That year, it rained nearly every day for eleven months. The crops meant to feed the city destroyed, we knew we would face famine. Close on its heels, as always, would come the plague. None of this made me despondent, however, for at last I had a purpose. I’d become more social in the nine months since Friar Baldo pulled me up from my knees in the nave of our great cathedral. I renewed old friendships and made new ones, all in order to identify objects that must be saved from Savonarola’s bonfires.
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. While I would never move in the lofty intellectual circles enjoyed by my grandfather, the Florentines rarely disappointed when it came to conversation. Once again, I found myself happily discussing Neoplatonism, even if it could not be done quite so openly as it had in the past. Twice I saw Cristofano at gatherings. The first time, we did not speak, but I could feel his eyes following me as I made my rounds of the guests. The second time, I encountered him on the wide marble stairway leading up to the party on the piano nobile. He was leaving as I arrived. There was no one else around. He stopped, took my hand, and brushed his lips over it.
“Mina,” he said, his eyes burning bright.
I could not find my voice to reply. He smiled at me and continued on his way down the steps. Doubtless I was a fool even to hope, but I took it as a sign that someday, perhaps, we would rekindle our friendship.
As the months passed, Savonarola’s grip on the city began to ever so slightly crack as the damage wreaked by his policies began to come clear. Nonetheless, those who were not his devoted followers still lived in fear of the torture meted out indiscriminately by his government. Rumors began to fly about the rain, that it was a sign from God that the little friar was not doing the Lord’s work. Everyone was uneasy.
This should have made my job simpler, but it didn’t. I’d always shown great interest in my friends’ art, but now I had to curb my enthusiasm. As Friar Baldo and his colleagues stole more and more pieces, everyone began talking about the thefts. One day, a cousin of mine pointed out that her cassoni and two ancient sculptures had disappeared from her house soon after I’d dined with her and was rhapsodizing about the pieces. She mentioned it at a party, and several others chimed in, saying that I had commented on possessions of theirs shortly before they’d been burgled. They were teasing, but I began to worry that they might suspect I had something to do with the crimes. After all, many of the stolen items were things I had earlier begged them to hide away so that they’d be out of Savonarola’s reach. How long until someone made the connection?
These concerns had been eating at me, so I cannot claim surprise when, at a dinner party, the host jokingly suggested that I was paying off my friends’ servants to remove and bring to me everything I’d not long ago asked them to put in safe storage. He didn’t mention Savonarola by name, but everyone knew what he meant.
I’d been on edge all night. Father Cambio was a guest as well, seated diagonally across from me at the table. From the moment I saw him, it was evident that he had not forgiven me for what I’d done the last time we met. The cut on his face caused by my ring had healed years ago, but it had left an invisible scar. Or rather, a scar visible only to me. There was no mistaking the hatred in his eyes.
“I would not have thought you a heretic, Signora Portinari,” he said. Everyone fell silent. This was not an accusation anyone should make in jest.
“I’m no heretic.” I met his stare.
“You are if you want to divert sinful objects from the fires in which they belong. The corruption in our Holy Church runs deep, signora. Only Savonarola can reform these evils. You should not stand in his way.”
“She’s so petite” our host said, trying to change the direction of the conversation. “Not big enough even to block the friar, as short as he is.” Everyone laughed and started to discuss the feud in which Savonarola was engaged with the pope. Father Cambio continued to glare at me with venom in his eyes.
The next day, a group of boys appeared at my door. One of Savonarola’s Bands of Hope. Their leader, who could not have been more than fifteen, demanded to see me.
“We are here to cleanse this house,” he said. “You have been given opportunities to do this yourself voluntarily, but we have learned that you kept back many objects that continue to lead you to sin.”
“You are not welcome here,” I said.
He shoved me aside, slamming me into the wall. “That is not for you to decide.”
He said many things after that. I remember none of them. The only thing that mattered to me was the golden half medal of St. Anthony hanging around his neck. This boy, this thug, was my son. He looked like me, with golden hair and light eyes, and might have grown up like me, too, educated and erudite, had I not abandoned him. I no longer tried to stop them from coming into the house, nor did I stand in their way when they looted my possessions. Everything precious was hidden safely away, but even if it weren’t, I’m not sure I could have fought to save any of it. Not then. Not when I saw what my son had become. I had destroyed his life, leaving him vulnerable to men like Savonarola. I wanted to tell him who I was, to show him the other half of the medal he wore, but I was too cowardly. I shrank away and said nothing.
The next day, I met with Friar Baldo in a vestry of the Cappelle Medicee. “We have just finished arranging to use this passageway,” he said, pushing a large wardrobe along the wall, revealing a trapdoor below it. He pulled it open and led me down a narrow set of steps into a small room that was stuffed full with items stolen to save them from Savonarola.
“So much,” I said, astonished by the quantity.
“Our work will have a significant impact,” he said. “But that is not what you wanted to discuss with me, is it?”
“No,” I said. I told him what had happened at the party, sparing no detail about Father Cambio’s threats. I told him that I’d then been visited by a Band of Hope, but made no mention of my relationship to the boys’ leader.
“You must be more careful,” he said. “You’ve provided us with information on nearly every fashionable house in the city. Now it is time for you to step back.”
“Even if I do, I’m afraid Father Cambio will still come after me.”
“Why does he despise you so much?”
I looked into his eyes. “Do the details matter?”
“I suppose they don’t, though I am curious,” he said.
“Suffice it to say that he will do anything in his power to hurt me. If I’d known he’d been invited to that dinner, I never would have gone. I hoped he’d forgot about me, but now…”
“Would you consider leaving Florence?”
“Never. It is my home.”
“Petrarch and Dante both survived exile,” he said.
“There’s nowhere I could go.”
“Then the only way to keep you safe is to make the Piagnoni believe you are one of them. Renounce your friends and take up with a new set. You can say that the Band of Hope changed your way of thinking and that you now support Savonarola.”
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“It’s the only way to stay safe if you insist on remaining in the city.”
And so I followed his advice. I told my friends that after the Band of Hope looted my house, I’d had a vision, and that I now knew we were all on the wrong path. Only Savonarola could lead us to salvation. It was not yet too late for us to repent.
My newfound zeal was off-putting to everyone, especially Bia, who knew how much I’d always despised the friar.
“I don’t believe this conversion,” she said. “It’s absurd. What game are you playing at? It was bad enough when you ruined everything with Signore Corsini, but now, just when you’ve let us reclaim some semblance of an interesting life, you throw it away. Do you have an aversion to happiness?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I—”
“I think you do,” she said. “And I know why.”
She lunged forward and tugged the thin gold chain around my neck, pulling the charm that dangled from it out from my bodice. I strained to grab it back, but she clasped it in her hand and held it high above her head, out of my reach.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I said.
“Who was your lover and why wouldn’t he marry you? Did my father know what you’d done? No wonder you never had a child of your own. You were left barren as punishment for your sins.”
“It wasn’t like that.” But I was lying. She had it exactly right.
“Did my father know?”
“No.”
“I suppose that’s a slim consolation.” She flung the necklace at me and then stormed out of the room.
I hadn’t noticed Alfia was there, standing in the shadows, until she stepped forward and enveloped me in an embrace. I wept and wept, wondering how one mistake could so completely destroy a person’s life.