Chapter Thirty-Two
Every church bell rings when Lorenzo de’ Medici and his bride step out onto the cathedral’s marble steps. The packed piazza roars when he takes his new wife’s hand and kisses her knuckles. She blushes prettily, and they roar even louder.
Everyone except for me.
Mamma looks at me, her eyebrows high. “Stop scowling. We don’t want him to see it. He might be kinder than his father.”
He might let us keep the house, she means. Never mind the fact there’s no way Lorenzo de’ Medici can see my face from hundreds of feet away, much less would let us keep something his family could take from us.
Instead of arguing with her, I smile, fingers going to the skull-headed key hidden in my innermost pocket. “Perhaps.”
A carpet of cloth-of-gold, its gleam nearly buried beneath thousands of rose petals, leads from the cathedral’s steps to the Palazzo Medici.
Two magicked papier-maché unicorns, their sides woven with garlands of herbs and wildflowers, rear and charge down the golden road to the thrill of fifes to lead the couple to their new home.
Lorenzo’s bride gasps, both hands flying over her mouth at the sight. She’s never seen magic before.
The crowd follows the married couple, and the scent of crushed flowers fills the air, sharp and green. When I inhale it, even I’m not immune to the great excitement sweeping through the city like a fever.
Today Lorenzo de’ Medici, heir to the family fortune and its vast power, has wed.
And tonight, I’m breaking into his house to find and share his family’s dark secrets with the world, starting with whatever they’ve done to my brother.
The Medici’s palazzo shines as bright as a bonfire. The stream of people moving to the garden doors makes nerves tighten in my belly, brings up the old fears of sitting down for an exam I didn’t study for. To steady myself, I take in my reflection in a coach window.
An arrogant stranger in black velvet and gold glares back at me.
“You’ll look good,” Giovannia said as she helped me get ready this afternoon. “You’ll look like you belong.”
Except I don’t want to look like I belong to the Medici’s glittering, rotting world. In these fine clothes, I’m a version of Virgil who never discovered art, who never insisted on bucking my family’s expectations to work in an artist’s workshop.
I don’t look like the boy who fell for Leonardo da Vinci and broke his heart.
Even though I’m not here for Leonardo—even though he’d better not be here for me—I can’t help pushing up on my toes to scan the crowd for him. Did he finish the wedding portrait? Did Verrocchio have him hire a horse and cart to bring it over this morning? What did he think of all the grandeur?
“Your invitation, signore,” the Medici herald says. The two-story garden doors are carved with images of Proserpina. Torches burn inside, beckoning like crooked fingers.
Niccolo’s already inside. Three more steps, and I’ll be there too.
I swallow and pull out the gilded paper. “Of course.”
The herald frowns at the guest name. “Isn’t he…?” He trails off, doubtlessly unable to find a tactful way to say about three inches from death without being rude. My family might be too poor to make the Medici’s guest list, but Giovannia’s ancient would-be fiancé isn’t.
“Yes. I’m his nephew. We have the same name.”
People scowl and mutter behind me, sullen about what’s taking so long. A guard whistles and makes a hurry up gesture.
The herald sighs, finally giving in to my plan. “Welcome, signore.”
Two guards search me next. One frowns when he upends my empty sword scabbard and out falls a rolled-up paper. “What’s this?”
The paper unfurls. The foxes look at me from the gravel path, a smaller one tucked into the bigger one’s side. I snatch them up before anyone steps on them. “My sister must’ve hidden it there.”
It was my first commissioned artwork. Niccolo bought it with a single coin. When I presented it to him, he hugged me to his side and whispered, “You’re a real artist now, aren’t you?”
It was the first time someone else wanted my art. The first time anyone stuck a name to what I could become. If this drawing can’t get my brother to remember me, if it can’t spark knowing in his distant soul, then nothing else will.
The guards shrug and motion me through the doors at last.
The courtyard garden is all a delightful fantasy.
Vining roses wrap around delicate lattices and box hedges.
Rearing lions and unicorns flank the paths, cut with such precision, I touch one just to be sure it’s greenery and not another magicked object.
Exquisite marble statues line the paths—prophets and kings and saints—who bow and usher guests deeper into the courtyard.
Even the torches seem to glow brighter, little pops of gold and silver fizzing from them like bubbles in a pale gold wine.
Keep your mouth shut, I remind myself. Don’t gape like a bumpkin.
This could be straight from a fairy tale, a dream. I grew up wealthy, but not like this.
I spot Niccolo in the crowd. He’s deep in conversation with a man whose back is to me. My brother’s wedding finery is black and gold, just like mine.
I tug my doublet’s collar, the skin too hot beneath it. My brain insists it’s a coincidence, but my heart whispers it’s a sign. A hidden thread connecting us, one waiting for me to make obvious to him once more. The drawing of the fox burns like an ember at my side.
I take a step closer, then another.
The person talking to Niccolo turns.
And I freeze.
Lorenzo de’ Medici.
The groom’s dark eyes scan the room, as if searching for a threat. Pulse kicking into a higher tempo, I duck behind a lemon tree before he sees me.
“And you, signore.” An older man with salt-and-pepper hair turns to me.
A sapphire winks on every single one of his fingers, a gorgeous woman is under his arm.
She’s decades younger than him and so attentive, she must be a courtesan.
“Do you make your gold from banking or commerce or”—he runs his hands up the woman’s backside—“flesh?”
Gesù Cristo! I just bathed, but watching this man makes me feel like I need to scrub dirt off my skin again.
A silk-clad arm slithers around my neck. “Painting.” Bartolomeo Rucellai grins. His dark blue wedding finery is working hard to make him look like a handsome young man and not a pile of rats in expensive brocade. “He’s also a painter, Zio. The Pitti one.”
His uncle? Splendid. I bet he heard everything about me snogging Bartolomeo as a boy.
The bordello owner ogles his companion’s low-cut bodice, as if appraising a jewel. “I’ve always wondered what would inspire a man to paint instead of possess.”
Bartolomeo smirks at the insult. “If you’re smart, you can have both.”
Gritting my teeth, I pluck a glass of wine off the lion’s-paw table beside us and clink it against Bartolomeo’s.
It would be unforgivably rude to snub him, no matter how much I want to.
Pitti isn’t the name on my invitation here, so I need to stay forgettable.
Pleasant. “It’s very bracing to see you. ”
“Bracing?” He frowns like he’s never heard that word before.
“Yes, just like running face-first into a wall.”
He throws back his head and laughs. ’Tis a mean, grating sound, one that makes other people turn and look. I shoot a furtive glance at Niccolo and Lorenzo, but they’re too far away to hear.
“Insult me all you want. I’ve won, and you and da Vinci have lost!”
It takes me a moment to understand what he’s saying. “The wedding commission?”
Bartolomeo won? God, that’s annoying. He’ll be insufferable about it for the rest of our lives. For once, the fact that mine will be so short doesn’t seem like a bad thing.
His smirk turns oily. “You didn’t know? I thought you and da Vinci worked on it together.”
“Verrocchio only let one of us attend today. I’m not here as an artist.” I smile in a way that I hope reads as arrogant and not nervous. I can’t reveal that I don’t know the details about the wedding commission: Bartolomeo might figure out I’m not supposed to be here.
Bartolomeo’s lip curls again. “No. You’re here as a failure.”
I run my tongue along the back of my clenched teeth, holding in the hot words that threaten to spill out. To this crowd, I’ll always be Nico Pitti’s second son, the spare heir who embarrassed him, the artist who fizzled like a wet log and went out before he was nineteen.
The bronze toes of the lion’s-paw table wriggle at me, awfully close to Bartolomeo. Florence’s wealthy love commissioning a magicked walking table for parties. Unfortunately, lion’s feet develop a mind of their own and become more likely to trip people than listen to them.
Bartolomeo doesn’t notice. He’s already turning away with a horrible, gloating smirk. Fighting with him would be foolish, but ruining his night just a little bit… I give the table a nod and leave.
There’s a hollow thunk of someone tripping, followed by a satisfying crash and scandalized gasps. I bite the pad of my thumb to keep from smiling, not daring to turn around.
You know someone’s being a stronzo if even the art begs you to bully them.
“I shouldn’t encourage you,” a familiar voice says. “But I love it when you put Bartolomeo Rucellai in his place.”
Leonardo’s grin stops my heart.