LITMIR.BIZ

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below the ribs and swung me like a bale of hay up into Clarice’s fierce clutches.

      A wave of fear slammed against me. I endured it until it crested and faded, leaving everything still and silent its wake. I had a choice: to quail, or to harden.

      I hardened.

      At the instant the boy handed me to my aunt, I slipped the stiletto from its sheath, hidden in my skirt pocket. It sliced easily through the skin beneath the boy’s jaw, in the same grinning arc Clarice had drawn for me on her own throat, with her finger.

      But I was a child and not very strong. The wound was shallow; he flinched and drew back before I could finish. With all my might, I plunged the weapon deeper into the side of his neck. He clawed at the protruding dagger and let go a gurgling shriek, his eyes bulging with furious reproach.

      Clutching me, Clarice kicked the boy’s shoulder. He fell backward, still screaming while Clarice set me on the saddle in front of her.

      I stared down at him, horrified and intrigued by what I had just done.

       He’s going to die in any case, my aunt had said. But the rebels would torture him horribly, until he confessed, and then they would hand him over to the crowd. You can spare him that.

       Even we must not know where Ippolito and the others have gone. Can you understand that, Caterina?

      It did not seem like a kindness now, watching him flail in the new grass, the blood from his throat collecting in a pool on the grass near his shoulder, crimson against spring green.

      Suddenly, ominously, he stilled and fell silent.

       He will break, Clarice had said, and tell them where the heirs have gone, and the House of Medici will be no more. But he will not be suspicious of a child. You will be able to get very close to him.

      Clarice shouted in my ear. “Stand up in the saddle, Caterina! Stand up, I won’t let you fall.”

      Miraculously, I struggled to my feet, swaying. I was now almost the height of the wall next to me.

      “Crawl up, child!”

      I pulled myself up while Clarice pushed. In an instant, I was kneeling on the wide ledge.

      “What do you see?” my aunt demanded. “Is there a carriage?”

      I looked out onto the narrow Via de’ Ginori—deserted save for a peasant woman dragging two small children with her, and a motionless one-horse carriage sitting next to the curb.

      “Yes,” I called to her, then shouted and waved a hand at the carriage. Slowly, the horse lifted its hooves, and the wheels began to turn. When it finally arrived, the driver pulled so close to the wall that the wheels screeched against the stone.

      I looked over the roof of the stables as the gate squealed; it swung wide open as a small crowd swarmed onto the estate. A man pointed up at me and let go a shout; the crowd headed directly toward us.

      The driver, dressed in rumpled, oil-stained linen, stood up in his seat and stretched out his dirty hands to me. “Jump! I’ll catch you.”

      Behind me, Clarice lurched as she grabbed the wall’s edge; her panicked mount had taken a step away from the wall. I tried to pull her up but lacked the strength.

      I sucked in a great deep breath and leaped. The driver caught me easily and set me down beside him, then called to Clarice. I could see only her fingers and the backs of her hands—the right one purpled and swollen—where the fine bones stood out like ivory cords.

      “Hold on, Madonna, I’ll pull you over!”

      Our rescuer walked to the far edge of the driver’s box until his chest was pressed against the wall. He strained but could only brush Clarice’s fingertips.

      “God help me,” Clarice screamed, at the same time that her horse shrieked. Men shouted on the other side of the wall.

      “Get her! Hold her horse!”

      “Don’t let her escape!”

      In desperation, the driver climbed onto the roof of the carriage and, flexing his knees, bent from his waist to reach over the ledge and catch her arms. Clarice’s good hand caught hold of him; when he straightened, her face appeared over the top of the wall.

      She screamed again, in fury rather than fright; her shoulders dipped beneath the wall as the men on the other side pulled at her. “Bastards! Bastards! Let me go!”

      The driver staggered and almost fell, but pulled on her with such brute force that he fell back onto the carriage roof. Aunt Clarice came tumbling with him. The driver leaned down to examine her, but she sat up and struck him with her left hand.

      “Go!” she snarled. She clambered down the side of the carriage and pulled me inside to sit beside her. She was gasping and trembling with exhaustion; her hair was wild on her shoulders, and the back of her gown had been torn off, exposing her petticoat.

      She leaned out the door and shouted, “Out of the city, quickly! I’ll tell you then where we’re going!”

      She fell back against the seat and stared down at her injured wrist as if astonished that it had not betrayed her. Then she stared up at the dirty wooden interior; unlike me, she made no attempt to look back at the home she was leaving.

      “We’ll go to Naples,” she said, “to my mother’s family. But not today. They’ll expect us to go there.” Shivering but unshaken, defeated but indomitable, she turned her fierce gaze on me. “The Orsini will help us. This is not the end, you know. The Medici will retake Florence. We always do.”

      I looked away. In the beginning, I had not wanted to take the knife, but it had drawn me like the darkness in Cosimo Ruggieri’s eyes. Now I stared down at the palm that had wielded the blade and saw that same darkness in me. I had told myself that I did it for the House of Medici; in truth, I had done it because I was curious, because I had wanted to see what it was like to kill a man.

      Like Lorenzo, I learned early that I was capable of murder. And I was terrified to think where that capability might lead.

       Five

      Poggio means hill, and the villa my great-grandfather built at Poggio a Caiano rests atop a sprawling grassy prominence in the Tuscan countryside, three hours from the city. The home Lorenzo obtained in 1479 had been a plain, three-storied square with a red tile roof, but in il Magnificos hands, it became much more. He encased the ground floor by a portico with several graceful arches that opened onto the front courtyard. A staircase originated on either side of the central arch and the two curved upward to meet at the grand middle-floor entrance, where a triangular pediment rested atop six great columns in the style of a Greek temple. The structure stood majestic and alone, surrounded by gentle hills and streams and the nearby Albano mountains.

      No one would think to look for us there, Aunt Clarice explained, as it lay northwest of the city, and the rebels would be searching all the roads leading south. We would spend the night there, during which she would formulate a plan that would eventually take us safely to Naples.

      We rolled through the open gates, coughing from the dust, and tumbled barefoot and disheveled from the carriage to be met by a dumbstruck gardener. Exhausted though we were, our nerves would not let us rest or eat. Her gaze distant, her mind working, my aunt paced through the formal, painstakingly groomed gardens while I dashed ahead of her in an effort to tire myself. Dove-colored clouds gathered overhead; the breeze grew cool and smelled of rain. I thought of the astonishment and reproach in the stableboy’s eyes. I had learned a fundamental truth about killing: The victim’s anguish is brief and fleeting, but the murderer’s endures forever.

      I ran and ran that afternoon, but never succeeded in leaving the stableboy behind. Clarice never spoke to me of him; I honestly believe that she, lost in her efforts to transform

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