I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis Page A

burst.
    He had wounded Giuliano. He had hurt him in his most vulnerable moment, and when Giuliano had said,
I love you, Lorenzo. . . . Please don’t make me choose
, Lorenzo had been cruel. Had turned him away, without help—the one thing he owed Giuliano most of all.
    How could he explain to the others that he could never leave his younger brother behind? How could he explain the responsibility he felt for Giuliano, who had lost his father so young and had always looked to Lorenzo for guidance? How could he explain the promise he had made to his father on the latter’s deathbed? They were all too concerned with the safety of Lorenzo
il Magnifico
, whom they considered to be the greatest man in Florence, but they were wrong, all of them.
    Lorenzo was pushed behind the thick, heavy doors of the sacristy. They slammed shut after someone ventured out to fetch the wounded Nori.
    Inside, the airless, windowless chamber smelled of sacrificial wine and the dust that had settled on the priests’ vestments. Lorenzo grabbed each man who had pushed him to safety; he studied each face, and was each time disappointed. The greatest man in Florence was not here.
    He thought of Baroncelli’s great curving knife and of the bright blood on Francesco de’ Pazzi’s thigh and tunic. The images propelled him to move for the doors, with the intention of flinging them open and going back to rescue his brother. But della Stuffa sensed his intention, and immediately pressed his body against the exit. Old Michelozzo joined him, then Antonio Ridolfo; the weight of the three men held the doors shut fast. Lorenzo was pushed to the outer edge of the engraved brass. There was a grimness in their expressions, an unspoken, unspeakable knowledge that Lorenzo could not and would not accept.
    Hysterically, he pounded on the cold brass until his fists ached—and then he continued to pound until they bled. The scholar Angelo Poliziano struggled to wrap a piece of wool, torn from his own mantle, around the bleeding cut on Lorenzo’s neck. Lorenzo tried to push the distraction away, but Poliziano persisted until the wound was bound tight.
    All the while, Lorenzo did not cease his frantic efforts. “My brother!” he cried shrilly, and would not be moved by those who came to comfort him, would not be stilled or quieted. “I must go and find him! My brother! Where is my brother? . . .”
     
    .  .  .
     
    Moments earlier, Giuliano had looked up in amazement as Baroncelli lifted his great knife overhead—the tip of the blade pointed directly at the younger Medici brother’s heart.
    It happened too quickly for Giuliano to be frightened. Instinctively, he backed away—into a body that pressed against him, so firm and so fast, there could be no doubt its owner was part of the conspiracy. Giuliano glimpsed the man behind him, dressed in the robes of a penitent—and then gasped at the cold, burning sensation of steel sliding into his back, just below his ribs.
    He had been terribly wounded. He was surrounded by assassins, and about to die.
    The realizations did not distress him as much as the fact that he was trapped and unable to warn Lorenzo. Surely his brother would be the next target.
    “Lorenzo,” he said emphatically, as Baroncelli’s knife at last came flashing down, the blade reflecting a hundred tiny flames from the candles on the altar. But his utterance was drowned out by Baroncelli’s panicked, nonsensical cry: “Here, traitor!”
    The blow caught Giuliano between his uppermost pair of ribs. There came the dull crack of bone, and a second spasm of pain so intense, so impossible, it left him breathless.
    Baroncelli’s clean-shaven face, so close to Giuliano’s own, gleamed with sweat. He grunted with effort as he withdrew the knife; it came out whistling. Giuliano fought to draw another breath, to call out Lorenzo’s name again; it came out less audible than a whisper.
    And in that instant, as he stared up at the knife, as