The Orphan of Florence

  “Please take me to them,” I said, and made my lips quiver as if I’d been about to weep. I told myself I wasn’t—that I was just playing him by pretending to be upset. “I’ve dreamed of knowing about my family for as long as I can remember. It’s hard, not knowing where you belong…” My voice accidentally caught, which was perfect.

  “You’re telling me nothing I don’t know well myself,” he answered, unmoved. “Now, turn the key.” He emphasized the last three words so that I’d see I had more chance of getting an answer from the stone wall beside us.

  I swore under my breath and fiddled with the key until it turned in the lock. I had to use most of my strength to push the heavy gate open. I stalked through the opening and kept on going, refusing to push the gate closed, refusing even to look at the Magician as he did so.

  His voice was soft behind me. “I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. I don’t have permission.”

  * * *

  I didn’t look at Ser Abramo as we walked across the estate and into his house. Leo greeted us enthusiastically, but I was too angry to respond in kind. Rage made eating out of the question, despite the delicious fragrance coming from the kitchen cauldron. Ser Abramo invited me to dine with him, but I walked past him and made my way up the staircase toward my bedchamber, where I closed the door, threw the bolt, and hurled myself facedown on the bed, too angry and frustrated even to cry.

  I’d told myself all these years that the hardest thing was not knowing what had happened to my family. I’d been wrong. It was actually harder knowing that someone else knew and wouldn’t tell me.

  Night had fallen by the time Ser Abramo’s tentative knock came at the door. At first I didn’t answer, but he persisted until I grew annoyed and opened the door.

  I intended to tell him to go away, but the man who stood there was the Magician, with a powerful gaze and voice, neither of which allowed for argument.

  “Come,” he said. For once, Leo wasn’t with him; perhaps the dog had the good sense to stay out of his way when he transformed from mere Abramo to an omnipotent immortal.

  “Where are we going?” I asked meekly, but he wasn’t in the mood to answer. He had already turned and was moving down the stairs. I could do nothing but follow. We went through the map room to the storage room, where—every action brisk and forceful—he lit the lamp, threw back the carpet, opened the hatch, and crawled down to the cellar.

  Reluctantly, I climbed down after him into the freezing blackness. He parted the velvet curtains, unlocked the arched door, and swung it open to reveal the cavernous workroom.

  Without pausing, he strode up to the tall shelves and pulled a slender leather-bound book from the uppermost shelf. He set it down on the long worktable and opened it midway, where the centers of several pages had been cut away to create a groove. Ser Abramo picked up an iron key nestled inside.

  “Remember where this is hid,” he said pointedly. “Memorize the title.”

  I sounded out the Tuscan. “Amarosa visione.” Visions of Love, by the poet Boccaccio.

  Meanwhile, he squatted down to clear away half of the dusty scrolls on the bottom shelf, exposing the wall behind them. The lamplight was too weak to dispel much dark, and he had to feel around with the iron key to find the groove. A door hidden in the wall popped open. Ser Abramo reached down and in and drew out a rectangular metal box.

  He didn’t rise, but instead held the dull key up to the lamp. “This opens the lockbox as well,” he said, and to prove it, he put the iron key into a latch on the side of the box. The top was a bit rusted from the cellar damp and took effort to open.

  Several pieces of paper lay inside the box. He drew out a yellowed one folded into quarters and set it on the table.

  “Time to start your training,” he said, very seriously.

  “Yes, Ser Lorenzo said something about that.”

  “He meant something else. What I teach you—you’re not to tell anyone. Do you understand? Not Ser Lorenzo, not Donna Lucrezia, not your friends. We never discuss it in anyone’s presence. You must swear.”

  I hesitated. “I already swore allegiance to Ser Lorenzo—”

  “Well and good. And now you have to swear allegiance to me, and the art I teach you.”

  I watched silently as he pulled out a colorful painted card just larger than my hand and set it down next to the paper.

  He pushed the painted card across the table toward me and pulled out a small but exceedingly sharp dagger, the sort favored by brigands to slice people’s throats.

  “Hold out your finger,” he said.

  I recoiled.

  “I suppose I should explain first.” He pointed with the dagger’s tip at the painted card. “Have you ever seen a card like this?”

  I shook my head.

  “They’re very old, but in Italy they’re new,” he said. “Fortune cards. The way I see it, they’re a means of learning God’s will. Most people only talk to God. This is a way of listening to Him. There are many cards, of which this is the first: the Fool.”

  Lorenzo is the fool, I thought, remembering my opium-fueled dream.

  “The Fool represents the start of a long journey,” the Magician continued.

  I stared down at a miniature painting of a village idiot with mouth agape and slightly crossed eyes looking out at the viewer. His thighs were completely naked; remnants of leggings covered him from knee to ankle, where they ended in shreds, leaving his feet bare. His tattered tunic barely covered his privates. A large club rested on his shoulder—no doubt protection from dogs and mockers who were probably responsible for the feathers stuck upright, like a crown, in his golden curls.

  “The fool is an outcast,” Ser Abramo said. “A guileless creature incapable of caring for himself. He’s fallen so far in society that he cannot fall further.” He paused. “You’re far from stupid, Giuliano, but you’ve made yourself an outcast. You can continue alone on the solitary course you have chosen and remain ignorant—”

  I was angry. I wanted to say, I didn’t choose this life. I’m an orphan, my parents abandoned me. I had no choice but to become an outcast. None of it’s my fault. I wanted to say, I could fall further. I could become a whore.

  I wanted to say, Don’t call me ignorant.

  “Or you can take a blind leap of faith,” Ser Abramo continued, “and walk a better path, if one with as many dangers. If you choose the latter, there are things I must reveal to you—secrets that you must swear upon your life to keep, at least for now. Secrets so deep they call for blood.”

  I tried to seem brave. “What dangers?”

  “Enemies who want to find and destroy me,” he said. “Who would destroy the Medici and Florence herself.”

  I hesitated. “Are you really a Magician, then, or just a—”

  I don’t know what I was going to say next, really. Bodyguard or agent or spy all came to mind, but before I could say it, Ser Abramo interrupted.

  “I am the Magician,” he said, in a way that left no doubt. “And I work, and always have worked, for Florence and for the Medici.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I lied, and let go a gusting sigh to rid myself of nerves.

  His expression softened at my bravado. “Swear you will die rather than reveal the secrets.”

  “Go ahead, prick my finger. I swear.” I just wanted it all to be over with.

  “Not just on your life,” he pressed. “On the lives of your friends, too.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “You wouldn’t hurt them, would you?” I thought of Tommaso and his missing front tooth.

  He held my gaze without blinking. “I wouldn’t have to.”

  For an instant, I considered running away. Living in comfort off that one amazing florin with Cecilia and Tommaso and forgetting that the Magician of Florence ever existed. Pretending there was no pope, no Roman army, no war.

  “You’re still paying me another florin afterward?” I asked, partly to break the tension. “I’d think more, since you’re requiring so mu
ch more of me.”

  His thick coal brow lifted above his eyepatch. “Don’t press your luck, urchin.”

  I thrust my hand in his, squeezed my eyes shut, and turned my face away. “Do it,” I said. I was good with a razor and tried not to be squeamish, but blood wasn’t one of my favorite sights. Particularly not my own.

  The stiletto’s edge was so sharp and Ser Abramo so quick that he had to tell me he was finished. It pinched only a little when he squeezed my finger in order to milk a fat, dark drop of blood from it, which spilled onto the heart of the Fool.

  And then he pierced his own finger without flinching and let his own blood spill on top of mine. He offered me his handkerchief to stanch the flow from my finger, and put his own in his mouth and brought it out clean.

  “We have a bargain now,” he said. “I’ll teach you all I know about magic. In return, I’ll use it to protect you and your friends from danger for the rest of your lives.”

  “All you know?” I breathed, surprised.

  “You’re as intelligent as I am,” he countered. “And I’m arrogant enough to say that’s quite rare. When the time comes for me to retire, you’ll be my replacement.”

  Ser Abramo reached for the lamp and took the cover off, exposing the wick and its yellow flame, which leapt on being freed. He picked up the painted card by one corner and fed it to the flame; it smoked when it found the blood and took a moment to catch, but when it did, the blaze jumped up toward his fingers. He rose, gesturing for me to follow, and together we went to the open pit of the little furnace.

  Ser Abramo dropped the card inside the pit. We stared down at it as it burned. “There’s your old life gone, and a new one beginning,” he said softly. “Just as it was for me.”

  I looked down as the image on the card blackened and shriveled into ash. The last thing to disappear was the Fool’s bare foot, stepping onto unknown ground before it finally darkened and transformed to gray-white cinder.

  And that was how I became apprenticed to the Magician of Florence.

  Seven

  That evening, Ser Abramo and I settled in the sumptuous sitting room next to each other, while the great roaring fire in the hearth chased away the chill that had settled deep in my bones during the wagon ride. Leo slept on the floor at our feet, occasionally releasing a gusting snore that made his pendulous muzzle flap.

  I sipped from a cup of mulled wine while Ser Abramo picked up the first parchment from the little table beside him and unfolded it. He held it in his lap and we both gazed down at the strange legends on it.

  “You’ll be good at this, you with your secret alphabet. This explains many magical symbols that you need to memorize right away.” His tone grew relaxed, enthusiastic; the darkness that had come over him earlier vanished. “For example, here are the elements: air, fire, water, earth.” He pointed at four little triangles, some upside-down, some with an extra line drawn parallel to the base. “And here are all the planets: Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn.”

  I recognized the symbols for Mars and Venus; they were the same symbols that represented male and female, respectively. Other symbols I recognized from both of my talismans, though I hadn’t known before what they’d meant.

  He set that parchment aside, picked up the other, and unfolded it. “This one shows the Tree of Life. It’s a bit advanced, but I want you to see the colors associated with the gods.”

  He held it up for me to look at. The detailed diagram didn’t look anything like a tree. Several lines connected seven circles, each of the latter painted a different color and bearing foreign letters and planetary symbols inside their diameters. It made no sense at all to me, but I nodded sagely.

  Ser Abramo set the second parchment down and carefully lifted the piece of paper and handed it to me. It was so thin and its creases so deeply worn that I feared it would fall apart in my hands. I tried to read it upside down at first, until he righted it for me.

  There were lines in some foreign language—Greek, I judged—at the top, with the translation in Tuscan beneath. Below were words and diagrams showing four five-pointed stars, each with arrows indicating how they were to be drawn. One star for the East, one for the South, one for West, one for North. And each had its own archangel to be summoned: Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel.

  “How to cast a magical circle,” I murmured, and felt a glimmer of fear. Although the ritual Ser Abramo did for my protection had felt holy, as if I’d been in church, the good Servants of Mary at the orphanage had drummed into me that all magic was the work of the devil, and right then I felt as though I was kissing his arse.

  “I work godly magic,” Ser Abramo said, lifting a brow at my apparently obvious fright. “It’s not evil in well-meaning hands, and you shouldn’t fear it, but you should show it the reverence you’d show God Himself in His temple. Because, quite honestly, that’s Who you’re communicating with.”

  “So magic really works?” I hadn’t meant for my voice to drop to a whisper.

  “If the magician believes in it,” he answered promptly. “It helps if the recipient of the magic believes in it, too.”

  “And if the magician doesn’t?”

  “It won’t work. At least, that’s been my experience.”

  “So you can turn lead into gold,” I asked, “and make dogs talk? Make people fall in love with each other? Create florins out of thin air?” It would certainly explain his generosity.

  He gave a hearty laugh, thoroughly amused at the question. “Real magic isn’t for that. It’s for protection, health, and…” His voice trailed and he stared out into the distance, suddenly serious again. “For example,” he said. “I asked to find—”

  “You mean you did a spell,” I interrupted.

  “That’s a crude way of putting it.” He paused. “I did a ritual asking to find the right person.” He glanced over at me; the muscles in his face relaxed, softening his expression. “And here you are.”

  That night, as I lay in my soft, sumptuous bed trying to fall asleep, I was torn between two opposing emotions. The first was … well, I’m not sure what it was, because I hadn’t felt it before. It felt like coming in from bitter weather and feeling the heat from a well-stoked fire on my tingling cheeks.

  The nuns at the orphanage, except one, had been adamant in their disapproval of me. I was an annoyance, a problem, a worthless creature who would come to no good. Yet here was Ser Abramo telling me I was wanted—so much so that he had used magic to find me. And someday, someday soon, he would tell me the truth about my family and who I really was.

  This thought led to the second emotion, one I was all too familiar with: terror. I feared having something wonderful in my life, because God would take it from me all too soon.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ser Abramo and I were sitting over bowls of minestra in the kitchen, Leo drooling at our feet, when a stranger sailed into the kitchen unannounced, as if there’d been no locks, no walls to restrain him. He was a very handsome younger man, perhaps five years my senior, with short-cropped, shining black curls and the shadowy beginnings of a goatee. Too handsome, if you ask me—the better-looking a man, the likelier he is to be full of himself. That alone made me dislike him immediately.

  Amazingly, he’d removed his winter cloak and hung it up in the outer room without anyone of us, including Leo, noticing.

  “Bramo,” he said, beaming, and held out his arms.

  “Niccolo!” Ser Abramo jumped to his feet and the two men embraced, each thumping the other’s back as if they’d been long-lost relatives seeing each other for the first time in years. Compared to the brawny Abramo, Niccolo seemed tall and willowy.

  Ser Abramo drew back, holding the younger man’s shoulders, and studied him. “You’ve put on a bit of weight,” he said approvingly, then added in a lower, confidential tone, “How are things going for you?”

  Niccolo’s grin remained fixed on his mouth, but fled his eyes. “Fine,” he asserted heartily. “Just fine.”

>   Ser Abramo gestured at me. “And here is your pupil, Giuliano.”

  There was something vaguely familiar about Niccolo, something that made me dislike him even more.

  “Giuliano.” He nodded politely, his smile fainter, frostier, his gaze every bit as cold as mine.

  I ignored him and looked questioningly at Ser Abramo. “I thought you were to teach me.”

  “I’ll teach you my trade. And Niccolo will teach you his.”

  “Which is?” I asked sourly, even though I suspected I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Niccolo’s grin dissolved entirely. His pale green eyes, whose thick black lashes made them look as if they’d been lined with kohl, narrowed at me with outright contempt. “Swordsmanship.” He turned to Abramo. “We’ll have to use daggers, then. There’s no way this tiny runt can lift a proper-sized weapon.”

  “Wait a minute!” I countered, talking over him. “I promised to be your apprentice, not get involved in violence! Much less trust him to teach me how to protect myself!”

  “Me?” Niccolo’s voice rose with indignance. “What’s your problem trusting me? I’m the one who has the problem trusting you!”

  Abramo’s thunderous tone startled us. “You’ll both do it,” he commanded sternly. “And the two of you will get on nicely so long as you’re in my house.” His gaze was searing, disgusted, relentless. Niccolo and I withered silently beneath it.

  Niccolo gave the curtest of nods, but his expression remained hostile.

  “Giuliano,” Ser Abramo ordered, his gaze pointedly holding Niccolo’s, “go upstairs to the weapons room. It’s on the floor above your chamber. You’ll find it open. Go inside, and wait there.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said politely, and headed out into the sitting room. I went so far as to open the door to the staircase and take a few steps up … and then tiptoed back soundlessly to the sitting room, my ear tilted toward the kitchen to better hear the men’s conversation. Niccolo wasn’t the only person who could steal soundlessly from room to room.

  “… disgusting little urchin,” Niccolo was saying.

  “Ho!” Ser Abramo responded, his tone now lighter and good-humored. “How quickly you forget what you were when you first entered this house!”