The Orphan of Florence

I didn’t understand the last sentence. I only knew that I was terribly uncomfortable with his praise and terribly pleased. At the same time, it worried me. I was coming to care about my mentor, which was tempting Fate.

  Niccolo arrived soon after. Once we were in the weapons room, he presented me with a handsome baldric of finely tooled leather. “We need to convince our audience you’ve been trained to fight,” he said. His manner was still cool and detached, but not so terribly disapproving as it had been the day before. “Not that you found your belt in a trash pile somewhere.” He paused. “It was nigh impossible finding one to fit a skinny child like you.”

  I ignored the insult and fastened it around my waist. It was new and the leather was stiff. But it fit much better than the old one and felt less clumsy.

  “I rubbed the inside of the scabbard with oil,” he said, as I stuck my blunted dagger inside it. “And tried to stretch it a bit. Now, show me how fast you can draw your weapon.”

  I pulled on the pommel. With the old baldric, the blade had slipped out easily. Now the sheath was much tighter, requiring me to pull harder, which cost an extra second or two. Niccolo shook his head in disgust.

  “It’s not fair,” I protested heatedly. “You should have stretched it more. You came in here knowing this would slow me down.”

  He was unmoved, skeptical. “Did you practice one hundred times like I told you?”

  “I did,” I answered. “Do you think me so stupid and lazy as to put my life at risk?”

  “Mind how you speak to your better!” he snapped.

  “You’re not my better!” I countered, with such surety that he drew back, surprised and a bit ashamed that I knew the truth. “I heard you speaking with Ser Abramo! You come from the same streets I do!” I waved the tip of my dagger at the new baldric to distract him from probing further. “Anyway, now I have to practice two hundred times with this stupid thing just to get as good as I was with the old one.”

  “Then you shall,” he said.

  I drew my dagger a few dozen times for Niccolo until he was finally convinced I had enough facility to begin our rehearsal. It now included Niccolo drawing his dagger, my grabbing his wrist with my left hand and drawing my weapon with my right. Before I could strike, Niccolo rotated his wrist to pull his blade to the outside of my left arm, and then up under it to tap his dagger to my chest.

  We did this for what seemed like hours, until our mock battle grew faster, smoother, almost believable to an unenlightened viewer. My body began to remember the moves, so that my mind was freer to wander, and it focused on my rage that Niccolo and his masters did not value my life enough to spare me this. I should have been sitting inside the Palazzo Medici listening to a tutor, with Donna Lucrezia as my benefactor, but thanks to Ser Lorenzo, I was sweating in the weapons room, learning how to put my life at risk.

  And so each time that Niccolo came at me, I fought harder, drawing my dulled blade and swiping at him in earnest, but his arms were longer than mine so he stayed beyond my reach. I bared my teeth in anger as I clutched his forearm with all my power and vainly sought a countermove to foil him.

  He sensed my fury and retaliated with his own. His moves became rougher, stronger, his dagger’s tap against my breastbone increasingly harder until it became a bruising thump.

  On the last go, as Niccolo broke my hold and brought his dulled blade to my heart, he hissed in my ear:

  “If you ever hurt Bramo, in any way, I’ll do this to you in earnest with a sharpened blade.”

  I hissed back. “The same goes for you. Only mind you call him Ser Abramo, because he’s by far your better.”

  My words struck him. He lowered his weapon and took a step back. “That’s true,” he said thoughtfully. “I ought.”

  “Then why don’t you?” I demanded.

  “He really loathes it, you know.”

  “Why? I call him that all the time.”

  His tone had warmed and grown familiar. “Because, my dear lad, he’s one of us.”

  “Us?”

  “An orphan rescued from the streets by the same benefactor and given a life.” He paused. “He didn’t tell you?”

  I could only stare at him, stunned.

  If such a good thing was happening to me, things would somehow go terribly wrong. They always did. Bad things happen on the streets, as I said. Not just to little boys like Tommaso, but also to young women like me, who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time with only a little razor to protect them.

  In my mind, I was someplace very far away, because I jumped in my skin when Niccolo said in a loud, cheerful voice, “All right, one more go, and we’re done for the day. Tomorrow, you practice the fall.”

  And a long, long fall it would be.

  Eight

  The midday bells were chiming as I sat down to memorize the symbols and attributions for each sign of the zodiac and to practice writing them: the sharp, stylized horns of Aries, the upward arrow of Sagittarius, the underlined omega of Libra. I’d always been too restless to sit still for long, but this was an entirely new alphabet, a code where each symbol held layers of meaning. I studied and practiced forming the symbols for hours, so joyously rapt that when Ser Abramo came to tell me it was evening, I was astonished.

  After supper, the Magician took me down to his cavern, where wall torches illuminated the area surrounding his worktable. The little furnace built into the dirt floor had been stoked until the metal encasing it was glowing white, throwing off heat—an agreeable heat, until one got too close.

  He led me over to the table and pointed out a coin the size of a talisman carved from yellow beeswax. I recognized the Latin phrase Confirmo O Deus potentissimus in the outer ring, and the stylized 4 for Jupiter in the center of the circle, but not some odd lines and circles above it. The symbols were raised, just as they would be on a real talisman. Two extremely thin steel dowels had been inserted into the edge of the coin opposite each other.

  The Magician turned the wax coin over; a square filled with random numbers sat in the center, ringed by Hebrew letters.

  “Obviously, there’s more to learn than can be taught in a week,” he said, which puzzled me; I knew my playacting with Niccolo would only last seven days, but I’d thought that I had years in which to learn Ser Abramo’s trade. “This is how the mold is created; it requires artistic skill, which your handwriting shows.” He pointed at the wax coin. “This one is ready to be coated with wet clay in order to make a mold. But in the meantime, for purposes of demonstration…”

  He picked up a hardened lump of clay and turned it in his hands so that I could see three small holes in the bottom of the mold and a larger one at the top. “This one is ready for the furnace.”

  “It’s a love talisman, so we’ll be working with…?” He raised an expectant professorial brow at me.

  “Venus,” I said, proud that I had figured out the way the mold worked, proud that I had the right answer to his question. “And the metal copper.”

  He grinned at me with paternal delight. “My clever boy.”

  I would have killed to make him smile like that again.

  “Copper has a high melting point, so the furnace is extremely hot. Respect it and keep your distance; it’ll sear your flesh right off,” he warned.

  He rose and donned a thick leather apron with pockets and gloves that came to his elbows and took up a shiny copper ingot from a shelf and what looked to be a flattened spoon with a handle as long as I was tall. “Steel,” he said of the spoon, “because it has a higher melting point than the other metals I work with.” The hardened lump of clay and ingot went into his apron pocket. “Keep behind me,” he said.

  I obeyed as we walked back toward the little furnace in the ground, blindingly bright as the sun, its edges kissed by yellow and pale orange; it threw off so much heat that when we stood before it, rills of sweat began streaming down my chest and back, down my face.

  I stood a half step behind Ser Abramo. He turned his head toward me,
the perspiration on his brow and hollowed cheeks made dazzling by the hot white light, his profile glowing like a craggy angel’s. “Lean in a bit closer,” he said, “and look inside.”

  An iron contraption—a dowel inside the furnace, running across its width—had a small bowl hammered into its center; both dowel and bowl glowed a deep orange-red. A tall, perpendicular handle at the end of one dowel protruded up from the furnace, allowing Ser Abramo distance from the fire and the ability to manipulate the bowl side to side.

  He produced the hardened lump of clay from his pocket and placed it carefully on the long-handed spoon; just as carefully, he set it down just beneath the iron bowl. The instant he did, the wax inside the clay melted and ran out the bottom of the mold, leaving it hollow.

  “Now we cast the metal,” he said.

  He lifted the copper ingot from his apron pocket and set it on the flattened part of his steel spoon, then lowered it slowly into the fire, onto the iron bowl. “The copper’s already been purified, so there should be little dross,” he added.

  The heat on my face had already grown unpleasant—I began to imagine how excruciating it would feel to burn my eyes—but I was far too curious to look away. After a time, the copper glowed first dull red, then orange, then yellow, then the white of pure sunlight. Ser Abramo took his steel spoon and used it to slide a hidden steel cover from one side of the furnace and a matching cover from the other side. They were made to meet at the center, producing a seam, but the Magician left them partially open, just enough so that we could see the ingot in the bowl.

  “Behold the magic,” he said.

  At that instant, a beautiful pure green flame leapt up from the slit in the furnace; I gasped as Ser Abramo smiled and watched as the flame began to take on a bluish hue.

  When it went from blue green to decidedly blue, he pulled on the protruding handle and tipped the little iron bowl so that the glowing white metal poured into the mold. Once it was full, he used his steel spoon to lift it up and out of the furnace, and set it some distance away, where the ground was cooler.

  “In an hour or so, we’ll break the mold. Copper cools quickly. And then our love talisman will be ready.” He paused and gave a wry grin. “I ought to give you this one.”

  I made a disgusted face. “I want nothing to do with affection of any sort,” I snapped.

  His grin lessened to a faint mysterious smile. “I know. The spell I worked in the circle the night you arrived … it was for more than just your protection. Your heart’s in a magical furnace now, Giuliano—one that will melt the dross away and leave the gold. The process has begun, and there’s no stopping it now.”

  “You have no right to play with my feelings!” I shouted, furious. “How dare you!” I turned on my heel, thinking to pull an ancient scroll from the shelf and cast it on top of the little white-hot furnace before stomping out of the Magician’s house for good.

  “Stop,” he said, with just enough thunder to make me obey instantly and turn back to face him. “I said the process had begun. I didn’t say that you had to cooperate. You’re free to stay as miserable and cold as you like.”

  “I didn’t ask to be abandoned!” I countered heatedly. “I didn’t ask to be beaten or despised, or to live in poverty and filth. That’s God’s work! And it’s stupid to think He doesn’t hate me and every other homeless urchin! In winter, I see them frozen to death in alleyways. In summer, they’re dying of plague on the cobblestones—” My voice broke.

  “And what of the well-fed urchin living in luxury in my house?” he asked quietly. “Yes, people are dying, and it’s tragic, horrible, more than enough to break anyone’s heart a thousand times over. But you … You’ve been rescued from the streets. Why are you still there?”

  “There are cruel—” I began, but he spoke over me.

  “There are cruel people who are loveless because they are fearful. But for those of us who choose to be kind, we must find each other and treasure each other all the more. That is where I put my faith.”

  I sneered at him. “How can you be so old and still so gullible?”

  He cocked his head gently. “It’s taken me half a century to lose the anger born of loss and cruelty. I hope that it takes you less time.”

  * * *

  On the third day of my training, I helped Niccolo drag a padded leather mat from a corner to the center of the weapons room. Thick gray clouds shrouded the sky outside; because of the gloom, the hearth was lit, and fine droplets of winter rain glistened in his black curls.

  “Falling,” he said, letting go of the edge of the mat, which thudded to the floor. “There’s an art to it.” He stepped onto the mat and gestured at me with both hands. “Come at me and watch carefully.”

  I drew my blunted dagger from my stiff new baldric with a bit more ease than the day before and ran at him.

  This time, he didn’t do the countermove, with the result that my dagger struck his breastbone with much more force than I’d intended. He fell backward to the floor, his eyes in a dead man’s unfocused stare, his body so convincingly limp that I squatted down beside him and begged him to speak.

  For long seconds, he didn’t move, with the result that I grew anxious. Just as I was getting up to call for Ser Abramo, he sat up, arms propped behind him, a grin on his wicked lips.

  “You bastard,” I hissed, as we helped each other onto our feet.

  He smiled at my irritation. “What I just did is exactly what I want you to do. It’s even more convincing when one’s wearing a cloak. Now I’ll do it very slowly; mark the movement of my legs. Don’t come at me this time; just watch.”

  I watched. He took a great step backward with his right leg, bending the knee slowly until he was low enough to let his rump drop to the floor without too much damage.

  “The trick is to let your head strike last,” he said as the small of his back, the blades of his shoulders, and then his skull hit the mat. “If we fix the hood of your cloak to stay up, you can fool them without having to smash it on the cobblestones.”

  I was to be pretend fighting on the streets, then.

  He turned his profile to me so I could watch from the side and demonstrated the fall again. “It’s easier to fall on your side, as you could fling out an arm and rest your head on it,” he commented. “But I couldn’t figure out a way to make that look realistic. So you’re just going to have to risk banging your head a bit.” He got up and dusted himself off. “Your turn.”

  I was awkward at first and afraid, but he demanded I do it again and again and again, until I finally relaxed and let my body flop realistically.

  Pleased, Niccolo fetched a thickly padded vest from a wall hook.

  “I’m going to start moving with real speed and don’t want your chest to be bruised too badly if I can’t rein my dagger quickly enough,” he explained, as he held out the vest for me and I wormed my arms into it. “Now we’ll do the whole performance, and you add the fall at the end.”

  I went into my fighting stance: he drew his blade, and I drew my dulled one in response. I was so focused on blocking his dagger with the proper overhand grip that I at first failed to notice that its edges were sharpened, its tip fatally keen.

  I yelped, and gripped his wrist harder to stop it from rotating and breaking free of my grasp, but he was too strong, too fast. His dagger slipped under my wrist and past it, bringing his weapon into the undefended space over my chest. I took a huge step backward off the mat and pulled my upper body hard to one side, to no use; his wicked sharp dagger found its mark, and rather than pull it back from me at the last instant, he plunged it forward, into my heart.

  I shrieked and fell clumsily onto my back against the hard wood—not the practiced fall, but one born of terror.

  It took me two breaths to realized I was uninjured, and that Niccolo was laughing, the length of his weapon suddenly halved.

  “Retractable blade,” he said cheerfully, holding its tip skyward for my inspection. “We need to be as realistic as poss
ible, after all.” He pressed a knob on the hilt, and the blade shot up to its former length again with a click.

  “Devil take you to hell,” I gasped. “Take you to hell and make you his whore.”

  He offered a hand to help me to my feet, but I struck out with my fist, hard, and connected with his thigh. I knew it would leave a bruise, and I was glad for it.

  The blow stopped the laughter; he winced, but soon returned to grinning as he moved out of range. “Surely you didn’t believe I would have hurt you. Have a sense of humor. It was a joke. You should have seen your face.”

  Furious, I clambered to my feet. “It wasn’t funny. Not funny at all,” I spat, with as much venom as I could muster.

  I had thought, after he told me that he had been a child on the streets, that he would have retained some empathy for someone new to the notion of safety, of trust. I had almost come to like him, but wealth and comfort had made him forget his origins and look down on those who shared them. To him, I was only a pawn.

  How did I know that he and Donna Lucrezia meant for me to survive our little performance? How could I be sure that, when the time came, the blade in his hand would be the retractable one?

  I could trust only Ser Abramo. And even him, only so far.

  * * *

  The week of my training passed quickly, with my days divided among studying the basics of magic, working with Ser Abramo at the furnace, and mock fighting with Niccolo. Our little play had come to include my pretending to hand him a message and just beginning to turn away when Niccolo drew his dagger and the duel began.

  The morning after Niccolo stabbed me in the chest with his retractable blade, he made a peace offering. One that brought me little peace, if any at all.

  After we’d run through our moves several times, each one ending with my falling on the mat, he paused, and his tone grew serious.

  “Look,” he said, “there’s a move I want to show you. One that might prove useful to you if anything goes wrong.”

  I scowled. “What do you mean, if anything goes wrong?”

  “Nothing will,” he said, less than convincingly. “But the time might come when you’ll need more than knowing the simplest way to block a dagger and to fall. Go ahead. Come at me, slowly.”