The Orphan of Florence Read online

  As the old man drew nearer to me, the handle of his cane glinted in the torchlight. Pure gold: I spot it the way a soaring falcon spots a hare in the forest below. His cloak was of the finest quality heavy wool, simply but exquisitely tailored. And he was alone, no doubt with a purse full of coins intended for the pleasures of the Buco.

  A juicy mark—rich, feeble, and half blind, hallelujah—had just dropped into our laps like manna from the sky. My one fat purse. It was too sweet, too easy.

  So I worried. The cane was a potential weapon, and the handsome prostitute was still nearby. Granted, the old man needed the cane for balance, and I was sure the younger man would run at the sight of my razor. If we were lucky, this would be our first and only Game of the evening.

  I let go a discreet cough, one just loud enough for Tommaso to hear. When he glanced at me, I inclined my head slightly toward the old man and drew my left forefinger beneath my nose, as if wiping it. It was the signal.

  The Game had begun.

  Tommaso went into action, wailing as he ran up to the old man. “Signore!” he called in that high little-girl voice of his. “Signore, please!” He was shivering, clutching the horse blanket tighter about him with his bare hands, his little legs thin as sticks. “My mother has died, and I’m starving! Only one denari, signore, only one for the love of Jesus and the Virgin…!”

  The old man stopped, his expression one of senile confusion, and stared down at the boy. “Eh,” he said. “Eh…” and patted his purse, hidden in a side interior pocket of his cloak. The right side—by a gift of heaven, his blind side, and the very place a pickpocket would go looking for it.

  As luck—or in my case, skill and experience—would have it, I was standing on the old man’s right side. And gloating to myself that this was a gift. A harmless old man, one patting his purse to reveal exactly where it was; usually, I had to do a bump and fan to find it. Better yet, the handsome prostitute had disappeared completely, perhaps sensing that we were about to make a lift and wanting nothing to do with it.

  I tried not to smile as I closed in on my target.

  Tommaso was prone to improvisation and that night was no exception. Rather than cry harder and drop to his knees in order to further distract the mark, which was the plan, he went on all fours and reached for something invisible on the filthy cobblestones.

  “But look!” he crowed. “Look here, signore! It’s a miracle!”

  “Eh?” the old man said, stooping down as far as his unsteady legs would permit. “Eh?”

  “A coin, a whole soldi! A miracle from the Virgin! She heard my prayer! Look!”

  I brushed past the old man, our cloaks grazing each other; he was more solid than he looked. Then I pretended to lose my balance a bit, as if I’d been drunk, and performed a bump. I jostled him just hard enough so that he didn’t feel me slitting his cloak with the razor. With two fingers, I slipped the deliciously heavy velvet purse up and out of the pocket as I muttered, “Excuse me.” In a blink, it was safe inside my own cloak pocket.

  The instant I palmed the purse, Tommaso’s angelic voice said, with heartrending disappointment, “Oh! I imagined it! Oh no! Wait! Is that it?”

  He continued scrabbling in the dirt while I pivoted on one foot, turning my back to the old man and preparing to move quickly and quietly back down the alleyway, away from the mark, away from the Buco, toward home.

  Except that while I was pivoting, a hand clamped down on my wrist, the guilty one attached to the very fingers that had just lifted the purse.

  I tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong. It belonged to the old man, who had dropped his cane and was standing perfectly upright, shoulders square. He was actually tall and burly, the filthy trickster.

  “Thief!” he bellowed, in a powerful bass. “Thief! Someone help me!”

  I pulled out my razor and brandished it at him—it’s not big or impressive looking, but it’s dangerous enough to make most marks unhand me. This man paid not a whit of attention to it; he was looking into my eyes with a gaze commanding and fearless, as if he’d been an emperor and I a worm that had crawled into his path. He had me in his power, and he wanted me to know it.

  I struggled to pull free. I didn’t want to use the razor unless I absolutely had to—once things get bloody, there’s no turning back—so I made swiping motions with it in the air that gradually came closer and closer to his hand.

  I swept my gaze briefly over the area and saw that Tommaso had already run off. I’d told him that if one of us got caught, the other one should run like hell and never look back; every man for himself. Even if I’d been prone to worry about what could happen to a lone six-year-old on the street, I wouldn’t have, because Tommaso had an invisible advantage. Under his rags, he was wearing my most precious possession: a truly magical talisman of silver, one that I’d wished devoutly in that instant I’d been wearing.

  * * *

  Ten years ago in the orphanage, when I wasn’t much older than Tommaso, Sister Anna Maria took me aside in the garden, behind a tall juniper where no one else could see, and showed me the amulet.

  What is it? I’d demanded, full of curiosity, staring at her palm, which held what looked to be a large silver coin on a leather thong. If I’d spoken that way—with juvenile bluntness—to the abbess who ran the orphanage, I’d have gotten my teeth knocked down my throat. Directness was not tolerated in little girls. But Sister Anna Maria was patient and usually kind.

  It’s a talisman, she’d explained. A charm, probably meant to keep you safe, although good Christians oughtn’t put faith in such things. But it’s right that you should have it.

  I looked up at her in surprise. She wore a white habit because it was summer, and she’d crouched on her haunches so that we could speak face-to-face. Her face was very narrow and lean, with a nose that was too big and lips that were too thin, but her eyes were large and beautiful.

  Why, Sister? I’d asked.

  Because you were wearing it the day I found you outside in the little basin, she said.

  Here in Florence, abandoned infants are left in the basin—a cranny, really, carved into the handsome marble work of the fountain in the square that faces the orphanage. Before sunrise, the mother or relative would leave the baby there, where the nuns would be sure to find it in the morning. No other city in Italy, or probably all Europe, was as progressive as ours. No mother had to feel shame or despair, because the Hospital for the Innocents, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, was not only new and clean, it was also an architectural masterpiece. Its benefactors were exceedingly wealthy, and the children were therefore well fed and dressed.

  My mother had apparently felt some ambivalence about whether I should have survived; I was left naked in the stone cold basin in winter. Naked, except for the talisman. Had I not been discovered and whisked inside quickly, I would have died.

  I looked at the shiny metal in the sister’s palm.

  Why didn’t you tell me before? I asked.

  It’s very, very rare and dear. You weren’t old enough to care for it properly, she replied.

  You mean, to hide it from the abbess. I was referring to that sour Servant of Mary Sister Maria Ignatia, the abbess of the convent attached to the orphanage. She would have snatched it off my neck and beaten me for having such an accursed thing.

  Sister Anna Maria nodded wistfully. You have to make sure she never sees it. You can’t show it to any of the children either, or she’ll find out about it and take it away.

  It’s from my parents, I said slowly. My cheeks and neck began to burn; my voice wavered. The talisman was rare; it was dear. Which meant my parents had been—or still were—wealthy. I’d always assumed they’d been poor, which meant they’d either died early from the plagues that always swept through the bleaker quarters of the city or had been starving and hadn’t had so much as a rag to wrap their infant daughter in.

  In other words, I’d believed that they had abandoned me either because they were dead and couldn’t help it
or because they loved me and wished me well.

  But no, my parents had been rich folk. Which meant that they could have given me a much better life. Even if both my parents had died, or I was a bastard child, there was still an obligated wealthy family in Florence who found me inconvenient.

  Sister Anna Maria gestured, smiling, for me to take the silver disc from her hand. I took it all right, and hurled it furiously to the earth. I was grinding it in with my heel when she caught my arms and pulled me away.

  They loved you, she said with stern certainty, or you wouldn’t have been wearing it. It’s very dear. You must keep it; your mother’s hand touched it.

  I spat on it clumsily, with most of the saliva winding up on my chin. If they had loved me, I retorted bitterly, I wouldn’t be here. If she touched it, I don’t want it.

  I ran away.

  I wouldn’t look at Sister Anna Maria for a week, but not long after, I found myself starting to think about the charm. It was mine, and the sister had said that it was worth a lot of money. I could tuck it away for the day I left the orphanage and sell it.

  So I began to drop hints with the good sister that I had reconsidered and wanted it back. She ignored me for a few days, but when I persisted, she finally delivered it to me. In secret, of course.

  Take good care of this, she said, as she handed it over. This is no ordinary charm. Look: It bears the stamp of the Magician of Florence. That little sun and moon conjoined—do you see the tiny crescent moon there? She pointed with a fingernail. It embraces the sun, that circle with a dot in its center. See how they both rest on the inner point of the M, next to the F?

  It was a beautiful, heavy coin with legends standing out in bas-relief. Curious lines and symbols marked the front, and on the back, a square with several rows of apparently random numbers.

  I let out a childish gasp of fear when she mentioned the Magician and wondered how a nun would know such things.

  Isn’t it wicked? I asked. I wasn’t really afraid it was wicked, but I was afraid that I’d spit on it and some demon might appear and punish me for doing it.

  Sister Anna Maria smiled in gentle amusement. It was made to protect you, Giulia, so how could it be wicked? And it did. Of course, you shouldn’t speak to the abbess about it …

  I’d figured out a long time ago that the abbess was a complete idiot, so there was no chance of me telling her anything. I took the talisman in my hand and stared at it.

  There were other magicians in the city—the bulk of them charlatans, but there was only one legendary Magician of Florence. Even us orphans, sheltered as we were from the world beyond the convent walls, knew: He was ancient, immortal, and the most dangerous man in the city because his power knew no bounds. He could force people to kill against their will, to fall in love, to do his bidding. His clientele were those who lusted for power, those who wished their enemies dead, those who desired unholy control over another. Rumor said the Medici family had become the wealthiest and most prominent in town only because they paid dearly for the Magician’s talismans; all of his customers paid dearly for his talismans because they always worked. No one, including his rich clients, had ever seen the Magician in person because he had the talent of making himself invisible, which led to a lot of speculation about whether he was walking among us without anyone having a clue.

  You couldn’t impress anyone more than by announcing that you were wearing a charm enchanted by the Magician of Florence.

  Even if you were wearing it because your parents wanted to be rid of you.

  * * *

  Back in front of the Buco Tavern, I was desperately wishing the very dear amulet was hanging from my neck.

  “Thief!” the old man bellowed at me once again, and instantly the handsome prostitute materialized out of the dark, long red hair glinting in the torchlight.

  Before I could react, the not-really-so-very-old man squeezed my wrist so hard that I dropped my razor onto the cobblestones. The handsome young prostitute bounded forward wielding a double-bladed knife half the length of his thigh, the sort of knife men carry when they mean business. I glanced down at my little razor in the street, then back up at his big knife.

  “Eight of Public Safety,” Handsome said, identifying himself as a policeman to the old man, who finally let go of my other hand. “Search the boy, my lord; I’m sure your purse is in his cloak.”

  The bastard. Both of them: two rotten stinking bastards, tricking a poor lad this way, neither of them what they had seemed. The Eight of Public Safety—a division of Florence’s city government, so named for the fact that eight guildsmen sat on the council—dealt with thievery and assault and like crimes; it would have made much more sense to encounter someone from the council of the Eight of the Night, which handled sodomy. Why go to elaborate lengths to catch a petty thief like me?

  The old man patted me down and finally found his velvet purse in my extra-long inside front pocket. He also found a small folded square of paper.

  “It’s a Bible verse,” I lied. “For luck.”

  The old man unfolded it and read it silently.

  “Anything I should see?” the policeman asked.

  My intended victim smiled as he pocketed it. “As he says: Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Probably stolen from a nun or priest. The boy certainly can’t read.”

  I looked at him dumbfounded; he was a criminally smooth liar. An honest citizen would have shown it to the officer.

  “And your money?” the redheaded policeman asked.

  The old man loosened the drawstring of his purse and peered into it. “All there,” he said, and tucked it away inside his cloak.

  “Well, then.” The officer took my upper arm and gave me a shake. “You’ll be sleeping in jail tonight. That is, if the other inmates let you. A small boy with a pretty face like yours should know better.”

  “Why are you arresting me?” I snapped. “Don’t you have better things to do than pick on a poor lad? Why isn’t someone from the Eight of the Watch here instead of you?”

  “Hah!” the policeman sneered. “You’ve got a lot of—”

  “One moment, please, Officer,” the old man interrupted, with upper-upper-class diction and accent. “No harm was done. I have my purse. Must you arrest him?”

  “I can’t let a pickpocket go free!” Officer Handsome growled. “Besides, we’ve had too many complaints about this one with the accursed eyes.”

  Accursed eyes was right. Even I cursed my own eyes frequently, just as I did at that very moment, because they identified me resoundingly and without question to anyone who got close enough to see that my left eye was an unremarkable brown, while the right was a pale and most remarkable green. God had marked me, which made most people—including my parents, no doubt—look on me with suspicious superstition. The trait smelled of witchcraft and possession.

  “But what if you were to place him in my custody?” the old man asked. “If I promise to care for and rehabilitate him?”

  I was immediately suspicious of such generosity, especially from a man headed for the Buco. Because, as the officer had pointed out, I appeared to be a small boy with a pretty face.

  Handsome lifted his chin and rolled his eyes in a “you don’t really expect me to believe that” gesture. “And how can I be sure you intend only that, Signore?”

  “I live on the Via de’ Gori, just west of the Church of San Lorenzo,” the old man answered, his tone disdainful at the officer’s implication. The Via de’ Gori was smack in the richest part of town. “Ask for me, Ser Giovanni the banker, tomorrow morning. The boy will be at my palazzo, and he’ll tell you that no mischief was involved—that he was, in fact, well fed and offered decent employment, enough to keep him from continuing in his current line of … work.”

  I stared at the old man in disbelief, and at the cop with a pleading expression. I stared at the sea monster and the whirlpool, neither of them good choices. I certainly didn’t wa
nt to go to jail, where my fate was certain, but by tomorrow morning, the not-feeble old man could have had his way with me a dozen times over nowhere near the Via de’ Gori. That is, if he hadn’t killed me for being disappointingly female.

  Officer Handsome was likewise not buying the old man’s story. “Look, even if I trusted you, and I’m not sure I do, signore, there’s the matter of the boy. What makes you think he won’t slit your throat in your sleep and rob you of everything?”

  He had a point. Because I had decided to go with the old man and had been dreaming of that very scenario—save for the throat-slitting part. It probably wouldn’t happen because the man was an impressive liar, which boded ill, but at least he wasn’t an officer with a long knife bent on hauling me to prison. Once Handsome was out of the picture, I’d give my former mark the slip. I knew all the little tunnels and alleyways that only the children of Florence’s streets know, and like Tommaso, I had a knack for disappearing.

  The old man laughed. “He won’t be a problem, Officer. I have a bodyguard at my house to protect me.”

  At that point, I piped up. “I’ll go with him,” I told the officer. “I’m not in my line of work because I want to be. I was forced into it because I’m an orphan.”

  “Really?” Handsome asked, in a tone that said he trusted me not at all. “Because I will check on you in the morning. And if any harm’s been done to this gentleman, or anything in his home is missing, I’ll see you’re tossed in Le Stinche for the rest of your short life.”

  The words Le Stinche made my bowels contract. The most notorious prison in Florence, built for debtors and small-time criminals like me, was famed not only for its innovative torture devices, but for fleas the size of rats and rats the size of dogs.

  I dropped my gaze and forced a tear. “Please, Officer,” I begged. “I swear, if I only could have one chance … I’ll do exactly as the gentleman says. I’m not a bad person, just hungry. It’s been so … hard lately, trying to get food.”