The Orphan of Florence Read online

  But one was not: a small M, with an F growing out of its left leg.

  See there? Sister Anna Maria had urged, on that long-ago day in the orphanage. That little sun and moon conjoined—so you see the tiny crescent moon there? It embraces the sun, that circle with a dot in it.

  It was the stamp of the Magician of Florence.

  Just as it had in the starry-skied black tent, the hair on the back of my neck lifted. This time, the hair on my forearms rose as well, because I knew.

  I dropped the talisman and it fell between my breasts. I was so stunned I forgot the poker and my treacherous situation and stood frozen, staring into the fire, trying not to believe and utterly failing.

  I was naked; I couldn’t flee out into the fatal cold. Mindless, numb, I propped the poker beside the fireplace, where it belonged, and set the towel and soap beside the tub, within easy reach.

  I sat down in the water and gasped at its warmth, then picked up the honey-colored bar lying beside the towel. Soap was dear, and Tommaso and I always went without. It was scented with lavender and rosewater, and I lathered myself up with it mechanically, hardly realizing what I was doing, because I was so afraid.

  It had nothing to do with the Magician’s possibly nefarious plans for me or his drooling monster of a dog. I could accept that my host was a magician, but I didn’t want to know that he was the Magician.

  Because if he really was the Magician …

  My talisman had been my one link to my parents—a silent, metal one. Now here was one of flesh and blood. He might have seen my mother and father face-to-face. Spoken to them. His hand might have brushed against theirs.

  Which meant that my parents had been real people, not faceless monsters. People who had gone to the Magician for help because they’d wanted to protect their child. And that was too horrible, too painful to contemplate for an instant.

  Better hatred than grief. Hatred at least keeps you moving.

  At that moment of crystalline certainty, my plans changed drastically. I was no longer interested only in escaping with as much booty as I could carry. As terrified as I was of learning it, I would stay with Ser Giovanni until I learned the truth about my parents. I would take the job and earn my florin, if necessary.

  And then I would escape with as much treasure as I could carry.

  I dunked my head into the filmy water and felt the fleas begin scrambling across my scalp. I held my breath under the water until I was sure they’d all drowned, then came up for air and began scrubbing my close-cropped mane.

  Taking the job made more and more sense to me. Tommaso and Cecilia would be worried that night, but in the morning I could explain everything to them. Money could change our lives. Cecilia could dress the part of a respectable widow and pass Tommaso off as her child. They’d never be cold or hungry. I could buy Tommaso the best education Florence could provide; he could grow up to become a wealthy merchant or shopkeeper. He could provide comfortably for a wife and children and live a happy life.

  Not that I cared, mind you. The best thing about the money was what it could do for me.

  As I dunked my head back in the filmy water and massaged it to rinse away the soap, I still wondered whether I was being played for a fool—whether, now that I was clean and less physically offensive, Ser Giovanni would suddenly bound in and ravish me. But the door didn’t open, not a crack, as I stepped out of the tub and grabbed my damp towel to cover myself. No pickpocket had ever smelled so sweet.

  * * *

  I put on the clothes—all of fine, dark blue wool, and comically large on my small frame; the felt cap dropped past my eyebrows instead of resting snugly just below my hairline.

  My boots were still gone, so I padded across the floor in my leggings and went downstairs looking for Ser Giovanni. Leo was sitting in the doorway leading to the kitchen and wagged his stump of a tail as I passed. I found his owner standing at the working table rubbing lard into my boots.

  “Stop it!” I exclaimed, scandalized to see such a wealthy man at such a menial task. “I’ll do that!”

  “Too late,” he said. “Already done.” He handed the gleaming boots to me. “So, are you going to work for me?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly. “I want to work for the Magician of Florence. I don’t want to go back to the streets, and I certainly don’t want to end up a tanner. But…” I hesitated. I didn’t want to look weak, and I also worried he wouldn’t believe me.

  “But?” he prompted.

  “I have a couple of friends,” I said, trying to sound as truthful as I actually was. “They rely on me. I need to tell them I’m all right. And I need to give them this florin.”

  I watched distrust flicker across his face. He knew I could just take the money and be gone forever. I held his keen one-eyed gaze for a while and tried to emanate sincerity from every pore in my skin.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Visit your friends in the morning and tell them you’ve obtained legitimate employment. But one thing I insist on: that you never return to your old life. You’ll be living here so long as you work for me, and you’ll never need to steal again.”

  I gave a small smile of triumph. Of course, working for a magician meant my eternal damnation, but then, I was already well and damned as a pickpocket. I offered my hand like a man, to seal the deal.

  He stared at it for a moment. “First, your name. Your real one, please.”

  “It really is Giuliano,” I answered, somewhat truthfully.

  “Giuliano it is, then,” he echoed. “I’m Abramo.” He offered his hand.

  Of course Giovanni wasn’t his real name.

  “Ser Abramo,” I said, and shook it. Of course, if I’d known the real truth, about the magic and the Medici and what I was really volunteering for, I’d never have taken his hand. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “So long as you quit calling me Ser.”

  “Are you really three hundred years old?”

  He laughed so hard I never did get an answer.

  * * *

  Lamp in one hand, cup in the other, and a man’s woolen nightshirt draped over one arm, Ser Abramo led me back up the stairs to the bedroom with the tub beside the hearth. Leo padded beside us, half grinning in apparent approval.

  “You’ll sleep here tonight,” the Magician said, as he set the cup and lamp on the night table and the folded nightshirt on the bed while I watched, squatting beside the fire. “There’s a chamber pot beneath the bed and a basin and pitcher of water over in the corner. I’ll give you the choice of drinking the wine or not.” Ser Abramo gestured with his chin at the cup on the night table. “It’ll taste bitter because I mixed that bit of opium with it. But drink it down quick and it won’t be too bad.”

  “Opium?”

  “Poppy. Don’t try to tell me that knee of yours doesn’t hurt; I’ve seen you limping a bit. If you have trouble sleeping because of the pain, this will ease it.”

  I stiffened with mistrust.

  He saw it and shrugged. “Your choice. If the ache begins to argue with you tonight, the cup is there. It’ll make you drowsy, but too much of it can put you to sleep forever, so mind you don’t get any ideas of sneaking downstairs for more.”

  “Yes, sir.” I looked at the four-poster bed in front of me, with its expensive brocade canopy and velvet bed curtains. It was large enough to hold half a dozen orphans. I’d never slept in a bed without someone else in it, and the thought was daunting.

  “The hearth should keep you warm enough,” Abramo said. “I’ll show you the privy in the morning. Good night then,” he said, and turned toward the door, but a thought stopped him. He reached for one of the thongs around his neck, lifted it up over his head, and held it out to me.

  Skeleton keys; the way onto the property, and the way out. They jangled as he dropped them into my palm.

  “Here,” he said. “I have other copies. I think it’s important to trust each other, don’t you?”

  I was still staring down at the keys when he
left, closing the door softly behind him.

  * * *

  I stripped, threw the keys on the night table, pulled on the ridiculously big nightshirt, and bolted the door—I didn’t want to have to spend the night wondering just how much I trusted Ser Abramo.

  And then I crawled into the magnificent bed. A real feather bed. I sank into it the way a raisin sinks into rising dough. The brocade cover was stiff, but the thick wool blanket was heavy and soft and clean, not at all scratchy and questionable-smelling like the one Tommaso and I shared. The sheets were silk, and the sensation of them against my clean perfumed skin, along with the warmth of the blanket and the hearth, was so delicious that I almost forgot my aching knee.

  I fell asleep quickly. But a few hours later, I must have shifted my weight back onto the knee because the pain woke me. I suffered with it an hour or so until I finally decided it was probably safe to drink from the cup on the night table.

  The wine itself was finer than I’d ever tasted—not the sour, watered-down stuff I’d tasted on occasion—but smooth and delicious, except for the slightly bitter aftertaste. I snuggled back under the blanket and waited for the throbbing in my knee to ease. I remember wondering if it ever would, when I suddenly awoke from a dream of Ser Abramo talking earnestly to another man.

  The poppy-tinged wine left me so giddy that I laughed, remembering all that had happened that night—the stiletto at my throat, the magical ceremony, the displays of priceless art, the Magician of Florence. It had to all be a dream or a vision brought on by fever. I sat up in the bed, pushing against all-too-real feathers and down. The blanket was real, and the cup on the night table, and the washtub, and the dying embers in the hearth.

  Maybe the voices had been real, too. I held my breath and strained to listen.

  A moment of silence passed, but then—very faint but undeniable—came a sound. Muffled, unintelligible, but definitely a human voice. Ser Abramo’s, perhaps.

  And then that of another man. Had I not been listening so intently, however, I would never have heard them.

  If I hadn’t been so torn about whether to trust Ser Abramo, or just so damned curious about what was going on, I might have yielded to the sweet drowsiness and gone back to sleep.

  Instead, I folded back the covers and slipped from the bed. The floor was cold beneath my bare feet. I crept to the door—movement made me slightly queasy, but that mild discomfort paled compared to the velvet sensation of air against my skin and the slow, delicious throb of my heart. I unbolted the door, opened it, and slipped onto the small landing at the top of the stairs. Ser Abramo’s chamber was nearby to my left, and the door to the darkened room was cracked. I put my ear next to it and listened.

  The voices were definitely emanating from the room, along with the louder sound of Leo snoring. And yet …

  The closer I leaned toward the opening and the harder I strained to hear, the more convinced I became that only Leo was actually inside. The voices were coming from inside the room, yet muffled as though they were farther away.

  I pressed gently against the heavy wooden door until it opened enough for me to see inside the room.

  The heap of glowing ash in the fireplace eased the darkness just enough for me to make out the shapes of cabinets and night tables, black against the grayish light. I could hear Leo snuffling in his sleep on the other side of the large bed.

  The empty large bed, which hadn’t been slept in. Ser Abramo was nowhere to be seen.

  But faintly, ever so faintly, I could hear men’s muted voices coming from the wall next to the fireplace.

  From within the wall.

  Lorenzo is fleeing to France, someone said.

  And another voice replied, mysteriously, Lorenzo is the fool.

  I tried, but could make out no other words.

  Mind you, there were no other rooms—at least, no other rooms visible to my eyes—on the second level except for my bedchamber and Ser Abramo’s. It was impossible for there to be voices droning on in the wall, but there they were.

  I pushed away the thought that Ser Abramo had become disembodied and was having an invisible conversation with a magical being. There was a logical explanation. There had to be.

  Such as a hidden room.

  I stood, listening to the unintelligible conversation until I began to feel lightheaded; I backed out onto the landing and silently pulled the door back to its original position, then stole quietly back to my room.

  As I stirred the fire back to life—staring fixedly at the beautiful glints of blue and green hidden within the sputtering orange flames—thoughts swirled in my head.

  Ser Abramo already had a huge jeweler’s shop and magical circle down in the cellar. The voice inside the wall was not his, but another man’s—or was it a demon, conjured to tell the future?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

  I remembered the keys on the night table.

  I think it’s important to trust each other, don’t you?

  I pondered Ser Abramo’s words and felt a sudden, sobering thrill of fear.

  He’d done everything to make sure I trusted him. Fed me, tended to my wound, gave a stirring magical performance, and made me feel special, chosen, wanted … all the things an orphan craved most to be. He’d even given me what supposedly were the keys to the estate.

  Having so thoroughly courted my trust, he had also given me the wine mixed with the fruit of the poppy.

  My choice, he’d said. Knowing that I was in pain and would almost certainly reach for the cup.

  It was a Game, just like the one Tommaso and I played. It had to be. Ser Abramo—if that was really his name—was just performing another role, like the one of the old man Ser Giovanni, hunched over his cane. He wasn’t the Magician of Florence. He couldn’t be; the Magician would never let a cur like me come near him. He certainly wouldn’t choose me, of all pickpockets, to work with him.

  Abramo was playing a game with me either to indulge his twisted personal pleasure or to entrap me into becoming something worse than a pickpocket. If life had taught me anything, it was that no one was trustworthy—especially the rich, who hated us poor.

  A whole florin. What had I been thinking? It was too good to be true.

  Panicked, I pulled on my clothes and took the florin and the keys. I was out the door and down the stairs as quickly as my sluggish limbs could move. I was in sedated terror the whole way down, sure that Leo would wake up and hear me.

  I made my way to the bolted door leading to the sitting room, which Ser Abramo had locked earlier. I lifted the bolt and slipped one of the skeleton keys into the lock. I expected to make several tries with different keys and discover none worked, but to my surprise, the door was already unlocked.

  I pushed it open and entered the sitting room. The ebbing light from the hearth allowed me to steer around the daybeds and chairs, past the busts of ancient philosophers, the tapestries, and the paintings.

  Terrified or not, the thief in me couldn’t resist slipping two of the gemstone goblets into the waistband of my leggings.

  I moved through the kitchen, the soup cauldron still hanging above the glowing coals. The door where Ser Abramo and I had entered the house was still bolted from the inside; I lifted the bolt and pushed …

  It was open, as was the door leading outdoors.

  I stepped out into the night and drew in a lungful of cold, bracing air. There weren’t many hours of darkness left; the glowing white moon was easing itself down into the western sky. I limped up to the heavy stone wall surrounding the property and put my shoulder to it. It slowly slid open.

  Beyond lay the pockmarked field and, across the river, the moon hovered just above the black skyline of the city.

  Adjusting the heavy precious goblets to keep them from sliding down into my leggings, I moved in the direction of the river, the limbs of barren trees casting ghoulish shadows onto the pockmarked earth. I was halfway to the River Arno when I planted my foot into another mole hole. I went down sc
reeching.

  I sat on the freezing ground staring up at the moon, once again certain that it would be the last thing I saw, certain that any second, I would hear the thrum of four-legged footfall, the gasping of canine breath.

  But there was only silence and the sound of my own panting. I was free to go back to Tommaso, to return to my unsafe, unhappy life on the streets. To let my past remain a mystery, and my future stunted and miserable.

  I stood up and turned to look back, for one last time, at the distant walls covered with their thicket of dead vines. Did they enclose a trap or the secret of my past and a chance for a better life?

  I turned my face back to the Arno, tasting freedom. Then turned it back toward the stone wall, considering that a different sort of freedom might have been lying there.

  Either direction held the risk of an early demise. But only one held the promise of something good happening to me, a concept so foreign it frightened me.

  I drew a deep breath and started moving back the way I’d come, toward the vine-covered wall.

  * * *

  I carefully bolted each gate and then each door in the house behind me. I replaced the precious goblets on the hearth mantel. When I came to the stairs—my tread clumsy because of the poppy—Leo’s silhouette was waiting at the top, on the landing.

  It was the final test of the Magician’s unmerited trust in me. The mastiff stood perfectly motionless, a pale gray ghost; his stillness could have been calm or the prelude to a vicious lunge. I spoke softly to him as I came up toward him, trying not to quake.

  Queasy with fear, I stopped two steps from the landing, almost close enough to pet him, certainly close enough for him to tear out my throat with a single move. Suddenly, he grinned, tongue lolling over monstrous teeth, and his stubby tail and backside began to wiggle.

  Ser Abramo really had taught Leo my scent so that the dog would know and trust me, not so that he could hunt me down.

  “Good boy,” I whispered as I climbed up to stand beside him, stunned by the possibility that a stranger I’d met on the streets of Florence meant me well. The Magician of Florence, no less.