The Smile (8 page)

Papà finally pulls me away, and I kick at him. He spins me around and grabs me from behind, locking my back to his chest. “She's dead, my little one, my baby girl. She died instantly.”

“No!” I kick and thrash and break free. And stop. For now I see the side of the horse, the side I've been avoiding.

Mamma's head is at a sharp angle. I know immediately Papà's right. No neck could bend that far; it's broken. Her face is already white, the blood all drained away somewhere else. A hidden pool.

The horse's right rear leg is shattered. Bones protrude in so many pieces. An explosion of shards. Why are horse's legs made so thin, as though designed to break? He'll have to be destroyed. It must be his fear that fouls the air. Or maybe that's just the way death smells.

We'll have to dig graves.

A double funeral.

I taste blood.

Papà puts his hand on my shoulder. But I sink away, to the ground. The dirt yields to me. This plot of earth is riddled with mole tunnels.

Blood drips from my mouth, red on black. I must have bitten my tongue. But I don't feel it.

Two graves to dig.

“Come, Betta.” Papà has caught my horse. She neighs in terror. She stamps and throws her head back. “Mount. We have to go for help.”

“I'll stay here.”

“She doesn't need you now, daughter. Get on the horse.”

“No.”

He stands a moment. “Hold these reins.” He hands me the reins, down on the ground where I sit.

He looks around and finds a heavy rock. “Look away, Betta.”

But I won't look away.

He slams Mamma's horse in the head, at the very top between the ears.

My horse screams and rears, dragging me a little way before she stops and paws the ground.

That one blow crushed the skull. But the poor animal gushes blood from his nose. He's somehow still alive. Papà kills him with a second blow.

Then he takes the reins from me and pins them to the ground with the rock. “I'll be back as soon as I can.” His face is grooved with pain, though his voice stays steady. “If you want to leave, ride home.”

He's gone.

I sit here, hands loose, nothing to do.

Gradually my horse stops stamping. She grows quiet. She grazes, pulling the rock along with her.

I sit. I can't feel my legs anymore. Nor my arms. Nor any part of me really.

Birds catch the edges of my vision. Insects have already discovered the wells of blood.

I sit.

The day moves forward as though nothing has changed.

Sparrows.

I have walked in the meadows and the woods so many times, reveling in being the Lord's smallest sparrow.

But I don't want Mamma to be a sparrow.

Oh, everything has changed.

Mamma is dead. The woman who calls me her sweet delight is gone. Oh sweet delight she was to me. I should have told her that. I should have told her every day.

My heart breaks.

I bury my fingers in the soft soil and weep.

CHAPTER Eight

AND SO WE MEET AGAIN.”
Giuliano de' Medici comes up beside me. His voice is hardly more than a whisper, yet I recognize it before I even turn to face him. “I'm so sorry, Monna Lisa.”

I've been brave. The hostess that Mamma would want me to be. Greeting everyone. Thanking them for coming. But now my bottom lip trembles. The last time he called me Monna Lisa I smiled. He said that calling me that was the key to my smile. Wouldn't it be lovely if there were such simple keys to happiness? I swallow. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.” I try to be clever. “Maybe funerals will be our regular meeting place.”

“Don't say that.” Giuliano shakes his head. “Anyway, we don't meet only at funerals. We met once before, near the Duomo.”

My mouth opens in disbelief. “You remember that?”

“And why not? You do.”

“But you're famous. Anyone would remember meeting you.”

Giuliano gives a small smile. “Are you fishing for a compliment?”

“I'm sorry I said that. I realized what it sounded like immediately after the words came out of my mouth. Please, let us start over.” I curtsy in greeting. “Hello, Ser Giuliano. Thank you for coming.”

“We were ten.” Giuliano rubs above his lip, though I can't see anything there. And I remember how he did that last time we were together. Is it his habit? “You talked a lot in those days. Or at least you talked a lot that time.”

I don't remember talking a lot. I might have said twenty words. But maybe to a ten-year-old boy that was a lot. He's thirteen now. Only a couple of months older than me. Thirteen, without a mother or a father. I, at least, still have my beloved Papà. But Giuliano does have siblings. Thank the Lord for that. If one of us had to lose both parents, I'm glad it's him rather than me.

What a dreadful thought. I'm ashamed of myself. But I can't help it; thoughts invade on their own.

“Did your brothers come, too?”

“Alas, no. Cardinal Giovanni lives in Rome now. He only came home briefly for my father's funeral. And Piero, well, he sends his regrets and condolences.”

“Good.” I put my hand to my mouth. I did it again. “I'm so sorry. I should bite my tongue.”

“Why? All you did was voice your true feelings.”

“Nothing excuses rudeness. That's the kind of behavior that made Mamma worry about me.”

Speaking of her—saying
Mamma
aloud—cracks my skull, so the truth of it all seeps in again. Mamma is dead. She won't come back. My eyes brim with tears.

Giuliano looks away.

I cried through the funeral Mass, which was all right, because I was hidden behind the black veil. But that's enough. I should be finished with crying. Mamma would want me to be a dignified hostess. It shows strength of spirit and good breeding to hold in tears at times like this. Besides, crying means I can't talk. And I want to talk with Giuliano. I swallow again and gather myself. “Did you come alone, then?”

“Aunt Nanina brought me.”

My eyes smart with embarrassment. “Of course. I wouldn't have expected you to come on your own.” This sounds wrong. I feel confused now. “I mean, that's what aunts do, they make people . . .”

“No one makes me do anything. I came of my own accord. To see you, Monna Lisa. To offer comfort.”

Before I can speak, Giuliano steps partway behind me and jerks his chin toward the other side of the room. A man and woman wend their way through the crowd from Papà to me. I immediately understand: Giuliano's yielding his place so I can greet these next visitors, who have come to pay their respects.

Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo and his young wife, Camilla. My ears catch the long string of names but hardly process the words that follow. I want to be talking to Giuliano. There's something I want to tell him, I realize now. And the realization makes it feel urgent. But I must pay attention. These kind people have come to Mamma's funeral. I force myself to nod at appropriate moments, to murmur thanks.

Francesco kisses my hand. Camilla kisses my cheeks. She's older than me by only a few years. And she's married to a man probably ten years her senior. A friend of my father's, in fact.

I think of Silvia and her hopes to do just what Camilla has done. She wants to entice a husband today, in fact. She wears my old green dress and holds her mouth shut—for we had a frank talk and I told her my fears about her language. She's determined not to let her tongue expose her social class until after a man is already smitten with her.

And all this is going on at Mamma's funeral. But it doesn't bother me. Rather, it seems a natural part of the sadness. For it's a widower Silvia hopes to lure. Widowers often take young wives. How else can a man provide loving care for his small children when his wife dies? And so many wives die. There's nothing wrong with such a match.

All the same, I pity those girls, tied to aging men. I never want to be one of them. I pity this Camilla. And if Silvia succeeds, I'll pity her. It's awful, but I can't help how I feel.

What is this way of thinking, excusing terrible thoughts on the grounds that I can't help it? I've done it twice in the last few moments. I must be a firmer master of myself. Mamma is no longer here to guide me.

I turn my attention back to this young Camilla in front of me now and look into her eyes and wonder if she's happy. She's plain and a little stooped to one side. Was she desperate? Her husband stated his father's name, Bartolomeo, and his father's father's name, Zanobi, but all he said of her was “Camilla.” He didn't say her childhood family name—as though being married to him is the only thing about her that matters. Is she without a history, without ties beyond the broad girth of the man whose arm her hand rests on? I have no sense of her. In her eyes is only a steady silence. And below her eyes a bit of a shadow.

Ah, sleep-deprived. Yes, I remember now: this Francesco recently became a father. Mamma talked only last week about how lucky he was now. For his first wife died in childbirth along with the babe.

Why don't her eyes show the delight of having that baby? But how stupid I am. Her eyes wouldn't twinkle merrily at a funeral. Not while she's talking to the daughter of the deceased. I must be losing my mind. Even if this young mother is joyfully giddy at her life, she's too well-bred to show that here. Someone raised her right.

I should behave like I've been raised right. Mamma tried so hard.

Mamma.

Mamma was younger than Papà. But her situation was different from this Camilla's, I'm sure. She didn't marry him out of desperation. She loved him. She loved him with all her heart. I know she did.

All this time Francesco has been talking. And I've been lost inside my head. I hope I haven't been rude.

They move away and I can finally turn to Giuliano. But no. Behind them, waiting his turn, stands Ghirlandaio, the painter who has just finished his work on the choir chapel of Santa Maria Novella. Papà calls him a master of colors, and if there's anything a silk merchant understands, it's colors.

He looks ill. I have the urge to lead him into the kitchen and set him down with a bowl of hearty
ribollita
—a soup made of layers of bread and beans and red cabbage, topped with onions and olive oil and soaked with beef broth. Silvia made it and brought it over last night. She filled a bowl and put it in front of Papà. She's so good to him, even knowing he doesn't like her family. She's never said as much, but I can tell she knows. I love her for not holding grudges. For simply seeing need and giving.

Papà ate hardly any of that wonderful soup. There's plenty left. I should take this painter by the hand and urge him to eat it and grow strong again.

But my hands hang at my sides, and I don't speak my crazy urges. I act proper.

And, finally, I am left in peace. I look over my shoulder at Giuliano.

He steps neatly from behind me to my side. “As I was saying, I came with my aunt Nanina. And, obviously now, with her husband and his two nieces and the husband of one of them. The men sat outside on the coach bench, but I was stuck inside with three gossiping women who were annoyed with me.” He gives a little apologetic laugh.

His words confuse me. What's obvious? And which women, I wonder. I should be able to picture immediately this Aunt Nanina. I should see in my mind who she's married to, who her husband's nieces are, who the husband of one of them is. But I can't think so well through the thick cream of grief that clogs my brain.

Besides, the Medici family is too large to keep track of. And everyone has the same name anyway. Too many men called Giovanni. Too many women called Camilla. Mamma thought it was important to memorize every single link between every single family. But the whole thing is a muddle to me.

A big family. What a comfort a big family must be.

Most noble families are large, like the Medici. Nobles have better food than peasants—and nobles have doctors—so it's natural that we thrive. It's Mamma's poor luck that I have no siblings, nothing else. Papà has always put good food on the table. And the best surgeon was called when I ran a horrible fever last year. But good food and care can't make someone become with child. And the sorceress Mamma went to failed. She seemed to suffer from the same infertility her own mother suffered from.

What I wouldn't give to have a sister beside me now. I hug myself.

“I should leave you to your mourning.” Giuliano bows his head and steps away.

“Don't go. Please.”

“I thought you stopped talking because . . . All right, I'll stay. We don't have to talk.” He stands beside me again and folds his hands over his abdomen solemnly. His eyes lower. He is clearly doing his best to act proper in the face of grief.

Just like me, trying to be a proper hostess.

What a sad world, that we should be cast in these roles so young.

“You were better at this than me,” I say. “You managed to act brave when your father died. You even laughed when we were together.”

“My father was sick for months. I had time to get used to the idea. You didn't.”

He's too understanding. I feel tears coming again. I give a little tug to Giuliano's sleeve and walk quickly from the room through the hall out the rear door. I'm stumbling over the gravel walks in our garden, blind with tears, crying so hard, my ribs hurt.

I drop onto a bench, weak.

Giuliano sits beside me and offers a handkerchief.

Snot runs from my nose into my mouth. I must look disgusting. I wipe myself up thoroughly. When I can speak, I say, “I want to tell you something. I have to tell you something. There's no one else to tell.”