Revealing The Man Behind The Ruler's Mask
#TheNovel - The Mad Schemers - S1E5
Subscribe - New episodes every Thursday at 6AM EST
Episode 1 - Conspiracy, Death, and Executions
Episode 2 - The Miracle That Inaugurated Horrific Times
Episode 3 - You Will All Be Executed Brutally
Episode 4 - An Honorable Man Executed with the Disgrace of the Wretched
Punches, shoves, kicks, and pushes. The crowd inveighed against Jacopo with innate violence. The show was horrible—a man, in agony, was dragged and forcibly pushed up the stairs of Palazzo della Signoria. Screams of unrecognizable words; it felt like you observed a wave of possessed and uncontrolled people with exploding rage breaking out of their faces. Jacopo tried to stand up a few times—the reflexes of a corpse, whose soul had already left for the afterlife, that attempted to escape an inevitable end. He kept dripping, and standing and falling, and crashing under that wave of violence.
The crowd treated Jacopo with the same treatment it had reserved for Francesco Salviati a few hours earlier. A man grabbed the rope next to him, tied it to one of the pillars inside the Sala dei Duecento, and wrapped it around his neck.
That scene was quick and horrific. Lorenzo had just walked out of the palace when he heard the sound of a crack echoing beyond the deafening yells and turned. He saw Jacopo hanging with his neck broken by his weight, next to the decomposing corpse of Salviati, now with a purple face. He absorbed every detail of that scene—a disgusting image that he meant to imprint in his memory forever because there was nothing else left to remember of the men who had killed his brother.
Voided of any emotions, like wearing a mask of emptiness, Lorenzo turned back and walked away from that palace, theater of horrible crimes. That same void he met when he stepped into his home, now that his brother was gone for good. I can believe this is happening, Lorenzo thought as he entered from the rear door to avoid the people who had anxiously hastened over to provide emotional support. He walked past the sumptuous dining room straight to the rear kitchen, mostly reserved for the invisible kitchen staff, searching for a simple place to ground his roots. His maid welcomed him. A woman in her sixties, loyal to the de Medici family since Cosimo, Lorenzo's father, ruled Florence. She knew Lorenzo more than anyone else. She could read the pain through his fragile eyes beyond that mask of a more vigorous ruler Lorenzo had been wearing all day.
"Please, leave me alone," afraid of showing his weakness, he asked everyone in that room to leave. His maid lightened the fuse of a beeswax candle with the gentle care you'd use with an explosive because Lorenzo was like a bomb of feelings ready to explode and brought a glass of red wine to the table as Lorenzo sat down.
The woman exited the dining room and ordered the crew to leave. Only two guards remained outside. It didn't take long for the beeswax to melt and release the scent in that room: lavender mixed with notes of jasmine and geranium. That sweet smell and the absence of burning animal fats or residuals from kitchens reminded Lorenzo of his power and privileged life; it penetrated his nostrils and embraced his body. A sense of restless calm pounded heavy on his shoulder as he leaned on that table now that the strangers' eyes were gone. Tears of rage and sadness slowly dropped from his eyes. He tried to cry, to scream, but he was incapable of releasing that pain stinging inside his belly—a stoic body keeping his feelings hostage. He carried the shame of being the only survivor, the burn of not being able to protect his beloved little brother, and the embarrassment of not being able to foresee the attempted coup. As his mind wandered, his body collapsed over such an intense scented calm that he fell asleep on the chair alone.
The dawn came. The candle, now fuming, had consumed the last of the wax. The first sunlight hit the window through the embroidered eyelets of the long white curtains; he lifted his head and looked around in confusion, like someone chasing ghosts with their glaze. His brother's body, the hanging corpses with purple, swollen faces, all those images now invaded his thoughts. He shook his body as if you hoped it was all a nightmare, but the stinging pain in his neck made it all real.
The following days all started like that with confusion and loneliness. Lorenzo needed calm around him; no one dared to bother their leader, but all around him worked to help with his revenge cause. Those days felt long enough for his pain to compress and hide deep in his body that it could not easily come out. The dawn came again. He woke up, and with a glaze at the room's emptiness, he took a deep breath, stood up, and exited. "Come with me," he ordered the guards while walking towards his office on the palace's east side.
"I need you to call my secretary Poliziano, the chancellor Bartolomeo, and the archbishop Gentile. Bring them here. Hurry!" Lorenzo ordered one of the guards with firm confidence as if the scent had presented him with a clear plan while suppressing those horrific memories. He walked with rushed steps, anxious to put down what he had in mind. "Consider it done!" The guard left immediately and grabbed a few others to move along with the task quickly.
"Sir, did you call for me?" Poliziano was the first to arrive. He was one of Lorenzo's closest friends, a loyal secretary, and a tutor of Piero, Lorenzo's son. "Yes, sit down, please." Lorenzo rushed to get to the point and prevented Poliziano from asking how he was doing. As he looked at the wound on his neck, he soon realized that there was no time for that formality because that was a friend who needed help. "The Pazzi's and the Pope are behind the conspiracy." Lorenzo started after taking a deep, long breath. "Our people also found and captured Federico's men," Lorenzo said nervously without pausing. Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, was a man to fear—a mercenary loyal to the Papacy, notable for his martial skills and driven solely by political and financial ambition—that kind of man you'd pay not to attack your city. "Sir, Florentines are on your side. These armies were waiting to attack, but none of your citizens has rebelled," Poliziano said to soften Lorenzo's discomfort. But he was right; his people had rushed to help him and prevented anyone else from attacking Florence.
They both knew how the events had unfolded till the plotted assassination. So Poliziano thought of listing all of them to strengthen his leader's power during that moment of perceived defeat: the ad personam law aimed at avoiding the Pazzi's inheriting large amount of money from the Borromei family; the choice of not financing the Pope to purchase the city of Imola; the refusal to appoint Salviati Archbishop of Florence; the fear that the web of marriages, spun by the Pazzi's power ambition, would diminish the de Medici's in Florence. That was a quick sequence of events that had characterized the previous decade, meticulously planned by the Pazzi to defeat the de Medici tyranny—or whatever you'd call a de facto leadership.
The remainder of those events felt like music for Lorenzo's ears. He made the right choices, he thought, although his brother's loss made him question that certainty. That storm of thoughts was interrupted by a guard knocking on the door. "Sir, the Archbishop of Arezzo, Gentile, and the Chancellor Bartolomeo are here." the guard announced. "If I may," he continued, "Renato, Jacopo's nephew, was captured while fleeing Florence. He denied being part of the conspiracy and asked to be spared, but the crowd gave him the place he deserved, near Jacopo and Salviati's hanging corpses."
Lorenzo didn't say a word. His people had consumed another brutal death—another sign of loyalty. He stared at the guard and dismissed him with a nod. "Thank you all for coming here," Lorenzo told the three men he summoned. "I have specific tasks for you."
Subscribe - New episodes every Thursday at 6AM EST
Episode 1 - Conspiracy, Death, and Executions
Episode 2 - The Miracle That Inaugurated Horrific Times
Episode 3 - You Will All Be Executed Brutally
Episode 4 - An Honorable Man Executed with the Disgrace of the Wretched
Another great chapter!