But shouldn’t this ciao read as good-bye?
Up until this very instant, everything in Italian, or Tuscan, or Latin sounded like English to Maisie. And everything written in those languages appeared in English to her.
This note, however, was most definitely not in English. Maisie considered this.
Maybe it had something to do with the odd way that Leonardo wrote. His backward writing, all the letters jammed up close together, could possibly be just gibberish rather than any language at all.
Yes, she decided, this note was simply impossible to read.
Even though it probably had specific instructions on when and where to meet Felix and Leonardo, it was completely useless.
Like a lightbulb going off in a cartoon, an idea quickly came to Maisie.
Clutching the note, she ran to Leonardo’s room. Inside, she went to the small mirror that hung above the table in one corner. The table had a ceramic pitcher sitting in a ceramic bowl on top of it, and a cotton towel draped across one corner. But it was the mirror that she needed.
Standing on tiptoe, Maisie lifted the note so that it was reflected there. That backward writing would appear forward now, she thought, congratulating herself on her brilliance.
Except even reflected in the mirror and reading it from left to right like regular writing, the words were still not in English.
There was ciao again. And her own name was legible now. And there were two signatures—Felix and Leonardo.
Everything else, Maisie saw, getting angry all over again, was in a language that was not English.
Confused, she balled the note up and stuck it in her pocket. Feeling how empty it was in there, she remembered dropping the seal into the urn last night. For the first time since she’d done that, she wondered if maybe that had been a bad idea. No, she decided as she made her way out of the bedroom and back to the studio, when the time came to go home she would just go back to the Palazzo Medici and retrieve it. Better to take one problem at a time, Maisie thought. For now, she would have to venture into the city and find Felix and Leonardo.
Felix glanced nervously around the crowd. From his special seat in the grandstand that held the Medicis and other nobility, he had a perfect view of everything—the Piazza Santa Croce below, the priests and dukes and other high-ranking officials of Florence around him, the bright, round colorful tents below that Leonardo had told him held the jousters, and the steaming crowd of what Sandro referred to—with a sneer—as commoners. Maisie was not anywhere to be seen.
Surely she had woken up by now and read the note telling her to come here to the Medici box. Why, Felix thought, did his sister have to be so difficult?
Felix sat between Piero and Leonardo. Although Piero seemed engaged in the goings-on below, Leonardo had one of his notebooks opened and had spent his time so far working on a sketch of a horse. He drew and studied what he drew and then, dissatisfied, rubbed off a line here and a line there, only to try again. Behind him, Sandro searched for a glimpse of someone named Simonetta. And beside Sandro sat Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice. Other men from last night’s supper were there, too, as well as women in damask and embroidered dresses.
But no Maisie.
“Morello di Vento has to win,” Clarice said.
“Doesn’t he always?” Sandro asked.
Leonardo leaned close to Felix and whispered, “That’s Lorenzo’s magnificent roan. He’s won every race since Lorenzo took over from his father.”
“The horses run from the Porta al Prato, through the Borgo Ognissanti, and end here,” Piero explained. “That’s why this is the most exciting place to be.”
Horses began to near the Piazza Santa Croce.
Excited, everyone jumped to their feet.
Although most had riders in elaborate clothing, some horses were riderless. The riders wore spurs to goad the horses into running faster. By the time they reached the Piazza Santa Croce, the horses were in such a frenzy that some of them seemed to have gone mad. They foamed at the mouth and stood on their hind legs. Felix watched as several riders were thrown from their horses’ backs.
But the first to ride triumphantly into the Piazza Santa Croce was indeed Lorenzo de’ Medici.
When he appeared, his horse regal and swift, the crowd went wild with cheers and applause.
Except, Felix noticed, one group. The men there stared coldly down at Lorenzo as he waved from high on the back of his horse, victorious.
“The Pazzis,” Leonardo said when he saw where Felix was looking. “They are rivals to the Medicis. Some say they are planning a take over.”
“Are they?” Felix asked.
Leonardo shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said.
“Are they who stormed the palazzo last night?”