Everywhere she looked she saw gold glittering back at her, or people in paintings staring at her. And doors. Closed doors to more rooms than Elm Medona had. Maisie had no choice. She stopped at each one and pushed it open carefully, just enough to peer inside. The first appeared to be a study filled with floor-to-ceiling books, and of course more sculptures and paintings. The next looked like a living room, all velvet furniture and giant tapestries covering the long stretch of walls. The tapestries were faded and showed scenes of what looked at a glance like rural life. Not the room she needed, so she quietly shut the door and continued past marble benches with mosaic scenes embedded in them, to still more doors that, when opened, revealed more studies and living rooms.
Finally, she glimpsed a room beyond one of the living rooms, and in that second room was a fireplace with a crackling fire burning and a narrow high bed covered in heavy red linens. The bed had four tall, intricately carved posts and a red canopy with fringe dangling from it. And in that bed lay Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Maisie stepped inside the first room, walking heavily to try to wake him and closing the door with a firm bang.
It worked.
Lorenzo sat upright and grabbed a large shiny knife from beside him.
“Put that down!” Maisie said. “It’s only me, Maisie Robbins.”
Lorenzo’s face had gone pale, and color did not return immediately.
“What are you doing in my private chambers?” he said, his voice regal.
“I’m sorry,” Maisie said. “But I think you have something of mine.”
“Do you realize that I could have you thrown in prison? With the Pazzis’ assassination threats, anyone who breaks in—”
“Actually,” Maisie said, “I didn’t break in. I was downstairs and—”
“Silence!” Lorenzo ordered.
How can a man in a red canopy bed, wearing a weird off-white nightgown, be so scary? Maisie wondered. Because Lorenzo, his cheeks now bright red, was indeed terrifying.
“Now I want you to turn around and leave my quarters.”
“But—”
“Do you understand?” Lorenzo said, his dark eyes ablaze.
“I do,” Maisie said, taking a few steps backward toward the door. “But I—”
“Prison is a very unpleasant place,” Lorenzo said.
“Okay, okay,” Maisie said. “But I need my gold seal back,” she finished quickly as she rushed out the door.
Once back in the corridor, she leaned against a wall, trying to calm down. Behind her, she felt a picture go crooked. Maisie turned and straightened it, the saint with his gold halo and sad droopy eyes staring back at her.
“Miss Robbins,” a deep voice called, startling her enough to make her send the painting back to a crooked angle.
A servant walked slowly toward her, holding a small yellow satin pillow.
“Yes?” Maisie asked, her voice little more than a squeak.
“Signor Medici believes this belongs to you.”
There, sitting right in the middle of the pillow, the gold seal shone.
“Yes!” Maisie said with relief. “Yes!”
With that, Maisie returned, breathless, to the courtyard, waving the seal in the air.
Felix looked at Maisie. Leonardo did, too.
Leonardo put out his hand.
And Maisie placed the seal in his waiting palm.
The next morning, Maisie woke up to the sound of Great-Uncle Thorne’s loud, boisterous voice echoing through the hall.
“Up! Up, you two rapscallions!” he shouted. “Awaken and greet the new day!”
Quieter, as if he were speaking to himself, he added, “I certainly have.”
Maisie burst into a big grin. Great-Uncle Thorne was not at death’s door, that terrible phrase her mother had used. He was alive! And he was here!
Quickly, she pulled on an old faded concert T-shirt of her father’s and her fleece vest, slipped her feet into her sneakers, and without even bothering to tie the laces, ran out into the hall.
Her mother hovered behind Great-Uncle Thorne, mystified.
“I got a call from the hospital,” she explained, “saying he woke up, then got up, and then demanded to come home right away.”
“A miracle,” Felix said from the doorway of his room, his eyes twinkling.
“Jennifer,” Great-Uncle Thorne ordered, turning his gaze onto their mother, “tell Cook I would like an omelette aux fines herbes, a pot of café au lait, and some melon.”
“All right,” their mother said.
“Tout de suite,” Great-Uncle Thorne added.
With that, their mother scurried off to the Kitchen.
As soon as she was gone, Great-Uncle Thorne turned his attention to Maisie and Felix.
“Let’s go,” he said to them.
“Go?” Maisie said. “Go where?”
He pointed a gnarled finger toward the door.
What choice did they have? Maisie and Felix let him lead the way out, down the stairs, and into the hallway, the wall closing behind them.
“Have you two ever been in the Fairy Room?” Great-Uncle Thorne asked them.
“Where’s that?” Maisie asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
They went down the Grand Staircase, across the foyer, through the West Rotunda with its glass-domed ceiling that revealed the full moon still in the sky above them, and into the Ladies’ Drawing Room.
The Ladies’ Drawing Room had pink moiré silk walls with twenty-four-carat-gold trim and a ceiling covered with murals of some Greek myth. Maisie and Felix hardly ever came in here. Everything was dainty and fragile-looking, from the desk with the spindly legs to the deep-pink fainting couch.
Great-Uncle Thorne paused.
“It’s said that my mother loved this room,” he said wistfully.
Maisie glanced around it. A harp stood in one corner with a music stand in front of it.