“This is only the second hanging of the year. The last was also for homicide,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It might bring a large crowd.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t seen it?”
“It is a terrible sight, surely,” Clara said, furrowing her smooth forehead. “After my first, I had nightmares for weeks. Umiltà had to give me a sleeping draught.”
“Why did you watch?”
“Executions are communal justice made visible,” she said seriously, “and citizens learn best from what they see.”
I wondered whether she was reciting something she’d been taught. “Then it doesn’t bother you to see your government kill someone?”
“The Podestà, his police, and i Noveschi keep us safe,” she said simply, and I saw there was no contradiction in her mind between the government’s acts of violence and its peaceful purpose. “Umiltà says the wards must watch the executions, as an example of what befalls those who fail to resist the temptations of the devil. Citizens must see the consequences of crime, so men contemplating evil deeds will instead seek the wisdom of God.”
I’d heard these arguments in my old time, though not always with a religious bent. I wasn’t sure whether I found Clara’s reiteration comforting or disturbing.
“Besides,” she added cheerfully, “he’s a foreigner.”
* * *
The following morning I woke to the sounds of a crowd congregating outside. I dressed and went to the Ospedale entrance. Three horsemen wearing the black and white of the commune rode into the crowd. Their brass horns blared a harsh fanfare, and the middle trumpeter stood in his saddle to proclaim the news.
“Giovanni de’ Medici of Florence has been convicted of homicide by the Podestà’s court. His sentence: execution by hanging!” The mood in the crowd was dangerous. Groups of adolescent and younger boys held rocks in their hands, looking ready for a fight. A chant rose up from one side of the piazza: “Death to the Florentine!” Soon it had spread through the mob.
The high bells of the torre began to ring. The crowd parted and I saw the somber procession: three priests walking beside a horse-drawn dung cart. Giovanni de’ Medici rode inside, hands bound behind him in the grip of a grim-looking guard with a sword at his belt. Giovanni looked straight ahead, swaying with the cart’s irregular movement over the stones.
One boy threw a stone that glanced harmlessly off the cart’s side. A rain of stones followed the first, one striking Giovanni in the forehead and drawing blood that dripped down to the bridge of his nose. He did not flinch or speak. I recognized the tongue-tied priest from the cathedral, chanting prayers as he walked alongside the cart.
The procession swelled as we headed downhill. “Penitenza, penitenza, penitenza,” the onlookers chanted: penitence. But the crowd was demanding something from Giovanni that he refused to deliver. He remained as silent as the guard beside him.
“He will not repent his acts of evil, even as he approaches death,” a woman muttered next to me. “He deserves to have his neck stretched, and be thrown to the torments of hell for all eternity.” She spat into the gutter.
We passed out of the walled city through the Porta Giustizia. The crowd slowed, and I saw the scaffold rising starkly above us, a gangly monster waiting for its meal. Giovanni was led out to stand before the mass of onlookers while a hollow-cheeked man with a scarred face dropped the noose over Giovanni’s neck. The little priest, his hands trembling, pulled a crucifix out from the folds of his robe and held it before the prisoner’s face.
“Look upon the cross, that you may die in God’s sight.” The priest’s voice trailed off with a final squeak, but he’d gotten the words out. I heard a collective gasp from the crowd as Giovanni turned his head away from the cross before him.
“Have you not one word to commend yourself to God?”
Giovanni smiled a strange, cruel smile. “Siena will rot for her role in my death.”
The executioner kicked the block from under Giovanni’s feet in one swift move, and the noose jerked sickeningly with its new weight. The little priest fell to the ground as the crowd pressed forward with a roar.
I now knew why I hadn’t found records of an executed Medici when I’d searched before. It was because I hadn’t written them yet.
* * *
The guards did not cut Giovanni’s body down after the hanging but let it dangle, twisting on its rope. “As an example to the enemies of Siena, and those who defy the will of God,” a guard proclaimed, to cheers from the crowd. Iacopo watched in horror, crouching behind a thorny bush. He remained there for hours, until a flock of crows came for his father’s open eyes. Overcome by sudden fatigue, he closed his eyes against the sight and slept. He awoke to the sound of young boys playing. For a moment he imagined he was sitting in the courtyard of his family palazzo while his little cousins laughed and threw a leather ball around the central fountain.
Iacopo stood cautiously and saw a group of boys scaling the gibbet to cut off fingers from his father’s corpse, joint by joint. They gathered, laughing, beneath the hanging body and began to play a gruesome game of dice with the hacked digits. Iacopo vomited into the bushes. He could barely stand for the trembling of his limbs but managed to stagger away from the scaffold, back uphill toward the city gates. He avoided the road, afraid of being seen, but the boys, too absorbed in their game, took no notice of him.
The guards at the porta eyed him suspiciously. His clothes were rumpled and reeking, and his hair full of twigs. When the men waved him along he exhaled with silent relief. Iacopo returned to the inn where he’d spent the past week. He’d wisely thought to give a false name there, as the Medici name was being cursed throughout the city. His arrival was met with disgust by the innkeeper Semenzato, who barred the door with his wide body.
“I’ll have no drunken brawls in my establishment, I warn you, no matter what you pay for the privilege.”
“I became ill upon the road today, and collapsed into a roadside ditch. I trust your hospitality will be as good as it has been these past six days.”
“Any word of trouble and you’ll be out on your backside, ill or not,” Semenzato said with threat in his voice.
Iacopo swallowed the insults he had in mind; the innkeeper’s officiousness must be tolerated if he were to find rest. The tavern patrons backed away from him as he passed through the room to the stairs.
In his chamber the despair and horror of the day tore through Iacopo afresh. He lay upon the floor, weeping but without the damp solace of tears.
Hours later, Iacopo woke to a persistent knocking on the door of his chamber. He rose before he called out leave to enter. The black-haired chambermaid stared at him without speaking.
“Have you not seen a man recovering from illness before? Bring me fresh water and a cloth.”
“I am here to deliver a message, Ser.”