Da Vinci's Disciples - Donna Russo Morin

Historical Fiction Series Set In 15th Century Florence

Da Vinci's Disciples by Donna Russo Morin

Series Excerpt

“Giuliano! My brother, my brother,” Lorenzo shrieked, pounding against the door, fighting those who kept him inside the sacristy.

“Leave me be,” he screamed, blue veins bulging on his reddened forehead. “I must get to my brother.”

Golden chalices clanged, falling from the oak table slammed against the back wall. Table legs screeched against marble floor as the bevy of men fought to keep Il Magnifico from raising the barricade someone had quickly dropped into place.

“You cannot, My Lord. I cannot allow it.”

Somehow the young Cavalcanti, a cousin branch to Lapaccia’s own, named for the man before him, wedged his body between his namesake and the bronze door. But Lorenzo abused the body as he did the door, barraging both with tight-fisted, blistering blows.

“But I must see to Giuliano. I saw him fall, but he lives still, I know it.” Lorenzo’s eyes darkened, seeing only his brother’s crumbled body. “Does he? Has he died? Do you know?”

The other men bundled in the small room glanced silently at each other, staring at him as if he was a stranger.

The young man shook his head, oaken brown hair a tangled and stringy nest falling to his shoulders. With tears in his eyes, he pleaded, “Please, Magnifico, please.”

“Lorenzo, my friend.” The familiar soothing voice of Sigismondo della Stufa came from behind.

Lorenzo’s body responded, thrashing abating. Da Vinci knew the moment had come, began to. With a touch of a gentle breeze, Leonardo reached out, and, placing a hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder, turned him from the door and the spent Cavalcanti. Lorenzo’s forehead creased as he looked up at the tall della Stufa standing before him, brows raised in silent, pathetic questioning.

“You cannot go out there, Lorenzo.” Sigismondo held him tightly. “Those who long for your death may be waiting. They want your blood and nothing less.”

“W…who?” Lorenzo stammered.

Sigismondo shook his head of tight black curls. “The…the Pazzis, I know, but I cannot be sure which. Others with them.”

“They would not. They could not,” Lorenzo protested, pushing the turban, twisted askance, off his head, thrashing it to the ground. “Not here, not so sacrilegious an attack.”

But the stalwart Sigismondo did not move nor speak; truth clung ominously to the silence.

Lorenzo dropped his head as his weight dropped against da Vinci, still standing beside him. Distemper drained away. That’s when he saw it; the streak of thick blood, darkening as it dried, running from beneath the door and passed him, into the small room. He followed it and his chest heaving at the sight.

In the far corner, a few steps away, his friend and savior Francesco Nori laid in a pool of his own blood. Hands, gloved in the liquid, pressed uselessly against his open stomach wound.

With a moan, Lorenzo lunged to his friend’s side, nudging Antonio Ridolfi aside.

“Francesco. No, not our Francesco,” Lorenzo muttered, splotching his own hands with Nori’s blood as they touched the man’s wound, the man’s face.

The cold, wet contact roused the injured man, barely.Francesco’s blue eyes, ones so quick to glint with mischief, now the gray of a winter sky, fluttered open. The slits spread as if in a smile at the face above him. And, as if the sight were enough, the eyes closed…never to open again.

Lorenzo dropped his head back upon his shoulders, shuddering with silent sobs.

“What is this?” Beside them Ridolfo swiped at his own tears, rustled damp fingers through long ash brown hair, and took Lorenzo by the shoulder, pulling the cowl of the man’s robe away.

There for all to see, a gash the width of a large dagger, blood bright and fresh, at the base of the neck, as if a line had been drawn upon Lorenzo’s collar bone.

Da Vinci leaped to their side, as did Loris Tornabuoni, Lorenzo’s cousin, from his post by the door. Leonardo pulled Lorenzo’s tunic farther aside, tearing it in the effort, revealing skin reddening in anger around the laceration.

“Poison?” The venomous word slithered from Antonio’s clenched teeth.

Leonardo nodded, amber eyes sending a message of fear.

Still in a crouch, Antonio sidled once more to Lorenzo’s side, padded and pleated leather doublet creaking as he lowered his head toward the wound.

But the movement stirred Lorenzo from his grief. “I am fine. Be gone from me. I must get to Giuliano.”

“Be still, Lorenzo!” Sigismondo barked impatiently. “You could be dying. How could you help your brother then?”

Lorenzo took the verbal slap but with a thunderous stare. “You cannot tell me if he lives. Why should I care if I do?”

Sigismondo spun away, frustration affirmed and contained in tightly fisted hands, but held back the jibes Lorenzo expected.

“Allow Antonio to extract the poison and I will find out.” He pointed to the northwest corner and a slim and slithering spiral staircase of the same polished golden wood as the walls.

“You go and then—”

“No!” Sigismondo ended Lorenzo’s negotiation before it began. “I will go while you allow treatment, or I will not go at all.”

Eyes closing in defeat, Lorenzo leaned back against the wall, raising his chin, and opening his wounded neck to Antonio.

Sigismondo made his way to the steps. As he climbed, Antonio lowered his head; this time Lorenzo allowed the man’s lips to latch upon his skin. The sounds of Antonio’s sucking kept time to the beat of Sigismondo stepping on the rails, loud in this small room fecund with the odorous of blood and excrement.

A few draws and Antonio pulled his head back, spitting the viscous mixture of blood and saliva away, over his shoulder. Above them, Sigismondo reached the apex of the spinning stairs, to the entrance of the organ loft above the cupola.

Sucking again, Antonio spit, this time the liquid made a clear glob upon the floor.

“Just once more.” He did and withdrew. Stepping away, mouth still full, he hunkered down in the opposite corner. Spitting, emptying his mouth, he stuck two fingers down his throat. Up came more liquid as his body heaved, parts of his morning repast spewed as well, an assurance no poison remained in either of them.

Spent, Antonio dropped back on the floor, curled his slim body up, his head on his knees.

Lorenzo de’ Medici, the great leader of the Florentine people, a despot some whispered in shadowed corners, crawled to Antonio’s side, and wrapped his arms about his caregiver.

“Your valor and service this day will not be forgot. Nor that of any of you.”

Gaze rising, Lorenzo almost dropped Antonio as he jumped to his feet. He could no longer see Sigismondo.

“He must have crawled into the loft,” Cavalcanti croaked with neck bent.

In silent minutes untold, they waited. Lorenzo had no sense of time. Was it just this morning he had been in his brother’s chamber, berating him like an irate father? Or was it a day ago? A year?

Noisily, Sigismondo entered the upper space of the sacristy, descending the slim stairs.

Lorenzo stepped to the bottom and yelled, “My brother? Did you see my brother?”

Sigismondo’s foot slipped on a shallow stair; body pin-wheeling, he caught himself quick, righting his stance with a grunt. “I will tell all when I get there, or else I will fall to my death and be able to tell nothing.”

Chided, Lorenzo stepped away, dark eyes locked on his friend.

Jumping down the last two rungs, Sigismondo bent over, hands upon knees, as he drew deep gasps of air.

Lorenzo crouched below Sigismondo. “Tell me all.”

Raising his head with a shake, Sigismondo reached out and gently pushed Lorenzo so he sat on the floor. Dropping next to him, burly body collapsing, Sigismondo’s story had already begun. Before he said a word, Antonio turned his face to the corner, Loris slithered down the wall, da Vinci looked to the Heavens.

“I will tell you this first,” Sigismondo took the hands of the man beside him, a man he served without question, a boy he had called friend for the whole of his life. “There are no enemies on the other side.” He ticked his square head toward the ten-paneled bronze aperture. “There is no one there but more of your friends, more of your loved ones. Your father, for one, Loris.”

Loris sighed, eyes closing in a moment of silent gratitude.

“They wait for you, Lorenzo. I could hear their worried chatter from above though they could not hear my calls. They—”

“My brother is dead, isn’t he, Sigi?” Lorenzo spoke the pet name as he squeezed the man’s hands. “My brother is gone.”

Sigismondo nodded, a small, simple gesture. With eyes closed against tears, Sigismondo pulled Lorenzo into his embrace. It was all he could do.

There was no sound; the world had become a hollowed, empty place…until the scrape of the bar upon the door broke it. Loris lifted the barricade and opened the door.

The men beyond the door made to rush in, but one large, raised hand by Sigismondo held them. Giovanni Tornabuoni, the poet Poliziano, a Medici cousin Martelli, and more gasped their relief to see Lorenzo alive yet confronted by his grief.

Sigismondo pulled the bereaved man to his feet. The men closed around Lorenzo, a human phalanx made of care, leading him out of the sacristy and the cathedral, steering him far from the covered body of his brother where others stood sentinel.

The silence held almost to the door. Almost.

Knowing he left his beloved brother forever, Lorenzo let loose a keening scream to smash against the dome ceiling far above, to berate the Gods even higher.

Books In This Series

Portrait Of A Conspiracy (Da Vinci's Disciples Book 1)