Enna has something in common with the young Lorenzo de' Medici: no one mourns her father's death. But Lorenzo lives in a palace, surrounded by family and friends, holding the future of Florence in his very hands; Enna, instead, has no one and nothin...
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Florence, 1470
Thunder rumbled beyond the tips of the hills sprawling to the north of the city like an emerald knotwork on Florence's countryside.
Rain would come.
Enna hurried her gait, eager to find a shelter as much as to find her friend.
Going to the last place where she had seen Bice had proved to be a fiasco; so, she had thought that maybe the girl would be roaming the most crowded streets for alms.
Begging was forbidden by the law and punishable with flogging—and also jail, for men. It was only allowed to those who had a special permission, like blind or severely maimed people, but someone who had little to lose would put it at stake for a bite of bread.
Enna had been making rounds in the major squares of the city, looking for a familiar, though emaciated, face and had winded up under the gaping maw of a marble lion in Piazza della Signoria.
It surveilled the traffic below from his spot on his pedestal, ignored by distracted passersby but always vigilant, like the Medici were, who had chosen it as symbol of their power.
People in Florence told that once upon a time, a couple centuries back or so, a real lion had been put into a cage and placed right in the middle of Piazza San Giovanni, to point out the independence and the strength of the city; one day, though, the animal had got out, terrorizing the citizens. It had taken a child, but had returned him to the mother unscathed, and had gone back into his cage.
From that day on, the lion had been cherished by the Florentines as a herald of auspicious things.
Enna only hoped that it granted her a fraction of that luck.
A shout raised over the square, followed by a flock of pigeons that had been idly pecking the ground until a few seconds earlier.
Enna inspected her surroundings with sharp and trained eye, immediately pinpointing the source of the fuss: some people, mostly men, were huddled up together around something lying on the stones.
"Be damned, you grullo*!" cried someone.
"Take him here!" snarled another.
The small cluster parted then, revealing not something, but someone; a man was hunched over himself in the futile attempt to shield his body from the verbal attacks people threw at him like stones. A couple of men seized his already crumpled garments and dragged him where everyone could see him.
"You shall pay for the misery you brought onto our families, poor bastard!"
The crowd yelled something in agreement and gathered around them, more and more fattening the circle of onlookers as minutes passed.
The fellow didn't even fight as they tore away his belt and exposed his pale buttocks to the cold and humid air.
Enna read a silent 'please' on his lips, repeated over and over. The two men restraining him—with very little effort, it must be said—pushed him down. They slammed his rear on the cobblestones: once, twice, thrice.*
The roaring laughter of the mob gobbled up the sobs of the mistreated and the sneering comments of his tormentors alike.
"What did he do to deserve this?" Enna questioned a woman whose eyes were relentlessly anchored on the scene.
"That bastard asked for money he knew damn well he could not return, and not a thought spared for the children of those who helped him!" She spat on the ground. "Now that his trade has sent him belly up, he tried to flee the city to avoid his creditors. Vile coward!" The woman spat a second time.
The prosperity and the wealth of Florence depended on the success of its merchants; when one failed, everyone suffered. A holy terror of insolvency was instilled in the souls of men, along with the fear of God's judgement itself, and it was punished as something worthy of the worst capital sin.
Enna didn't want to stay and hear what people yelled at the rascal, but it was something else that gave wings to her feet as she fled the place with her heart racing in tune with her swift steps.
A face among those reunited in the square had ignited memories she wanted to bury in the dark depths of her mind, for ever.
The air in her lungs reduced to ragged little breaths, she leaned against a wall at the mouth of an alley, focusing on the nooks and cracks between the red bricks to gain back control. Enna brushed away a dark strand from her dump brow, gulping down fresh air like a horse after a wild gallop.
Then she saw her.
Bice.
"Wait!" she panted. But her voice was too small even to be heard farther in the desert alley, where her friend had just been fluttering about.
Enna grasped at the wall with her right hand—the one attached to her good arm—for support, and she ventured along it, down the dirt road.
Bice was faster than her, though, no matter how she hastened her pace, and Enna finally had to admit she'd lost the girl when she reached borgo Ognissanti.
She stopped to consider her next choice: she could dare walking deeper into the quarter even though she did not know its streets, or she could go back to the Spedale and come looking for her friend another time.
Ognissanti was one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Florence, and she would never set foot in it normally—even the whores steered clear of it. But Bice was there, somewhere.
How could Enna leave now?
A grating voice boomed to her back, startling her.
She turned her head.
The person to whom that voice belonged was... small. From a distance he could have passed for a child, though the rough planes of his face and the thick, dark beard which covered it identified him as a thoroughly grown man.
"I've seen ye 'round, lass. Ye working at the Spedale, aye? Running some errand today?" the little man asked with evident amusement.
"I... I'm just looking for a friend."
The stranger whistled. "I can be your friend, if ye wish so." He laughed, lecherously laying a hand on his balls.
Enna could not take him seriously, but did not mock him. "Thank you for the offer," she replied, not completely hiding her sarcasm. "I shall keep you in mind, should I be in need of a new one." Then she made to go down the way she'd come from.
"Sorry, lass, I cannot let you leave," the oddly vigorous voice announced.
Something in the back of her mind registered a sense of danger in those words, in their sound.
So, Enna looked back at the stranger.
The dwarf was pointing a knife to her.
Author's Note
Grullo was an insult for people excessively naïve or with scarce intellect.
The scene of the man who gets beaten actually refers to a practice born around the half of the XVI century. At that time is dated the construction of the loggia del Porcellino, mostly known as loggia del Mercato Nuovo, where a bicolour marble rod is inserted in the centre of the floor. It is renown as pietra dello scandalo, the stone of scandal, but it is also called pietra dell'acculata because insolvent debtors were punished by having their naked backside, or culo in vulgar Italian, repeatedly beaten on it. From this humiliating custom originated the modern expression con il culo a terra,meaning 'being on your ass', and designating someone in a very unlucky condition.
