Painting Mona Lisa. Jeanne Kalogridis

gaze. Yet despite the intensity of her emotions, her tone was controlled as she replied, ‘Other holy men have prayed to God on my behalf. I and my husband have prayed, and we are good Christians, yet God has not seen fit to heal me.’ At last, she brought herself to face Pico. ‘Yet, if you are so convinced of the efficacy of Fra Girolamo’s prayers, why do you not ask him to pray for me from afar?’

      In his urgency, Messer Giovanni vacated his chair to bend on one knee before my mother in a posture of outright supplication; he lowered his voice so that I had to lean forwards myself in order to hear him over the crackling of the fire.

      ‘Madonna … you have certainly heard of the prophecy of the papa angelico?’

      Everyone in France and Italy knew of the prophecy of the angelic pope – one elected not by a committee of cardinals but by God, who would come to cleanse the Church of its corruption and unite it shortly before Christ’s return.

      My mother gave the most cursory of nods.

      ‘He is Fra Girolamo; in my heart, I am convinced. He is no ordinary man. Madonna, what harm can it do for you to come hear him once? I will arrange for him to meet you privately after Mass, this very Sunday if you are willing. Think of it: through Fra Girolamo’s hands, God will heal you. You need be a prisoner in this house no longer. Only come once, Madonna …’

      She glanced over at my father. There was reproach in her gaze at first, for he had put her in the most awkward possible situation; yet that reproach melted away as she caught sight of his face.

      There was nothing conniving in my father’s expression, nothing that smacked of satisfaction or victory. Like Pico’s, his face was aglow – not with reflected firelight or godly inspiration, but with the purest, most desperate love I had ever seen.

      It was that, more than Pico’s persuasive charm, which made her yield; and when at last she answered the Count, she was gazing upon my father, with all the pain and love that had been hidden in her heart now visible in her expression. Her eyes shone with tears, which spilled onto her cheeks when she spoke.

      ‘Only once,’ she said – to my father, not to the kneeling Pico. ‘Only once.’

       XVI

      That Sunday the sky was blue, lit by a sun too feeble to soften the gripping cold. My thickest cloak, of scarlet wool lined with rabbit fur, was not enough to warm me; the air stung my eyes and made them water. In the carriage, my mother sat rigid and expressionless between me and Zalumma, her black hair and eyes a striking contrast to the white ermine cape wrapped about her emerald velvet gown. Across from us, my father glanced solicitously at his wife, eager to obtain a sign of affection, but she gazed past him, as if he were not present. Zalumma stared directly at my father and did not bother to hide the outrage she felt on behalf of her mistress.

      Count Pico rode with us and did his best to distract my father and me with pleasant comments, but there was no ignoring my mother’s humiliation, icy and bitter as the weather. Arrangements had been made for us to meet privately with Fra Girolamo directly after the service, so that he could lay hands upon my mother and pray for her.

      I gasped as we rolled up to the entrance of the church at San Marco. My awe was not generated by the building – a plain structure of unadorned stone, of the same style as our parish at Santo Spirito – but rather by the number of people who, being unable to find room inside the sanctuary, pressed tightly against each other in the doorway, on the steps, and all the way out into the piazza.

      Had Count Pico not been with us, we would never have gained entry. He called out as he stepped from the carriage, and at once, three generously sized Dominican monks appeared and escorted us inside. Their effect on the crowd was magical; they melted away, like wax before a flame. In a moment, I found myself standing between my mother and father not far from the pulpit and the main altar, beneath which Cosimo de’ Medici lay entombed.

      Compared to the grand Duomo, San Marco’s interior was sedate and unremarkable, with its pale stone colonnades and simple altar. Yet the mood inside the sanctuary was one of breathless feverishness; despite the numbing chill, women fanned themselves and whispered, agitated. Men stamped their feet – not against the cold, but out of impatience – and monks groaned as they prayed aloud. I felt as though I were at Carnival, awaiting a much-anticipated joust.

      The choir began to sing, and the processional began.

      With rapt expressions, worshippers turned eagerly towards the parade. First came the young acolytes, one holding the great cross, another swinging a thurible which perfumed the air with smoky frankincense. Next came the deacon, and then the priest himself.

      Last of all came Fra Girolamo, in the place of highest honour. At the sight of him, people cried out: ‘Fra Girolamo! Pray for me!’ ‘God bless you, Brother!’ Loudest of all was the cry, ‘Babbo! Babbo!’, that sweet term only the youngest children use to address their fathers.

      I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, trying to get a glimpse of him. I caught only the impression of a frayed brown friar’s robe poorly filled by a thin figure; the hood was up, and his head was bowed. Pride was not among his sins, I decided.

      He sat, huddled and intimidated, with the acolytes; only then did the people grow calmer. Yet as the Mass progressed, their restlessness again increased. When the choir sang the Gloria in excelsis, the crowd began to fidget. The Epistle was chanted, the Gradual sung; when the priest read the Gospel, people were murmuring continuously – to themselves, to each other, to God.

      They murmured to Fra Girolamo. It was like listening to the thrum of insects and nocturnal creatures on a summer’s night – a sound loud and unintelligible.

      The instant he ascended the pulpit, the sanctuary fell profoundly silent, so silent that I could hear a carriage’s wooden wheels rattling on the cobblestones of the Via Larga.

      Above us, above Cosimo’s bones, stood a small gaunt man with sunken cheeks and great, protruding dark eyes; his hood was pushed back, revealing a head crowned by coarse black curls.

      He was even homelier than his nemesis, Lorenzo de’ Medici. His brow was low and sloping. His nose looked as if someone had taken a great axe-shaped square of flesh, and simply pressed it to his face; the bridge jutted straight out from his brow in a perpendicular line, then dropped down at an abrupt right angle. His lower teeth were crooked and protruded so that his full lower lip pushed outwards.

      No messiah was ever more unseemly. Yet the timid man I had seen in the procession and the one who ascended the pulpit could not have differed more. This new Savonarola, this touted papa angelico, had increased magically in stature; his eyes blazed with certainty, and his bony hands gripped the sides of the pulpit with divine authority. This was a man transformed by a power greater than himself, a power that radiated from his frail body and permeated the chill air surrounding us. For the first time since entering the church, I forgot the cold. Even my mother, who had remained subdued, beaten, and silent throughout the ritual, let go a soft sound of amazement.

      On the other side of my father, Count Pico lifted his hands, clasped in prayer, in a gesture of supplication. ‘Fra Girolamo,’ he cried, ‘give us your blessing and we will be healed!’ I glanced at his upturned face, radiant with devotion, at the sudden tears filling his eyes. At once I understood why Zalumma had once derided Savonarola and his followers as piagnoni – ‘wailers’.

      But the emotion swirling about us was infinite, wild, genuine. Men and women stretched forth their arms, palms open, pleading.

      And Fra Girolamo responded. His gaze swept over us; he seemed to see us, each one, and to acknowledge the love directed at him with eyes shining with compassion and humility. He made the sign of the Cross over the crowd with hands that trembled faintly from contained emotion – and when he did, contented sighs rose heavenwards, and at last the sanctuary again was still.

      Savonarola closed his eyes, summoning an internal force, and then he spoke.

      ‘Our sermon