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to die down before breaking the seal and unfurling the official tallies.
    â€œGiuliano di Piero de’ Medici won this joust by twenty-one points! He broke a total of fifty-nine lances! Fifty-nine!” Lorenzo shouted. “Behold our winner and your hero!”
    The crowd roared.
    Lorenzo embraced his brother. Awash in triumph and smiles, Giuliano walked the length of the stands, holding aloft the exquisitely decorated helmet so everyone could admire it. The piazza reverberated with cheers that echoed along the walls of the church and the surrounding houses. As I clapped, I cast my eye around the scene, memorizing the jubilant faces, the sumptuous clothing, the heart-lifting laughter, and the colorful, rich brocade banners festooning the usually modest, sandy-colored buildings of the piazza. It was as if a rainbow of happiness had fallen from the sky and laid itself out along the square. Tomorrow the piazza would be stripped and back to the grittier business of bartering and selling, cloth weaving and dyeing, while penitent pilgrims climbed the stairs of the grim, brown-bricked church of Santa Croce to prostrate themselves before dark, candlelit altars.
    Tomorrow my life would be ordinary again as well.
    I let out a resigned sigh as I watched officials and dignitaries cluster into typical end-of-celebration good-byes. Ragged Florentine boys dashed onto the field, searching the sand for the pearls lost from Giuliano’s costume, knocked off by the joust’s collisions. One child jumped up and down clutching a jewel in his hand, knowing his life had just changed for the better.
    I turned to say my good-byes to Simonetta and to look for my escort home. “Oh my! Forgive me, Your Grace.” I had almost walked straight into Lorenzo the Magnificent himself.
    Though technically not a nobleman, Lorenzo honored me with a bow fit for a king’s court. I curtsied. As I rose, about to congratulate him on the wonders of the joust, I realized that the man Simonetta had pointed out to me stood behind Lorenzo. “Ginevra de’ Benci Niccolini, may I introduce you to the honorable ambassador from Venice, Bernardo Bembo?”
    â€œMy lady.” The diplomat bowed low, sweeping his hand down and then out across his outstretched foot. Holding the pose, he glanced up at me with startling bright-blue eyes and a decidedly mischievous grin. He was even more handsome up close, despite the gray peppering his hair.
    I felt myself blush and stammer like a new postulant at the convent. “G-good even, my lord.”
    â€œAmbassador Bembo is much praised for his oratory and knowledge of Petrarch and Dante,” Lorenzo continued. “He longs to meet Florentines who share his love of poetry. I plan a dinner in his honor at our palazzo and am inviting guests who share his devotion to literature and the ancients. I, of course, thought of you. Before he died, your dear father and I often discussed the meaning of Plato’s dialogues. I know you have inherited his interests. Abbess Scolastica has told me of your lovely verses. Perhaps you would share one of your poems with us that evening?”
    I trembled at the honor of such a request. Lorenzo was lauded throughout Tuscany for his fostering of literature. He often invited artists, writers, and scholars to his country villas at Fiesole and Careggi to listen to music and poetry readaloud. They discussed the nature of man’s supreme good, his summum bonum , as explored within classical texts. He also sponsored a Platonic Academy within the city, led by the great philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who had been a friend to my father.
    â€œOh, sir, I would be delighted!” But then I realized that the invitation was not for me to accept. Trying to hide my annoyance with such societal rules, I demurred, “But first . . . first I must . . . I must ask . . .”
    â€œYour husband?” Lorenzo smiled at me. “But of course, Luigi Niccolini will be a