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if I’m late, Silvano beats me. And he doesn’t go easy on me, like he did with you.” He left quickly, and Simonetta and Maria entered the room, holding rags, brushes, and a clean shirt.
             
    THERE WAS BARELY TIME for me to look around and take in the bed and the little chest. The bed was covered with a red silk coverlet which lay over sheets of yellow cloth. I lifted the sheets to see an unimaginable luxury: a mattress. It was thin and a rip in the corner revealed it to be stuffed with horsehair, but I’d never before slept on one. There was a tall window, but it was heavily draped, like all the other windows in this palazzo. A few tallow candles shed a graceless, wan light. This was my room. I’d never had a room before. Then the door opened and I jumped away from the bed as a barrel-chested man with long curling hair and silver in his beard strode in. He was expensively dressed and shod in calf-leather boots. He was the well-known head of the armorers’ guild, and I’d seen him at the market. Or rather, I’d seen him watching me there.
    He smiled at me greedily and I thought of how the roast fowl must have felt when I spied it on the table. Terror and humiliation overwhelmed me, and I backed up against the wall. Out on the streets, I could run away when one of the men who paid me a soldi to touch me grew too insistent; here there was no escape. My heart scrambled. I looked around desperately, but there was nowhere to go. The armorer strode over and his hands shook as he reached toward me. I pushed his hands away, but he was strong and wrapped one thick arm around me, pinioning my arms to my sides, and ripped off my shirt. I struggled, but he didn’t notice.
    “So soft, so beautiful,” he murmured, his breath gurgling in his throat. “So young.” He fumbled at his breeches and then pushed me facedown onto the bed. It was worse than dying. I screamed and screamed, kept screaming at full volume even when the breath left me. I resisted even though Silvano had made it clear that he would kill me if I did. I would have preferred to be killed, in that moment. I was too shamed to weep and could only close my eyes and pray for death. I realized that God was laughing at me again, and that He was too cruel and uncaring to let me die as I asked.
    It was then that I learned that God’s mockery sometimes contains shards of kindness, for He threw me a mote of grace. Suddenly, miraculously, I was no longer in Silvano’s. All of Florence beyond the palazzo was laid out in front of me, as if I could simply step down into the city streets. But it wasn’t just my mind that went there, it was my whole self. The boundaries between physical and imaginary dissolved, and reality seeped into both realms. There was a supernatural vaulting, first of my imagination, then of my senses, and, finally, upon seeing the pigments in the frescoes and hearing the soft voices of the choir, of my entire being into the monumental church of Santa Croce. The
Raising of Drusiana
in the Evangelist’s life was spread out before me. I had once crouched down in the pews near a priest telling the story to a Catechism class, telling how Drusiana had so loved St. John and kept his commandments that the saint had resurrected her in the name of the Lord. It thrilled me that devotion like that could result in salvation, and I resolved that one day I, too, would demonstrate that kind of love. Perhaps not for a saint, because saints would have nothing to do with trash like me; perhaps not for a person, though I’d longed to be of noble station and belong to a family and wife of my own; perhaps only for the painting itself.
    The painting before me deserved my veneration. Every detail was vibrant and beautiful, from the varied emotions on the faces to the blue sky arching over them. If I put my finger to a cheek or brow, I would feel warm skin. It was as if the artist had painted real people thronged around St. John, and I was one of them,