The Medici Girl

Forging Letters

The chill of winter was still in Firenze when Giuliano returned from Roma with letters from Pope Sixtus. Contessina sat in Lorenzo's study as Giuliano produced a stack of letters full of intel from Roma and the Medici supporters there. She had a cup of wine in her hand as the brothers shifted through the pile on Lorenzo's desk looking for the one letter that mattered the most. The atmosphere of night made the room look like a scribes place of worship, but she waited as they looked. 

"Ah! Here it is." Giuliano said picking the large letter with the papal seal on it and a red ribbon tied around it. "Unopened as requested by the Pope." He walked over from the desk to hand it to the blond woman who was nervous at seeing what the pope decided her future was going to be. She looked up at Giuliano wondering if he understood her hesitance in grabbing the letter. "Don't worry, whatever it says we will deal with it." He offered her a hopeful smile before looking at his brother who was deep into his own letter. 

"Let her open it, Giuliano." Lorenzo said with his face blocked by the letter he was reading. 

Contessina slowly took the papal document from her cousin's hand and cracked the wax seal open before removing the red ribbon. She slowly opened it knowing that the vellum in her hands could possibly force her out of Firenze or it could officially make her capable of being a free woman again. Ezio's face flashed through her mind at the thought of divorcing him, but he also thought it a good idea, if only for her safety and that of Cammillia's. He had said as much in the tiny letter he had given her the day of Uberto Alberti's assassination. Contessina scanned over the document trying to understand the Latin that was written upon it in Sixtus' hand and then the translation done by one of his cardinals. Her heart sunk at what she read. 

"This is what the pope thinks of us Medici." She said standing up and handing it to Lorenzo, who put the letter he was reading down to look at the document himself. "He would rather see me exiled from Firenze as well." 

"He does not approve of the dispensation because you are married to a criminal still on the loose. Signed by his Holiness and the cardinal who translated, Rodrigo Borgia." Borgia? Why did the name sound so familiar? "Did Carlo send anything?" Lorenzo asked his brother. 

"Si, he did." Giuliano pulled that letter from the inside of his doublet and handed it to Lorenzo. It did not take the older Medici man to open the letter and scan its contents after putting down the papal letter. 

"Carlo will keep trying to persaude Sixtus for the dispensation, Contessina. For now, you must keep yourself confined to the Palazzo for your own safety." Lorenzo told the blond woman who stood up quickly. 

"I refuse to be jailed, Lorenzo." She said walking to his desk and leaning over it to get the letter from the Vatican. "No one has to know about it right? They all believe the rumors to be true, so why not keep this charade going?" She could forge the handwriting on the document and make it official, but she would need help from a certain artist to help with getting the right ink. The vatican used a special ink, not like the ink that Lorenzo used, no the ink was a mix of squid and charcoal. She smelled the vellum. It smelled of dried urine as well as the fragrance powder used to dry the ink. "I will be back." She said folding the letter up and putting it in the bust of her corset. "I have to visit a friend." 

Ezio sat at the desk in the room at the top of Villa Auditore with a quill in his hand and paper in front of him. He had no idea what to write, but he knew he should. It had been a few days since his uncle found Ezio, his mother, and his sister on the road not to far away from Monteriggioni surrounded by Vieri de'Pazzi and his thugs. If it had not been for Mario, Ezio was not sure if they would all be safe and sound in the villa at that moment. What troubled him the most was the secret his father kept from him all of his life and he was just now knowing about it. How was he to understand it or accept it? Had Contessina known about this too? He doubted she knew as much as he did, but he did not know.