She lay on her bed and willed the hours to pass so that she could disappear into sleep, but when she closed her eyes she saw Pippo’s white robes floating out like the wings of an angel as he fell. On the way home, Mamma Lucrezia had decried the incident as a foul way to scare the family into obedience, but she’d shut her mouth when she’d heard shouting and they’d all sat nervously for fear of being stopped by the preacher’s boys. A servant had carried Pippo into the main hall and laid him on a settle whilst they waited for the doctor to arrive. Mamma Lucrezia had insisted on making a special drink to ease the pain of his bruising and calm his nerves. Poor little Filippo shook uncontrollably and had to be pried from his mamma’s lap. Luna’s ordeal seemed minor next to her brother’s torment.

When she was very little, one of her favourite days involved helping her father procure and deliver supplies to the monastery. They would gather up a bundle of cloth for the monks to use for robes, then spend time in the tannery where Papa would select leather skins to use to cover the manuscripts copied out by the monks. The items would be loaded into a small wagon with Luna snuggled into one corner and then her father would manoeuvre it across the cobblestone streets. He’d pause often to talk to this merchant or that gentleman, inquiring after a shipment of cloth or the quality of beans that season. Luna would listen to the mellow tones of his conversation from her safe little spot and doze when the talk dragged on, with her head resting against the pillowy weight of the sacks of cloth. When they arrived at the monastery, her father would lift her out along with the sacks and she thought him the strongest man in the world. He’d have killed Savonarola if the monks had not held him back. He would die for his son. What would he do when he found out she’d been attacked in church too?

*

Luna woke with a throbbing pain down one side and realised she’d fallen asleep curled up against the wall with her arm pressed beneath her. She stood and stretched, and reckoned by the way the light fell on her dresser that it was now late in the afternoon. Her body no longer shook but when she breathed, it felt like a torrent of shame and relief flooded from her all at once and it was as much as she could do to stop from crying out. She pulled her hair back and up into a knot, then she fixed the buttons on her skirt and reviewed her reflection in the pane of glass. There was nothing different about the girl who stared back. She saw no mark of the shame that rankled within.