Lent by Jo Walton

Author:Jo Walton [Walton, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780765379061
Google: wsVrDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07GV9K8X6
Goodreads: 41554680
Publisher: Tor
Published: 2019-05-27T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Thy will be done.

MARCH 1493

What is worth having without God? Nothing, if you still have the hope of Heaven. For Girolamo, knowing himself eternally damned, there are some things. Hell is devoid of breath and joy and change. Earth has those things; pale shadows of Heaven as they are, he accepts them, and with them friendship and human love. Girolamo cares about his friends, about Florence, about saving mortal souls from Hell, that now more than ever. He cannot hope for himself, but he hopes for others. Knowing he is damned is constant torment, but there is kindness and humanity and earthly beauty, here he can breathe and smell and taste and touch. Even if he can hope for no more than the good things of Earth, at least he can rejoice in those. He can help these good men, who are trying to help him despite knowing his nature.

He walks the streets of Florence and remembers a different present, a different future, and increasingly as the changes they have made reverberate, a different past. Much of what happens in the wider world is as he remembers it, but already they are reaching out tentatively to make changes there too. They don’t want to change things so much they lose their advantage of knowing the future, so they are cautious. They know the French will be invading, and they want to be ready. Bernardo de’ Neri and some other members of the Council of Seven are reluctant to believe in the coming French invasion, but they have agreed to renew the defences and hire a mercenary captain anyway. Girolamo’s head itches as hair grows to cover his shaven tonsure, and then it stops itching. He has to visit barber’s shops to keep his hair short and his face shaved, which he has not done since he was a boy—in the monastery one of the brothers shaves all the others every Saturday.

One day in Lent, a day when in other lives he was in Bologna getting into trouble with the Bentivoglios, Girolamo walks from the cathedral to the Medici Palace with Marsilio. He is surprised to see how much Marsilio is loved by everyone, from the scholars and the rich merchants to the cobblers and the fish sellers. Everyone smiles to see him, and when Girolamo is with Marsilio they no longer seem confused by him as they usually are. They find it hard to understand a man who has left the cloister and yet lives so quietly. Marsilio buys bread, and the woman selling it asks for his blessing, which he gives, smiling. She beams as they walk away. Young Lorenzo Tornabuoni, riding past, pauses to greet him, and they joke together in Latin about the spring rain and the fresh horse. Michelangelo Buonarroti, a young sculptor with curly hair and ears that stick out, stops to say he has begun polishing the marble for the pieta he is making for Lorenzo’s tomb. Even in Girolamo’s memories of other

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