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begun to take on the Medici responsibilities; the year before, he had begun receiving letters asking for his patronage, and their father, Piero, had already sent his eldest son to Milan and Rome on politically motivated trips. He was a homely boy, with wide-set slanting eyes, a jutting jaw, and soft brown hair that fell in a neatly trimmed fringe across a pale, low forehead; yet the sensitive intelligence that shone in those eyes made him oddly attractive.
    They made their way to the pastoral neighborhood of Santo Spirito. Giuliano recalled tall trees, and a sweeping grass lawn that sloped down to the placid river. There, the slave woman set a linen cloth on the ground and brought out food for the children. It was late spring, warm with a few lazy clouds, though the day before it had rained. The river Arno was quicksilver when the sun struck it, leaden when it did not.
    Lorenzo’s sullenness that day made Giuliano sad. It seemed to him that their father was too intent on making Lorenzo an adult before his time. So, to make him laugh, Giuliano had run down to the riverbank, gleefully ignoring the slave’s outraged threats, and stomped, splashing, into the water fully clothed.
    His antics worked; Lorenzo followed, laughing, tunic, mantle, slippers, and all. By this time, Nannina, Bianca, and the slave were all shouting their disapproval. Lorenzo ignored them. He was a strong swimmer, and soon made his way quite a distance from the shore, then dove beneath the waters.
    Giuliano followed tentatively but, being younger, fell behind. Hewatched as Lorenzo took a great gulp of air and disappeared beneath the gray surface. When he did not reappear immediately, Giuliano treaded water and laughed, expecting his brother to swim beneath him and grasp his foot at any moment.
    Seconds passed. Giuliano’s laughter turned to silence, then fear—then he began to call for his brother. On the shore, the women—unable to enter the water because of their heavy skirts—began to cry out in panic.
    Giuliano was only a child. He had not yet overcome his fear of diving beneath the water, yet love for his brother drove him to suck in a deep breath and submerge himself. The silence there astonished him; he opened his eyes and peered in the direction where Lorenzo had been.
    The river was muddy from the previous day’s rains; Giuliano’s eyes stung as he searched. He could see nothing but a large, irregular dark shape some distance away, deep beneath the waters. It was not human—not Lorenzo—but it was all that was visible, and instinct told him to approach it. He surfaced, drew in more air, then compelled himself to dive down again.
    There, the length of three tall men beneath the surface, lay the craggy limbs of a fallen tree.
    Giuliano’s lungs burned, yet his sense that Lorenzo was nearby made him push against the quiet water. With a final, painful burst, he reached the sunken branches and pressed a palm against the slick surface of the trunk.
    At once, he grew remarkably dizzy, and heard a rushing in his ears; he shut his eyes and opened his mouth, gasping for air. There was none to be had, and so he drank in the foul Arno. He retched it up at once; then reflex forced him to gulp in more.
    Giuliano was drowning.
    Though a child, he understood clearly that he was dying. The realization prompted him to open his eyes, to capture a last glimpse of Earth that he might take with him to Heaven.
    At that instant, a cloud moved overhead, permitting a shaft of sunlight to pierce the river so thoroughly that it caused the silt suspendedin the water to glitter, and illumined the area directly before Giuliano’s eyes.
    Staring back at him, an arm’s length away, was the drowning Lorenzo. His tunic and mantle had been caught on an errant branch, and he had twisted himself about in a mad effort to be free.
    Both brothers should have died then. But Giuliano prayed, with a child’s guilelessness:
God, let me save my brother
.
    Impossibly, he had pulled