Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (21 page)

I liked the ambassador at once. A stocky man with white streaks in his ruddy brown hair and beard, Albany lacked the elegance of the Frenchman who had once rescued me from the convent of Santa Lucia, but I felt that perhaps at last I had an ally. I plied him with questions.

“When am I to be married?” I asked.

“In October, Mademoiselle Catherine,” he said, calling me by my French name.

“Why was my betrothal kept secret?”

“Allow me to explain a few things,
mademoiselle.
Pope Clement wanted to keep his agreement with King François a secret from Emperor Charles. Those two rulers have been enemies for many years. The Holy Father feared that if Charles learned of the agreement too soon, he would put a stop to the marriage contract. Now it's too late; there's nothing Charles can do about it. You're a most desirable bride—one of the richest women in Europe. The pope will not let you go cheaply.”

But I had other things on my mind.
What about Henri?—
that's what mattered.
Will I like him? Will he care for me?

But I couldn't bring myself to ask this honest-seeming ambassador. I would have to discover that for myself.

A
NEW FACE
appeared among the familiar ones at Palazzo Medici. It belonged to a distant Medici cousin called Lorenzino. Eighteen years old, nearly as handsome as Ippolito, and nearly as cruel and arrogant as Alessandro, Lorenzino quickly became Alessandro's constant companion in mischief. The pair soon brought down the wrath of Pope Clement for their malicious pranks, which included knocking the heads off antique statuary. Anyone could see that Lorenzino meant trouble, but the trouble was tolerated.

Pope Clement now announced that Alessandro would return to Florence to assume his new role as duke and lord over the city. Forenzino, his loutish companion, would stand ready to help him. And I would accompany them both to the seat of Medici family power, to serve as Alessandro's official hostess and to prepare for my wedding.

When Lucrezia and Maria returned to Rome from Francesca's wedding, they were as surprised as anyone to learn of the marriage plans Pope Clement had made for me. Once again I would be separated from people I'd come to care for, especially Maria. Now they helped me get ready to leave Rome.

Lucrezia offered practical advice. “You're going to be expected to entertain a lot of people at a lot of dinners. Hire the best cooks you can find and pay them well, keep an eye on the budget, fire anyone you suspect of cheating you, and smile at your guests no matter how terrible you feel. Act as though you know exactly what you're doing. I'm sure you'll be a brilliant hostess.” I hoped she was right.

At the end of January, His Holiness arranged a farewell dinner for me. Maria laughed as she arranged my hair, recalling the stubble I'd arrived with, but our laughter turned to weeping before she'd finished. We left Palazzo Medici with Lucrezia to ride together to the pope's residence for the last time.

Pope Clement's tears flowed as freely as they had two years earlier when I'd first arrived in Rome. “I've made the greatest match in the world for you, dear niece,” he whispered as I knelt and kissed his ring.

“
Mille grazie,
Holy Father,” I replied softly. “I am most grateful.”

On a cold February day I embraced Lucrezia and Maria and rode out of the Eternal City with Alessandro's huge retinue headed north, thinking of all that I was leaving behind and all that lay ahead.

12

W
HEN
B
ETTA AND
I arrived in Florence with Alessandro's entourage, we found the Palazzo Medici in a sorry state of disrepair, with the furnishings stolen or vandalized during the siege. Alessandro angrily dismissed the trusted servant who had been left in charge of the palazzo and ordered the flogging of the slaves under his direction.

Dismayed, I laid a hand on his arm and tried to restrain him. “Surely it's not their fault,” I ventured. “The mobs—”

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Alessandro interrupted rudely, shaking me off.

Soon he'd installed a new staff, including a Turkish slave girl to attend to my personal needs. Her name was Akasma. She had been brought from Constantinople with her mother, who had died on the voyage, and put in a group of slaves bought by Alessandro. At fifteen she was only a year older than I but a dozen years wiser. She was very tall, exotically beautiful with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, graceful and intelligent. She had a fine singing voice the choir nuns at Le Murate would have welcomed, but she hadn't been trained in the virtues and had a worrisome way of meeting a man's stares.

I hadn't been around girls my own age since I'd left Le Murate more than two years earlier. In Akasma I found someone who could be a friend, in spite of our social differences, and I quickly became attached to her. I invented excuses to have her come to my apartment on some trivial errand. Sometimes she talked her way into the servants' kitchen late in the evening and prepared an orange-flavored pudding, which we then shared.

Akasma was thrilled to learn that I would soon travel to France to be married. I was determined to take her with me, an idea that appealed to her adventurous spirit.

“Tell me about France,” she begged.

“No doubt we'll live in huge castles even grander than this one, and we'll be well cared for by the king of France himself.” Beyond that, I had no more idea than she did what to expect.

“And Alessandro—will he come to the wedding, too?”

“I don't know. Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. “I don't like him.”

“Oh, Akasma,” I said. “Nobody does.”

W
ITHIN A WEEK
of my return to Florence, I arranged to visit Fe Murate. I went first to see the abbess, Suor Margherita, who assured me that all was well—the gardens had been restored to their earlier beauty, the nuns were again plump and in good health, and loyal patrons had placed orders for bridal trousseaux and for copies of the Book of Hours.

I asked about my dear friends. “Are they still here?”

“Niccolà and Giulietta are waiting for the next stage in their lives to begin, when dowry negotiations are complete,” the abbess reported. “And Tomassa weeps constantly, still fearing that her father hasn't enough dowry to find her a suitable husband and that she will have to spend the rest of her life as a nun.”

“I want to invite them to travel with me to France for my wedding,” I told her.

“Go speak to them. I'll grant them leave for the journey, if their parents are agreeable.”

The rules had not changed: Visits were still limited to a few minutes at the grille, with no chance to speak face-to-face.

“Oh, Duchessina, it's you!” I recognized Niccolà's voice. “We've missed you! Tell us everything!”

This was the first time I had stood on the outside of the grille to visit someone on the inside. It was better than nothing, I thought, but unsatisfying when there was so much more to say. “You know I have only minutes here. But I want to ask you—all three of you—to my wedding. I'm to marry Henri, Duke of Orléans, second son of the king of France. Will you join my retinue and make the journey to France?”

Such excitement! Of course they would. “If our parents allow it,” Tomassa added.

“I'll write to them,” I promised.

Suor Margherita signaled the end of the visit. “Come back soon, Duchessina!” they called after me.

B
EFORE
I
LEFT
R
OME
, the Duke of Albany had promised to send me a dancing master to teach me to dance in the French manner. Now a short, round man with a small black mustache and dainty white hands appeared at Palazzo Medici. “Monsieur Sagnier, master of the dance, at your service,
mademoiselle.
”

I remembered the nights in the convent when Argentina boldly organized secret dancing parties while the nuns slept. Under Monsieur Sagnier's instruction I learned that, with slight differences, the French dances were much the same—the slow
basse danse,
the
stately pavane.
Next he added the
gaillarde,
full of leaps and hops. Akasma was drafted to serve as my partner.

When the day's lesson ended, I plied Monsieur Sagnier with questions. Unlike Monsieur Philippe or the Duke of Albany, the dancing teacher was a willing source of gossip.

“King François loves women—especially beautiful women,” Monsieur Sagnier told me, little black mustache twitching. “His favorite is Anne d'Heilly, his mistress. Then there is Queen Eleanor, who is not beautiful and whom he loves not at all.”

I gaped at Monsieur Sagnier, considering this bit of information, which didn't match what the French tutor had told me. I sometimes felt that the dancing master embroidered his stories. How, for instance, could it possibly be true what he now claimed had happened to Henri and his older brother?

“The king of France and the king of Spain had long been arch rivals,” he explained. “François wanted to be Holy Roman Emperor, but the electors chose Charles instead. One can scarcely imagine the battles that followed, the wars, the hostility between the two kings!” Sagnier's pale fingers fluttered.

“Then Charles defeated François and took him prisoner, locking him up in a Spanish prison. The next year the two kings made their peace, but to earn his freedom François had to agree to marry Charles's widowed sister, Eleanor, the one he does not love, and to hand over his two older sons as hostages. The dauphin was eight and Henri just six years old when they were sent away to a harsh prison in Spain.”

“His own sons?” I repeated, incredulous. “King François bought his own freedom by giving the Spanish his two boys as hostages?” I wondered if I had misunderstood—that my comprehension of French was not as good as I thought.

“
Oui, exactement.
The boys remained for four years in a miserable dungeon, until their release was finally arranged.”

“How terrible!” I cried. My months at Santa Lucia had taught me what it was to be a hostage, but my future husband's childhood had been much worse than mine. Maybe we shared a common bond after all.