Mario, too, avoided the ceremony like the plague, but he later testified that Vittoria told him about it. A ring was an indispensable part of a clandestine marriage, helping to shore up its shaky foundation. Paolo Giordano, she said, put a ring on her finger, and with her Bolognese maid, Caterina, as a witness, said, “Now I marry Signora Vittoria.” And Vittoria, “receiving it, consented to marry Orsini.”
10
This would have been enough to ensure a legal marriage before 1563, but now, in 1581, the validity was dubious. In the eyes of the Church, it would have been more like a legally binding engagement to be married.
Mario stated that according to Vittoria, “Everything had happened with the knowledge of Father Paolo, and that he had assured her and the signor that because of the vow and the ring it was an indissoluble sacrament, and that they could live together without sex.”
11
Father Paolo himself testified that he had informed Vittoria that she “must not consent to sleep with him if first the marriage was not done solemnly because otherwise their souls would be in damnation.”
12
Mario agreed with Father Paolo that they were married yet, under the ambiguous circumstances, could not consummate the union.
But the duke was not pleased with the last condition. The whole point of the murder and the marriage was to finally have sex with the delectable Vittoria. Either they were married or they weren’t. Crushed between fear of papal authorities and fear of Paolo Giordano, Father Paolo and Abbot Mario had placed the couple in the legal limbo of the maybe-married, and the duke wasn’t having it.
Now Paolo Giordano wanted to conduct another ceremony more in line with the Council of Trent, a ceremony which would allow consummation but, given the interfering relatives, would not include the banns. Father Paolo recalled, “He asked that I speak of it to Monsignor Pirro Taro [vice regent of the vicariate] to see if he could do this marriage as his Illustrious Lordship desired, with a priest, two witnesses and a notary but without the publications.
“I left his Illustrious Lordship with this resolution, and the following day I went to Lord Monsignor Pirro after dinner, I believe that was on May 1, and I told him the facts without naming the persons, which is what Signor Paolo ordered me to do. After some discussion, Monsignor Pirro did not want to resolve it, saying that I should think about it very carefully as he would also.”
13
But here Father Paolo took the opportunity to hop on a horse and ride to Spoleto, a hundred miles north of Rome, where he was supposed to visit the churches and monasteries with the bishop’s assistant, Pietro Orsini, a distant relative of the duke’s. The poor priest was in a terrible position, caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place, and he must have hoped that somehow the whole thing would pass over in his absence.
He must have been horrified when he arrived in the town of Borghetto and found a servant of Paolo Giordano’s waiting for him, who “presented me with a letter of his Excellency’s all in his own hand, in which he wrote me that he marveled much that I had left without saying a word, and that he had remained in great suspense. In the same letter I replied to him that I had to leave at the request of Don Signor Pietro, and that he should have patience until my return.”
14
And patience would most likely have obtained for Paolo Giordano everything he wanted. In a major metropolitan city like Rome, rife with murders, duels, rapes, arsons, Church scandals, excommunications, malaria, famine, floods, and plagues of locusts, the tragic murder of a cardinal’s unremarkable nephew would have soon been forgotten. If instead of rushing to marry Vittoria, the duke had seen fit to travel abroad that summer, suspicions of his guilt would have faded. As a grandee of Spain, he could have taken the opportunity to visit King Philip II at his nearly completed Escorial Palace in Madrid. He could have stayed with his de Medici in-laws in Tuscany, visiting his neglected children, or journeyed to the republic of Venice, where his family had served honorably in many military campaigns. Or he could have stayed at Lake Bracciano with his bandits and gone hunting.
Meanwhile, Vittoria could have lived quietly in her parents’ house, or taken her grieving self, wrapped in copious widow’s weeds, to retirement in a convent for a year. Once she had returned to the Palazzo Accoramboni, after a year of sober behavior on both their parts, the duke could have begun to call on her and ask for her hand. Such a marriage would not have caused the firestorm of protest and suspicion created by vows made only days after Francesco’s murder. Unfortunately, patience had never been Paolo Giordano’s strong suit. He had never been able to deny himself a glass of wine, a pork chop, a new coach, or a pretty prostitute, let alone the love of his life.
It is interesting that Vittoria did not dissuade him from his haste.
How can I marry you within days of Francesco’s murder?
she could have said.
What will people think? Let us wait a few months.
But perhaps the tragically passive Vittoria was afraid that the duke might change his mind if she angered him by insisting on waiting. Worse, in the meantime the duke might clutch his chest at the banquet table and keel over stone dead into a custard pudding. Then she would never become a duchess, and Francesco’s death would have been in vain.
Fearing that the blame attached to him for Francesco’s murder would create a clear impediment to the marriage, Paolo Giordano instructed an acquaintance of his to pretend to be the assassin. The fall guy was a certain Césaré Pallantieri, a Renaissance rebel-without-a-cause banished to Florence several months earlier for brawling. Pallantieri wrote the governor of Rome that he had snuck into the city on April 16, ambushed Francesco Peretti, and shot him for having tried to poison him the year before. He was making the truth known, the letter continued, so that innocent people (and here he meant Paolo Giordano) would not be blamed for the crime.
Investigations showed, however, that Césaré Pallantieri was seen in Florence the night of April 16 and the morning of April 17. And in a city where the flimsiest piece of gossip flew high and low in a matter of hours, no one in Rome had ever heard the least rumor of the ridiculous poisoning story. The Pallantieri letter made Paolo Giordano look guiltier than ever.
The sight of the Orsini carriage parked daily in front of the Accoramboni house within days of the assassination had already started speculation.
Now that he has killed the husband,
people said,
he is going to marry the widow immediately.
Camilla fidgeted uncomfortably. In the couple of days after Francesco’s murder before Vittoria returned to her parents, the women had mourned together and consoled each other. Camilla had not believed the reports that her daughter-in-law had had a hand in the murder. Perhaps Paolo Giordano had indeed killed Francesco to marry Vittoria, but if Vittoria were innocent, she would repulse his advances with horror. Why was she receiving daily hours-long visits from the man who had most likely murdered her husband?
Camilla complained to her brother.
Vittoria must have been in on it. She’s going to marry the duke. We didn’t give her enough silk dresses. You never came through with the carriage. That’s why Francesco is dead. We couldn’t give her enough things.
Cardinal Montalto loved Vittoria as a daughter. Though he had, in his past, been extremely harsh with men, he usually had a soft spot for the fairer sex, and he was closer to his sister than anyone on earth.
Surely Vittoria hadn’t known of Paolo Giordano’s
plans to murder Francesco. Hadn’t she thrown herself on her knees that night, and begged him not to go out? And the Accoramboni family was hardly in a position to bar the duke from visiting them. Vittoria would surely reject any suitor so soon, but especially the presumed murderer, who will eventually waddle away in frustration. Perhaps nothing will come of it, after all.
Pope Gregory, too, was upset about the perpetual parking place of the duke’s carriage. He called in Cardinal Montalto and told him he was going to investigate the duke’s involvement in Francesco’s murder. And Cardinal Montalto once more made known his Christian forgiveness. An
avvisi
of April 30 reported, “Cardinal Montalto supplicated his Holiness not to investigate this murder anymore, as he had pardoned the murderer.”
15
Through his spy network, Cardinal de Medici knew more than Camilla, Montalto, and Pope Gregory put together. He learned that either the duke had already married Vittoria without publishing the banns or was planning to do so. Oddly, the duke’s murder of Francesco was not at all troubling; duels and assassinations burnished a family’s reputation, proving its men were courageous and honorable. But marrying beneath oneself was an unforgivable crime.
In addition to the nagging question of a dishonorable marriage, the cardinal and his brother were concerned for the financial interests of their nephew, Virginio, who was nine, and their niece, Leonora, ten. Paolo Giordano, sixteen years older than Vittoria and plagued by obesity and its attending ailments, would almost certainly die before her. As his widow, just how much of the estate would she inherit?
Despite the duke’s lavish lifestyle and numerous palaces, there would be little left for the children once they paid their father’s crushing debts. If a widow grabbed a chunk of the estate, the children would be forced to sell their land and castles and be left with a pittance. Poor little Leonora would be dowerless, possibly crammed into a convent for life. Virginio would be the duke of absolutely nothing. The great Orsinis, who for centuries had made Rome ring with the clash of arms, had ruled Christ’s Church as popes, and had married into the highest echelons of royalty, would come to a shameful end.
Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici had never liked his embarrassing brother-in-law. For twenty-three years the family had dutifully trudged behind Paolo Giordano with a broom and dustpan cleaning up his messes. They had loaned him money, smoothed over his brushes with the law, and put the brakes on his frequent sale of land. He was, after all, a close relative, and his dishonor would dishonor them all. They looked out for him not because they cared for him, but to prevent him from harming their own interests.
Cardinal de Medici had avoided Paolo Giordano well before he murdered the cardinal’s sister. The coldly calculating churchman saw his brother-in-law as wildly spendthrift, emotionally unstable, and physically repulsive. And now, with the out-of-control duke threatening his most embarrassing antics yet, Cardinal de Medici pulled in the big guns. He convinced the grand duke, the Spanish ambassador, and numerous other cardinals to implore Pope Gregory to annul any marriage that might have already occurred, and to forbid any future marriage. Scandal and disgrace would taint them all if something weren’t done about it immediately.
The pope agreed. Unsure what to do about the murder investigation, he was at least certain that he would not permit the suspected murderer to marry the victim’s wife. On May 5, Monsignor Mario Marzio, lieutenant of the vicariate of Rome, called Vittoria to his palazzo in the Piazza di Trevi. Accompanied by some lady friends, she swished in with huge black silk skirts swaying from side to side and a white widow’s veil on her head. We can presume she had the decency to remove her spanking new wedding ring.
Surrounded by a notary and five witnesses, the monsignor informed her that Gregory had forbidden her to contract marriage without having the written permission of the pope himself, and that without such permission any marriage would be null and void. Out of respect for Paolo Giordano’s nobility, and probably out of fear of his army, the decree mentioned neither the duke nor Francesco’s murder. The monsignor read it to her first in the official Latin version, and then in Italian so that she could understand. The notary wrote down that Vittoria was present and had heard the decree. And the five witnesses signed their names.
Vittoria, who had remarried five days earlier, managed to look shocked. She replied that the recent deaths of her husband and brother made it unlikely that she would remarry any time soon. But when she decided to do so, she was convinced that his Holiness, as a just prince, would not take away this legal right from her, nor as head of the Church would he deny her this sacrament. Stunned, she and her ladies rustled out of the chamber.
Had it all been for nothing?
When Paolo Giordano heard the news of the papal decree, he was incandescent with rage. He was also aware of the very real possibility that the de Medicis, expert in administering poison and dagger thrusts themselves, might murder Vittoria to prevent him from marrying her. One evening a few days after the decree was issued, his coach pulled into the Accoramboni courtyard, and a while later, departed. Inside were Vittoria, her mother, and her maid Caterina, secretly dashing out of Rome to the duke’s villa of Magnanapoli, where they would be safe from de Medici murder.
According to Mario’s testimony, the duke “saw this business disturbed, and he feared worse to come if he stayed far away from my sister. Being informed that because of the vow and the ring my sister was already his wife, for worthy reasons he resolved to take her to his villa, which he did. There he wrote a document in his own hand declaring that his Excellency led my sister to his house as his wife because she was not safe in our house, and promising to hold her intact [no sex] until he had permission from the pope.”
16
It is unlikely, however, that the duke kept Vittoria intact.
Vittoria’s father stayed in Rome and spread the word that she was so sick with grief from her recent tragedies that she was near the point of death, and couldn’t see a single visitor. Those who came by to comfort the dying woman had no idea she was feasting with the duke of Bracciano at his country estate.
At Magnanapoli, Paolo Giordano bestowed items of great value on Vittoria. And now, finally, she possessed the luxury goods she had always dreamed of. According to an inventory, she received silverware: two silver basins worked with reliefs; twenty silver place settings; two silver candlesticks; two silver trays; a silver jug attached to a basin with a chain, used for hand washing; and a mirror set in a silver etching.