The Red Lily Crown (15 page)

The Palazzo Bargello, used as a prison

10 AUGUST 1575

T
he stone chamber in the Palazzo Bargello, under the Volognana Tower, was lighted by torches in iron brackets. Four men were there, among the chains and hooks and stained wooden implements: a priest with a pen and paper; an executioner in his leather tunic and apron; the prisoner Orazio Pucci, his wrists chained behind him, naked but for a filthy and ragged shirt; and Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici, wearing clothes he might have worn for a court entertainment, a doublet, breeches and hose in rich raisin-colored velvet, sewn with rubies, pearls and jet. A brooch with a Florentine lily in rubies and diamonds was pinned to his hat. His eyes were glittering and his mouth was hard as forged iron.

“You know the question of the four elements, I am sure,” the grand duke said. His voice was cool and pleasant. “For air, the strappado—you will be winched high by your wrists, then dropped and swung in the air, until your shoulders crack and come apart from your own weight. For water, the water itself—forced down your throat as you are stretched upon the wheel, until your traitorous belly bursts inside you.”

“Torture me with a hundred elements,” Pucci said. He was ghastly white in the torchlight. “I will tell you nothing.”

“The fire,” the grand duke went on, as if his prisoner had not spoken at all. “Irons heated in braziers until they are white-hot, and then applied”—he paused and smiled—“applied judiciously, to such parts of your body as you value most. And in the end, the earth. Great stones to press the breath out of you, and break your bones, one at a time.”

“I will tell you nothing,” Pucci said again.

The grand duke gestured to the executioner. The man pushed Pucci roughly to one side of the room where a hook hung on a chain from a system of pulleys and winches reaching high up into the ancient vaulted ceiling. He fastened the hook to the fetters that held Pucci's hands behind his back.

“I give you one final opportunity to speak,” the grand duke said. “Tell me everything, who was involved in your plot, what you intended to do, how you intended to do it. I will give you a priest for absolution and a clean death, and your body returned to your family in such a state that they can mourn over it and entomb it properly.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The grand duke's eyes narrowed. He gestured.

The executioner began to turn the crank of the winch. The chain tightened, and slowly lifted Pucci's arms behind him. He bent forward involuntarily, but that gave him only a moment's respite. The muscles of his arms and shoulders bulged and strained under the rags of his shirt as his whole weight was lifted, and his feet swung free.

“Higher,” the grand duke said. “Slowly.”

As the winch wound up the chain, Pucci's body began to swing a little. He made a guttural sound, more a grunt of effort than a cry of pain, as his unnaturally twisted shoulders strained against the weight of his body. The grand duke leaned forward, watching closely. Pucci's feet were now a man's height from the floor. There were thick rider's muscles in his thighs and calves.

“Higher. As high as it will go.”

The winch creaked. Pucci labored for breath as the strain on his shoulders compressed his chest.

“Now,” the grand duke said, when the chain had been wound as far as it would go. “I can leave you to hang there and let your shoulders dislocate themselves slowly as you wear out your strength. I can have you dropped to within a foot of the floor, so your shoulders are torn out of their sockets all at once. Or I can let you down gently. Which would you prefer?”

There was an eerie friendly quality to his voice. He might have been offering a choice of wines to a friend.
Brunello? Trebbiano? Moscato?

“Drop me,” Pucci managed to wrench out. “Medici bastard.”

The grand duke waited a moment, as if considering. Then he lifted his finger to the executioner.

Pucci dropped. The chain went taut, with a ringing sound. The wet tearing of ruptured muscles and tendons, the popping sound of joints coming apart—then the only sound was Pucci screaming. His body swung. His shoulders did not look like the shoulders of a man.

“Again,” the grand duke said. “Five drops, for the element of air. Then we will begin the water.”

By the fourth drop, Pucci was shrieking incoherently, begging for mercy. The grand duke directed the fifth drop anyway. He was visualizing Bia with her wrists bound behind her, her arms dragged up, her body bent over, her hair tied back, wholly naked with her rich breasts swinging free as she sobbed and pleaded. He would never actually lift her, of course, let alone drop her. But a modified version of the strappado, oh, yes. It would be beautiful. And he would tell her carefully, all the details of the real strappado. Her fear would be a fine spice to her pain, and together they would increase his pleasure.

Fear and pain and pleasure. They could not be separated, not really. His mother had taught him that, his father, his tutors. Or had he always known it, been born knowing it?

“He has fainted, Serenissimo,” the executioner said. “Another drop might tear his arms from his body—the bones are entirely pulled apart.”

“Lower him. Wake him. We shall see if he chooses to confess, because if he does not, we will proceed to the water.”

Pucci was lowered to the stones of the floor and unchained. His arms were loose and mottled as stuffed sausages hung in a butcher's shop. His shoulders were swollen to twice their normal size, purpled as the bruising came out. The executioner dumped a bucket of water over him and he whimpered.

“No more.” He sounded like a child. “No more, please, please.”

The grand duke gestured to the priest, who came forward with his book of paper, his pen and ink.

“Name your conspirators,” the grand duke said. “Confess every plan and every person who aided you.”

“Capponi,” Pucci gasped. Every trace of his defiance was gone. His manhood, his adulthood, were gone. There were tears streaking down from the corners of his eyes. “Alamanni. Cammillo Martelli. Pierino Ridolfi.”

“What was your plan?”

“Assassination. The grand duke, the cardinal. Don Pietro. The boy, Cosimino, Don Pietro's seed. Wipe out all the males of the Medici, root and branch, and make Florence a republic again.”

He did not seem to be aware, anymore, that it was the grand duke he was confessing to. The priest scratched at his paper, writing it all down.

The grand duke said, “Don Cosimino is two years old.”

“He is a Medici.”

“And his mother Donna Dianora supported you. You need not tell me that, because I already know.”

Pucci's eyes opened. He seemed to come back to himself, to understand, for a moment at least, what he had done.

“No,” he said. “Not Donna Dianora. She did not know.”

The grand duke gestured with one finger. The executioner picked up a wooden mallet with a three-foot handle, swung it in a great arc, and struck Pucci's ruined left shoulder with casual accuracy. Pucci convulsed, making a high whistling sound of agony.

After a while the grand duke said again, “Donna Dianora supported you.”

“Yes. Money. Meeting-places. The assassinations, she knew.”

The priest wrote it down.

“And Donna Isabella? My charming sister, my father's favorite, who imagines herself to be the first lady of Florence. Was she part of your conspiracy as well?”

“I do not know. She had lovers, Troilo Orsini, and she was great friends with Donna Dianora, but I do not know more than that.”

He fainted again.

“That is quite enough.” The grand duke smiled. His sister and his brother's wife could not exactly be dragged into the Bargello, put to the question, and executed, satisfying as that would be. But there were ways. Oh yes, there were ways. “Executioner, take him away. Call the physician. I do not want him executed immediately—I may have more questions later.”

“Yes, Serenissimo.”

“It is a pity,” the grand duke said, “that he broke so quickly. I expected him to hold his silence through the water at least, and even the fire.”

The executioner shrugged. “Some men can stand pain, Serenissimo, and some can't. I've seen all kinds.”

“You will be seeing more, in the next few weeks.” The grand duke gave the executioner a small bag of silver
grossi
. “Yes, it is a great pity he was not stronger. I was looking forward to all four elements of the question.”

The Palazzo Medici

22 FEBRUARY 1576

C
hiara held the basin as Dianora gasped and choked. She'd been vomiting all day, ever since dinner. In fact, she'd been sick more often than not, ever since Orazio Pucci had been executed last summer. The grand duke was obsessed, whisperers said, with hunting down everyone connected to Pucci's conspiracy. Even the Christmas and Epiphany festivals had been flat and cheerless, full of fear. Pierino Ridolfi had escaped Florence and no one knew where he was, but others were in prison, awaiting the headsman's ax. Lesser conspirators were still being arrested.

Nonna?

So far, there was no indication she was suspected. But the grand duke was cunning and relentless and liked to strike when it was least expected. Chiara herself was very careful about what she ate and drank, and avoided the delicacies that were being served at Donna Isabella's table now that it was Carnival-tide.

“Oh, Chiara.” Dianora wiped her mouth with a clean napkin. Her eyes were swollen with tears and her fine complexion was mottled with red. “I am so ill, I think I am going to die.”

“Shall I call the physician?”

“
Dio mio
, no. I dare not take any medicament. Who knows what may be in it?”

“You're invited to Donna Bianca's entertainment next week. Everyone's going. If you're not there, it'll cause more talk.”

“I do not care. I will not creep and crawl to Francesco's mistress. How dare she act as if she is the queen of the Carnival?”

“You would be better off,” said Donna Isabella, who was reclining on a cushioned bench by the window, “if you made an effort to cultivate the Venetian. I do. It is the only way to gain Francesco's favor.”

“I do not want his favor.”

“You might be sick less often if you appeased him.”

Donna Isabella had recently been in a great decline as well. Her lover, Don Troilo Orsini, had fled Florence in the fall, two steps ahead of an arrest warrant. There were whispers—but of course, there were always whispers—that both ladies were being poisoned at the command of the grand duke. There'd certainly been no work in the laboratory, or at least no work on the quest for the
Lapis Philosophorum
. Chiara had been allowed afternoons in the laboratory three times a week, grudgingly, mostly because Donna Isabella wanted her to make love potions. Donna Isabella had never quite grasped the difference between alchemy and witchcraft.

“The grand duchess never goes anywhere Bianca Cappello goes,” Dianora said pettishly, “so I do not see why I should have to.”

The laboratory was so different from Donna Isabella's apartments, cool, full of space and shadows, smelling of clean pungent minerals instead of heated flesh and perfumes and half-eaten pastries. Chiara loved it there, and loved the simple tasks of distillation, extraction, sublimation and calcination that Magister Ruanno set for her—not because he needed the products she created, but because he wanted her to learn. He was a good teacher, clear and concise, and he told her plainly that one day she might be as skilled as he was. No one had ever told her that before. She had wished Babbo could be there to hear it.

Once, in fact, she had wished for it so hard that Babbo's voice had screamed in her ears and her vision had turned black. She'd come to herself on the floor among shatters of broken retorts, feeling dizzy and light. Magister Ruanno hadn't made her feel as if she was stupid for having a falling-spell. He gave her a tiny cup of some clear liquid—it tasted like Nonna's cordials but without the sweetness or herbs, just aqua vitae all by itself, sharp and burning—and helped her to her feet. His touch was gentle and straightforward. She wondered what his touch would be like if she wasn't a sworn virgin, and she thought of her dreams.

Dreams or no dreams, she liked being alone with Magister Ruanno, wearing her simple habit with the moonstone exposed on her breast. He talked to her about alchemy and metallurgy, not only the processes themselves but the history. He showed her maps of the stars, and two or three times he had taken her outside in the dark to point out the North Star and the planets and the way the stars made patterns, with names. She began to realize that he didn't really believe a lot of the things the grand duke believed, the magical things. While she performed her beginner's exercises, he worked by himself on something. He wouldn't say what it was.

“Chiara, quick, the basin—”

Chiara jumped. Dianora began vomiting again.

“The grand duchess is the emperor's sister,” Isabella said, when Dianora had exhausted herself and lay back in her chair. “No one expects her to acknowledge her husband's mistress, not even Francesco, and in any case she does not care for entertainments. You are a different matter entirely. You must be seen, and make some attempt to regain your reputation.”

“
Un fico secco
for my reputation.” Dianora made a rude gesture.

Chiara put the basin outside the door for the
domestica
to collect, and went to the cabinet for a clean basin and fresh towels. “I have an idea,” she said. “Carnival's all very well, but it's followed by Lent. What if on Ash Wednesday we all go out into the city after Mass, with the ashes on our foreheads, and collect alms for the poor? Everyone would see, and talk, and admire the virtue of it. And the alms are always needed.”

Isabella sat up straighter, her eyes brightening. “And think of what a slap in the face it would be to Bianca Cappello and her ostentatious entertainments. Everyone would talk about the goodness and charity of the grand duke's sister and sister-in-law, and the greedy vulgarity of his mistress.”

Dianora laughed, for the first time in days. “That is a wonderful idea,” she said. “We could wear our plainest dresses. No, wait—we could have dresses made, like nuns' habits. Everyone has fantastical costumes for Carnival, masks and jewels. We can put it about that we ourselves have given money to charity instead of making Carnival costumes.”

“We could take the dogs.” Isabella reached down and stroked Rina's sleek russet head. There was a second little hound beside her, another gift from the grand duchess, this time to Dianora. The new dog had been given a long complicated name, supposedly some forest nymph connected to the goddess Diana. Dianora called her Leia for short. “Have special leashes made.”

They began to talk together, making plans, each one more elaborate than the one before. Chiara waited for them to acknowledge her, include her, but they had forgotten her.

It was no longer quite so exciting to be part of the court. Isabella and Dianora, the grand duke himself, even the grand duchess, for all her kindness and piety—like statues of the saints in the church, they all had unattractive places where the bright colors and gold leaf had rubbed off. Isabella was beautiful, yes, or at least she had been in her shining youth. She was kind enough, in her careless way, and she collected artists and musicians as if they were
marionetti
. But she was troubled and sensual and only too willing to involve herself in secret matters that were better left alone.

I'd be her friend, Chiara thought, if she'd let me. But she's my friend only when the humor strikes her. When there's no one else. No one— Well, say it. No one of her own rank.

Magister Ruanno cares enough about her to want to take care of her and protect her. He isn't her lover, I know that now. He was, once, when he was younger, when he first arrived in Florence in the grand duchess's household. What was he doing in Austria? He doesn't say much about his past. But he still cares about Donna Isabella. Does he know that both Donna Dianora and Donna Isabella have been sick, off and on, since Christmas? Does he suspect—

“Chiara!”

Again Chiara jumped. Dianora was staring at her, her eyebrows lifted. Isabella was smiling, pleasantly enough but without real warmth. In her secret thoughts Chiara called it her center-of-the-cosmos look. She thought everything and everyone, the earth and sun and the stars themselves, rose and set around her. Well, it wasn't her fault. She'd been brought up to think that. They all had, the Medici, the aristocrats.

“Chiara,” Dianora said again. Her voice was remote, a little fretful, the voice she used when she talked to the servant girls. “I think we would like something to eat. Run down to the kitchen, if you please, and fetch some bread and fruit and cheese, and some of that sweet red wine.”

“Should you be drinking wine from the kitchen?” Chiara said. “I'll go and buy a fresh bottle, if you—”

“Just do as you are told,” Dianora said. She picked Leia up and hugged her. “We do not want to wait.”

Chiara went hot and cold all at once—her face hot as fire with humiliation, her hands cold as ice with fury. She waited for Isabella to say something, to exclaim that Dianora should not speak so disparagingly to Chiara, the grand duke's
soror mystica
, their friend. But Isabella was alone in the center of the cosmos, and said nothing.

After a moment Chiara stood up, curtsied without a word, and went out of the room.

Fool
, Babbo whispered.
Fool, to ever think the Medici are your friends.

Her head pounded.

They're the fools, she thought, to eat food from their own kitchen. It's the grand duke himself who's having something put in the food, I know it is. Medici plotting against Medici. No one else would dare, and there's no other explanation for these bouts of sickness, over and over.

Does he simply mean to frighten them?

Or will I find them dead one day soon, lying in their beds with their silken cushions and velvet coverlets, and sweet red wine spilled all around them?