The Red Lily Crown (16 page)

The Boboli Gardens

28 FEBRUARY 1576

O
n the last day of Carnival, between a fine banquet in the afternoon and a magnificent masked entertainment planned for the evening, the grand duke and Bianca Cappello stepped out of the Palazzo Pitti into the magnificent gardens that stretched behind it. It was cold and damp, with a lacy veil of mist. Off in the distance, the grand duke could hear fireworks.

“Leave us,” he said to the courtiers who attended them. “Madonna Bianca and I would walk alone for a little while.”

The gentlemen and the ladies melted away, probably thinking that a warm fire and a cup of sweet spiced wine before the entertainment would be much more pleasant than a walk in the gardens in February. Bianca Cappello pulled her mantle more closely around her body. It was made of dark green velvet quilted and embroidered with gold and pearls, lined with lustrous marten fur and clasped with jeweled gold martens' heads. Marten fur increased a woman's fertility, and the grand duke knew that even after nine childless years Bianca still prayed every night to bear him a son.

It was time he had a son, one way or another. Time the whispers about his ability to sire a male child were silenced forever.

“In the summer,” he said, as they walked past a fountain and into the sunken court of the amphitheater, “we will mount spectacles here. I am pleased, Madonna, with your management of the Carnival celebrations, and in particular with your personal banquet. You did well—everyone said so.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Bianca said. It was her own voice, lower in timbre, adult, with a faint tinge of a Venetian accent. She held her head high, proud, a great lady. He was willing to allow her to enjoy her moment of triumph, because she would become his Bia again whenever he commanded it.

“I have a reason for allowing you to present yourself so openly as my mistress, and the first lady of the court.”

That intrigued her, excited her, he could tell. She said, “What reason, my lord?”

“I will tell you when we reach the center of the labyrinth.”

They walked on, and climbed a steep terrace. Amid plantings that would bloom when the weather became warmer, there was a water basin with a fountain in the center. It was dominated by the figure of Neptune standing on a great rock, surrounded by Nereids and minor sea gods crouching in niches, submissive under his power. The grand duke stopped, putting out one hand to stop Bianca as well. He looked at the statuary for a long time. One Nereid in particular appealed to him, a naked girl on her knees with one arm thrown up over her head, as if in fear or supplication.

“I do not like this fountain,” Bianca said. She sounded petulant. “Neptune himself is well enough, but the other figures are unnatural. Perhaps they should be replaced, my lord.”

“I think not.”

She paled a little. She knew him well enough to know the thought behind the spoken words:
just because I allow you some public recognition, do not get above yourself
.

After a while they turned to the west and made their way to the edge of the main cultivated area. A fine labyrinth of hornbeam and yew trees had been constructed over the past year or so, with rose canes and bittersweet twining among the trees' branches. An iron gate with the Medici device of the shield and balls prevented the casual wanderer in the gardens from entering.

The grand duke unlocked the gate and stepped into the labyrinth confidently—and well he might, as he had designed it and knew its secrets. It was much larger than the mosaic set into his laboratory floor, but it was the same design, down to the last cusp and curving arc. He beckoned for Bianca to follow him.

“Come in,” he said. “I would have you walk the labyrinth with me.”

“I am cold,” she said. “Please, my lord, let us go back.”

“Do you not want to know the secret at its heart?”

She wrapped herself even more closely in her fur-lined mantle and stepped reluctantly into the labyrinth. The grand duke thought of the girl Chiara Nerini, his
soror mystica
—that first night, she had stepped confidently into the labyrinth in the laboratory, and walked its path with grave determination. Of course, it had not been hedged with such plants as this one was. He locked the gate behind them.

“By the lion of San Marco,” Bianca said, reaching out to touch one of the rose canes. “I have never seen such thorns.”

“Do not touch it.” The grand duke paused. “These are unique plants, and they are dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“They have been watered with
sonnodolce
, the elixir of Tommaso Vasari.”

“What is that?” Bianca stepped into the center of the labyrinth's path, collecting her mantle and skirts close about her so they would not touch the plantings on either side. “Tommaso Vasari? Is he the fellow who built the Vasari Corridor?”

“No. He was an alchemist in my father's employment, who disappeared mysteriously around the time of Carnival in 1566. He left behind a formula he called
sonnodolce
, sweet sleep—a unique poison, quick, sure and undetectable; superior, even, to the cantarella supposedly used by the Borgias. I found the formula by chance, written on a page torn out of a lost book, among my father's papers.”

It was not quite the truth, but it was close enough. He himself had torn the page from the book, after overhearing his father and Messer Tommaso talking about the
sonnodolce
, its efficacy and its strange effects. And it was fortunate that he had torn the page out when he did, because a week later Tommaso Vasari and all his books and alchemical equipment had disappeared. His father had refused to be questioned, and so in retaliation Francesco had kept the torn page as his own secret.

“I have been experimenting with it for some years,” he said, “and interestingly enough, it does not kill plants. If it is used judiciously, they thrive on it. Come, turn this way.”

Bianca followed him. He could see her trembling, very slightly; the shifting glitter of her diamond earrings gave her away. She was keeping close to him, her head no longer high and proud. She was afraid, knowing that he had such a poison in his possession, and that he was not afraid to use it. By the time they reached the heart of the labyrinth, she would be his Bia, fully and completely.

“There is still work to be done,” he said calmly, continuing to walk along the paths, taking each turn without hesitation. “See the flower beds under the hornbeam trees? Last autumn I had them planted with lily bulbs, particularly treated, and I hope the flowers will be doubly poisonous—a substance distilled from the stamens of a particular red lily is part of the formula for
sonnodolce
.”

“Francesco—Holy Mother, you are mad.”

“Not at all. It is an experiment, a matter of science. Flowers and herbs have been used to convey poisons for centuries, with the poison applied to the leaves or petals as a liquid or a very fine powder. I am developing plants that carry the
sonnodolce
within their very veins, so a puncture from a thorn, even a small scratch, is instantaneously fatal.”

As he spoke, he casually took a pair of heavy leather gloves, workman's gloves, from his belt and put them on. They were thick enough to protect him if he chose to break off one of the poisoned rose canes. Bianca watched him. Her earrings trembled more noticeably.

“But whom do you wish to poison, Francesco? Whom do you wish to trap in your maze?”

“It is a labyrinth, not a maze.”

“Are they not the same?”

“A labyrinth has a single path—if you follow it confidently you will ultimately reach the end. A maze has many paths, many blind alleys.”

“Very well. Whom do you wish to trap in your labyrinth?”

“Come with me to the center, and I will tell you.”

The center of the locked, poisoned labyrinth, of course, being the safest place in Florence to speak of secret things.

They walked on. She seemed to shrink with every step. Her rich clothing and jewels looked more and more like a costume, awkward and unnatural. At last he led her into a rosette-shaped clearing. At the center of the clearing, the geometrical center of the labyrinth itself, rested an oblong stone, half-buried, the width of two hands, the length of three. There were round holes on its surface, as if it had once been hot enough to boil, and bubbles had risen to its surface.

“This is the center of the labyrinth. The heart of knowledge. Do you see that stone, my Bia?”

“Yes, Franco.”

“It fell from the sky a thousand years ago. Now it belongs to me. It is full of iron, but even so I had it carved—the arms of the Medici and the lily of Florence, my own
impresa
and my secret glyph, my device as an alchemist.”

He was proud of the stone, its uniqueness, its value, its meaning, what it concealed. He could see that Bia did not understand. She was bored and shivering.

“I think you should put off that fine mantle you are wearing,” he said to her, “and remove your sleeves, and open the front of your bodice.”

“But it is so cold.” The Bia-voice, high and sweet. “Franco, I shall be cold.”

“Good. You have been quite heated and comfortable at the Carnival banquets and entertainments, wearing fine clothes and jewels that do not belong to you, drinking in the admiration of every man in Florence. Now you shall feel the cold bite into that fine flesh of yours, and beg me to allow you to be warm again.”

Slowly she reached up and unfastened the jeweled martens'-head clasps. The mantle fell in a heap of velvet and fur. She shivered again.

“Perhaps I should help you with the rest.”

He drew his dagger and cut the laces at her shoulders. She tugged the embroidered silk sleeves down her arms and dropped them on top of the mantle. She was wearing a white silk camicia with sleeves that reached her wrists, but it was thin, thin as a whisper. Even so— He cut the camicia's sleeves away, leaving her arms bare. Her smooth, rosy skin contracted into gooseflesh as he watched.

“C-cold,” she whispered.

He went behind her and cut the laces of her bodice. The boned and stiffened fabric was so thick with gold thread and jewels that it retained its shape when it came away from her body, like some fantastic insect's shell. She let it drop. He went back in front of her and cut the drawstring of her camicia, then pulled the gathered neckline to loosen it. One breast was entirely exposed, the nipple tight with the cold. The other was half-covered by the sheer white fabric. The sun was setting behind the labyrinth and a wash of pink-gold light made her flesh glow.

He did not touch her. He did not have to. She was trembling, but it was no longer entirely a result of the cold. She was aroused, his creature in that moment, there in the heart of the labyrinth. He could tell her anything, and no one else would ever know.

“Even with the perfect poison,” he began, as calmly as if she were fully dressed and warm, “it is difficult to poison someone and avoid scandal entirely. Any sudden death creates whispers. Slow deaths are—slow. Consider, for instance, my youngest brother's wife. Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo. Dianora.”

Bia nodded. “She did not attend my banquet. I mean, Donna Bianca's banquet. She claimed she was sick.”

“She was sick. Just not sick enough.”

“Franco. Are you—is the grand duke having her poisoned?”

“And if he is?”

Bia laughed. It was a jarring and unexpected sound. She had wrapped her arms around herself for what warmth they provided. “She deserves it. Everyone knows she was up to her neck in Orazio Pucci's conspiracy. Everyone knows she has had dozens of lovers. And she has been rude to Donna Bianca, over and over. Thinking she is too good for her brother-in-law's mistress.”

The grand duke nodded. “It would be quicker and simpler,” he said, “if there were proof she had a lover now. Then my brother would be entirely justified in killing her openly, to preserve his honor.”

“She dances and whispers with half a dozen men. I do not know if she has actually taken a new lover in the present moment.”

“Donna Bianca, now that she is taking the lead in court activities, is uniquely placed to learn such things. She could cultivate Donna Dianora's friendship, or if that does not suffice, pay bribes to her serving-women.”

Bia looked at him. The cold was beginning to show on the skin of her breasts and throat and cheeks, the rosy flush becoming mottled with violet. Her eyes were wide and dark with self-surrender. He wondered what it would be like to put her out into real cold, cold with ice and snow, completely naked. Would her skin turn that deathlike violet color all over her body? What would it feel like to have her when she was half-dead with cold?

“That is why, then,” she said. “Why Donna Bianca was queen of the Carnival this year.”

The grand duke smiled and nodded. “That is one reason. She will discover the specific details of how Donna Dianora is dishonoring my brother. And for that matter, she will discover Donna Isabella's secrets as well. The Duke of Bracciano is also careful of his honor.”

“Your own sister?” Bia sounded genuinely shocked.

“She is importuning me for money, telling everyone our father meant for her to have a substantial inheritance. She has nothing in writing and I am tired of her demands.”

The sun had dropped below the top of the labyrinth's trees, and the light had faded. Cold mist swirled. In a husky voice, between chattering teeth, Bia said, “And the grand duke's wife? Is there some reason, perhaps, that he could kill her as well, or put her aside?”

The grand duke pricked her exposed breast with the tip of his dagger. She sucked in her breath and stepped back. He pricked her again. She stepped back again, and then realized that another step would press her exposed back and shoulders against the poisoned thorns of the rose canes. She whimpered softly and stretched out her arms, embracing the cold and the knife, the danger and his pleasure. With lingering care he cut three lines over the curve of her breast with his dagger's point; they were not deep but bright blood beaded up. She groaned but did not move.