The Red Lily Crown (22 page)

“Thank you, Ferdinando,” the grand duchess said. “You always know the right things to say.”

“For you, my dear Giovanna, it is easy to know what to say.” His expression changed when he looked at her. No sly sensuality. Only warmth, affection and admiration.

It's a sad thing, Chiara thought suddenly, that he couldn't have been the oldest son and married her himself. They could have been happy together, and the grand duke would have been happier as the second son, left alone with his alchemy and his gaudy mistress. It made her uneasy to think that the grand duke's brother, a prince of the church, felt such particular affection for his brother's wife. But if one took the time to know the grand duchess, it was easy to feel affection for her. Easy for anyone except the grand duke and his mistress.

There was a white dove embroidered on the cardinal's sleeve. The holy spirit, of course. But still—it was so much like the white dove the grand duchess was embroidering on her altar-cloth.
I chose a pair of turtledoves as my device. . . .

“Thank you, my lord cardinal,” Chiara said. She got to her feet, looking away from the doves. Her headache pulsed gently behind her eyes. “Thank you, Serenissima, for taking such kind care for my soul.”

The Palazzo Pitti

A FEW DAYS LATER

T
wo spools of the scarlet silk, the grand duchess had said, and one of the sky blue, from the store-closet at the end of the corridor. One skein of gold thread, too, from the locked casket on the uppermost shelf. It was real gold, the thread was, gleaming metal wire pounded fine as the finest silk. Chiara tucked the key back in her pouch and picked up her lamp.

“Come, Vivi,” she called softly. She turned to leave the closet.

Magister Ruanno dell' Inghilterra stood in the doorway, with the slanting afternoon light at his back. She knew him—well, how did she know him? She just knew him. His height, perhaps, and the workman's breadth of his shoulders.

“Magister Ruanno,” she said. She hadn't seen him—except for her dreams, which she tried not to think about—since that night in the laboratory, when he had agreed to help Nonna and the girls escape to Pistoia, in exchange for her secret messages about Donna Isabella and Donna Dianora, may they rest in peace. How long ago had it been? Five months, six months? It felt like a lifetime.

“You frightened me,” she said. “What are you doing—”

He stepped inside the closet and closed the door behind him. The tiny flame of her lamp wavered in the movement of the air and went out.

Chiara was afraid and not afraid, at the same time. In the darkness she could hear him breathing, and hear herself breathing. She took a step backward. There was no room to take more than the one step. He loomed over her. Sensation stabbed deep in her belly, in a way she'd never felt before.

“I heard you'd been r-released,” she stammered. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

“I have. Light your lamp again, if you please. I wish to speak with you privately, but not in the dark.”

Chiara put the threads back on the shelf, took out her tinderbox, and struck a light. She was used to doing it in the dark, by touch alone. How many times had she been the first to rise and light the lamps, while her mother and Nonna tended to the little ones? She was awkward about it, with her damaged fingers, but at least she got the lamp lighted again.

Magister Ruanno's figure emerged from the blackness, dressed in plain dark breeches and doublet, clean-shaven, his hair neatly cut. He looked gaunt and—at first she thought he looked sad, but that wasn't it, not quite. He looked grieved to the bone, yes, but it was an angry grief. A frightening grief. She wondered what he'd promised to the grand duke to regain his freedom. Whatever it was, he still wore the piece of red hematite around his neck, set in its copper and iron chain.

Vivi was at his feet, standing on her hind legs, stretching her front paws to the top of his boots. He picked her up and petted her.

“What do you want?” Chiara's knees felt shaky. She was annoyed with Vivi for going to him so easily, annoyed with him for responding, and that made her want to strike out. “We made our bargain and I sent you the messages. I did my part. You can't blame me that they are dead.”

“I do not blame you. The grand duke told me that you were injured at Cerreto Guidi.”

Involuntarily she put her left hand behind her back. The crooked fingers were ugly and she didn't like people looking at them.

“Show me.”

Reluctantly she held her hand forward.

“How did this happen?”

“My fingers were crushed in a door.” She didn't try to explain any further.

He put one of his hands under hers, very gently, and lifted the poor fingers to his lips. It wasn't a passionate kiss at all. It was an acknowledgement that she had cared for Donna Isabella too, in her way, and that she had tried to protect her. That their terrible failures made a bond between them. Her fear melted away and she would have started to cry again, if she'd had any tears left.

“Can you tell me what really happened? The grand duke claims it was an accident, and the gossip around the city tells a hundred different stories.”

“It wasn't an accident.”

He waited, still holding her hand. Vivi, snuggled in the crook of his other arm, made a happy sound in her throat, almost like the purr of a cat.

“She went into a chamber where her husband had called her. They shouted at each other, about Donna Dianora being murdered, about the grand duke conspiring with Don Pietro, telling him it was his right to kill her. About the grand duke—conspiring in it all. Then her husband struck her. There was another man in the chamber, one her husband called Massimo. I could hear them struggling, but I couldn't see. I tried to see, I tried.”

He stroked her hand with his thumb. “I know.”

“Her husband threw the door open. I had my hand between the door and the wall. That—that's when—I didn't really feel it, not right away. He told us to fetch vinegar, that Donna Isabella had fainted.”

“Had she?”

“No. She was dead when I went in. Her throat was marked, so clearly anyone could see it. One of them strangled her with a cord, a red silk cord. Or maybe they did it together.”

“Some of the gossipers claim her body was abused after her death.”

Walls covered with frescos, figures of people appearing to twist and whisper . . . a man crucified upside down . . . a woman in grave clothes sitting bolt upright, her arms crossed over her breast. The sound of the coffin nails being drawn out sounded like devils shrieking. . . .

“I don't remember. I had fever, I don't remember.”

“Shhh. Chiara. That is enough, you do not have to remember.”

By the ass bones of San Martino, she stinks.

Lift up her skirts, Emiliano. I've never seen a princess's private parts before.

She gulped and jerked her hand away from him, turning around to cover her mouth. All she could think was, don't let me vomit, not here, not in the grand duchess's special store-closet.

“Chiara.”

She heard the click of Vivi's claws on the floor. He had put her down. Then she felt him put his arms around her, very gently.

“Shhh,” he said again. “I needed to know, but even so I am sorry I asked you to remember.”

His voice was deep and soft. The calm warmth of his arms steadied her and expected nothing in return. His body behind hers was hard and strong enough to lean on, and for a moment she closed her eyes and leaned. It was what she wanted, in her shattered heart of hearts, his strength to lean on. Forget, she thought. Forget. Slip back into that numb, watery haze where none of it matters.

He is going to kill you
.
It was one of the demons' voices, sudden and startling in the quiet darkness.
He says he doesn't blame you for Donna Isabella's death, but he does
.

You have escaped death twice
, Babbo whispered.
You should have died, you should be dead. There will be a third time and you will not escape
.

You dared to touch me
, Isabella put in.
You closed my eyes. And then you looked upon me when I was dead and rotting. How could you? How could you?

He is going to kill you. You can tell the grand duke he helped Nonna escape, Nonna who was involved with Pierino Ridolfi. Why else did he come here secretly, to this tiny dark closet, but to kill you, kill you, kill you. . . .

The fear rushed back. She pushed his arms away and turned to face him again. Her heart felt as if it would burst out of her chest.

“The grand duchess is waiting for her silks,” she said. She hardly had enough breath to speak coherently. “She will send someone to look for me.”

Maybe it was just the flickering light from her small lamp, but the terrible sadness in his eyes seemed to darken and settle into every line and plane of his face.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not, not for a long time.”

“Let me pass by.”

He didn't move. “We are not finished, you and I.”

Vivi whined and pressed against her legs.
Pet me, pick me up, love me
.

“What,” Chiara managed to say. “What—do you want—of me?”

He put one hand on her neck, just where it sloped into her shoulder. He wasn't wearing gloves. Skin to skin—it was the first time he'd touched her like that, his bare skin against hers. His fingers lay lightly against the back of her neck. She could feel each individual fingertip. After all her dreams she should have felt pleasure, but she didn't. All she felt was terror rushing through her, from her neck to her toes.

He is going to kill you
.

“You want it too, I think. Even if you are hiding it from yourself.”

She closed her eyes. The voices crackled and scratched inside her head. She whispered, “What? What do I want?”

Very softly he said, “Vengeance.”

She opened her eyes. The voices stopped, mid-whisper. For a moment there was absolute silence.

He moved his hand, slid it down over her shoulder. Then he took it away. Her knees gave way and if she hadn't been pressed back against the shelves she would have fallen. Vivi whined and pawed at her skirt.

“We can have vengeance,” he said. “Both of us.”

“But you're free,” she managed to say. Her chest hurt, as if she had been running and running. “The grand duke let you go free.”

“I made a vow to him,” he said. “I swore I would pursue no vengeance, that I would become his English alchemist again, just as I was.” He smiled. The wolf smile. “Unlike you, I have no intention of keeping my vow.”

“Why are you telling me? I don't want to know. I don't want—”

“Hush,” he said. “I am telling you because I do not want you to think I have submitted to the grand duke despite what he has done. That I condone—her death, or Dianora's, or any of the others.”

“What does it matter what I think of you?”

He said nothing.

Her heartbeat and breathing began to feel steadier. After a moment she said, “So the grand duke wants to start again? With the
magnum opus
?”

“Yes. It is the only reason I am alive. The only reason he sent his best physicians to treat your fever and save your hand. We are bound to him, both of us, the earth and the moon to his sun. He believes it, that we must work together for the
magnum opus
to be successful.”

“But you don't believe it.”

“No. There is no such thing as the
Lapis Philosophorum
, at least not in the way he believes it to exist. But there are other things we can learn with alchemy, things that make ore from the mines richer, things that could even heal sicknesses. The grand duke's wealth and power provide us with the elements and equipment we need, and give us protection against those who would call alchemy witchcraft.”

“Magister Ruanno,” she said. She realized with a start that he had been calling her Chiara, just Chiara, not Mona Chiara or Signorina Chiara or Soror Chiara. What would it feel like to call him by his name alone? He had so many names, Ruanno, Roannes, Rohannes. Were any of them his true name?

“Ruanno,” she said, testing.

“Ruan,” he said. “My true name is Ruan.”

“Ruan.” It sounded right without the softening of the extra Latin and Italian syllables. “He killed them, I know. Not with his own hands, but he arranged it and he's protected both his brother and the Duke of Bracciano. Can you work with him, through the fourteen stages, and never once pollute the
magnum opus
with hate?”

“Hate will not pollute it. It will make it stronger.”

“I don't believe that.”

“It is true. I have hated all my life, and I am strong.”

“Hated what? Who?”

He looked at her for a moment, as if he were balancing two sides of a scale inside his head. At last he said, “An Englishman in Cornwall. He had my father killed, and hounded my mother to death. He took my home, my estate, my birthright, before I was ever born. He put me to work in the mines when I was five years old. I hate him and one day I will kill him.”

He is going to kill—

Not her. Someone else.

Her lantern began to sputter. She picked Vivi up—the puppy wiggled and tried to escape—and tried to push past him. He didn't push her back. He did reach out, hook one finger under the silver chain and pull the moonstone out of the bodice of her gown. It glowed, milky white with glimmers of green and blue and pink, reflecting the lamplight. He clasped the stone and touched it to the chunk of hematite around his own neck.

“We are bound together,” he said again. “In life and in death. In vengeance and in—”

“No. Don't say it.”

He held her moonstone for a few moments more, then let it go. “I will not say it now,” he said. “But when the grand duke is dead, it will be just the two of us.”

Her lantern went out. The closet fell into inky blackness. Even the moonstone was extinguished. Vivi dug her puppy claws into her neck, her plump little body trembling. Chiara's throat ached with wanting to say
yes, yes, the two of us
, but she couldn't make the words come out. The grand duke was too powerful. He would never be dead, no matter what they did, and that meant—

The door opened. Light from the corridor burst into the closet.

“Do not be afraid,” Ruan said. “We will take our vengeance together, Chiara, and I will protect you from harm, as long as I live.”

He left the closet without looking back. Chiara stared after him, the pain behind her eyes and at the side of her head suddenly so intense she could feel it even in the twists and knots of her braided hair.