The Red Lily Crown (23 page)

The Villa di Pratolino

24 NOVEMBER 1576

T
he peasant woman crouched on the birthing stool, groaning in the moment of rest between her pains. Her camicia was gathered up around her waist, and her splayed thighs quivered as she labored. She had her hands thrust through two loops of twisted cloth that had been knotted to the back of the stool; her face was covered with a black hood and veil. Bianca Cappello stood behind her, wrapped in the rich mantle of dark green velvet and marten fur. An ancient midwife knelt in front of the stool, massaging the laboring woman's belly and exposed parts with lavender oil.

“Soon now,” Francesco said. He moved a branch of candles closer so he could see the labor in all its detail. There was only a little blood so far, where the woman's inner membranes had torn. The top of the infant's head was visible, bulging from the joining-place of her thighs, dark red with a tracery of fine hair. He could smell her sweat, her fear, her helplessness.

“My Bia, come closer. Yes, lean forward. I wish to see your face instead of hers—I wish to imagine that it is you suffering here, bringing forth my son.”

Bianca leaned over the woman's shoulder. She was pale as the wax of the candles. The jeweled gold martens' heads that clasped her mantle caught the moving candlelight, appearing to flinch and turn their faces away as she trembled; under the mantle her body appeared grossly thickened, as if she herself were to bear her child any day. Francesco had watched her wrap herself in silk-and-feather layers of padding, increasing it gradually. She had put on real flesh as well, a considerable amount of it. Everyone believed she was with child. It was a great satisfaction, to know that everyone believed it. They whispered about what a strong man he was.

The only thing left for him to desire was the whisper that he was the father of a strong son. His wife's six girls were not good enough. Sometimes he heard people laughing, or thought he did—
six girls and no son, six girls, six girls
.

To be a man, he needed a son.

“I know what childbirth is like,” Bianca said. “I had my daughter, after all.”

Another girl. Not even his, but still a reproach to him.

“Twelve years ago,” he said. “When you yourself were little more than a child, and you were so mishandled in that birth that you have been barren ever since. Put your arms around her, Bia. Become one with her. This is to be our child, your child, if it is a son. I wish to see you experience the pains.”

“I thought you were going to give her the anodyne. Is that not why you had your pet alchemists create it, to comfort birth pangs? Do you not wish to experiment with it, and see if it succeeds?”

He laughed. “God himself says that women are to bring forth their children with suffering, and anything that lessens their pain is the work of the devil. That is why I had the anodyne created—it has stirred so much talk about you being with child, and my fears for you, that no one thinks to question your sudden fertility after twelve years of barrenness.”

“I would like to see if it works, though.”

“Your birth pangs will be pretense, my Bia. You will not need the anodyne—although I will give it to you, for all to see, and you will act as if it eases you.”

He could see by her expression that she was afraid. Was the anodyne real? Or was he intending to poison her, once he had a son everyone believed was his? It was pleasurable to let her feel uncertainty and fear. He would never let her go, but she did not have to know that.

“I do not want both of them in my chamber,” she said. “I do not like your Magister Ruanno. The girl, the virgin—let her bring the anodyne. Let her offer it to me on her knees.”

“I will choose the witnesses,” Francesco said. “I will arrange everything.”

The woman's contractions began again. She screamed, the sound deep and harsh at first, then higher and shriller as the pain grew worse. Her head thrashed from side to side; she dragged and twisted the loops of cloth, her body arching. Bianca crouched behind her, grasping the twisted cloth in her own hands, putting her cheek next to the woman's cheek. Francesco narrowed his eyes, looking through his lashes. With the woman's face hooded, and only the light of the candles—Bia's face beside hers, Bia's hands pulling the ropes—yes, it might have been Bia laboring there. Bia writhing and shrieking in agony as she brought forth the fruit of his seed.

The midwife supported the child's head as it emerged, turning it slightly so Francesco could see its profile. He had seen dogs whelp and horses foal but he had never seen a child born before. It was slick-looking, covered with mucus, streaked with something white and waxy. It did not look as if it was alive.

Giovanna was far too proud and modest to allow him in her birthing-chambers. In fact, she allowed no physicians, no males at all, only her midwives and one or two favored ladies. So be it. Bia—Bianca—Bia would do the same. It would make the whole complicated contrivance that much easier.

“Push again,” the midwife said. “One good hard push, my girl, and the shoulders will be out, and the worst will be over.”

The woman was sobbing and shuddering. Bia's face was twisted—she had sunk into the trance state he could always induce in her when he compelled her to do as he wished. She dragged on the loops of cloth and groaned as if she herself were truly expelling the child from her body.

The woman shrieked and strained one last time, almost lifting herself from the birthing stool. The midwife twisted the baby's shoulders expertly and supported it as it slid from its mother's body. It was attached to a pulsing grayish-purple rope of flesh, as if one of the mother's entrails had become entangled with it. Francesco thrust the candlestand forward, careless of the dripping hot wax.

The midwife held it up by its ankles and smacked it smartly on the backside. It wailed, a surprising loud and healthy sound. Its head was big, disproportionate to its body. Were all babies like that? He could not see its sex.

“By the piss of the Virgin,” the midwife muttered. “A useless girl.”

“No,” Bianca said. “Oh no, no.”

The woman had collapsed on the stool, half-fainting, hanging from the twisted loops that were still wrapped around her wrists. The midwife put the screaming child on her chest and began to massage her belly hard. “Still the afterbirth to come,” she said.

Francesco put the candlestand aside. There was no more need to see clearly. “You, midwife,” he said. “What about the others? Have you given them the potions to stimulate their labors?”

“Not yet, Serenissimo. There's only Gianna and me to tend them.”

Four women, selected for their youth and health, the fullness of their bellies and the color of their hair, red-gold like Bianca's. Each had disappeared in broad daylight from their villages in the countryside around Florence, leaving husbands and families mystified and bereft; the power of the grand duke was such that he could arrange such matters with ease. The mercenaries who had performed the abductions had also vanished once the women were safely collected. They had been chosen, after all, with an eye to there being no one to wonder what had become of them.

Each of the women had been locked in a single, separate room in the cellars of the Villa di Pratolino, easy enough to manage with the villa still partly in the disorder of construction. They had been given the best food, the finest, softest beds to rest in. They had been promised gold, luxury, the restoration of their freedom once their babies were born. They had been promised their babies would end in their own arms, fat and happy. They were given no explanations; they had never seen the grand duke and so did not know why they had been abducted or why they were being fattened like Epiphany geese. Two women cared for them, the midwife Caterina Donati and the maidservant Gianna Santi.

All the promises, of course, were lies. The whole complicated plan was designed to produce one healthy red-haired baby boy. When that was accomplished, the women, the other babies, the midwife and the serving-woman, all of them would join the mercenaries in the dark depths of the Arno with garrotes knotted around their necks, the long loose ends drifting in the current.

This woman, the mother of the girl, she had been the first to begin her labor. She and her daughter would be the first to die.

“Do as you have been instructed with this one,” Francesco said to the midwife. “When you are finished, give the next woman your potion, so her labor begins. Send the maidservant to us when she is ready.”

“Yes, Serenissimo.” The midwife had been promised gold, too. She had been part of the Cappello household in Venice, and had helped Bianca flee with her lover, all those years ago. She thought her years of faithful service made her safe.

“Come, my Bia,” Francesco said. “We will have supper, and a little music, while we are waiting.”

She shuddered as he took her arm, and drew her marten furs more closely around her body. Neither of them looked back at the woman. The baby had stopped squalling and was making whimpering sounds, looking for its mother's breast.

The passageways were like a maze. Before they even reached the first turning, the baby's whimpers had stopped. Francesco nodded, satisfied. Every detail was being attended to as he had ordered, and in the end no one alive would know the truth but he himself, and his Bia.

The Villa di Pratolino

26 NOVEMBER 1576

“S
anta Margherita, help me, the pain, the pain!” Bianca thrashed her head back and forth, just as the woman in the cell had done. She was wrapped in half a dozen thick coverlets, so the actual shape of her body was well-hidden. Her face was flushed and swollen—she had drunk cup after cup of wine in her state of nervous hysteria, until he had ordered her servants to give her no more. Now she was clear-minded but miserably sick, and that just added to the verisimilitude. As he had instructed her to do, she was calling upon the patron saint of childbirth. All in all, the grand duke was pleased.

“You, midwife,” he said. “Prepare loops of that silken rope—it will relieve Donna Bianca's distress if she has something to pull on.”

The midwife picked up the coil of heavy silk cord and began to knot it into loops. It was the same woman, Caterina Donati, who had made loops of rough twisted cloth for the women in the cellars. The same woman who had smothered the first girl baby, and with the same matter-of-factness had sent him a message that a boy baby had been born. The other women in the cellars, well, they had been left to a mercenary assassin. After one more assignment—the deaths of Caterina Donati herself and the young maidservant and musician, Gianna Santi—the assassin would also disappear. Every trace of the plot would be eradicated.

Gianna Santi was not in the room. She was waiting in the proper place, for the proper signal. Other than that, the room was packed with people—two physicians, an apothecary, a priest, his own brother Don Pietro, half a dozen noble ladies. It was important to have witnesses. The grand duke was annoyed that his brother the cardinal had declined to travel from Rome to attend the birth, but of course Ferdinando had always been a great friend of the grand duchess's.

Other than the grand duchess herself, there were no great ladies of the Medici left to be present. Isabella and Dianora were dead, and good riddance to them. He had considered allowing his stepmother Cammilla Martelli out of her walled convent for the occasion, just for the sake of having a tenuously related noble lady in the room, but had decided against it.

“I must have lavender oil,” Bianca sobbed. “I must have water—cold water, cooled with ice, please, please!”

“Calm yourself, Madonna Bianca.” The physician was sweating. Fires burned high in both fireplaces and the room was stifling hot. “If you will allow me to examine you, I will be able to tell you—”

“No! How dare you! My lord, do not allow this man to violate my dignity. I wish only my own women about me, Gianna and Caterina.”

She feigned fainting, clutching the coverlets around her, drawing up her knees as if to curl herself protectively around the child to be born.

“No man will touch you, Madonna, I swear it. Even I will leave you, and I will see that you do not suffer.”

“It is a great sin to ease a woman's birth pangs,” the priest objected.

The grand duke laughed. “I will buy indulgences enough,” he said. “Even now, my alchemist is outside with an anodyne of my own creation.”

The people in the room began to whisper, particularly the women. An anodyne for the pains of childbirth? What payment would the grand duke require, to share it?

“Soror Chiara.” The grand duke raised his voice. “You may come in.”

Every head turned. In the arched doorway stood Chiara Nerini, wearing her habit of pure undyed wool, her hair loose to her hips. The great moonstone in its silver setting glowed on her breast, and her eyes, clear and changeable as shot silk, brown to gold to green, met his with apprehension and defiance. The grand duke had not seen her, not even thought about her, during his preparations for the appearance of his son. He had left the creation of the anodyne to Ruanno, not thinking that a
soror mystica
would be required—but of course she would. The anodyne was meant to relieve a woman's pains, and according to the principle of correspondence it would require a woman's hand in the preparation.

And the plot required only women around Donna Bianca.

Soror Chiara carried a flask in her hands, a sphere of glass with a long narrow neck. The liquid that filled it was transparent and red as blood.

“Give me the anodyne,” the grand duke said. “Donna Bianca is laboring to bring forth my son, and I would ease her pains.”

The priest crossed himself but said nothing more. The physician scowled. Everyone in the room goggled as if their eyes would fall out. Good. All the talk would be of the anodyne, and the assumption that Bianca was indeed about to bear a child would be taken for granted.

Chiara Nerini paced forward, grave and graceful as a nun, and placed the flask in his hands.

“As you commanded, Serenissimo,” she said. Her voice was formal, unlike her usual free-and-easy speech. He could tell she had memorized and practiced the words. “I have drunk of it myself, and it is safe and effective.”

He examined the flask, trying to guess what was in the red liquid. Aqua vitae as a base. Oil of poppies, almost certainly. It had a sweet, sharp smell—oil of cloves? Something to sweeten it, and something—perhaps a pinch of vermillion, synthesized from mercury and black sulphur—to give it the red color. As he looked at the flask, he thought of ways to make use of Soror Chiara's unexpected appearance. She was known, she was a member of the grand duchess's household. She would make an excellent witness.

He handed the flask back to her. “You may remain,” he said. “Physician, you may go.”

“Serenissimo,” the man said. “I beg you. If anything should go ill with your lady—”

“Go. Remain in the palazzo. If you are needed, you will be called.”

With poor grace, the man went out.

“Soror Chiara, there is water on that table, cooled with ice. Please prepare a draught for Donna Bianca.”

“Yes, Serenissimo.”

He stepped back to Bianca's bedside. She had opened her eyes. They were huge and dark, as if she had bathed them with belladonna. She was deep in her play-acting, submissive to his will, believing what he wished her to believe.

“Francesco,” she said. “Franco. Swear to me.”

“Anything.” He leaned forward so they could whisper together.

“If I die, swear you will make my son your heir. Swear.”

“You will not die, my Bia.”

“I do not want the priest here.” She raised her voice. “He tried to give me the unction. He thinks I will die.”

“All women in childbed are given the unction,” the priest said. He was not used to being repudiated. “It is common practice. You cannot be sure you will pass through your labor safely, Donna Bianca, and surely you do not wish to die in your sins.”

Bianca began to cry, writhing and screaming under the piles of coverlets. Soror Chiara went to her side with a cup and held it to her lips. Bianca stopped crying and looked up at her with those black, distended eyes.

“Drink,” Soror Chiara said. Her voice was cool. “The anodyne will ease you.”

The grand duke could tell from her expression that she hated Bianca, and he could tell from Bianca's expression that she hated Chiara Nerini in return. He remembered the story of how Soror Chiara had refused to show the correct respect at the Palazzo Medici. All the more reason to compel her to witness Bianca's triumph.

Bianca hesitated for a moment, looking to him, uncertain. He nodded, and she drank, deeply and thirstily. The priest began to pray in a loud voice, asking for God's mercy on daughters of Eve who fell into mortal sin.

“Enough.” The grand duke stepped up to the priest, deliberately making it seem as if he intended to strike him. The priest scrambled back, clutching at his cassock. “You are dismissed, Father. You are all dismissed. The midwife will remain to tend Donna Bianca, and Soror Chiara will remain to witness.”

He did not say,
to witness for the grand duchess's sake
, but that was what he meant. Everyone knew that was what he meant.

Soror Chiara did not move. She looked at him with those extraordinary eyes, different than he had ever seen them before. She said, “I wish to go with the others.”

Suddenly the room was silent.

“I command you,” the grand duke said, “as your temporal lord and as your master in the art, to remain and witness both Donna Bianca's labor and the birth.”

What was she thinking? Something was happening behind her eyes, some weighing-up of action and reaction, defiance on the one hand and consequence on the other. After a moment she bowed her head and said, “I will remain, Serenissimo.”

The room burst into sound and action, people shuffling, crowding toward the door, murmuring. He made a signal to Bianca. She pushed the cup away and said loudly, “I would like music to ease me. Send for my woman Gianna Santi, and her
mandolino
.”

“I will fetch her myself,” the grand duke said. “Midwife, I leave Donna Bianca in your hands. Soror Chiara, prepare additional draughts of the anodyne as may be required. Everyone else may go.”

The people in the room went out, looking back over their shoulders, whispering among themselves. Chiara Nerini remained, unmoving, her eyes cast down. The anodyne rested on the table, the flask glowing red in the light from the fireplaces. The grand duke was the last to depart, and closed the door gently behind him.

•   •   •

The rest of the plan went off exactly as he had devised it. Gianna Santi arrived at the chamber carrying her Neapolitan
mandolino
with its vaulted bowl-shaped back; if it seemed heavier than such instruments usually were, neither the midwife nor Soror Chiara were musicians enough to notice such a detail. The grand duke went back into the chamber with her and closed the door again. Gianna Santi went around the bed and made a great show of tuning the
mandolino
's strings. At the same time, the midwife lifted up the coverlets. That was part of the plan. No one, not even the grand duke himself, would see anything to indicate that the baby was not born from Donna Bianca's own body.

Bianca screamed, a high loud shriek.

A baby cried.

The midwife straightened, holding up the child triumphantly. It was smeared with blood and the white waxy substance, already beginning to dry and flake off. The cord had been tied and cut. The midwife went straight to a waiting basin of water and plunged the child in. It began to cry more lustily.

Bianca lay sobbing. The mounded coverlets concealed the state of the bed.

Gianna Santi began to pluck the strings of her
mandolino
. It sounded off-key, as if the sounding-board had been damaged.

“It is a son, Serenissimo!” the midwife cried.

The grand duke went over to the midwife and took the naked baby in his arms. The water made the blood look slick and fresh. The hair was reddish and the genitals were swollen. All the better to prove that he could, after all, father a son.

“You may go, Soror Chiara,” he said. “You may tell what you have seen, to the grand duchess, and to anyone who asks you.”

Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Was that her way of defying him, refusing to see? Good—all the more reason for her to believe what she had heard. She would see the baby in his arms, and that was enough.

“Soror Chiara,” he said again.

She opened her eyes. For a long moment she looked at the squirming, howling baby. Then without a word she curtsied, turned around and went out of the chamber.

“Did she see?” Bianca cried. “Did she believe?”

“Shush, Madonna. All is well.”

“I hate her.”

“You will have your revenge, however little you may see it now.” He bent his head to the baby. “Imagine how it will outrage her, that she has been the witness to our son's birth, and in honesty will be required to report it to all who ask her.”

“I still hate her.”

The grand duke laughed. To the baby he said, “I will name you Antonio, for the saint who discovers lost things. I had a brother named Antonio, who died in his infancy—you shall take up the name and carry it forward in the history of the Medici.”

“Franco,” Bianca said. Her voice was hoarse from all her screams and crying. With only the two serving-women in the room, it did not matter what she called him. “Did I do it as you wished? Are you pleased?”

He went over to the bed and placed the baby in her arms. “I am pleased,” he said. “We have a son, my Bia.”