The Red Lily Crown (24 page)

The Casino di San Marco

6 DECEMBER 1576

C
hiara stepped back from the great table and bowed to Magister Francesco and Magister Ruanno.

In the laboratory, after all, they were equal. She was willing to show them respect, as one practitioner of the great art to another, but curtsying like a maidservant? No, not anymore. So for the first time she bowed, her hands crossed over her heart, mirroring their own bows. Neither man said anything. She saw a glint in Magister Ruanno's—Ruan's—eyes that might have been admiration.

They had achieved the separation, the seventh stage of the
magnum opus
, and the next step was the conjunction, the recombination of the elements. It was like a man joining with a woman, Magister Francesco had explained. The female element was critical. Fire and air, those were male powers; water was the female power. When water surrendered itself to fire and air in the conjunction, an entirely new element was produced, like a child being born.

“Like a child being born,” Magister Francesco repeated, lovingly, one word at a time. “We will be successful, I believe, because our art will mirror life.”

The whisperers of the court had been quick to sink the devastating blade of the news into the grand duchess's heart: Bianca Cappello had borne a strong and healthy son. There were naysayers, naturally, as there always were, who pointed out Donna Bianca's age, the long years of her barrenness, and the fortuitous entry into her chamber of a musician with a large Neapolitan
mandolino
. Chiara couldn't be certain, either way. She'd been in the chamber, provided the anodyne for Donna Bianca's supposed pains, remained after the others had left, but out of defiance and anger she'd squeezed her eyes shut, choosing to see nothing. If she'd watched, she'd be able to speak fairly, for certain, one way or the other. But it was too late now.

“The powers of fire and air have manifested themselves within you,” Magister Ruanno said to Magister Francesco. What a dissembler he could be when it suited him. “The feminine powers have surrendered, and a male child has been the result. It is the best possible sign.”

“Indeed,” Magister Francesco said.

He sounded smug as a barnyard rooster. How dare he give Bianca Cappello all the credit for ducal childbearing when the grand duchess herself was struggling through the early months of being with child? And for the seventh time.

“If I may be so bold, Magister Francesco,” Chiara said. She knew she wasn't as polished a play-actor as Magister Ruanno was, and she could hear the edge of resentment in her own voice. “The grand duchess is with child as well.”

“So she is,” he said. “All the more a symbol of the power of the male element and the surrender of the female.”

The air in the laboratory was thick with maleness and femaleness, as if it were a scent, a fleshly briny-sweet effluvium. None of the other stages of the
magnum opus
had created such an intense focus on the fact that Magister Francesco and Magister Ruanno were men, and she was a woman.

She had seen and spoken to Magister Ruanno—Ruan—any number of times since they had confronted each other in the grand duchess's store-closet. To look at him, to listen to him, you'd think none of it had ever happened. Well, maybe not entirely. His eyes were like deep holes in the earth, holes all the way down to hell, and they followed the grand duke relentlessly. Other than that, his face was as blank as a painted face in a portrait.

What would it be like, to be conjoined with him? Making the sounds that Isabella and Dianora had made together, on those lazy summer afternoons? Leaving the bed tangled and musky as the inside of a flower?

Saints and angels, she had to stop thinking such thoughts.

She had begun to look back on her first two years at the Medici court as if they had happened to a different person, a young, defiant, awestruck girl finding her way and losing her way, over and over, in a glittering maze of palaces and duchesses and conspiracies. She knew exactly when the path had started—the moment she took her first sip of the strong spiced wine in the grand duke's golden studiolo, with its hidden curiosity cabinets and its secret door. She knew when it had ended, too—in the grand duchess's store-closet, in the dark, with Ruanno dell' Inghilterra's arms around her.

When the grand duke is dead, it will be just the two of us
.

For some reason, that moment had brought her back to life. The numbness that had overwhelmed her after her fever had gone. At the same time she had learned to be quiet. To be cautious. To see clearly, past titles and blood.

Most of the time, anyway.

Alchemy, alchemy. Focus on the alchemy.

“Combine the natron with the oil of vitriol,” Magister Ruanno said.

Chiara poured a measured amount of white natron crystals into a new athanor. Magister Francesco then added the oil of vitriol, a large beaker of it, slowly and carefully. An intense blue color blossomed as the natron crystals dissolved.

“The aqua fortis is complete,” Magister Francesco said. “The athanor is new and sound. Add the separated elements, and the aqua fortis will conjoin them.”

Magister Ruanno added the elements, one at a time—the mystical analogs of fire, water and air. Then he sealed the athanor with copper seals imprinted with the mark of Solomon, two triangles representing fire and water, the conjunction of opposites.

“It is the night of the full moon,” he said. “When the moon is full again, we will open the athanor and discover whether the conjunction has been successful.”

“Amen,” said Magister Francesco.

“Amen,” said Chiara. She stepped back from the athanor and without a word turned to make her way to the door, not following the maze but walking straight across its double folds, its cusps and arcs. She wanted only to be far away from both of them—away from the grand duke because she was afraid of him, hated him, wished she could make him suffer somehow, the way he made the grand duchess suffer. The way he'd made Donna Isabella suffer. And away from Ruan—well, that was different. She wanted to be far away from him because if he ever touched her again, the way he'd touched her in the grand duchess's store-closet—

“Soror Chiara,” the grand duke said. “You have not been given leave to go.”

Chiara stopped.

“I wish to work on another alchemical process while we wait for the conjunction to take place. I would have both of you assist me.”

For just a moment she considered disobeying him. Babbo's voice, dry and dark as ashes, whispered,
yes, walk away, girl, he'll come after you and kill you—you should be dead anyway and it will be one more mortal sin to drag the Medici prince down to hell
. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, fighting the voice, fighting the sudden sinking fear. Then she turned.

“Yes, Magister Francesco,” she said. She compelled herself to be calm and deferential. She didn't look at Magister Ruanno. “What would you have me do?”

“I wish to create a fresh supply of
sonnodolce
, the elixir of Tommaso Vasari. When it is done, I would have it compounded with fresh rainwater, in a proportion of one part to one hundred parts.”

“That is dangerous work,” Magister Ruanno said.

At the same time Chiara said, “Create
what
?”

“Dangerous to you, perhaps,” the grand duke said to Magister Ruanno. “Not to me. It is called
sonnodolce
, Soror Chiara, a sweet-tasting, unfailing and undetectable poison discovered by an alchemist in my father's employ, one Tommaso Vasari.”

Chiara swayed. Neither of the men seemed to notice.

Sonnodolce
.

Tommaso Vasari.

Babbo's book, the ancient book with Babbo's own notes in the back, plastered into the wall in the cellar of the bookshop. The first time she'd looked at it, she hadn't been able to read any of the Latin, and for that matter most of the Italian—Babbo believed good husbands wouldn't want girls if they could read anything more than the
Pater
and the
Ave
and maybe a recipe for roast veal. But she'd helped in the shop since she'd been tall enough to see over the counter, and she knew a signature when she saw one. On the first page, in fine black ink, had been the name
Tommaso Vasari
, clear as clear. The book itself wasn't printed but lettered by hand, its illustrations hand-drawn and colored. There were annotations throughout the book in the same fresh black ink as the signature. So presumably this Tommaso Vasari had found it, purchased it, used it, written his own notes in it. In the back, there were pages of Babbo's notes—she knew they were his because she had seen him writing some of them, when she watched him secretly.

She could close her eyes and see the page, headed with more Latin words
and filled with drawings of strange plants, crystals, unidentifiable objects. Tommaso Vasari had added the word
sonnodolce
at the bottom. It had stood out to her because it was the only word on the page that wasn't in Latin, and she'd been able to sound it out.
Sonnodolce
,
sonno
for sleep and
dolce
for sweet. The other handwriting, Babbo's, had scribbled a few words of his own in the margin—some of it she could read but most of it she couldn't. The page opposite it, where the actual formula had been written, was torn out. The ragged edge of paper remained.

A poison?

How had her father come by such a book? Who had torn out the page with the formula, and how had the grand duke learned about it? Had there been some secret connection between her father and the old grand duke, long before the day when she'd gone out in the rain to sell the silver funnel to the prince?

Her father's handwriting—when she'd first looked at it, it had meant nothing. Scribbles. Lines and loops. A word or two, here and there, a name, that made sense. But now, now after two and a half years of endless lessons in Latin and calligraphy—now she could read.

She could
read
.

She blinked, and came back to herself.

“How can it be true that
sonnodolce
is not dangerous to you?” Magister Ruanno was saying. “One does not have to drink it. A few drops on the skin will be absorbed, and can be enough to kill.”

“A few drops, yes. One drop, every seven days after taking the Sacrament at Mass, never twice on exactly the same spot of naked skin—that is not only safe, but will in time confer immunity to the
sonnodolce
. Because the
sonnodolce
is a mother poison, from which many others are compounded, it confers a powerful general immunity as well. It also—”

He stopped, as if he suddenly realized he had said too much.

“Mithridates of Persia is said to have compounded a universal antidote to poisons, in somewhat similar fashion,” Magister Ruanno said. He sounded calm, uncaring, as if the
sonnodolce
was nothing more than a curiosity. “May I suggest that Soror Chiara's presence is not necessary? There is no need to expose her to possible accidental contamination.”

“I wish to have her here,” the grand duke said. “I have a reason for requiring the feminine element to be present in this particular distillation.”

Chiara made her way back across the pattern of the maze. To Magister Ruanno she said, “I am perfectly capable of protecting myself from a poisonous distillate.”

She looked directly into his eyes, for the first time since their secret exchange in the grand duchess's store-closet. He was thinking,
if the grand duke is to have a supply of this
sonnodolce
always at hand, then
I am going to take some of it for myself and put a single drop upon my skin, once every seven days, to keep myself safe if the grand duke should decide he no longer needs me.

She could read his thoughts so easily, because she herself was thinking exactly the same thing.

I
t was dark by the time the distillation was complete. As Magister Francesco removed his mask and cassock, he directed them to divide the distillate into one hundred parts, each part in its own separate vial, all one hundred vials in a silver rack in ten rows of ten. These would be combined with purified rainwater and applied to the roses and brambles in his private maze in the Boboli gardens one vial's worth every day. When he was satisfied his orders were being followed, he departed. Chiara and Magister Ruanno looked at each other without words, and carefully prepared one hundred and two vials. He took one of the extra ones. She took the other.

“Chiara,” Magister Ruanno said. “Take care with that. No more than a single drop, and no more often than once every seven days.”

Chiara put out her chin at him. “Do you think I'm a fool?”

“No. But I think you are young and impatient. I do not wish to lose—”

He stopped.

“You don't want to lose the grand duke's
soror mystica
.” Chiara finished his sentence for him. She was hurt that he would think so little of her skill and care, and although she knew it wasn't true, she wanted to hurt him back. “You don't want to lose your chance at making him believe he's found the
Lapis Philosophorum
.”

His eyes rested upon her, dark and endlessly deep and with an intensity she couldn't quite understand. After a moment he said, “That is true, as far as it goes.”

“I'll be as careful as you will. Good night to you, Magister Ruanno.”

She went into the small room next to the laboratory and took off her habit. As always, she had worn simple, dark clothing when the grand duke had called her to the Casino di San Marco; she put it on again. She strapped her leather belt around her waist and put the tiny, securely stoppered vial into her pouch. She went back into the laboratory—Magister Ruanno was gone—and from there out into the corridor. The guardsman in Medici colors who always accompanied her when she was called to the Casino di San Marco was waiting. He looked bored.

“I've been ordered to spend the night here, Rufino,” she said. “To watch over one of the grand duke's experiments. I'll lock myself in. You can go home.”

From the beginning she'd hated being watched over, and although she'd never actually slipped away from her guards before, she'd taken care to sweeten their feelings toward her with questions about their families and baskets of Nonna's cakes and
pasticci
. Rufino didn't wait to be told twice. He grinned at her and strode off whistling, sword-belt jingling.

She was alone. She had the night before her. Such freedom was rare and she was going to make the most of it.

She was going to see the book again, and read the things Babbo had written inside it.

With Rufino gone it was easy to slip past the grand duke's own night guards—they walked through the building, room to room, and she knew the pattern of it by heart. She kept to the shadows as she made her way through the narrow familiar streets, past the Duomo, to the booksellers' quarter to the northeast of the Palazzo Vecchio. The moon was full but mostly tucked away behind low gray clouds. It was icy cold, so cold her breath made a faint silvery plume in the night air. Had it really been a year and a half since she had ridden to the bookshop in the night, dressed in a boy's clothes, with a princess's necklace inside her doublet? A year and a half, and so much pain, so much terror, so much death. Her crooked fingers ached in the cold and dampness.

The shop looked the same. The door was locked, the windows were clean, the stones in front of the door were swept. Everything was dark and quiet. The caretaker didn't live in the shop, so it would be empty. She slipped into the alley and made her way around to the back door. It was locked as well. So it would have to be the secret passage. Santa Barbara, she whispered to herself, patron of diggers and stonemasons, help me. Let the passage be safe, let it be open, let the hatchway be undiscovered.

The passage came out in the corner of the yard, under what looked like a pile of stones left over from building the wall. She kilted up her skirts and mantle, rolled two stones aside and crawled into the passageway. It was dry and reasonably clear. Fortunately it was short and dark and she couldn't see the webs and filth and saints-only-knew-what-else she was crawling in. She came to the wooden hatchway and pushed, and glory be to God, it opened.

In the familiar cellar she could find her way by touch. The lamp was still on the shelf where it had always been; she could feel the layer of dust on the brass lid. The oil had congealed but the wick remained. She took her flint and steel from her pouch and struck a light.

The wall where the book was hidden was untouched. In fact, everything looked exactly as it had looked the day she and Magister Ruanno had come down into the cellar to look at Babbo's treasures the first time. If I break through the plaster, she thought, I'll have to take the book back with me, or find another hiding-place. I haven't got any fresh plaster to wall it up again.

Get it out
, Babbo's voice whispered. Pain struck through her head like knives in her eyes.
Go ahead, you've come this far. Time for you to see what I've written about you and Gian and life and death and the Medici prince. . . .

She had no tools, but there was a heavy stone mortar and pestle on the table; Babbo had used it to grind minerals but it was commonplace, not something Magister Ruanno had wanted. She grasped the pestle and began to pound on the plaster. It flaked and began to crumble. Her head felt as if it were about to burst with agony. Bigger pieces of the plaster broke away, and then there it was—the metal box she'd used to protect the book. A few more blows with the pestle and the hole was large enough. Carefully she took the box out of its hiding-place, opened it, unwrapped the waxed silk and laid the book on the table where the lantern's light would play over its pages.

The front and back covers were wood, studded with brass nails. Threads of red silk still clung to the nails, but the covering, whatever it might have been, had long since been worn away. The pages, in a dozen separate quires, were sewn to a woven net of braided linen cords, and the cords themselves were laced to the wooden covers. Holding her breath, Chiara turned back the cover.

The name
Tommaso Vasari
leaped off the first page, black and bold as she remembered it. The words written above it, which had meant nothing to her when she first saw them, now made sense to her. They were
Hic liber est meus
. This book is mine.

The satisfaction of reading for herself was like drinking spiced wine, that first spiced wine she had ever tasted, in the grand duke's golden studiolo. Hot and sweet. The words were more than ink and parchment. They had meaning. She understood the meaning. Until this moment she had never realized the power of knowing how to read.

She turned the pages. In the first section there were instructions for concocting the
Lapis Philosophorum
, different from the instructions that the grand duke followed. There were only four stages instead of fourteen, and each was identified with a color—
nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo
, blackening, whitening, yellowing and reddening. Each stage was described in detail. At the end of the descriptions she could pick out the words
alchimista solitarius
. A solitary alchemist. Using this method of four stages, was it possible for one person, working alone, to create the
Lapis Philosophorum
?

Thoughtfully she continued turning the pages. There were strange drawings, circles and lines with the positions of the planets drawn in, and the stars of the zodiac—horoscopes, then. She reached the place where the formula for
sonnodolce
had been torn out. The drawings now made sense to her. A black powder—some form of charcoal, it had been, although the grand duke had measured it out without identifying the wood it came from. White crystals. A golden-yellow powder. A red liquid. Only hours ago she had helped Magister Francesco and Magister Ruanno combine the ingredients, just as they were represented on the page. The sources and the exact proportions, those Magister Francesco had kept to himself. He was taking care that he was the only person who knew the secret of the
sonnodolce
.

Who had torn the page from the book? Magister Francesco, or someone else? Did someone else know? If so, who?

She turned to the last pages, where she had seen Babbo writing his own notes. They were there, just as she remembered, scribbled lines on the blank pages left over at the end of the last quire. The first page was neat, ruled with lines, and headed with a note:

Tommaso Vasari has been assassinated at an Austrian monastery. In accordance with my promise, I will use his equipment and books to injure the grand duke, and support the cause of the republic.

It was followed by a list, some of the items marked with checks and numbers set down beside them. The athanor from Trebizond was on the list, unchecked, as were the double pelican and the green glass alembic in the shape of the crescent moon. Even the little silver funnel was there—
one small silver descensory said to be a thousand years old, decorated with a design of a labyrinth
.

Chiara frowned. Had Babbo known the old grand duke's alchemist Tommaso Vasari, then? Or had Vasari chosen him by chance, because he sold books and curiosities and was known to have republican sympathies? She wondered if Grand Duke Francesco could tell her more about Tommaso Vasari, why he had left Florence, how he had come to be assassinated in a monastery in Austria. Or had only Grand Duke Cosimo known?

There was nothing more on that page. On the next few pages, more horoscopes—her own name jumped out at her, and Gian's. Giancarlo Nerini, born in Florence, the seventh day of August in the year 1557, under the sign of the Lion. Chiara Nerini, born in Florence, the twelfth day of November in the year 1558, under the sign of the Scorpion. She counted in her head. She had turned eighteen years old, then, a little less than a month ago.

After that, her father's handwriting changed, became fumbling and shaky.

I am teaching myself the things in the rest of Vasari's books. There are spells to bring back the dead. I will bring Gian back, even at the cost of my immortal soul.

So that was written after the accident. Chiara felt the hot spike of a headache driving into her skull from the crescent-shaped scar over her left ear.
Stop
, Isabella's soft, persuasive voice whispered.
Do not read any more. Put the book away, come back to the palace, lose yourself in comfort and luxury. Give yourself to Ruanno dell' Inghilterra—you know what he meant to say. He did not want to lose you, too. He wants you. You want him. Francesco will never know. . . .

Chiara squeezed her eyes closed. Read? Don't read?

She opened her eyes and read.

The spell requires a sacrifice. Chiara watches me when I work—she thinks I don't see her looking through the stair-rail, but I do. She will come down willingly to help me when I ask her. I will cut her throat, and her virgin's life-blood will bring him back. She should have died instead of Gian, and it is only right she be the one to bring him back.

Chiara read the words over and over. They blurred before her eyes. It didn't matter. She would never forget them.

I will cut her throat.

Babbo had meant to kill her, in order to bring Gian back.

Necromancy
. It was Magister Ruanno's voice, Ruan's voice, not a demon's voice but a real memory. They had been here in the cellar, in this very place.
Some necromancers . . .
Then he had stopped. Put his hand on her wrist, touched her deliberately for the first time.

It is nothing.

He had known about necromancy, and sacrifices. Had he guessed? Had he thought to protect her from the terrible knowledge that her own father had meant to kill her?

But Babbo had been the one to die, leaving behind poverty and misery and the unexplained hidden beauty of Tommaso Vasari's alchemical equipment. I would have known, she thought. I would have known all this from the beginning, if I had been able to read.

My greatest enemy was my greatest ally
, Babbo's voice scratched and rustled in her head.
You thought I meant the devil. Stupid Chiara. I meant Duke Cosimo de' Medici, who did something terrible to Tommaso Vasari that made him flee from Florence in the middle of the night and leave all his knowledge and riches for the enemies of the Medici. For me
.

Then he laughed. And laughed and laughed.

Chiara put her face down against the book, trembling. Cry? No, she wouldn't cry. She wouldn't give Babbo the satisfaction.

You have the
sonnodolce, he whispered.
Don't waste it with drips and drops on your skin. Drink it now, all of it. It's pleasant to the taste and you'll drift away quickly. You're the one who should have died, Chiara, and there's still time, still time
.

The grand duke had said that the drop was to be applied to the skin after taking the Sacrament at Mass. But she didn't want to wait. She took the vial out of her pouch.

One drop, no more, on the inside of your wrist where the skin is thin and soft
, Isabella whispered.
It is not time for you to die. Put the one drop on your skin and think of Ruanno, here in this silent dark cellar with the lamplight flickering. He is a wonderful lover, hard and strong and exquisitely slow, and so gentle afterward. Live, Chiara. You and Ruanno must live to take revenge on Francesco
.

She opened the vial. The
sonnodolce
had a scent like honey, flowery with undertones of green leaves and insect wings. She thought of Ruanno—of Ruan—imagining him as he had been in the store-closet, close, a dark shadow looming. She could imagine his touch. He had taken a vial of the
sonnodolce
, too. One drop at a time, each one of them—and they would be immune to any poison, forever.