The Red Lily Crown (25 page)

She let one drop fall on her left wrist. Then she put the stopper back in the vial. She thought about the secret instructions in the book that claimed a solitary alchemist could create the
Lapis Philosophorum
in four stages. Black, white, yellow and red. She thought about how easy it would be to rebuild a small laboratory here in the cellar, with equipment and elements stolen from the grand duke's storerooms.

She thought about Nonna coming home to Florence, with Mattea and Lucia, and all of them together again. Nonna would be happy to help her snatch the
Lapis Philosophorum
straight from under the grand duke's Medici nose. There'd been no news of Pierino Ridolfi but that didn't mean the grand duke's agents hadn't caught him. Was he dead? Had he confessed? Would Magister Ruanno know?

Magister Ruanno.

Ruan. Oh, Ruan.

As the
sonnodolce
took her, all the voices went away and she was alone with her thoughts, wonderfully alone. She imagined herself breaking her holy vow with Ruan, lying open under his weight and making the soft ecstatic groaning sounds Isabella and Dianora had made, in bed with each other on sweet summer afternoons.

. . .
hard and strong and exquisitely slow, and so gentle afterward . . .

She imagined it all, from the beginning to the end, and with happiness afterward that was greater than any happiness she had ever known.

The Palazzo Pitti

6 JANUARY 1577

I
t had been hard to face Magister Ruanno at first, after that dark solitary hour in the bookshop's cellar. Did the
sonnodolce
increase the power of visions and fancies, bring hidden ones out into the light? Chiara felt as if she had broken her vow in truth, given herself to him, taken him, exposed herself to him with all the gasping intimacies of the flesh. If he noticed she was clumsy and tongue-tied in his presence, he said nothing.

She had brought Tommaso Vasari's book back to the laboratory and hidden it in the simplest possible way—by putting it in the cabinet with all the other books. She had also continued putting one drop of the poison on her wrist every seven days, alternating from one wrist to the other, choosing a different spot each time. Each time she felt desire for him. Was it the
sonnodolce
, or was it her own newly sensitized thoughts, feeding upon themselves? Surely he was using his tiny vial just as she was using hers. She wondered what, if anything, he desired, and wished she had the courage to ask him.

On Christmas Eve, the grand duchess had announced officially to her husband, with the support of her physicians, priests, and ladies, that she was once again with child. The city had exploded with delight, and the twelve days of Christmastide had been joyous like no other holiday Chiara had ever seen. Bianca Cappello was hated in Florence, by every woman, certainly, from the grand duchess herself to the humblest washerwoman. Her much-vaunted son was a changeling, of course—even arrests and whippings in the street hadn't been enough to stop the whispers. What woman is suddenly fertile again, at the age of twenty-eight, after ten years as a barren mistress? Cold and unpopular the Austrian grand duchess may be, but at least she bore her own children. The city hummed with prayers for a half-Imperial son, to put Bianca Cappello's long Venetian nose out of joint once and for all. The Epiphany night celebration at the Palazzo Pitti was the glittering culmination of the holiday delights.

“I wish you a holy Epiphany, Signorina Chiara.”

It was Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, the grand duke's brother, with his fleshy lips and his smoldering carnal eyes. He was robed in scarlet silk so heavily embroidered with gold thread, sapphires and amethysts that he might have been one of the Three Kings himself. Chiara knelt with every appearance of deference and kissed the ring he extended. His plump white hand smelled of musk, vanilla and cloves.

“Thank you,
sua Eminenza Illustrissima e Reverendissima
,” she said, as she straightened. She would show him she had learned the proper way to address a prince of the church from a noble family. “Allow me to wish you a holy and joyful Epiphany as well.”

“The processions were spectacular, were they not?” He gestured to the two priests who attended him, and with reverent bows they withdrew.

Why was he making an effort to talk to her, here among the noble and celebrated revelers in the grand salon of the palace? What did he want? Cautiously she said, “Indeed they were, Eminenza.”

“And the star singers were charming. That is an Austrian custom, which reminds the grand duchess of her home. It is more important than ever, at this delicate time, for her to be happy and content.”

“Yes, Eminenza.”

“How cautious you are, my dear. I assure you, I mean you no harm. In fact, I can do you a great deal of good, if you will only allow me.”

“Your blessings always do me good, Eminenza.”

He laughed. “It is not another blessing I am suggesting. Come, over here—there is no better place to speak in private than in the midst of a large and boisterous crowd, do you not agree?”

“I am waiting for the grand duchess to return. She felt ill and withdrew for a little while, but asked me to wait here for her.”

“I know. We will watch for her together. Come.”

Chiara couldn't think of any more excuses, and he wasn't, after all, asking her to leave the grand salon. She followed him to the side of the room, slightly apart from the mass of revelers, into the small privacy offered by a window and its draperies. Outside light shimmered in hundreds of windows where people were dancing and exchanging gifts. The pattern of the city's streets was marked by torches, flaring and streaming in the cold night wind, lighting the way for the more raucous young men's processions.

“Now,” the cardinal said. He leaned close, so he could lower his voice a bit. His breath smelled of sweet wine and rosewater pasticci. “Let us talk about this business of you being present to witness the birth of Signora Bianca Cappello's child.”

Chiara looked down at her skirts, rearranging them slightly. They were the most amazing violet silk, new, richer than anything she had worn so far at court, with a foreparte and bodice embroidered with silver and knotted with a few small pearls, not quite perfect in shape. Her forehead was bound with a silver ribbon and there were silver chains and strings of crystals braided into her hair. The joy of being with child again and the season of the Epiphany had made the grand duchess generous with the ladies of her household. Chiara didn't want to repay that generosity with betrayal.

“I was in the room, Eminenza,” she said, taking care with her words. “I did not see the birth.”

“Indeed? How can that be so?”

She felt heat creeping up her throat and into her cheeks. How could a grown-up young woman of the court, eighteen years old, dressed in violet silk and silver and pearls, blush like a foolish child? Probably because she'd acted like a foolish child. In a low voice she said, “I was angry that the grand duke commanded me to stay and be a witness, and I squeezed my eyes shut so I would see nothing.”

The cardinal stared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter. The people standing around them turned and looked, then whispered behind their hands. Who was the woman in violet silk, and what was she saying to the grand duke's brother to make him laugh in such an un-ecclesiastical manner? Chiara felt her blush get hotter.

“Well, my child,” the cardinal said at last, when he had recovered himself. “What did you hear, then? And surely you opened your eyes before leaving the room, and did not stumble blindly out the door.”

“I heard one of Signora Bianca's women come in. The grand duke was with her—they spoke to each other, too quietly for me to understand the words. I heard the sound of a
mandolino
's strings, as if the woman was tuning it, but they sounded muffled and—well, not like music.”

“How did you know it was a
mandolino
?”

“Later, after I opened my eyes, I saw it.”

The cardinal nodded. He seemed pleased. “There has been a great deal of talk about that
mandolino
, particularly the size of it and what it might have contained. At least a dozen people were still outside the door, and saw the woman go into the chamber. Very well, go on.”

“Signora Bianca screamed. Almost at the same time, the baby cried. I heard splashing—I think the midwife was washing it. Signora Bianca was sobbing. The other woman tried to play the
mandolino
, presumably to soothe her, but it sounded wrong, as if it had been damaged.”

“And when did you open your eyes?”

“When the grand duke spoke to me. He was standing before me with the baby in his arms—it was naked and wet, and there were streaks of blood and patches of white material, like paste or wax, on its skin. The birth cord had been cut and tied with red thread. It was definitely a boy child.”

“So it was genuinely a newly born child. I wonder what Francesco had to do, to assure himself of a healthy newborn baby boy at just the right moment.”

Chiara had wondered the same thing. She said nothing.

“And after that, you went out of the room? You did not see what became of the
mandolino
, or the woman who played it?”

“No, Eminenza.”

“Cast into the Arno, I suspect, the both of them. I have heard rumors that both the
mandolino
-player and the midwife have disappeared.”

Chiara stared at him. The brightness and gaiety of the grand salon seemed to fade, like the colored sparks of fireworks blinking out and leaving trails of smoke against a black sky. “Disappeared? Both of them?”

“Some say one escaped. Even if that is true, perhaps it is your good fortune that you cannot say for certain what happened in Signora Bianca's bedchamber.”

There was a stir among the people on the other side of the salon. The grand duchess came back into the room, making her way slowly to the dais with gentlemen bowing and ladies sweeping curtsies on either side of her. With dignity she resumed her seat beside the grand duke. His dark head bent toward hers, with some private words for her alone.

What had he done? Were Bianca Cappello's women murdered, their bodies eaten by fish, their bones tumbling slowly out to sea in the murk of the Arno? Had one of them escaped with her life? How could the grand duke eat and drink and receive gifts in these lavish Epiphany revels, bathed and perfumed, glittering with jewels?

“I must return to my place,” Chiara said. “She may ask for me.”

“A moment more,” the cardinal said. “The English alchemist, Magister Ruanno dell' Inghilterra—you have worked with him, spent time with him, have you not?”

Oh, no. No. Not Magister Ruanno. Not Ruan, the dark secret lover who came to her in her
sonnodolce
dreams, who had saved Nonna and the little girls, who had given her the secrets she had needed to pass through her initiation. He would never abet the grand duke in conspiracy and murder. Unless—unless he was playing a double game, pretending to conspire while ensnaring the grand duke ever more deeply in evil, blackening his very soul in revenge for Donna Isabella's terrible death.

The cardinal must have seen the color drain from her face. He said, “You misunderstand, my dear—I have heard no whispers that Magister Ruanno was involved in the production of the changeling, or the disappearances of Signora Bianca's two women. I ask you about him because I have seen him look at you, and I have seen you avoid looking at him. Is he your lover?”

Yes
.

No
.

“No,” she whispered. She could barely manage the single word.

The cardinal smiled. How could one smile be so full of amused and urbane lechery, as if he could see straight into her most secret thoughts?

“If you wish to be dispensed from your vow of virginity,” he said, “I can arrange it. Quite privately, of course. The grand duke need never know.”

“I would know.” She took a long breath and steadied herself. She didn't want to be caught in whatever webs the cardinal was spinning. He hated Bianca Cappello with a well-known and un-Christian hatred, and he didn't have much natural brotherly love for the grand duke, either. Better to stay well clear of him. “Thank you for your concern, Eminenza, but for the moment I am satisfied as I am.”

He shrugged. “Very well, my dear,” he said. “The grand duchess is looking our way, and I suspect she would like you to join the rest of her ladies.”

“Thank you, Eminenza.” She knelt again and kissed his ring. “Happy Epiphany to you.”

“God bless you, my dear,” he said. The plump flesh under his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You may go, and good fortune to you.”

“W
hat were you and the cardinal whispering about?”

Ruanno dell' Inghilterra didn't look like himself, dressed in a courtier's padded doublet and paned trunk hose over tight-fitting canions, all in figured mulberry-colored silk, with a starched ruff at his throat and lace showing at his wrists. Apparently the grand duke had been generous to his household as well. Magister Ruanno—Ruan—looked like he wished he had his ordinary plain dark doublet and hose back again.

“Birth,” Chiara said. “Death.”

She had made her curtsy to the grand duchess, been kindly acknowledged, and waved away with a smile and a command to enjoy herself with the young people of the court. Bless her, the grand duchess made it sound as if she herself was a hundred years old. Chiara had kissed her hand with heartfelt admiration and withdrawn.

Straight into Ruan.

He had to have placed himself there deliberately—the grand salon was thick with people and yet there he was, right where she stepped. At least it was easier to talk to him when he was dressed up like a player in an Epiphany pageant. The unnatural courtier's clothing separated him from the primitive force in her
sonnodolce
dreams.

Is he your lover?

Yes.

No.

“Birth seems straightforward enough,” he said. “Given that we are celebrating the grand duchess's happy news. But death? Whose death?”

“It was nothing, just talk.”

She started to turn away and he put his hand on her wrist, below the edge of her sleeve where her skin was bare. It was a light, ordinary touch, no more than any other man might have done if he had wanted her to stay, talk further, dance, something, but it brought back the
sonnodolce
dreams—
Ruan grasping her wrists, spreading her arms wide, bending over her in darkness, saying something, his lips just barely touching hers as he spoke
—and made her whole body stiffen as if she had been touched by fire. She jerked her hand away. He started back at the same time. Surprise at her reaction? Or a reaction of his own?

“What is it?” He didn't try to touch her again but he moved, just a little, just enough to put himself between her and the rest of the room so no one else could see her.

“Nothing. Nothing. Let me go.”

“That was not nothing.”

She didn't dare say the word
sonnodolce
, not here where some passing courtier or laughing lady might hear the word and wonder what it was. But on the other hand, what better place to ask him?
There is no better place to speak in private
, the cardinal had said,
than in the midst of a large and boisterous crowd
. And that same crowd would protect her. From him. From herself.

She bent her head and said in a low quick voice, “The liquid. The drop on your wrist, one day out of seven. Does it—affect you?”

She wasn't looking at him but she felt him react. It was as if someone had struck him.

“You too?” he said.

She nodded, still not looking at him.

“I have—dreams,” he said slowly. “They are more vivid that any other dreams I have ever had. I am at home, in Cornwall, walking along the cliffs and tasting the sea spray. I am inside Milhyntall House, where I was born, walking through the rooms—there are so many rooms inside the house that I have never seen, that I know only because my mother described them to me when she told me stories at night. I am going down into Wheal Loer, my father's mine, my mine, where there are veins of copper that go so deep they will never be exhausted, and I am not a nameless half-naked boy carrying rocks to the surface, but the lord of it all.”

“You see your home.” The house he described sounded like a great manor. And the mine—well, he had told her an Englishman had taken over his father's estate after a rebellion, and later put him to work as a child in the mine. Was that why he had always seemed to be half-workman, half-gentleman?

“Yes,” he said. “I wonder if the—liquid—makes one see the thing one desires most in all the world.”

She couldn't stop herself from asking. “Is that all you see? Your home?”

“Not all.” He paused. She wondered if he also dreamed of Isabella, and his own revenge on the grand duke for her death. Then very gently he said to her, “What do you see,
awen lymm
?”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Tell me what you see.”

If he didn't see her, she'd die before she'd tell him she saw him. And anyway, if it was true that the
sonnodolce
made you see what you wanted most, she'd be seeing visions of herself with her head clear and the
Lapis Philosophorum
in her hands. Herself as an alchemist as famous as Perenelle Flamel. Herself proving utterly and completely that Babbo had been wrong to cast her aside, wrong to think she was good for nothing but a sacrifice to bring Gian back.

“I don't remember,” she said. “Just that there are dreams. Sometimes it's what I want most in the world, and sometimes it's—I don't know, what I'm most afraid of.”

He didn't press her. Did he know she was lying? “I wonder what the grand duke sees,” he said. He looked at Francesco de' Medici on the dais at the head of the salon and the lines of cruelty deepened at the corners of his mouth. “He has changed in the eleven years I have known him. He was always melancholy, and preferred to be alone in his laboratory with his experiments. But he was not—vicious. Not a man who would murder his own sister and cousin.”

“When did he start—with the drops? Do you know?”

“I am not sure. I think from the time of his marriage. He made Bianca Cappello his mistress at about the same time, and he may have feared that Imperial agents would poison him for bringing such shame upon the emperor's sister. The fellow who created the—the liquid we are speaking of—had supposedly fled to Austria, so the grand duke could have feared that particular substance.”

“So for eleven years. I can believe it's driven him mad, after eleven years. What do you think he sees, in his dreams?”

“I do not know. I suspect he sees the
Lapis Philosophorum
, and all the power it would bring him. His mother and father begging his pardon for loving his brothers and his sister more than they loved him. All the world paying him homage.”

“We should stop,” she said. “It's not worth becoming immune to poisons, if the drops will do that to us in the end.”

Ruan looked at her. She saw the terrible need in his eyes. Did he see the same thing in hers? Would she give up the overpowering and demanding Ruan who came to her and held her helpless after the drop of
sonnodolce
fell upon her wrist?

He said, “I will not stop. Not until I regain Milhyntall House and Wheal Loer, in truth and not only in dreams. Not until I see— until I have taken the vengeance I have sworn.”

Not until he saw the grand duke lying dead at his feet. Even in the midst of a noisy crowd, there were some things that could not be said.

“In any case,” he said, “there is still good reason for both of us to be immune to poison. The grand duke—”

A gasp and rustle ran through the room, as if everyone was turning and whispering at once. Chiara stepped to one side so she could see, and although Ruan didn't touch her, he put out one arm in front of her, as if to protect her.

Bianca Cappello stood in the center of the double doorway into the great salon, all alone. Her head was thrown back, as if overbalanced by the weight of her hair, braided and pinned, shimmering with gold dust and heavy with jewels. She was dressed in a gown of orange-scarlet satin lavishly laced with gold.

The grand duke looked at her. His face was flushed and black darkness surrounded him. The grand duchess sat like stone.

Bianca began to walk toward them.

A dozen people gasped her name at once, so the word
Bianca Bianca Bianca
whispered and crackled and filled the air of the great salon like the sound of a flame. She walked the length of the room, slowly, deliberately, glorying in everyone's eyes upon her, her own eyes fixed on the grand duke's face and nothing else. She ignored the grand duchess. She ignored everyone in the great salon but her lover.

The father of her son.

Or so she claimed.

Men and women stepped back, making way for her. No one bowed or curtsied. After what seemed like hours she reached the dais and sank into a deep curtsy herself. The deepest, most perfect curtsy anyone could ever see. A graceful curtsy that the grand duchess could never perform with her poor twisted back, no matter how many steel corsets and padded dresses she wore.

Chiara saw the grand duke's lips move, although she couldn't hear what he said. From the look on his face, she wouldn't have wanted to hear it. Bianca was very still for a moment, then she straightened. An unnatural hush fell over the room. Everyone was suddenly being quiet because of course everyone wanted to hear what she would say.

“Surely, Serenissimo,” she said, in a strong high voice, “you will welcome the mother of your son to your Epiphany celebrations.”

More silence. Then slowly the grand duke rose to his feet, his darkness rising with him and swirling around him. “We have not commanded your presence,” he said.

Anyone else would have crumpled and crept away. Bianca Cappello stood her ground, you had to give her that. To her own surprise, Chiara felt Ruan take her hand, his fingers slipping in between hers, his palm to her palm. She had a sense that he was preparing to pull her to safety somehow. What did he expect the grand duke to do?

“Is it so wrong, Serenissimo,” Bianca Cappello said, “that I wish to join the revels at the court? The day for my churching has come and gone, and the rich public celebration you promised me has not been arranged.”

The gasps and whispers rose to a fever's pitch. Sweat—or was it tears?—made streaks in the white ceruse on Bianca's face and the vermilion she had used to paint half-moons high on her cheeks. As much as she loved and admired the grand duchess, Chiara couldn't help feeling a flicker of sympathy. What had Bianca Cappello felt, sitting alone in her fine new villa at Pratolino with her changeling child, her serving-women murdered, knowing her lover was leading his court in the dazzling Epiphany processions, masques, feasts and dancing, which would be talked about all over Europe? Epiphany revels to which she was pointedly not invited?

What did she expect the grand duke to do? Surely she wasn't fool enough to think he would smile and invite her to sit at his side on the dais?

He did smile. It was awful, like a skull's teeth. He looked around the grand salon in a leisurely manner, at his brothers, at his courtiers, at all the richly dressed noblemen and gentlemen celebrating the feast of the Three Kings with him. At last he said, very deliberately, “Magister Ruanno.”

Chiara felt Ruan stiffen. His hand slipped out of hers as if he had never touched her at all. He stepped forward, made one of his stiff, economical bows, and said, “I am at your service, Serenissimo.”

“I require that you travel with Donna Bianca back to the villa at Pratolino, and arrange that she remains there whether she desires to do so or not. You are detailed half a dozen guardsmen to assist you.”

Bianca Cappello stood frozen. Her tears had vanished, transmuted to vapor, probably, by her fury.

“I will not go with him,” she said. “He is a servant.”

Ruan didn't move. His expression didn't change.

“As are you, Madonna,” the grand duke said. “Go. I am not accustomed to repeating my orders.”

For the space of a few breaths Chiara thought Bianca Cappello might defy him further. Then suddenly she swept around, with her head high and a great flouncing of her silken skirts, and walked out of the room. Ruan stood for a moment, then bowed again to the grand duke and followed her. At the door, the guardsmen formed up two-by-two and stepped after him.

Chiara turned to look at the dais. The grand duchess had not moved or said a word through the whole confrontation. The grand duke seated himself again and lifted his hand.

“Bring in the
befanini
,” he said. “And more wine. We will refresh ourselves with the special cakes of the season, and then continue with the celebrations.”