The Red Lily Crown (38 page)

Villa Seravezza, near the silver mine at Bottino, northwest of Florence

10 OCTOBER 1587

“I
would have gone mad,” Ruan said, “if it had not been for the miners. They talked to me, brought me lamps and oil so I was not left in the dark, their own food to supplement what the guards gave me. Books and papers for calculations. Johan Ziegler, the mine master—I would like to arrange a rich reward for him, both in money and in advancement.”

Cardinal Prince Ferdinando de' Medici lounged comfortably among cushions in a chair on the other side of the room. He was not wearing his cardinal's scarlet. Ruan wondered if he would ever wear it again.

“I did not know what I would find,” the cardinal said, “when Francesco let slip amidst his ravings that he had you imprisoned in the mine at Bottino. It has been what, five years? I half-expected a gibbering maniac, naked and filthy and overgrown with hair.”

“So I might have been, but for Johan.”

The first months of his imprisonment were a blur of nightmare images. Being in an underground cell carved from the bare rock, with no opening but the grating overhead. Being without the
sonnodolce
. Knowing Chiara was hurt and alone in Le Murate. If he had known he would be arrested, he would not have taken her to a place where the grand duke had such power.

Weeks of madness.
A gibbering maniac, naked and filthy and overgrown with hair
. Yes, for a while. Then a little at a time he had fought his way to sanity again.

His first wish upon being freed had been for news of Chiara. When the cardinal had assured him she was still at Le Murate and safe, he had asked for a bath, a barber, and fresh clothing from the skin out. For all his pacing—the cell had been eight paces in one direction, ten in the other—his deliberate working of his muscles against the stone walls and his daily ritual of jumping to catch hold of the iron grating in the ceiling and pulling himself up as many times as he could manage, he had lost flesh and strength. It would be a long time before he was himself again.

“I am surprised your miners did not dig you out,” the cardinal said.

“The grand duke's new prefect watched them closely. It would have taken days to dig out the grate without blasting, and if they had blasted, they would have killed me.”

The cardinal turned over a page in a ledger that lay on the table in front of him. “The production of the mine has increased in the last five years. My brother imprisons you under the harshest of conditions, and from your hole in the rock you use your knowledge and skill to improve his mine's workings?”

“It was for the miners, not for the grand duke. And to maintain my own reason. Nothing more.”

“Indeed.” The cardinal turned over another page. “So you no longer consider yourself the grand duke's man.”

“I consider myself,” Ruan said, “the man who is going to kill him.”

The cardinal smiled. “You will be pleased when you see him, I think. He has had a series of apoplectic strokes, and is partly paralyzed. At the moment he is at his villa in Poggio a Caiano, suffering from a serious attack of tertian fever. One way or another, he will not live long, and what life is left to him will be unpleasant in the extreme.”

“I take it you intend to succeed him?”

“I do. My brother's attempts to legitimate Prince Antonio are immoral and illegal by both church and secular law—the boy is a bastard unrelated by blood to the Medici. I have a written confession from one of the women who assisted them in the deception.”

“I will not kill a child.”

“The boy is eleven years old. He has been raised to believe himself the heir. A snake fresh from the egg will bite, just as much as an adult.”

“Put him into a religious order. After all, the church will soon be short a cardinal.”

The cardinal laughed. “Very well, Magister Ruanno. We will see.”

Ruan pushed himself to his feet and walked across the room. His eyes were still sensitive to the light, but oh, the astonishing delight of looking out a window and seeing gardens, the mountains, and the sky. He said, “I am not sure why you have gone to the trouble of freeing me, Eminenza. Surely it would have been simple enough to accomplish your brother's death yourself, with no one else to find out.”

“And if anything goes wrong, and people do find out? A person to blame is a necessary thing, Magister Ruanno, and you are the perfect scapegoat. You have every reason to hate my brother. And when the thing is done, you will go home to Cornwall. I will make a play of pursuing you, but I am not my brother, obsessed with revenge.”

Home to Cornwall. Ruan wondered what had happened with Wheal Loer and Milhyntall House in the past five years. Had Jago Warne kept the mine working, at least, so there had been a living for the miners? Had the English come back and taken Milhyntall again?

“You are frank,” he said to Ferdinando de' Medici.

“I know you are not a fool. I have another reason to free you as well, you and the woman Chiara Nerini.”

Ruan felt a flicker of apprehension. “What reason?”

“In my brother's fevered ravings, he speaks over and over of something he calls
sonnodolce
. He seems to think it is the most valuable thing he possesses. I am not sure what it is, whether it is a poison or an aphrodisiac, but either one would be useful to have.”

It is more than you guess, Ruan thought. He said, “What does that have to do with me, or Chiara?”

The cardinal chuckled. “Come, come, Magister Ruanno,” he said. “I am not a fool either. My brother associates both your name and Signorina Chiara's with this
sonnodolce
. You both know something about it. Surely it would be a small thing to share with me, in return for your freedom.”

“A small thing,” Ruan repeated. He was tiring from the activity and the light and he could not think clearly, although even in his weakened state he was not fool enough to believe that the cardinal did not design to kill him in the end. Kill him and Chiara. “Eminenza, I desire to see Chiara before anything else.”

“She is safe and well at Le Murate. The abbess found out she could read and write Latin, and has put her to work as a copyist, so she has easy work and some comforts. I want her at Poggio a Caiano as well, because she witnessed Giovanna's death, and I intend to send for her at the proper time.”

Ruan closed his eyes. He wanted to say
send for her now
but he knew he would have to lie down before he fell down. He heard the cardinal's fingers snap, and after a moment two gentlemen were there to support him on either side. He sagged against their arms.

“We must leave for Poggio a Caiano tomorrow, or the next day at the latest,” the cardinal said. His voice sounded far away. “Rest. Try to eat.”

“Chiara?”

“You will see her soon enough. Think on this, Magister Ruanno—you will be face-to-face with my brother again in a few days, and I promise you, you will have your revenge at last.”

The Villa del Poggio a Caiano, northwest of Florence

17 OCTOBER 1587

R
uan stepped into the grand duke's bedchamber. The day before, when he and Ferdinando de' Medici had arrived at the villa, it had smelled of sickness, with medicaments and basins of water and stinking slop jars everywhere. Today it was clean again. Two maidservants were just going out, carrying between them a basket heaped high with soiled linens. Inside, the cardinal sat in a fine chair beside his brother's bed, dressed in a night-gown of rich brocaded crimson, not a cardinal's robe but much the same color. He still wore his ring of office, and the great cabochon sapphire smoldered darkly in the wavering candlelight.

There was a table set between the cardinal's chair and the bed. On the table lay two rings of keys, a few papers, a seal matrix with an elaborately engraved golden handle, and its counterseal, a gold ring with the arms of Tuscany engraved on a black onyx stone.

The grand duke was asleep. The worst flush of fever had gone. He was freshly shaved and what was left of his hair had been combed. There were things a recovery from tertian fever could not achieve—the right side of his face still did not quite match the left, and his right hand was still contracted like a claw—but he looked better. He turned his head from side to side and clutched at the richly embroidered coverlet, as if he were struggling with evil dreams.

As well he might be. Dreams of the devil coming to claim his own.

“The fever has gone?” Ruan asked.

“As you see.” The cardinal gestured. “The physicians say he is better. What report do you have of Bianca Cappello?”

“She is still shut up in her bedchamber. She knows he is sick, of course, and knows you are here. She is terrified, because other than your brother she has no one to protect her from the vengeance of all the people who hate her.”

“Good. And the rest?”

“I have told her women that she is sick as well, and already two or three of them have slipped away. They will find their way back to Florence and spread the tale.”

“Good. I had hoped the fever would carry Francesco off last night—it would have simplified matters. He knew how sick he was. He gave me his keys and his seals, without reservation.”

“So I see.”

“He will die tonight, one way or another.” The cardinal took a small glass vial from a pocket inside his robe and put it on the table. It contained a clear greenish-blue liquid. The candlelight licked and shimmered over the glass and struck rainbow reflections from the liquid itself.

“Wake him,” the cardinal said.

Ruan looked thoughtfully at the grand duke's face. He could see his eyes moving, under his eyelids. Had he continued to take the
sonnodolce
, even after suffering the apoplexy that had crippled him? If so, the cardinal would have a surprise when he gave his brother the liquid in the glass flask. The intense greenish-blue was the color of arsenic combined with an acetate of copper. It was a terrible poison, but it would not kill a man who had been taking
sonnodolce
.

He grasped the grand duke's shoulder and shook him hard.

“Wake up, Serenissimo,” he said. “Wake up—your brother is here.”

The grand duke coughed and shuddered in a brief convulsion, then slowly opened his eyes. Ruan watched, and saw the precise moment when his senses came back to him.

“Ruanno dell' Inghilterra,” he said. His voice was weak and hoarse, not like his own voice at all. “What are you doing here?”

“You no longer have the power to keep me imprisoned.”

“You no longer have any power at all,” the cardinal said. “You will die tonight for your sins, Francesco. Do you understand that?”

The grand duke turned his head and looked at his brother. After a moment he pushed himself up on his left elbow. His right shoulder and arm were twisted and too weak to support his weight.

“You would be happy if I were to die, brother,” he said. His voice was stronger and clearer. “But I think not just yet. I will live long enough to take back the keys I gave you in the depths of my sickness. To see Prince Antonio publicly proclaimed as my successor. You thought you had the red lily crown within your grasp, but I will keep it for myself a little longer.”

“You will not. I have a written confession from the woman Gianna Santi—you are surprised? Well you might be, as you sent a troop of hired bravos to kill her on the road to Bologna. She escaped with her life, at least long enough to dictate her confession, and when you and Bianca Cappello are dead I will make that document public. The boy Antonio is related by blood to neither of you.”

“The woman lies.”

“I do not think so.”

“I am better. I am not going to die tonight.”

“Magister Ruanno may have something to say about that.”

The grand duke turned his head and looked at Ruan. Sick he may have been, crippled he may have been, but he could still call up the authority that ran in his Medici blood. After a moment he smiled and lay back against his pillows. “Neither of you would dare to harm me,” he said. “Where is my Bia? She will take care of me.”

“Bia?” The cardinal acted as if he had never heard the pet name before. “If you mean Bianca Cappello, you will not see her again in this life. She is already dead, Francesco.”

Ruan had not expected that. Some men, he thought, did not need racks and thumbscrews to torture other men.

“I do not believe you,” the grand duke said. “She is the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, crowned and anointed. You would not dare.”

“It is true. Magister Ruanno here strangled her, just as Paolo Giordano Orsini strangled our sister Isabella. Just as our own brother Pietro strangled our cousin and sister-in-law Dianora. Do you remember how you wrote to them, to Pietro and to Orsini, and gave them your authorization to commit their murders? How you welcomed them back into your presence afterward, and helped them excuse themselves?”

The grand duke pushed himself up once more, this time struggling to a full sitting position. “It is not true,” he said. “Ruanno?”

Ruan said nothing.

“I will tell you this as well,” the cardinal said. “I admired the Grand Duchess Giovanna with all my heart. I used to think, sometimes—what if I had been the elder son, and she had been my wife? Did you even know that she took a pair of turtledoves as her device, upon her marriage, and
Fida Conjunctio
as her motto? A faithful union. She was faithful to the end, to a terrible death, and if I had been her husband, I would have been faithful too.”

“Giovanna,” the grand duke said. He sounded genuinely baffled. “What does she have to do with any of this? What does she have to do with Bia?”

“What does she have to do with it?” The cardinal rose, his robe like a sheet of blood. “She died at your Bia's hands. Oh, yes, I know. Magister Ruanno knows. You may have thought you silenced the woman Chiara Nerini, but you did not. She will testify against your Bia, that she struck Giovanna, and caused her to fall.”

“Giovanna struck Bianca first. It was a quarrel between two women, that is all—Bianca never intended to push her.”

“So she may have said. She will say nothing more. I saw her face turn blue, and her filthy tongue swell up—that is what it looks like when you strangle a woman. You do not know that, do you, Francesco? You have always commanded others to commit your murders for you.”

For the first time the grand duke's conviction seemed to waver. Tears welled up and streaked down over his cheeks. “Bia,” he said again. He stiffened and shuddered with another of his seizures.

“Serenissimo,” Ruan said sharply. Even those recovering from tertian fevers sometimes died suddenly in the course of such a seizure. “The formula for the
sonnodolce
. Where is it?”

The cardinal leaned forward, listening.

“The
sonnodolce
.” The grand duke opened his eyes. They were clear again. “It is safely hidden where you will never find it. Bring my Bia to me, alive and well, and I will tell you where it is.”

Ruan looked at the cardinal. The cardinal gathered his gown and seated himself again. He twisted his ring of office on his finger, as if he was making certain it would be easily slipped off when the moment came. He thought for a moment, then raised one hand to Ruan.

“Go,” he said. “Fetch the Venetian woman. Let us learn where my brother has hidden his secrets.”