The Red Lily Crown (40 page)

G
uardsmen escorted them to a room at the end of a corridor. Two of them stepped forward and threw open the doors.

The cardinal was there. He was standing to one side, half in and half out of the pool of light from the candle-branches. How much he looked like his brother sometimes, particularly in the play of light and darkness.

In the center of the room, the candlelight spilling over her in golden pools, Bianca Cappello knelt at a prie-dieu made of light-colored wood, well-worn, carved with the peahen device of Eleonora of Toledo. Her face was swollen and shiny with tears. Her head was covered with a white veil, pinned with a diamond pin, and her hair had darkened. Or had she simply stopped treating it with bleaches and sunlight and gold dust? She was no longer beautiful, no longer sensuous, but at the same time she had more dignity.

I never thought I'd see dignity, Chiara thought, when I looked at Bianca Cappello.

The rest of the room was empty.

“Here are the English alchemist and the woman Chiara Nerini, Serenissimo,” the leader of the soldiers said. “As you commanded.”

Serenissimo.

She had seen Grand Duke Francesco lying dead, yes, but even so, hearing his brother addressed with the grand-ducal title shocked her. He was truly gone, then, Francesco de' Medici, who had bought a silver descensory with a labyrinth pattern around the rim and changed her life forever. Francesco de' Medici, alchemist and prince, his favorite room at the Palazzo Vecchio a golden studiolo with metals and earths, crystals and acids and bones, concealed in compartments behind priceless paintings. Would anyone else ever find them? Would they find the secret door? It was like him, that room—a rich exterior with a hundred hidden things, some of them beautiful, some of them ugly, some of them terrifying.

Well, may his soul sink down into the fires of hell where it belonged. Perhaps the prayers of the Grand Duchess Giovanna in heaven would save him one day, because for all his wickedness she had never stopped loving him.

“Signorina Chiara,” said the cardinal. The grand duke now, although she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to think of him that way. “Good. I require your witness against this woman, that she might be punished for her sins as she deserves.”

“I will speak the truth as I saw it, my lord,” she said. “But I beg you—”

“The truth is all I desire,” he said.

Chiara nodded. She didn't look at Ruan.

“Now,” the cardinal said, turning his attention to Bianca Cappello. “My brother is dead and can no longer protect you. I wish to—”

“Your brother is dead because you poisoned him.” Bianca Cappello's voice was flat and husky, as if with tears and screaming.

“So you say,” the cardinal said. “The symptoms were the symptoms of advanced tertian fever, were they not? The seizures, the vomiting, the purging? The doctors have been treating him for such a fever for a week now, and will witness to that fact when his body is opened.”

“You poisoned him,” Donna Bianca said again. “Magister Ruanno was there.”

Chiara looked at Ruan. His face was shadowed and without expression. He didn't move. He didn't have to. It was enough that he was there.

“You poisoned him,” Bianca Cappello said for the third time. It was as if she still could not quite believe it, and was trying to convince herself. “You have hated him and wished him dead from the day he married me. Wished both of us dead.”

“From the day he married you?” the cardinal said. He might have been arguing a fine point of theology with a roomful of bishops. “You are mistaken. I have hated you from the day you polluted the Grand Duchess Giovanna's wedding day with your presence and first set your snares for my brother.”

“I did not—”

“Do not insult us all with your lies. You made the grand duchess's life an agony of sorrow and humiliation, and you caused her death in the end.”

Chiara saw Donna Bianca's hands twist together, where they lay on the prie-dieu. “I did not push her,” she said. She turned her head and looked straight into Chiara's eyes. Chiara stepped back involuntarily. “You were there,” Donna Bianca said. “If you tell the truth as you say you wish to do, you will bear witness to that. I did not push her.”

“Well, Signorina Chiara?” the cardinal said. “You were threatened by my brother, and so you held your peace. Now he is dead, and there is no one to hurt you. Tell your story, from beginning to end, the truth without omission.”

So. Here it was. The moment she had dreamed of, longed for, given up hope of ever seeing. There was life and feeling in the moment still—she wanted Bianca Cappello to pay for all the anguish she had caused with her ambition and selfishness. She wanted to bear public witness to the Grand Duchess Giovanna and how kind she had been. How she had loved her children. How she had loved her little hounds. How she had loved God. How, somehow, she had loved her husband, for all the misery and shame he had brought her. All that love, hidden behind the steely pride of her Imperial blood.

But even so—to say words that would bring about another woman's death? Even if they were true words? Even if the other woman deserved the death a hundred times over? Even if she had doubled a leather leash and struck Vivi hard enough to make her yelp with fright and pain?

Some people said revenge was hot. Some said it was cold. In truth it was dry and bitter as ashes.

“The grand duchess wished to go to the Palazzo Pitti that day,” Chiara said slowly. The images welled up in her memory, clear as clear. The grand duchess's voice.
The gardens are so lovely, and it is warm for April
. The dogs barking as their leashes were snapped on. “We set out to take the dogs with us. The grand duchess spoke to little Prince Filippo. The nurse told her that he had said the word ‘Mama,' and that he was a good boy.”

The room was utterly silent. The cardinal and Ruan were like ghosts, in front of her and behind her, one scarlet, one black. Chiara saw only Bianca Cappello, kneeling in the candlelight.

“We started down, but the old dogs couldn't manage the stairs. The grand duchess sent her other women—” She closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing. The memories were flooding back, and they made her head hurt so much. She needed time to sort them out and put them in the proper order. “She sent them back upstairs with the two old dogs. I stayed, because I had Vivi with me. And I didn't want to leave the grand duchess entirely alone.”

The cardinal moved, distracting her. She looked at him and saw that he had bowed his head and put his hand over his eyes.

“A woman came up to us and spoke to the grand duchess. She was dressed as a servant, but when I saw her face I knew her. It was you, Donna Bianca.”

“I confess it freely,” Bianca Cappello said. “I was there.”

“You were there to spy upon her.”

“I confess that as well.”

“She didn't acknowledge your presence. She asked me to help her walk down the rest of the stairs. You pushed me aside, and when I stumbled I stepped on poor Vivi's paw. She yelped with pain. That made the grand duchess angry, that you would push me, and that Vivi would be hurt.”

Touch either Signorina Chiara or her dog again, and I will make you sorry
.

“It was only a dog.”

Chiara could feel anger welling up in her heart. “Only a dog? She feels pain, just as you do. I haven't forgotten that you struck her when you took her away from Le Murate.”

Donna Bianca looked down and didn't answer. Chiara waited for a moment, to calm her temper.

“The grand duchess asked you why you were dressed as you were,” she went on at last. “You told her you didn't need silks and jewels to prove your worth, or an iron corset to keep your back straight.”

The cardinal lifted his head. “Venetian
sgualdrina
,” he hissed.

Donna Bianca turned and looked at him. “You call me names for the words I used?” she said. “What did the grand duchess say then, Signorina Chiara? Surely you remember that as well.”

“She said an iron bridle to control your tongue would be a fine thing.”

Donna Bianca nodded, as if she had been vindicated. She said nothing more.

“More hard things were said, on both sides. Then, Donna Bianca, you called little Prince Filippo a monster. You told her the grand duke as well used such words to describe his one legitimate son.”

“It was a lie. I confess it. I wished to hurt her.”

“She struck you across the mouth at that. I remember that I was shocked—it was unlike the grand duchess to allow herself to be provoked. I don't think she'd ever struck any other person deliberately, not once in her whole life. But you called her son a monster.”

“And that is when she fell. She struck me, and lost her balance.”

“You struck back. You'd had a lot more practice slapping people, hadn't you? I jumped to catch her and I would have, I would have saved her—but you struck her back and hit her shoulder and she fell.”

Donna Bianca said nothing for a long time. At last, very quietly, she said, “I struck her back. I confess it. But I did not push her, and I did not mean for her to fall.”

“You struck her,” the cardinal said. “You confess it. And do you confess as well that you conspired with the grand duke to introduce a changeling son into his household? Do you confess that the woman Gianna Santi's deposition is truthful—that the two of you killed at least five women, and some unknown number of other children, in order to achieve your end?”

Donna Bianca looked down at her hands again. She knows, Chiara thought. She knows she's going to die tonight, and with the grand duke dead before her, she doesn't care. She doesn't want to live without him.

Steadily Donna Bianca said, “I confess it.”

“Very well.” The cardinal straightened. “Magister Ruanno, ask my secretary to step in, if you please. I will also require the priest and the executioner.”

“Serenissimo,” Chiara said. The words
priest
and
executioner
made her stomach lurch unpleasantly. “A moment, I beg you.”

Ruan did not move. The cardinal turned and looked at her.

“I know the favor you wish to beg,” he said. “Giovanna would have done the same—asked me to spare her life, to let her live out her years behind the walls of a convent, in solitude and penance.”

“No,” Chiara said. “I am not asking for her life. She knows what I want.”

Vivi. Where is Vivi?

“I want no one to beg for my life,” Bianca Cappello said, in a low voice. “Thank you, Signorina Chiara, for sparing me that. Your hound is with the kennel master at the Palazzo Pitti. She is perfectly well, and I am sorry I struck her.”

“Enough,” the cardinal said. “Magister Ruanno, I gave you an order.”

Without a word Ruan bowed and went out. As he turned, his hand brushed against hers, for the tiniest fraction of a second. It might have been nothing but chance, but Chiara knew it wasn't. It was Ruan saying
Have courage
.

He came back in with two men. The priest was a Minorite in black and white, tonsured and sandaled. He had his hood up and his face was hidden as he murmured Latin prayers.

The executioner might have been an ordinary courtier, dressed in a dark red doublet of
moccaiaro
cloth and plain hose. Chiara had expected a hulking monster in leather, his chest bare and sweating, but this man—he was much of a height with Ruan, and had the same well-muscled shoulders. From swinging axes and pulling ropes, no doubt. He was masked and hooded and gloved, so no inch of his skin showed. In his right hand he carried a garrote, a simple loop of braided leather with a wooden handle securely knotted to each end.

He didn't speak. He bowed to the cardinal and stood in silence, awaiting his orders.

“Confess your sins,” the cardinal said to Bianca Cappello. “Prepare yourself.”

The priest stepped close to where Donna Bianca knelt, and put his head down to hers. They whispered together. Chiara wondered what she was confessing. The truth about her first husband's death? The truth about Don Antonio's birth? The truth about that night in the poison labyrinth? Or any truth at all?

She finished her confession. The priest straightened and held up his hand.
“
Ego absolvo te a peccatis tuis
,”
he said.
“
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
.”
He traced the sign of the cross in the air, and stepped back. Donna Bianca lifted her head and looked at the executioner. She saw the garrote—she swallowed, and then slowly and quite deliberately reached up and removed her veil. Her hair was braided and twisted, leaving her neck bare. She let the thin silk drift to the floor, and she put the diamond pin on the prie-dieu. Her jewels would be the executioner's due.

She stretched her neck, raising her chin, lowering her shoulders.

The swan, Chiara thought. Her device.

Then she closed her eyes and her lips moved. Was she praying, or was she whispering to the grand duke—
I will be with you soon, my Franco. Your Bia will be with you soon
. Her face seemed lit from within, as if she was expecting some enormous pleasure. But then, the things the grand duke had done to her, the ways he had taught her to take her delights, they were not so different, were they, from what she faced now?

The executioner stepped behind her. He drew out the garrote to its full length between his gloved hands, as if testing its strength. Chiara saw the muscles in his arms shift. She wanted to close her eyes but she couldn't look away.

The executioner waited. His eyes, behind the mask, shifted to the cardinal.

The priest prayed.

The cardinal lifted his hand.

The executioner crossed his arms, looped the garrote around Bianca Cappello's throat and jerked it tight with quick and terrible precision. Her eyes widened briefly and then went blank. Her body sagged against the loop of braided leather, stretching her neck all the further. He knew exactly where to place the loop, Chiara thought with horror, just like Ruan knew how to wrap his arm around my neck that first day in the grand duke's golden studiolo, and make me unconscious in an instant.