The Red Lily Crown (41 page)

She managed to close her eyes at last. She clenched her fists, the crooked fingers aching. There was no sound but the breathing of the executioner, harsh with his effort, and the faint creaking of the garrote's braided leather. Let it be over, she thought. Let it be over quickly.

A soft sound, with the rustling of cloth. Chiara opened her eyes.

The executioner had let Bianca Cappello's body slump forward against the prie-dieu. She looked quite natural, as if she had put her head down to pray, and her face was hidden. He was looping the garrote into coils as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, to strangle a woman and leave her body lying limp in her silks and laces like a wilted flower.

When he was finished, he bowed to the cardinal, still without a word. The cardinal nodded to him. He picked up the diamond pin and went out of the room, followed by the priest. Chiara realized she was holding her breath, and let it out in a great sigh. She wanted to cross herself, but her arms wouldn't move.

“She has died of the same tertian fever that carried off the grand duke,” the cardinal said. “Unfortunate, but such fevers are common, and she insisted on nursing him herself.”

“The mark on her throat?” Ruan said.

“I will have her face covered with a silk cloth when they open the bodies, for her modesty's sake. It will hide her throat as well. You may be sure the physicians will point out all the marks and symptoms of the fever when they draw up the death certificates.”

Yes, Chiara thought. We may be sure. They will want to please the new grand duke. She stepped closer to Ruan. She was a little afraid to look at him, but even so she wanted to feel the warmth of his body close to hers. Life, in a room where death was so close—

“Serenissimo,” Ruan said. “Shall we leave for Florence immediately? Signorina Chiara can lead us through the labyrinth to your brother's hiding-place, and then she and I will collect her little dog and be off to Cornwall.”

Footsteps. Heavy ones. Metal and leather creaking. Chiara's knees turned to water with fear, and she looked around.

The six soldiers.

“We will indeed leave for Florence immediately,” the new grand duke said. He smiled. “I will have my brother's mithridate for myself, and the two of you—well, lead me to the center of this labyrinth my brother spoke of, and perhaps I will allow you to live.”

T
hey rode south to Signa and crossed the ancient bridge to Lastra, then followed the Arno east to the city. A moon just past full had begun to rise in the darkening sky. The grand duke pressed the horses, and when one of them cast a shoe, he left the horse and the guardsman behind. With the remaining five guardsmen they arrived at the iron gate to the poison labyrinth as the moon reached its height.

The grand duke gave his brother's keys to one of the guardsmen, who tried each one in turn until he found the right one.

“Take the lantern, Signorina Chiara.” The grand duke gestured to one of the guardsmen, who produced a lantern from his saddlebag and struck a spark with his flint to light it. “Now. Lead the way. You and you”—he gestured to two of the guards—“accompany me. Have your blades at the ready, if you please. The rest of you, remain here. Allow no one to enter, and no one but me to leave.”

He's going to kill us, Chiara thought, no matter what he said. I wouldn't want to be one of those guards, either, because they're going to end up at the bottom of the Arno right along with us. He doesn't want anyone to know about the hiding-place or what's in it.

“Take care you walk in the center of the path,” she said aloud. She lifted the lantern, and its wavering light made the intertwined tree limbs writhe like serpents. “The plants are poisoned, and the thorns will kill us all.”

Ruan knew, of course. He'd helped create the
sonnodolce
from the beginning. He'd taken it himself for years. But in his prison—

You will not die or go mad without it. He gave me none after he imprisoned me, and although it was bad for a while, I survived.

Five years it had been for him without the drug. She herself was immune to the poison of the thorns, and that secret would be her weapon. Ruan, though, Ruan was as vulnerable as the grand duke and his guardsmen. A scratch, a single prick that drew blood, could kill him.

She looked at him. He looked back at her and nodded very slightly.
Lead us to the center, where there will be room to move safely. I will watch for my chance to take a blade from one of the guards. I will avoid the thorns—but if I cannot, at least I will give you a chance to escape.

Was she reading his thoughts? Or did she simply know him so well she knew what he planned to do?

She drew one deep breath and walked into the labyrinth. Ruan walked behind her, then the two guardsmen with their swords drawn, and the grand duke behind them all. When they had made their way around the first double fold and back to the straight path, the grand duke said, “So this is the labyrinth where my brother concealed his hiding-place. I have walked in these gardens a hundred times, and never knew such a thing was behind the iron gate.”

Chiara said nothing. They walked on. She thought of the night she had stumbled through the maze alone, without a lantern, burning with thorn-scratches and dizzy with the effects of the
sonnodolce
. So long ago, and in the summer, not October. She had been immune to the poison then, and she would be immune now. But Ruan, Ruan—

The path curved, then doubled back upon itself. The grand duke didn't speak again. Chiara held the lantern high. Most of the roses had finished blooming, but there were a few gallant blossoms left, enough to perfume the night air with their scent. The hornbeams had no scent, but the yew trees smelled green and medicinal, like the bags of rosemary and eucalyptus leaves the nuns at Le Murate had placed between their folded linens.

At last they came out into the clearing at the center of the maze. They clustered together, all of them keeping as far away from the thorns as they could get.

“There's a stone,” Chiara said. “In the very center. When I found it, the night I was in the maze before, I didn't think it was anything but a marker, laid down to help the original workmen lay out the circles of the path. But it has carvings. Look.”

She knelt by the stone—the grass wasn't lush and velvety now, but dry and crisp in the October chill—and placed the lantern beside it. One of the guardsmen pushed Ruan to his knees facing her. The grand duke came up and knelt down himself.

“It is a meteor,” Ruan said. “A stone that falls from the sky, rich with iron. Look at the holes, like bubbles. It has been so hot the stone itself has boiled.”

“I have heard of such things,” the grand duke said. He touched the stone. “They are valuable.”

Chiara ran her fingers over the carvings. The shield and balls of the Medici, the lily of Florence, and the weasel, symbol of boldness and resolution, Francesco de' Medici's personal device. A fourth design she couldn't identify.

“This is the place,” she said. “I'm sure of it.”

“We must dig under it to be certain,” the grand duke said. He stood up and brushed his hands together fastidiously. “Signorina Chiara, you will do the work. Remember there are two swords at Magister Ruanno's throat, and at your own back as well.”

He drew his dagger and tossed it to the grass beside her. Wordlessly she picked it up and began to cut away thick sods of grass from around the stone. It was sunk into the ground more deeply than it appeared, and it was very heavy, heavier than it should have been. Ruan had said—rich with iron. That was why it had such strange, rust-red patches and veins.

She stabbed the blade into the earth. Every thrust sent a shock of effort through her arms and shoulders, half-pain, half-pleasure. She scooped out the loosened earth and stabbed some more. She was driving the blade into Ferdinando de' Medici's treacherous heart. She was piercing Bianca Cappello's hand as it swung to strike the grand duchess's shoulder. As it doubled the leash and struck Vivi. She was stabbing Francesco de' Medici with his initiations and his secrets and his black, black shadows. Stabbing the men who had ridden her down so many years ago as she played in the street with her brother, then galloped on, leaving their lives in ruins. Stabbing Babbo, even, who had hated her for surviving when Gian was dead. Who had planned her own death in his mad quest to bring Gian back, and haunted her down through the years with his demons' voices.

You made a blast and a fire
, she screamed in her head,
and you died. I made a blast and a fire, and I survived. I'll survive this, too, you'll see. I'll prove to you that I deserve to live
—

Abruptly the knife struck metal. The impact jarred her wrists. She lifted her head and realized she was sweating with effort. Her face was wet and her eyes were blurred and stinging.

“Chiara,” Ruan said.

“Be silent,” said the grand duke. “What have you found, Signorina Chiara?”

“It's a box of some kind.”

She scooped the loose earth away from the box and dug a little deeper. She tried to lift the box out of the hole, but it was too heavy. It was the size of a footstool or a little larger, made of metal, too tarnished to identify. Around its sides there were more engravings, the same four figures that were incised into the stone.

“It's locked,” she said. “A loop and latch. The earth has eaten away at it—I think I can break it.”

“No. Put the dagger aside, Signorina Chiara, and stand up. Both of you, step back to the edge of the clearing, if you please.”

The guardsmen swung their swords forward. Chiara put the dagger down on the grass—a dagger, dulled from digging, wouldn't be any use against blades in the hands of two skilled swordsmen anyway—and stood up. She looked at Ruan and looked away, so she wouldn't reveal what she knew he meant to do.

Together they stepped back to the hedgerow.

“Another step.”

Ruan edged between her and the guardsmen's blades. The thorns were no more than a hand's breadth from his back, gleaming in the moonlight. Chiara felt his fingers close around hers briefly.

“Step back,” the grand duke said again. “I am giving you a choice, both of you—the thorns, or a sword.”

Chiara closed her eyes. She thought of all the drops of
sonnodolce
that had fallen on her wrist, for years and years, from that very first night in the bookshop's cellar—

Ruan moved before she could finish the thought, pushing her to one side and at the same time ducking under the first guardsman's blade to grasp the second man's forearm with both his hands. Was it the moonlight that made everything seem to happen so slowly, or the flicker of the lantern, or some magic effect of the ancient stone from the farthest heavens? She saw the grand duke's mouth open, shouting an order. The first guardsman began to turn.

If Ruan had been himself, with the hard heavy muscles he'd lost to his long imprisonment, he would have broken the guard's arm with a single jerk. As it was, he pulled the man to the grass and rolled over and over, grappling for his sword as they lurched perilously close to the thorns on the other side of the clearing. The first guardsman swung his blade, looking for an opening, unwilling to kill his brother-in-arms in order to kill Ruan. The grand duke jumped back, to the other side of the stone. He reached for Chiara.

—it didn't kill me, and now it's going to save our lives.

She turned and deliberately grasped a double handful of the rose canes. The thorns sank into her palm and fingers—saints and angels, it was pain like she'd never known before. Grimly she tore the rose canes away from the bush. Blood ran down her wrists, soaked into her sleeves, and dripped into the grass. The grand duke cried out and pulled his hands away. The second guardsman had Ruan pinned at last, so close to the hedgerow—blood on Ruan's face, from the fight or from a thorn? The first guardsman had his sword arched back over his head, preparing for a killing blow.

With a wordless shriek of fury and horror she swung the bunch of canes at the man with the sword. They lashed the air like whips, tearing his neck and back and shoulder, slicing through his padded woolen doublet as if it was the thinnest silk. He stiffened and shuddered, and although he managed to swing the sword down he had lost his aim and it thrust into the ground instead of into Ruan's heart. Chiara struck him again with the rose canes and he fell.

The second guardsman had stumbled to his feet. Ruan rolled away from the hedgerow, reaching for the pommel of the abandoned sword. Chiara slashed the second guardsman's face with the canes and he screamed like a woman, throwing up his arms to protect his eyes. Ruan dragged the sword out of the ground and came to his feet, gasping with exertion.

It was over. That quickly. Both guardsmen lay twitching, dying, dead. The grand duke faced them, weaponless. All around them, the poison thorns, the moonlight, and utter silence.

“Ruan,” she gasped. “Your face. Did one of the thorns—”

“No,
meur ras dhe Duw
. Just the guardsman's fist.”

“There are guards at the gate,” the grand duke said. “If you kill me, they will never let you leave the maze.”

“Perhaps,” Ruan said. “Perhaps not. Chiara, are you all right? Your hands—”

She dropped the rose canes. Her hands felt numb.

“Let them bleed,” she said. “Nonna always said it was good for wounds to bleed a while, because it cleans out the evil humors.”

“You will never leave the maze,” the grand duke said again. “Not without me.”

She looked at him. She had never had such a large dose of the
sonnodolce
, all at once, and it made her dizzy. All her senses ran together, sight becoming sound, touch becoming taste, scent becoming sight again. The man standing before them, dressed in his rich scarlet and with a huge cabochon sapphire glowing on his finger—was it Ferdinando de' Medici or Francesco de' Medici, or some incomprehensible combination of the two? Whichever it was, it was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. She could taste the red lily crown on his head, hear the sharp, fleshy scent of lilies, feel the harshness of his breathing. She could smell his thoughts.
I have not killed my brother and his Venetian whore, only to die here in secret, at the hands of an English alchemist and a bookseller's daughter
.

“I will give you gold,” he said. “More than you have ever dreamed of.”

“Chiara?”

It was Ruan's voice. She turned slowly. From that first moment in the Piazza della Signoria when he had driven away the guardsmen with his whip, through terror and learning, love and hate, loneliness and pleasure beyond anything else she'd ever known, he had been there, behind her, beside her, holding her. He had thrown himself at the guardsmen knowing he couldn't prevail against them both, knowing that if he was pushed into the thorns he would die, all to give her a chance to fight for them both, and save both their lives.

“Ruan,” she said. “I'm all right—a little dizzy from the
sonnodolce
.”

“It is a miracle that you are alive at all,” he said. “That either one of us is alive.”

She said again, “I'm all right. The box, Ruan. We must open the box.”

He stepped forward. The grand duke stepped backward one step and stopped, afraid. Ruan lifted the sword and said, “Turn around.”

“I saved you,” the grand duke said. His voice was high. “You would still be in that hole in the rock if I had not set you free.”

“Turn around.”

“A priest. You cannot kill me without a priest.”

“Turn around.”

The grand duke turned. Pale and weakened Ruan might have been, but he still had his height and his peculiar skills. He dropped the sword and got his forearm around the grand duke's throat, right up under his chin. With his other hand he pushed the back of the grand duke's head forward.

The grand duke collapsed as if he'd been poleaxed.

Chiara threw herself down beside the half-uncovered box, picked up the dagger, and began to strike the rusted hasp of the lock. She seemed to have strength beyond anything she'd ever had before, although the strange sensations induced by the
sonnodolce
were already fading. After a few blows the hasp broke away. She brushed the pieces aside and put back the lid.