The Red Lily Crown (8 page)

She did not dare look down, but she could feel the heat of the fire beneath the golden grate. It licked at her bare toes.

“You must walk over the grate,” the prince said. “It is the final test.”

Slowly, very slowly, Chiara stretched out her arms, with the sieve in her hands. She looked at Magister Ruanno; he smiled and nodded slightly. Then she shifted her gaze to the prince's face, looked straight into his dark eyes, and deliberately shook the sieve. The water cascaded down and she heard the hiss as it hit the hot metal grate, drenched the coals, drowned the fire. The fumes stung her eyes. Her hands, her whole body, shook with triumph. Without looking down she stepped on the grate—hot, yes, but not enough to burn if she stepped quickly—and crossed over it.

“I walked across your golden grate,” she said. Her voice did not sound like her own at all. “And carried water in your silver sieve. I drank your black water and held it inside me and hold it still. Your red ribbon measured my neck perfectly, down to the last hairsbreadth. Never dare doubt that I'm a virgin, pure and untouched, worthy to be your
soror mystica
.”

She walked down the three steps and cast the sieve to the floor at the prince's feet. It made a clanging metallic sound on the stones, flipped over and rolled a few feet. She didn't care if it was dented, or what happened to it. She didn't care that she was naked, with her hair loose down her back. She didn't kneel, but stood straight and proud.

For a moment, there was absolute silence.

Then the prince rose from his throne. “You have passed through the tests, Chiara Nerini,” he said. “Magister Ruanno, the habit.”

The foreigner picked up a bundle of cloth, neatly folded. It was the creamy color of undyed wool. He shook it out to reveal a simple robe, nothing more than a wide, uncut and unsewn length of cloth with an opening in the center for her head to go through.

“Gather up your hair,” he said.

She reached back and pulled the heavy length of her hair forward.

He dropped the cloth over her shoulders. It fell straight to the floor, front and back; when she threw her hair back and stretched out her arms, she found it was wide enough to reach her fingertips on either side. Wool, yes, but it wasn't coarse and scratchy like the clothing she was used to. It was smooth and fine and fell in wide, graceful folds.

The prince nodded. He looked pleased.

“Now,” he said, “you must vow to remain a virgin while you are in my service, upon pain of death. Magister Ruanno, the relic.”

Relic? Pain of death? All Chiara wanted was a chance to slip behind the black curtain, and now there was a relic?

Magister Ruanno stepped over to one of the bookcases on a side wall, then returned with a reliquary made of carved rock crystal in the form of a scallop shell, with a frame of gold and a clasp of gold and pearls and blue jewels—blue, the Holy Virgin's color. Inside the shell, folded over and over upon itself, was a strip of ordinary-looking fabric, dyed green and embroidered with gold thread. The green was much faded but even through the thickness of the rock crystal, the gold glinted in the candlelight. He handed the reliquary to the prince.

“What is it?” Chiara said.

The prince made a scornful sound—
you
may be a virgin but you know nothing
. Magister Ruanno said gently, “It is the Sacra Cintola, the sacred girdle of the Holy Virgin Mary, which has been kept in the Cathedral of Santo Stefano at Prato for four hundred years and more. The Princess Giovanna is a faithful devotee of the relic, and so of course the priests and the sindaco of Prato are happy to permit the prince to bring it into Florence for one night.”

“It is the greatest relic of the Holy Virgin in Christendom,” the prince said. “You will put your hands upon it when you swear.”

Chiara pressed her thighs together. The need to pass water was becoming intense. For some reason the holy relic seemed to suck away her triumph at having passed through the prince's tests, and make her humiliatingly aware that she was nothing but a fifteen-year-old bookseller's daughter, helpless in front of these powerful men in their dark robes.

“I will swear,” she said.

The prince offered the reliquary. She put her hands on it. The rock crystal was cool and polished, the fluting of the scallop shell perfectly carved.

“Swear, then,” the prince said.

“With my hands on the Sacra—the Sacra Cintola of the Holy Virgin,” Chiara said, a little desperately. “I swear I will remain a virgin for as long as I am in the service of the prince.”

“Upon penalty of death.”

“I will remain a virgin, upon penalty of death, for as long as I am in the service of the prince.”

The prince made the sign of the cross. “Amen,” he said. “You are sworn.”

He put the reliquary down and took a silver chain from the table beside his throne. It was hung with a pendant stone with a milky, opalescent sheen, mostly white but with half-transparent tinges of blue and pink and gold. It wasn't a pearl—pearls didn't have that strange transparency. It was big, the size and shape of a dove's egg, and polished, as if it had been worn and re-set and worn again since the creation of the world.

“This is a moonstone from the kingdom of Ruhuna, on an island far to the east, beyond Persia, beyond the Silk Road,” the prince said. “The moon, the moonstone itself and the element silver in the setting are symbols of virginity. You will wear this stone as a mark that you are set aside from the world as our
soror mystica
. I have a stone also, a diamond set in gold, symbolizing the sun. Magister Ruanno's stone is hematite set in iron and copper, symbols of the earth.”

Chiara stepped forward and he put the chain around her neck. She had never owned a piece of jewelry and never worn a necklace before. It felt heavy and unnatural. The loose folds of the tunic-cape-whatever-it-was felt light and clean, and smelled of herbs.

“From this day forward—” the prince began.

Suddenly the door to the corridor opened. Dark and damp and the outside world flooded in. There were half-a-dozen uniformed guardsmen there. No one said anything, but the prince's expression changed, hardened. Without another word or a backward glance he walked out of the room. Magister Ruanno started to follow him, and then paused.

“You did well,” he said. He looked—not surprised, exactly, or at least not surprised by anything she had done. Surprised at himself, perhaps, for being pleased she had succeeded.

“I would have failed if you hadn't told me what you told me,” she said.

He touched the hair at her left temple with one finger, almost as if he was pointing at the scar. But no, all he did was untangle a wisp that had caught itself in the silver links of the chain. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Wait here now, Monella Chiara, and someone will come for you.”

He went out.

She waited a moment to be certain he wouldn't return, then went behind the black curtain. There she found a prosaic basin, more blue and white porcelain, and fine clean towels. She half expected her piss to be black, after drinking the black water. But it was reassuringly clear and light. When she emerged from behind the curtain, the crystals on the shelves glittered in the candlelight, and the skulls grinned at her, empty-eyed.

A woman was waiting. She was short and thick-bodied and had plump wrinkled cheeks like last season's apples; her gown and sleeves and headdress were fine enough but not trimmed with silver or gold or jewels. Beside her stood a little hound, parti-colored black and white and russet, with long silky ears. It was wearing a collar of shiny purple fabric like silk, and although the woman did not have jewels, the dog did, pearls and purple stones sewn to its collar with silver thread.

“I am Donna Jimena Osorio,” the woman said. “Related by blood to the late Duchess”—she crossed herself—“Eleonora of Toledo. She invited me to Florence to manage her daughter Donna Isabella's household, and so I have done with all my heart, for thirty years and more. This”—she gestured to the dog, which was looking up at Chiara with dark, intelligent eyes—“is Rina, Donna Isabella's special pet. You are to come with us now.”

“I want to go home,” Chiara said. She hadn't realized how much she wanted to go home until she said the words. “My Nonna will be afraid for me. My little sisters will miss me. Please, Donna Jimena? I beg you. Just for an hour—no one will ever know.”

“The prince has forbidden it.”

“Please.”

“Your Nonna knows where you are. How do you think the prince knew your name, and your father's name? Magister Ruanno found out for him, as he finds out so many things, and he spoke with Mona Agnesa himself. That is your Nonna's name, is it not?”

Chiara nodded. She didn't know what to say.

“Now come with me.”

“Where have the prince and Magister Ruanno gone?”

“To the Villa di Castello,” Donna Jimena said. She crossed herself again. “Grand Duke Cosimo is dead. Everything is changed from this night forward, for you and I and everyone in Florence are now subjects of Francesco de' Medici, the first of his name to be Grand Duke of Tuscany.”

Isabella

The Star of the House of Medici

The Villa di Castello

21 APRIL 1574

B
reathing hard—grief? fear? simple exertion?—Francesco de' Medici stepped into the room where his father's body lay. It was full dark, and the Villa di Castello blazed with torches and candles. The light wavered and rippled, and there were eyes, eyes everywhere.

Cosimo de' Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had devoted his ambitious, ruthless and vainglorious life to the
precedenza
of his name, his city and himself, had been dead for two or three hours, no more. His body, once so robust, had withered over the past months with sickness and inactivity. He looked like an old man, much older than his fifty-five years, his eyes as hollow as a skull's eyes. The oil of the chrism gleamed on his forehead and lips and the backs of his hands.

Every man in the room, even the priests, bowed to the new grand duke. Some made deeper reverences than others. The new grand duke noticed every detail, measured every inclination of the head and bending of the knee. He would remember.

He began, however, by kneeling beside his father's body and reciting the
De Profundis
. He did not care whether his father's iniquities were forgiven or not, but he wanted his own reign to begin with a public act of filial piety his secretaries could describe in their letters to the pope and to the kings and queens of Europe. He said the Latin words by rote, all the while thinking of alchemy, of his laboratory, of his English alchemist and the girl Chiara Nerini, his
soror mystica
now, initiated and vowed. She would make the difference, and the
Lapis Philosophorum
would be his at last. When he had finished the psalm he stood up and looked about him.

“Where,” he demanded, “is Signora Cammilla?”

The priests and physicians and courtiers murmured and looked away. One young fellow, braver than the others, perhaps, or less well-versed in the intricacies of the Medici court, said, “She has retired to her apartments, Serenissimo, to dress herself in the proper mourning garments for a grand duke's widow.”

“I have garments in mind for her.” The new grand duke gestured to two of his gentlemen. “See to moving my father's body to the Pitti Palace at once. Send for carpenters and upholsterers, so that a proper catafalque may be constructed. Also engage the embalmers, and notify my secretaries and messengers—letters must be sent.”

The two gentlemen ran out of the room.

“You, priests,” he continued. “I desire that there will be no fewer than six priests attending my father's body at all times, praying for his soul.”

The priests looked furtively at each other, counting. There were seven of them. All of them clustered around the bed, knelt, and reached for their beads.

“Physicians, you are needed no longer. You may apply to my majordomo for your fees.”

The physicians left. There was a distinct flavor of relief in their flight. Bereaved sons so often held physicians to blame for a father's death.

“You.” The grand duke indicated the young man who had spoken. “Lead me to Signora Cammilla's apartments.”

“But she—”

“Lead me.”

The young man went out, and the grand duke followed him. After him trailed his remaining gentlemen, pushing each other unobtrusively for position. The apartments in question were at the back of the villa, with windows overlooking the garden. The grand duke knew the rooms well—they had been his mother's, in the days of his childhood. He did not remember Eleonora of Toledo fondly, but it enraged him that his father's morganatic wife—little more than a mistress, and four years younger than he himself, by the bleeding severed neck of the Baptist—had dared to occupy them.

“Open the door,” he said.

“But Serenissimo, Donna Cammilla asked to be undisturbed in her grief.”

“Signora Cammilla,” the grand duke said, stressing the lesser title, “will be disturbed if it is my pleasure to disturb her. Open the door.”

The young man pushed the door open, and the grand duke walked in. Two waiting-women froze in attitudes of surprise. One held a pair of silver scissors and a red silk skirt-front embroidered with rubies and pearls; she was in the midst of cutting the gems from the decorated fabric and collecting them in a small leather box. The other woman had a glass of golden wine and a plate of cakes on a tray.

At a gesture from the grand duke, two of his gentlemen moved forward to take the women into custody. The woman with the scissors tried to run, slashing at her captor with the pointed blades. The other one dropped her tray—a smash of glass, a spray of wine, a scatter of sticky cakes bouncing and rolling—and screamed a warning. The grand duke walked on serenely through the chaos, past the inner receiving room and into the privy bedchamber.

Cammilla Martelli was on her feet, with three more waiting-ladies surrounding her—they had all heard the woman in the anteroom scream. Her hair, a bright terra-cotta auburn that clearly had its origin in a dye-pot, was loose over her shoulders; her night-gown was rich but wrinkled and spotted by wear, tied carelessly so her heavy breasts were half-exposed. She thrust a bundle of fabric into the open chest behind her and faced her stepson, her head thrown back like a wild mare's.

“How dare you?” Her voice was high and edged with fear. “I am mourning for your father, and no one, not even you, has the right to interfere with me.”

“I have the right to interfere with anyone I choose.” The grand duke walked across the room and pushed her aside unceremoniously. She stumbled and would have fallen if one of her ladies had not caught her. “I have the right to decide whether you live or die,
matrigna
. What are you doing with this?”

He picked up the bundle of fabric. It was a camicia in fine white silk, decorated with black work. A silver needle dangled at the end of a piece of thread. He jerked the thread loose and the hem of the camicia unraveled, spilling a glittering necklace of emeralds and pearls onto the floor. The grand duke picked it up. For a moment he was a child again, sulky at being forced to recite a Latin exercise for a group of ambassadors when all he really wanted was to be left alone with his rocks and bird-skulls. The emerald-and-pearl necklace had looped three times around his mother's neck as she pointed out his errors in front of them all.

“My mother's jewels,” he said. His pleasant, almost conversational tone was the one Bianca—his Bia—had learned to fear the most. Bia would not defy him as his father's second wife was daring to do. “Sewn into the hem of your camicia. And you ask how I dare?”

“They are my jewels now!” Cammilla snatched for the necklace. The grand duke held it out of her reach. “Your father gave them to me.”

“So you say.”

“He wrote it in a letter. I have every right to the jewels, and to everything he gave me. I was his wife, however much you and your brothers and your sister hated me, and I stayed with him when he was sick, fed him with my own hands. I earned it all.”

“All?” A new voice, a woman's. Everyone turned. There in the doorway stood the grand duke's sister Isabella, the favorite of their father; with his blessing and complicity she had never gone to live at her husband's dreary castle at Bracciano, but had remained in Florence where she lived in luxurious grandeur among the Medici. She was three years older than Cammilla Martelli, but she had a knack of surrounding herself with such a vivid golden glamour that she made her young stepmother look draggletailed and faded. Crowding into the room behind her were Don Pietro, the youngest of the four living Medici children, and his beautiful young cousin-wife Donna Dianora.

“All?” Isabella demanded again. “What exactly did he give you?”

“Sister.” The grand duke's voice was cold. “Our father may have encouraged informality from you, but I do not. When you enter my presence you will make the proper obeisance.”

Brother and sister stared at each other. Their eyes were the same, brown and gold flecked with gray; everything else about them was different. Isabella's emotions were there on her face for anyone to read, outrage, hatred, frustration, cunning. Her eyes, this night, were swollen and reddened with tears. The grand duke's face was blank. Only his Bia, and to some extent the foreign alchemist Ruanno dell' Inghilterra, could ever discern his thoughts.

Isabella looked away first. She sank into a deep curtsy, allowing herself the luxury of making it too deep, too mocking. She straightened and said, “Your excellency, the highest and most illustrious grand duke my brother, I present you with my deepest condolences on the death of our beloved father, and my most humble compliments on your own accession to his titles and properties.”

The grand duke nodded. For the moment, he thought, I will allow her to believe that I accept her extravagant homage as genuine. He looked to Don Pietro and Donna Dianora. After a moment they made their proper reverences as well.

“Now,” the grand duke said, “that we have our own positions properly established, perhaps we should make arrangements for Signora Cammilla.”

“I agree, Serenissimo,” Isabella said. “Signora Cammilla, what do you mean when you say you have a right to everything our father gave you? What things, exactly?”

“I need not make an account to you,” Cammilla said. Her voice shook. So many Medici in one room at the same time were enough to make anyone's voice shake. “I have documents, letters—it is all mine and I will keep it, and I will take you to the courts if you try to take it away from me.”

“Fishwife,” Isabella said. Scorn shot through and through the single word. “Shrieking of courts. That necklace, Serenissimo. I remember it—it belonged to our mother.”

“So it did. I came upon Signora Cammilla sewing it into the hem of her camicia.”

Isabella's eyes narrowed. “Stealing it, then.”

“I was not stealing it!” Cammilla shook off her woman's supporting arms and stepped forward. She was brave enough, one had to grant her that, and not entirely a fool. She could not curtsy properly, dressed in a half-tied night-gown, but she made an awkward bend of her knees and bob of her head. “It is mine, Serenissimo, the gift of your father.”

“And the jewels your woman was cutting off a red skirt, in the other room? Those are yours as well?”

“Yes, Serenissimo.”

The grand duke walked over to the open chest, dropped the necklace in, and picked up a casket of carved and polished sandalwood. He put back the lid. Again he was back in his childhood, in his mother's apartments, standing stiffly beside her as old Bronzino painted a portrait of the two of them together. Two strings of enormous pearls she had worn, one with a jewel attached, a large square yellow diamond set in a circle of gold, with a pendant pearl shaped like a teardrop. That same jewel, that same smoky yellow diamond—

He took the pendant out of the casket and held it up.

“And this?” His voice was dangerously soft.

“I will make you a gift of that one, Serenissimo,” Cammilla said. Fear made her pale, but she was still defiant. “That one, as a memorial of your mother.”

Without any warning the grand duke drew back his right hand and struck Cammilla viciously across the mouth, so hard as to knock her off her feet. Her ladies screamed. One of them attempted to run. Don Pietro caught hold of her arm, grasped her hair with his other hand, and jerked her head around like a farmer killing a chicken. There was an audible cracking sound. The woman dropped like a broken poppet, her eyes staring into nothing.

Isabella and Dianora pressed closer together. Isabella put one arm around her young cousin, as if to protect her.

Don Pietro giggled.

“Want me to kill the rest of them, brother?” he said. “I'd not mind breaking Signora Cammilla's neck for her at all.”

“Not at the moment.” The grand duke held up his hand. He was still able to control his youngest brother. “Go and fetch a priest for that one. And speaking of priests, where is the cardinal? He returned from Rome to be at our father's bedside, and he is not here.”

“He is at the Pitti, praying with the Princess Giovanna,” Isabella said. The cardinal was their other living brother, Ferdinando de' Medici, who had been a prince of the church since the age of thirteen. “I should say, her highness the Grand Duchess Giovanna. In their piety, they are consoling each other.”

“I am sure they are.” Ferdinando, of course, was his heir until Giovanna managed to bear a son. One would think they would be bitter enemies, but they were not; Giovanna was so pious that Ferdinando's red hat dazzled her. “Signora Cammilla, dress yourself properly in your plainest dress. Your woman may help you. I have chosen a place for you to be secluded in your mourning.”

“I will not be secluded,” she said. There was a bright red mark across her face and a smudge of blood at the corner of her mouth, and her eyes showed white all the way around as they slewed from her stepson to the body of her waiting-woman and back. “I do not care what you call yourself, Francesco, prince or grand duke or master of the world. You are not my master and I will not obey you. This is my home and I will stay here for as long as I choose.”

“Signora, the Villa di Castello has belonged to the Medici since the days of Lorenzo il Magnifico. You may have made your home here while my father was alive, but you will do so no longer.”

“You think not?” Cammilla began to sob in a frenzy of anger and fear. “I have documents. Not only are the jewels mine, but the Villa di Castello as well. Get out! Get out, all of you! Leave me alone.”

The grand duke gestured to his guardsmen. They stepped forward and took Cammilla by her arms. The two ladies remaining, goggle-eyed with terror, did nothing.

“Take her to the Convent of the Santissima Annunziata,” the grand duke said. “As she does not choose to change, let her wear her night-gown—the nuns will soon strip her and dress her as a lay sister. She is to be locked in a cell and given nothing but bread and water.”