The Red Lily Crown (9 page)

“Santissima Annunziata—” Cammilla began. “No! That is Le Murate, where the nuns are walled in and never let out! I will not go! I have documents—they are in the hands of my
avvocato
, and he will show you, prove to you that the villa and the jewels are mine.”

“Take her four remaining women as well, these two and the two in the anteroom. We shall see what they will confess, when they have tasted the walls of Le Murate for a few weeks.”

The women went quietly, stepping around the body of their dead companion, shocked into compliance. Cammilla Martelli did not go quietly. She shrieked and struggled with the guardsmen, kicking and scratching and biting, until they were compelled to bind her hands and feet and carry her. As her screams and imprecations faded in the distance, the grand duke casually put the yellow diamond back in the casket and closed the lid.

“The Villa di Castello is to be sealed at once,” he said. “Tomorrow I will send my secretaries to take an inventory of the jewels and furnishings.”

“What of these documents she claims to have?” Isabella's eyes were sharp and acquisitive; she coveted her mother's jewels.

“I will find out the name of her
avvocato
and my own men of law will take up the matter with him.”

Don Pietro came back with a priest. At the sight of the waiting-woman's body, the priest knelt and began to gabble through the prayers of conditional absolution.

“Surely he did not do it,” Isabella said. “Our father? He would not have given that woman the Villa di Castello, of all places. He would not have given her our mother's jewels.”

“He was a fool for her,” the grand duke said, “especially in these last few months. It does not matter. A few weeks in an enclosed nun's cell, fasting and with a daily taste of the whip the nuns use to mortify their flesh, and she will happily sign any new papers I choose to give her.”

He walked out of the room, forgetting the jewels and the villa and the men at law between one step and the next. Cammilla Martelli naked on her knees, sobbing, her white back striped with whip marks, that remained in his mind a little longer. Then she vanished too. He thought about his laboratory, his English alchemist and his
soror mystica
, and how they would find the
Lapis Philosophorum
together.

He did not look back to see if the others followed him, but he knew they did.

The silver mine at Bottino, northwest of Florence

TEN DAYS LATER

“S
o the old tyrant is really dead?”

The mine master's lantern flickered and caught sparks of pure silver. Ruan ran his hand over the vein. He could feel the difference in texture between the ore and the rock that surrounded it. It ran deeper into the tunnel, with smaller veins branching away from the primary, what Agricola—the father, the true metallurgical genius, not the mountebank of a nephew—would have called a
vena dilatata
.

“Grand Duke Cosimo is truly dead,” Ruan said. The mine master was a Hungarian named Johan Ziegler. His two sons also worked in the mine, and his wife mended the men's shirts, and his daughters were married to miners. It had been the same in Cornwall—the families in the village had lived and breathed the work of the mine. His memories of Cornwall were terrible, and sometimes he wished he could erase them from his brain, like etching on silver erased by a fresh application of acid. At the same time Cornwall was his home, his native earth, and it lived in his nerves and sinews with the metals he loved.

He traced the vein of silver with his hand again and added, “Prince Francesco is the grand duke now.”

“One Medici is the same as another. I suppose this one wants more ore, more silver.”

The other men murmured. One of them said, “They always want more.”

Ruan smiled, although in the black darkness of the mine no one would see it. Perhaps it was just as well. It pleased him that the miners spoke their true thoughts in his presence, despite the fact that he was the grand duke's
praefectus metallorum
for the mine, his prefect. He carefully balanced his authority and his camaraderie because he admired the miners, their hard work, their straightforward honesty. It was a different world from the world of the court.

“You sent me a message that you had found some crystalline silver,” he said to Johan Ziegler. “I would like to see it, and collect a sample.”

They continued down the tunnel. The original workings of the mine at Bottino were ancient, a thousand years old and more. Men had been taking silver out of the earth in this spot since the days of King Solomon. This tunnel, though, was new. It was on a deeper level, and instead of ladders, Ruan had directed the installation of a machine with a wheel-and-crank windlass, turned by three men. This not only drew up the ore and any accumulated water, but also controlled a wooden basket that lowered the men to the bottom of the shaft more quickly and with less risk of falling.

“This way,” Ziegler said. “The new grand duke, this Francesco, has he a mind to make any changes in the management of the mine?”

“No,” Ruan said. He heard the miners behind them let out their breaths with relief. “All of you will continue in your positions, and as always I will speak to the grand duke on your behalf if you have difficulties or special requirements.”

They went into another branch of the tunnel. Ruan had to crouch to pass through; only Johan Ziegler went with him. The air was warm and stale. The blowing machine, turned by the wind above and by another windlass on still days, was not powerful enough to force fresh air into the side tunnels.

“There is not enough air for the lantern to last,” Ruan said. “How much farther?”

“Here.”

The mine master held up the light. It glanced off a formation of dark silvery cubes, half-hidden in a pink and gold vein of calcite.

“What is it, Magister Rohannes?” Piero said. “I haven't seen silver like that before.”

“It is a sulphide of silver,” Ruan said. He took a small pick from his belt and tapped gently around the silver crystals. They fell into his hand like a cluster of hazelnuts from a tree. He put them into the mine master's bag and extracted more samples, taking also some of the shining calcite that surrounded them.

“A neat touch you've got with that pick,” Ziegler said. “Not many great men will come down a shaft and into a tunnel, their ownselves.”

“I have had experience,” Ruan said. He did not specify what kind of experience, or when it had occurred, or what it had cost him. “Let us go back, before the lantern fails in this air. We must sink a ventilation shaft and install another blowing machine—this vein will be rich.”

“Just show us where to dig.” The mine master led the way as they crept back to the main tunnel. “One thing in this new grand duke's favor—he has the good sense to keep everything the way it was.”

“The mine has been producing a fine yield.”

“We dig up more,” Ziegler said, “when we have a prefect who is willing to listen to what really goes on underground.”

•   •   •

Cosimo de' Medici had built the villa at Seravezza so he had a suitable place to stay when he visited the Bottino mine. It had fortresslike towers at the corners—leave it to old Grand Duke Cosimo, always prepared for attack—and at the same time elegant rooms and fine gardens. A small coterie of servants managed the villa, with help from the village as needed, and they knew Ruan liked to be left to his own devices. He laid out his samples of silver sulphide on a writing-table by one of the large windows, and began to write his notes and make his sketches before the light failed.

Francesco was always more interested in curiosities like the crystalline silver than he was in the specifics of ore composition and new veins. Now that Grand Duke Cosimo was dead, the reports would be different. Prince Francesco had been his father's regent for almost ten years, but the old man had always been in the background, cunning, grasping, countermanding his son's edicts when it pleased him to do so. It was hardly surprising that Francesco had retreated to his laboratory when he could, and to his mistress's house. I might have done the same, Ruan thought. Now he will have less time for the things he truly loves.

Ruan drew the mine's new tunnels from memory, and sketched in the location of the veins.
The silver ore is composed of native silver, antimony and arsenic
, he wrote. His letters were tall and angular, a scholar's letters, and he wrote quickly, confident in his knowledge.
There are extensive crystals of what the miners call black quartz, as well as carnelian and jacinth. These crystals are rarely of gem quality but can be useful in alchemical applications
.

Alchemical applications.

There had been no time for alchemy in the strange combination of chaos and ceremony that had surrounded the old grand duke's death. Ruan wondered what the girl Chiara Nerini thought, having been for all practical purposes abducted, put through the prince's fanciful initiation and then abandoned in Isabella's household to twiddle her thumbs as the wardrobe mistress's assistant. He had made it his business to find her grandmother and make sure she knew the girl was safe. The grandmother had not been pleased to learn that her granddaughter was in Medici hands, and she had not hesitated to tell him so.

He smiled to himself, continuing to write with half his attention. The Nerini blood apparently ran true, in both looks and character. The grandmother had the same changeable eyes as the girl, brown and green and gold. Fifteen-year-old virgin or not, Soror Chiara might turn out to be considerably less docile than Francesco expected. The ceremonial silver sieve, flung at the prince's feet—

There was a scratch at the door, and it opened. The majordomo of the villa stepped in and said, “A messenger to see you, Magister Ruanno.”

Ruan put down his pen. “Send him in, Piero,” he said.

The man who stepped into the room was short and slight as messengers had to be, to spare their horses. His light brown hair, wind-burned skin and blue eyes could have come only from England, as if his English-style mandilion jacket and canions weren't enough to give him away. No identifying badges, but then the messengers Ruan dealt with rarely cared to advertise their affiliations.

How had he found his way to Seravezza?

“I beg your pardon, Master Ruanno, for interrupting you at your work.” The fellow bowed. “I called at the Casino di San Marco in Florence, and was informed of your presence here.”

“Indeed,” Ruan said. “What is so important that you could not wait for me in Florence? I am to be back in the city before the old grand duke's funeral.”

The messenger took a packet of papers out of his jacket. “I have a letter from Dr. John Dee in London, which he has charged me with delivering in all possible haste. Dr. Dee told me that there would be a reply, and that I am to return with it to London as quickly as possible.”

That meant Dee wanted gold. Being the English queen's advisor on occult and scientific matters was all well and good, but it paid little. And living at the English court was an expensive business.

“I will read the letter,” Ruan said. “You may go to the kitchen and refresh yourself. I will send for you when I have prepared my answer.”

The messenger placed the packet on the table, bowed again and went away. Ruan broke the seals on the packet and unfolded the letter.

It was, as he had expected, a demand for gold, couched in elaborate terms. It promised the support of Baron Burghley and the Earl of Leicester, as well as the queen's absolute personal favor, in return. Influence at the court of Elizabeth Tudor did not come cheaply. Secrecy was even more expensive.

Ruan prepared a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out a draft on his holding at the bank of the Borromei in Florence in the amount of two hundred gold scudi, which Dr. Dee could present to the branch the Borromei maintained in London. Then he wrote a short letter to accompany it, promising more when there was further news of the queen's support.

Which meant he would have to obtain more. There was never enough gold.

His thoughts circled back to alchemy.

He did not really believe there was such a thing as the
Lapis Philosophorum
, at least not in the magical sense Grand Duke Francesco believed. However, he had seen elements combined, and in the course of the combination become something entirely different. Who would have believed such a metal as bronze to exist, until by accident some man had melted together copper and tin? Who would have known that crystals of silver contained silver and sulphur, until some alchemist had separated them into their component parts with strong acid? While playing at alchemy with the grand duke, who knew what new combinations or separations he might discover, and which ones might result in new, pure gold?

The grand duke believed in the
Lapis Philosophorum
, for its own sake—for the power it would bring him. The girl, Chiara Nerini, believed in it too, for its healing powers. Well, perhaps there was some substance to be discovered that would heal her. He would play his part with the two of them, and the gold that would go into his account at the bank of the Borromei would be gold that already existed, from the grand duke's inexhaustible coffers.

He folded the bank draft and the letter together and sealed the packet with black wax. Into the wax he pressed his personal seal, a design combining a circular labyrinth, a crescent moon and a red-billed sea-crow, the heraldic bird of Cornwall. No one but he himself knew what it really meant.

The messenger could ride for the coast tomorrow, straight from Seravezza, he thought as he went out into the corridor, and then travel down to the port at Livorno. He would finish his reports tonight, and in the morning ride for Florence. There was the old grand duke's funeral to get through first. Then there would be alchemy again.

He needed the gold—that was true as far as it went. But there was another reason, a greater reason, a reason he had never told anyone. He performed his experiments with metals and crystals, stones and acids, alkalis and earths and volatile salts, because he loved them. He loved the fact that they came out of the mysterious depths of the earth. They were ancient and elemental, and yet in his hands they could be changed.

Changed, as he had changed himself, once, twice, three times. And as he meant to change himself one last time, in the end.