The Devil’s Queen

In its center—as if the perpetrators had intended to draw attention to their dramatic display—a pile of clothes lay on the floor: the farsettos Alessandro and Ippolito had worn the previous night, atop a tangle of black leggings and Passerini’s scarlet gown.

I stood behind my aunt as she bent down to check the abandoned fabric for warmth. As she straightened, she let go a whispered roar, filled with infinite rage.

“Traitors! Traitors! Sons of whores, all of you!”

She whirled about and saw me standing, terrified, in front of her. Her eyes were wild, her features contorted.

“I pledged on my honor,” she said, but not to me. “On my honor, on my family name, and Capponi trusted me.”

She fell silent until her anger transformed into ruthless determination. She took my hand firmly and led me ungently back into the corridor, where Leda was still moaning on the floor.

She seized the pregnant woman’s arm. “Get up. Quick, go to the stables and see if the carriages have gone.”

Leda arched her back and went rigid; liquid splashed softly against marble. Clarice took a step back from the clear puddle around Leda’s knees and shouted for Paola—who was, of course, horrified by the revelation of the men’s departure and needed severe chastising before she calmed.

Clarice ordered Paola to go to the stables to see if all the carriages were gone. “Calmly,” Clarice urged, “as if you had forgotten to pack something. Remember—the rebels are watching just beyond the gate.”

Once Paola had gone on her mission, Clarice glanced down at Leda and turned to me. “Help me get her to my room,” she said.

We lifted the laboring woman to her feet and helped her up the stairs to my aunt’s chambers. The spasm that had earlier seized her eased, and she sat, panting, in a chair near Clarice’s bed.

In due time, Paola returned, hysterical: Passerini and the heirs were nowhere to be found, yet the carriages that had been packed with their belongings still waited. The master of the horses and all the grooms were gone—and the bodies of three stablehands lay bloodied in the straw. Only a boy remained. He had been asleep, he said, and woke terrified to discover his fellows murdered and the master gone.

In Clarice’s eyes, I saw the flash of Lorenzo’s brilliant mind at work.

“My quill,” she said to Paola, “and paper.”

When Paola had delivered them both, Clarice sat at her desk and wrote two letters. The effort exasperated her, as her bandaged hand pained her; many times, she dropped the quill. She bade Paola fold one letter several times into a small square, the other, into thirds. With the smaller letter in hand, Aunt Clarice knelt at the foot of Leda’s chair and took the servant’s cheeks in her hands. A look passed between them that I, a child, did not understand. Then Clarice leaned forward and pressed her lips to Leda’s as a man might kiss a woman; Leda wound her arms about Clarice and held her fast. After a long moment, Clarice pulled away and touched her forehead to Leda’s in the tenderest of gestures.

Finally Clarice straightened. “You must be brave for me, Leda, or we are all dead. I will arrange with Capponi for you to go to my physician. You must give the doctor this”—she held up the little square of paper—“without anyone seeing or knowing.”

“But the rebels …,” Leda breathed, owl-eyed.

“They’ll have pity on you,” Clarice said firmly. “Doctor Cattani will make sure that your child arrives safely in this world. We will meet again, and soon. Only trust me.”

When Leda, tight-lipped, finally nodded, Clarice gestured for Paola to take the other letter, folded in thirds.

“Tell the rebels at the gate to deliver this to Capponi immediately. Wait for his answer, then come to me.”

Paola hesitated—only an instant, as Aunt Clarice’s gaze was far more frightening than the prospect of facing the tebels—and disappeared with the letter.

After a long, anxious hour—during which I managed to dress myself, with Clarice’s help—Paola reappeared with news that Capponi would let Leda leave provided she was judged sincerely pregnant and about to give birth. This led to an urgent consultation between the women as to where the letter should be concealed, and how Leda should pass it to the doctor without detection.

Then, per Capponi’s instruction, Clarice and Paola helped the pregnant woman down the stairs to the large brass door that opened directly onto the Via Larga. I shadowed them at a distance.

Just outside the door, two respectful nobles waited; beyond them, rebel soldiers held back the crowd that had gathered in the street. The nobles helped Leda into a waiting wagon. Aunt Clarice stood in the doorway, her palm pressed against the jamb, and watched as they drove Leda away. When she turned to face me, she was bereft. She did not expect to see Leda again—a ghastly thought, since the latter had served Clarice since both were children.

We headed back upstairs. In my aunt’s carriage, I read the truth: The world we knew was dissolving to make room for something new and terrible. I had been sad, thinking I would be separated from Piero for a few weeks; now, looking at Clarice’s face, I realized I might never set eyes on him again.

Once in her room, Clarice went to a cupboard and retrieved a gold florin.

“Take this to the stableboy,” she told Paola. “Tell him to remain at his post until the fifth hour of the morning, when he must saddle the largest stallion and lead it out through the back of the stables, to the rear walls of the estate. If he waits there for us, I will bring him another florin.” She paused. “If you tell him the heirs have gone—if you so much as hint at the truth—I will throw you over the gate myself and let them tear you to shreds, because he just might realize he can tell the rebels our secret to save his skin.”

Paola accepted the coin but hesitated, troubled. “There is no chance—even on the largest horse—that we could make it past the gate—”

Clarice’s gaze silenced her; Paola gave a quick little curtsy, then disappeared. Her expression, when she returned, was one of relief: The boy was still there, happy to obey. “He swears on his life that he will tell the rebels nothing,” she said.

I puzzled over Clarice’s scheme. I had been told several times that I was to go to the dining hall no later than the fifth hour of the morning, because Capponi’s general and his men would be on our doorstep half an hour later to escort us to the Piazza. Whatever her plan, she intended to execute it before their arrival.

I watched as Paola arranged Clarice’s hair and dressed her in the black-and-gold brocade gown she had chosen to wear for our family’s public humiliation. Paola was lacing on the first heavy, velvet-edged sleeve when the church bells signaled terce, the third hour of the morning. Three hours had passed since daybreak, when I had discovered Leda huddled on the floor; three more would pass until the bells chimed sext, the sixth hour, midday, when we were to arrive at the Piazza della Signoria.

Paola continued her task, although her fingers were clumsy and shaking. In the end, Clarice was dressed and achingly beautiful. She glanced into the mirror Paola held for her and scowled, sighing. Some new worry, some problem, had occurred to her, one she did not yet know how to resolve. But she turned to me with forced, hollow cheer.

“Now,” she asked, “how shall we amuse ourselves for the next two hours? We must find a way to busy ourselves, you and I.”

“I would like to go to the chapel,” I said.

Clarice entered the chapel slowly, reverently, and I reluctantly followed suit, genuflecting and crossing myself when she did, then settling beside her on the pew.

Clarice closed her eyes, but I could still see her mind struggling with some fresh challenge. I left her to it while I wriggled, straining my neck to get a better view of the mural.

Clarice sighed and opened her eyes again. “Didn’t you come to pray, child?”

I expected irritation but heard only curiosity, so I answered honestly. “No. I wanted to see Lorenzo again.”

Her face softened. “Then go and see him.”

I went over to the wooden choir stall just beneath the painting of the crowd following the youthful magus Gaspar and tilted my head back.

“Do you know them all, then?” Clarice asked behind me, her tone low and faintly sad.

I pointed to the first horse behind Gaspar’s. “Here is Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo’s father,” I said. “And beside him, his father, Cosimo the Old.” They had been shrewdest, most powerful men Florence had known, until Lorenzo il Magnifico supplanted them both.

Clarice stepped forward to gesture at a small face near Lorenzo’s, almost lost in the crowd. “And here is Giuliano, his brother. He was murdered in the cathedral, you know. They tried to murder Lorenzo, too. He was wounded and bleeding, but he wouldn’t leave his brother. His friends dragged him away as he shouted Giuliano’s name. No one was more loyal to those he loved.

“There are those who aren’t there beside him but should have been,” she continued. “Ghosts, of whom you have not heard enough. My mother should be there—your grandmother Alfonsina. She married Lorenzo’s eldest son, an idiot who promptly alienated the people and was banished. But she had a son—your father—and educated him in the subject of politics, so that when we Medici returned to Florence, he ruled it well enough. When your father went away to war, Alfonsina governed quite capably. And now…we have lost the city again.” She sighed. “No matter how brightly we shine, we Medici women are doomed to be eclipsed by our men.”

“I won’t let it happen to me,” I said.

She turned her head sharply to look down at me. “Won’t you?” she asked slowly. In her eyes I saw an idea being birthed, one that caused the recent worry there to vanish.

“I can be strong,” I said, “like Lorenzo. Please, I would like to touch him. Just once, before we go.”

She was not a large woman, but I was not a large child. She lifted me with effort, trying to spare her injured wrist, just high enough so that I could touch Lorenzo’s cheek. Silly child, I had expected the contours and warmth of flesh, and was surprised to find the surface beneath my fingertips flat and cold.

“He was no fool,” she said, when she had lowered me. “He knew when to love, and when to hate.

“When his brother was murdered—when he saw the House of Medici was in danger—he struck out.” She looked pointedly at me.

“Do you understand that it is possible to be good yet destroy one’s enemies, Caterina? That sometimes, to protect one’s own blood, it is necessary to let the blood of others?”

I shook my head, shocked.

“If a man came to our door,” Clarice persisted, “and wanted to murder me, to murder Piero and you, could you do what was necessary to stop him?”

I looked away for an instant, summoning the scene in my imagination. “Yes,” I answered. “I could.”

“You are like me,” Clarice said approvingly, “and Lorenzo: sensitive, yet able to do what needs to be done. The House of Medici must survive, and you, Caterina, are its only hope.”

She smiled darkly at me and, with her bandaged hand, reached into the folds of her skirt to draw out something slender and shining and very, very sharp.

We returned to Clarice’s quarters, where Paola waited, and spent the next hour twisting silk scarves around jewels and gold florins. With Paola’s help, my aunt tied four heavy makeshift belts around her waist, beneath her gown. A pair of emerald earrings and a large diamond went into her bodice. Clarice helped Paola secure two of the belts on her person, then set aside one gold florin.

Then we sat for half an hour, with only Clarice knowing what awaited us. Prompted by a signal known only to her, Clarice picked up the gold florin and handed it to Paola.

“Take this to the boy,” she said. “Tell him to ready a horse and lead it through the stables and out the back, then wait there. Then you come to us at the main entry.”

Paola left. Aunt Clarice took my hand and led me downstairs to stand with her by the front door. When the servant returned, Clarice caught her shoulders.

“Be calm,” she said, “and listen carefully to me. Caterina and I are going to the stables. Stay here. The instant we leave, count to twenty—then open this door.”

Paola’s arms thrashed to free herself from Clarice’s grasp; she began to cry out, but my aunt silenced her with a harsh shake.

“Listen,” Clarice snarled. “You must scream loudly to get everyone’s attention. Say that the heirs are upstairs, that they are escaping. Repeat it until everyone rushes into the house. Then you can run out and lose yourself in the crowd.” She paused. “The jewels are yours. If I don’t see you again, I wish you well.” She drew back and gave the servant a piercing look. “Before God Almighty, will you do it?”

Paola trembled mightily but whispered: “I’ll do it.”

“May He keep you, then.”

Clarice gripped my hand. Together we ran the length of the palazzo, through the corridors and courtyard and garden until we were in sight of the stables. She stopped abruptly in the shelter of a tall hedge and peered past it at the now-unlocked iron gate.

I peered with her. On the other side of the black bars, bored rebel soldiers kept watch in front of a milling crowd.

Then I heard them, high and shrill: Paola’s screams. Clarice stooped down and pulled off her slippers; I did the same. She waited while all the men turned toward the source of the noise—then, when they all surged to the east, away from the gate, she drew in a long breath and ran west, dragging me with her.

We kicked up clouds of dust as we dashed past the heirs’ waiting carriage, past our own; the harnessed horses whinnied in protest. We came alongside the stables, then veered behind them, past the spot where I had lain after I learned Piero would leave me. There, next to the high stone wall, stood a saddled mount and an astonished boy—a wiry Ethiopian not much older than I, with a cloud of feather-light hair. Bits of straw clung to his hair and clothes. Like the horse’s, his eyes were wide and worried and white. The massive roan shied, but the boy reined it in with ease.

“Help me up!” Clarice demanded; the shouting out in the street had grown so loud he could barely hear her.

My aunt wasted no time with modesty. She hiked up her skirts, exposing white legs, and placed her bare foot in the stirrup. The horse was tall and she could not bring her leg over its withers; the boy gave her rump a mighty shove, which allowed her to scramble up into the saddle. She sat astride it, taking the reins in her good hand, and maneuvered the horse sidelong to the wall until her leg was pressed between the animal’s barrel and the stone. Then she pierced our young rescuer with her gaze.

“You swore on your life that you would tell the rebels nothing,” she said. It was an accusation.

“Yes, yes,” he responded anxiously. “I will say nothing, Madonna.”

“Only those who know a secret promise to keep it,” she said. “And there is only one secret the rebels would want to hear today. What might it be? They would not care about an absent stable master and his murdered grooms.”

His mouth fell open; he looked as though he wanted to cry.

“Look at you, covered in straw,” Clarice told him. “You hid because, like the others, you had heard too much, and they were going to kill you, too. You know where the heirs have gone, don’t you?”

Owl-eyed, he dropped his head and stared hard at the grass. “No, Madonna, no …”

“You lie,” Clarice said. “And I don’t blame you. I would be frightened, too.”

His face contorted as he began to weep. “Please, Donna Clarice, don’t be angry, please…. Before God, I swear I will not tell anyone…. I could have gone to the rebels, run to the gate and told them everything, but I stayed. I have always been loyal, I will be loyal still. Only do not be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” she soothed. “We’ll take you with us. Lord knows, if we don’t, the rebels will torture you until you speak. I’ll give you another florin if you tell me where Ser Ippolito and the others have gone. But first, hand me the girl.” She leaned down and held her arms out to me.

He was bony but strong; he seized me below the ribs and swung me like a bale of hay up into Clarice’s fierce clutches.

A wave of fear slammed against me. I endured it until it crested and faded, leaving everything still and silent its wake. I had a choice: to quail, or to harden.

I hardened.

At the instant the boy handed me to my aunt, I slipped the stiletto from its sheath, hidden in my skirt pocket. It sliced easily through the skin beneath the boy’s jaw, in the same grinning arc Clarice had drawn for me on her own throat, with her finger.

But I was a child and not very strong. The wound was shallow; he flinched and drew back before I could finish. With all my might, I plunged the weapon deeper into the side of his neck. He clawed at the protruding dagger and let go a gurgling shriek, his eyes bulging with furious reproach.

Clutching me, Clarice kicked the boy’s shoulder. He fell backward, still screaming while Clarice set me on the saddle in front of her.

I stared down at him, horrified and intrigued by what I had just done.

He’s going to die in any case, my aunt had said. But the rebels would torture him horribly, until he confessed, and then they would hand him over to the crowd. You can spare him that.

Even we must not know where Ippolito and the others have gone. Can you understand that, Caterina?

It did not seem like a kindness now, watching him flail in the new grass, the blood from his throat collecting in a pool on the grass near his shoulder, crimson against spring green.

Suddenly, ominously, he stilled and fell silent.

He will break, Clarice had said, and tell them where the heirs have gone, and the House of Medici will be no more. But he will not be suspicious of a child. You will be able to get very close to him.

Clarice shouted in my ear. “Stand up in the saddle, Caterina! Stand up, I won’t let you fall.”

Miraculously, I struggled to my feet, swaying. I was now almost the height of the wall next to me.

“Crawl up, child!”

I pulled myself up while Clarice pushed. In an instant, I was kneeling on the wide ledge.

“What do you see?” my aunt demanded. “Is there a carriage?”

I looked out onto the narrow Via de’ Ginori—deserted save for a peasant woman dragging two small children with her, and a motionless one-horse carriage sitting next to the curb.

“Yes,” I called to her, then shouted and waved a hand at the carriage. Slowly, the horse lifted its hooves, and the wheels began to turn. When it finally arrived, the driver pulled so close to the wall that the wheels screeched against the stone.

I looked over the roof of the stables as the gate squealed; it swung wide open as a small crowd swarmed onto the estate. A man pointed up at me and let go a shout; the crowd headed directly toward us.

The driver, dressed in rumpled, oil-stained linen, stood up in his seat and stretched out his dirty hands to me. “Jump! I’ll catch you.”

Behind me, Clarice lurched as she grabbed the wall’s edge; her panicked mount had taken a step away from the wall. I tried to pull her up but lacked the strength.

I sucked in a great deep breath and leaped. The driver caught me easily and set me down beside him, then called to Clarice. I could see only her fingers and the backs of her hands—the right one purpled and swollen—where the fine bones stood out like ivory cords.

“Hold on, Madonna, I’ll pull you over!”

Our rescuer walked to the far edge of the driver’s box until his chest was pressed against the wall. He strained but could only brush Clarice’s fingertips.

“God help me,” Clarice screamed, at the same time that her horse shrieked. Men shouted on the other side of the wall.

“Get her! Hold her horse!”

“Don’t let her escape!”

In desperation, the driver climbed onto the roof of the carriage and, flexing his knees, bent from his waist to reach over the ledge and catch her arms. Clarice’s good hand caught hold of him; when he straightened, her face appeared over the top of the wall.

She screamed again, in fury rather than fright; her shoulders dipped beneath the wall as the men on the other side pulled at her. “Bastards! Bastards! Let me go!”

The driver staggered and almost fell, but pulled on her with such brute force that he fell back onto the carriage roof. Aunt Clarice came tumbling with him. The driver leaned down to examine her, but she sat up and struck him with her left hand.

“Go!” she snarled. She clambered down the side of the carriage and pulled me inside to sit beside her. She was gasping and trembling with exhaustion; her hair was wild on her shoulders, and the back of her gown had been torn off, exposing her petticoat.

She leaned out the door and shouted, “Out of the city, quickly! I’ll tell you then where we’re going!”

She fell back against the seat and stared down at her injured wrist as if astonished that it had not betrayed her. Then she stared up at the dirty wooden interior; unlike me, she made no attempt to look back at the home she was leaving.

“We’ll go to Naples,” she said, “to my mother’s family. But not today. They’ll expect us to go there.” Shivering but unshaken, defeated but indomitable, she turned her fierce gaze on me. “The Orsini will help us. This is not the end, you know. The Medici will retake Florence. We always do.”

I looked away. In the beginning, I had not wanted to take the knife, but it had drawn me like the darkness in Cosimo Ruggieri’s eyes. Now I stared down at the palm that had wielded the blade and saw that same darkness in me. I had told myself that I did it for the House of Medici; in truth, I had done it because I was curious, because I had wanted to see what it was like to kill a man.

Like Lorenzo, I learned early that I was capable of murder. And I was terrified to think where that capability might lead.

Five

Poggio means hill, and the villa my great-grandfather built at Poggio a Caiano rests atop a sprawling grassy prominence in the Tuscan countryside, three hours from the city. The home Lorenzo obtained in 1479 had been a plain, three-storied square with a red tile roof, but in il Magnificos hands, it became much more. He encased the ground floor by a portico with several graceful arches that opened onto the front courtyard. A staircase originated on either side of the central arch and the two curved upward to meet at the grand middle-floor entrance, where a triangular pediment rested atop six great columns in the style of a Greek temple. The structure stood majestic and alone, surrounded by gentle hills and streams and the nearby Albano mountains.

No one would think to look for us there, Aunt Clarice explained, as it lay northwest of the city, and the rebels would be searching all the roads leading south. We would spend the night there, during which she would formulate a plan that would eventually take us safely to Naples.

We rolled through the open gates, coughing from the dust, and tumbled barefoot and disheveled from the carriage to be met by a dumbstruck gardener. Exhausted though we were, our nerves would not let us rest or eat. Her gaze distant, her mind working, my aunt paced through the formal, painstakingly groomed gardens while I dashed ahead of her in an effort to tire myself. Dove-colored clouds gathered overhead; the breeze grew cool and smelled of rain. I thought of the astonishment and reproach in the stableboy’s eyes. I had learned a fundamental truth about killing: The victim’s anguish is brief and fleeting, but the murderer’s endures forever.

I ran and ran that afternoon, but never succeeded in leaving the stableboy behind. Clarice never spoke to me of him; I honestly believe that she, lost in her efforts to transform a bleak future, had already forgotten him.