The Devil’s Queen

When evening came, my aunt and I shared a supper of greasy soup, then went upstairs. Clarice undressed me herself. When she undid the laces on my bodice, the smooth black stone hidden there dropped to the marble floor with a click, and the battered bit of herb followed mutely. I bent to pick them up, bracing for angry words.

“Did Ser Cosimo give you those?” my aunt asked softly.

I nodded, flushing.

Clarice nodded, too, slowly. “Keep them safe, then,” she said.

She sent me to bed while she sat just outside, in the antechamber, and laboriously penned letters by lamplight. I put the herb and gem beneath my pillow and fell asleep to the halting scratch of her quill against the paper.

Some time later, I was awakened by a wooden bang; an early summer storm had ridden in on a cold wind. A servant girl hurried into the room and closed the offending shutters to keep out the rain. I stared at the antechamber wall, where Aunt Clarice’s shadow loomed and receded as the flame danced, and listened to the shutters’ muted complaint.

My sleep, when it finally came, was troubled by dreams—not of images but of sounds: of Clarice screaming for men to let go of her skirts, of horses neighing, of rebels chanting for our downfall. I dreamt of hoofbeats and the pounding of rain, of men’s voices and the faraway roll of thunder.

Consciousness returned like a lightning strike; with a start, I realized that the drum of hoofbeats, the strident cadence of Clarice’s voice, and the lower one of men’s were not part of any dream.

I pushed myself from bed and hurried to the shuttered window. It was low enough that I could look out easily—but the shutters were latched, and I too short to reach them. I looked about for a chair, and in that instant the door opened and a servant entered. She was not much older than I, but she was tall enough to unfasten the shutters at my impatient command and open them, then step back, her eyes enormous with fright.

I stared out. On the vast, downward-sloping lawn, two dozen men sat on horseback in four militarily precise rows, sheathed swords at their hips.

In that instant, my faith in Ruggieri’s magic crumbled. The Wing of Corvus was at best a harmless piece of jet. I would never grow up to rule; I would never grow up at all. I backed away from the window.

“Where is she?” I whispered to the girl.

“Madonna Clarice? At the front door, talking to two men. They told me to fetch you.

“She is so angry with them,” the girl continued. “She did not want them to wake you. She is swearing at them so, she will surely provoke them—” She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she was going to be sick, then forced herself to calm. “Last night, she summoned me and said that, if anything happened to her, I was to see you safely to her mother’s people.” She glanced nervously at the door. “They will come looking for you, if we don’t appear soon. But …”

I lifted my brows questioningly.

“But we could leave by the servants’ stairs,” she continued. “They wouldn’t see us. There are places to hide here. I think Madonna Clarice would want that.”

I expected Clarice did want that, and that she knew if I did not appear, the rebels would torture her in the hope of learning my whereabouts; they might well kill her. Escape seemed possible but unlikely—but my disappearance would undeniably put Clarice in terrible danger. Weighing this, I moved slowly to the bed, reached beneath the pillow, and found the hidden stone. I stared at its glassy surface, a black mirror in my palm, and saw my aunt refleeted there:

Aunt Clarice, lifting me up to touch Lorenzo’s childish face. Clarice, lifting me out of the rebels’ reach, even as they tried to tear her apart. Clarice, who could well have departed with her husband and children, leaving us heirs in rebel hands. But like her grandfather, she did not abandon those of her blood, no matter how fatally afflicted.

I placed the worthless gem upon the pillow, then pulled off the silver talisman, on its leather cord, and coiled it beside the stone. Then I looked up at the servant.

“Get my gown, please,” I said. “I will be going down to meet them.”

PART III

Imprisonment May 1527–August 1530

Six

Images from that day are etched clearly in my memory: the long walk down the stairs, the sight of Clarice in the vestibule, a shawl tossed over her shoulders to hide the fact that a swath had been torn from the back of her gold gown. Her wrist—resting now in a sling—had left her pale with agony. Although the man she spoke to was more than a head taller and flanked by two aides of similar height, she seemed larger than them all. Gesturing sharply with her free hand, she railed as fearlessly at him as she had at Passerini the morning he came to tell her Pope Clement had been routed.

As I moved down the stairs, the man listening to her glanced up. He was intense and very quiet, and made me remember something Piero had once said, that a dog who did not bark was far more likely to bite. His hair and beard and eyes matched his new brown cloak. He was Bernardo Rinuccini, head of the rebel militia.

I remember how his eyes grew rounded at the sight of me, how Aunt Clarice’s mouth fell open as she glanced over her shoulder, stricken and profoundly speechless.

“Promise me you won’t hurt her,” I told the general, “and I will go with you.”

Rinuccini stared down at me. “I have no reason to hurt her.”

“Promise me,” I repeated, gazing steadily at him.

“I promise,” he said.

I walked past Clarice to Rinuccini’s side; there was horror in her eyes as she watched me slip irrevocably from her care. But the greater horror was mine, to glimpse the proud spirit behind those eyes and to mark the instant it broke.

They led me away. When I appeared in the doorway, the troops waiting on the lawn cheered. I moved quickly so that they had no cause to touch me, not until I was lifted up onto a horse and into the lap of a well-born soldier. He wore not a sword but a weapon I had never seen before: an arquebus, a contraption of wood and metal designed to blast balls of lead into distant victims, like a miniature cannon one might hold in one’s hand. He regarded me with victory and loathing; never was a trophy more scorned or prized.

The ascending sun coaxed the previous night’s rain from the earth; the horses moved through low swirls of mist as we rode across the quiet countryside. Numbed by the enormity of my decision, I rode in mindless dread, my back pressed to my guardian’s chest.

By midmorning we had returned to the city. We headed not south to the great Piazza della Signoria and the gallows but north. As the streets were busy, we attracted much attention, but most failed to notice a little girl huddled against one of the soldiers; by the time a few had, we had already passed, and their faint curses, like stones hurled from too great a distance, did not frighten me.

Our procession turned onto an unfamiliar street lined with stone walls. They were thick and high, unbroken save for three narrow doors at long intervals.

We stopped at one of the doors. Set into it were two iron grates, one at eye level, behind which a black cloth had been hung, and an uncovered one at foot level.

An aide dismounted and called at the covered grate, while another soldier swung me down from the horse. The door opened inward, an aide pushed me inside, and someone quickly shut the door behind me.

I stumbled forward onto a stone patio that lay in the shadow of a large building and glanced up at the woman who faced me. She was worn and colorless and dressed in black but for the white wimple beneath her long veil. She put her finger to her lips for silence, so emphatically that I followed her without a word into the building, which was as plain and aged and soundless as she. She led me up two flights of narrow stairs, then past a long row of cells, before depositing me in a tiny room, with a bed pushed against the wall opposite the window and two chairs.

The latter were occupied by two young women clad in shabby brown dresses. They dropped their mending after making the same gesture, finger to lips, before they hurried to me.

Clumsily, they began to remove my gown. I doubt they had ever seen anything as fine, for they didn’t understand how to unlace the sleeves, but at last my gown slipped free and I stepped out of it into an uncertain future.

Seven

On one of Florence’s most oppressively narrow streets lies the Dominican convent known as Santa-Caterina da Siena. The convent’s denizens fiercely opposed the Medici and supported the rebels, no doubt because it catered to the poor. Its six boarders—girls of marriageable age or younger, from families who had discovered that it was cheaper to keep them at the convent—were born of the lowest class of workers: the dyers, weavers, and carders of wool and silk, men whose occupations stained their hands, twisted their bodies, scarred their lungs. These were men who fell sick and died young, leaving behind daughters who could not be fed. These were men who had torn down our Medici banners and ignited them out of hatred for the rich and well-fed.

Santa-Caterina stank because its ancient plumbing and sewers were in disrepair. Nuns were always on their knees scrubbing floors and walls, but no amount of cleaning overcame the smell. The inhabitants were all thin and hungry. There were no Latin lessons here, no efforts made to teach the girls letters or numbers, only work to be done. The abbess, Sister Violetta, had no energy to like or dislike me; she was too busy trying to keep her charges alive to worry about politics. She knew only that the rebels paid for my care on time.

I shared a cell—and a dirty straw mattress alive with fleas and a family of mice—with four other boarders, all of them older than I. One of them hated me bitterly, as her brother had been killed in a clash with Medici supporters. Two of them did not much care. And then there was twelve-year-old Tommasa.

Tommasa’s father was a silk merchant whose mounting debts had prompted him to flee the city, leaving his wife and children to deal with his creditors. Tommasa’s mother was sickly; Tommasa, too, was frail and suffered from frightening bouts of wheezing and breathlessness, especially when she overexerted herself. She had the long, thin bones and delicate coloring of a Northerner: pale hair, white skin, eyes blue as sky. Yet she worked as hard as the others without complaint, and her lips were always curved in the gentlest of smiles.

She treated me as a friend, even though her brothers were passionate advocates of the rebel cause, so much so that Tommasa never mentioned me to them.

Tommasa was my sole link to the world beyond Santa-Caterina’s walls. Her mother visited weekly and always brought news. I learned how the Medici palazzo had been pillaged, how its remaining treasures had been seized by the new government. All the banners bearing the Medici crest had been torn down, and all sculptures and buildings bearing the same had been crudely edited with chisels.

I asked about Aunt Clarice, of course, and tried not to cry when Tommasa told me she was still alive, though no one knew where she had gone. Ippolito’s and Alessandro’s whereabouts were also a mystery.

When I commented on Tommasa’s kindness to me, she was taken aback.

“Why should I treat you otherwise?” she asked. “They say your family has oppressed the people, but you are kind to me and the others. I can’t punish you for something others have done.”

I loved her for the same reason I had loved Piero, because she was too good to glimpse the blackness hidden in my heart.

I spent a dismal summer fearing execution and hoping for news. Neither came, and by the time autumn arrived, I dwelled in a haze of hunger and grief. I lost will and weight and stopped asking questions of Tommasa as she relayed the latest gossip.

Winter came and brought an icy chill. Our room had no hearth and was freezing; I never stopped shivering. The water froze in the tiny basin we five shared, but we were too cold to bathe anyway. The fleas guaranteed that, if I slept at all, it was poorly. The cold never eased but grew more bitter.

One morning in late December, I headed with the other girls to the refectory. As we passed by a cell, a pair of nuns were carrying out a third. The last was completely rigid, and her sisters had lifted only her head and feet, as if she were a plank of wood. The two nuns glanced up at us, their forbidding gazes intended to silence all questions.

As they passed, Tommasa quickly crossed herself, and rest of us followed suit. We held our tongues and our places until they had disappeared down the corridor.

“Did you see that?” Lionarda, the oldest girl, hissed.

“Dead,” one of the others said.

“Frozen,” I said. But at the refectory, as we were waiting to have our bowls filled, one of the novices in front of us fainted and was taken away. I thought little of it: I swept floors and patched worn habits, unflinching when I pricked my chill-numbed fingers with the needle. I didn’t worry until that evening at vespers, when I noticed that the chapel was only half full.

I whispered to Tommasa, “Where are the other sisters?”

“Taken sick,” she answered. “Some sort of fever.”

That night, I counted five separate times that the nuns hurried up and down the corridor. In the morning, four of us rose from the mattress. Lionarda did not.

Her breath hung as white vapor in the frigid air above her face; despite the cold, her forehead shone with sweat. One of the other girls tried to wake her, but neither shouting nor shaking could make her open her eyes. We called for the nuns, but no one came; the cells near ours were empty.

Tommasa and I stayed with Lionarda and sent the other two girls to get help. Half an hour later, a novice came in her white veil and black apron. Silently—for it was during an hour the nuns did not speak—she slipped her hands beneath Lionarda’s nightgown and ran them swiftly over her neck, collarbone, armpits. She then reached under the gown to feel the area around Lionarda’s groin and drew back with a spasm of fear.

She lifted up a corner of the nightgown to reveal a lump the size of a goose egg at the top of the girl’s thigh, encircled by a dark purple ring, like a perfectly concentric bruise.

“What is it?” Tommasa breathed.

The novice mouthed an answer. I looked up too late to see it, but Tommasa gasped and lifted her hand to her throat.

“What is it?” I echoed, directing the question at Tommasa.

She turned toward me, her eyes and nose streaming from the cold, and whispered:

“Plague.”

After they carried Lionarda away, Tommasa and I went to the refectory for the morning meal, then headed to the common room. Sister Violetta normally assigned us our chores there at that time. But the room had become a hospital, with a score of women lying on the floor—some groaning, some ominously quiet. An elderly sister intercepted us at the doorway and gestured for us to return to our cell. There we found the other two boarders, Serena and Constantina, sewing shrouds.

“What happened to Lionarda?” Serena demanded, and when I explained, she said, “Half the sisters were missing from the refectory this morning. It’s plague, all right.”

We huddled on the bed, our conversation anxious. I thought of Aunt Clarice, of how devastated she would be to learn that I had died in a squalid hovel, of how Piero would cry when he learned that I was gone.

After two hours, the elderly sister appeared in the doorway to tell Tommasa her brothers were at the grate—and to warn her that she was not to speak of the sickness at the convent. Tommasa left, and within the hour returned, her eyes bright with a secret. She said nothing until midday, when she rose to go to the water closet and gestured surreptitiously for me to join her.

After we entered the foul-smelling little room, she drew her fist from her pocket, then slowly uncurled it.

A small black stone, polished to a sheen, rested in her palm. I snatched it from her and thought of how Aunt Clarice had looked at me when the Wing of Corvus and the herb had dropped from my gown, how she had gazed thoughtfully at me as I bent to pick them up.

Did Ser Cosimo give you those? Keep them safe, then.

Only Clarice could have known that I had left the stone at Poggio a Caiano. Only Clarice could have found it and returned it to me to let me know I was not forgotten. My heart welled.

“Who gave this to you?” I demanded of Tommasa.

“A man,” she said. “My brothers were leaving and I had just lowered the veil over the grate. The man must have looked through the bottom grate and seen the hem of my skirt.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He asked me whether I was friend or foe of the Medici,” Tommasa replied. “And when I said neither, he asked me if I knew a girl named Caterina. I told him yes, you were my friend.

“He offered me money if I would bring you that”—Tommasa nodded at the stone in my hand—“but speak of it to no one. Is it a family keepsake?”

“It was my mother’s,” I lied. Tommasa could clearly be trusted, but I needed no accusations of witchcraft to add to my troubles. “Did he say anything else?”

“I told him to throw the money through the lower grate into the alms box, as an offering to the convent. And I asked him whether he had any message for you, and he said, ‘Tell her to be strong a little longer. Tell her I will return.’”

A little longer… I will return. The words made me giddy. I tucked the stone between my apron and dress, nestling it near the fabric sash that served as my belt.

I looked up at Tommasa. “We must never speak of this, not even to each other. The rebels would kill me or take me away.”

She nodded solemnly.

Despite the presence of plague and the relentless winter, I walked Santa-Caterina’s halls with growing joy. Each time I slipped my hand beneath my apron, I fingered the stone, and its cold, smooth surface became Clarice’s embrace.

The next morning, we four remaining boarders rose to discover that the refectory had been closed. The cooks had fallen ill, and the remaining healthy sisters were overwhelmed by the added work of caring for the sick. No doubt there were more shrouds to be sewn, but the convent’s routine had been broken, so we were forgotten. We returned to our cell and sat on the lumpy straw mattress, hungry and frightened and cold, and tried to divert one another with gossip.

After a few hours, sounds echoed in the corridor: a nun’s sharp voice, feet scurrying against stone floors, doors being opened and closed. I peeked down the hallway and saw a sister madly kicking up dust with a broom.

“What are they doing?” Serena called. She sat cross-legged on the bed next to Tommasa.

“Cleaning,” I replied in wonderment.

More doors were closed; the frenzied sweeping stopped. I could hear Sister Violetta issuing orders in the distance but could see no one. After a time, we girls went back to our stories.

Sister Violetta suddenly appeared in the open doorway.

“Girls,” she said crisply and beckoned at them with her finger, even though this hour was one of silence for the sisters. “Not you, Caterina. You stay here. The rest of you, come with me.”

She led the other girls away. I waited in agony. Perhaps another sister had seen the the stranger who had looked for me; perhaps Tommasa had revealed the secret. Now the rebels would kill me, or take me to a prison even worse than Santa-Caterina.

Moments passed, until footsteps sounded in the corridor—ringing ones, the unfamiliar sound of leather bootheels against stone. A rebel, I thought with despair. They had come for me.

But the man who appeared in my doorway looked nothing like Rinuccini and his soldiers. He wore a heavy cape of pink velvet lined with ermine, and a brown velvet cap with a small white plume; his goatee was fastidiously trimmed, and carefully crafted long black ringlets spilled onto his shoulders. He pressed a lace handkerchief to his nose; even at a distance, he exuded the fragrance of roses.

Beside him, Sister Violetta said softly, “This is the girl,” then disappeared.

“Ugh!” the stranger said, his words muffled by lace. “Forgive me, but the stink! How do you bear it?” He lowered the kerchief to doff his cap and bowed. “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Catherine de’ Medici, Duchessa of Urbino, daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne?”

Catherine, he said, like the man in my bloodstained dream.

“I am,” I replied.

“I am—ugh!—I am Robert Saint-Denis de la Roche, ambassador to the Republic of Florence at the will of His Majesty King François the First. Your late mother was a cousin of His Majesty, and it came to our attention yesterday that you, Duchessa—a kinswoman—were being held in the most egregious of circumstances. Is it true that those are the clothes you are forced to wear, and this is the bed upon which you are forced to sleep?”

My fist, hidden beneath my scapular and clutching the Raven’s Wing, began slowly to uncurl.

“Yes,” I said.

I wanted to run my fingers over the folds of his velvet cloak, to step out of my itchy wool dress into a fine gown, to have Ginevra lace up my bodice and bring me my pick of sleeves. I wanted to see Piero again. Most of all, I wanted to thank Aunt Clarice for finding me, and that last thought brought me very close to tears.

The ambassador’s expression softened. “How terrible for you, a child. It is freezing here. It is a wonder you are not sick.”

“There is plague here,” I said. “Most of the sisters have it.”

He swore in his foreign tongue; the square of lace fluttered to the ground. “The abbess said nothing to me of this!” He took almost immediate control of his temper and fright. “Then it is done,” he said. “I’ll arrange to have you moved from this flea-ridden cesspool today. This is no place for a cousin of the King!”

“The rebels won’t let me go,” I said. “They want me dead.”

One of his black brows lifted slyly. “The rebels want a secure republic, which they do not have. They need the goodwill of King François, and they will not have it until they show proper respect to his kinswoman.” He bowed again, suddenly. “I shall not linger, Duchessa—if there is plague in this building, I must move all the more swiftly. Give me a few hours, and we will take you to a home that is more suitable.”

He began to move away; I called out, “Please tell my aunt Clarice how grateful I am that you have come!”

He stopped and faced me, his expression quizzical. “I have not been in contact with her, though I will certainly try to send her your message.”

“But who sent you?”

“An old friend of your family alerted me,” he said. “He said that you would know it was he. Ruggieri, I believe his name was.” He paused. “Let me go now, Duchessa, for the plague moves swiftly. I swear before God, you will not spend another night here. So be of good cheer and brave heart.”

“I will,” I said, but the instant he disappeared down the corridor, I burst into tears. I cried because Ser Cosimo, a near stranger, had found me and taken pity; I cried because Aunt Clarice had not. I picked up the abandoned square of spiderweb-fine lace to wipe my eyes, and inhaled the scent of flowers.

I told myself that the Raven’s Wing would protect me from plague and see me freed from Santa-Caterina; I vowed never to let it go again.

But the French ambassador did not come for me that morning, nor did anyone come for me that afternoon. I sat with the other girls sewing shrouds, so exhilarated and distracted that I pricked myself a dozen times. By dusk my good spirits had faded. What if the rebels were not as desperate to please King François as Monsieur la Roche had thought?