The Devil’s Queen

Bootheels hammered against stone. I turned and saw them enter: men with heads unbowed, hearts uncrossed, as though these walls were not hallowed.

“Where is she?” one demanded. “Where is she, Caterina of the Medici?”

I crossed myself. I rose. I turned and looked beyond the shoulders of my sisters at four soldiers armed with long swords—as if we were a danger, as if we might give fight.

The youngest of them, all gangling limbs and nerves, had eyes as bright and wide as mine. His chin was up, his hand on his hilt. “Back away,” he told my sisters. “Back away. We must take her, by order of the Republic.”

Niccoletta and the others stood fast and silent. The soldiers drew their swords and advanced a step. A collective sigh, and the women scattered.

All of them, except Niccoletta. She stepped in front of me, her arms spread, her voice hard. “Do not lay a hand on this child.”

“Move away,” the young soldier warned.

I caught hold of Niccoletta’s arm. “Do as he says.”

Niccoletta was stone, and the soldier so nervous, he swung his sword. The flat hit Niccoletta’s shoulder and dropped her to her knees.

The sisters and I cried out at the same instant Niccoletta did. I knelt beside her. She was speechless, gasping in pain, but there was no blood; her spectacles were still in place.

The other more seasoned soldiers elbowed the younger man back before he could do further harm.

“Here now,” one said. “Don’t press us to violence in God’s house.”

As he spoke, two more soldiers entered, followed by a dark-haired man with silver in his trimmed beard and an air of authority. He had come to take me to die.

Mother Giustina, red-eyed and resigned, walked beside him.

With one hand, I gestured at my white veil and raised my voice; it echoed, clear and ringing, throughout the chapel. “What sort of excommunicated fiend would enter a sanctuary to drag a bride of Christ from her convent? Would dare to drag her to her doom?”

The commander’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

“I dare do neither,” he said, in a tone so good-natured that it broke the spell of fear. The women, arms raised in protest, slowly lowered them; the soldiers sheathed their weapons. “I have simply come to transport you, Donna Caterina, to a safer place.”

“This place is safe!” Mother Giustina countered.

The commander turned to her and politely said, “Safe for her purposes, Abbess, but not the Republic’s. This is a den of Medici sympathizers.” He settled his gaze again on me. “You see that we have sufficient force to take you, Duchessa. I would sincerely prefer to use none.”

I studied him a long moment, then lifted my fingers to Sister Niccoletta’s face and stroked it; she touched her forehead to mine and began to cry.

“Stop,” I said softly and kissed her cheek. Her skin was powder-soft and weathered, and tasted of bitter brine.

Ten

The commander asked me to dispense with the habit and change into a regular gown, but I refused. He did not ask a second time. Haste was critical, and when, for the first time in two and a half years, I stepped outside Le Murate’s walls into the street, I understood why.

Eight soldiers on horseback had fanned out in a half circle around the cloister gate. Four of them held torches; four of them brandished swords against a crowd thrice their number but steadily growing.

As the soldiers and I passed through the gate, a man in the crowd shouted, “There she is!”

I could not see much of the crowd beyond the men on horseback, only a leg here, an arm there, a glimpse of a face. Color fled in the wake of twilight, leaving behind black and grey.

In the center of the group of soldiers, two men held the reins of unmounted horses and a donkey. One of them handed off his reins to the other as he caught sight of us and hurried over.

“Commander,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know how word got out …”

No, it’s her, it is! The little nun—

The Pope’s niece—

Pampered in a rich nunnery all this time while we starve!

The commander’s face grew still, save for a muscle that spasmed in his cheek. He looked out at his men and said softly, “I chose you because I thought you could hold your tongues. When I learn who has done this—I care not why, I care not how—I will see him swing.”

Death to the Medici! a woman cried.

A hurled stone struck just inside the ring of soldiers; it skipped and clattered to a stop near my feet.

Bastards! Traitors!

Give her to us!

The commander looked down at it, then back at his second. “Get her mounted,” he said. “Let’s move on before it gets worse.”

The troops ran to their horses. The second, a large, sullen-faced man, took my elbow as if I were an unruly commoner and swung me up onto the donkey. The animal looked reproachfully back at me, showing large yellow teeth that worried the bit.

The commander, now astride a pale grey stallion, rode up alongside me and called to his men. We began to move: the commander and I side by side, each flanked by a mounted soldier. In front of us, behind us, men rode three abreast.

Before all the men were in formation, three street thugs dashed between the horses’ bodies; one reached for me, the tips of his fingers grazing my leg. I cried out. The commander bellowed and leaned toward him with such urgent ferocity that the filthy youth shrank back, and was trampled by a horse.

Abaso le palle! someone shouted. Death to the Medici!

The soldiers closed ranks around us, and we made our way down the broad Via Ghibellina at an earnest trot. The crowd followed us for a while, hurling curses and the occasional missile. We soon outpaced them and made our way onto a quieter thoroughfare. We passed monastery walls, cathedrals, and rich men’s houses, the windows dark because the owners had fled in the face of the siege.

I clutched the saddle horn and slapped, stiff with dread, against the donkey’s saddle. Too late today for a public execution; it would have to wait until morning—unless a quick and private death awaited.

The streets grew narrower. The grand estates gave way to shops and tradesmen’s houses.

As we turned onto a broader avenue, our caravan slowed. In the near distance, black forms blocked the street. They had been waiting silently in the dark.

“Damn you,” the commander cursed his men. “Before God, if one of you is the traitor, I’ll send you to Hell myself …”

Death to the Medici, someone in the darkness said uncertainly.

The cry erupted with fervor: Abaso le palle! Down with the balls!

A hail of stones followed.

Beside me, the commander reined in his stamping horse and bellowed, “This prisoner is being transported at the command of the Republic! Anyone who interferes is a traitor!”

“You are the traitors,” a woman’s voice cried.

She stepped forward into the torchlight, a starving wraith wrapped in filthy rags. Beneath her jutting collarbones, her torn bodice had been rolled down to expose one breast, where a weakly wailing infant refused to suckle. She glared at me, her eyes two wild black holes.

“Medici bitch!” she roared. “You kill me, you kill my child! Your soldiers starve us, while you grow fat! You should die! You!”

You, the crowd echoed. Death to the Medici!

Two youths ran out of the dark to accost the soldier on my left. One grabbed his heel in the stirrup and pulled him down; the other struck him with a club. He fell sideways in the saddle, grappling with the first youth.

“Get his sword!” someone shouted, and the crowd rushed forward.

The commander barked orders and reined his horse in until his leg pressed against mine. The fallen soldier had managed to unsheathe his sword and held the youths at bay.

A grizzled beggar dashed into the light, gripped the skirt of my habit, and tugged mightily; the donkey brayed and I screamed. My saddle slipped, and the world canted sideways in a frightening whirl of animal hide and swords and filthy limbs.

My legs became tangled in the stirrups; my shoulder struck bone and flesh. I looked up in midfall and saw the beggar’s yawning grin, studded with cracked and rotting teeth, maggots in a putrid hole. I felt his hands on me and screamed again.

Suddenly he disappeared; I kicked free from the stirrups and was guided up by strong hands onto my feet. The commander’s right arm pressed me close; his left hand brandished his sword. On the stones before us, the beggar lay bleeding. The soldiers encircled us, holding back the now-quiet crowd.

The commander pointed the tip of his sword at the beggar’s head and thundered, “The next one who touches her, I’ll kill.” He lowered his voice. “She’s just a girl. A girl at the mercy of the same politics you poor bastards are.”

He mounted his stallion, then gestured at his second in command, who lifted me so that the commander could pull me up into his saddle. We began to move again. The commander’s arms were on either side of me as he held the reins, and momentum pushed me back against his chest, warm and hard.

Now and then, I caught a whiff of raw meat left too long in the sun. The commander pulled out a square of linen and handed it to me.

“Put it over your nose and mouth,” he said. “There’s plague in this neighborhood.”

I put it over my nose and breathed in the antiseptic fragrance of rosemary.

“You’re still trembling,” he said. “It’s all right now. The street rabble, I won’t let them harm you.”

I lowered the kerchief. “That’s not what I fear.”

He grew quiet, then said softly, “We don’t know what to do with you. Were it my choice, I’d free you now. It’s only a matter of time.”

Eager, wistful, I half turned in the saddle. “You really think I’ll be freed?”

The same muscle in his cheek twitched. “A cruel thing for a child,” he said. “You’ve been our prisoner—how long now? Three years? With luck, you’ll outlive me, Duchessa. Me and every one of these poor bastards here.” He indicated his troops with a jerk of his chin. “Your friends outnumber ours now.”

Hope tugged at me. “Don’t lie,” I said.

His mouth stretched in a cynical grin. “I’ll lay you a wager that, within two months’ time, you and I will see our fortunes reversed.”

“And what are the stakes?” I asked.

“My life.”

I didn’t properly understand his reply then, but I said, “Done.”

“Done it is,” he said.

I settled against him. Whether he had lied or not, he had put my mind at ease.

“For our wager,” I said lightly, looking out at the shopfronts and walls as the torches’ yellow glow swept over them, “if you lose, whose head shall I ask for?”

The instant he opened his mouth, I knew what he would say.

“Silvestro,” he said. “Silvestro Aldobrandini, a humble soldier of the Republic.”

I thought of my mother’s letter, lying beneath my pillow at Le Murate, forever lost.

Our party encountered no more challenges, and we made our way quickly to the northern quarter of San Giovanni. Once there, we turned onto the narrow Via San Gallo and came to a cloister wall, behind which Sister Violetta was waiting to receive me.

It was the convent of Santa-Caterina, where I had spent the first months of my captivity. Ser Silvestro had seen me safely returned.

Eleven

As she closed the wooden gate on Ser Silvestro, Sister Violetta received me as she had before, finger to lips. Her lantern revealed the toll the past three years had taken; she was even gaunter now. She turned and led me upstairs to my old cell. A young woman with pale golden hair sat on the straw mattress; when the glow of the lantern found her, she lifted a thin arm and squinted at the light. Like Violetta’s, her face bore the pinched look of the hungry, but hers was growing into womanly beauty.

“Tommasa?” I asked.

She let go a gasp of recognition and embraced me as Sister Violetta again signaled for silence, then turned and disappeared down the corridor.

Tommasa broke the silence as soon as Violetta’s footsteps faded. “Caterina!” she hissed. “Why did they bring you back? Where have you been?”

I took in the filthy straw mattress, the stink of the sewer, and slowly sat down on the edge of the bed. Back at Le Murate, Sister Niccoletta was surely weeping, and I wanted to weep, too. I shook my head, too heavyhearted to speak.

Tommasa was too lonely to be silent. Most of the sisters and all of the boarders had succumbed to plague, she told me, and because of the siege, the convent’s larders were almost bare.

I lay awake all that night on the hard, lumpy straw, listening to Tommasa’s soft snores. All the while, I thought of Sister Niccoletta and Mother Giustina, and the life I had lost at Le Murate.

When morning came, I learned the new terms of my imprisonment: I was not to do chores, nor eat in the refectory, nor attend chapel. I was to remain day and night in my cell.

A miserable fortnight passed. There were no books at Santa-Caterina, and my requests for mending to pass the time were ignored. I lost weight on watery gruel. My only distraction was Tommasa, who returned in the evenings.

One hot August morning, the cannon started booming again, so loudly the floor vibrated beneath my feet. Sister Violetta, hollow-eyed with fear, appeared in the corridor outside to confer with my guardian nun. After several concerned glances in my direction, Violetta stepped forward and shut the door to my cell. Had there been a bolt or lock, she would have used it. From that point on, the door remained closed. Tommasa did not return, and I spent the night alone on scratchy, sour-smelling straw, vacillating between hope and terror.

The next morning, I woke again to the thunder of cannon; the merciless assault against Florence’s walls had begun. My guardian sister failed to bring food. When night fell, the fighting and the cannon ceased.

On the second day, there were only the cannon, closer than ever; on third morning, I woke to silence. I got out of bed and knocked on the door. No one responded; as I caught the handle of the door, a bell began to toll.

It was not a church bell marking the hour or summoning the faithful to prayer. It was the low, sad chime of the Cow—the bell in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, the Palace of Lords, the bell that called all citizens to the town’s central square.

Overwhelmed by joy, I threw open the door to glimpse my captor disappearing swiftly down the hallway. I followed. We came upon other sisters, all rushing to the patio beside the convent wall. From there they ascended a steep staircase built into the side of the convent. I elbowed my way up the stairs to the slanting roof, dizzyingly free and open to the sky and the city; I spread my bare arms to the breeze. Florence sprawled out around me, her walls surrounded by rolling hills, once green but now dark earth, raw from the tread of enemy boots and the wheels of artillery.

On roofs throughout the city, people were gathering. Some were pointing to the south, beyond the river, at Florence’s walls and their most ancient gate, the Porta Romana. There, just inside the city walls, huge white flags billowed as they slowly neared the gate. Soon they would pass outside, to the waiting enemy.

Down below, people swarmed into the streets; beside me, the nuns sobbed openly. Their hearts were broken, but mine was sailing on the wind with the flags.

Overcome, Sister Violetta sank onto her knees and stared out at the swelling white harbingers of defeat.

“Sister Violetta,” I said.

She stared at me, her gaze blank. Her mouth worked for an instant before she was able to say, “Remember us kindly, Caterina.”

“I will,” I answered, “provided you tell me how to get to Santissima Annunziata delle Murate.”

She frowned and finally saw my tousled braid and dingy, sleeveless nightgown, its hem lifted by the wind, the outlines of the black silk pouch visible beneath the fraying linen at my breasts.

“You can’t go out onto the streets,” she said. “You’re not even dressed. There will be soldiers. It isn’t safe.”

I laughed, an unfamiliar sound. I was bold, unstoppable. Mars had just surrendered its hold on me, and now lucky Jupiter was ascendant. “I’m going, with or without your help.”

She told me. South and east, down the Via Guelfa, past the Duomo, to the Via Ghibellina.

I hurried down the stairs, ran across the patio, slid the bolt on the thick convent door, and stepped out into the Via San Gallo.

It was early but hot, the cobblestones beneath my bare feet already warm. The street was alive with noise: the low-pitched toll of the Cow, the clatter of hooves, the rumble of excited voices. I had expected to find a populace shuttered indoors, hiding in fear from the same army that had savaged Rome; instead, people streamed out of their houses. Their poverty caused my giddy fearlessness to waver. I rubbed elbows with the well-dressed merchants and the starving poor, their children’s bellies bloated from hunger. Some headed with me, toward the tolling Cow in the Piazza della Signoria, but most headed due south on the Via Larga, toward the southern gate and the Imperial army. Toward food.

Republican soldiers moved against the crowd—some on foot, some mounted. None looked up at me. Their heads were bowed, their gazes downcast as they headed wearily home to await their conquerors and certain death.

I ran unnoticed, sweat streaming from my temples, the tender soles of my feet bruised and cut. The throng swept along faster and faster, as a cry went up.

The gates are open! They’re coming in!

I turned to see Ser Silvestro headed in the direction opposite mine, slouching astride his stallion, riding very slowly. His bare head was bowed; at the crowd’s shout, he lifted his chin, acknowledging the inevitable, then dropped it again.

Chance, some might call it, or luck. But it was Jupiter, touching us both with its beneficence, bestowing us upon each other.

I hurried to him; his weary horse paid me no mind.

“Ser Silvestro!” I shouted giddily. “Ser Silvestro!”

He did not hear; I reached out and touched his boot in the stirrup. He started and scowled down at me, ready to shout at the urchin who disturbed him—then recoiled and looked more closely at me.

“Duchessina!” he exclaimed in amazement. “How can it be …!”

Without ado, he reached for my hands and I grasped his, and he lifted me up onto his saddle.

I turned round to look at him. “Do you remember our wager?”

He shook his head gently.

“You should,” I admonished. “The stakes were your life.” And when he looked blankly at me, I added, “You said that, in two months’ time, our fortunes would be reversed. Two months, but only three weeks have passed since we met.”

His features relaxed into a pale, unhappy smile. “I remember now,” he said heavily. “I suppose, since it has been three weeks and not eight, I have lost.”

“To the contrary, you have won,” I said. “You need only take me to the convent of Le Murate to collect.”

PART IV

Rome September 1530–October 1533

Twelve

I made good on my bargain with Ser Silvestro. His comrades met their deaths at chopping blocks and gallows; he was fated to join them until I dispatched a letter to the Pope. His sentence was commuted to exile.

When Le Murate’s door opened to me, I ran into Sister Niccoletta’s waiting arms; we held each other fast and I laughed at the pools of tears collected on her spectacles. Within two days, Roman legates arrived with gifts of cheese, cakes, lambs, pigs, pigeons, and the finest wine I have ever tasted. While the rest of the city mourned defeat, those at Le Murate celebrated my return with a feast.

Fortunately, our invaders were not the wild, angry troops that had decimated Rome. The occupation of Florence was orderly. The Imperial commander who brought greetings from the Pope and Emperor Charles kissed my hand and addressed me as Duchessa.

On the fourth morning after the Republican surrender, a carriage took me to the Strozzi family villa. There, two men waited in the reception hall, one of them the gray-haired, sunken-cheeked Filippo Strozzi. As I entered the room, he embraced me more enthusiastically than he ever had before. He had reason to be glad: Florence and Rome were in the throes of rebuilding, and Filippo, kinsman by marriage to the Pope and a banker with money to lend, was positioned to become dazzlingly rich.

The other man was young, short, barrel-chested, and wearing a blinding grin. I failed to recognize him until he cried, his voice breaking with emotion, “Cat! Cat, I thought never to see you again!”

I had no words. I hugged Piero tightly, reluctant to let go of him. When we sat, he pulled his chair next to mine and held my hand.

My joy at the Imperial victory was tinged with sorrow at the realization that I would have to leave Le Murate, but I comforted myself with the thought that I would soon return home to the Palazzo Medici with Uncle Filippo and Piero.

“Duchessina” Filippo said, “His Holiness has sent you gifts.”

He fetched presents: a silk damask gown of vivid blue and a choker of pearls from which hung a pea-size diamond.

“I shall wear these,” I said, delighted, “when we dine together again at the Palazzo Medici.”

“Pope Clement bids you wear these when you go to meet him in Rome.” Filippo cleared his throat. “His Holiness wishes the heirs to remain in Rome until such time as they are ready to rule.”

I cried, of course. I had to be pried away from Piero after we said good-bye.

Back at Le Murate, I mourned bitterly. I wrote impassioned letters to Clement, begging to stay in Florence. It didn’t matter. By the end of the month, I was forced to say farewell to Sister Niccoletta and Mother Giustina and my beloved Piero.

I was orphaned again.

Rome sits upon seven hills. After hours of rolling green countryside, I glimpsed the first of them, the Qirinal, from the window of the carriage that carried Uncle Filippo, Ginevra, and me. Filippo pointed at an approaching expanse of worn, unremarkable brick, sections of which had dissolved with age and sprouted greenery.

“The Aurelian Wall,” he said reverently. “Nearly thirteen hundred years old.”

Moments after, we reached the wall and passed beneath a modern archway: the Porta del Popolo, the Gate of the People. Beyond, a sprawling city stretched to the horizon, dotted with campaniles and cathedral domes rising above the flat roofs of villas; white marble glittered beneath a hot September sun. Rome was far larger than Florence, far larger than I could have imagined. We rolled through common neighborhoods, past shops, humble homes, and open markets. The poor traveled on foot, the merchants on horses, the rich in carriages, a preponderance of which belonged to cardinals. Yet the streets, though busy, were uncrowded; a third of the buildings were still empty three years after the devastation wrought by the Emperor’s troops. Rome was still licking her wounds.

As the districts grew wealthier, I saw more evidence of the Sack. The gaudy villas of cardinals and of Rome’s most influential families exhibited damage: Stone finials and cornices had been smashed, wooden doorways scarred. Statues of gods were missing limbs, noses, breasts. Over the entrance to one cathedral, a headless Virgin held the Christ child in her arms.

Hammers rang on every street; wooden scaffolding embraced the façade of every other building. Artists’ shops were crowded with clients arguing over commissions, apprentices grinding gems, sculptors chiseling huge chunks of marble.