The Scarlet Contessa

When I learned of the marriage, I wept and begged Bona to cancel the wedding or let me flee. She had enormous sympathy for my situation, but she could not disobey her husband. As my wedding day grew closer, I grew more frantic.

Then Matteo went to the duke and asked for my hand.

At the July wedding—a small affair in the ducal chapel, attended by Bona, her ladies, Cicco, and Matteo’s fellow scribes—my groom was too stunned by his own decision to meet my gaze. After the ceremony, he kissed me not on the lips, as was proper for man and wife, but upon the brow. At the small banquet in the ground-floor servants’ hall, his gaze was, for once, directed at everyone but me. He drank a bit more than his portion of wine that night, and I more than mine; clearly, the bride was not the only one to dread the wedding night.

We went to his chambers to find the bed strewn with rose petals; Bona’s maid Francesca helped me quickly to undress down to my chemise, while Matteo hid behind the open doors of his wardrobe and fumbled with his own clothing. Once Francesca had left, I climbed into the bed, drew the covers up, and waited for my naked husband to appear.

Matteo emerged minus his doublet but still dressed in his short chemise and leggings. He pointed to a fur rug in front of the cold hearth. “I will sleep there tonight,” he said, still without looking at me.

I stared at him in amazement. The thought of sexual congress had left me terrified, but the priest had pronounced us wed. We were, to my thinking, obliged to couple whether we wanted to or not. “Why do you not come to bed?”

“I . . .” His cheeks flamed. “Dea, I could not bear to see you forced into such a terrible marriage, to a cruel man far beneath your station. But I—”

“You do not love me,” I finished calmly. How had I so misinterpreted all those longing glances over so many years? “You are doing this out of kindness, of course.”

He drew a breath, squared his shoulders, and sat down beside me. Taking my hand, he finally looked into my eyes. “I love you more than anyone else in all the world, Dea,” he said fiercely. “And I vow to protect you from harm and care for you tenderly. I am your truest friend, but I can never be more than that. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “You don’t fancy women, then.”

He let go a short, unhappy laugh. “It’s not that at all. It’s . . . simply a very complicated situation. The time will come soon, though, when I can explain why things must be so. But for now, I ask you to trust me. And one more thing . . .”

I lifted an expectant brow.

“For your sake, and mine, we must pretend that we have consummated our marriage. It is the safest course. Could you do that, Dea, knowing that I love you and want only the best for you?”

His words and eyes radiated compassion; I imagined I heard honest anguish in his tone. Even so, my temper flared. He was lying about preferring women to men, I decided, because it was a mortal sin and one that, discovered, could lead to his disgrace and even death. Yet I was furious that he would not trust me with the truth. He had said we were true friends.

I dropped his hand, picked up the feather pillow beside me, and, with all my strength, struck him hard in the face with it. Then I flung myself down on the bed, turned my back to him, and lay there a few minutes before my indignation yielded to tears. Even now, I am not sure why I cried so abruptly and bitterly; I should have been relieved.

When he lay down beside me and put his arm around my shoulder, I did not pull away. We passed the whole night thus.

My pride was wounded, but I quickly recovered. After all, I now had something I had never known before: a family, even if it consisted only of Matteo. For the first time I truly belonged to someone else, and he belonged to me. And I did not, like all other women, crave children—in fact, I privately thought it cruel to bring a new soul into such a wicked world. I enjoyed Matteo’s company, and resolved to live contentedly with him without relations.

Resolutions are such feeble things.

I had expected to love him as I might a friend, a brother. I had not expected that he would be ever thoughtful of me, that he would daily do me small kindnesses, bring me small gifts, take joy in my delight. I had not expected that I would lie in his bed pretending to sleep while he worked late at the small trestle desk in his chambers; I had not expected the way the lamplight would paint his skin golden, would cause shadows to nestle in the hollows of his cheeks and throat, would spark glints of copper in his hair.

During the days he worked upstairs in the men’s wing with Cicco and the rest of the clerical staff while I spent the time with Bona. At night, he worked alone, in our chamber, on the most secret projects. I was proud that Cicco had entrusted the most delicate matters to him, even at the same time that I was annoyed that Cicco overworked him so. Matteo was discreet: he never discussed his work, nor left the papers out where I could see them. Sometimes he read; most of the time, he wrote and wrote. When he was finished, he gathered his papers together and quietly placed them in a compartment hidden in the wainscoting, which he locked; the key hung from a leather thong about his neck.

Once I passed by while he was working at his desk and failed to avert my gaze in time. I got a glimpse of cipher rendered in Matteo’s even hand. It was a beautiful creation, a tapestry of numbers and Latin letters and mathematical symbols, elegantly woven upon the page without space or punctuation. I tried to forget what I had seen, but that was impossible—like Matteo, I was good at keeping secrets, too. Only Bona, who had taught me my letters, knew the truth: that once I saw something in writing, in my native tongue or French or Latin, I could not forget it. Bona was scandalized that God should have given a woman such a useless gift; at her urging, I kept my talent to myself.

I hid it from Matteo, too, for it comforted me to have him there as I fell asleep; I did not want him to worry I might be too curious.

Not long after we were married, I woke one night to find the lamplight blue and sputtering, and Matteo still in his chair. He had put away his work and was sitting up very straight, his arms by his sides. His eyes were closed, his face utterly relaxed; the corners of his lips were faintly turned up in the most beatific of smiles. Dreaming, I thought, and I stirred, thinking to rise and lead him to bed, but the instant I moved, his eyes opened slowly. He had been full awake.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said, startled.

“I was just thinking,” he said, as if that were explanation enough. His eyes were extraordinarily bright and loving. “If you don’t mind, I would like to think for a bit longer.”

“Suit yourself.” I rolled back over, but I could not go back to sleep; I kept thinking of the look on his face.

In all dealings with me Matteo was patient, in all dealings kind. I saw his anger only once, one evening when his master Cicco kicked open our chamber door and hurled Matteo inside. As Matteo struck the floor full force, I yelped and ran to him. His upper lip was split and bleeding, his left eye swelling shut. I put my arms about his shoulders and pulled him up to sitting; trembling with rage, he pushed me away and tried to get to his feet, but Cicco moved quickly into the room and kicked him back down.

“Fool!” Cicco barked. He was forty years Matteo’s senior and gray-haired, but stout and tall as an oak. “Are you thinking to get yourself killed? Stay here and soak your head in cold water until you can think clearly!”

With that, Cicco turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

I fussed over Matteo and cleaned the blood away. His front tooth had been chipped on the outside edge, his upper lip was split at the same spot as his childhood scar, and the tender skin around his eye was badly bruised. I asked a gentle question as to the cause of the fight, but Matteo was too troubled to speak for hours. I suspected that he had probably seen a woman being dragged through the loggia, and tried to intervene. After all those years of working for the duke, he should have known better.

We did not speak that night; I helped him undress and turned down the covers for him, but he would not go to bed. Nor did he bring out his papers to work; instead, he sat at his desk and stared straight ahead at the wainscoting.

It was well after midnight when I woke to see the lamp still burning, and Matteo still in his chair. His eyes—the one swollen and an alarming shade of purple now—were closed, and his expression was, if not blissful, then at least serene.

“What do you do in that chair?” I asked softly.

He drew in a long breath and released it with a faintly shuddering sigh. “I try,” he said, “to see things as they really are.”

There was something surprisingly optimistic in his tone. Barefoot, I went to him and blew out the lamp, then led him to bed. He slept with his arm around my shoulder. We did not speak of the fight with Cicco again, but I watched day after day as the swelling of his upper lip gradually retreated, leaving behind a thicker scar.

The months of our marriage passed quickly. July left, and August came; at every feast day, every wedding, Matteo and I sat together and danced, beaming as newlyweds ought. We blushed at jokes about the conjugal relations we were surely enjoying, and answered questions about the possible arrival of children with smiles and shrugs.

I began to fall in love. I had not meant to; I had not believed that any man could be as kind as Bona, or as gentle, or as able to put my needs before his. I blamed Matteo for my feelings. I would not have come to love him so much had he not gazed on me so often with such genuine affection, and I saw, from close daily observation, that he did not favor men over women.

What, then, kept him from my arms?

By late August, I began to experiment with small signs of affection. When the entire court celebrated the end of summer with an outdoor picnic, I held his hand after the dances had ended, and led him to a pond on the edges of the duke’s hunting park. The moon was waxing fat and reflected in the dark, still water; I drew his attention upward, to the glittering diamond sky, and pointed at a cluster of stars.

And I shared with Matteo something I had never revealed to anyone. Somehow I knew that Matteo would understand.

“See those stars.” I pointed up at the sky. “And the wisps of clouds beside them. Together, they make an upside-down numeral four.”

Matteo noted them and looked sharply at me. “They do,” he said.

“It’s a man, do you see? He’s upside down—and his one leg is bent and crossed over the straight one, to make the four.”

“The hanged man,” he whispered. I could not read his tone.

“Well, perhaps,” I said, relaxing my focus and letting my imagination roam. “Perhaps, if one slipped a rope over his ankle and dangled him upside down, and he bent one knee . . . Matteo, that man is you.”

I looked back at him to see his reaction. I expected him to smile and think it was a fanciful little joke. But he was studying me with the same intensity he turned on his ciphers.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

I looked back at the hanged man, and was filled with sudden dread. Some very bad things were going to happen, but they would bring about great good. Good that Matteo would heartily approve of.

“Changes are coming,” I said truthfully. I could not bring myself to say that they would be unbearably hard.

It was a warm night, but the breeze stirred as I spoke. He shivered slightly, and composed himself.

“How often do you see these . . . signs, Dea?”

“They’re everywhere,” I answered, heartened by the fact that he did not scoff. “I just notice them at some times more than others. But they are always true.” I hesitated. “Bona would say this was from the Devil.”

“Bona would be wrong,” he said, more quickly than I think he wanted to, for he stopped himself and remained silent for a moment. “Have you mentioned this to anyone else?”

“No one. I hoped you might understand.”

“I do. And you should never, ever speak of this to Bona or anyone else.” He paused. “It’s not from the Devil. But some people think it is, and that makes it dangerous to discuss. People have been killed for less.”

“I’ll speak of it only to you.”

“I would appreciate that—if you see something you think I should know about.” His tone warmed. “You must be who you are, Dea, and must never stifle such a talent. But only you and I should know.”

I smiled, pleased that my husband and I shared a secret.

He glanced back up at the sky. I took advantage of the moment to reach up and press my hand to his warm cheek. He smiled down at me, but upon seeing the look in my eye, drew away, and went back to the others.

I was, however, not easily discouraged. In those days my chaste pecks upon waking and retiring began to stray from his cheek toward his lips. I remarked on the fine appearance he made, on my great good luck of having him for a husband, on my constant gratitude for his kindness. When he worked too long past midnight, I would go to him and set my cheek upon his shoulder and plead sweetly for him to join me in bed. I yearned for yet feared his touch.

In every case, I was rebuffed kindly, subtly: Matteo avoided my kisses by turning his face gently away, and slipped his hand from my grip when I held on too long. My compliments brought small, tenuous smiles and averted gazes. In the first few days of November, as Matteo settled at his desk, while I, in my nightgown, stoked the fire, I asked over my shoulder:

“Would it be so horrible, then, if we were to truly live as man and wife?”

His long silence served as answer. I looked back at the flames, humiliated and struggling to hide my tears.

After a time, he said softly, “I love you, Dea. But never in that way.” He paused. “I’ll be leaving in a few days for Rome. Cicco has asked me to go on the duke’s behalf. Perhaps when I return, I’ll be able to explain things. Perhaps later we could go together to Florence, to meet some of my friends there.”

“Florence!” I whispered harshly. “What has Florence to do with anything?”

His expression grew sorrowful; after a long moment, he said, “If you understood, you would not be angry. Please, Dea, trust me for a little while longer.”

I answered nothing, but took a few more savage thrusts at the fire with the poker, then went to bed sulking. Eventually, I tired of my self-pity and fell asleep.

Some hours later I woke in the dead of night. The room was black; the single window was shuttered and Matteo had put out the lamp, but he did not lie beside me. Instead, he trod with bare feet slowly, lightly, over the carpet and the stone, gesturing with his arms in the darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, I saw him pause in front of the south wall and make a complicated, sweeping gesture, and heard the faintest of murmurs—softer than a whisper, yet oddly authoritative—issue from his lips. After this, he made a quarter-turn to face west, and again gestured; by the time he faced the north wall, I surmised that he was drawing stars in the air, and connecting them with a circle.

The realization pricked the hairs on the back of my neck: Stars and circles belonged to the realm of magic, and Bona had drilled into me that such things were of the Devil. Yet only half of me took fright; the other half was keenly interested, and even comforted, for Matteo’s circle enclosed the entire room, including the bed where I lay. Like him, I was sheltered from whatever evil lurked beyond the perimeter.

In the darkness, my husband summoned no demons, invoked no dead. Instead, he stood in the circle’s center, at the foot of our bed, and spread his arms, his face turned toward the invisible sky. He was, I decided, praying.

The next morning I did not speak of it to him; nor did I mention it over the next few days, though he continued nightly to draw the stars. As he packed for his Roman journey, he grew increasingly pensive; I felt at times that he was on the verge of telling me a great secret, but something held him back.

Morning and evening, I prayed at Bona’s side in the chapel: Let Matteo’s acts be good, not evil. Let him love me. Keep him safe.

He departed for Rome on a chill November dawn. He would not let me go with him to the stables, even though it was early and Bona would not expect me for an hour. Instead, he turned, dressed in his heavy woolen cloak and cap, and stopped as I tried to follow him out the door of our chamber.

“Dea,” he said. “Let me take my leave now, and quickly.” To my surprise, he clasped both my hands very tightly, and studied my face as if he thought to find something unexpected there; his eyes were so bright, so filled with affection that I thought he was about to kiss me full on the lips.

“Quickly,” I agreed. “I don’t care for good-byes.” I closed my eyes and leaned in, eager for the kiss.

It did not come. He let go of my hands abruptly, and when I opened my eyes, he was reaching for something around his neck. He pulled it over his head and handed it to me; I stared at it for an instant as it dangled from his long fingers.

A tiny black key, strung upon a leather thong. I stared at it in surprise.

“Use it,” he said, “in case of emergency.”

“For the compartment in the wall,” I said, disbelieving, “where you keep your papers.”

He nodded.

“Why do you not just give it to Cicco?”

“Because those papers are not for Cicco,” he said, in a way that awakened gooseflesh on my arms. “Or for anyone else but you, and then only in an emergency.”

“There will be no emergency,” I warned him sternly as I took the key and hung it round my own neck. His statement provoked a thousand anxious questions: If you haven’t been working for Cicco, then who? Why? What sort of papers are these? But I asked none of them; he was standing in his cloak in the doorway, ready to leave. “I’ll return this to you when you come home.” At Christmas, I almost added, and realized how very long he would be gone.

“Dea,” he said softly, and tried to take my hands again; I threw my arms around him and hugged him. This time, my embrace was fully returned. “My Dea,” he repeated, then drew back and gave me that pure, loving smile. “God keep you.”

“And you,” I said, struggling to keep my composure. “Oh, Matteo, be careful!” I wanted to say Don’t go to Rome! I felt that if I dared let go, Matteo would slip from my grasp forever.

He leaned down and gave me a solemn, fraternal kiss upon the lips, then said, “You will see me again, Dea.”

“Of course,” I said, and he turned and was gone.

The whole time Matteo was away, I slept on the little cot near Bona’s feet, where I had always slept in the years before my marriage. Without Matteo, his chamber seemed forlorn and empty; I could not sleep in his bed alone. I did not linger long; Bona would be waiting for me that morning, and there were countless preparations left before the annual Christmas trek to Milan.

Even so, I paused before leaving, and prodded the fire one last time, making sure that the smoke drew properly. As I stared down into the golden flames, I saw the chance design made by the smaller limbs I had heaped upon the logs: an upside-down four. The hanged man.

Chapter Three

Bona was surprisingly cheerful that morning. Normally, her husband’s violent infidelities would have left her shaken and sorrowful for a few days, but the instant I arrived in her chamber, she informed me that Duke Galeazzo had yielded to her request that she be allowed to honor his “secret guest” with a luncheon. The duke was reluctant, but, apparently, Lorenzo was eager to make amends for “startling the ladies in the chapel.”

It was to be an intimate event. Situated in a corner tower, Galeazzo’s private dining chamber had an unusually high vaulted ceiling; the stone floors were covered in Persian carpets in shades of scarlet, pine, and gold to mute the echoing tread of servants and the clatter of goblets and plates. Two arched windows faced north and east; these were shuttered that morning to keep out prying eyes and the bitter cold, and the great hearth contained such a fierce crackling blaze that I began to sweat the instant I entered the room. A pair of large tapestries covered the walls on either side of the eastern window, and the bare walls had been painted with trellises of flowers. But what was most remarkable, to my mind, were the eight long oval mirrors—four hung on the wall behind the table, four on the wall in front—that allowed the duke to see his reflection’s reflection, as well as those of everyone in front of or behind him. These, combined with his four tasters—who sampled everything before it appeared on Galeazzo’s plate or in his cup—gave him some measure of comfort, for even he realized that he had earned many enemies.

Lorenzo was waiting when we women arrived, an hour before midday. He wore a great smile that emphasized his jutting lower jaw by revealing his bottom row of teeth, yet it somehow served to ease his ugliness. That morning, he was unaccompanied and dressed in a plain, long tunic of gray wool. He wore no jewelry, nor had his straight locks felt the kiss of a curling iron. Yet when Bona’s arrival was announced, he bowed and kissed her extended hand with a seasoned courtier’s finesse; though he presented himself as a commoner, his confidence and self-possession marked him as an equal. Caterina, too, was announced and received a similar reception. I entered silently, to no fanfare, and expected no greeting, but Lorenzo bowed deeply to me, and when I responded with a curtsy, said warmly, “Dea, isn’t it? The wife of Matteo da Prato?”

“I am,” I said, blushing. I was unaccustomed to being acknowledged by anyone save Bona.

“I am an acquaintance of your husband’s,” he said. “I have known him for many years. It was I, in fact, who recommended him to the duke for employment.”

Tongue-tied in the face of his composure and charm, I had no response.

Duke Galeazzo was late, requiring Bona and Lorenzo to engage in small talk for half an hour. Galeazzo’s secretary and right-hand man, the thick-necked, burly Cicco Simonetta, arrived first. With his peasant’s hair—long on top, cropped sharply above his oddly small ears—and round, heavy face, Cicco could easily have been mistaken for an ignorant bumpkin were it not for his fine dress and the shrewdness in his eyes. The duke kept no secrets from Cicco, who greeted Lorenzo with no smile and much reticence.

After the silent appearance of three sullen, armed bodyguards, and the emergence of attendants and the ducal cupbearer from the kitchen, Galeazzo arrived—without the usual blare of trumpets, given that Lorenzo’s arrival was to be known by as few residents of Castle Pavia as possible. The duke’s pride, however, required that his entry be accompanied by the sung praises of one of the castrated tenors who had entertained us in Bona’s chamber the day before.

A month shy of his thirty-third birthday, Galeazzo Maria was in his prime. Like all the Sforza, he was sturdy, muscular, and passionately devoted to sport. His tunic, of gray-green watered silk embroidered with bronze fleur-de-lis, with white ermine trim at the collar, was tailored to show off a powerful chest and shoulders. His cap of light reddish brown hair was cut in layers, long enough to cover his ears but too short to touch his collar; as was the fashion, carefully crimped curls framed his face. The latter was dominated by a strong nose, so badly broken in his youth that the bridge had a large bump. His green eyes were deep set, round, and ringed by shadows, his lips thin and permanently pursed in an arrogant sneer.

This was the man who had ordered one of his enemies to be nailed to his coffin before being buried alive; who had, instead of showing generosity to a starving peasant who dared catch a hare in the hunting park, killed him by forcing him to swallow the unskinned animal whole; and who had, in a spasm of jealousy, chopped off the hands of a courtier who had caressed one of Galeazzo’s former lovers. The duke had been born not to heartless parents but to a brave warrior, Francesco Sforza, and a proud, strong-willed but charitable woman, Bianca Maria Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan. His parents were much loved, and as their eldest son grew to maturity, they were perplexed by his arrogance and cruelty. When his father died and Galeazzo claimed the duchy, he resisted his mother’s advice; she died of a mysterious fever—or poison, some say, on the order of her own son.