The Scarlet Contessa

They came at dusk, galloping across the Lombard plain: a solitary horse and rider, black against the graying sweep of snow and ice and sky. I let go a cry of infinite relief; my breath clouded the glass, and I wiped it away, compelled and squinting as I struggled to recognize the rider.

At last he reached the moat, reined in his horse, and shouted for the castellan to lower the drawbridge. Only then did I see the body slung over the saddle; I gasped and pressed my fingertips to the freezing glass.

Somehow I calmed myself, gathered my skirts, and hurried down the stairs. I ran outside, across the cold, endless courtyard to the main gate just as the horse’s hooves struck a last, hollow thud against the wooden bridge and passed, ringing, onto the cobblestones inside the gate.

I ran to Matteo, his belly pressed against the saddle, his long legs hanging down one flank of the lathered steed, his head and torso down the other, his arms horribly limp and dangling. He would have slipped easily to the ground had the rider not held him firmly in place.

I cried out, thinking he was dead, but when the rider dismounted and helped him slide into my arms, he groaned.

I do not remember the rider carrying him to his bed or shouting for the doctor. Others ran to help, but I do not remember them at all. Of the breathless moments before the doctor came, I recall fragments: Matteo’s hazel eyes, the whites now red, sparkling, utterly lost; Matteo’s brow and cheeks, an ugly mottled violet; his skin slick and glistening; Matteo’s limbs, spasming as cramps seized his gut. I held his head as he retched yellow-green vomit streaked with bright blood. I wiped his sunken face with a cold cloth that appeared magically in my hand and called his name, but he did not know me.

If I had to lose him, if he had to die, why did he not die as the Hanged Man, limp, peaceful, resigned? Why did he have to suffer horribly? God is merciful, Bona said, and just, but there was no mercy, no justice in Matteo’s dying, only the most savage cruelty.

Plague, someone whispered, and crossed himself, but it was not plague. Bona’s physician appeared with leeches and a bitter draught, but Matteo vomited up what little he was able to swallow, and his limbs convulsed so violently at times that he crushed many of the leeches and the doctor removed the rest for fear of losing them.

Fever, the doctor said, but it was like no fever I had ever seen. Matteo’s master Cicco came, his huge bulk huddled, his tiny eyes wide, his rounded features slack with fright; Matteo did not know him, either, and he did not stay long. Bona came and said that I must rest—a ridiculous suggestion, I thought, for I had no idea then that it was nearly dawn—and that she would sit with Matteo. I sent her away. I sent the doctor away. I sent the hovering rider away, until my husband and I were alone.

As the morning light filtered through the open shutters, Matteo’s thrashing eased at last, and I closed them, hoping he might sleep. Amazingly, the hearth was still crackling; someone must have stoked it. As I turned to where my husband lay, his long, naked torso and limbs motionless against the dark soaked sheets, I heard a rasping croak.

“Lorenzo.”

I moved swiftly to the chair by the bedside and put my cool hand to his cheek. His eyes were frighteningly dull; the purple flush had faded from his cheeks, now ashen.

“Lorenzo has gone back to Florence,” I said. There was no point in mentioning Lorenzo’s diversion to the north in hopes of a secret rendezvous. His Magnificence was already well on his way home. “You must not worry about him now.”

His eyelids fluttered. “Dea,” he gasped. His voice was so hoarse as to be unrecognizable; his throat must have been terribly sore.

I pressed my knuckles to my lips. “Oh, Matteo. Matteo, my poor darling . . .”

“I am dying,” he whispered, and I felt as though I would melt—my blood, my bones, my flesh—and only the blinding pain in my throat and chest would remain.

“I won’t let you,” I sobbed, but he gestured desperately, impatiently with his right hand. He was so weak that I had to fall silent to hear him.

“My quill,” he said.

I ran to his desk, retrieved the quill, and lifted the inkpot from its place, my hands shaking, clumsy. I fetched a piece of parchment along with his little lap desk, and propped him up against the pillows.

Once situated, he tried to dip the nib into the inkpot I held for him, but tremors plagued him; he dropped the quill. He squeezed his eyes shut and let go a moan of frustration, then gathered himself and looked back at me. His lips were dove gray and trembling.

“Swear,” he whispered.

“Anything,” I said. “Anything for you.”

It pained him to speak; sweat dripped from his forehead as he formed the words. “On your life,” he gasped. “Take me to San Marco. And my papers . . . Read them in secret. Tell Lorenzo: Romulus and the Wolf mean to destroy you.”

He fell abruptly silent.

“I swear,” I said.

As I spoke, his body stiffened, and he let go a terrible strangled sound and lost control of his bowels. For several seconds, he lay thus—stiff and trembling—and then his arms and legs began to thrash. I cried his name and tried to hold him down, lest he harm himself, but I was not strong enough.

In the end, he fell still; his eyes closed, and his breathing grew harsh. Half an hour later, it stopped, and his eyes slowly opened; I looked in them and knew that he was dead.

I stripped the soiled sheets and set them outside, and used the basin of water someone had left behind to wash my husband. When he was clean, I dressed him in his finest tunic and leggings, then lay down beside him and held him until someone knocked upon the door.

I did not answer, but I had forgotten to throw the bolt and Bona entered. She tried to coax me away; I would not hear, would not leave Matteo. She left, and when she came again, she brought others, including Cicco, his foolish hair disheveled from sleep. The lumbering bear of a man, normally stoic, burst out weeping at the sight of Matteo, his star pupil. He tried gently to pull me from my husband, but again, I would not go; he had to recruit a second man. I clawed and kicked, to no avail; they caught my arms and tore me from my beloved.

I screamed, I thrashed; the sobbing Cicco held me lest I hurt myself. When I finally grew tired and had to sit, Bona convinced me to take a sip of strangely bitter wine. She had brought her priest, Father Piero, and after I had fallen into a strange state between sleep and waking, Father Piero told me, “You must accept this. We are human and frail, and do not understand as yet, but it is God’s will.”

“God is a murderer,” I said listlessly, “and a liar. He bids us pray, yet will not hear us. He sets evil men over us, and takes no pity on their victims.”

“Dea,” Bona chided, aghast. “God have mercy on you!” She crossed herself, covered her eyes with her hands, and wept.

I turned calmly to her. “When did He hear us? When did He ever hear us?”

She never answered. To my astonishment, a scarlet-robed cardinal entered and produced a vial of holy oil, dipped his finger into it, and touched my darling’s eyes, ears, nose, lips hands, feet, and loins, praying: Per istam sanctam unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus . . .

Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy may God forgive whatever sins you have committed . . .

Matteo needed no forgiveness, I decided. It was God who needed to apologize to my husband.

When Bona’s draught had left me sufficiently compliant, Francesca and the chambermaids took me away to the duchess’s room and dressed me in black skirts that were too long, and a veil that filmed the world darkly; I did not care. I did not want to see.

Miserable, pointless hours passed, after which I was taken to the ducal chapel to discover Matteo in front of the altar, lying in a wooden box, his arms crossed, a crucifix over his heart. The votive candles I had lit for his safety still burned upon the altar. I threw them across the room, ignoring the startled gasps of onlookers and the scalding wax that spilled down my arm.

I did not sleep at all that first night.

The next day, I sat beside Matteo in the chapel, Bona at my side, while most of the courtiers filed past his body. In the midst of familiar faces, one unknown appeared, with beard and hair and eyes black and shining as jet. I did not know him, yet felt I had laid eyes upon him before. He bore a saddlebag slung over his shoulder, and when he approached, he went down upon one knee and presented the saddlebag as if it were a gift.

I realized then that he was the rider, the man who had broken away from the caravan of papal legates my husband was leading from Rome to Milan, in order to bring Matteo swiftly home. He had remained in Matteo’s room, awaiting the outcome, until I had thrown him out.

“This was your husband’s, Madonna,” he said. His voice was deep and soft, his gaze averted; if he felt any emotion, it was carefully contained. “He asked me to be certain you received it.” He looked to be Matteo’s age and would have been pretty enough to capture the duke’s attention—Galeazzo occasionally indulged in affairs with his male staff—had it not been for his great sharp nose.

I thanked him. The bag was heavier than I expected, and when he handed it to me, it slipped from my grasp to the ground. I could not bring myself to look inside, not there, with others watching. The man bowed and retreated, and I thought no more about him.

Duke Galeazzo was last to appear. He stared with distaste at my husband’s corpse and said flatly, “A pity. He was one of my most talented scribes. Poison, was it?”

At those last words, I gasped. The red-eyed Cicco was with the duke and drew him away with a word, but I rose, and called after him to explain himself. What poison? Had the doctor said this? Why had no one mentioned this to me?

I tried to push through the crowd and find the black-haired man who had given me Matteo’s saddlebag. He had traveled with Matteo; surely he would know if my husband had been poisoned.

But the man was nowhere to be found, and Francesca and Bona pleaded with me to sit back down. His Grace was mistaken, they insisted. He was confusing Matteo with another man, another matter, but I did not believe them, and broke down sobbing.

After a time, there were priests and Roman legates, public prayers and psalms, but there was no burial. For the first time in anyone’s memory, the ground was coated with a layer of solid ice; we could not lay him in the earth until it thawed.

Matteo’s corpse was taken away—somewhere outside, I suspected, sheltered from animals but not the freezing cold; they were wise not to tell me where. Bona led me to a nauseating display of food in the common dining chamber near the chapel. I could not bear the sight of it, so her ladies returned me to Bona’s chamber, where I drank more of the wine laced with the bitter tang of poppies. For hours I stared into the glittering fire.

Matteo had been murdered. Romulus and the Wolf had killed him in order to silence him, and they would kill Lorenzo next. And I was stripped of reason and will and could do nothing to stop it. Whom should I tell? Whom should I trust?

When night fell, Francesca helped me undress and put on my nightgown. She offered me more bitter wine, but I refused and was taken to my little cot. When Bona arrived, she paused before climbing into her own bed to pray; I lay listening to her whispers and began to tremble with silent rage. I wanted to strike her, to tear the rosary from her fingers, to scream that she had taught me only lies: God was neither loving nor just, and I hated Him.

I held my tongue and waited, anguished, until Bona fell asleep, until Francesca snored. By the light of the hearth, I rose and found my shawl and slippers, then slipped out into the loggia.

I pattered downstairs, gasping at the freezing air when I hit the open hallway. I staggered in the blackness, twice almost slipping on the ice, and was shivering uncontrollably by the time I got to Matteo’s room. It was cold and dark and drafty; the fire had gone out and the flue was still open, but I did not bother to light it, as I did not care whether I caught cold or froze to death. I would have been pleased to die.

I am unsure why I went to my husband’s chamber. I believe I meant to scream myself hoarse, though even with the windows shuttered, I would have been overheard. I only know that when I arrived and drew the bolt behind me, I spied Matteo’s quill upon the carpet.

It must have been tangled in the bedding and fallen when I removed the sheets to clean him. I dropped to my knees before it and grief rushed out of me in a torrent. The sobs wracked me so that I sank down upon the carpet, the quill clutched to my chest.

I wept a good half an hour. When I was done, my eyes, nose, and mouth were streaming, the poor feather crushed. Gasping for breath, I pushed myself up to sitting, and felt something small and metal brush against my breastbone, beneath my nightgown.

Matteo’s key.

Use it in case of emergency.

I drew my sleeve across my eyes and nose, and stared across the room at Matteo’s writing desk and the secret panel next to it, hidden in the dark wooden wainscoting. Weak and trembling after the paroxysm of tears, I crawled on my hands and knees to Matteo’s desk, and pulled myself up into his chair to light the lamp. The oil was low, and the flame feeble; I leaned down and had to run my fingertips over the wall to find the tiny black keyhole.

I slipped the leather thong over my hand, and put the little key into the lock.

The door to the compartment popped open with a faint click. Behind the wood panel, a large stone brick was missing from the wall; in the gap sat a thick stack of papers the size of a library manuscript. I drew them out carefully, set them upon my husband’s desk, and pulled the lamp closer.

On the very top was a tiny black silk pouch, tied with a red ribbon, and beneath that, a letter on fresh paper, folded into thirds, sealed with wax, and addressed For my Beloved. At the sight, I braced myself for the emotional upheaval to come as I opened the little black pouch. I thought it contained jewelry—a keepsake, perhaps, by which I could remember him, but it contained only a coarse grayish-brown powder.

I turned to the letter, expecting to learn, at long last, why my husband had rejected my amorous advances.

I did not expect to be frightened.

It was not a heartfelt farewell letter but a diagram, in Matteo’s hand, of a circle with the cardinal directions marked—oddly, with east at the top of the circle instead of north, and west at the bottom. At each direction, he had put a five-pointed star, with arrows carefully indicating how it should be drawn, and beneath each star, a word in what I suspected was Hebrew; underneath these were written phonetic translations in the vernacular, but no meaning was given.

Beneath this was a diagram of a second circle, again with the cardinal directions, this time accompanied by hexagrams and more barbarous words.

It was magic, the same magic I had seen him work at night when I pretended to be sleeping in our bed, and I remembered snatches of our conversation the night I had first told him that I saw portents in the clouds and sky and stars.

Bona would say this was from the Devil, I had said, and he had answered swiftly: Bona would be wrong.

Beneath both circles were sets of instructions in Milanese describing the rites that accompanied each. I could not focus my shattered mind long enough to make sense of them, nor could I keep the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck from lifting when I set down Matteo’s diagram to examine the next page upon the stack.

It was a piece of yellowed vellum, brittle with age, many times folded and in danger of falling apart. Gingerly, I unfolded it upon the desk. The ink was rust brown, faded, the handwriting ancient, unfamiliar; Bona had permitted me no Greek, though I recognized it readily enough, and understood most of the Latin translation written in a later hand beneath it.

It was an invocation—of what, I could not fathom in my grief-addled state. I set it delicately aside; beneath it rested an unbound manuscript of text, consisting of several dozens of pages in Latin. The paper and the author’s hand were modern; the title page read De Mysteriis Aegyptiorium, Of the Egyptian Mysteries.

Last in the stack of writing was a document written in Matteo’s careful, even script. The letters of the Latin alphabet were written across the page, in order, and beneath each letter was written a different, random letter, number, or symbol. The letter a for example, was represented by the number 9, the letter b by an x, and c by an l. At the very top of the document was written strike out every fourth. It was, I realized, a key—one Matteo must have used when encrypting secret correspondence.

I propped an elbow on the desk and put my fingertips to my brow. “Why do you want me to have this?” I asked aloud.

The impulse to cast it all into the dying fire overtook me. Magic had been no more able to protect wicked men from killing Matteo than had God. But another thought damped my anger: the memory of the gilded triumph card displaying the Hanged Man. Surrender to evil forces with the intent of sacrifice.

I pressed the heels of my palms to my burning eyes and tried to make sense of it all. Matteo had clearly had a sense of his impending death before he left, else he would not have given me the key.

He had sacrificed himself to me in marriage out of innocent love. Had he again sacrificed himself to protect me? Had he left all this behind to warn me?

Had I not been furious with God, I would have burned it all. Instead I stared down at the meaningless tapestry of numerals and letters on the page and heard Lorenzo the Magnificent speaking.

It was I, in fact, who recommended Matteo to the duke for employment.

As if in answer, I heard Matteo in my memory.

I was rescued in my youth by a wealthy patron. . . .

Perhaps later we could go together to Florence.

Bury me in San Marco, the monastery in Florence that had educated him.

Read them in secret. And tell Lorenzo: Romulus and the Wolf mean to destroy you.

I sat very still, for perhaps an hour, then stoked the fire and stirred it until the flames leapt high and the room grew warm. I opened the shutters and discovered my husband’s saddlebag, leaning against the wall beneath a window. I undid the straps and emptied it onto the bed. It held another quill, a vial of ink, a blotter, two pairs of leggings and two wool undershirts, a brass mug, comb, and a small book, bound in leather. Half its pages were covered in the same unfathomable cipher—numbers and letters mixed with an occasional star or other symbol—I had found on the papers hidden in the compartment. I examined the little book for some time, but could make no sense of it.

When the blackness outside eased to gray, I went back upstairs to the duchess’s chamber, where Bona lay sleeping. I tiptoed up onto the platform, slid the bed curtains aside, and set a hand gently upon her shoulder. Even so, she wakened with a start.

“I must take Matteo to Florence,” I said.

Chapter Five

The duke refused my request to take Matteo to Florence to be buried in the churchyard of San Marco. For one thing, Galeazzo said, the winter was far too treacherous for a woman to attempt five days’ hard ride, even if it be southward—no matter that a day of feeble sun had melted most of the ice. For another, he insisted that every member of court attend the Christmas celebrations in Milan, whether they were in mourning or not.

Of the myriad princes in Italy, none celebrated Christmas with greater zeal than Duke Galeazzo. He required all courtiers, all ambassadors, all feudatories to come to Milan to celebrate the Nativity and renew their vows of fealty to him the day after, on the feast of Saint Stephen. Everyone, except the dying and the mortally ill, was required to attend, for the holiday marked the end and beginning of the year. The duke gave gifts to his underlings, alms to the poor, pardons to the convicted; during the week, he attended mass at different venues, the better to be seen by his loyal subjects. On the twenty-sixth, Saint Stephen’s Day, he went to the church of Santo Stefano; on the twenty-seventh, Saint John the Evangelist’s Day, he went to the church of San Giovanni, and so forth.

Bona had tears in her eyes when she told me of the duke’s decision; the court was leaving the next morning for the Castle Porta Giovia in the center of Milan, and I, in my black veil, was required to go, too. I turned from her, speechless, but she put a hand upon my shoulder to draw me back.

“He is being embalmed,” she said, and I realized she meant Matteo. “Come with me to Milan, please. And when we return to Pavia, the duke will be distracted, and I will see to it that you are able to take Matteo to Florence for burial.”

The following morning found me riding silently on horseback alongside Francesca and the other chattering chambermaids next to the furnished, velvet-draped wagon that held Bona and the children. It was a sunny winter’s day, harshly bright and blue, with a wind that stole all warmth. The roads were slush and mud; my cape grew quickly spattered. Matteo’s saddlebag, packed with the little book in cipher and Bona’s triumph cards, was strapped to my mount. From time to time, it brushed the back of my leg, bringing fresh grief.

Milan lies due north of Pavia, one day’s easy ride away, on flat roads across the Po River basin. Given the size and lumbering pace of our caravan, however, we set out at dawn and did not reach our destination until well after dusk.

Nestled on a plain, the city stretches out to the horizon, where the distant, snowy flanks of the Alps graze the heavens. The light was failing by the time my horse’s hooves struck cobblestone, but I could still see the four towers of the ducal castle, Porta Giovia, and the flickering yellow glow emanating from its windows. Across the broad avenue was the cathedral, the Duomo, its face covered with dark, skeletal scaffolding. Spires from other cathedrals—San Giovanni, Santo Stefano, Sant’ Ambrogio—reared up from an endless span of red-tiled rooftops.

Normally I would have taken pleasure in the journey and the sights of the city, which we frequented only once or twice a year because the palace there was cramped compared to Pavia, and the city streets noisier and dirtier than the countryside. But that night I felt only bitterness; the festive spirits of those surrounding me were rude, the glory of Milan mocking. The ducal apartments were adorned with pomanders and evergreen, and fragrant with mulled wine; I found it all offensive.

In the little closet off Bona’s room, I shared a bed with Francesca. Happily, she fell quickly asleep. I brought out the little book from Matteo’s saddlebag and lit the lamp, and stared at page after page of my husband’s mysterious cipher. After an hour, I realized that the headings for each separate entry must have been days or dates or times, and I distracted myself from miserable grief by trying possible substitutions for the different symbols.

I did not put out the light until Francesca stirred and complained drowsily a few hours before dawn. Even then, I did not sleep, but lay still, thinking of Matteo, the cipher, and the triumph cards.

Two days passed in a blur of audiences, masses, banquets, dances, and concerts, the last performed by Galeazzo’s magnificent choir of thirty souls. Despite the weather, the streets of Milan were crowded with those who had come to watch the ceremony of the Yule log, and those who had come to proclaim their loyalty to Galeazzo for another year.

On Christmas Eve Day, the duke held a grand audience for petitioners; when sunset approached, we courtiers and servants stood in the first-floor great hall as His Grace lit the ciocco, the Yule log that was to be tended so that it burned for as long as possible. Once darkness had taken hold, Bona called for me to attend her in the ducal chambers. There, in the family’s private dining chamber, I stood while Bona, her two daughters, two sons, and Caterina sat at the table watching the duke direct his brothers Ottaviano and Filippo. Together, Ottaviano—the youngest brother, slight and willowy, with a delicate, feminine face and long dark hair uncharacteristic of the Sforzas—and Filippo—second eldest, sturdy of body but feeble of intellect—carried a huge log of oak through the doorway and set it down atop a bough of juniper set in the hearth.