The Scarlet Contessa

Despite the closed windows, the reedy wail of the traditional zampogni, the pipes played only at Christmas, filtered up from the duke’s private courtyard below.

“Ugh!” Filippo exclaimed, once freed of his burden. “It’s fatter than Cicco! This one will surely burn till New Year’s.”

“Back away, back away!” Galeazzo scolded excitedly, and took his place in front of the fireplace. His face was flushed, his words thick; he had already drunk a good deal of wine. A servant handed him a lit taper, and he held the flame to the juniper; it caught with a fragrant flare, and he laughed, pleased, as he handed the candle back.

With his right hand, he made the sign of the cross, and snapped his fingers at his cupbearer, who filled his goblet with fresh wine and gave it to him. Once the juniper had caught in earnest, the duke splashed a bit of wine on the log, as custom required, and took a long swallow from his cup. This he passed to Filippo, who handed it to Ottaviano, who respectfully delivered it to Bona; it made its way down the hierarchy to arrive last of all to me.

I emptied the cup, although there was less than a full sip left, thanks to Caterina swallowing far more than her share.

The duke then tossed a gold ducat onto the fire, and from a red velvet bag, handed one gold coin apiece to his brothers, children, and wife. My lowly status stifled his generosity, however, and he turned his back to me; Bona pressed her coin into my palm, so that I might enjoy an increase in wealth in the coming year.

Fortunately, the duke was not so stingy when it came to food and drink, and I was allowed to sit between his natural daughters, Chiara and Caterina. There was a surfeit of marvelous food, including a pigeon tart with prunes that normally would have tempted me, and ravioli stuffed with pig’s liver and herbs, but I had no taste for it. I had not wanted to attend the family gathering, and had asked Bona to excuse me, but the duke had gotten wind of it and insisted that I come so that “things would be as they are every year.” And to make sure of it, he had ordered that I dispense with mourning and dress in holiday attire; I had no choice but to obey, and so chose a gown of dark green velvet, but wore no gold and no smile.

Galeazzo and Filippo proceeded to get very drunk indeed, and by the time the feast was well under way, their conversation grew peppered with thinly veiled metaphors about the pleasures of defiling virgin flesh. At one point, the duke began to thrust a grilled sausage in and out of the stuffed capon on his plate, in a pointedly sexual manner, while Filippo howled with laughter. Caterina grinned, and Bona flushed and grew quiet. By the time supper was finished, Bona was eager to shoo the children out of the chamber and leave herself. I rose with her and accompanied her to the door; as she turned and bade her husband good night, he looked up from the table, his eyes heavy-lidded and glittering from drink, and said:

“Not her. You can go, but she must stay.”

He had never made such a request, and both the duchess and I were troubled by it, until Galeazzo repeated, “She must stay. And you must have one of your ladies fetch the triumph cards Lorenzo gave you straightaway.” When Bona hesitated to direct a fearful glance at me, he slammed his fist upon the table so hard that the empty platters rattled.

When silence followed, I said to her, “Your Grace, please forgive me, but the cards are in your quarters, inside the trunk at the foot of my cot.”

Bona stared at me as if I were the Devil himself, come to steal her soul. Without a word, she curtsied to her husband and left, taking all the children with her; Caterina passed by last, pausing briefly to study me, her expression both curious and oddly worried. I stood awkwardly by the door for a quarter hour while the duke and his drunken brothers ignored me and the conversation grew ever more raucous. When Francesca finally arrived with the diamond-studded red velvet box, my anxiety increased.

“Sit,” Galeazzo said, slurring, gesturing at the chair directly across from him. His brother Filippo made an exaggerated show of hurrying to pull the chair out for me, as if I were the duchess. He and the duke laughed, but I curtsied and sat with dignity, placing the box in front of me on the table and resting one hand atop it.

Only the girlish, delicate Ottaviano said hesitantly, “But you are in mourning, Dea. Was the loss recent?”

“My husband,” I answered, and acknowledged his kindness with a nod. At that instant, a wave of grief mixed with rage overtook me, and I resolved that I would speak the truth to Galeazzo without fear. I would have been grateful to incur his wrath and die for it.

“Enough of that,” the duke said, dismissing the gloomy subject with a curt gesture. “She’s going to tell me my fortune for the coming year, boys.” He leveled his dangerous gaze at me; for once, I returned it without disguising my hatred. “Except that this time”—his voice dropped to a malicious whisper—“my luck will be quite good, won’t it, my dear?”

“Can we know our fortunes?” Filippo asked, with inebriated enthusiasm. His face was flushed, his lips crooked in an intoxicated grin. “My lord, may we know, too?”

Ottaviano seconded him so eagerly that the duke waved for silence.

“It all depends,” he said, with a wink to his brothers, “on how cooperative the lady is. And such a lovely lady she has recently become.”

Filippo laughed—half from nerves, half from delight—as the duke reached out and put a warm, sweating hand upon mine. Disgusted, I slipped mine out from under his and instinctively glanced behind me to confirm that Bona was indeed gone, as were all the servants save the duke’s cupbearer and a pair of bodyguards who had appeared silently in front of the closed, and now bolted, doors.

I suppose I should not have been surprised, yet I had always believed that my relationship with Bona protected me, that the duke would no more lay a hand on me than he would his own daughters. For an instant, I considered screaming and pounding on the door, but I had heard too many times how little such behavior availed the other women who sought escape. I could rely only on my wits.

“Your Grace,” I said, with feigned confidence, “I will read your cards. For the sake of accuracy, let us have silence. You must think only of the question you would ask and nothing else.”

“I stated the question,” the duke countered, with a hint of irritation, and slouched forward with both elbows on the table. He propped his chin upon both hands, as if his head had grown too heavy to hold up. “My future for the coming year.”

“Then think on that, Your Grace,” I said coolly, and took the cards from the velvet box. They were warm, as if they had been stored close to a hearth, and despite the fact that they were much larger than playing cards, they shuffled easily this time, as if tailored to my grasp. I mixed them for as long as I dared, praying silently all the while. I saw no point in calling upon God; I spoke to the only one I still trusted.

Matteo, help me. Help me to get out of here untouched and alive.

Filippo broke the silence with a drunken giggle; Ottaviano joined in, but the duke had grown serious and hissed at them to be quiet.

I, too, grew deeply still, and surrendered even my prayers in order to listen to the cards whispering in my hands. Instinct directed me to gather them up, stack them neatly, and push the pile to the center of the dining table, within Galeazzo’s reach.

“Cut them, Your Grace,” I directed. An odd calm descended upon me, turning my feigned confidence into something real, a strange and ancient authority.

Leaning heavily upon his left elbow, chin still propped upon a fist, Galeazzo reached out with his right hand. It was unsteady, and on his first attempt to cut the deck, he dropped the cards, overturning some, and swore.

“No matter, Your Grace,” I said smoothly. “Gather them up, and cut again. It is all as fate wishes it to be.”

By then, Galeazzo was scowling and visibly unnerved. Filippo’s drunken grin had vanished; he and Ottaviano were paying careful attention to their brother’s changing mood. Galeazzo pushed the cards back into a pile and cut them. I placed one stack atop the other, and took them back across the table.

I drew a card from the top of the deck, turned it over, and dropped into another world.

Before me, a glittering marble tower reared up against the bright blue sky, its pinnacle so high that wisps of clouds kissed it. At the top—so far up, they appeared as small as flies—two stonemasons wielded mortar and plane to build ever higher. This was the Tower of Babel, I realized, representing the hubris of man; and as I tilted my head far back to study its apex and the men working there, a roiling indigo cloud rushed from the horizon and enclosed the pinnacle and the men.

It was the wrath of God, this cloud, and it birthed a blue-tinged, blinding bolt of lightning; the crack and roar was so ominous, I shrieked and covered my ears. At the same instant, the Tower exploded, sending shards of shattered marble hurtling to earth. The masons’ screams grew louder as they fell, headfirst, into oblivion. One of them, flailing a steel blade, I recognized as the King of Swords, he who metes out justice. I dropped to my knees and covered my head as he and a second man struck the earth beside me.

Just as swiftly, God’s dark wrath disappeared, and the sky was again an unmarred blue—but the Tower was reduced to a shambles. Beside me lay the body of the second man. Impossibly, he was whole, and his eyes open in stark surprise, but he was no less dead and bloody, pierced through the heart by the King of Swords’ weapon. His hair was a light chestnut, his lips thin, the bridge of his nose marked by a single large bump. He was Duke Galeazzo, and I knew that he had at last paid for his sins, and was glad.

“What does it mean?” Galeazzo demanded, and when I did not immediately reply, his tone changed from impatient to apprehensive. “What does it mean?”

Matteo, help me, I prayed again. I drew a deep breath and spoke the truth. My words were just loud enough to be heard over the crackling fire and the duke’s quickened breath.

“That you will be attacked, my lord, by those against whom you have sinned. That unless you repent immediately and make reparation, you will not live to see the coming year.”

His brothers looked on while Galeazzo let go a ragged gasp of amazement and clumsily pushed himself to his feet. Grimacing with fury, he let go a snarl and raised an arm to strike.

I glared back, defiant and ready to face my own unhappy fate. Matteo was dead, and I did not care to live. Yet it brought me wicked comfort to know that Duke Galeazzo would quake with fear until his own time came.

“You!” he roared, his voice shrill with outrage. “You rotting bitch, how dare you speak to us so! How dare you . . .”

He struck out. The stinging blow caught my upper lip, and almost tipped me backward in my chair. Stubbornly I held on and would not stir from my place, though my lip smarted enough to provoke tears. I refused to shed them, but looked boldly back at him.

“You,” he hissed, his anger transforming in that exhaled word to curiosity. He stared at me, and his eyes narrowed in disbelieving recognition, then widened as his brows rushed together in fear. “Mother of God, it’s her, she’s a ghost! A ghost come back to haunt me! God help me . . . Save me, someone!”

He crossed himself and staggered backward, promptly falling over his own chair; Ottaviano and Filippo rushed to help him. As he struggled back to his feet, his brothers clutching his elbows, he bellowed, “Get her out of here! Get her out!”

I rose, and when the guards caught hold of my arms, I did not struggle, but let myself be pushed through the swiftly opened doors, and flung down upon the cold, hard marble in the loggia. Once there, I sat up and gingerly fingered my lip to find it greatly swollen. I touched my tongue to it, and tasted blood and morbid satisfaction.

Bona was sitting in front of her fireplace beside Caterina and Chiara when I returned from the duke’s chambers. I knew she still felt betrayed over the cards, but at the sight of me, she let go a cry and rushed to embrace me. I put my hands upon her shoulders to comfort her, and when she realized I was otherwise untouched, she let go a sob of relief.

I admit, I was surprised to find Caterina there, wearing an unusually somber expression. Once she learned I was mostly undamaged, however, she grew at once insolent. While Francesca went downstairs to the larder to find a piece of fresh meat for a poultice, Bona made me sit in front of the fire and gently pressed her own kerchief to my lip to staunch the bleeding. She could not bring herself to ask how her husband had behaved, but Caterina, who had settled in the chair beside me, had no such reluctance.

“Did the king appear?” she asked.

Bona, Chiara, and I looked at her in puzzlement.

“The king,” she prompted. “The one with the sword. You drew that card for my father before, when Lorenzo came to visit. Did it come again? Or does some new future await him?”

Bona’s lip curled. “You ought not ask such impertinent questions,” she said, with uncharacteristic asperity. “Let Dea rest. She’s tired and has been through enough.”

Caterina ignored her and turned her whole body toward me. “It must have not been a very good future, or he wouldn’t have hit you.”

Bona was right: I was tired—tired of secrets and lies. And Galeazzo’s reaction had left me with an odd sense of power. No matter what punishment he was planning for me, I no longer cared. I had spoken the truth and it had squarely hit its mark; now I did not want to stop.

“The king was there,” I said, my words muffled by Bona’s kerchief and my huge upper lip. “But he appeared inside another card: the Tower.”

Caterina leaned closer with avid curiosity. “And the Tower means?”

“The wrath of God will strike your father down,” I said flatly, and tried not to care when Bona flinched.

Caterina caught her breath, her eyes oddly bright. “When?”

“I will not hear of this,” Bona interjected. “Fortune-telling is pure wickedness, an abomination. . . . I wish to God that you had never seen those accursed cards! How could you have taken them from me?”

“Soon,” I answered Caterina. To Bona I said, “Forgive me, Your Grace. Of late, my mind seems not to be my own.”

Bona crossed herself. She was on the verge of weeping, I realized, and so I fell silent and answered no more of Caterina’s questions.

The duchess never said anything more about the cards that I had taken without her permission, yet from that moment on, she developed a perceptible coolness toward me. I had stolen from her, and Bona would not forget it.

Chapter Six

On Christmas Day, three masses were said in the duke’s chapel; custom demanded that Galeazzo and all of his courtiers attend. I missed the first, however, as I slept poorly, given my throbbing lip, and Bona told me to stay abed when the others rose.

I attended the other services and the great banquet, but wore my black veil to hide my swollen lip, and ate and drank little. When the dancing began, I retreated to Matteo’s chamber and tried again to make sense of the cipher in the little leather-bound book from his saddlebag, without success. I also wondered what became of the triumph cards I had left with the duke and his brothers, but did not dare ask Bona.

The next day was the feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr. As such, the duke was expected to attend mass at the church of Santo Stefano in the southeastern quarter, a short ride away. But normally temperate Milan was in the grip of the coldest weather most of its citizens had ever seen; an ice storm had glazed the city during the night, and been followed by a dusting of snow and a fierce wind that blew the clouds away, leaving trees, bushes, and roofs glittering in the early-morning sun.

The wind howled as I rose and dressed in my black mourning. A quick glance in the duchess’s large hand mirror revealed that the swelling in my upper lip had gone down, though the skin was still purplish and bore a dark red scab where it had neatly split; I lowered my dark veil again. Bona kept her bed curtains pulled; she had been up retching during the night, and Francesca, I, and the chambermaids all agreed we would not wake her, but send a message to the duke that she was too ill to rise. Beyond the window, branches bowed low, snapping from the weight of the ice and groaning in the wake of the wind; I expected that most of the court, Galeazzo and his magnificent choir included, would refuse to go out in such weather, and instead celebrate the saint’s day here at the castle.

I was wrong. An hour after we sent word to the duke that the duchess was indisposed, Caterina came running into Bona’s chamber, her pale, pretty cheeks flushed and damp with tears. Her mother, Lucrezia Landriani, one of the duke’s dearest, and most prolific, mistresses, lingered in the doorway, lest her presence offend the duchess.

“I won’t go!” Caterina exclaimed, pouting, as she entered. She was dressed in a confection of white watered silk trimmed lightly in crimson velvet and studded with gold beads; her long yellow curls had been neatly contained in a hairnet littered with diamonds and tiny rubies. “Where is the lady duchess? I must speak to her!”

“Duchess Bona is ill, Madonna Caterina, and cannot be disturbed,” I said in a hushed, warning tone.

Caterina recoiled slightly at the word ill and moved no farther; she gestured at me. “Help me, then! My father the duke is insisting that all of his”—she lowered her voice out of respect for Bona—“ladies and children accompany him to Santo Stefano!” His mistresses, she meant; perhaps it was Galeazzo’s way of getting even with his wife for not accompanying him in the cold.

“In this weather?” Even I was surprised.

Caterina nodded; a cascade of diamonds and rubies sparkled at her ears. She was truly magnificent to behold that day, a porcelain beauty with gleaming golden hair, dressed in shimmering white, the dark red trim serving to accentuate her pale glory.

“He would have us walk halfway across the city in this wind,” she said, and as if on cue, a gust rattled at the window. “Only the bishop and the ambassadors will be allowed to ride beside him on horseback. Please, Dea,” she said, “can you not wake the lady duchess? She could send a note asking His Grace if my mother and I could ride beside him in the Lady Bona’s stead. She could even say that I am weak from a recent illness. . . .”

Bona’s flat, weary voice emanated from behind the tapestry bed curtains. “Have you been ill, Caterina?”

From the doorway, her mother, Lucrezia, called softly back, “Your Grace, she is being difficult because she is jealous—the duke called upon his sons to visit him this morning, but has ignored Caterina, who is eager to show him her lovely new dress. She thinks that if she rides beside him in a place of honor, he and everyone else in Milan will have a chance to admire her.” She shot a sour look at her daughter. “You must not bother Her Grace. The duke has decided to go, and we must hurry. His priest and choir are already waiting at Santo Stefano; the others have all gathered in the courtyard.”

“Dea,” Bona called weakly, “will you go with her in my stead? And relay to the duke that I would humbly ask his favor for a horse for Caterina and her mother?”

“Of course, Your Grace,” I answered, and in a lower voice said to Caterina, “but he will not give them if I ask.”

“Why not?” she said, studying me carefully, and I remembered that I had, in fact, predicted Galeazzo’s doom and walked out of his chamber alive and barely scathed.

I took a step closer to Caterina. “You must get your cloak and gloves, Madonna,” I told her. “The duke will not suffer our being late.”

Bona called again from behind the curtains. “Go,” she said to me, “and pray for my husband. I have had a night of evil dreams.”

We almost were late. I would have far preferred to remain inside the warm castle to tend the duchess that morning, but for Bona’s sake, I borrowed Francesca’s black woolen cloak and gloves and went down to the huge courtyard with Caterina and her mother. By the watchtowers, a crowd of perhaps fifty nobles—most of them women with their children, the duke’s illegitimate get, and the rest of the duke’s favorite male courtiers—had gathered, their splendid attire hidden beneath swaths of fur and thick wool. Nearby, a half dozen grooms held the reins to some thirty horses.

The mood of the waiting nobles was sour, their teeth chattering. Caterina and I joined them, and stamped our feet to keep warm until the grinning duke at last appeared in a crimson cloak lined with white ermine, his arms linked with a fellow hellion, Zaccaria Saggi, the Mantuan ambassador. The stooped, gold-mitered Bishop of Como and the duke’s brothers, Filippo and Ottaviano, followed close behind, trailed by the Florentine ambassador and a dozen gentlemen of the chamber. The whole was flanked by a score of guards in full armor, long swords sheathed at their hips; among their ranks was a great tall Moor with yellow eyes and dark brown skin. In place of a helmet, he wore a large white turban; in place of a sword, a scimitar.

I moved toward the duke, paused a generous distance away, and bowed deeply as I relayed Bona’s request.

He stiffened, unnerved by the sight of me, but cupped a hand to his ear to catch my words. A sudden bitter gust drove them away; impatient, he frowned and waved me off. Caterina thinned her lips and uttered an indignant curse beneath her breath as I returned to her side.

Galeazzo then briefly addressed the waiting crowd, speaking perhaps of the holiday and his gratitude for our loyalty, but his words, too, were swallowed by the wind. We shouted a perfunctory greeting, and watched as he climbed atop his black charger, caparisoned in white and crimson, the Sforza colors. Immediately, his inner circle and the guards mounted their steeds and closed ranks around him; we lesser beings were confined outside the protected inner circle.

Like the others, I drew the cowl close to my face and made my way over the slippery drawbridge and out into the street, across which stood the city cathedral, its unfinished walls covered with latticework scaffolding; the Alps loomed in the distance behind us. We kept pace with the horses for half an hour over icy cobblestones; on two occasions, Caterina slipped and her mother and I caught her before she fell to her knees. The wind drove my veil into my eyes, and would have blown it and my cowl off had I not clutched the edges of the latter. No one engaged in festive, lighthearted chatter; the howling wind drowned all other sounds, and forced us to walk with faces downcast against the stinging cold. Tradition demanded that the streets be filled with throngs cheering the duke, but on this feast day after Christmas only a few hardy souls huddled on the treacherous, snow-dusted ice and called out feebly when the duke and his entourage passed.

I was shivering uncontrollably by the time we arrived at the little plaza in front of the church of Santo Stefano, an ancient, unimpressive two-story edifice with a crumbling stone façade. The plaza was filled with merchants, peasants, and the starving poor; the church was so crowded inside that they had waited here in hopes of catching a glimpse of His Grace. The guards, their armor glinting with light reflected from the snow, dismounted and began to clear the plaza while several young grooms ran forward to take the horses.

Galeazzo dismounted and handed over his reins without looking at his groom; he squinted nervously at the plaza and, beyond it, at the door to the church. Like his daughter, he enjoyed public attention, but he also took enormous care to protect his person, and did not relax until the way was clear and the guards signaled him. The bishop, who was to celebrate the mass, moved ahead of him, and the ambassadors took their places at his left; his brothers moved to his right, so that the men stood five abreast, with the duke in the protected center. Behind them, in the favored retinue, walked Cicco’s younger brother, the secretary Giovanni Simonetta, and a military adviser, Orfeo da Ricavo, followed by a row of camerieri, the nobles who attended the duke in his chamber and were considered his closest friends. The big Moor—a full head taller than any other man present, his hand on the hilt of his scimitar—led them into the church, while a pair of armored bodyguards flanked each row of the ducal procession.