The Devil’s Queen

One of them shouted exuberantly at the passing crowd. “Did you hear? The Pope has fallen! Rome lies in the Emperor’s hands!”

At the palazzo’s front entrance, a banner bore the Medici coat of arms so proudly displayed throughout the city: six red balls, six palle, arranged in rows upon a golden shield. Palle, palle! was our rallying cry, the words on our supporters’ lips as they raised their swords in our defense.

As I watched, a wool dyer, his hands and tattered tunic stained dark blue, climbed onto his fellow’s shoulders and pulled down the banner to shouts of approval. A third man touched a torch to the banner and set it ablaze. Passersby slowed and gawked.

“Abaso le palle!” the wool dyer cried, and those surrounding him picked up the chant. “Down with the balls! Death to the Medici!”

In the midst of the tumult, the iron gates opened a crack, and Agostino—Aunt Clarice’s errand boy—slipped out unobserved. But as the gate clanged shut behind him, a few of the men hurled pebbles at him. He shielded his head and dashed away, disappearing into the traffic.

I leaned farther out of the open window. Behind the thin streams of smoke rising from the burning banner, the wool dyer spied me; his face lit up with hatred. Had he been able to reach up into the window, he would have seized me—an eight-year-old girl, an innocent—and dashed my brains against the pavement.

“Abaso le palle!” he roared. At me.

I withdrew. I could not run to Clarice for comfort—she would not have provided it even had she been available. I wanted my cousin Piero; nothing cowed him, not even his formidable mother…and he was the one person I trusted. Since he was not in the boys’ classroom receiving his lessons, I hurried to the library.

As I suspected, Piero was there. Like me, he was an insatiable student, often demanding more of his tutors than they knew, with the result that we frequently encountered each other huddled behind book. Unlike me, he was, at a rather immature sixteen, still cherub-cheeked, with close-cropped ringlets and a sweet, ingenuous temperament. I trusted him more than anyone, and adored him as a brother.

Piero sat cross-legged on the floor, squinting down at the heavy tome open in his lap, utterly captivated and utterly calm. He glanced up at me, and just as quickly returned to his reading.

“I told you this morning about Passerini coming,” I said. “The news is very bad. Pope Clement has fallen.”

Piero sighed calmly and told me the story of Clement’s predicament, which he had learned from the cook. In Rome, a secret passageway leads from the Vatican to the fortress known as the Castel Sant’Angelo. Emperor Charles’s mutinous soldiers had joined with anti-Medici fighters and attacked the Papal Palace. Caught unawares, Pope Clement had run for his life—robes flapping like the wings of a startled dove—across the passage to the fortress. There he remained, trapped in his stronghold by jeering troops.

Piero was totally unfazed by it all.

“We’ve always had enemies,” he said. “They want to form their own government. The Pope has always known about them, but Mother says he grew careless and missed clear signs of trouble. She warned him, but Clement didn’t listen.”

“But what will happen to us?” I said, annoyed that my voice shook. “Piero, there are men outside burning our banner! They’re calling for our deaths!”

“Cat,” he said softly and reached for my hand. I let him draw me down to sit beside him on the cool marble.

“We always knew the rebels would try to take advantage of something like this,” Piero said soothingly, “but they aren’t that organized. It will take them a few days to react. By then, we’ll have gone to one of the country villas, and Mother and Passerini will have decided what to do.”

I pulled away from him. “How will we get to the country? The crowd won’t even let us out of the house!”

“Cat,” he chided gently, “they’re just troublemakers. Come nightfall, they’ll get bored and go away.”

Before he could say anything further, I asked, “Who is the astrologer’s son? Your mother sent Agostino to fetch him.”

He digested this with dawning surprise. “That would be Ser Benozzo’s eldest, Cosimo.”

I shook my head, indicating my ignorance.

“The Ruggieri family has always served as the Medicis’ astrologers,” Piero explained. “Ser Benozzo advised Lorenzo il Magnifico. They say his son Cosimo is a prodigy of sorts, and a very powerful magician. Others say such talk is nothing more than a rumor circulated by Ser Benozzo to help the family business.”

I interrupted. “But Aunt Clarice doesn’t put a lot of faith in such things.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Cosimo wrote Mother a letter well over a week ago. He offered his services; he said that serious trouble was coming, and that she would need his help.”

I was intrigued. “What did she do?”

“You know Mother. She refused to reply, because she felt insulted that such a young man—a boy, she called him—should presume that she would need help from the likes of him.”

“Father Domenico says it’s the work of the Devil.”

Piero clicked his tongue scornfully. “Magic isn’t evil—unless you mean for it to hurt someone—and it’s not superstition, it’s science. It can be used to make medicines, not poisons. Here.” He proudly lifted the large volume in his lap so that I could see its cover. “I’m reading Ficino.”

“Who?”

“Marsilio Ficino. He was Lorenzo il Magnifico’s tutor. Old Cosimo hired him to translate the Corpus Hermeticum, an ancient text on magic. Ficino was brilliant, and this is one of his finest works.” He pointed at the title: De Vita Coelitus Comparanda.

“Gaining Life from the Heavens,” he translated. “Ficino was an excellent astrologer, and he understood that magic is a natural power.” He grew animated. “Listen to this….” He translated haltingly from the Latin. “ ‘Using this power of the stars, the Magi were first to worship the infant Christ. Therefore, why fear the name Magus, a name which is pleasing to the Gospel?’”

“So this astrologer’s son is coming to bring us help,” I said. “Help from God’s stars.”

“Yes.” Piero gave a reassuring nod. “Even if he weren’t, we would still be all right. Mother might complain, but we’ll just go to the country until it’s safe again.”

I let myself be convinced—temporarily. On the library floor, I nestled against my cousin and listened to him read in Latin. This continued until Aunt Clarice’s slave Leda—pale, frowning, and heavily pregnant—appeared in the doorway.

“There you are.” She motioned impatiently. “Come at once, Caterina. Madonna Clarice is waiting.”

The horoscopist was a tall, skinny youth of eighteen, if one estimated generously, yet he wore the grey tunic and somber attitude of a city elder. His pitted skin was sickly white, his hair so black it gleamed blue; he brushed it straight back to reveal a sharp widow’s peak. His eyes seemed even blacker and held something old and shrewd, something that fascinated and frightened me. He was ugly: His long nose was crooked, his lips uneven, his ears too large. Yet I did not want to look away. I stared, a rude, stupid child.

Aunt Clarice said, “Stand there, Caterina, in the light. No, save your little curtsy and just hold still. Leda, close the door behind you and wait in the hall until I call you. I’ll have no interruptions.” Her tone was distracted and oddly soft.

After a worried glance at her mistress, Leda stole out and quietly shut the door. I stepped into a pane of sunlight and stood dutifully a few paces from Clarice, who sat beside the cold fireplace. My aunt was arguably the most influential woman in Italy and old enough to be this young man’s mother, but his presence—calm and focused as a viper’s before the strike—was the more powerful, and even Clarice, long inured to the company of pontiffs and kings, was afraid of him.

“This is the girl,” she said. “She is plain, but generally obedient.”

“Donna Caterina, it is an honor to meet you,” the visitor said. “I am Cosimo Ruggieri, son of Ser Benozzo the astrologer.”

His appearance was forbidding, but his voice was beautiful and deep. I could have closed my eyes and listened to it as if it were music.

“Think of me as a physician,” Ser Cosimo said. “I wish to conduct a brief examination of your person.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

Ser Cosimo smiled a bit more broadly, revealing crooked upper teeth.

“Not in the least. I have already completed a portion; I see that you are quite short for your age, and your aunt reports that you are rarely sick. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“She is always running in the garden,” Clarice offered palely. “She rides as well as the boys do. By the time she was four, we could not keep her from the horses.”

“May I …?” Ser Cosimo paused delicately. “Could you lift your skirts a bit so that I can examine your legs, Caterina?”

I dropped my gaze, embarrassed and perplexed, but raised the hem of my dress first above my ankles and then—at his gentle urging—to my knee.

Ser Cosimo nodded approvingly. “Very strong legs, just as one would expect.”

“And thighs,” I said, dropping my skirts. “Jupiter’s influence.”

Intrigued, he smiled faintly and brought his face closer to mine. “You have studied such things?”

“Only a little,” I said. I did not tell him that I had just been listening to Piero reading Ficino’s attributions for Jupiter.

Aunt Clarice interrupted, her tone detached. “But her Jupiter is in detriment.”

Ser Cosimo kept his penetrating gaze focused on me. “In Libra, in the Third House. But there are ways to strengthen it.”

I braved a question. “You know about my stars, then, Ser Cosimo?”

“I have taken an interest in them for some time,” he replied. “They present a great many challenges and a great many opportunities. May I ask what moles you have?”

“There are two on my face.”

Ser Cosimo lowered himself onto his haunches, bringing us eye to eye. “Show me, Caterina.”

I smoothed my dull, mousy hair away from my right cheek. “Here and here.” I pointed at my temple, near the hairline, and at a spot between my jaw and ear.

He drew in a sharp breath and turned to Aunt Clarice, his manner grave.

“Is it bad?” she asked.

“Not so bad that we cannot repair it,” he said. “I will return tomorrow at this very hour, with talismans and herbs for her protection. You must employ them according to my precise directions.”

“For me,” Clarice said swiftly, “and for my sons, not just for her.”

The astrologer’s son cast a sharp glance at her. “Certainly. For everyone who has need.” A threat crept into his tone. “But such things bring no benefit unless they are used exactly as prescribed—and exactly for whom they are created.”

Clarice dropped her gaze, intimidated—and furious at herself for being so. “Of course, Ser Cosimo.”

“Good,” he said and bowed his farewell.

“God be with you, Donna Clarice,” he said graciously. “And with you, Donna Caterina.”

I murmured a good-bye as he walked out the door. It was odd watching a youth move like an elderly man. Many years later, he would confess to having been fifteen years old at the time. He had used the aid of a glamour, he claimed, to make himself appear older, knowing Clarice would never have listened to him otherwise.

As soon as the astrologer was out of earshot, Aunt Clarice said, “I’ve heard rumors of this one, the eldest boy. Smart, true—smart at conjuring devils and making poisons. I’ve heard that his father despairs.”

“He isn’t a good man?” I asked timidly.

“He is evil. A necessary evil, now.” She lowered her face into her hand and began to massage her temple. “It’s all falling apart. Rome, the papacy, Florence herself. It’s only a matter of time before the news spreads all over the city. And then…everything will go to Hell. I need to figure out what to do before …” I thought I heard tears, but she gathered herself and snapped open her eyes. “Go to your chambers and study your texts. There will be no lessons today, but you’d best comport yourself quietly. I won’t tolerate any distractions.”

I left the great hall. Rather than follow my aunt’s instructions to go upstairs, I dashed out to the courtyard. The astrologer’s son was there, moving swiftly for the gardens.

I cried out, “Ser Cosimo! Wait!”

He stopped and faced me. His expression was knowing and amused, as if he had completely expected to find a breathless eight-year-old girl tearing after him.

“Caterina,” he said, with odd familiarity.

“You can’t leave,” I said. “There are men outside calling for our deaths. Even if you got out safely, you would never be able to come back again.”

He bent forward and faced me at my level. “But I will get out safely,” he said. “And I will come back again tomorrow. When I do, you must find me alone in the courtyard or the garden. There are things we must discuss, unhappy secrets. But not today. The hour is not propitious.”

As he spoke, his eyes hardened, as if he was watching a distant but approaching evil. He straightened and said, “But nothing bad will happen. I will see to it. We will speak again tomorrow. God keep you, Caterina.”

He turned and strode off.

I hurried after him, but he walked faster than I could run. In seconds he was at the entrance to the stables, in view of the large gate leading to the Via Larga. I hung back, afraid.

The palazzo was a fortress of thick stone; its main entry was an impenetrable brass door positioned in the building’s center. To the west lay the gardens and the stables, viewable from the street behind a north-facing iron gate that began where the citadel proper ended.

Just inside that gate were seven armed guards, warily eyeing the crowd on the other side of the thick iron bars. When I had last peered through the upstairs window, only six men had lingered by the western gate. Now more than two dozen peasants and merchants stood staring back at the guards.

A groom handed Ser Cosimo the reins to a glossy black mare. At the sight of the astrologer, a few in the mob hissed. One hurled a stone, which banked off an iron bar and struck the earth several paces from its target.

Ser Cosimo calmly led his mount to the gate. The mare stamped her feet and turned her face from the waiting men as one of them cried out: “Abaso le palle! Down with the balls!”

“What,” called another, “did they bring you here to suck the cardinal’s cock?”

“And his Medici-loving balls! Abaso le palle!“

The commotion alerted others who had been standing watch across the street, who hurried to join those at the gate. The chant grew louder.

“Abaso le palle.

Abaso le palle.”

Men shook their fists in the air and pushed their hands between the bars to claw at those on the other side. The mare whinnied and showed them the whites of her eyes.

Ser Cosimo’s composure never wavered. Serene and unflinching, he walked toward the metal bars amid a hail of pebbles. He was not struck, but our guards were not as fortunate; they yelped curses as they tried to shield their faces. One hurried to the bolt and slid the heavy iron bar back while the others drew their swords and formed a shoulder-to-shoulder barricade in front of Ser Cosimo.

The guard at the bolt glanced over his shoulder at the departing guest. “You’re mad, sir,” he said. “They’ll tear you to pieces.”

I broke out from my hiding place and ran to Ser Cosimo.

“Don’t hurt him!” I shouted at the crowd. “He’s not one of us!”

Ser Cosimo dropped the reins of his nervous mount and knelt down to catch my shoulders.

“Go inside, Catherine,” he said. Catherine, my name in a foreign tongue. “I know what I am doing. I will be safe.”

As he finished speaking, a pebble grazed my shoulder. I flinched; Ser Cosimo saw it strike. And his eyes—

The look of the Devil, I was going to say, but perhaps it is better called the look of God. For the Devil can trick and test, but God alone metes out death, and only He can will a man to suffer for eternity.

That was that look I saw in Cosimo’s eye. He was capable, I decided, of undying spite, of murder without the slightest regret. Yet it was not that look that unsettled me. It was the fact that I recognized it and was still drawn to him; it was the fact that I knew it and did not want to look away.

He whirled on the crowd with that infinitely evil look. At once, the rain of stones ceased. When every man had grown silent, he called out, strong and clear:

“I am Cosimo Ruggieri, the astrologer’s son. Strike her again, if you dare.”

Nothing more was said. Darkly radiant, Ser Cosimo mounted his horse, and the guard pushed open the singing gate. The magician rode out, and the crowd parted for him.

The gate swung shut with a clang, and the guard slid the bolt into place. It was as though a signal had been given: The crowd came alive and again hurled pebbles and curses at the guards.

But the astrologer’s son passed unharmed, his head high, his shoulders square and sure. While the rest of the world fixed its unruly attention on the palazzo gates, he rode away, and soon disappeared from my sight.

Two

My memories of Florence are blurred by terror, affection, distance, and time, but some impressions from that long-ago past remain sharp. The peals of church bells, for one: I woke and ate and prayed to the songs of the cathedral of San Lorenzo, which holds my ancestors’ bones; of Santa Maria del Fiore, with its vast impossible dome; of San Marco, where the mad monk Savonarola once dwelled. I can still hear the low “mooing” of the bell called the Cow, which hung in the great Palazzo della Signoria, seat of Florence’s government.

I remember, too, the rooms of my childhood, especially the family chapel. On the walls above the wooden choir stalls, my ancestors rode on grandly caparisoned horses in Gozzoli’s masterpiece, The Procession of the Magi. The mural spanned three walls. The eastern one captured my imagination, for it was the wall of the Magus Gaspar, he who led the way after Bethlehem’s star. My forefathers rode just behind him, in dazzling shades of crimson, blue, and gold.

The mural had been commissioned in Piero the Gouty’s time. He rode just behind Gaspar; my great-great-grandfather was a serious, tight-lipped man in his fifth decade, riding immediately in front of his own father, the aged but still wily Cosimo. His son Lorenzo il Magnifico followed them both. He was only eleven then, a homely boy with a jutting lower lip and wildly crooked nose. Yet there was something beautiful in his upward-slanting eyes, in their clear, focused intelligence that made me yearn to touch his cheek. But he had been painted high upon the wall, beyond my reach. Many times I had climbed onto a choir stall when the chapel was empty, but I could touch only the fresco’s lower edge. I had often been told that I possessed Lorenzo’s quick wit, and felt a kinship with him. His father had died when he was young, leaving him a city to rule; not long after, his adored brother was assassinated, leaving him truly alone.

But Lorenzo was wise. His child’s gaze was sober and steady. And it was fastened not on his father, Piero, or his grandfather Cosimo—but directly on golden-haired Gaspar, the Magus who followed the star.

Young Lorenzo gazed down at me that evening at vespers. Uncle Filippo was absent, but Clarice was there, her tense features softened beneath a gossamer black veil. She murmured prayers with one eye open, her monocular gaze darting behind her, at the open door. She had seemed chastened during her encounter with Ser Cosimo, but the intervening hours had restored her nerve.

To her immediate right was my cousin Ippolito, straight and tall, having recently sprouted a man’s broad chest and back. Tanned from hunting, he had grown a goatee and mustache, which enhanced his dark eyes and made him dizzyingly handsome. He was kind to me—we were after all, to be married someday and rule Florence together—but now he was eighteen and had come to notice women. And I was just a homely little girl.

Alessandro, his junior by two years, stood beside him, murmuring prayers with his eyes wide open. My half brother, Sandro, son of an African slave, had thick black brows, full lips, and a taciturn demeanor. No matter how long I studied his heavy, pouting features, I never glimpsed a hint of our common ancestry. Sandro was well aware that he lacked his elder cousin Ippolito’s physical beauty and charm. Their relationship had become marked by competitiveness, yet the two were inseparable, bound by their special status.

In the chapel, Ginevra prayed on Clarice’s immediate left, flanked by little Roberto, then Leone and Tommaso, then my beloved Piero. Even he, who had earlier been so dismissive of my fears, had grown quiet and pensive as the crowd outside our gates swelled.

I remember little of the actual ritual that evening—just Aunt Clarice’s strong alto as we sang the psalms, and the priest’s wavering tenor as he led the Kyrie eleison.

He had just begun to chant the benediction when Aunt Clarice’s head turned sharply. Outside, in the corridor, Uncle Filippo held his cap in his hands.

He was a grim man with sunken cheeks and grey hair cut short in the style of a Roman senator; when he caught Clarice’s eye, his expression grew even grimmer. She motioned quickly at Ginevra: Go, go. Take the children with you. She inclined her head at Ippolito and Alessandro. And take them, too.

The priest’s hand sliced horizontally through the air to complete the invisible cross. He, too, had seen the crowds at the gate and departed quickly through the exit near the altar.

Clarice moved aside, allowing Ginevra to herd the cousins toward the door. At the same time, Uncle Filippo advanced into the chapel. Last of the children, I lagged behind.

Sandro followed the others meekly, but Ippolito broke away from the group to face Clarice. “I will stay,” he said. “Filippo bears important news, doesn’t he?”

Clarice’s expression hardened, a sight that made Ginevra redouble her efforts to shoo the children outside. I ducked behind a choir stall, itching to hear Uncle Filippo’s news.

“Here now,” Filippo said gently as he came to stand beside his wife. “Ippolito, I need a moment alone with her.” He waited until Ginevra cleared the other boys out of the chapel. “You’ll hear everything in good time.”

Ippolito looked sharply from his aunt to his uncle. “Now is good time. I’ve been watching quietly while Passerini alienated the people. I can’t be patient any longer.” He drew in a breath. “You’ve been summoning military support, I take it. How do we stand?”

“We stand in a complicated situation,” Filippo said. “And I will tell you everything I have learned this evening. But first, I will have a private word with my wife.”

For a long moment, he and Ippolito stared at each other; Uncle Filippo was solid as stone. At last, Ippolito let go a sound of disgust, then turned away and strode out after the others.

Filippo drew Clarice to a pew. As he sat down beside her, she raised her veil and said, stricken: “So. We are lost then.”

Filippo nodded.

Flaring, Clarice jumped to her feet. “They’ve forsaken us already?” There was fury as well as disappointment in her tone. She had already known what news Filippo would bring, yet she had hoped wildly, secretly, that it would not be the news she expected.

Filippo remained seated. “They’re afraid. Without Clement’s support—”

“Damn them!” When Filippo reached for her arm, she shook him off. “Cowards! Damn the Emperor, damn Passerini—and damn the Pope!”

“Clarice,” Filippo said forcefully. This time when he caught her arm, she did not pull away but instead sat down hard.