The Red Lily Crown (12 page)

“I know. I've learned things. I'm even learning to read.”

“Decent girls have no need for reading.”

“All the ladies of the court read.”

Nonna made a disrespectful gesture and spat on the floor. Clearly she didn't think much of the ladies of the court.

“Nonna, I know Babbo hated the Medici.” Chiara stepped closer. “I know you hate them. I know you're probably up to your neck in all the republican plots. But the grand duke paid a gold scudo
for that old silver funnel—it's called a descensory, did you know that? I knew Lucia and Mattea were hungry, and you were hungry too. I had to sell it to him. I had to try.”

Nonna's expression softened. That made it so much harder to keep from crying.

“The grand duke ordered his sister Donna Isabella to make a place for me,” Chiara went on, talking fast, “because he wants to buy more of Babbo's equipment, not for any other reason.”

“She has lovers. Everyone knows it. She won't go to Bracciano and live with her husband, like a proper wife should.”

“I know, Nonna, but that lady in the sedan chair with me? She's Donna Jimena Osorio—she's a cousin or something to the old grand duchess, the grand duke's mother, and she's like a mother, almost, to Donna Isabella. She watches over me. The old grand duchess was strict, and Donna Jimena is strict, too.”

“And what about the man riding with you?”

“He thinks I'm just a child. He calls me a street urchin. His name is Magister Ruanno dell' Inghilterra, and he's the grand duke's—well, his friend, his favored alchemist and metallurgist. If he's anybody's lover, he's Donna Isabella's, not mine.”

Nonna pursed up her mouth as if she was going to spit again. “Medici,” she said. “Whores, the lot of them, women and men. And the court is a cesspool. You can't swim in filth without some of it sticking to you.”

“It won't, I swear. The Grand Duchess Giovanna, she's good. She loves her daughters. She has little dogs, and she loves them too. She's devout and proud and so sad—she's homesick and hates that the grand duke has that Venetian mistress—”

Chiara ran out of breath. She held out her hands to Nonna, pleading.

“It was that English alchemist who sent the messenger,” Nonna said. She ran her hands over the leather bindings of the new books. She had always loved fine books. She wouldn't have minded being rich, Nonna wouldn't, if it had been in a republican Florence. “I never met him so I didn't know what he looked like, but the messenger said his name, Ruanno dell' Inghilterra. It was the day after you disappeared. Since then there've been messengers half a dozen times, with money and clothes and food. I wanted to throw it all out in the gutters but the little ones cried. Mattea cried, so much.”

“It was for the silver descensory, Nonna, nothing more.”

“I don't believe that for a minute,
nipotina
. There's something you're not telling me.”

Nipotina
. Little granddaughter. The pet name Nonna had always called her.

Chiara gave up and started to cry. At the same time Nonna held out her arms, and she ran into them.

“Nonna. Oh, Nonna.”

“Shhh.
Mia nipotina
. It's all right, it doesn't matter. If the damned Medici want to give us their gold, we'll take it. We'll use it against them, if we can. I was so afraid for you when you didn't come home—the messenger, I was glad to see him, even in his Medici colors.”

“They wouldn't let me come until now. They thought I'd run away. As if I'd ever leave Florence, ever in my life.”

Nonna caught hold of her upper arms and pushed her back. She swept her sharp eyes over the green silk dress and yellow ribbons. “You could hide from them, even here in the city. I know ways.”

“Nonna— No. It's not the clothes or the fine food or the palaces or the duchesses and princesses, truly it's not.” Well, maybe it was, just a little, but she wouldn't tell Nonna that. “There's—there's something the grand duke can do—some way—it might be able to cure my head, Nonna, my headaches and the voices. It might be able to make me
right
again.”

“Something to do with his alchemy, I'll wager—the Stone of the Philosophers, perhaps? Don't look at me like that, girl, everyone knows the grand duke's crazy for alchemy, and every alchemist dreams of creating the Stone, and why? Because it turns base metals into gold, yes, but it also cures all illnesses, and makes you live forever, and lets you talk to the dead. That's what your Babbo was trying to do when he blew himself to pieces—make the Stone of the Philosophers, so he could call up the spirits of Gian and your mother and tell them he loved them, one last time.”

“Oh, Nonna. I'm so sorry.”

“Never mind. They're dead and gone, all of them. And whatever your Babbo thought, whatever the Medici grand duke may think, there's no such thing as the Stone of the Philosophers. It's against the will of God.”

“I don't know. Maybe it is.” There was no point in arguing, because when Nonna talked about the will of God, she never changed her mind. “Nonna, I've brought some gifts for you and Lucia and Mattea. Let's bring them into the shop, and then Magister Ruanno and I can go down into the cellar and look at what's left of Babbo's equipment.”

“We might as well sell it to him, for as much as we can get. If we don't, they'll just take it without giving us the money. So you're going to go back? Live in the palazzo with your fine new friends, and kiss the grand duke's
culo
in hopes his alchemy will cure you of your headaches and demons' voices?”

“I have to, Nonna. I have to try. I'm having falling-spells, too. I'm afraid all the bad things in my head will kill me one day.”

Nonna crossed herself. “I'll pray for you. Now invite your foreigner friend in to see your Babbo's things. I'll pour some almond milk and cut up a
schiacciata
for Donna Jimena.”

Chiara stared at her. Almond milk and
schiacciata
?

Nonna laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said. Her voice was both affectionate and bitter. “Almond milk and
schiacciata
. We've come up in the world,
mia nipotina
, since you've become a plaything of the Medici.”

“B
e careful,” Chiara said. “The fire damaged the stairway. Step here, along the wall.”

Magister Ruanno followed her down the worn wooden steps, walled in with stone on either side. When they reached the bottom, he held the lantern high, then said some words under his breath, in the language he seemed to use only to swear with. “Do you have any idea what you have here?”

“I know my father never told me where it came from.” Chiara stepped onto the packed dirt floor. The cellar had originally been a storage space for vegetables, sacks of flour and bottles of wine, pots of ink and bales of paper and leather. Babbo had cleaned and enlarged the space and moved all the stored goods to the kitchen directly above the cellar, much to Nonna's housewifely outrage. He had also constructed a separate, secret entrance, a tunnel that ran under the tiny back courtyard. Chiara was careful not to look at the wooden hatchway under the table. It didn't really look like a hatchway, anyway, just a pile of wood.

Magister Ruanno hung the lantern from a hook and lay one scarred hand lightly upon the double pelican apparatus. Its two crystal necks glimmered in the fitful light, and its gold fittings shone. “This is worth a fortune,” he said. “Not so much for its materials, although they are rich enough, but for its design. I cannot imagine how a bookseller obtained such a thing.”

“You're not a very good bargainer, to tell me openly it's worth so much.”

He smiled. His face did change when he smiled, not the wolf-smile but the rare true smile. Even the dark sadness of his eyes lightened a little. “It is not my money,” he said. “The grand duke can afford to pay you a fortune, and so he shall. Do you think your father stole the double pelican? If so, we must find out who originally possessed it.”

“Babbo wasn't a thief. The only thing he ever said about his alchemy was that his greatest enemy was his greatest ally. And then he'd laugh. I always thought he meant the devil.”

“Perhaps he did. How much was lost in the fire?”

“Most of it. Just the pelican is left, and the alembic—see? It's green glass, in the shape of a crescent moon. There's an athanor, too, that Babbo always said came from Trebizond. Wherever that is.”

“It was a Byzantine state on the shore of the Black Sea, the western terminus of the Silk Road.” Magister Ruanno examined the athanor closely as he spoke. Of course he'd know. He'd probably been there. “This could indeed be Trapezuntine work. Tell me more about your father, Monella Chiara. I am surprised the grand duke did not know of his work, given the grand duke's own great interest in alchemy.”

“I'll tell you whatever you want to know, if you'll stop calling me that.”

He glanced over at her. No smile this time. He looked as if he was actually seeing her for the first time since the morning of her initiation. “You are no longer a street urchin, are you?”

“I never was. I may have been poor and ragged, but the Nerini are respectable members of the booksellers' Arte in Florence, and have been for generations.”

“Donna Chiara, then.” His eyes glinted in the lantern's flickering light.

“Call me that in front of Nonna and she'll knock out a few of your teeth with her broom. The Nerini are for the republic and always have been.”

“I am only teasing you. Tell me about your respectable republic-supporting father, Mona Chiara.”

She looked down at the green glass of the crescent-moon alembic. It had always been her favorite piece. “The accident, that's where it started. Although it wasn't really an accident. My brother Gian and I were playing in the street outside the shop and two noblemen on horseback rode us down. They didn't try to stop. The children of a shopkeeper—it just didn't matter to them.”

“Your brother—” She could see him counting her family in his head, Nonna, Lucia, Mattea. “Your brother was killed, then.”

“Yes. His face and head were crushed, and his back broken.”

Neither one of them said anything for a moment. Magister Ruanno lifted the top off the athanor and looked inside. Then he put the top in place again and said, “And you were hurt as well.”

It didn't seem to be a question. How much did he know? Had he been asking questions about her?

“One of the horses kicked me. Here, on the side of my head.”

She put one hand up over the mark. Her hair felt thick and soft. Washing it with Donna Jimena's lotion of vinegar, rosemary water, sweet oil, mint and thyme had made it stronger and more lustrous; the hair growing over the crescent scar was coarser, and had glints of silver she had never seen before. Of course, she had never had a mirror of her own.

“The headaches you mentioned the night before your initiation—are they a result of the injury?”

“Yes. And sometimes I have falling-spells.” The demons' voices, that wasn't something she wanted to tell him. Not yet, anyway.

He picked up some broken pieces of glass from the table and idly tried to piece them together. “And you design to heal yourself with the
Lapis Philosophorum
.”

“That's one reason.”

“So what did your father do, after your brother was killed? Where was your mother?” He brushed the broken pieces from the table; whatever they had been was lost forever.

“My mother—my mother was with child when it happened. She miscarried and died. She loved Gian so much, I don't think she cared about living anymore. He was the heir. The only boy. When she died and her baby died, there was no heir left.”

“You and your sisters—surely you could marry, bring sons-in-law into the business.”

“That's what Nonna said. Nonna's practical. But my father, he was so angry, so lost—all he cared about was finding Gian and my mother again.”

Chiara shivered. Even in the summer, the cellar could be cold.

“Necromancy, then,” Magister Ruanno said quietly. It was frightening, a little, how quickly he understood things. “He hoped to create the
Lapis Philosophorum
, and use it for necromancy—raising the dead.”

“Yes.”

“Did he ever ask you to help him with his spells? Before the fire?”

“Help him? No. I watched, sometimes, when he didn't know. I wanted to learn everything, so I could—be his heir. Not like Gian, of course, but the best I could be. Why do you want to know if he asked me to help him?”

“Some necromancers—” He stopped. He put one hand on her wrist, actually touched her deliberately. His fingers lay against the green silk of her oversleeve, but his thumb touched the back of her hand, with only the thin white ruffled edge of her camicia's sleeve between his skin and hers. She was so surprised she didn't move. He didn't hold on to her or caress her or anything, just let his hand rest on her wrist for a moment. It was as if he wanted to reassure her, or protect her from something, but she couldn't think what.

“Some necromancers what?” she said.

He took his hand away. “It is nothing.”

There was something, of course, but whatever it was, apparently he wasn't going to tell her. He went back over to the double pelican and began examining it more closely, looking for ways to take it apart and transport it safely. After a little while he said, “What about his books? The day you offered the silver descensory to the grand duke, you said you had books.”

Again, what to tell him? No books? All the books? Some of the books? There was one book, the oldest and most valuable one—Babbo had written his own notes in it, and one day she'd learn enough Latin to read them. That one, she'd keep for herself. Magister Ruanno would be suspicious, though, if she denied what she had said before, and claimed there were no books.

“There are some books. I took them upstairs—I was afraid the cellar might collapse, and I thought the books were the most important things of all.”

He looked at her. She had a moment's fear that he'd understood what she hadn't said, as he'd done with the necromancy. That he knew Babbo's book was still here in the cellar, wrapped in waterproof waxed silk, locked in an iron box, and plastered into the wall. Knew the secret of the hatchway and the tunnel. But after a moment he smiled his wolf-smile and said smoothly, “Spoken like a true bookseller's daughter. Let us go up and look at these books, then. I will send some of the grand duke's servants to collect the equipment.”

“How much will the grand duke pay?”

“I will speak to him. One large sum might raise suspicion, and be difficult to invest properly. Say, twenty gold scudi a year for twenty years. And dowries, for yourself and your sisters. Whatever your grandmother thinks is suitable. It will not be easy, attracting a husband for a girl with a chin sharp as a kitchen-knife.”

Chiara took the lantern down from its hook and started up the steps. She wasn't sure if he was teasing her or not. He'd never teased before. “Who says I want a husband? Come upstairs, then. I'll show you the books, and Nonna will offer you some
schiacciata
and some almond milk for your refreshment.”