The Red Lily Crown (30 page)

He already knew. She could see it in his eyes, the downward curve of his mouth, the darkness always so close behind him. He knew, and he was waiting to see what she would say.

“We had come down from the second floor together,” Chiara said steadily. “But the dogs, the old dogs—they couldn't manage the stairs.”

“I understand she sent her women back upstairs with the dogs. You—were you there when she fell, or did you go upstairs with the others?”

What to say?

Tell the truth and die? Because if I accuse Bianca Cappello now, I will be floating in the Arno myself before nightfall.

Lie, and live?

What had Ruan said, in the grand duchess's store-closet?
I swore I would pursue no vengeance
. Then he had smiled the wolf smile.
Unlike you, I have no intention of keeping my vow
.

Unlike me then, perhaps. Not anymore. Now I understand.

“I wasn't there,” Chiara said. She looked straight into the grand duke's eyes. “I went upstairs—the other women had gone before me, and didn't see me. It was only when I heard her scream and ran back down that I discovered she had fallen.”

The grand duke nodded. He knew she was lying. He would kill her if she ever told the truth, and he knew she understood it. “Very well,” he said. “You may go.”

She curtsied deeply, then backed away. One last time she looked at the grand duchess's face. Good-bye, Serenissima, she thought. So much sadness and loneliness in your life, and yet you took time to be kind to me, a bookseller's daughter. I hope your soul has flown home to Austria, where you always wanted to be. Don't fear for your children. I'll watch over them. And I'll watch over your little dogs, too, forever and ever.

She went out of the room and closed the door behind her.

The guardsmen paid no attention to her. She clenched her fists as she walked down the passageway, and her crooked fingers ached.

“I'll make Bianca Cappello pay.” She whispered the words aloud, her voice bitter as gentian. “I'll smile to her face and to the grand duke's, until the right moment comes. Then she'll pay for what she has done, I swear it.”

Bianca

The White Swan

The Villa di Pratolino

21 JUNE 1578

F
ollowed by two wagons full of books, equipment and alchemical elements, Chiara rode past the red-roofed gatehouse and into the magnificent southern gardens of the Villa di Pratolino. Since the grand duchess's death, the grand duke had spent most of his time there, directing the ongoing construction, building a new private laboratory, and sating his senses with the overripe flesh of Bianca Cappello. Ruan had not returned to Florence, and that left Chiara as the only person in the grand duke's personal household who could tell an athanor from an alembic. She grasped the power with grim satisfaction.

At the Casino di San Marco, she supervised the men who packed boxes with equipment and elements and stacked them in wagons. It was an easy hour or two's ride to Pratolino for a good horseman on a hot-blooded horse, but for laden carts and draft mules it was slow and tedious. The first time they'd done it, it had taken most of the day. This trip, the third, had gone a little more smoothly. Chiara was tired of riding back and forth. At least once the boxes had been unpacked at Pratolino she would have food and drink and a place to sleep, before starting back to Florence the next day.

She was washing glass beakers and setting them out in the cabinet, arranged by size from the largest to the smallest, when the grand duke stepped into the lemon-house he had chosen as the site of his new laboratory. He gestured to his gentlemen to remain outside, and shut the door. He looked different. He had put on even more flesh, but it was unhealthy flesh, the flesh of a man who no longer rode or hunted or went out in the sun. The darkness that had always surrounded him seemed to have crept inside the outline of his figure, making shadows where there hadn't been shadows before.

“The moon is up, Soror Chiara,” he said. “If you work by nothing but the light of these lanterns, you will make mistakes.”

She put the last beaker in the cabinet and picked up a white linen towel to dry her hands. It gave her a moment to put her hatred away in its dark cankered hiding-place at the center of her heart. “I am finished, Magister Francesco,” she said in a pleasant voice. “The workmen are settled in the stables with the mules and the wagons. Is it your pleasure that I sup and sleep in the same room I used before?”

“All in good time. I wish to speak with you first.”

One of the lanterns flickered and went out. The darkness deepened.

“Of course, Magister Francesco.”

“I have had a letter from Magister Ruanno.”

A moment passed. Chiara realized she had stopped breathing, and her hands had knotted themselves in the towel so hard that it made her crooked fingers ache. She loosened her grip on the linen slowly and carefully, and took a breath.

I am required to return to England to address my affairs there. . . . Whatever he tells you, do not listen.

In a way he had never been gone, because she had seen him so vividly, every week, in her
sonnodolce
dreams. She had felt his skin under her palms, slick with sweat, and his mouth over hers. . . .

“What did he write?” she said. Her voice was not quite steady. “Will he return soon?”

“He intends to. However, I am displeased with him—he went away without my permission.”

The displeasure was all for show. He was the grand duke and he had to act angry when one of his household disobeyed him. But he needed his English alchemist. There was no one else with Ruan's skills and knowledge.

“Perhaps,” Chiara said, “Magister Ruanno was called away in such a hurry he did not have a chance to ask for official papers.”

“Perhaps.”

“But he is well? He asks your permission to return?”

The grand duke smiled. “You are particularly interested in whether he returns or not? I would have thought you would be pleased he was gone, so you could be the only alchemist in my personal household.”

Careful, Chiara thought. Careful.

“You honor me with your confidence, Serenissimo,” she said.

Have you guessed, Serenissimo, that for each large chest and crate of materials I bring here, I take an inconspicuous small one to the bookshop where I am stocking my own laboratory in Babbo's cellar? Have you guessed that I am arranging things here in your fine new laboratory, so that every attempt you make to create the
Lapis Philosophorum
will end in failure? It's not difficult—a pinch of ground alum stone here, a drop of aqua fortis there. You will never notice anything, but the
Lapis Philosophorum
will forever elude you.

“Magister Ruanno is necessary for the completion of the
magnum opus
,” the grand duke said. “I am fire and you are water, but he is earth, and earth is required.” He picked up a glass flask filled with the alkahest of tartar, clear as water, and tilted it from side to side thoughtfully. Through it she could see his eyes, magnified into something terrifying. “In any case, he writes that he is taking ship from England, and as his ship cannot be far behind the messenger that brought me the letter, he should be in Florence within the month.”

“I look forward to beginning our work again, Serenissimo.”

“Say nothing of all this.” The grand duke put the flask back on the table. “Welcome him back with courtesy. We will begin the
magnum opus
anew at the summer solstice. When we have been successful, perhaps you will wake one day to find yourself my sole alchemist—my
magistra
.”

Magistra
 . . .

Yes, her dark heart cried. See, Babbo? I will be the grand duke's
magistra
, greater than you, greater even than Perenelle Flamel.

But only if Ruan is gone
, Babbo whispered.
Only if Ruan is dead. Dead. Dead
.

The grand duke had restored him to favor once, in the terrible time after Donna Isabella's death. He wouldn't do it again. He'd allow Ruan to come back, oh yes, like a hunter drawing his prey into a trap. He'd make use of him, his skills, his power. And then he would kill him.

She made her gesture of respect, a bow from the waist like a man, with her hands crossed over her breast. A good way to hide her eyes and her mouth and the fact that she was lying through her teeth when she said, “All shall be as you desire it, Serenissimo.”

The next morning she broke her fast with a piece of freshly baked bread, a few figs, and a cup of watered wine. At the Villa di Pratolino her small room had a window, and as she ate she could look out over the garden and marvel at the fanciful statuary, the topiaries and automatons that were so dear to the grand duke's hard mechanical heart. When she was finished she smoothed her skirts, stepped out into the corridor and started for the side entryway that led to the stables.

“Signorina Chiara.”

A woman's voice, husky, imperious, with a breath of a Venetian accent.

Chiara stopped. Once she'd stopped, she was trapped—she couldn't walk on, pretend she hadn't heard the voice. The last time she'd heard it had been at the top of the stairs in the Palazzo Vecchio.

I call it a monster? Francesco himself calls it a monster, when you are not listening
.

Bianca Cappello.

Say nothing. Smile. You have chosen the path of slow, cold revenge. Wait. Choose your moment. Remember what you hope to gain for yourself in the households of the Medici.

She turned and faced the grand duke's mistress.

Bianca Cappello was dressed in cream-colored summer silk with a loosely gathered skirt and full loose sleeves, a high ruffled lace collar and a deep square décolletage that revealed the cleft between her white breasts. Over this dress—hardly more than a fanciful camicia—she wore a crimson velvet jacket, sleeveless, embroidered and frogged with so much gold it was a miracle she was able to stand up straight. In her curled russet hair, she had pinned a circlet of red lilies.

Red lilies. The heraldic symbol of Florence. As if she had strolled into the garden in the dawn and said to herself,
oh look, red lilies, how pretty, I'll just pick a few and weave them into a crown for myself. . . .

He must have married her. She never would have dared wear the red lilies of Florence if he hadn't, she, a Venetian and all the more hated for it. But of course the marriage would be a secret, so Chiara was perfectly free to pretend she didn't understand.

“Signora Bianca.” It was clear as clear the woman expected a curtsy, a deep and humble one to make up for Chiara's insultingly tiny bend of the knees that afternoon at the Palazzo Medici. Would she ever forget that? Probably not.

Chiara stood unmoving, her knees straight, her hands at her sides.

“The day will come,” Bianca Cappello said, “when you will kiss the floor before me and beg my pardon for your discourtesy. Do you see the lilies I wear in my hair?”

“I see them.”

“Do you understand what they mean?”

Chiara met her gaze steadily. “No,” she said. “They are red flowers, nothing more.”

Bianca's heavy brows thrust together in a scowl. “They are red lilies, you fool. The symbol of Florence.”

“Indeed?” Chiara smiled. It was pleasant, she had to admit, to see Bianca Cappello so outraged, and so helpless to do anything about it. Clearly the grand duke had forbidden her to tell anyone about their secret marriage. As long as I remain blind to her red lilies, Chiara thought, I don't have to pay her obeisance and it will drive her mad. And she can't run to the grand duke to complain, because she's not supposed to be swanning around like a grand duchess. Not yet.

“They're pretty flowers,” Chiara said. “I was looking out at the gardens this morning, and saw many flowers of every possible color.”

Bianca's face colored up with anger until it was almost as red as the lilies she would still not dare to wear in public, or even in the grand duke's presence.

“I will make you sorry. I will see you cast into an oubliette, so you never see flowers again.”

“Take care with your threats, Signora Bianca. You may be the grand duke's—mistress—but I am his
soror mystica
and the sole
magistra
of his laboratories.”

“I am no longer his mistress.” Bianca was so angry she could hardly talk. “I am his wife. Yes, his wife—his true wife, not his meek little play-acting wife anymore. That is what the red lilies mean, if you were not too stupid to understand it.”

“And this is to be announced in the city—when? Sometime soon?”

“You know it cannot be made public until a year has passed. A year of mourning for poor ugly Giovanna of Austria. I am to have my own apartments in the Palazzo Pitti and the management of her children, what do you think of that? Eleonora is eleven and may resist me, but Anna is only eight and Maria only three, and of course Filippo is barely a year old and an idiot. In the end they will love me more than they ever loved her.”

The children? Oh, no, Chiara thought. You will never have her children. I will find a way to put a stop to that.

“Keep your vicious tongue off the grand duchess and her children,” she said aloud. “She was a greater lady than you will ever be.”

“You think so? Wait until you see me enter the city in a chariot drawn by golden lions, and with the red lily crown upon my head.”

“The wait may be longer than you think. Cammilla Martelli was old Duke Cosimo's wife, and she had no grand coronation, or any coronation at all. Look at her today—walled up in a convent, all her property stripped away from her, seeing her friends, such as they are, through a grille in the nuns' parlor. Being a wife is not the same thing as being a grand duchess.”

“For me it will be.” Bianca had become calmer, and seemed to be realizing how foolish she had been to reveal her clandestine wedding. “You will say nothing to anyone about this matter, Signorina Chiara. Even the grand duke himself would order you to keep silence.”

“As he ordered you to keep silence, for all the good it did him.”

Bianca reached up and took the red lilies from her hair. She held them to her lips for a moment and appeared to breathe their scent. Then she looked up. Her face had changed—it was pale and cold. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds. Chiara actually took a step backward, she was so startled by the change.

“You have been silent about the day the grand duchess died,” she said. “You told the grand duke you were not there. Why did you do that, Signorina Chiara? Did you think to keep what you know to yourself, and one day use it against me?”

Lie, Chiara thought. Lie like you've never lied before.

“I would not blacken the grand duchess's name,” she said, “by speaking it in the same breath as yours.”

“Perhaps,” Bianca Cappello said. “Perhaps not. And perhaps I will find a way to make certain your breath speaks no one's name, ever again.”