The Scarlet Contessa (2 page)

The encounter between Caterina and the elders lasts only minutes. By the time I hurry out of Caterina’s new chamber and up the vertiginous steps to Paradise—the lavish apartment she had built for herself in more peaceful times and where she receives all her guests—the elders, Ser Ludovico and Ser Niccolò, are coming down the stairs and pass me. With them is one of the contessa’s personal bodyguards, guiding them out of the maze that is Ravaldino Fortress.

They nod politely and cordially enough to me, though they seem preoccupied—who would not be, with Valentino’s army on the way? I nod in response and make way for them to pass, deeply relieved that they seem calm. Obviously, there had been no argument with the contessa; perhaps they had come to express support for her.

Buoyed, I lift my skirts and hurry upstairs to find Caterina in the nearly bare reception chamber. She has left her chair, behind which a second impassive bodyguard stands, and is on her toes at the window, craning her neck to stare down at the stone courtyard Ser Niccolò and Ser Ludovico will cross on their way out of the fortress.

When I enter and pause to curtsy, she jerks her head over her shoulder to look back at me, and I know in an instant that all is lost.

“Bastard!” she swears. “Son of a filthy whore . . . !” Her lips are trembling, her teeth gritted, her blue eyes wide with rage. I do not move, but remain genuflected as she turns her face back to the window and continues her tirade.

“Luffo Numai!” she shouts. Numai is the richest man in Forlì; he has served on the city council for some years and considers himself the spokesman for the townspeople. “That’s who it was—that’s the traitor! He convinced them all that they had no chance with me, that Valentino’s army would slaughter them, that they were safer surrendering to him.” She lets go a wild laugh. “They’ll learn soon enough what becomes of those who trust the Duke of Valentino!”

I lift my head. “The Forlivese?” I whisper.

“They will not fight in my defense,” she says, still facing the window. The bitter words steam the glass, and she wipes them away angrily as she stares down at the courtyard below. “They are sending a messenger to Valentino to tell him so. And according to my apologetic guests, it was Luffo Numai who worked tirelessly to convince the citizens that surrender was their only hope for survival. Many of the people supported me, wanted to raise their swords for me, but Numai bullied them until they gave in.” She lurches toward the window as her eye catches something below. “Hah! There they go!”

She turns toward me, skirts whirling, words tumbling out of her so rapidly I can scarcely follow them. “I was polite to Niccolò and Ludovico, of course. I was gracious; I told them that, given the fall of Imola, I could not expect the citizens of Forlì to defend me. But they would have, had it not been for Numai. How much money, do you think, Valentino promised him? And governorship, of course, since Valentino will not be able to look after the cities himself.”

She moves swiftly to the chair and throws on her cloak, then strides out of the chamber, through the door, and down the same steps Niccolò and Ludovico had recently trodden; since she continues to address me, I follow, breathless from the effort to keep pace with her.

“Numai thinks he will steal my lands from me,” she says darkly, “and from my sons, but he will pay. The bastard will pay! I will see to it personally.”

I follow her down to the second level, where tunnels have been cut deep into the stone wall to accommodate artillery. Caterina leads me to the end of one of them and calls to a nearby soldier.

“Bring the gunners!” she shouts, and as the soldier runs off to obey, Caterina moves to the side of one of the long bronze cannons, which is tilted upward forty-five degrees.

My lady does not need to search for the long-handled ladle, or the great wooden box that houses the gunpowder; she knows where both are kept, and fills the ladle full of the sulfurous powder with practiced ease, then pushes it down the cannon’s long barrel. At her bidding, I run and fetch a huge handful of hay to serve as wadding from a pile kept near the gunpowder box, and the long wooden rammer.

As I drop the hay into the muzzle and push it down with the rammer, Caterina goes to fetch the ball from a large pyramid-shaped stack. She staggers beneath the weight of the dressed stone sphere; she can carry it only crouched over, in both hands, with the ball at mid-thigh. But carry it she does, and as she steps toward the muzzle, I join her, and together we manage to lift the ball high enough to push it into the barrel.

By this time, six gunners have finally assembled, and they take over the rest of the duties.

“Aim it at Numai’s palace,” Caterina orders, knowing full well the likelihood of accurately striking such a distant target at dusk is poor. Even so, she watches avidly as one of the artillerymen uses a weighted plummet line to find the true perpendicular, then measures the angle with a quadrant and adjusts the muzzle accordingly. And when at last the metal cover is lifted at the cannon’s base, and the botefeux holding the lighted match is applied to the touchhole, she claps her hands with dark glee.

“For you, Luffo Numai!” she cries, a split second before the officer in charge waves us back, then orders:

“Fire!”

I flinch and put my hands over my ears.

At once, I find myself living the fortune-telling card known as the Tower. The cannon roars, paining my ears, and the heavy stone of the fortress walls, of the solid floor beneath my feet, trembles. In my mind, I feel myself falling, falling amid shattered stone, to the ground, to certain doom, to the end of everything I know.

At Caterina’s command, the cannon fires again, and again.

The Lady of Forlì and I have been through the experience of the Tower twice now, and survived. But this third time will surely be our last.

In the midst of the deafening song of the artillery, I see our end and our beginning. And my mind turns to the distant past. . . .

PART I

Milan

December 1476–April 1477

Chapter One

At dusk the screams came—outraged, feminine, shrill. We would never have marked them had it not been for the smoke and the singers’ sudden silence. I heard them eight days before Christmas as I stood in the loggia, gasping in stinging cold air from the open window, brusquely unshuttered by a quick-thinking servant.

A moment earlier, I had been sitting in front of the snapping hearth in the duchess’s quarters while one of her chambermaids roasted pignoli on a wood-handled iron peel—treats for the ducal heir, seven-year-old Gian Galeazzo Sforza, who stared blankly into the flames while his nurse brushed out the straw-colored curls covering his frail shoulders. Beside him sat his six-year-old brother, Ermes—thick-limbed and thick-waisted, slow to move or think—with a straight cap of dull red hair. To their left sat their mother, Duchess Bona, a sheer white veil wrapped about her coiled, muddy braids, her lips pursed as she squinted down at the needle and silk in her plump hands. She was twenty-seven and matronly; God had dealt her a stout frame, squat limbs, and a short, thick neck that dwarfed her broad face. Though her features were not unpleasant—her nose was short and round, her skin powder-soft and fine, her teeth small and fairly even—she had a low forehead with thick, overwhelming eyebrows. Her profile was flat, her eyes wide set, her small chin lost in folds of fat, most of it acquired after the birth of her first child; yet at the court of Duke Galeazzo, to my thinking, there was no lovelier soul.

To Bona’s left sat the duke’s two natural daughters, results of his dalliance with a courtier’s wife. The elder, Caterina, was, at thirteen, an example of physical perfection, with a lithe body that promised full breasts, clear skin, and a straight, well-proportioned nose, though her lips were rather thin. Two attributes propelled her past mere attractiveness into true beauty: full, loose curls of a gold so pale and bright it glittered in the sun, and eyes of a blue so intense that many who met her for the first time let go an involuntary gasp. The effect was enhanced by the natural confidence of her gaze. That afternoon, however, her gaze was sullen, for she had no patience with the needle and she hated sitting still; she paused often in her embroidery to glare at the fire and emit sighs of vexation. Had it been summer, she would have ignored the duchess’s insistence on a sewing lesson and joined her father on the hunt, or gone riding with her brothers, or chased them across the sprawling courtyard. No matter that such activities were exceedingly inappropriate for a young woman, already betrothed and certain to wed within three years. Caterina had no fear of the duchess’s wrath, not just because Bona was disinclined to anger, but also because her father the duke favored her and rarely allowed her to be punished.

The same could not be said of her nine-year-old sister, Chiara, a rail-thin, timid mouse with bulging brown eyes and a narrow, sharp-featured face. For all the attention the duke showed Caterina, Chiara—a slow-witted, obedient girl—received only his unwarranted abuse; she rarely met another’s gaze and kept close to Bona’s side. For Bona’s heart was so great that she treated all the duke’s children equally; her own son, Gian Galeazzo, who would someday rule Milan and all her territories, was shown the same tender kindness as Caterina and Chiara, both living proof of her husband’s philandering. She was also good to his two bastard sons, who were then almost men, off in Milan learning the military arts at their stepfather’s home. Although she had encouraged all of us children to address her as our mother, Chiara alone called her
Mama.
Caterina called her
Madonna, my Lady
; I called her
Your Grace.

Bona was kind even to me, a foundling of murky origin. She claimed publicly that I was the natural child of one of her disgraced cousins in Savoy, and therefore related to the king of France. I had only the vaguest memory of a beautiful raven-haired woman, her features blurred by time, who murmured endearments to me in French; surely this had been my mother. I had recollections, too, of kindly nuns who cared for me after the raven-haired woman had disappeared. But when I pressed Bona privately on the subject, she refused to give any details, hinting that I was better off not knowing. She adopted me as her daughter—if a lesser one, fated to spend my days as her most coddled lady-in-waiting. I was grateful, but ashamed of my origins. And being ashamed, I imagined the worst.

Almadea,
she named me: soul of God. Over the years, I came to be called simply Dea, but Bona made sure I never lost sight of my soul. She was a pious woman, given to prayer and charity, eager to raise her children to serve God. Since Caterina took no interest in the invisible world, Gian Galeazzo was destined for a secular fate, and Chiara was slow, I alone was the diligent recipient of her ardent religious instruction.

The duke, who praised Caterina to the skies and cursed poor Chiara, had little to say to or of me. I was strictly Bona’s project—although I, four years older than Caterina and often her chaperone, had many opportunities to be in the presence of His Grace, who doted on his blue-eyed, golden-haired daughter and paid her frequent visits. At those times, his eyes belonged to Caterina, and in those rare instances when his gaze strayed and caught mine, he quickly averted it.

On that eighth day before the Feast of the Nativity, the castle at Pavia—the duke’s favorite country lodgings—was bustling. Every servant’s expression was one of harried determination, every courtier’s one of eager anticipation. In two days, the entire court of several hundred would make the daylong procession to the city, Milan, and the majestic Castle of Porta Giovia. There, on the day before Christmas, the duke would address the people, issue pardons, and distribute charity; when the sun set, he would ceremonially light the
ciocco,
the great Yule log, for his staff and servants in the great banquet hall. The fire would be faithfully tended throughout the night. The duke had never lost his childhood love of the holiday, so he also privately celebrated the
ciocco
ritual with his family each Christmas Eve, followed by a lavish banquet.

On that particular afternoon, in a festive gesture anticipating the annual pilgrimage, the duke sent a quartet of carolers to his wife’s chambers. These were members of Duke Galeazzo’s choir, the most magnificent in all Europe. The duke took only a vague interest in the arts, leaving the acquisition of books and paintings to his underlings, but music was his passion, and he took great care to seek out the most talented vocalists and composers in all of Europe.

Gian Galeazzo, Ermes, Duchess Bona, Caterina, Chiara, and I sat facing west before the fire, with the open doorway to our left, while the carolers—two men and two lads, the latter chosen by the duke for their pretty bodies as much as their talent—stood just left of the hearth, lifting their amazing voices in song. Behind us, two chambermaids were busy packing Bona’s Christmas wardrobe into two large trunks. Sitting on the floor by his elder brother’s feet, Ermes dozed while little Gian Galeazzo sat dutifully enduring his nurse’s brush as he stared into the fire and listened; Duchess Bona hoped that the boys would catch their father’s passion for music. She and Chiara were distracted by their embroidery, and Caterina by a wooden ball at her foot, a toy belonging to her younger half-brothers. She slyly nudged it with her toe until it rolled a short distance and gently bumped the nose of the dozing greyhound coiled at Bona’s feet. The dog—three-legged and, like me, one of Bona’s rescues—opened one eye and promptly returned to its nap.

The duchess’s chamber was of comfortable size, with a large arched window, vaulted ceilings, and walls paneled in dark, ornately carved wood. Unlike the duke’s, it consisted of a single room that featured a sitting area in front of the fireplace, a dressing area shielded from view by several garderobes, and a platform upon which rested a mahogany bed, its brocade curtains drawn. Near it were three cots, one of which I occupied on those nights my husband traveled. Bona’s chamber resembled most of the other rooms in Castle Pavia, which consisted of a two-story stone square large enough to comfortably house five hundred souls. Each corner of the square was marked by a great tower, and these corner suites were reserved for the most important personages and functions. On the upper floor, the northeast tower housed the duke’s suite of rooms, the northwest, his heir’s; the southeast and southwest towers served as the chancery and the library, respectively. On the ground floor, the tower rooms held the reliquary and the prison. Except for the duke’s, all rooms opened onto a long common hall, or loggia, overlooking the massive interior courtyard; the loggia on the first floor, which housed the servants, lesser visitors, butchery, prison, bathhouse, laundry, and treasury, was open to the elements. For the comfort of the duke and his family, however, the upper loggia was bricked in, though there were windows to catch summer breezes, with shutters to close out winter winds.

As a girl, I used to race down the long, seemingly endless halls, barely avoiding collisions with the servants who filled them. One day I determined to count every room on both floors: There are eighty-three if you include the
saletti,
the little sitting rooms that protrude from the chapel, the chamber of rabbits, and the chamber of damsels and roses, the last two named for their murals. My favorite was the first-floor chamber of mirrors, with a floor of glittering mosaic and a ceiling of brightly colored glass.

Bona’s fireplace rested in the center of the wall adjoining her son’s apartment, and so we sat many steps away from either the window or the chamber door. I sat nearest the latter, which was open to allow the servants who were packing the duchess’s Christmas luggage easy access.

I should have relaxed in the fire’s warmth and simply listened to the singing. One lad’s voice was so hauntingly beautiful that when he performed a solo, Bona stopped in her sewing and closed her eyes at its sweetness.

I closed my eyes, too, but opened them immediately at the sudden welling of tears and the unwanted tightness in my throat. For the third time in the last hour, I set my sewing down and—as discreetly as possible, moving behind the seated group—stepped rapidly away from the hearth into the cool shade at the arched window, and looked out.

To my left, the feeble sun was dying behind thick winter clouds that threatened snow; before me stood the formal garden, withered save for spots of evergreen. Straight ahead, to the north, the Lombard plain stretched out, much of it obscured by the bare, spidery-limbed trees in the nearby park where the duke hunted. A day’s ride away, beyond the plain and my sight, stood the Alps; to the east, the kingdom of Savoy, where Bona had been born.

My Matteo would not be coming from the north, but court life required me to attend the duchess, and quash all yearning to run southward down the endless loggia to the library, where I could climb the steps to the southwest watchtower and stare out toward Rome.

Matteo da Prato served the duke as a scribe, occasional courier, and minor envoy. His mother had died giving life to him, and his father had died not long afterward; like me, he had been adopted by a wealthy family and educated. His talent for breaking ciphers and creating impenetrable code had earned him the attention of the duke’s top secretary, Cicco Simonetta. I first set eyes on him seven years ago, when I was ten and he seventeen, new to Milan and freshly apprenticed to Cicco; I never dreamed then that we should ever marry.

I had never expected to marry at all.

Back at the hearth, Bona noted my dismay. When the singers caught their breath between arrangements, she called softly, “He will not come today, Dea. I’ve said a hundred times, there is nothing more certain than delays during winter travel. Don’t fret; they’ve already found lodging and are sitting comfortably right now just as we are, in front of a fire.” She paused. “Time to shutter the windows now, anyway. It’s growing bitter.”

She did not remark on the fact that it had been the coldest winter anyone at court could remember.

“Of course, Your Grace,” I said. At my words, a gust of wind stirred the clouds; before my eyes they writhed and reformed into a haunting image: the shape of a man dangling in the darkening sky as if an invisible God held him by one ankle, his opposite leg bent at the knee to create an upside-down four.

The hanged man,
Matteo had called him.

I pushed the heavy slatted panels into place and latched them, then hesitated an instant to flick away a tear. When I faced Bona again, it was with a false smile.

Reason, if not the clouds, said that I had no cause to worry. Matteo was a seasoned traveler, and the guests he was escorting from Rome to Milan were papal legates, too precious to risk by traveling in bad weather. Matteo was also armed against bandits, and the legates traveled with attendants and bodyguards. Yet my anxiety would not ease. I had awakened that morning in a peculiar panic from a dream of a double-edged sword pointed downward, dripping blood onto the frozen earth, while a voice whispered flatly in my ear,
Matteo is dead.

Before morning mass, I had lit a second candle for Matteo, so that God would be doubly sure to hear my prayers. Bona noted it when she arrived in the chapel, and when I knelt beside her, she set a comforting hand upon my forearm.

“God hears,” she said softly, “and I am praying, too.”

Her kindness forced me to flick away tears, yet my worry did not lift; in my mind’s eye, I saw Matteo suspended upside-down, pale and unconscious.

After mass, I was gratefully distracted by the task of supervising the chambermaids as they prepared the duchess’s and children’s households for the return to Milan.

At noon, I noted the gathering snow clouds but told myself stubbornly that Matteo, the smartest man I knew, would mark them, too, and hasten his progress; but as the sky darkened, so did my mood, and sunset brought a growing dread. By the time I shuttered Bona’s window, I was again fighting back tears.

Yet I returned to my embroidery with a vengeance, and with each jab of the needle uttered a silent prayer:
God, protect my husband.
Surely God would hear. No one was more deserving of protection than Matteo; no prayers were worthier of being granted than Bona’s.