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Authors: Marina Fiorato

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: The Daughter of Siena
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‘
You
are the prize. And my father offered you to
him
, pandered for
him
, so you could ride and talk and … kiss.’ His face was a ruin. ‘He could not trust me to win for him, for the Eagles, or as a champion for a wife who might love me. He had to create a rival for me in
him
, but he had no need. You would have been enough. I wanted you, only you. I wanted you to look at me, just once, the way you look at him. But he shall not have you, if I cannot.’
Gazing into those maddened eyes, Pia steeled herself to say the unsayable.
‘Then, come, my husband. Let us go home. For if I die tonight, I will never have had the chance to lie with you.’
And she kissed him, full on the lips.
In that dreadful moment when he held her tight, devouring her, she reached to her boot. As Nello’s tongue pushed into her mouth, she thrust the horse shears through his tunic with all her desperate strength, and felt
the hot flood of blood on her hands. His lips slackened against hers, his grasp loosened and she clung to the battlements. Nello looked at her for the fraction of one heartbeat, a hurt, questioning look that she would remember for ever, a red ribbon of blood falling from his mouth.
Then he fell, in the shape of a cross, down, down, plunging from purgatory to hell.
 
 
Zebra marvelled at the practised speed and dispatch with which the Palatinate army followed and surrounded the papal troops. There was no bloodshed, just a calm and quiet understanding; the pope’s men knew when they were outnumbered and when to cut their losses. The fellows with the crossed keys laid down their arms, and were bound and led away by the infantry. Then the Palatinate cavalry, led by the Electress herself, rode quietly and without incident to the piazza, and the palace of her brother the heir of Tuscany, whose letter she had received.
 
 
Gian Gastone de’ Medici was not concerned for Siena, for he knew his sister would be hard by with her cavalry. Whatever his opinion of Anna Maria Luisa, he knew that her loyalty to her family was beyond question, and that she was as jealous of the Medici dominions as he was; she would not stand by while the Nine took Siena.
He idly watched the end of the race, only because
every hoofbeat brought him closer to Dami’s freedom, for the statutes stipulated that the condemned man was freed when the winner was announced. He vaguely registered that this year’s winner was a handsome white horse without a rider. He ignored some sort of drama that was taking place on the tower above his head and made no note of the pointing, gasping crowd. He did not even turn his head.
No, Gian Gastone de’ Medici had eyes only for his lover as he made his way across the piazza, a freed man. Giuliano Dami enjoyed perhaps a whole minute of his freedom, perhaps shared one glance and wave with his master, before a dark shadow grew around him like a stain as Nello Caprimulgo fell, with great precision, directly upon him.
 
 
Riccardo stumbled into the light from the marble porticoes of the chapel at the bottom of the great tower, half carrying, half leading Pia, who clung to him as if she would never let him go. His instincts were to take her into the shadowy alleys of the Tower
contrada
to safety, but the delighted whicker of a horse halted him. Leocorno, who had valiantly won the race for him riderless, barged his way through the crowds, dodging a sea of patting hands, and trailing a collection of Torre children who were garlanding him with wreaths and ribbons of blue and burgundy.
Riccardo strode towards the horse, and as he and Pia wrapped their arms around his white neck, Leocorno
stumbled, as if the weight of the garlands or the love were too much for him. His knees folded and he staggered, then fell to the ground. Pia pulled the great head into her lap, not understanding.
But Riccardo knew.
He bent to the white ear for the last time.
‘You won,’ he shouted above the mêlée. ‘And now you are free.’
The large liquid eye regarded him, then deadened; Riccardo could see only his own reflection now and knew Leocorno was gone. The fragment of spear in the Unicorn’s skull had freed him at last; the battle cries had ceased for him, and he was at peace.
Pia’s tears fell on the white velvet cheek, and Violante, seeing it all from her vantage point, was visited by a memory. As she watched Pia cradle the huge white head, it was as though a virgin of old had, at last, found that creature of fable that she sought.
The Shell
V
iolante had been married for one year. She went with Ferdinando to a party at one of his father Cosimo de’ Medici’s summer palaces, high on the hills above Florence. The
palazzo
was a beautiful long white house with ornamental gardens, dark spears of cypress trees piercing the sky and the scent of myrtle in the air. Violante was as happy on that day as she had ever been in her marriage; her disillusion not quite complete, her barrenness not yet a certainty.
The heat in the gardens was fierce and she retreated inside the cool house. She wandered into a huge room and was drawn to the windows. In the gardens, musicians played and there was the tinkle of crystal and laughter drifting on the breeze that shifted the gauzy drapes. She could see Ferdinando, his head thrown back, laughing with his beloved sister Anna Maria Luisa, and her insides contracted with love. The older siblings ignored their younger brother Gian Gastone, who stood a little
apart. But Violante did not mark him; she looked instead at her husband, unable to believe her luck. Almost overwhelmed by her feelings, she turned and noticed for the first time a painting on the opposite wall.
And what a painting. A huge poplar panel depicting a woman of great beauty, with flowing red hair, rising naked from a great scallop shell floating on a blue sea, the kindly winds personified to blow her to shore on an azure wave. Violante walked forward and looked that fortunate goddess right in her serene green eyes. She was
so
beautiful,
so
abundant; naked as the day she was born, with glowing skin the hue of an apricot, perfect breasts and long limbs. The other figures in the painting focused their attention entirely on the goddess, waiting, rapt, for her to speak or gesture. She was everything Violante had never been, never had. She wondered what it was like to feel the heat of everyone’s attention, to succeed in your own beauty, to be desired.
She heard a step at the door and hoped it was Ferdinando, optimistic, for once, that she could borrow some of the goddess’s magic. But it was her father-in-law, Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, a man she had always found courteous, but frightening.
He came to stand beside her.
‘It’s an allegory,’ he said, ‘about birth. The shell represents a cunt.’
He turned and fixed her with his hooded Medici eyes, giving Violante his full attention.
‘And when, my dear, might you be going to conceive?’
 
 
Domenico Bruni lit a candle and stole quietly past the door of his tiny parlour. As he passed the jamb he put his head into the room, and his goodnights died on his lips. The two young people within, sitting close on the settle, were lit gold by the fire. Pia Tolomei’s head lay on his son’s shoulder and her dark eyes, huge in the firelight, seemed utterly at peace. His son’s face wore the same expression, a completeness Domenico had never seen. Both of them looked as if they had come home.
As Domenico climbed the little stair to his room he regarded his truckle bed as he set his candle down. Ordinarily, after the Palio dell’Assunta in August, he would take to his bed with nothing but the drear cold winter to look forward to, a whole year to wait before the Palio di Provenzano in July. But this time he did not want to take to his bed; he wanted to be with Riccardo.
For the first time since Dami had visited him late at night, he felt safe. Dami could not now tell anyone that, twenty years past, he had given a royal child to Domenico; he could not tell anyone that the child Domenico had loved and raised was not his.
For the first and only time in his life, Domenico did not care who had won the Palio, or that, outside, a raucous feast was taking place under the Palio banner of black-and-white silk, which the valiant Leocorno had won for the Tower before he died. He did not even care that his son had stopped in the middle of the race to save a woman of the Owlet
contrada
. He did not even care to go down to his stable and make the arrangements for the
Lipizzaner’s body, the corpse that Riccardo had insisted be brought home.
All he wanted was for Riccardo to stay.
 
 
Violante de’ Medici was not in the habit of walking abroad on the night of the Palio. Boisterous winners and doleful losers both could make for trouble on the streets. She took two sergeants-at-arms with her and left them outside Domenico’s door, sharing a cup with the jubilant citizens who had ranged a dozen trestle tables along the streets, bedecked in burgundy and blue. Violante had no idea what she would say to the old man.
She didn’t knock but went straight into the little firelit room. There she found Riccardo on the settle, with Pia’s head on his knee, stroking her hair as she slept.
Riccardo did not see her until she broke the firelight with her shadow, but he raised his eyes to her unsurprised. He had known she would come for him. ‘When will you tell them?’
She was glad he understood. ‘Tomorrow. The Electress Palatine Anna Maria Luisa is in residence at the palace. She is a good woman and will not let her brother Gian Gastone act against you. She will see justice done. You will be invested as governor of Siena and grand duke of Tuscany.’
‘Grand duke?’
‘Yes. Can you not hear the bells?’
Riccardo cocked his head. Above the crackle of the sticks in the grate, above the screams and songs outside,
he could hear the great bell Sunto ringing a passing bell. All he could think of was that the last time he had heard that bell he had been riding Leocorno, about to start the race. At that moment it seemed that the bell rang for that valiant, troubled horse who had ended his life in a victory, not the defeat of battle.
Violante said gently, ‘Cosimo de’ Medici, your namesake, your … grandsire, is dead.’
She could not grieve for the grand duke, who had abandoned her when she needed him most. The only point on which she could be grateful to him was that he had needed a shoe for his favourite horse on the day the twins were born, and had called on the best farrier in Tuscany, a man who had taken Cosimo’s grandson home to Siena. She smiled at that child now.
‘It is your time.’
Riccardo stared again at the fire. ‘Will he give up his inheritance so easily?’
‘Gian Gastone?’
She thought of her sorry brother-in-law, sobbing in his bed at the palace, useless now that his paramour was gone. Justice had been well served for him and Dami – Dami had taken a child and lost his life; Gian Gastone had attempted murder for his dukedom and lost that.
‘I cannot imagine that, in his current state, he will even leave his bed, let alone fight for his dukedom,’ she replied.
‘And the Electress Palatine? Will she not wish to inherit? For it may easily be said that your brother-in-law has not long for this world.’
She had not thought that he understood so much.
‘She has no living heir. Her husband died of the syphilis, like mine. She is too old to carry a child. She will be glad that the line will carry on, otherwise the dukedom will pass to the Bourbon or Spain. She loved Ferdinando well, and will love you too.’ She did not mean to lie to him but spoke with emphasis, as if her certainty would make it so.
‘And my father?’
He had asked her this question before, in the Tower church, with exactly the same intonation. Then, he had sought to know more about Ferdinando. Now, she knew exactly whom he meant.
‘Domenico Bruni will have my thanks, and the city’s thanks. I will repay him for his service to you. But from today,’ she said gently, ‘he must be as one of your subjects to you.’
The irony, the cruelty of her position was not lost upon her. She, who had lost Riccardo so long ago, was now to deprive a true father of his son.
Still Riccardo said nothing but looked down at Pia. He stroked her hair and tucked a black lock of it tenderly behind her ear. ‘And Pia?’
He asked the question with the air of one who knew the answer.
Violante spoke softly, but clearly, so he should be in absolutely no doubt of the truth.
‘She will return to her father’s house, as a widow must. Faustino has lost everything and will not act against her now. I had the horse shears brought down from the tower and disposed of – there is no need for anyone to
know that Nello was dead before he fell. Pia is guiltless and free.’
‘And then?’
She loved him too well to wilfully misinterpret the question. ‘One day she may marry again, but she cannot marry you.’
‘Cannot?’
Riccardo raised his eyes to hers. In his firelight reveries he had dreamed of being duke, of riding to Pia’s house to carry her away, a man of power, a man who could not be gainsaid. In these dreams he resembled his real father better than he knew, for Ferdinando had followed his own appetites without pause. But in reality Riccardo knew that if he was to rule, he could not rule that way. He could not be a despot. He should rule in the manner of his mother, justly and well.
Violante lowered her voice still more, tender to the feelings of the sleeping girl.
‘She may marry within her own class. A high-born citizen of Siena will do well for her. But not a duke. A duke must marry for alliance, for fortune, but not for love. Believe me,’ she said with feeling, ‘I know whereof I speak.’
‘Did you not love, then, where you wed?’ Riccardo was almost pleading.
‘I? I did, yes. So much. Your father,’ she stumbled at the word, ‘he did not.’
She had loved a man and lost him. She had loved his sons and lost one of them. Now she must take from her remaining son the only father he had known and the
woman he loved. She knew that the replacement of them with herself could be no consolation. She could see it writ in Riccardo’s expression. He looked at her across fathoms of loss and there was no love there. He stared his duty in the face, not his mother.
‘How long do I have?’ It seemed to her that he hated her then.
‘Till noon. Come to the palace. All will be readied there.’
She wanted to wish him to enjoy this precious night, but could not find the words to do it. She left them then to the little time that they had remaining.
 
 
Violante went back across the piazza, that great scallop shell where all this had begun, where all this would end. She knew that there was no way forward for her and Riccardo. He could never, now, be her boy. They could never fill in those years, the seasons, the decades they had missed. She would be, at best, a benevolent stranger. A councillor, a dowager. Once Riccardo was installed, Gian Gastone would return to Florence, or his hated, chilly, marital castle, or wherever he would now go to eke out his existence without Dami.
And she? What would become of her? Perhaps she would go to Rome, as she had once planned to do before Ferdinando died, to the Palazzo Madama, a Medici palace where she could console herself with the balm of having done her duty, and lighten her days with the twin wonders of religion and art.
Violante stood in the middle of the
campo
and looked at the place where, yesterday, the starting line had been. Then she turned around, slowly and methodically, the ageless palaces wheeling about her, until she faced the finish line. She looked at the ground, dizzy, at the nine divisions of the scallop shell, at the place where Vicenzo had died last month, at the fountain where Egidio had lain, and at the shadow below the balcony where Nello and Dami had died. Libations of blood, given to the ground by the sacrificial sons of Siena, dark blots on the perfect shell of the
campo
. If the Palio was Siena and Siena was the Palio, she could at least, before she left, leave a framework of laws for Riccardo, in the hope that no more young men would die. A series of proclamations would do, an attempt to codify this most ancient of sports, to prevent future tragedy.
Violante quickened her steps toward the palace, her guard at her heels. She knew that tonight there would be no dreams of the twins, for she would not sleep. She climbed wearily to the library, called for paper and ink, and sat heavily at the round table. Before she lifted her pen, she laid one hand on the fine buckram of the
Morte d’Arthur
, the book she had once read to her son.

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