The Scarlet Contessa (12 page)

“A spiritual tradition?” I half whispered.

“A means,” Marsilio interjected, in his breathy tenor, “by which the soul might unite itself with God.”

“We are the bearers of holy gifts,” Lorenzo said softly. “Each man, each woman. Like the magi of old, we follow the star, knowing it will guide us to even greater treasure. Those of us who have been granted the knowledge and conversation of the angel have a duty to use our gifts to shine the light of the sacred star on others, not just for the good of Florence, but for the good of Italy, for the good of the world. This is why we Medici collect all the sacred things, all the ancient things; it is our duty, so that the old wisdom is not forgotten. It is why we have painted the Procession of the Magi on our chapel walls, why our family celebrates Epiphany as our special day.”

“The angel,” I murmured, and when Lorenzo looked askance at me, I added, “the Holy Guardian Angel, the one Marsilio mentioned in his letter . . .”

“The same,” he answered shortly. “We vow to obey that divine inner genius, even unto death. But it is something to be experienced, not discussed.”

“Matteo must have known the angel,” I said, struggling to understand.

“And he sent you to us, with his dying breath,” Lucrezia said. “Clearly, he wanted you to know this, else he would not have allowed you access to his papers.” She paused. “There is much we have to discuss, Dea, and more we will explain. In the meantime, it would be best for us to finish our luncheon.” She nodded to Giuliano, who reached behind him to pull a tasseled cord hanging from the ceiling.

In less than a minute, the servants reappeared, bearing more food. We finished eating while the others told me humorous stories about Matteo’s youth. I treasured each one, yet none of them explained the secret that troubled me most of all: why my husband would not take me to his bed.

After the meal, Lucrezia wished to speak to me alone; we left the men downstairs and went up to her chambers on the third level. Although the rest of the rooms were filled with exquisite paintings, relics, busts, and jewels on display, Lucrezia’s suite was austerely elegant, without a single painting on the wall save one of an angel announcing the coming of the Christ child to a young, golden-haired Mary. It was also entirely empty; the Medici matron had apparently informed her staff of her desire for privacy.

Lucrezia settled in the antechamber, in a padded chair in front of a writing desk by the flickering hearth. A second chair had been set beside hers, and she patted it in invitation. I sat, struggling to digest what I had already learned.

Clearly, Matteo, Lorenzo, Marsilio, and probably Giuliano had all performed the rituals I had discovered in my husband’s secret cabinet, and had evoked the angel.

It was also becoming clear to me that my husband—a close intimate of the Medici, gone to serve at Galeazzo’s court—had also served as Lorenzo’s spy. Why else had Lorenzo, a secret visitor to Milan before Christmas, been eagerly awaiting a message from Matteo? A message that had been utterly cryptic:
Romulus and the Wolf mean to destroy you.

“This has not been an easy day for you,” she remarked, drawing me from my thoughts. “Too sad, and filled with too many shocks.” She opened the little desk drawer and pulled out a small rectangular bundle wrapped in black silk. “I’m afraid it isn’t over yet.”

She set the bundle upon the dark glossy wood and untied the silk, then spread it out over the desktop, revealing the hidden contents.

It was a deck of triumph cards—not so large as those Lorenzo had given Bona, nor as fine, though the backs of the cards bore a similar design, of vases, twining leaves, and flowers. But the thin film of gesso plaster on which the illustrations had been painted was cracked and chipped in places from heavy use.

I gasped and picked them up without asking permission, turned them over, and fanned them in my hands. Here were images I had known since childhood: the terrifying Tower, with its lightning bolt and shattered stone; the barefoot pauper called the Fool; the Wheel of Fortune; and, of course, the Papess, in her golden tiara and white veil.

The Papess. I looked up at Lucrezia, and recognized her at once.

“Do you remember these cards?” she asked softly.

“I do . . .” I spread them out upon the table; the chalices, the swords, the coins, the batons: I knew them all, yet did not remember how. I fingered the cards wistfully, tenderly. There, the Hanged Man, my poor sacrificed Matteo. There, the flighty, vengeful Knave of Swords, the courageous Queen of Batons. I caressed them as I would family.

“These were your mother’s,” Lucrezia said.

I glanced up, dumbstruck. My hand, which had been hovering over the Queen of Batons, picked her up and clutched her tightly.

“Before she died, she came here to Florence,” Lucrezia continued. “To the convent of Le Murate. The Medici men support San Marco, and go there to meditate and pray; we Medici women do the same for Le Murate. The abbot, the abbess, are our dear friends. Nothing happens at either cloister that we do not soon learn about.”

I closed my eyes briefly and thought of the great cedar in the convent garden; I understood now why its fragrance had provoked my tears.

“Do you remember anything about your mother?” she asked gently.

I shook my head.

“Matteo indicated to us that you did not.” She drew a long breath. “I know only that her name was Elisabeth, that she was French, that her husband had cast her from his house when you were very small. She fled to Milan first, and there she suffered the misfortune of reading Duke Galeazzo’s future.” She paused; her voice dropped to a low murmur. “Your mother was a very beautiful woman.”

My hand, which still gripped the Queen of Batons, began to tremble. “You needn’t say more; I know what the duke did to beautiful women.”

She bowed her head. “Elisabeth foretold a bad end for the duke, and warned him to change his ways, or he would die at the hands of his enemies. Such talk enraged Galeazzo, who beat her almost to death, then raped her.”

The light dimmed suddenly, as if someone had blown out a taper; the walls in the spacious antechamber grew abruptly close. I closed my eyes and saw the duke staring down at the Tower card:
Mother of God, it’s she! A ghost come back to haunt me!

Lucrezia’s gaze was focused on the distant past. “After the duke was finished with her, her young son struck Galeazzo with a candlestick and they managed to escape. Galeazzo’s secretary, Cicco Simonetta, is a decent man who abhorred his master’s cruelty. While the duke was incapacitated, Cicco saw her and her children to the stables, gave her a horse and provisions and instructed her to head to Florence, where she would be safe.

“She rode with her children here, and sought refuge at Le Murate. The attack left her pregnant; even though the nuns took good care of her, she lost the baby. Afterward . . . she was never the same. She lost her reason, and desired only revenge against the duke.” Lucrezia sighed. “As a mother, I understand. There were rumors that Galeazzo had vowed revenge against her little boy. And so one day she left her children behind to return to Milan. She had acquired a dagger, and managed to get near enough to him to graze him with it, but she was quickly surrounded by guards.” She dropped her gaze. “She was hung in the public square outside the cathedral in Milan.”

“Children,” I said. “So I was not the only one. Are the others still alive?”

She shook her head sadly. “There was only one other, a boy. He was older than you, perhaps ten, when it happened; you were only three. You must have seen it all. When his mother was attacked, the boy threw himself on the duke and pummeled him; the duke struck him so hard that he was slammed back against the wall.

“Elisabeth fled Milan in part because she was terrified for her son’s sake; striking the duke’s royal person is a crime punishable by death. So when she came to Le Murate, she asked that the boy be moved to San Marco, and his name changed.”

“What was his name?” I pressed.

“Guillaume. And yours was Desiree.”

The names were meaningless to me. I drew a deep breath and asked a question whose answer I feared. “What happened to him?”

Lucrezia faced me squarely. Her eyes were very large and sorrowful. “He died. But not before he grew into a man. We educated him and sent him to the university at Pavia. Because of his great heart and talent, Marsilio initiated him into the secrets of the Magi. But once he learned that he had a sister at the court of Milan, he insisted on finding employment there, so that he could watch over her himself. He could not tell her the truth, lest the duke get wind of it and punish him and his sister. But he intended to bring her to Florence eventually, and to reveal all. Of course, he had pressing business to finish for Lorenzo before he could leave the duke’s employ.”

I heard my husband whisper:
Perhaps we could go together to Florence, to meet some of my friends there.

The Queen of Batons slipped from my fingers; I pressed my palms hard against my eyes. “Matteo,” I whispered, and drew a ragged, hitching breath, then released it as a wail. “Oh, Matteo, my dear brother . . .”

Chapter Nine

All my doubts concerning Matteo’s affection for me fell away. I had never realized just how deep and constant his love for me had been.

“Why did no one tell me he was my brother?” I moaned, bitter at the realization that I had lost my only surviving family member. “Why?”

Lucrezia wrapped her arms about me tightly until I grew calm enough to listen again.

After my mother had left me in the nuns’ care to meet her fate in Milan, I became withdrawn and mute and forgot everything about my former existence, including my family. For almost five years I lived at Le Murate as an orphan until I came to Lucrezia’s attention; the abbess had kept her promise to my mother to reveal my identity to no one, for my own safety. But two years later, the abbess and many of the sisters died during an outbreak of plague in the convent; only one surviving sister remembered my story and relayed it to Lucrezia some time after. She in turn compared notes with her husband, Piero, and realized that she had finally located Matteo’s lost sister.

But by then, Bianca Maria, the duke’s mother, had learned from Cicco that the boy and girl of the hanged mother were in Florence. Eager to make amends for her son’s wickedness, Bianca Maria secretly searched for them, hoping to adopt them. She could not locate Matteo at all, and by the time she located me at Le Murate, she was dying, so she confided in the duke’s good-hearted new wife, Bona of Savoy, who was also determined to right Galeazzo’s wrongs.

In the middle of the night, Bona’s agents stole into the convent and took me away, back to Milan, where I became the “natural daughter” of one of Bona’s “disgraced but noble” cousins.

Lucrezia was terrified that the duke had taken revenge on me; it took her months to discover what had actually happened. By then, she deemed it safest to let me remain under Bona’s gentle care. But Matteo was inconsolable at the thought of his sister living under the same roof as their mother’s murderer. As soon as he was grown, he went to Milan to look after me . . . and, in time, to bring me back to Florence.

“The nun who took care of your mother at Le Murate kept the cards because Elisabeth asked that they be given to you, when you were old enough,” Lucrezia told me, after I had calmed. A note of regret crept into her tone. “I wish I had had the chance to meet her, because such a talent must not be misused. I would have offered her the secrets of the Magi . . . and the knowledge of the angel, so that she could have offered her ability up to God. Instead, her anger destroyed her.”

She paused and leveled her serene, knowing gaze at me. “You have your mother’s gift, Dea. Lorenzo saw it, and Matteo told us as much.”

“How do I know it doesn’t come from the Devil?” I demanded, suddenly fearful. “The manuscript spoke of demons, not angels, and of pagan gods. And the rituals Matteo left behind . . . they use stars and circles and barbarous names.”

“The names of God,” Lucrezia corrected. “And the Greek word
daemon
usually refers to a divine genius, not an evil spirit.” She gestured at the cards. “Dea, do you truly believe these are evil?”

“Bona says they are,” I said, and stopped myself. What did
I
believe? “They represent . . . people, sometimes. And forces, like fire, or the wind.” I pondered it a moment. “I suppose the wind is neither good nor evil.”

“It can destroy and shatter,” Lucrezia agreed, “or power a great ship. Forces simply
are,
Dea. Their worth depends upon the purpose for which they are used.” She gathered up the cards in her long, bony hands and held them out to me. “These are yours now. So are the rituals and the manuscript that Matteo left for you.”

I hesitated. “The ritual is for summoning the angel?”

Lucrezia nodded.

“And if I summon it, then what?”

She smiled faintly. “That is between you and the angel. It will show you the purpose of the life God has given you, and give you special help so that you might fulfill it.”

I took the cards. They were warm from Lucrezia’s touch, and worn from my mother’s hands.

I had many more questions for Lucrezia, some of which she answered that day. For example, the brown powder in the little pouch—“which must never be discussed, as the profane cannot understand it,” she said—was to be taken in a bit of wine just before the ritual was begun, and all three rituals were to be performed in a certain order.

The revelations of the day strained my nerves and emotions and left me exhausted. Lucrezia insisted that I stay the night at the Palazzo Medici, and sent word of the fact to my driver, asking that my things be brought to me. I stayed alone in the modest bedroom that had belonged to Lucrezia’s now-married eldest daughter, Nannina, which overlooked the courtyard.

I did not have the will to come down to supper, or to join the carnival celebrations beginning outside in the street; instead, I lay on Nannina’s straw and feather bed and stared up at the stucco ceiling, overwhelmed by sadness, regret, love, and bittersweet gratitude.

I was filled with other, darker emotions, too: hatred, and the craving for swift and bloody justice. I was pleased that Duke Galeazzo had died violently, as my mother and I had predicted; her death had already been avenged. But Matteo’s had not.

I decided that I already knew my life’s purpose: that of taking revenge on my brother’s murderers—on the Wolf and Romulus, whether Lorenzo was willing to reveal their identities or not. And so I resolved to use the powder, the rituals, and the angel for a cause I believed to be just.

A maid brought me a warm supper that evening. The singing and shouting out in the broad Via Larga kept me awake until very late, as did the happy voices of visitors inside the palazzo.

I woke the next morning to a muted cascade of church bells from San Marco, not far down the broad cobblestoned street, and San Lorenzo just to the east, and from the magnificent Duomo farther south. I opened my eyes knowing that I would tell Bona I had discovered Matteo’s surviving family—it was not entirely a lie—and wanted nothing more than to return to Florence, and to them. I knew that if I made my plea passionately, she would grant it. After all, Lorenzo was my one connection to the Wolf and Romulus; he had the answers I sought.

I declined that morning to join the parade through the city streets. Instead, I attended mass with Lucrezia in the Medici family chapel, whose walls were adorned with a fresco of the procession of the Magi, rendered in vivid scarlets, greens, and sapphires, all gilded and gleaming with candlelight. Afterward she and I went up to a second-floor window and waited for the pageant to pass by in the street below.

Clad in black and white, the trumpeters marched at the head of the parade, blaring notice of their arrival. Behind them strode the standard-bearers, dressed in brilliant stripes of saffron, red, and blue and carrying the red and white flags that bore the fleur-de-lis of Florence. Next came costumed pedestrians, some of who threw brightly colored streamers of cloth into the cheering crowd.

And then came Lorenzo, first of the Magi, upon a white horse grandly caparisoned in gold and red; the rider was similarly dressed in gold brocade and a red velvet cape, with a tasseled Moorish turban upon his head. Lorenzo’s smile was broader, more carefree, than I’d ever seen it; in a grand, giddy gesture, he threw coins into the crowd. Beside him, dressed in a red felt cap and the plain tunic of a servant, was his younger brother, Giuliano. I stared down at them, at the fluttering gold and blue pennants, and could think only of how Matteo must have looked riding there.

I attended the banquet that afternoon. The sweetly beaming Marsilio attended, along with a number of young men whose names sounded vaguely familiar, among them Leonardo da Vinci and Alessandro Botticelli. Lucrezia sat at my side and smoothly answered questions on my behalf, deftly disarming any that were too prying, too painful.

Afterward the men adjourned to a meeting hall on the ground floor; Lucrezia took my elbow and steered me away, whispering, “It is a meeting of the Society of the Magi, for those who are initiated. Don’t worry, Lorenzo will merely repeat what he told you before. I’m afraid we women are not allowed to attend, as most of the men are too foolish to realize that we are just as capable of spiritual attainment as they are.” She chuckled softly. “May God grant them all wisdom.”

By then, I had resolved to leave for Milan as soon as possible, and informed her. She was sad that I would be leaving so soon, but I told her of my intent to return to Florence very quickly, and to remain here forever.

I asked her then whether she would read my triumph cards for me; she hesitated, and shook her head. “That is not my gift, but yours.”

“And what is your gift?” I asked.

She gave a secretive little smile. “Similar to yours. But I use no cards. I simply see.”

Quietly, so that servants passing in the hall might not hear, I murmured, “And what do you see for me, Madonna Lucrezia?”

The smile faded; her gaze grew somber. “A longer and more unusual journey than you expect, dear Dea.”

She would not elaborate. I sat with her an hour that evening, asking questions about Matteo—what he had been like as a boy, what he had said about me. She showed me the most recent letter he had written to her in his lovely cipher; Marsilio had kindly written the decrypted message above it, in his distinctive hand.

My brother described me as intelligent, beautiful, generous, and thoughtful. He spoke of how the deception of marrying me broke his heart, though it was necessary to protect me from physical abuse; he spoke of his worry that I would never trust him again once I learned the truth. I could not listen to his words without weeping.

When all the servants were out of earshot, I whispered to Lucrezia, “When should I perform them? The rituals to summon the angel?”

She raised her thin dark brows in mild surprise. “That is not for me to answer, child. You will know when it is time.”

Worn from emotion, I again retired early to Nannina’s bedchamber, and when the maid left me for the night, I took out my mother’s triumph cards. Sitting upon the bed, I mumbled a prayer to the angel—whatever, whoever it might be—then set out three cards facedown, just as I had for Caterina.

Past, present, future.

I turned over the first card. Upon a white background, four gold-tipped swords pointed at the ground; a second set of four downward-pointing swords crossed them, forming a diamond-shaped lattice at the card’s center. I sensed steel clashing against steel: there was dissension here, interference of an internal sort, deception and confusion; and when I saw a ninth sword, its hilt upon the ground, its tip pointing straight up through the center of the crossed blades, I felt as though it pierced me to my core.

The Nine of Swords represented the past, one that held pain to the point of madness. As I stared at the swords, I fancied blood dripping like tears from the tip of each blade, and felt a strong sense that while this had been my past, it might also be my present and future unless this pain was resolved.

“The present,” I said aloud, and turned over the Fool.

At the sight of it, I felt an unreasoning dismay.
This is wrong,
I thought involuntarily; this was someone else’s destiny, not mine. But then I cast about for ways that it might have a desired meaning; and, as minds often do, mine misled me, with the comforting notion that
This is merely the trip back to Pavia, then to Florence again. Not such a long journey after all.
It was coincidence, and nothing more, that I had drawn the same card I had given Caterina.

At least, I convinced myself of it, until I turned over the third card representing the future, and saw the Tower.

Caterina’s terrified words echoed in my mind.
It’s a trick, all of it! You’re doing this to frighten me!

The stucco and tapestry of Nannina’s bedroom walls changed suddenly to the thick stone of a castle keep. Thunder roared in my ears so violently that I reached out to press a hand to the stone, and felt it shudder violently.

Panicked, I tried desperately to remember what I had told Caterina.

This does not mean death. But this is an upheaval, an end to old ways. This is destruction. . . .

You have a long journey ahead of you.
A journey, I knew, of years.
Perhaps along the way, you will find a way to avert whatever disaster this card represents.

“I do not want this,” I hissed. I wanted nothing to do with spoiled, selfish Caterina and her undoubtedly well-deserved fate.

I put the cards away and did my best not to think of them again that night. The destiny they revealed seemed senseless, the angel a vague and distant philosophical concept.

Nonetheless, I spent the hours before sleep studying the three rituals. Even after I blew out the lamp, I lay on the bed, arm raised, and, just as I had seen Matteo do, traced stars in the dark.

In the early morning, my driver and wagon were waiting for me out in the Via Larga. I took my leave of Lucrezia with a familial embrace and kiss; I did not have the opportunity to say good-bye to Lorenzo or his brother, who were both still sleeping after the previous day’s revelries. Hidden in my cloak pocket were the rituals, the powder, and my mother’s triumph cards.

The first two days of travel were uneventful. The weather remained unusually warm, and the driver’s wife’s health was much improved; she sat on the seat beside her husband while I sat inside, the canvas flap closed, and set to memorizing the barbarous calls that were to accompany the drawing of the stars and circle.

By the evening of the third day, a cold breeze stirred and sent dark clouds scurrying across the sky. The air smelled of rain, and the driver stopped at the inn a few hours’ south of Modena, where we had stayed before. I dined on cabbage, bread, and wild boar, then bought a half flagon of wine and carried it to my private room. Although it had no hearth, the innkeeper’s wife brought me heated bricks for the bed.

I bolted the door, shuttered the windows, undressed to my wool chemise, and drank most of the wine; the prospect of asking Bona to release me from her service made me anxious. In time, I fell into an uneasy sleep.