The Second Duchess (30 page)

“
T
his is the Torre dei Leonis’, the Lion’s Tower, the oldest part of the Castello,” the duke said as we came out onto an open gallery with a white marble balustrade. “The lower levels of the tower are three hundred years old. This gallery and the balustrade were added more recently. If you look down, you will see the orange garden on the terrace.”

I looked down and felt a wave of vertigo. The duke was standing close enough to touch me; I was without any attendant ladies, and he had forbidden both my guards and his own secretaries to follow us. The garden seemed dizzyingly far below, and the balustrade was only breast-high. He was close enough to lift me and—

But no, I could not allow myself to think such things anymore. My dizziness cleared; whether he noticed it or not I did not know. He led me to a low door opening off the gallery. From his purse he extracted a fine golden chain with several keys strung upon it, one large and the rest small; using the large key, he opened the door.

The room was tiny and undecorated, clearly meant for nothing but storage. There was no window; the only light was from the open door, and dust motes glittered in the shaft of late-afternoon sunshine. Behind the veil of dust, along one of the side walls, there were four—no, five wooden chests. The fifth was smaller, perfectly plain, with none of the carving or gilding or faded paint that covered the larger chests. Other than that, the room was empty.

“The four large
cassoni
were hers,” the duke said. “Two of them were brought back from the monastery, where I closed them and locked them with my own hands. The other two contain the things left here in Ferrara, after most of her personal possessions were returned to Florence or distributed to the poor.”

I walked over to the wall and put my hand on the largest of the coffers. It was carved with intricate fruit and flowers, symbols of fecundity; the heads of virginal unicorns peeped out among the foliage. A cipher of an
A
and an
L
intertwined was painted in the center of the lid. Alfonso. Lucrezia. I wondered if she had ever addressed the duke by his Christian name, a liberty I had not yet dared to take.

I wiped the dust from my hand against my skirt.

“What of the fifth coffer, the small one? It is not like the others.”

“The Clarissas provided it, and I used it to gather up the items lying about in the cell where the duchess died. Here, I will show you why I believe she took poison.”

He picked up the small chest and put it on top of one of the larger ones, then unlocked it with one of the smaller keys upon his golden chain. He put back the lid and gestured to me to examine the contents.

The first things I saw were white linen fabric, an ivory comb, and some small gilt boxes such as I myself used for cosmetics and comfits. The boxes were cracked and dented. Underneath, there were the broken shards of a mirror and pieces of brightly flowered majolica, which had probably once been a cup and a plate. Deeper still, at the very bottom, I found a crudely carved wooden cup-and-ball toy, a bundle of painted jackstraws, a basket with a few shriveled cherries, and a small rock-crystal flask banded with gold and heavily studded with jewels. It was long-necked, roundbodied, with a golden stopper attached by delicate chains. A beautiful thing, no doubt, yet at the same time faintly malevolent, like some many-eyed creature out of a myth.

The duke picked up the flask and turned it so the slanting sunlight flashed off its cabochon emeralds and topazes and rubies. Through the carved crystal I could see a small amount of dry silvery residue in the bottom.

“It is Florentine work, probably from the workshop of Cellini, if not from the master’s own hand,” he said. His voice had changed, taken on the rapt, musing note of the collector. “Unmistakable. Notice the delicacy of the gold-work, the repoussé technique, the way the stones are polished and set.”

“It is certainly not something one would ordinarily find in a monastery.” I had expected a plain glass or earthenware container, not such a valuable piece. I could not help but think of Mother Eleonora’s luxurious room, the hangings, the carpets, the jeweled cups for fine wine.

He put the flask down and frowned, as if he were deliberately wresting himself free of its spell. “I agree. I do not remember seeing it among the duchess’s possessions, but it is definitely Florentine work, and I was not familiar with all the things she owned.” Here an edge of contempt crept into his voice. “Nor with the ways in which she obtained them.”

“But, my lord, if you are correct and the flask was filled with poison, why would she have such a thing among her possessions?”

“She was a Medici, and they are hardly known for niceties when it comes to poisons. Perhaps at one time she intended to rid herself of some rival, or an importunate lover like the one she persuaded Sandro Bellinceno to assassinate for her. I think the poison was there, for whatever reason, and in her fit of uncontrolled passion she drank it down for sensation’s sake.”

“You are very frank, my lord,” I said slowly. It still disturbed me that he seemed to hold his friend entirely innocent despite his crimes of adultery and murder.

“I would never say such a thing publicly, of course. But we were to be honest with each other from now on, were we not? I did not kill my first duchess, but I did not marry her willingly, nor did I feel any affection for her, nor did I care for her merchants’ breeding and her whore’s morals.”

He spoke quite softly, but even so I flinched at the brutality of his assessment. “She was hardly more than a child. Surely you could have molded her.”

“Molded her? Her childhood name was ‘Sodona,’ and for good reason.”

“Sodona?”

“It means ‘hard one.’ She had no desire to be lessoned, and she set her wits plainly against me when I attempted to teach her—lies, excuses, trickeries. I did not choose to stoop to such children’s games.”

I looked down at the coffer again, the cup-and-ball and the jackstraws. There was no half-finished needlework, no musical instrument, no books, nothing an adult woman might have used to while away hours of captivity.

“Even so, my lord, she did not deserve to die for her childishness. Nor for her breeding, which was certainly none of her own fault. You said when you went into the locked cell, she was already dead, and lay peacefully, as if asleep. Could she have died naturally? She was with child, after all, and her humors could have been disordered.”

“She was perfectly healthy only a few hours earlier.”

“Could she have been smothered? That would leave no mark.”

“The cell was locked and guarded by the Clarissas. She was alone. The flask was beside her pallet, with its stopper unstopped. If she died by any other means, what was in it?”

I reached down and touched the jeweled crystal phial, turning it slightly so the bit of silvery residue inside was more visible. As I did so, one corner of the white cloth underneath turned back as well, revealing a coiled silken tape. I stared at it for a moment, trying to think why it looked familiar. Then I realized I had seen just such cloths myself here in Ferrara, and not so long ago.

“I think I know what was in the flask, my lord.”

He said something between his teeth, an oath in Italian I did not understand. “Speak plainly, Madonna,” he said in a hard voice.

I lifted one of the cloths. It was a narrowish strip of white linen made with several layers quilted together; at each of the corners there was sewn a silken tape. “If you found this”—I laid the cloth down and removed the toys and the pieces of majolica to uncover others—“and all of these, unpacked and lying ready in the duchess’s cell, then I assure you she did not take poison. And I further assure you she had every intention of living to see the morning.”

I doubt the duke had ever actually seen such a cloth before; they had been the private business of women since the beginning of time. But he was no fool, and he divined its purpose at once. “You think the flask contained an abortifacient potion, not a poison, and the duchess had prepared herself for its effects.”

I nodded. “Does it not make sense, my lord? It was the one thing that could save her. Maria Granmammelli refused her, but somehow, from someone, she procured the potion she desired. That night she drank it and prepared herself for her deliverance.”

“Perhaps she took too much. You yourself pointed out that such accidents are not unknown.”

“If so, would there not have been evidence? You said when she was discovered, she was composed, unmarked, without any sign of blood or agitation.”

He nodded slowly. “That is true.”

I replaced the cloths in the coffer and picked up the flask again. “So she procured her potion,” I said thoughtfully. “But from whom? And why in such a valuable flask? Perhaps it was among her things, filled with perfume or a sleeping draught—it is the sort of thing a Florentine person of wealth and position would own. Perhaps she made a bargain with one of the infirmarians—refill the flask with a suitable potion, and when it had achieved its purpose, the flask itself would be payment.”

I could not help remembering my own bargain with Sister Orsola. Had Lucrezia de’ Medici found her as easy to bribe as I had?

“An ingenious speculation,” the duke said. “However, if the potion was not, after all, a poison, it brings us back to the question of how she died.”

“You are certain she could not have died of natural causes?”

“As certain as it is possible to be. When she was first taken to Corpus Domini, I instructed Messer Girolamo to examine her, will she or nill she. He found no evidence of any disease, and there were no reports from the infirmarian of any ill health.”

“It is all very mysterious.” I put the flask back in the coffer. Its jewels glittered like a hundred basilisk eyes. “The flask was empty, which argues she drank whatever was in it. She laid out the cloths, which argues it was an abortifacient, not a poison. And yet she showed no signs of the potion ever taking effect, and died quietly in her sleep.”

“Perhaps she only thought it was an abortifacient,” he said. “She had enemies aplenty. She may have been given the flask and been deliberately misled about its contents.”

“That is another possibility. My lord, if we are to learn the truth, we must—”

A howl interrupted me. A moment later Tristo bounded into the room, eyes bright with joy, white-flagged tail high. Isa was just behind him, her baying higher and shriller than her brother’s. They flung themselves at me and almost bowled me over in their excitement.

“What is this?” The duke sounded surprised and angry, and at the same time amused in spite of himself. “What are your little hounds about, Madonna, running unleashed?”

Nicoletta came panting in just at that moment. A wisp or two of her hair had come loose. She had the scarlet leather leashes in her hand.

“Forgive me, forgive me, Serenissima,” she gasped, too much beside herself at first to realize I was not alone in the little room. When she saw the duke, she sucked in her breath and attempted to curtsy, which was less than successful in the tiny room. “I beg your indulgence, Serenissimo, but they escaped me. They seemed determined to track their mistress, and before I knew it they had followed her scent, first to your apartments, then here.”

The little beagles were delighted with their accomplishment, and not at all cowed by my half-hearted scoldings. I stroked Tristo’s russet head and hugged his warm, sturdy little body as I reproved him, which I suspect diminished the effect. Then I handed him back to Nicoletta and did the same with Isa.

“It is what they have been bred to do, so they can hardly be blamed,” the duke said. “Next time take more care to keep them leashed. Now carry them back to the duchess’s apartments, and she shall follow shortly.”