Jeanne Kalogridis - The Scarlet Contessa

As the church was the recipient of the Medicis’ charity, there were wooden chairs for the worshippers. In the last row sat a tall, spare woman dressed in a rich but modest gown of dark gray velvet; her face and bowed head were veiled in black silk gauze. She did not look up as I passed, but kept her head inclined toward the rosary in her prayer-steepled hands.

Domenico deposited me in my seat, in the first row directly before the altar, and departed without a word to the woman. The priest sprinkled frankincense upon the now-hot coals, and put the lid on the censer; smoke streamed out through the holes. Swinging the censer from a chain, he made his way down the aisle, chanting. I turned as the door to the chapel opened and Domenico and five other men carried Matteo’s casket as far as the threshold. There they waited while the priest censed the casket, then took a brass asperger from the font by the door and sprinkled Matteo with holy water.

As he did, the two monks by the altar began to sing a hollow, aching melody.

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine . . .

Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord . . .

The priest then led the slow procession into the chapel. I turned away, struggling to contain my tears, and did not look at the coffin again until the priest took his place at the altar, and the pallbearers gently set the casket down a few steps from him.

For the first time, I noticed the pallbearers. One was Brother Domenico and two others his fellow monks. But three of the men were wealthy gentlemen, given their exceedingly fine but unostentatious clothes. The first was small and delicate-looking, with graying red-gold hair; the second was Matteo’s age, young, handsome, dark-haired and muscular. And the third was Lorenzo de’ Medici.

At the sight of Lorenzo, my tenuous grip on my emotions failed. Tears spilled from me, hot and fierce. I remembered Matteo’s suffering on that last horrible night; I thought of how Lorenzo must have waited for him and finally realized that something had gone horribly wrong.

I heard Matteo’s ragged whisper: Tell Lorenzo . . .

I remember little else of the ceremony—only the sacred Host dry upon my tongue, and the priest circling the coffin twice with more incense, more holy water. Only when it was over, and the pallbearers returned to take the coffin, did I realize that they had been sitting behind me the entire time.

The priest caught my arm and led me after the coffin; as I left the chapel, the tall veiled woman rose and stood respectfully.

We went to a deep hole flanked by a large mound of reddish dirt in the churchyard; the gravediggers were waiting for us, leaning on their shovels. The coffin was set upon ropes, which the diggers used to lower it into the ground. Matteo was laid to rest so that his head lay due east of his feet, since Christ would appear in the eastern sky when He returned to raise the dead.

Lorenzo and the younger man flanked the veiled woman, their arms wound about hers in support; the delicate middle-aged man stood on Lorenzo’s other side and dabbed at his red-rimmed eyes. They remained a short distance from me, as if unwilling to intrude on my grief.

I listened, dazed, as the priest spoke of Saint Martha and her profession of faith that her brother would indeed rise from the dead.

At last, the priest made the sign of the cross over the grave, and chanted: Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei . . .

It was over. At the priest’s prompting, I clutched a fistful of cold, wet soil and sprinkled it onto Matteo’s coffin. The other four mourners watched me, hesitant. I turned to them, gesturing at the mound of earth.

“Please,” I said.

The woman was first to add her handful of dirt; the men followed. Once I had handed a coin to the priest for his services, and a purse for the monastery from Bona to Brother Domenico, the gravediggers took to their work with haste. I turned to the others.

“Ser Lorenzo,” I asked, “may I have a private word with you?”

He nodded, and moved to my side; the others retreated a few steps, while Lorenzo led me over to a bare-limbed tree, swollen with pink-red bud in response to the unusually mild weather. I tried not to flinch each time a clod of earth struck Matteo’s coffin.

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