Jeanne Kalogridis - The Devil’s Queen

“It’s an outrage!” he shrieked. “I am the regent, I alone possess the authority to make such decisions. And I denounce this one!” He stood inches from Aunt Clarice, who, accompanied by two men at arms, barred entry to the dining hall. “You insult us!”

He seized Clarice’s right wrist, wrenching it so violently that she cried out in surprise and pain.

“Worthless bastard!” she shouted. “Let go of me!”

On either side of her, the guards unsheathed their swords. Passerini dropped hold of her at once. The younger of the guards was ready to strike, but Clarice signaled for peace and caught Ippolito’s gaze.

“Get them from my sight,” she hissed.

Cradling her injured wrist, she turned and swept imperiously back into the dining hall. The door closed behind her, and the guards positioned themselves in front of it. The Cardinal lurched slightly, as if considering whether to charge the door, but Ippolito caught his arm.

“They’ve made the decision to deal with her,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do here. Come.” Still gripping Passerini’s arm, he moved for the stairs; Sandro followed.

I held my ground on the landing as they ascended toward me and looked questioningly at Ippolito.

“Our aunt has chosen to humiliate us, Caterina,” Ippolito said tautly, “by barring us from the negotiations at the request of the rebels. I’m sure they’ll find her more accommodating.” His voice grew very low and soft. “She has humiliated us. And she will pay.”

I watched as they made their way to their apartments, then I returned to my bed and stared at the window and the darkness beyond it, broken by the wavering glow from the rebels’ torches.

I slept fitfully, with dreams of men and swords and shouting. At dawn, sounds pulled me from sleep: the ring of bootheels on marble, the murmur of men’s voices. I called for Paola, who came and dressed me with a far rougher hand than Ginevra ever had. On her orders, I ran down toward the kitchen but stopped in the ground-floor corridor. The door to the dining hall was open; curiosity compelled me to peer past the threshold.

Clarice was inside. She sat alone at the long table littered with empty goblets; hers was full, untouched. She was dressed gorgeously in deep green brocade, and the train of her gown spilled over the side of the chair and pooled artfully at her feet. Her arm rested on the table, and her face, nestled in the crook, was turned from me. Her chestnut hair hung upon her shoulder, restrained by a gold net studded with tiny diamonds.

She heard me and languidly lifted her head. She was full awake, but her expression was lifeless; I was too young to interpret it then, but over the years I have come to recognize the dull look of undigested grief.

“Caterina,” she said, without inflection; her eyes were heavy-lidded with exhaustion. She leaned over and patted the seat of the chair beside her. “Come, sit with me. The men will be down soon, and you might as well hear.”

I sat. Her wrist, propped upon the table, was badly swollen, with dark marks left by Passerini’s fingers. Within a few minutes, Leda led Passerini and the cousins to the table. Ippolito’s manner was reserved; Passerini’s and Sandro’s, angry and challenging.

When they had taken their seats, Aunt Clarice waved Leda out of the room. Capponi had guaranteed us all safe passage, she said. We would go to Naples, where her mother’s people, the Orsini, would take us in. With their help, we would raise an army. The Duke of Milan would support us, and the d’Estes of Ferrara, and every other dynasty in Italy with sense enough to see that the formation of another Venice-style republic was an outright threat to them.

Passerini interrupted. “You gave Capponi everything he wanted, didn’t you? No wonder they preferred to deal with a woman!”

Clarice looked wearily at him. “Their men surround this house, Silvio. They have soldiers and weapons, and we have neither. With what did you intend me to bargain?”

“They came to us!” Passerini snarled. “They wanted something.”

“They wanted our heads,” Clarice said, with a faint trace of spirit. “Instead they will grant us safe passage. And in exchange, we must give them this.”

She spoke tonelessly and at length: The rebels would let us live, if, in four days, on the seventeenth of May at midday, Ippolito, Alessandro, and I went to the great public square, the Piazza della Signoria, and announced our abdication. We would then swear oaths of allegiance to the new Third Republic of Florence. We would also swear never to return. Afterward, rebel soldiers would lead us to the city gates and waiting carriages.

The cardinal swore and sputtered. “Betrayal,” Sandro said. The magician’s face rose in my imagination and whispered: One that threatens your life. They both fell silent the instant Ippolito rose.

“I knew Florence was lost,” he told Clarice, his voice unsteady. “But there are other things we could have purchased our safety with—properties, hidden family treasure, promises of alliances. For you to agree to humiliate us publicly—”

Clarice raised a brow. “Would you prefer the bite of the executioner’s blade?”

“I will not bow to them, Aunt,” Ippolito said.

“I kept our dignity,” Clarice countered; the tiny diamonds in her hairnet sparkled as she lifted her chin. “They could have taken our heads. They could have stripped us and hung us in the Piazza della Signoria. Instead, they wait outside. They give us a bit of freedom. They give us time.”

Ippolito drew in a long breath, and when he let it go, he shuddered. “I will not bow to them,” he said, and the words held a threat.

Four miserable days passed; the men spent them closeted in Ippolito’s chambers. Aunt Clarice wandered empty halls, as all of the house servants—except the most loyal, which included Leda, Paola, the stablehands, and the cook—had left. Beyond the iron gate, the rebels kept watch; the soldiers who had guarded our palazzo abandoned us.

By the afternoon of the sixteenth—one day before we were all to humble ourselves in the Piazza della Signoria—my room was stripped. I begged Paola to pack the volume of Ficino, but she murmured that it was a very big book for such a little girl.

That evening, Aunt Clarice prevailed upon us to have supper in one of the smaller dining rooms. Ippolito had little to say to anyone; Sandro, however, seemed surprisingly lighthearted, as did Passerini—who, when Clarice voiced her regret over leaving the family home in hostile hands, patted her hand, pointedly ignoring her bandaged right wrist.

The dinner ended quietly—at least, for Clarice, Ippolito, and me. The three of us retired, leaving Sandro and Passerini to their wine and jokes. I could hear them laughing as I headed back toward the children’s apartments.

That night, I dreamt.

I stood in the center of a vast open field and spied in the distance a man, his body backlit by the rays of the dying sun. I could not see his face, but he knew me and called out to me in a foreign tongue.

Catherine …

Not Caterina, as I was christened at birth, but Catherine. I recognized it as my name, just as I had when the magician had once uttered it so.

Catherine, he cried again, anguished.

The setting changed abruptly, as happens in dreams. He lay on the ground at my feet and I stood over him, wanting to help. Blood welled up from his shadowed face like water from a spring and soaked the earth beneath him. I knew that I was responsible for this blood, that he would die if I did not do something. Yet I could not fathom what I was to do.

Catherine, he whispered, and died, and I woke to the sound of Leda screaming.