Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (11 page)

“Then all's well with you here, Caterina?” she asked in a husky voice.

“It is. But I miss you so much, dear aunt,” I told her, tears springing to my eyes. I wanted so badly to embrace her that I thrust my hand through the grille and tried to reach her. For a moment Aunt Clarissa's fingers touched mine.

“Then I shall not worry about you anymore,” she said. “
Addio,
my child. Farewell.”

Four days later Suor Margherita delivered the terrible news. “It grieves me to bring you this sadness, Duchessina,” said the abbess. “Your aunt Clarissa died giving birth to a daughter. The infant also died soon after, but not before she had been christened Caterina, in your honor. On her deathbed Clarissa told her husband that she wanted you to have this.” The abbess placed in my hands a rosary made of coral and pearls with a silver cross. I recognized the rosary from the many times I had knelt by Aunt Clarissa's side in the church of San Lorenzo, while she murmured
Ave Marias
and
Paternosters
and
Glorias.
I pressed the beads to my heart and realized the effort it must have cost my aunt to make her last visit to me.

The funeral mass for Clarissa Strozzi, sung by the beautiful voices of the choir nuns of Le Murate, offered no solace. My friends, Niccolà and Giulietta and Tomassa, tiptoed cautiously around me out of respect for my deep sorrow.

For days my head throbbed with the pain of my loss. For the first time I truly felt orphaned. Now I had no one at all.

T
HE ABBESS,
believing that work and prayer were the best solace for an aching heart, soon decided that I had languished long enough. “I'm sending you to Suor Battista in the scriptorium. She specifically asked for you. You must have done something to impress her.”

Unless they were teachers, like Suor Paolina and Suor Rita, professed nuns rarely had anything to do with the girls living at the convent. I had not spoken to the nun with the crooked back since I had happened upon her in the scriptorium soon after my arrival.

“The abbess sent me,” I said, stepping into her cubicle.

“Good,” said Suor Battista, regarding me with her luminous eyes. “Do you remember that you asked me on your last visit if I could teach you to do what I do?”

Si, suora.

“Well, I'm going to try. I'm not the best copyist at Le Murate,” she admitted. “Suor Agnese has the most elegant hand of any of us, and her books are most in demand, so she can't be spared for teaching.” Suor Battista smiled. “But I am patient. That's my greatest virtue. Shall we begin?”

Before allowing me to form even a single letter, Suor Battista taught me first to use a small knife to prepare the goose quill, cutting the quill at an angle and shaping the nib. Then I learned to mix the ink from nutgall and a sort of gum. Finally, beginning on scraps of parchment already spoiled by a copyist's error, I made my first clumsy strokes.

It was true: Suor Battista was the very soul of patience. I quickly became tired of repeating the same strokes over and over, row after row of them. “You must do this until each stroke becomes a part of your hand,” she said.

How dull,
I thought. I longed to do something else—
anything
else—but the old nun kept me at my task.

When the lesson ended, Suor Battista showed me a copy of the Book of Hours being prepared for one of the convent's most demanding customers.

“This is Suor Agnese's work, ready to be bound. It has just come back from the illuminator, the artist who paints the miniatures in each book. We believe he's the best in the city.” Reverently she turned the pages, past scenes from the Old Testament—Adam and Eve in paradise, Noah and his ark. “The patron wished to have a calendar included. Here's the painting for August, with the grape harvest. In the background you see one of the patron's country villas.”

The brilliant colors leaped from the pages, the radiant blues made with ground lapis lazuli from Persia, a vivid green from crushed flowers, a vibrant red from the liquid of a certain insect. Gold leaf glowed in every little painting.

“Now the pages will be bound with embroidered velvet over boards, the clasps made of silver.” Suor Battista smiled broadly, revealing a gap between her teeth. “They're so beautiful that I can hardly bear to let them go when they're finished.”

At my next lesson I struggled to form the capital
D
of
Dominus
and the
P
of
Pax
and made a mess of both. “There must be an easier way,” I grumbled.

“Oh, indeed there is. Decades ago a German artisan named Gutenberg invented something called a printing press. It's quite amazing, but to tell you the truth, Duchessina, I wouldn't want one of those printed books. Ours are so much more beautiful, and our patrons are willing to pay the price for that beauty.”

I came to treasure the time I spent in the scriptorium with Suor Battista when I studied her art. Late that summer, after weeks of practicing on parchment, I had my first experience writing on vellum. “It is made from the skin of an unborn calf,” Suor Battista explained. “Far superior to parchment, but very costly—only for someone as rich as
Il Magnifico.
” She laughed to herself, remembering. “I knew him, you see.”

I glanced up from the vellum sheet. “You did? My great-grandfather?”

“I did.
Il Magnifico
liked to gather the most talented artists and the most learned philosophers in Florence,” she said, as we sat side by side at the slanted writing table. “It was an honor to be invited to dine with him, an honor that I enjoyed several times as a young woman. Once I was seated next to Michelangelo Buonarroti, while he was a student living at Palazzo Medici and working in
Il Magnifico's
sculpture garden.
Il Magnifico
was greatly impressed by Michelangelo's talent. We had a fine conversation,” she said, her blue green eyes twinkling.

“You knew him, too?” I asked, remembering the peculiar man who'd called me “little mouse.”

“
Si,
I did. He's a small man, you know, and rather ugly. I think he felt at ease with me. A beautiful woman would have made him nervous. My husband found this amusing.”

Suor Battista watched patiently as I struggled to form an acceptable capital G in
Gloria.
I turned to look at her. “You were married?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise. A droplet of ink fell onto the vellum.

“I haven't always been a nun,” she murmured. “But as a girl I was educated in this convent. Then I left to be married to a man much older than I. He was willing to overlook my crooked back because my father offered a large dowry. I was his third wife—his children were all older than I was!”

Hesitantly, I asked if she had had children.

“
Si.
” Suor Battista tapped the page, indicating that I was to continue my work. “I bore my husband three living children. When he died, they were taken by his family and my dowry was returned to me, as is the custom. With such a large dowry I could have married again, despite my appearance. But I didn't want to.”

I glanced up from the page, where the letters were beginning to swim before my eyes. “You didn't like being married?” I dared to ask.

“No, I confess that I did not. My husband was not a kind man, and he had a mistress whom he much preferred to me. I remembered how happy I had been here at Le Murate, and after his death I decided to come back and to take the vows.”

I made another unsightly blot while attempting to copy a part of the Office for the Dead. “It's of no consequence,” Suor Battista said. “This is how we learn—by making mistakes.”

“But I make so many of them!” I complained.

“You're improving,” she said. “I see progress every day. Now, shall we try again with the
D
of
Dies Irae?
”

A
LTHOUGH THE
older girls under the guardianship of the nuns at first paid scant attention to me, I eventually became acquainted with Argentina Soderini. Argentina was fifteen, and she had just learned that she was soon to be married. Argentina was the girl we all watched and secretly envied for her fair hair that fell below her shoulders. And she appeared to have been born knowing exactly how to keep her eyes modestly lowered and her voice pleasantly pitched. It seemed to Giulietta, Tomassa, Niccolà, and me that Argentina had been born a perfect lady, already in full command of all the virtues.

But we soon learned there was more to Argentina than we imagined. It was Argentina who led us on midnight raids to the convent kitchen, Argentina who kept a supply of sweets hidden in her room, Argentina who'd once been infatuated with a groom in her father's stable and had even arranged to meet the boy for romantic trysts until she was caught. We younger girls listened with wide eyes and big ears.

“I'd never be able to get away with such a thing,” said Cecilia, another of the older girls. “My nurse would have told my father in an instant if she suspected that I'd even allowed a boy's eyes to meet mine. Especially a servant's.”

“That wasn't a problem,” Argentina declared with a toss of her golden hair. “I simply made enough gifts to my poor, befuddled nurse that she turned a blind eye to some of my adventures.”

“But still, you were found out!” Niccolà burst out, although it was understood that younger girls were permitted to listen but not to participate.

“
Si,
eventually I was. That's when my father decided to send me here. I hoped that Giovanni would find a way to send me messages, but alas! He doesn't read or write, and even if he did it would have been impossible to exchange letters. But now all that's ended, and no doubt my Giovanni will marry some lusty peasant wench with a fat behind who'll provide him with a half dozen snot-nosed brats.”

We were shocked by her manner of talking. This was our elegant Argentina? It was also one of the reasons we were drawn to her, because she dared to speak and act in ways we didn't have the courage even to contemplate.

One night, after she'd smuggled out a little wine from the nuns' cellar, Argentina decided to teach us to dance. I'd had no dancing lessons; neither, I found, had the other younger girls. But Argentina seemed to know all about it.

“The
bassadanza,
” she explained, “is sort of a country dance, quiet and graceful, nothing very complicated, and the
pavana,
of course, is a court dance, very stately and dignified. Now, watch, ladies: This is the
sempio,
which is a single step. And—pay attention—the
doppio,
which is similar but lasts twice as long.”

She demonstrated. We strived to imitate her.

“Come, ladies, follow me. First you rise onto your toes, like this—and then a step left, a step forward right, another step forward left, and then you sink down onto your heels.”

Soon Argentina was leading her enthusiastic pupils around the room. From there we moved on to the
ripresa—“Bend
the knees,
feet
together,
up
on the toes,
again!”—
and putting it all together for the
voltatonda,
a full turn in place.

“This is the dance you'll be expected to perform at your wedding,” Argentina advised us. “It's not too soon to start practicing.”

It was only a matter of time until we were discovered. Argentina became bolder, and the nun in charge of the cellar noticed that several bottles of the best wine were missing. A novice was sent to keep an eye on the cellar. It might not have turned out so badly if the novice had simply reported to Suor Margherita that Argentina had helped herself to a bottle or two, but the novice then followed our friend to the refectory, where a party was being organized.

“We won't get caught,” Argentina insisted, “as long as we don't make a lot of noise and we're out of here before lauds.”