Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (13 page)

For the first time in my life, I was ashamed to carry the name of Medici.

A
BRUTAL WINTER
descended on us. The soldiers had seized a number of forts along the Arno River, so that no supplies could be shipped up the river from the coast. This was the season of Advent, when fish was always served at least three times a week. Now we did without.

At Christmas we still had a plentiful store of grain and oil, but there were no fresh meats to roast on the spits in the kitchen, no soft cheeses for the lasagne. Instead, the cooks prepared
pasta e fagiole,
macaroni with white beans, seasoned with a little smoked ham, and we were grateful for it.

The Feast of the Epiphany was traditionally celebrated with cakes rich with eggs and studded with almonds. Now eggs were scarce, almonds rare. The citizens had always observed the feast day with a brilliant procession, the noblemen in velvet doublets embroidered with gold thread and pearls, hose with legs of different colors, and cloaks lined with fur, while the ladies watching from their palace windows were splendid in lustrous silks with jeweled garlands in their hair. There would be no procession this year, the abbess said.

In February, news reached Le Múrate that Pope Clement had kept his promise to the Spanish king and set the iron crown of Charlemagne on Charles's head in the ancient cathedral in Bologna. Charles was now officially Holy Roman Emperor.

“The Holy Father can do what he wants for King Charles,” the abbess told us, “but Florence will not surrender.”

“We will not surrender!” we echoed.

We survived the winter, thanks to the convent's well-stocked larders and the cleverness of our cooks, but crowds gathered daily outside our thick walls, clamoring for food. The abbess ordered rations to be set aside for the needy from our own shrinking supply, but it was not nearly enough to satisfy their hunger.

In their misery they shouted insults: “Down with the Medici! You harbor the harlot within your walls! You feed her while we, the citizens of Florence, are left to starve!”

The abbess tried to protect me from such insults. But not all of the professed nuns and novices believed that I deserved protection. Most of them simply ignored me, averting their eyes. Nevertheless, I was aware of the whispers:
If Duchessina were turned out, sent elsewhere, perhaps our misery would be ended.

There was nothing I could do. After months of contentment in my new home, I was as miserable as everyone else.

No more orders came to the convent for the Book of Hours or trousseaux or fine woven altar cloths embellished with lace. We mourned the death of the artist who painted the lovely miniatures in the books, who, we learned, had been killed by enemy soldiers as he tried to leave the city.

“We'll resume our work when our ordeal is over,” Suor Battista assured me.

I wanted to believe her, but like many others, I was afraid we would not survive.

A
S SPRING ADVANCED
, there was an outbreak of plague in which many people in the city sickened and died. Hoping to prevent the seeds of the horrible disease from entering the convent, the nuns placed a bowl of vinegar near the alms basin by a slot in the wall through which people sometimes pushed coins. The sister in charge carefully rinsed the coins in the vinegar. A sour smell permeated the cloister.

Despite the precautions, members of our community began to fall ill. Their coughs echoed through the damp chambers. I, too, came down with a high fever, red spots on my chest, a cough, an ache in my limbs. When my strength continued to ebb away and I showed no signs of recovery, Suor Margherita sent for a physician. She described my symptoms to him through the grille and provided him with a vial of my urine. At his direction an apothecary concocted herbs and other secret ingredients that at first made me even sicker.

My sole visitor during my weeks of illness—aside from Maddalena, who was an attentive nurse—was Suor Battista. The old nun with the crooked back came daily to sit by my bed and tell me stories about
Il Magnifico
and the wonders of Florence during his lifetime. Fortunately, I was spared the Black Death, and slowly my health returned.

The siege continued, and the bombardment resumed. There was no more ham to flavor the beans and macaroni; then no more beans; finally, no more flour for macaroni. We existed on cabbage soup and some rotting carrots. The sisters planted vegetables in every available space, but the gardens couldn't yield enough to feed us all.

With little to eat, Suor Battista seemed to grow smaller. I went to sit with her in her cubicle in the scriptorium, although we did no copying, and she no longer told me stories of the Florence of her youth. Her strength ebbed. One day she didn't come to her cubicle, and I was told that she had taken to her bed. I waited until the nuns had gone to the chapel for vespers and slipped into the forbidden dormitory.

Suor Battista lay on her cot in her black tunic and white veil; professed nuns always slept fully dressed in their habits. She was not the only one in the dormitory—half a dozen others were also unable to get up. I tiptoed past them and knelt beside Suor Battista's cot. Her hands were folded on her breast, her eyes closed.

“Suor Battista,” I whispered and touched a blue-veined hand.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Dear Duchessina,” she sighed, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Look in the box—” She stopped, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Don't speak.” I laid my finger on her lips.

“In the box. Under the cot. Book. For you. Take. It.”

“Later,” I promised.

“Now.
Per favore.
”

I pulled the plain wooden box from under her cot—the box that had taken up so much space the time I tried to hide there. Inside was the Book of Hours with its glowing miniatures that she had often shown me.

“Yours. Take it,” she said in a whisper so faint I had to strain to hear it. “Now go. Before . . . you . . . get caught . . . trespassing.”

I promised to come back the next day, when the nuns were again at prayer.

But the next day the light in her blue green eyes had gone out, extinguished forever. I felt as though a light had gone out in my life as well.

Several days passed before a priest arrived to conduct the Office of the Dead, and when at last he did come, many of the sisters were too ill to attend or too weak to sing. I did my best to sing for her through my tears.

8

“D
UCHESSINA!
”

I awoke with a start. Someone was tapping on the door of my room, whispering urgently through the small iron grate.

“Duchessina!”

The abbess,
I thought. Had I slept so soundly that I hadn't heard the bell calling us to prayer? I glanced up at the window high above my narrow bed. The night sky was black with a sprinkle of winking stars—still too early for lauds.

“Duchessina!”

The whisper grew louder, the tapping more insistent. The latch lifted and the door opened, letting in the bright glow of a candle, the rustle of skirts, the click of rosary beads. The abbess, dressed in her black mantle and white wimple, peered down at me. Her face was pale. “Get up and dress quickly. The soldiers have come to take you away”

“Take me where?”

“To another convent. The governors of the Republic have ordered you removed. They say you'll be safer. They've sent the soldiers to escort you. Silvestro Aldobrandini of the Signoria's Council of Ten is with them, and he has promised to protect you.”

I was sure she didn't believe the promises she was repeating. She must have feared, as I did, that these men intended to harm me, maybe even murder me, once they'd gotten me away from Le Murate.

There was no need to ask
why.
It was hatred of my family, and especially of Pope Clement. At my uncle's orders the city had been under siege for nine months. Thousands had died of disease and starvation. The people of Florence were determined to take their anger out on someone.
On me.

I shuddered, pulling the coverlet close, though the night was stiflingly hot. My teeth began to chatter, and I couldn't stop them. I was eleven years old, and for the third time in my life I was being forced to flee. This time, though, I might not be fleeing to safety but to my own death.

The abbess carried a candlestick. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white in the candlelight. “Some men came earlier, just after we'd finished compline, and demanded to see you,” she said, her dark eyes filled with worry. “I told them that the convent had entered the hours of silence. Now they've sent Aldobrandini with the soldiers. An angry mob has threatened to burn our convent to the ground if you remain here.”

“Where do they say they're taking me?” I asked.

“To Santa Lucia,” she said, avoiding my eye.

“Santa Lucia!” I cried, remembering the wretched months I'd spent there. “But that's a horrible place! I can't go back there! The mother superior, the nuns, the lay sisters, all of them despise the Medici, and me most of all.”

The abbess touched my shoulder. “I'm aware of their feelings. But they are women of God, and I trust that they will protect you. You must endure this. It's your only hope, dear child. There is no other way.”

I was trembling, but I tried hard not to show how afraid I was. I didn't want to leave Le Murate. I surely did not want to return to Santa Lucia. But more than that, I did not want to die. I didn't trust the soldiers not to turn me over to the furious crowd, and I had to think of a way to protect myself. “Very well, Suor Margherita,” I said. “Give me a little time to get ready.”

The good abbess kissed my forehead. “Hurry, Duchessina,” she said.

I had the beginnings of a plan. If the crowd believed that I had become a nun, their religious beliefs wouldn't allow them to kill a bride of Christ. When the abbess had gone, I first whispered a prayer to the Holy Virgin and then rushed to the alcove adjoining my room where Maddalena lay sleeping. I pulled back the curtain and shook her awake.

“Scissors,” I said. “I need scissors—
now,
Maddalena.”

She didn't ask why I was demanding scissors in the middle of the night. She flew immediately to the cupboard where our work baskets were kept.

“I want you to cut off my hair,” I said. “All of it.”

Maddalena stared at me. “But Signorina Duchessina,” she stammered, “I . . . I cannot.”

“You must,” I insisted, “and quickly.” When she still hesitated, I took the scissors from her, seized a hank of my long hair in one hand, and hacked it off. Maddalena gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth, watching me with horrified eyes, as though I had lost my senses.

I dropped the clump of hair on the stone floor and lopped off another handful. There was no mirror in my room, so I couldn't see what I was doing. “Here,” I said impatiently. “Now cut, as short as possible. And then you must help me find a novice's habit. Who is a sound sleeper? Whose garb can we borrow without disturbing her?”

“Marietta,” Maddalena said, reluctantly taking the scissors from my hand. “She sleeps as though she were made of wood.” Still she hesitated. “But why must we do this to your beautiful hair?”

“Because the angry crowd out there may not believe that I am a nun, that I'm trying to fool them. If it comes to it, I will show them my naked head, and they will have to let me go.”

Within minutes my servant had chopped my hair nearly to my scalp and slipped away to the dormitory where the novices slept on straw mattresses. While she was gone, I opened the miniature
cassone
with my most precious treasures: my mother's ruby cross, my father's gold ring, my aunt Clarissa's rosary, and now Suor Battista's Book of Hours—all mementos of the dead. I shut the box, making the decision to leave the
cassone
there, at Le Murate, rather than take it on such a dangerous journey.