Murder in the Garden of God (31 page)

A notary, Gian Domenico de Rossi, went to the convent on November 22 with the pope’s order. There he found “three fir boxes to hold glasses,” “two boxes of carved walnut,” and a “convent armoire containing things of the Signora Vittoria, and finally a writing desk.”
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The notary placed his seal on everything.

Lodovico had obtained from Vittoria a copy of the duke’s will and forwarded it to Francesco de Medici. Studying the document, the grand duke was horrified. It was a will, he wrote his brother, the cardinal, on November 26, “in which will be seen so many extravagances that it is clear how much that woman knew to do. But you would do a great service to Virginio if you could find a means so that his Holiness would declare this obligation null and void by the prohibition that Gregory made against them marrying, and for the murder of her husband which, when it is proven that it was done by order of Signor Paolo, the law will declare that she cannot be his wife. Finally, this legacy is so damaging to Virginio that it must be well considered, and every effort must be made to annul it.”
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The grand duke also wrote a letter to Sixtus which Cardinal de Medici personally handed to him. “Your Holiness will have learned of the death of Paolo Giordano,” Francesco began, “and his will that is so damaging to Virginio, his son and my nephew who, if he is not embraced by the great goodness of your Holiness, I do not see how he will overcome all the burdens left him by his indiscrete father.”
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The cardinal pointed out to Sixtus that poor Virginio was starting out his adult life crushed by his father’s debts. His estate had almost no cash and was mired in dozens of lawsuits with powerful adversaries. Now he would need to give Vittoria 100,000 scudi cash. The boy needed the pope’s help and protection.

Again, the pope did not wish to appear vengeful. Perhaps another reason for his reluctance to negate the will was his old fondness for Vittoria. Seeing the pope’s hesitation, the cardinal once more pushed the idea of a marriage between Virginio and Flavia Peretti. If the pope agreed to the marriage, surely he would want Virginio and his grandniece to have the dead duke’s entire estate, without giving the murderess Vittoria a huge chunk. There were also advantages for the Peretti family as such a match would ensure them powerful connections long after the pope’s death. Sixtus, who had shuddered at the thought of being related to Paolo Giordano, was more inclined to the marriage now that the grotesque duke was out of the way.

But Camilla was still adamantly opposed to it. She wanted nothing to do with the family of the man who had murdered her beloved Francesco. Plus she was hoping for a royal marriage for Flavia. Catherine de Medici, queen mother of France, had made her illustrious match to the French prince when she was a papal niece. Why should Flavia settle for anything less? Aware of Camilla’s resistance, Cardinal de Medici requested that Francesco send the boy to Rome to win the pope’s favor.

While negotiations were being made for the future duchess of Bracciano, in her sumptuous Paduan palace the former one received condolence visits from government officials and their wives, along with the local nobility. On November 22, her youngest brother, Flaminio, arrived in Padua from Rome to cheer her up. Flaminio, who had served as a page in the court of Cardinal Farnese, was a sensitive young man who hated violence and loved to play the lute. Cardinal Santorio wrote that Flaminio was the only member of the Accoramboni family who was a decent human being. Not so her other brother, Marcello, who, as if the family were not embroiled in enough intrigues, had murdered yet again.

A servant of his named Moricone wanted to leave Marcello’s service and first asked him for some money that he had loaned him. Marcello refused to give it. As the Ave Maria bells rang out just after sunset on December 1, Marcello’s servants fired guns at Moricone as he walked in the street outside Vittoria’s palace. He lay on the ground wounded as Marcello swaggered up and dispatched him with a sword. Flaminio ran towards the screams with a lantern and was horrified by what he found.

Paduan authorities asked Lodovico for permission to punish the murderers, as at the moment he was the head of the Orsini family in Padua and responsible for Vittoria’s affairs. Lodovico gave his permission gladly. But by then Marcello and his men had hidden themselves in a convent.

Lodovico was eager to see Marcello executed for murder. It was Marcello, when he first moved to Bracciano in 1580, who pointed out his sister’s charms to the duke. It was Marcello who murdered her husband so she could marry Paolo Giordano. Marcello elbowed Lodovico out of the way and become Paolo Giordano’s right-hand man. Marcello, a minor nobleman in a family of too many sons, had edged out a noble Orsini. Now greedy Marcello had tried to hide the valuable furniture in order to steal it.

Lodovico was a dangerous enemy with powerful friends. He was evidently concocting a plot with the grand duke of Tuscany to do someone bodily harm. On December 6, Lodovico gave a certain Signor Prospero a letter for Francesco that ended, “Signor Prospero will also confer with your Highness on some of my thoughts concerning the particulars of which I did not want to write your Highness because it seemed I shouldn’t entrust them to paper. However, your Highness will hear them from Signor Prospero, and if you will make me worthy of telling me what you think, you will find that I will make every effort to put it into execution.”
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More frightening was the letter Lodovico sent on December 10 to Liverotto Paolucci, the man he had hired to kill Vincenzo Vitelli two years earlier: “God aid you in what I will do. I don’t want songs anymore. It is said that Marcello goes away by road. It will be good to do this service (or better, according to the other lesson, but I will see what needs to be done when I come, and I will do it. Wait for me.) Burn this letter.”
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Clearly, Lodovico was planning to kill Marcello and possibly someone else as well.

But there were other, more practical matters to attend to. Lodovico wrote Cardinal de Medici asking for instructions on reducing the dead duke’s
famiglia,
a word used not only for family for also for servants and retainers. It was expensive to pay so many employees, he explained, and he wanted to know what he should do with them. He also needed guidance on what to do with the furniture once he obtained possession of it.

While waiting impatiently for a reply, Lodovico was furious to learn that Vittoria had in her possession the duke’s most sacred object, the ring of Saint Bridget, which had a tiny piece of the Swedish saint’s clothing under glass. Bridget had visited Rome in 1350 where she befriended the knight Latino Orsini and healed him and his son of illness. Lodovico insisted that the ring, a talisman of good fortune for the Orsini family for more than two centuries, should go immediately to Virginio. Vittoria didn’t want the ring; it was an ugly old thing with a moldy piece of cloth inside, but she was certainly not going to give it to the interfering Lodovico. Virginio could have it, she said, if he wrote her personally asking for it. Virginio accordingly wrote, and Vittoria sent him the ring.

Lodovico visited Vittoria frequently to discuss the estate, and she always seemed pleasant to him. One day, wreathing her poison in smiles, she told him of the codicil giving her all the furniture, but she didn’t show it to him. Lodovico told Filelfo, “She pretends also to have a document written in the hand of the signor which gives her all the furniture and things, as was cited in the will.”
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On December 13, Lodovico wrote again to the grand duke expressing astonishment that he had not received letters from him or Virginio, and begging him to send him “a resolute order of what we need to do with this family estate of Signor Paolo.”
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That same day, Lodovico received instructions from the grand duke to pay off Paolo Giordano’s servants who wanted to leave. The others should go to Bracciano, where they would be employed by Virginio. The older ones, in particular, were to be looked after. “To Signora Vittoria Accoramboni, tell her for our part that she can believe that we are very unhappy for the loss she has suffered, but it being the will of God, it is right to accommodate herself as a Christian and with patience. Since her brothers are with her, she can take whatever resolution and path she wants. If she desires to go to Bracciano, which would perhaps be best, she will find Signor Virginio there, and she can negotiate with him and hope for everything fair and pleasant.”
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Clearly, Bracciano did not offer Vittoria everything fair and pleasant. She had never met her stepson, who had been groomed by his uncles to detest her. If she were foolish enough to visit the castle, it is likely that she, too, would have died suddenly after eating something.

“With regards to the possessions of the duke,” Francesco continued, “sell the useless ones, or those that are too heavy to move, keeping and taking to Florence the precious items and the best horses and carriages.”
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He informed Lodovico that Paolo Giordano had kept money in a desk which he should use to repay himself for his expenses.

On December 13, Vittoria wrote one last imploring letter to Bianca Cappello:

I have many times written to your most serene Highness of my affairs, and I have not had a reply. I desire to always remain in your grace and protection. To demonstrate to you how much I am your most affectionate servant, I once more ask you to account me as such, as I offer you this great affection with all my heart. Kissing your hands without end, I pray God that he keep your Highness in all happiness.

Having signed the letter, she added a postscript. “I beg your Highness to console me in so much affliction and tribulation, and to hold me under your protection and favor me on all occasions as your most humble servant.”
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But Vittoria must have known that protection would probably not come from that quarter. She hired Italy’s top lawyer, Marcantonio Pellegrino, to help her with her husband’s estate. She showed him what she had not dared to show Lodovico, the codicil mentioned in Paolo Giordano’s will that listed the furniture and other items she was to inherit.

Lodovico was beside himself to hear that Vittoria had hired a lawyer to fight him in court. He sent a letter to Filelfo, who had gone to Venice to work with the authorities there on Virginio’s behalf. “He wrote me that Signora Vittoria had changed the cards in her hand,” Filelfo reported, “not fulfilling her promises to him, but that he hoped with the means of the law to prevent himself from being cheated.”
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On December 14, Pellegrino presented himself as Vittoria’s lawyer to the mayor of Padua, Andrea Bernardo, and pointed to the sentence in the duke’s will where he mentioned a document of donation. Then he presented the document signed by Paolo Giordano and written in the hand of the notary Tiberio Valento. Unfortunately, Valento had left the republic and could not attest to having written it at the duke’s instigation, nor to having seen him sign it.

The codicil confirmed that all of the items in the Tor de Specchi convent belonged to Vittoria. Although she had already given it to Virginio, the ring of Saint Bridget could remain in her possession until her death. And finally, Vittoria should inherit “all gold, silver, jewels, and other furniture that I will buy during the time I am outside of Rome and my estates… Moreover, in the case that I die outside Rome or my duchy, I give all the gold, silver, and other furniture that I will have taken there with me.”
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In Vittoria’s name, the lawyer demanded from the mayor all of the duke’s
mobili
that were in the republic. To make sure that the signature on the codicil was not a forgery, the mayor visited the duke’s remaining servants and showed them the document. They swore that the signature was genuine. Then Bernardo ruled that Vittoria should get back all the furniture that she had tried to ship out at Chioggia. True to its reputation, the republic of Venice was standing up for the underdog. Here was a beautiful, tragic, young widow, fighting the power of the de Medicis, the Orsinis, and possibly the pope for some furniture. The Venetian Republic was on her side.

Lodovico was flabbergasted to learn that Vittoria would be getting the
mobili.
He had already boasted to the grand duke, the cardinal, and Virginio of his cleverness in snatching it back from her and had assured them he would obtain it soon. Now he looked like an idiot. He arranged for Vittoria to post a small bond for the furniture, in case the decision was overturned. But that looked unlikely.

On December 17, he fired off another missive to Filelfo. “Thursday morning,” the secretary reported, “I received another letter in which he told me that Signora Vittoria had by means of the law won all of Signor Paolo Giordano’s furniture by virtue of a note of donation made to her by Signor Paolo. Signor Lodovico claimed that this was forged due to many reasons, and that against this judicial act he could not do anything else except to force her to give security for these items. But he was not entirely satisfied, it seeming to him that he had been made a fool of by a woman, and he asked if I knew another path of justice to take these things from her.”
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Now it was Lodovico’s turn to hire a lawyer in Venice, a certain Falagnosta whom Filelfo visited with all pertinent documents. After examining them, Falagnosta told Filelfo that Vittoria had a strong case. Lodovico wrote back that Vittoria was not the duke’s wife and therefore could not inherit. He also cast aspersions on the document of donation. The duke’s signature, though genuine, meant nothing. Before Lodovico went to Venice, Paolo Giordano had given him several sheets of paper which were blank except for his signature at the bottom. Lodovico could fill in the sheets with the text he deemed necessary in case of an emergency. Perhaps Vittoria had obtained such a signed sheet of blank paper and had a trusted friend or servant pretend to be the notary.