The Red Lily Crown (11 page)

The moment passed. A few steps behind the princes, Chiara saw another figure in black robes. She could not see the man's face but recognized the height and the shape of the shoulders—it was Magister Ruanno dell' Inghilterra. He also looked up, and for a moment she thought he was looking at her. She felt the heat of a flush in her cheeks, and began to lift her hand in response. Then she realized he was looking at the other window.

And at the other window, Donna Isabella pressed her open palm against the glass.

T
he old grand duke had been moldering in his tomb for a month. Grand Duke Francesco had fulfilled some of his father's wishes and put others—many others—aside while he spent half his time closeted in his laboratory with his foreign alchemist and the other half at the palazzo on the Via Maggio with his mistress Donna Bianca. Had he included Chiara in his alchemical works? Oh, no. She'd remained shut up in Donna Isabella's household at the Palazzo Medici, which meant she'd remained Donna Jimena's seam-sewer and errand-runner. Lots of good food and pretty clothes, lots of secrets and whispers and plots, lots of bewilderingly explicit talk about lovers and pleasures, but no alchemy, not unless you counted the endless reading, writing and Latin lessons.

Had they forgotten her, the grand duke and Magister Ruanno, her initiation and her vow? Had they forgotten her father's treasures? Had it all been nothing more than an amusement for them? The comforts and excitements of the court were alluring and seductive, yes, but the headaches remained. The voices remained. Twice Chiara had falling-spells, fortunately when she was alone so no one at the court knew about them yet. Where was her chance to be a
soror mystica
, to learn and practice the art of alchemy in her own right, so she could put her hands on the
Lapis Philosophorum
and cure herself?

Donna Isabella had her own difficulties, which mostly seemed to be about money, her children and her absent lover. He was Don Troilo Orsini, some sort of connection to her horrible husband, a cousin, maybe. Poor Donna Isabella raged and wept and wrote letters, some of them cold and logical, some of them tear-smudged and full of such lust they might have been written by a courtesan. Beautiful, scintillating Donna Isabella, the shining star of the house of Medici, the first lady of Florence—that was what everybody said about her, but in private she ate too much and suffered bilious spells, fretted over feeling ugly and old while her lover disported himself in Naples, and left the covers off her chamber pots. How Nonna would have scolded her for that!

Donna Dianora visited Donna Isabella almost every day. She was the closest to Chiara in age—only a few years older—so beautiful and so unhappy. She had lovers, too. In fact, there was so much talk about lovers that Chiara found herself dreaming of men some nights, faceless men who stroked her face and hair, kissed her breasts, whispered love words to her. In one dream the man wasn't faceless, but looked down at her with the English alchemist's strange, sad dark eyes. The pleasure he gave her made her gasp for breath. Then in the eerie way of dreams he was suddenly behind her, and he put his arm around her throat and squeezed.

Donna Isabella and Donna Dianora sometimes pleasured each other in the long summer afternoons, whispering and moaning together. Chiara wasn't allowed to see what they were doing. The sounds of their delight made her want to try self-pleasuring for herself, but she was afraid to ask how it was done. And if Nonna ever found out, she'd switch her half to death for such sinfulness.

She tried to run away once, and ended up locked in a closet on bread and water for three days as a punishment. She didn't try that again. But today, today, Monday the sunny twenty-first day of June, for the first time since that rainy morning in April, it had been officially arranged and she was going home.

Home—oh, home!

“Donna Jimena,” she said, “do we have everything? The new summer mantle for Nonna? The camicias and skirts and sleeves for Lucia and Mattea? Oh, and the chopines? Particularly the chopines, a brand-new pair for each one of them.”

“My dear, they have already been sent more new clothes than they can wear in five years. I have seen to it myself.”

“What about the money? I had two little bags of silver
lire
for the girls, and a purse of gold
quattrini
for Nonna.”

“They have been sent money.”

“But I want to give them more, with my own hands. I want to show Nonna that it's not all a bad thing, me being here at the court.”

Donna Jimena laughed. “Why would she think it is a bad thing?”

“They were always supporters of the old republic, the Nerini. My father hated the Medici, and Nonna is his mother—he learned it at her knee.”

“Best to say as little as possible about that.” Donna Jimena collected the two small bags of silver pennies and the fat embroidered purse of gold and put them into the leather trunk where all the other gifts were packed. “There are enough plots against the Medici as it is. And while I am speaking of plots, you have become much too friendly with Donna Dianora. Whispering in corners like children.”

“But I like Dianora. She's young, and clever and so beautiful.”

“Donna Dianora to you, young lady.”

“She and Donna Isabella give pleasure to each other sometimes,” Chiara went on. It excited her to know such a passionate secret. “I hear them—”

“
Por Dios
, will you be silent? You cannot say such things in the Palazzo Medici—there are ears everywhere, do you understand?”

“I don't care if they hear.”

“You will care if I take my switch to you. Now, let us be off. You carry the trunk. You have younger and stronger legs than I.”

The trunk was easy to carry. Chiara danced beside Donna Jimena as they made their way down the stairway and toward the courtyard. She didn't feel like a grown-up
soror mystica
today, and the moonstone was carefully hidden under her neat and snowy-white new camicia. Her head was clear, for once. The voices were silent. She felt like—well, like a fifteen-year-old girl going home for the first time in two and a half months. Going home after becoming rich, successful, friendly with duchesses and great ladies, illustrious beyond anyone in her family's wildest dreams—and in her truest heart half-afraid to own it, because to her family it was the blackest betrayal.

There was a horse in the courtyard, a big red horse—it looked familiar. A long whip was coiled and strapped to the horse's saddle. Chiara stopped midstep and said, “We're not going to ride horses, are we?”

“No.” Magister Ruanno's voice, from behind a sedan chair, made her jump. She had learned, among all the other things she had learned, that his full name was Ruanno dell' Inghilterra, which really just meant Ruanno of England, and so probably wasn't his real name. In Latin he wrote it
Roannes Pencarianus
. What the
Pencarianus
meant, she didn't know and no one would say.

“You and Donna Jimena will ride in this sedan chair,” he said. “I will ride Lowarn, and carry your trunk of gifts. If you will permit me?”

She handed the trunk over to him and he turned to strap it behind Lowarn's saddle.

“Where have you been all this time?” Chiara put out her kitchen-knife chin at him. He wasn't so mysterious or frightening anymore, not after she'd seen him look up at Donna Isabella, the morning of the old grand duke's funeral. He was a man like other men, with a man's lusts. She had even dreamed—but she wouldn't think about that. “Why haven't you sent for me, you and the grand duke?”

“So many questions.” From his expression he might have been reproving a wayward child, not an illustrious young lady. “I have been occupied with my own affairs, Monella Chiara, and my own service to the grand duke. I assure you he will call for you when it pleases him to do so.”

“Don't call me that.”

He smiled. “But it suits you so well.”

“He's set you to guard me, hasn't he?”

“Not at all. I am coming with you to assess your father's alchemical equipment, and determine the prices the grand duke will pay.”

“And if I decide I don't want to come back?”

Donna Jimena made a disapproving tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. Magister Ruanno only laughed.

“That is the responsibility of these fine fellows,” he said. At his gesture, four stout guardsmen in Medici colors came into the courtyard and took their places beside the poles of the sedan chair, two in the front and two in the back. “You will come back, Monella Chiara, whether you wish to or not. Now in you get.”

Donna Jimena stepped into the sedan chair's compartment first, and made room for Chiara to sit beside her. Chiara hesitated, thinking about refusing to go just for the sake of not doing what Magister Ruanno had told her to do. On the other hand, Nonna liked to say
you're stubborn as a goat, girl, and too quick to cut off your nose to spite your face
. Oh, how she longed to see Nonna and Mattea and Lucia.

With poor grace she clambered into the sedan chair. It had the crest of Grand Duke Francesco, with its six Medici balls, painted on its side. Magister Ruanno spoke to the guardsmen. The chair tilted a little as they lifted it, then moved forward. Lowarn's hooves struck the stones of the courtyard as he followed behind.

“Now listen to me, Chiara,” Donna Jimena said. “You are to say nothing to your Nonna or your sisters about this
soror mystica
business. You may say that you sold the grand duke the silver descensory, and that he is interested in your father's other equipment, and that out of Christian kindness he offered you a place in Donna Isabella's household. But that is all.”

“I wasn't going to say anything.”

Donna Jimena nodded briskly, although the glint in her eyes showed she knew Chiara was lying. She was no one's fool, Donna Jimena, at least not on any subject but her beloved Donna Isabella. She and Nonna would either take to each other like long-lost sisters or hate each other like two scorpions.

“See that you don't. Magister Ruanno is here to do more than just assess your father's equipment, you know. He is watching you, and he will report back to the grand duke. Your behavior today will determine whether or not you are allowed to visit your family more often.”

Chiara said nothing. The guardsmen were walking briskly and the sedan chair was bouncing up and down. The movement made her feel sick. Or maybe it was the uneasiness of returning home wearing a leaf-green skirt and bodice of
mezzani
silk that had been made just for her and never once re-cut or re-trimmed or turned inside-out for freshening. Compared to anything Donna Isabella wore, or Donna Dianora, or even Donna Jimena, it was all very plain and serviceable;
mezzani
was the cheapest of the silks, but even so it was silk, and the skirt and bodice were new. Her camicia was new as well, her hair was braided with yellow silk ribbons and fastened with silver pins, and her green leather slippers were as soft as peach skins.

The sedan chair stopped. Chiara heard a child's voice shrieking. She looked at Donna Jimena; Donna Jimena nodded and gave her a firm little push. She stepped out of the sedan chair into the street.

“Chichi!” Mattea cried. She was only nine. She had a new smock, rosy pink, with a ruffle around the neckline. “You've come home!”

Lucia, who was twelve and so much like Nonna that she might as well have been fifty-and-twelve, stood to one side with a scowl on her face. She also wore a new dress, although hers was plain, a bright orange color like apricot jam. “You've been away long enough,” she said. “I've had to do all your work.”

And then Nonna herself came to the door of the shop. She wore the same severe black widow's habit she'd worn for as long as Chiara could remember, with an unbleached linen wimple and a black veil like a nun. Her face was wrinkled as a walnut shell, but her eyes were hard and bright and aware, the eyes of a young woman, a revolutionary. Which she had been, fifty years ago in the days of the third republic. They were changeable eyes, brown to green to gold, set deeply under slanting brows. All her life people had told Chiara she had eyes just like her Nonna's.

Suddenly she felt shoddy and dishonest in her silk gown. Tears—tears? Why tears?—made a swelling in her throat. She swallowed, straightened her back and lifted her chin.

“Hello, Nonna,” she said. “I've come home.”

“With the balls of the Medici behind you.” Nonna glanced over Chiara's shoulder at the crest on the sedan chair, at the guardsmen in the Medici colors, at Magister Ruanno on his big red horse. “They've fattened you up—does the grand duke not like his bedmates with their ribs sticking out and their chins as sharp as a kitchen-knife?
Puttana
—you're no granddaughter of mine.”

She turned and went back into the shop and closed the door.

Chiara felt hot blood rush up into her face. Mattea started to cry and Lucia turned to comfort her. Magister Ruanno had swung down from Lowarn and stepped forward, but blindly Chiara put out one arm to stop him. She walked to the door herself, threw it open so hard it banged against the wall, and went inside.

Nonna had gone to the back, where the books for sale and the bookbinding materials were kept. There were more books than there had been. The stock had been replenished then, and how else but with Medici gold?

“I'm not a whore,” Chiara said. Anger made her voice hoarse. She kept her eyes narrowed so the tears wouldn't come out. “The grand duke hasn't touched me. The man outside hasn't touched me. No man has touched me.”

“There's more than one way to be a whore.” Nonna would not look at her.

“Because I took gold from the Medici, for Babbo's silver funnel? You've used the gold I sent you—there are more books to sell, and the girls have new dresses. Look, that window was broken.” She gestured. “Now it's mended, with new glass.”

Nonna looked up. Her mouth worked. “They were hungry,” she said. “They were in rags. You were in rags, Chiara, and now you have a silk dress, like a
concubina
.”

“But I'm not a
concubina
. I swear it, Nonna, by the Sacra Cintola of the Holy Virgin.”

“What do you know of the Sacra Cintola?”

You are to say nothing to your Nonna or your sisters about this
soror mystica
business.