The Red Lily Crown (26 page)

A
woman who has been crying for a night and a day, the grand duke thought, was hardly a creature to move a man's heart. Bia's face was blotched and swollen, her eyes little more than slits, her nose and upper lip so reddened they looked raw. Her hair was loose and tangled where she had dragged the jeweled ornaments out of it. One string of pearls and rubies remained, hanging in a forgotten loop like drops of blood alternating with milky drops of semen.

All this, because he had sent her away from the Epiphany revels. His wife had cried herself into an unrecognizable state after the deaths of her children, but that was different. Crying for a dead child was understandable, even if the child was a girl. Crying more than a pretty crystal tear or two over a court revel was beneath contempt.

“It was not the revel,” Bia sobbed. “Do you not understand? You humiliated me. You promised me a grand churching and you did not keep your promise. You sent me away with a
servant
to escort me, in front of everyone.”

“When we spoke of the churching,” the grand duke said, “I did not yet know that the grand duchess would be with child. With her in such a condition, you can hardly expect me to throw your churching in her face.”

“She has borne you nothing but daughters, and weak daughters at that—half of them have died.”

“This time it may be a son. Take care with your words, my Bia.”

She flounced over to the bed and threw herself down, sobbing like a madwoman. The grand duke poured himself a cup of wine, settled comfortably in the fine carved chair by the fire, and gazed out through the handsome glazed
portafinestra
at the snow-covered gardens. Snow. Wind. Darkness. He remembered that afternoon in the garden labyrinth, almost a year ago on Shrove Tuesday, how he had cut her dress and bared her breasts to the cold. How he had wondered what it would be like to expose her entire naked body to the cold, and then later have her when she was half-dead with it.

He sipped. After a while she stopped crying and sat up.

“I am so tired of it all,” she said. “I do not want to be your meek little Bia anymore. I am Bianca Cappello, a noblewoman of Venice, and the mother of your son. I want to—”

“You are not the boy's mother.”

“And you are not his father! I could publish that truth from one end of Italy to the other. I could write to the pope himself.”

“So you could. But have you any proof that I am not his father?”

She stared at him. He sipped his wine calmly.

“It is perfectly possible,” he said after a moment, “that I fathered the boy on another woman, and allowed you the pretense that he was yours, out of the kindness of my heart. All you know for certain, my Bia, is that another woman bore him, and that he was smuggled into your bedchamber in the bowl of a Neapolitan
mandolino
.”

“But I saw,” she said. Her voice was hoarse from all the screaming and sobbing. “In the cellars. I saw that woman—all the women. I heard your orders.”

“Did you? There is no one to support your assertions. No one.”

“Because you have killed them all.”

“Tut, my Bia, that is slanderous. A bearing of false witness. I trust you will confess it, and do suitable penance.”

Because of course I did not kill them, he thought. A few words here and there to selected fellows willing to take the sin of murder upon their own souls, well, that is a different thing altogether.

He watched her. He could see her thoughts pass across her face, just as clearly as if she were speaking them.
He is lying. Is he lying? Am I going mad? No, I know what I saw. It is another one of his games. He has played games with me from the beginning. Does he love me? Did he ever love me?

It always came to that.
Does he love me?

She scrubbed the back of her hand across her face like a child. “Very well. He is yours and he is mine, and I am sorry—sorry for what I said. When will I have my churching, then?”

“I will arrange it here at Pratolino—the chapel is complete but for the final frescos.”

“I do not
want
it here. I want it at the Duomo, for everyone to see.”

“That is impossible just now. Be reasonable, my Bia.”

“Because of her.”

“Because of her brother. I need the emperor's good will.”

She walked over to the table, picked up one of the wine cups, and held it out to him. After a moment he stood up and poured wine into the cup. She drank it down as if it were water, which was what he had been afraid she would do.

“You are the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The emperor has acknowledged you, and he cannot take it back. I want to be churched in the Duomo, and recognized by every man and woman in Florence as your favorite and the mother of your only son.”

She held out her cup for more wine. He took the cup away from her and put it on the table.

“No,” he said. “It is not possible.”

She swung her arm at him, her fingers arched like claws. He was expecting it and stepped back, so calmly that the wine in his cup barely rippled. She lost her balance and stumbled over the hem of her loose night-gown, and only saved herself from falling by catching hold of the bedpost. She squeezed her eyes shut and cried—howled—screamed like a child.

“I
hate
you! You are like my father—he loved my stepmother more than he loved me.”

“It is only right, my Bia, that a man love his wife more than his daughter.”

“It was not right,” she wailed. “He made me the mistress of the house, from the time my own mother died—I had beautiful clothes and necklaces and sweetmeats and all the leisure I wanted. The servants obeyed me, whatever I asked of them.”

The grand duke finished his wine and put his cup down. He had become tired of her hysteria. He meditated on the snow blowing in the wind outside the
portafinestra
.

“Then he married again and she insisted I dress plainly and sit still for lessons and do needlework. She wormed her way into his heart and convinced him to let her change everything and I
hated
it, Francesco, I hated it. I was not born to dress plainly and sew shirts. I am not born to be hidden away here at Pratolino while everyone bows and curtsies to the emperor's sister.”

“Bia,” the grand duke said. “Be silent.”

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffled, but put her shoulders back and stood straight before him. She had done that in response to his voice for eleven years.

“Strip yourself.”

She began to take off her clothes, still sniffling. It was a simple task. She was wearing only the velvet night-gown the color of amber, crumpled and stained with her tears. Under the night-gown, a white silk camicia heavily embroidered with white and gold thread. Under the camicia, nothing.

He looked at her, the rich wealth of her flesh, the weight of her breasts, the sweet curve of her belly. Her hair was in wild disarray, with the single strand of rubies and pearls tangled in the strands. He felt his own flesh respond to her nearness, her scent.

Not yet. Later. It would be so much better, later.

“So,” he said. “You do not wish to live quietly here at Pratolino, and serve me as my little wife Bia when it pleases me to require it?”

She arched her back and lifted her chin. She knew how she affected him.

“I do not,” she said.

He caught hold of her wrist and jerked her toward the
portafinestra
. The casements opened like windows, both inward and outward. With his free hand he unlatched them, and without a word he pushed her through into the snow. She shrieked and staggered, her bare feet slipping on patches of ice, and fell to her hands and knees.

“If you do not wish to live here,” he said, “then go. And take exactly what you brought with you that I did not provide.”

He closed and latched the casements, went back to his chair, and sat down.

“Francesco!” she screamed. She got to her feet and flung herself at the glass panes. Everywhere her naked skin had touched the snow, it was reddened as if it had been burned. “For the love of God, are you mad?”

He poured himself more wine. She paced back and forth outside the window, her arms wrapped around her body, shivering and crying and screaming gutter imprecations. He wondered how long she could remain outside in the cold and snow, naked as an animal, without collapsing. He wondered what he would do if she collapsed before she surrendered.

“Francesco!”

Her breath crystallized on the glass panes, making shining patterns of ice. She was shivering violently now, uncontrollably. Her skin was losing its color even as he watched her, with the reddened patches turning to violet, and her lips and fingers taking on a blue cast. Her fingernails against the casements' glazing sounded like dead branches in a winter wind.

He sipped his wine. The fire crackled, pleasantly warm.

“F-Franco,” she sobbed. Her teeth were chattering and she could barely form the words. “Your Bia will die in this cold. Please let your Bia in—she will obey you forever, she swears it.”

He put the wine cup down on the table, stood up, and went to the
portafinestra
. He toyed with the latch, watching her eyes. The tears were freezing on her cheeks.

She sank to her knees. Her lips formed the word
please
.

He lifted the latch and opened the casements.

She fell back into the room surrounded by a gust of wet, icy air. He left her to lie sobbing and shuddering on the stone floor while he latched the casements again and pulled the draperies over them to help keep the cold out and the warmth of the fire in. Then he looked at her. Her skin was bluish-white, roughened with gooseflesh and gleaming with streaks of sweat, half-frozen to her flesh. As he stood over her, she turned her head and kissed his foot like a hound bitch who had been whipped.

“Ah, my Bia,” he said. He lifted her and carried her to the bed. She sank into the deep warm down mattresses with a groan, and he piled comforters on top of her. She curled herself up like a child, whimpering.

In a leisurely fashion he took off his own clothes, enjoying the warmth of the fire against his naked skin. He took a last long swallow of wine. Then he lifted the coverlets and climbed into the bed. Holy Christ, but she was cold still. He gathered her into his arms and kissed her icy blue lips. Then he forced himself into her. She was cold everywhere. The sensation of his own swollen heat sunk deep in her cold flesh was beyond anything he had ever felt before.

She clung to him, whispering
Franco Franco Franco Franco
through her chattering teeth. He stroked her hair, brushing away the wetness of snowflakes.

Having a son was all very well. In a few months he might even have the half-Imperial son he craved with every drop of Medici blood in his body. But even that was nothing compared to his craving for Bia's helplessness, Bia's obedience, Bia's sweet, sweet pleas for mercy.

However much she might anger him, in the end she always surrendered. She gave him more pleasure than anything else. Even alchemy. It was as simple and as inexplicable as that.

He would never give up his Bia.

The Palazzo Vecchio

24 MAY 1577

T
o celebrate the birth of a legitimate Medici heir, the people of Florence went mad with fireworks, feasting and singing. Wine flowed from enormous barrels set up on the
ringhiere
of the Palazzo, all the way to the Ponte Vecchio, and even supporters of the old republic toasted the birth—free wine, after all, was free wine. The
potenze
, the workmen's holiday guilds, staged jousts in the piazzas and broke each other's heads with triumphant abandon.

What no one knew except the grand duke and the grand duchess themselves, the court physicians, the grand duchess's private chaplain and half a dozen ladies hand-picked for their ability to hold their tongues, was that the baby boy was frail and barely responsive. The soft spot at the back of his disproportionately large skull bulged in a frightening way, and his tiny limbs stiffened every few hours with seizures. But he had lived for four days now. He was a male. He was unquestionably the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and his wife, the grand duchess, the sister of Emperor Maximilian II.

The city celebrated.

“Will you drink a little wine, Serenissima?”

Chiara found herself whispering, because it felt like a sin to speak in a normal voice. The windows were covered and the bed-curtains were drawn. Propped up with dozens of cushions, the grand duchess looked like a child herself, her sunken eyes closed, her fingers moving from bead to bead of her rosary, over and over again. She was making a novena to the Holy Innocents, and she shook her head as she continued her prayers.

She would make herself seriously ill if she didn't stop praying and drink some hot spiced red wine and good stout meat broth. Chiara knew it was hopeless to insist, though, and she put the cup down on the table beside the bed.

“She wouldn't drink any of the wine, Messer Baccio,” she said to the physician. “She just keeps praying.”

“She is overwhelmingly melancholic, filled with black bile,” the physician said. “Dry and cold. We must continue to press liquids on her, and spices to warm her from within.”

Get her out of bed and give her a floor to scrub
, Nonna would have said.
Let her nurse her own babe and wash its swaddlings.
Noble ladies don't have enough work to do and it's no wonder their humors are disordered
.

“Yes, Messer Baccio.”

“You may go, my dear. We may require you tomorrow or we may not—I will send for you if necessary.”

Chiara didn't wait to be told twice. She had her own tiny, windowless cell at the Palazzo Vecchio, just as she did at the Palazzo Pitti and all the ducal palaces and villas. She was happy enough to have it, for all its lack of comforts. And she could always go to the Austrian kennel master's domain downstairs, where she and Vivi were warmly welcome.

And of course there was the laboratory. If she could only get to the laboratory—clean, bright, well-ordered, with its cabinets of books. Could she slip out of the Palazzo Vecchio and make her way to the Casino di San Marco? Probably not. The streets weren't safe, not with the
potenze
running rampant, the banquet tables set up in front of the Palazzo Medici, and the barrels of wine being refilled every hour. Banquet tables. Saints and angels, she was hungry. Maybe she could go down to the kitchen and—

“Chiara.”

She stopped.

It was Ruan.

“I have been looking for you,
awen lymm
.”

He was dressed for riding in his plain dark doublet and leather breeches, with his whip coiled over his shoulder—all workman tonight, no trace of the gentleman. She could smell wine on his breath. He had always seemed abstemious but with so much celebrating going on, apparently even the self-contained Magister Ruanno had downed a cup or two of the grand duke's free wine as he passed through the streets. She said, “I wish you'd stop calling me that. Or at least tell me what it means.”

“Perhaps one day. How is the grand duchess?”

“I'm not allowed to say anything.”

“The grand duke has asked me to create a compound that he believes will reduce the swelling of the little one's skull, while it is still soft. He also requires a syrup that is a specific for convulsions. From those things I can draw my own conclusions.”

Chiara tried to control her expression but she couldn't. She felt her mouth twist and the sting of tears in her eyes. Poor little baby, so frail and helpless. Poor Grand Duchess Giovanna, to have her longed-for son at last and to have him—wrong, so wrong. He wouldn't live. He couldn't live. How could God be so cruel, to send him and then take him away again?

“I know,” Ruan said. “They are cheering in the streets, pressing wine on every passer-by, and then I come here. It is like going from light to darkness in one step.”

She gulped back her tears. “I don't want to talk about it. Why were you looking for me?”

“I want you to help me with the tasks the grand duke has assigned me, in the laboratory. I have two mounted guardsmen with me, and an extra horse. If you wrap yourself up well in a dark mantle and hood, we will be safe enough.”

“I was wishing there was a way for me to get away from the Palazzo. I'd like to help if I can.”

“You can. Get your mantle.”

•   •   •

He had measured and arranged his ingredients, and laid them out in clean glass bowls and flasks. Chiara didn't recognize all of them. The clear, syrupy-thick liquid in the second flask had to be oil of vitriol—in itself it was dangerously corrosive, but it also had a strong dehydrating property. There was another clear liquid that looked like ordinary water, and four dishes with powdered minerals—two white, one yellow, and one a startling bright blue. A system of retorts and an alembic had been constructed, and a fire had been lit in a small burner.

“I have already made the measurements,” he said. “I will combine the forces, if you will add each one according to my direction.”

Neither of them had changed into their habits—without the presence of the grand duke and his fancies, it didn't seem necessary. Chiara had pulled the moonstone out from under her camicia, so she could touch it, and feel its weight against her breast. She said, “Yes, Magister Ruanno.”

“Begin with the first white powder.” He picked up a glass rod. “Pour it slowly into this retort.”

For a little while they worked together, without speaking other than his quiet instructions. He seemed to be making a particular effort not to touch her, not even so much as a brushing of their fingers. Eventually he said, “Have you seen the baby prince?”

“Yes, but only for a moment.”

“Tell me what you saw. You know the grand duke believes in observation as part of the scientific and alchemical method. I do not think he would expect you to keep silence in the laboratory, if your observations will help to formulate a treatment.”

Chiara added another dram of the yellow powder, using a silver cochlear in order to measure carefully. “He didn't look—right. His head wasn't so much misshapen, like babies' heads are sometimes, as it was out of proportion, too large. The soft spot at the back of his head was swollen, and his poor little face— I didn't see him suffering the seizures, but the ladies—well, they talked among themselves.”

Magister Ruanno stirred his compound in silence. The number of times the glass rod circled was important.

“What you describe,” he said at last, “sounds very much like what Hippocrates called
hudroképhalon
, a collection of watery humors over the brain.”

“Will this help?” Chiara gestured to the compound. The ingredients had been combined and were beginning to bubble gently over the fire. It had become a milky, bluish-green liquid, thick, looking for all the world like Nonna's spinach soup with cream.

“No. There is probably nothing that will help the child. All this can do is help the grand duke and the grand duchess believe they have done all they can to save their heir.”

“And the syrup for the seizures?”

“Again, a palliative, not a cure.”

“Where did you learn all these things?” Chiara asked. “What is that word you said, and who is Hippocrates?”

He smiled. “Hippocrates was a Greek physician and philosopher—he might well have been an alchemist too, or at least worked closely with alchemy. The word was also Greek—a combination of
húdôr
, the word for water, and
kephalé
, the word for head.”

“Did you learn Greek at your home in Cornwall?”

His expression changed. “No. I learned nothing but misery and bitterness at my home in Cornwall.”

“Then why do you want to go back?”

“Because Milhyntall House is mine. Wheal Loer is mine.”

“Are those Greek words, too?”

He stirred the compound twenty-eight times. She counted the strokes with him. Twenty-eight was a perfect number, equal to the sum of its proper positive divisors, and it would help bring the compound to perfection. Then he turned the hourglass over.

“They are Cornish words,” he said at last. “Wheal Loer is a tin and copper mine—loer means moon, and the first of the Pencarrows, generations ago, claimed to have seen the full moon when he first looked up from the mine's main shaft. Milhyntall means labyrinth. There is an old tale that there was a stone maze built on the spot where the house stands, long before there was any written history.”

“Pencarrow. Is that your other name? Is that why you sign yourself
Roannes Pencarianus
?”

He looked surprised, as if he hadn't meant to speak the name aloud. Reluctantly he said, “Yes.”

Chiara looked down at the black-and-white labyrinth inset into the laboratory floor. “Labyrinth House,” she said. “You were born to be an alchemist, then.”

“I was born to be Ruan Pencarrow of Milhyntall, and nothing else.”

“Why did you leave?”

The sand in the hourglass ran out. He picked up his glass rod and again stirred the compound twenty-eight times. Apparently the consistency pleased him, because he removed the retort from the fire and placed it in the silver rack to cool.

“I did not leave of my own will,” he said. The fire left deep shadows of sorrow in the hollows of his eyes and under his cheekbones. “Chiara, enough. Perhaps one day I will tell you the story, but I cannot do it tonight. There is already enough unhappiness for both of us.”

She turned her face away and began to collect the glass rods and silver cochlears. It was easy to understand loving a place so much. She loved Florence, her home, her native soil, every street and alley, church and marketplace, bridge and tree and stone. The only home she had ever known was the bookshop and the rooms overhead and the cellar—

The cellar. Her new laboratory, all her own.

I can heal myself, she thought. I can get away from the court and be myself again, Chiara Nerini, Florentine, alchemist, sister in the art to Perenelle Flamel. I can call myself the daughter of Carlo Nerini and be certain that Babbo would be proud of me. Nonna can run the shop and I—

Nonna.

“Ruan?” She put the glass rods in a basin for washing, carefully, one at a time.

“What?”

“Do you think it's safe for Nonna and my sisters to come home to Florence? It's been a year and a half.”

“The grand duke never forgets a betrayal. You know that.”

Pain stabbed through her forehead. It surprised her, because her headaches had become less frequent. “He never knew it was Nonna who helped Ridolfi escape. Well, Nonna and me. If he knew, we'd both be dead.”

“Perhaps.”

“I miss her,” she said. “I miss having my home to myself, without the Arte's caretaker. You of all people should understand what exile means, and having a stranger living in one's home.”

She saw him stiffen. She was sorry she'd said it, but it was too late.

For a long time they stood without moving or speaking. The compound in the retort made soft crackling sounds as it cooled. The pain behind her eyes faded. Being in the laboratory always helped. Being in her own laboratory, in the cellar of the bookshop, would help even more.

“It is a risk,” he said at last. “It must be done very quietly, and there will be bribes to pay.”

“The grand duke's money should be enough. Twenty gold scudi
per year. Has he been paying it properly?”

Ruan's mouth twitched in what might have been a fragment of a smile. “Are you only now wondering about that?” he said. “He has paid it regularly. Some has been allotted to the caretaker, and some of it has been sent to your Nonna in Pistoia, to sweeten the temper of her sister and buy Lucia and Mattea new dresses. Some of it has paid for your own expenses. Some of it has been put away safely. I will prepare you an account, if you want one.”

“Of course not.”

“Write a letter to your Nonna, then, and I will see that it is delivered. I am sure she will be happy to come home to Florence, and be the mistress of her own household again.”

That made Chiara smile, in a wry sort of way—imagine Nonna, not the mistress, forced to defer to her sister in everything. She was probably desperate to come home. She would probably be willing to walk every step of the way. And she would help build and conceal the laboratory in the cellar. How she would laugh at the thought of stealing the grand duke's equipment and materials and using them to find the
Lapis Philosophorum
before he did. Even in the midst of all the darkness and sorrow, Chiara felt her heart lift.

“Ruan,” she said. “Thank you.”

He smiled, a real smile. “It is a small thing.”

“It isn't. It's more than you know. It makes me want to—”

She stopped. She couldn't tell him about the
sonnodolce
dreams, how much she craved them, how they made her feel as if she was already his lover, even if she had never even kissed him.