Wolves in Winter (18 page)

‘And they say that Messr Giovanni’s looking to replace him.’

‘Rather him than me! Let’s hope he wears his breastplate to bed her!’

I was drawn in by this talk, though I knew they should be ashamed if they thought that I was not quite one of them. What kind of woman could Caterina be, to take such magnificent and appalling
risks? There was a saying in Florence: ‘If you wish to live as you choose, you should not be born a woman in Italy.’ The women of Florence lived closeted and quiet, yet this Caterina
seemed as reckless and powerful as a man. I was fascinated by her, joining in the speculation that there was more than business between Forli and Florence.

When Ser Giovanni returned, though, it was not as an expectant bridegroom. He came storming into the library, where I sat writing as my master dictated from Scot’s
De
chiromantia
.

‘This has to stop. All this. Now.’

My master plucked at the sleeve of his gown. ‘I do not understand you, sir. Why do you disturb my work?’

‘Your work? Your precious work will have us all burned if Savonarola has his way! Where’s the girl?’

‘The girl?’

Ser Giovanni reminded me of Piero at that moment, lordly, imperious, all Medici. He recovered himself and respectfully asked pardon.

‘I have a letter here, from the prior of San Marco himself. It came to me at Forli. I have ridden through the night.’ I could see, his handsome young face was drawn and there were
yellow hollows beneath his eyes.

‘I have no fear of the Dominican, sir. I have come against him before. He knows that my studies are the Lord’s work, just as his prayers are.’

‘He tells me I have been harbouring a sorcerer. That you are . . . conjuring devils and Christ’s own mother knows what. The Signoria will not stand for it! We are Medici, remember,
they want no continuing of Lorenzo’s ungodly ways.’

‘Was it not Savonarola himself who waited at great Lorenzo’s deathbed in this very house?’

He breathes, slowly, resignedly, waiting for the end. With each breath, the wolves run across the mountains. They stream through the passes, fluid as wine, I taste their hunger. Each breath
surges them onwards. Faltering, the man raises his hands to the priest who stands grim beside him. His hands draw the sign of the cross above his breast, the she-wolf raises her snout and
howls.

‘He writes that you have a familiar. A Spanish witch. That she spirited you out of the palazzo. Well?’

I looked helplessly at my master, who hemmed and mumbled and scrutinised his sleeve.

‘Spanish?’ he turned to me. ‘Spanish? Ficino, I demand you tell me what abominations you are practising here or so help me I will have you in the Bargello by nightfall and none
of your sainted scholarship will save you from the fire.’

There was nothing for it but the truth, or a version of the truth, at least. I was sorry for my poor master, he was as much a slave as I at that moment. He had nothing but what his reputation
and Medici charity had given him, and Giovanni could turn him out to beg his bread on the roads if he wished it.

‘There is no harm in it, sir. She was a servant in Ser Piero’s house, I saw she was intelligent and taught her. My apprentice was . . . lost, when the palazzo was attacked. I brought
her here, we came with some travelling people and I thought it better she change her gown, for safety you understand, the French were on the roads. That is all.’

‘So you are the girl?’ He looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time, and it struck me again how invisible we were to great people, how we only existed if we made
trouble. Piero had lost plenty by that blind arrogance.

‘Yes, sir. They called me Mora, at the palazzo.’

‘Mora the apothecary. And where did you learn to heal? These are Spanish arts you have practised upon me and my household?’

‘No, sir. I know what my master has taught me, from his books.’

‘She is special, sir,’ interrupted Ficino eagerly, and I burned with shame, willing him not to boast of our labours.

‘You are too kind, master,’ I put in hurriedly, glaring at him. ‘All my poor knowledge has been gleaned from your wisdom.’

Giovanni paced up and down, the spurs snapping at the floor. ‘I am sorry, Maestro. But I must ask you to give up your pupil. I have a use for her, and her skills.’

‘You cannot, you do not understand. We are coming close!’ I was astonished, I had never thought my master cared enough for me to shout.

‘If the Signoria thinks that I am harbouring a sorcerer, the Dominicans will have you burned. And I shall lose my contract with Florence and we shall all be ruined. Do you understand me?
You are most welcome to stay here and continue at your studies, but I can have no talk of witchcraft at Careggi. You must give her up.’

I was so sorry for my master in that moment. Whatever I had thought of his work, I had been honoured to be in the presence of such learning, and he had sheltered me. It was what my father had
hoped, that a scholar who could read his key might protect me. What would Ser Giovanni do, if he knew what I truly was? He would turn me over to Savonarola and they would duck me in the Arno.

‘She is nothing, sir, a slave. Why should you trouble yourself about her?’

I would forgive him. I would forgive him though his words went through my skin and squeezed around my heart. He had said no more than the truth.

‘I wish to present her to the Countess. She is much interested in herbs and medicines. I will take her with me when we leave for Forli.’

PART TWO

1496–1499

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
E SET OUT ON A BRIGHT MORNING IN DECEMBER.
I rode astride, comfortable in my boys’ breeches and warm cloak. Ser
Giovanni had given me a good horse, a young chestnut. I shared his delight at being freed from his frosty winter stable as his long strides covered the frozen ground. Ser Giovanni was travelling as
a merchant, not a Medici prince. His clothes were as solemn and drab as even the fanatics of Florence could wish, but his doleful appearance couldn’t quite disguise the light of happy
expectation in his eyes. The closer we drew to Forli, the more apprehensive I became, though the crisp bright winter sun shone and Giovanni was in an exultant mood, singing snatches of
strombelli
to himself and kicking his horse into a gallop wherever the path lay clear. He, at least, was not fearful, and when, bivouacked around the fire at nights, we heard the wolves
singing, nor then was I. The others might huddle closer to the fire and draw their daggers near, but at night at least I could believe I was riding towards a new life, free of old books and rituals
and the endless scratch of the pen that never let me forget what I was not. The crying of the wolves brought back my dreams of my mother, and I fancied again that she was bringing me safely to the
Countess, away from the ghosts and griefs of Careggi. I was eager to see this extraordinary woman, I would try hard to please Caterina, I thought, and serve her well.

Forli, when we reached it after four days of hard riding, seemed at first a charming place. As we walked the horses slowly down the pass, I could see over the city walls to a circle of gardens,
where cachi fruits, plump and orange-coloured, gleamed against leafless branches in the sharp winter light. Two rivers crossed the plain, and there were several water mills turning, whilst within
the oval of the walls I could make out the roofs of fine palaces and churches, and a tall campanile adorned with a huge clock, such as I had never seen before. It wasn’t until we drew closer
to the principal of the four gates that I made out the hideous human skulls, draped with strands of hair and leathery flesh, impaled on posts to remind newcomers of what would befall those who were
disloyal to Forli’s countess.

We came into the broad piazza, with a church at either end, and I felt another shudder of disgust when I saw the Palazzo Signoria, blackened and abandoned, which the Countess had deserted when
her first husband was murdered. I remembered Maestro Ficino’s description of the people falling on the corpses of the murderers like cannibals. Yet there was no dark place on the stone flags
to show where such horrors had taken place, and the stallholders and housewives in the market looked clean and cheerful, prosperous. It was difficult to imagine them as a howling mob of
flesheaters. More difficult still to imagine the beautiful woman who greeted us in the inner courtyard of the Ravaldino fortress as a creature of vengeance and nightmare.

The Countess of Forli was not young, perhaps in the middle thirties even, and her skin was a little lined. But that skin was the whitest I had ever seen, and her eyes, heavy-lidded and turned up
at the corners, were amber-coloured, playful. Unlike Ser Giovanni, she was formally dressed, in a blood-coloured gown tightly laced and low across the bosom, the sleeves slashed to show a mantle of
cloth of gold. She wore gold at her neck and her wrists, and a single huge ruby in the hollow of her throat that picked up the glints of gold in her loosely curled hair and those jewel-like eyes.
She stood very straight as she moved forward in welcome, and made a half-curtsey to Giovanni – a perfectly balanced gesture of courtesy, which yet displayed her awareness of her higher rank.
Maestro Ficino had told me that when she ruled in Rome like the Pope’s own daughter, she had been presented with basins full of jewels so precious that they could have bought all the
treasures of the Medici. But the woman before me would have seemed like a queen in a peasant girl’s shift, so secure was she in her own powers to command.

Giovanni pushed me forward. I was conscious of how dirty my face and clothes were, and awkwardly uncertain as to whether I should bow or curtsey, dressed as I was. I removed my cap and make an
awkward bob. I anticipated the usual expression of surprise when the Countess’s eyes fell upon my face, but she remained cool and distant as her gaze travelled over my countenance.

‘This is the child you told me of? Ficino’s pupil?’

Giovanni nodded.

‘Thank you. What . . . rare looks.’

‘Mora.’

‘You are welcome to Forli, Mora,’ she said graciously, but she was already turning away. ‘Your journey must have been most wearying,’ she remarked to Giovanni.

‘Indeed, Countess.’

‘Then perhaps this evening we will dine alone.’

Behind me, I heard one of the grooms snicker. I did not see either Giovanni or the Countess for the next three days.

Perhaps a Sforza lady felt more at home in a fortress, for after the murder of her first husband, the Countess Caterina had never returned to live in the city. Instead, she had built a new
palace within the curtain wall of the Ravaldino fortress. To my eyes, it still looked like little more than an armoury, certainly nothing like so grand as the Medici palazzo in Florence, nor even
so refined as the ruin of Careggi, but the people of Forli were proud of it, naming it the ‘Paradiso’. In case they ever forgot her power over them, though, the Countess had ordered the
prison to be moved against her house where it connected by the
cassero
with the fortress – named, of course, ‘Inferno’.

Within, the house was comfortable and graceful. The great sala was covered with frescoes, with tiled floors in deep blue and pale yellow which, with their airy designs of fruits and flowers,
made me think of Piero’s
scrittoio
. Beyond the house was a walled garden, most beautiful, with some fine statues, avenues of fig trees, and, to my great pleasure, a well-stocked herb
bed. I wandered too in her hunting park, where it bordered the
cittadella
, the enclosed space for troops and weapons, discovering a pretty green summerhouse planted round with trailing
roses. In truth, I had little to do those first days other than accustom myself to my new clothes. Once Ser Giovanni’s servants had left, Caterina had a gown made up for me, much better than
anything I had ever worn, of a heavy pewter-coloured damask with a green velvet cap that almost caught the glow of my eyes. I supposed that she would think of her new slave as a fashionable thing,
like her
moresca
perfume holders, twined in silver minarets and studded with pearls. I had been so used to the freedom of my boy’s clothes, at first the gown felt constricting, the
tightly laced bodice leaving me breathless; but in a while I grew used to it.

The Paradiso was filled with beautiful things. It was clear that the Countess had always lived amongst beauty. The wellhead in the courtyard was of polished Verona marble, the loggia carved with
foliage and animals and set with alabaster figures. Countess Caterina ate with gold spoons with her devices chased elaborately in their handles, the Sforza serpents writhing as she turned her
hands. She drank from an enamelled ivory chalice, her gowns and linens were stored in painted caskets, the tapestries on her benches and tables were the finest silk, so heavy it took two men to
lift one. Above all, she seemed to love mirrors. In her crimson-draped chamber a curtained recess held a looking glass of deepest ruby Venice-ware, with fat gold cherubs playing round its rim. I
peeped at myself in that, and in the reflections of the polished silver basins in the sala, in the ivory hand-mirror that lay on the Countess’s marquetry table, in the gilt-work night mirror
with lamps set into its frame which stood by her high bed. And very foolish I looked; I might have been back in the porch of Santo Spirito, with my crown of coins, such a gewgaw I was, with my
collarbones poking out like razor clams and my copper skin darkened from the sun of the Careggi countryside.

I was almost sixteen, but my chest stayed stubbornly flat and my hips and thighs were as narrow as a child’s. I had been glad to pass for a boy at Careggi, but somehow it hurt more to
remember what I was – and was not – here in this elegant house, surrounded by the beautiful possessions of a beautiful woman. I wondered if my mother would have pitied me, and loved me
despite it all. I wished I could at least be plain, dull skinned and mousy haired and ordinary, but in my grey dress with my mop of white hair I looked like an icicle from a pantomime, an imp. When
I began to attend on the Countess I was conscious again, as I had not been for so long, of the whispers and giggles that followed my progress in her wake. I tried to smile, and not seem too proud,
and I was too ugly for any of the Countess’s other maids to be jealous of me.