Wolves in Winter (19 page)

From the first, Caterina herself was kind. Because I was Ser Giovanni’s gift, his learned Spanish slave, she had me attend on her. I had been so little around women, I feared that I should
be clumsy. But it was not difficult to brush out her hair while she sat at her glass and gazed at herself like an oracle, nor to hand her a basin of rosewater to clean her face, or the gold pot of
alum distillate that she rubbed into her skin to keep it so white. I soon felt quite the lady’s maid, though it did not escape me that my own odd looks were a perfect foil to her own
flourishing beauty. And perhaps that was why she liked to keep me at her side when she gave audience to the Signoria in the fine apartments of her son, for whom she ruled Forli as regent. But it
was dull work, all the same, for all that the things I handled were so lovely. I was glad, when Ser Giovanni returned to Careggi, that the Countess had time once more for what she pleased to call
her ‘experiments’.

The Countess had built a blue-tiled
farmacia
for her work, and here I felt at home. What knowledge I had I owed more to my father and my own gatherings at Careggi than my studies with my
old master, but she found me as adept as I was willing. I was glad to be at work again, for so long as I had tasks to complete and make me feel useful, I felt lighter. Each morning, I would walk
into the town to collect the Countess’s orders from the spice dealer, Signor Albertini, and from the convent of Santa Maria della Ripa. Whilst the Countess attended to her business, I would
prepare the pestles and mortars, the jars and instruments according to her own instructions, and then, about an hour before dinnertime, she would appear and we began. As soon as the Countess
learned I could write, she gave me the task of transcribing her successful ‘experiments’ in a ledger. I explained that I had little Latin, but the proper names she dictated herself and
for the rest I did my best with what I knew. It was a hodge-podge language I invented, but we could make it out.

That summer, naturally enough, we made beauty remedies. I boiled betonica root in oil and cooled it with rosemary as a tonic for the face, I mixed ampoules of aluminium sulphate with rosewater
and juniper essence, which the Countess showed me how to distil, then beat into egg whites. A drop rubbed into the face and neck whitened the skin surprisingly – soon my sunburned face had
taken on the colour of warm cream. We boiled cuttlefish in white wine to make tooth powder and a paste of cloves, nutmeg and sage to sweeten the breath. Ivy leaves stewed in water filtered through
ash made a wash to lighten the hair. I combed it through and we sat together in the garden whilst I read to the Countess from Marullo’s poems as her hair, streaming almost to the ground as
she lay in the shade with her head propped on a cushion, brightened slowly in the sun.

If there was any doubt that Madonna Caterina was in love with Giovanni, her talk to me dispelled it. She questioned me about Careggi, about what he did and who visited him, about what he liked
to eat and how I had cured the Medici gout. I answered her shyly at first, but she had a way of making my hesitant remarks seem fascinating. She told me of her own first visit to Florence, as a
little girl, when her father had been Duke of Milan. They had travelled with five hundred soldiers, a hundred knights and fifty grooms, all in the Sforza livery, each leading a warhorse saddled
with gold brocade, with gold stirrups and silk-embroidered bridles. She had been carried into the palazzo to be received by the Medici ladies in a brocaded litter, and been shown all its treasures.
I told her about the snow statue, and the
scrittoio
, and how sadly I heard that Florence was changed. I asked her of Rome, which Cecco had always dreamed of seeing. The most magnificent city
in the world, he called it. She smiled, and her eyes slid to the ground. It was splendid, she said, the palaces and basilicas, the cardinals with their great trains, the pilgrims from all over the
world. But she had never cared for it, she admitted, it was Florence, ever since that first visit, which was the city of her heart.

In the autumn, Ser Giovanni returned, with a train of sixteen mouths, and it seemed as though he had come to stay for good. When I left the Countess for my truckle bed in her anteroom, I knew
that the door to Giovanni’s apartments would open softly, and that he would cross the sala to spend all night in bed with her. I stuffed my pillow over my ears and longed for my lily-root
tea, for the sound of their love was hard for me to bear. It seemed cruel that I should suffer as all girls that age suffer, when unlike them there was no prospect of my greening being cured with a
wedding. I clamped my knees together and ground my teeth and in the mornings, glimpsing myself while my lady was at her toilette, I thought I looked uglier than ever.

The Countess, though, seemed to grow more beautiful by the moment. In the mornings she was flushed and lazy, her ruffled curls tumbling into the lace of her chemise where it slipped off one
rounded shoulder. She grew a little plumper each day, her skin as rich and smooth as junket, her belly a soft, quivering mound beneath her bodice, her breasts pushing upwards above her gown. With
Giovanni there, she left off the severe colours she had been used to wear as the stern governess of Forli and dressed in violet and yellow, rose damask and cloth of silver, setting off the
heightened colour in her cheeks. As I held out her chemise, she would pinch at the fat on her thighs and claim to despair at the rounding of her hips, but I could see from the way that she ran her
hands over the contours of her body that she was pleased with what she saw. And at supper she would take a sweetmeat from Ser Giovanni’s own hand, crushing it between her reddened lips,
relishing it greedily.

With Giovanni’s return, we made other remedies in the
farmacia
, receipts that reminded me of the prescriptions old Margherita had handed out. Castor oil and crushed red ants were
the ingredients of one potion whose purpose the Countess, giggling, had me disguise in our book with a series of coded letters.

‘Have you had a sweetheart, Mora?’ she asked me suddenly.

I was surprised. It was the first time she had spoken to me of myself, of my own life.

‘No, Madonna.’ I could feel the blood rising in my neck.

‘Would you like one?’ she teased.

‘No, Madonna. I’m content as I am.’

‘Well, perhaps one day we’ll find you a good husband,’ she said gently.

I screwed up my face to keep back the tears, pinching the scuttling insects, enjoying the cruelty of dropping their tiny oozing corpses into the bubbling liquid.

‘As I said, Madonna, I am content as I am,’ I managed to force it out.

‘But I have upset you. Come, tell me why. Are you not happy here in Forli?’

‘I am quite content.’ But even as I said it, the tears were running down my face, tears for Cecco and my father and my ugliness, for all the losses and strangeness of my life. And
before I remembered myself, I gabbled out the story of what had become of my father, and how I had been sold away from Toledo, and how I never wished to love anyone again. I had no thought for her
station, of how improper it was for me to speak to her thus, I simply wept, and talked, and in a while I began to feel a little better, as she listened gravely, never interrupting me.

When I was quieted, she said to me, ‘I was married very young, you know.’

I watched her face. People will tell you things, if you keep silent long enough.

‘I was just twelve. His Holiness wanted Imola, my city of Imola, for his nephew. They were nothing, the Riario, fruit sellers from Liguria until Sixtus won the papal throne. And then he
wanted to found a family, a great dynasty. He went to the Medici to raise money, but was refused, so he came to my father, the Duke, and it was agreed. Imola would be my dowry. It pleased them
both, I think, to feel that they had cheated the Medici, and I would have a great marriage. I think my father meant well, but he did not consider – I was too young, so very young, and my
husband was not a kind man. They hated him here, you know, and in the end they killed him.’

I composed my face gravely. Everyone knew of the killing, and of the Countess’s revenge.

‘Did you love him, Madonna?’ I asked.

‘Never,’ she hissed savagely, ‘he was a fool and a coward. I am a Sforza, and he was no better than a market trader’s brat. It was my blood they needed, as much as my
money.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘God knows, I showed them what Sforza blood is.’

She looked away, and I wondered if she was remembering the dark stains on the flags of the piazza, those rotting corpses strung up to prove her Sforza will.

‘So you see, Mora,’ she continued, recovered to herself, ‘there are worse things than having no husband. They say that if you wish to live as you choose, you had better not be
born a woman in Italy, but I think we do very well here, nonetheless, no?’

She smiled a true smile then, a delicious, wicked smile, and reached out to brush the last of the tearstains from my cheek. ‘You can always open your heart to me, you know,’ she said
smoothly, though I knew that our confidences were at an end for the present.

I turned back to my work, and as I stirred and measured I thought of her, wondering that she could show so calm and gentle when she had such steel in her heart. I was glad all the same that I
had not told her that I had not, quite, been born a woman.

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
E WERE WALKING THROUGH THE PARK TO THE
loggia, on one of the last bright days of the year. Countess Caterina walked ahead
on Ser Giovanni’s arm, a new gown of silver damask trailing carelessly behind her. There was no secret now as to what was between them, it was talked of openly in the town that the Countess
would take another husband before the season turned. The ladies arranged cushions and unpacked baskets of cake and jam, setting out the picnic on linen napkins, one of them began to pluck at a
lute. I stood by demurely, eyes to the ground, holding the Countess’s reticule in case it was wanted. The ladies’ voices carried high and clear in the warm air, which had the first
whisper of winter dampness in it, a lower note, like the occasional rumble of Ser Giovanni’s deeper voice as he joined the conversation. I thought we must look like a painting, gathered so,
and tried to make the time pass by imagining which classical allusion a painter might take as his theme for a lady and her lover enjoying a sylvan feast. In any case, I thought glumly, I should
always be the servant, standing attentively in the background.

It was soon to be All Hallows Eve, and the ladies were frightening one another with stories of ghosts and spirits, as the light turned from gold to grey.

‘There was a woman at Modena,’ one of them was saying, ‘who had a priest as a lover, and they conjured demons together.’

‘I heard that if you fill a glass bowl with oil and honey and set it before a tomb the spirits will come out to eat on All Hallows night,’ giggled another.

Ser Giovanni suddenly noticed me, in that way great people have, as though they were surprised by the appearance of servants, like actors who had stepped through a curtain.

‘Come ladies,’ he said, ‘this is childish talk, when we have a real scholar amongst us. A scholar who knows the magic of the East, eh, Mora? What should we do if we want to see
a ghost?’

They turned their heads to me, some with a little quiver of distaste. I did not like to be noticed by them. I did not like the sound of that slave’s name before them, I did not like their
white skins and their light eyes. I could see the Countess watching me sternly.

‘Please, your honour,’ I began shyly. ‘Maestro Ficino, whom the ladies will know is a very great man, teaches that there is a sympathetic relationship between terrestrial
materials and celestial bodies. If the harmonies are aligned, as in the musical properties of the seven planets, then it is possible to speak with the spirits. We would have to purify a room, hang
it in white and seal it, sprinkle it with rose vinegar, and then—’

‘Thank you, Mora,’ the Countess cut me off. My face burned. I was pompous. I did not know how to make charming conversation. Ser Giovanni looked embarrassed. I had failed him.

‘There, there is another way,’ I gabbled. ‘We need laurel leaves, to write on.’

The Countess nodded indulgently at one of her women, who scampered off to rummage in the garden. I took a pen from her reticule and squatted down to show the ladies what to do.

‘See, we write the name so, of the spirit we want to see. It has to be a secret, write the name of the person you want to see.’

Some of the ladies looked thoughtful, others tittered, but they all scrabbled for the quill.

‘And then we hold it up to the sun, like this.’

We stood in a line, facing westward.

‘So now, when you go to your beds, the spirit will visit you in your dreams.’

The ladies laughed, squinting excitedly at their leaves.

‘But you mustn’t tell, otherwise the magic won’t work.’

‘Then I hope you have chosen your ghosts wisely,’ said the Countess dryly. ‘Come, it is growing chilly.’ I caught Ser Giovanni’s eye, and hoped that he was pleased
with his gift.

Next day when I drew back the curtains of the tester, the Countess’s gold eyes were waiting for me accusingly.

‘What did you mean, Mora, by that foolish game with the leaves?’

‘Nothing, Madonna. Excuse me. It was nothing, just to amuse the ladies, you know. To do it properly . . .’

‘I know, one needs amulets and incantations and heavenly lyres,’ she was smiling, her sternness was a game.

‘So you summoned your spirit, Madonna?’

‘I did, and most gratifying it was. My husband,’ she stretched luxuriously, her hair tumbling from her cap, ‘was quite pleased to have a little excursion from Hell. And I to
send him back there. Thank you, Mora, I slept excellently.’

I did not believe her, how could I? And yet I was glad, so glad that I had pleased her.

‘If you like, I could cast a chart for you. Maestro Ficino taught me well.’