“Yes, I am sure. She said it had sonnets and engravings of a lascivious nature.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, if this business of your investigations leads to the recovery of that book, Madonna, it will have had some value to me after all.”
“I do not understand.”
“Perhaps one day I will tell you. Go on with your story.”
“There is really nothing more. Donna Elisabetta told me some of Duchess Lucrezia’s possessions were stored away in a secret room, and I hoped to find a way to examine them. That is as far as my investigations have proceeded, my lord, I swear to you.”
“Very well. Sum up for me, if you please, the conclusions you have drawn.”
“I initially concluded that you—you poisoned her, my lord, perhaps with the connivance of Maria Granmammelli or Mother Eleonora or both. And with some—provocation. But—”
I stopped. He waited.
“But over the past fortnight or so,” I said slowly, “I have come to see other possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“She was with child. She attempted to obtain an abortifacient potion from Maria Granmammelli, and such potions are always dangerous. If the old woman ultimately relented and gave her the potion, or if she found some other herb-woman to give her what she wanted, she may have dosed herself excessively and died by accident.”
“That is one possibility.”
“On the other hand, Sister Orsola claims to believe the young duchess took her own life. Public shame stared her in the face, and she had made few friends and many enemies in Ferrara. One argument against this theory of self-murder is that she is buried in the Monastero del Corpus Domini, in holy ground.”
“I shall have more to say about that in a moment. Continue.”
“You understand, my lord, I am speaking completely frankly, just as the thoughts occur to me.”
“I understand.”
“Crezia and Nora loathed the young duchess and were jealous of her youth, her beauty, and her precedence.”
The duke laughed. There was a cold, bitter sound to it. “And so they are repaid for their gossiping. Go on.”
“The cardinal and the Marquis of Montecchio each have claims to Ferrara, if you remain childless. If they heard whispers she was with child—”
“The marquis, perhaps,” he said. “My brother, no. I will not bring him into this business. It is true we are often at odds, and true as well that Luigi is little suited for the church. But throw his scarlet hat over the wall to usurp my position? Murder a woman and child? I think not. His ambitions center on Rome, not Ferrara.”
“Maria Granmammelli, then,” I said. “She hated the young duchess because her blood was not blue enough for the Este.”
He looked thoughtful. “A possibility. Although I have reason to doubt it, which I will expand upon in a moment. Go on.”
“The Medici themselves, through intermediaries. If you intended to openly repudiate Lucrezia de’ Medici and her child, it would have been a scandal. Daughter or no, Duke Cosimo might have thought her death the lesser evil.”
“I could believe it easily.”
“There were whispers about the elder daughter. He is said to have stabbed her in a passion of fury, when he discovered her with a lover.”
“I have heard those stories. What else?”
“Any one of Duchess Lucrezia’s lovers, through jealousy of the others, and particularly Messer Sandro, who had already committed one murder on her account.”
“The monastery is enclosed, and the duchess was kept straitly without gifts or visitors from outside. How do you propose this procession of potential murderers obtained the opportunity to poison her?”
“It would have been Mother Eleonora, would it not, who kept the keys to her cell? She is quite accustomed to—unusual comforts. Silken cushions and fine wines. Perhaps she was bribed.”
“And so you suspect even my aunt, locked away in her monastery.”
“She has many friends about the court. She could easily have arranged for the slashed girth, my lord. Or for that matter, the poison that killed Paolina Tassoni. She was disturbed by my questions.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I am sure there are others who should be suspected as well, persons I am forgetting, or whom I have not yet encountered or thought to suspect.”
“You have a remarkable imagination, Madonna,” he said. “I trust you have not spoken these thoughts to anyone else?”
I felt a little chill of apprehension. “No, I have not.”
“Good,” he said. “Now I will tell you what really happened.”
I finished my wine and put the glass down on the table. “Please do, my lord.”
“My first duchess,” he said with calm precision, “took her own life. She was indeed with child by one of her lovers, although she herself denied it to the end. I myself had not approached her for some time, and yet Maria Granmammelli believed it, and in such matters I trust her shrewdness.”
So far, I thought, the ring of truth.
“I did not intend to allow the Duchess of Ferrara to make a scandal of herself. That is why I gave commands for her retirement to Corpus Domini. In time, once her child was born, she would have been—convinced—to return to Florence, take vows herself, and petition the pope for an annulment of our marriage.”
And you, I thought, would have drafted that petition for her.
“I wished to know the names of the men who had dishonored her. I questioned her several times, and she refused to speak—she continued to swear she was not with child at all. That last afternoon at Corpus Domini, I questioned her again. She responded with wild importunities, curses, and threats to make away with herself.”
“And you left her there? Alone and in such a state of mind?”
His eyes narrowed briefly, but his voice remained steady. “The infirmarian was with her, and there were two other sisters keeping watch as well. I particularly charged them not to leave the duchess alone. Even so, sometime in the night the duchess took poison, and was found dead the next morning.”
I looked at him for a moment. He met my gaze steadily. It would have been easy, so easy, to simply accept what he said and say nothing more. The duke himself seemed to believe it. Perhaps he was right. And yet—
I thought of the portrait, that flushed, joyous face, so spirited, so alive, with the branch of cherry blossoms in her hand. Would that girl have taken her own life, even on impulse, even in an extremity of fear or fury?
“My lord, forgive me.” My voice shook, however much I strove to control it. I looked at my wine-glass on the table and adjusted its position slightly so it was equally distant from either side of the table’s corner. “But have you some proof the duchess took her own life? How, for instance, did she obtain the poison?”
He leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine. “You do not believe me?”
“It is not that. The Medici are using this matter to blacken your name. Unless there is proof that you are innocent, tangible proof in your hands alone, you will never achieve the Precedenza or the title of grand duke.”
He did not say anything for a long time. I sat very still, looking at my empty wine-glass placed so precisely on the corner of the table.
“Consider the facts,” he said at last. “The Clarissas are enclosed. The monastery is locked securely, day and night. The duchess threatened to kill herself in my presence and the presence of two holy sisters, as well as the half-dozen more who were probably listening at the door. The next morning, she was dead in her locked cell, lying as if asleep without a wound or mark on her body and with an empty flask on the table beside her bed.”
“An empty flask!”
“Yes.”
“But nothing has been said about a flask! Where did it come from? What became of it?”
He held up one hand. “Perhaps I should tell the story of that morning from the beginning, Madonna. And then you will tell me exactly what Sister Orsola has told you about the matter.”
I nodded in agreement.
“I received a message just after lauds.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words. “When I arrived at Corpus Domini, Mother Eleonora told me the duchess was dead. She swore to me the room had been closed and the door locked again the moment the infirmarian gave the alarm, and nothing had been touched.”
Was Mother Eleonora telling the truth? I wondered, but said nothing.
“I was admitted to the enclosure, given my position as patron of the monastery and the extremity of the circumstance. I unlocked the door myself. When I went in, the flask was on the table beside her bed. There was no sign of any struggle or sickness. She lay there quite peacefully, as if asleep. I called for Messer Girolamo, my physician, as a matter of form, and of course for a priest as well, but it was clear she had been dead for several hours.”
He paused and took a sip of his wine, his face expressionless. When he did not go on, I asked, “Why did you put it about she had died of an imbalance of humors? Why not simply tell the truth?”
He looked at me, and for a moment I feared I had gone too far. Evenly he said, “Self-murder is a mortal sin, Madonna, and in taking her own life she had taken the life of her unborn child as well. Bastard or no, it was an innocent soul. I thought to protect her name, and the name of Este, from those stains.”
Pride is a mortal sin as well, I thought, although of course I did not dare say it aloud.
“You are thinking I was more concerned with my own pride than with the truth,” he said, reading my thoughts with uncanny accuracy as he sometimes did. “Perhaps you are right. I can say only that there was gossip enough about the duchess as it was, and I did not wish to encourage chattering tongues by making it public she had taken her own life.”
“Did Mother Eleonora and Sister Orsola see the flask? Did they realize its import?”
“I do not know. I have always thought not, as I put the flask away immediately with the duchess’s other things, and had the coffers removed to the Castello that very day.”
“Sister Orsola was uneasy when I questioned her, too ingratiating one moment, too belligerent the next. Could she have given the duchess the flask?”
“Given its value, I think not. Even if she had, would it have been filled with poison?”
I said nothing.
“I believe it was among the duchess’s belongings from the beginning. I assure you I did not send her to the monastery in sackcloth and ashes, Madonna. She was supplied with two of her own coffers, clothes, household goods, and such personal possessions as she valued. I did not look inside the coffers before sending them.”
“I would like to look at them, please.”
He finished his wine and put the glass down. His expression had darkened again. “Since I suspect nothing else will satisfy you, I will take you to your so-called secret room, and stand by as you unpack the coffers with your own hands.”
I had not expected to win the skirmish so easily. “Thank you, my lord,” I said. “Perhaps we will find the missing book packed away as well.”
“I examined the coffers before they were placed in the storage room. The book is not there.”
“A secret compartment, perhaps? Such things are not unheard-of, and the young duchess’s coffers would have been manufactured by Medici workmen, to Medici designs.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “That is something I did not look for,” he said. “And I should have. You are devious, Madonna, as well as disquisitive. Tell me, have you secret compartments in your own bridal coffers?”
He rose. I rose as well. I said, “You are quite welcome to examine them, my lord, at your leisure. Now, however, I would like to go to the secret room, as you have promised.”
SECRET COMPARTMENTS! EVEN if there had been secret compartments in my coffers, I wouldn’t have put the book in one of them—far too easy to find. Better to hide things in separate boxes no one knows about, well-locked and well-hidden. It’s strange, though, to hear Alfonso admit he didn’t look for them. He’s never been a man to admit his mistakes to anyone.
It’s strange, too, to listen to Alfonso tell la Cavalla about how he found my body. I was still there, of course, when he came into the monastery cell that morning. I was separated from my flesh but not entirely free of it—it takes a long time, when one becomes
immobila
, to let go of the flesh. Death isn’t such a sudden thing as the living imagine. It’s slow, slow—the flesh cools little by little, and all the things that make us alive, our hearts and brains and muscles and tripes, don’t stop working instantly. I was there, oh, yes, frightened and furious, trying to fit myself back into that familiar, comforting flesh, even as it stiffened and became more and more not-me.
Mother Eleonora was there, too, and Sister Orsola and old Sister Addolorata, who were looking guilty because they’d gone off to sleep. Alfonso held a broken piece of my own mirror to my lips—well, to my body’s lips, at least. He noticed the flask at once, I think, but didn’t say anything. Just imagine how surprised I was when he said, “The duchess is alive, but barely. Call a priest. And send a messenger to Messer Girolamo Brasavola.”
Alive! I was not alive, and he knew it. He lied so I would have the holy unction and be buried in holy ground, all for the sake of his own pride. And of course he wanted to prevent any gossip about how I died. How I’ve laughed, through the years, as the same gossip he tried to stop has buzzed around his pompous head.
Other than that, he’s been more or less telling the truth so far. One thing he didn’t tell her, because he doesn’t know it himself, is that the monastery wasn’t all that securely locked, day and night. Sister Orsola used to steal the keys, both the key to the back door and the key to my cell. That’s how Tommasina got in, to bring me a few delicacies and playthings. She’s a sly one, Sister Orsola is, and she does love jewelry and sweets, which makes her easy to bribe. La Cavalla found that out for herself.