“No, my lord, I never learned to play chess. My father also considered it a game of war and politics, and as such not suitable for women.”
He smiled. “You are an unusual woman,” he said. “Messer Bernardo Canigiani is to join us shortly, but before he does, I wish to give you a sketch of the situation so you do not expect too much.”
We had settled ourselves in the Appartamento della Pazienza in the Saint Catherine Tower; the duke had directed our two heavy carved chairs to be placed on either side of a table made of mahogany, marble, and horn, its top inlaid with alternating squares in translucent white and black marble. Behind us was a magnificent painting by Messer Battista Dossi called
Justice
. I had hoped for justice rather than politics in the matter of Messer Bernardo Canigiani and his master, but perhaps I was indeed expecting too much.
“Please continue, my lord.”
The chess pieces were stored in a drawer under the table. He took out two pieces, one white, one black, made of carved and polished wood. They were about four inches in height and amazingly detailed, representing richly dressed gentlemen on horseback, spurred and crowned, bearing not weapons but scepters symbolizing worldly power.
“These are the most important pieces in the game,” he said. “The two kings.” He placed the kings on the board, the white one on a white square, the black one on a black square on the opposite side. “Let us say they represent Cosimo de’ Medici and me.”
I wondered whether he intended himself to be the white king or the black king.
“Then there is the queen.” He drew another piece out of the drawer. It was a little smaller than the kings and depicted a lady on horseback with a falcon on her wrist. Her saddle was an uncanny duplicate of the chairlike saddle I had been obliged to use on the ride back from Belfiore. She was a white piece. He placed her next to the white king.
“Only one queen?” I asked.
“She is you, Madonna, and there is not another like her.” I could not tell if he meant it as a compliment or a reproach, but at least now I knew which color was which. “In this game, Cosimo de’ Medici has no queen. But he does have Bernardo Canigiani.”
He placed another piece on the board. The figure was riding a mule rather than a horse, without a saddle, and wearing the
cappello
, the broad-brimmed Roman hat of a churchman. He was one of the black pieces.
“This fellow is usually called a bishop, but for the moment we shall designate him as an ambassador.” He placed the figure diagonally in front of the black king, directly across from the white queen. I looked at the unobstructed path between the two figures and felt a chill of fear.
“There are also two pawns in this game,” he went on. He took out two smaller white pieces representing foot-soldiers carrying spears. “One is the alchemist Tommaso Vasari. The other you shall meet shortly.”
“I wish to know one thing only, my lord,” I said. “How does the game end?”
“Unfortunately, not with a checkmate. Our two pawns are not strong enough. But”—he placed the two pawns together in the black square immediately in front of the white queen—“they are strong enough to protect you, Madonna, from any further machinations on the part of Messer Bernardo or his master. That is the best I can promise.”
“I pray it is so,” I said. I reached out and picked up the white king. His bearded chin jutted arrogantly, much like the duke’s; there was even a tiny carved dagger at his belt. His horse was caparisoned as if for war, or jousting.
Jousting.
But I could not ask him now. Messer Bernardo Canigiani would arrive shortly. The duke would put our two pawns in play. We would find out what the end of the game would be.
I put the white king back on the board. My questions about the tournament at Blois would have to wait.
“IT IS ALWAYS my greatest delight, Serenissimo, to be called into your presence. And of course the presence of the Serenissima.”
Messer Bernardo Canigiani swept one of his ostentatious bows, the feather of his hat skimming the marble floor.
“It is our pleasure as well,” the duke said. “You will note I have dismissed my secretaries and the rest of the court. The duchess and I wish to speak with you quite privately.”
Bernardo Canigiani continued to smile. “I am entirely at your service, Serenissimo. I see you and your charming duchess have been enjoying a game of chess.”
“Not in any conventional manner. In fact, the board is laid out to represent your audience with us, at this moment. You will see the duchess and me on the one side, and you yourself, with of course your master, Duke Cosimo, figuratively present behind you, on the other.”
He looked at the board. “A clever conceit,” he said. “What, then, do the two pawns represent? It is highly irregular to place two pawns upon one square.”
“Perhaps. They also represent real people. I shall call them in one at a time, and we will see if they are as one in their purpose.”
The duke lifted his hand, and Tommaso Vasari stepped into the room from the adjoining terrace garden.
“What is this?” Messer Bernardo’s smile froze upon his face, and for the first time since I had come to Ferrara, I saw him discomfited. “What is this man doing here?”
“You know him, then,” the duke said in a silky voice.
“Of course I know him. He is a Florentine alchemist in the employ of Duke Cosimo. Serenissimo, I demand to know what he is doing here in Ferrara and—”
“You may demand nothing.” Messer Bernardo started back at the sudden harshness in the duke’s voice, and I must confess I did the same. “Messer Tommaso, tell the ambassador what you have told me, if you please.”
The alchemist came forward. He was a short, thin fellow with hollow eyes like his daughter’s, dark and burning. His graying hair was combed straight back, and although he had tried to grow the long luxuriant beard that was an alchemist’s badge of office, he had produced only a few thin strings. His skin was mushroom-white, as if he never set foot in sunlight.
“Serenissimo,” he said. He bowed to the duke. Then he turned to Messer Bernardo. “Ambasciatore,” he said. His voice was soft and perfectly respectful. Which made it all the more astonishing when he sprang at Messer Bernardo with a knife suddenly glittering in his hand.
“Ho, guards!” the duke shouted. Messer Bernardo flailed at his attacker, screaming like a woman, his cape and the feathered hat in his hand taking the worst of the knife-cuts. I suddenly heard Tommasina Vasari’s voice—
a hollow bodkin, an accidental scratch
—and I cried, “Take care, the knife may be poisoned!”
One of the men-at-arms struck the alchemist from behind, and he went to his knees; the knife skidded across the polished floor. Messer Bernardo, sweating and shaking, cast his slashed cape and hat away from him with terror and disgust.
“Serenissimo, I protest!” he gasped. “I am a
patrizio
of Florence and Duke Cosimo’s accredited ambassador. I will not be treated in this manner. What have I to do with this alchemist, that you so much as bring him into the room with me?”
“What you have to do with him,” the duke said, “is that you arranged the murder of his daughter.”
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Tommaso Vasari sobbed. It sounded like a piece of paper being torn in half. “She did not know,” he said. “She was innocent. Her only sin was to love the young duchess more than she loved her father and her home. She knew nothing about the substitution of the poison for the abortifacient potion.”
“What are you talking about, fellow?” Messer Bernardo demanded. “Poison? Potion? I know nothing of any poisons or potions.”
“Perhaps our second pawn will make the matter clearer.” The duke gestured for the guards to leave, and when they had gone, another man came into the room. I did not know him at first. It was only when he turned his head and I saw the purple birthmark on his neck that I recognized him: it was the gaoler who had been given charge of Tommasina Vasari, and under whose oversight she had been killed. He had been bathed, barbered, and dressed in the livery of the duke’s house servants.
“Tell your story,” the duke said.
“My name is Matteo Fabbri.” The man was pale but resolute, and I could not help thinking he showed more courage than Messer Bernardo did. “’ Twas I who killed her, Serenissimo, Serenissima, and I’ve not had a night’s sleep since. There was no Augustinian. That was a tale I made up when the Serenissima pointed out the poor lady couldn’t have hanged herself, not with her thumbs all broken and crushed.”
Tommaso Vasari sobbed again.
“He paid me.” Matteo Fabbri pointed at Messer Bernardo. “Two gold florins. He said she would die anyway, and he was right, poor lady—she was crying and begging for a priest, and I don’t think she could have lived much longer. Just a quick twist, and she was gone.”
“I have never seen you before in my life,” Messer Bernardo said. “You are mistaken, gaoler.”
I sucked in my breath.
The duke said very softly, “And how did you know this man’s occupation, Messer Bernardo? He is dressed in ordinary livery, and nothing has been said of prisons or gaolers.”
Once again that deadly silence.
“A fortuitous guess.” Messer Bernardo straightened his doublet and made an effort to look unconcerned. “It was in your prison that the woman hanged herself, is that not so, Serenissimo? Who else but a gaoler would have access to a prisoner? Surely you cannot expect to accuse me of murder based upon the word of this fellow.”
He was babbling. He knew he had been trapped.
“I do,” the duke said. He reached out and flicked one finger against the figure on the chessboard representing the ambassador. It fell over with a single tick of wood against polished black marble. “And I also intend to accuse your master.”
“Duke Cosimo? That is ridiculous.”
“I think not. Messer Tommaso, I will ask you again to tell your tale. No knives this time, if you please.”
The alchemist lifted his head. Tears streaked his face. “When I received the letter from my daughter,” he said, “I was angry. She had refused, time and again, to come home—and she was even willing to take mortal sin upon herself by purveying a forbidden potion, all for the sake of Lucrezia de’ Medici. I thought to revenge myself upon them both by showing Duke Cosimo the letter, showing him his daughter’s dishonor. He fell into a rage, as he is well-known for doing, and swore he would see his daughter dead before she shamed him.”
Messer Bernardo stood absolutely white and still, as if he had been turned to salt.
“He gave me a rich flask covered with jewels, which he said Tommasina could keep for herself—she could have sold it for ten times the amount she would have needed to return safely home. At his instruction I made up the poison and sealed it into the flask, and sent it off to Tommasina with a letter assuring her it was the safest and most efficacious of abortifacients.”
I spoke for the first time. “Messer Tommaso, did he have no sorrow, no regret for his daughter?”
“None, Serenissima. He said she would be served as she justly merited—if she was not with child, she would not drink the potion, and thus she would not die; but if she drank the potion so as to kill a bastard she had conceived in sin, well, then, she would die, and rightly so.”
“God forgive him,” I said softly. I looked at the black king on the chessboard. He was a mirror image of the white king. Surely the duke and Cosimo de’ Medici were not so similar. Surely the duke would never—
“There was no longer any advantage to be gained from a marriage between Ferrara and Florence,” the duke said. “Half her dowry would be returned if she died childless, and that was better than nothing. The scandal would become the scandal of her death, attached to me, rather than the scandal of her bearing a bastard, blackening the name of the Medici.”
Messer Tommaso bowed his head. “Just so,” he said. “And so it happened, Serenissimo, just as you say. But Tommasina did not come home. The rest of the young duchess’s household returned, but not my Tommasina. I made inquiries—and was told to make no more, if I wished to retain my position and Duke Cosimo’s favor. I think he ultimately convinced himself the tale he put about was true—that you, Serenissimo, had poisoned his daughter in secret.”
“I will not stand by and allow this low fellow to blacken Duke Cosimo’s name,” Messer Bernardo said in a harsh and shaky voice. “He lies, and I demand he be returned to Florence to be tried and punished for this betrayal.”
“I think not,” the duke said again. “Continue, Messer Tommaso.”
“I heard nothing more of Tommasina until your man came to me, Serenissimo, and told me she had been murdered in Ferrara after being questioned in the matter of Lucrezia de’ Medici’s death. I knew immediately it was Duke Cosimo’s hand, stretching out from Florence, that had silenced her.”
“And so it was,” the duke said. “However much Messer Bernardo may deny it.”
“You would not dare make this tale public,” Messer Bernardo said. He might have aged ten years in the past ten minutes. I looked at the fallen figure of the black ambassador’s piece on the chessboard, and the two pawns in the square in front of the white queen, and in that moment the duke’s design became wholly clear to me.
The duke touched the black king, but did not tip the figure over. Duke Cosimo could not be openly accused of murder, any more than the Duke of Ferrara himself. “Madonna, I see you have divined my purpose in bringing forward our two pawns. Perhaps you would care to explain it to Messer Bernardo.”
I thought of Messer Bernardo whispering to me in the chapel. I thought of the dead, one image after another as if I were running through a gallery of paintings—the glowing young duchess with her branch of cherry blossoms in her hand, the painter-friar with his magnificent genius and fatal hubris, the rawboned infirmarian with her pathetic greed for jewels and pleasures, the vengeful
parruchiera
whispering madness to me on my wedding morning, then screaming and screaming as her thumbs cracked in the thumbscrew.