Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (15 page)

My words had touched their mark. I had saved Aldobrandini's life. I sat holding the letter, enjoying the feeling of triumph.

But the letter continued. “Now that it is once again safe to travel, you are to begin preparations immediately to remove with all haste to Rome, where you will make your home under our loving guidance.”

The letter was signed
Clemens Pater Patrum VII—
Clement, Father of Fathers, VII.

I stared blankly at the letter in my lap.

My life was about to undergo another enormous shift. The last thing I wanted to do was move to Rome to be with Pope Clement, but I had no choice but to obey Destiny had called me again.

9

T
HE FIRST CHALLENGE
in preparing to leave for Rome was gathering the proper clothes. I had arrived at Le Murate with only my wrinkled silk gown and a mildewed velvet cloak. The gown had fit me when I was eight years old, but now I was eleven. For most of the past three years I had dressed nearly every day in the drab gray tunic and underskirt required of the girls at the convent. On feast days we were allowed to dress up. I'd managed to squeeze into my old gown that the nuns in the sewing room had cleaned and let out and added to as I'd grown, disguising the seams with clever embroidery stitches. Then, due to the effects of the siege and the terrible shortage of food, I'd become quite thin. Now the old silk gown hung on me,
worn out and ill fitting. I could not go to Rome in that dress or in the tunic and underskirt.

Suor Margherita dispatched a letter by courier to the pope, assuring the Holy Father that I looked forward with eagerness to the honor of being in his presence. Then she added that, as impatiently as I wished to be on my way, my present wardrobe was unsuitable. I would need several new gowns, she wrote, as well as cloaks and undergarments, hosiery and slippers.

The pope replied, telling her to provide whatever I needed. The problem was that he sent no money. The abbess instructed the seamstresses to do what they could with what they had. From their store of silks and damasks used to make vestments for priests and bishops, they fashioned a gown of green brocade, embroidered the bodice with gold thread and edged the white sleeves in lace; they also made me a plain russet dress for traveling. Nuns who'd specialized in creating exquisite bridal trousseaux for the daughters of rich patrons stitched new sleeping shifts and undergarments of fine linen. Cecilia, one of the older girls who would soon leave the convent to be married, made me a gift of a pair of slippers that she'd outgrown.

Niccolà, Giulietta, and Tomassa watched these preparations with mixed feelings. “It's not fair!” Giulietta complained. “No sooner do you come back to us so that we can be together again than you tell us you're leaving.”

“I feel sorry for you, Duchessina,” Niccolà said bluntly.
“How can you bear to make your home with the pope, after what he has done to our city?”

“How can I not?” I asked. “I have no more choice than the citizens of Florence do. When the Holy Father speaks, I must obey”

“She's right,” Tomassa remarked to Niccolà. “Duchessina has no more choice than
we
do.”

“And what about your cousin, Alessandro?” asked Giulietta. “He's to become the lord of Florence. Will we like him, do you think?”

“No,” I answered frankly. “You won't. He was a cruel boy, and I doubt that he's changed for the better, now that he's a man.”

It would be much different if it were Ippolito,
I thought, but didn't say.

B
EFORE
I
LEFT
F
LORENCE
, I wanted to see Filippo Strozzi to ask a favor. In reply to my request, Clarissa's former slave, Minna, came to accompany me to Palazzo Strozzi. Filippo greeted me somberly. He'd sent his three younger sons with Betta to the country before the siege began, while he and his oldest boy, Piero, had remained in Florence. All had survived and were now reunited in the city, including Betta.

This was the first time I'd seen my uncle since before Clarissa's death, and I was shocked by how much he had aged, his face deeply lined, his eyes hooded and grave.
I began to weep as though the news of her death were still fresh, but Filippo remained stoic, muttering, “God's will be done.”

He summoned his sons to the grand receiving room, once the scene of many festive entertainments but now stripped of its rich tapestries and furnishings. The boys' faces were thin and sad, and they had little to say. But at that moment Betta sailed in, and the mood changed. Unlike the Strozzi father and sons, she was used to expressing her feelings. The barren receiving room echoed with her wails of grief for my dead aunt and cries of joy at the sight of me. Soon everyone was laughing and crying and talking at once.

When the excitement settled down, I spoke to Filippo. “The Holy Father has called me to Rome. He's sending a cardinal with an escort to accompany me. I've come to ask if you'll allow Betta to return to my service and travel to Rome with me.” I turned to Betta. “If she's willing.”

Betta didn't wait for Filippo Strozzi to signal his opinion one way or the other. She threw her arms around me again, burying my face in her pillowy bosom until I was half smothered. Filippo forced a thin smile. “Certainly Elisabetta may go with you to Rome. God protect you on your travels.”

O
N THE MORNING
of October first, my few belongings, including my precious
cassone
with its treasures, were packed in panniers slung over the back of a donkey. I said good-bye to Maddalena and my friends at Le Murate, promising that my visit to Rome was only just a visit and that I expected to return to Florence before long. We kissed one another, and wept, and kissed again. Suor Margherita gave me her blessing. My three best friends presented a going-away gift—a very pretty head covering they had taken turns stitching in secret.

My feelings that day were a tangle: I was sad to be leaving my dear friends and uneasy about what my life would be like under the pope's thumb, but I was also thrilled by the notion of a journey to a faraway city. Except for my earliest years, of which I had no memory, I had never traveled outside of Tuscany. I'd spent the past three years shut up in one convent or another, and I was curious about Rome. I had heard much about its ancient ruins, as well as about St. Peter's Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel, and the Palazzo Vaticano, the pope's palace. I wanted to see it all.

With Betta and four armed guards I rode off to join our traveling party on the piazza outside the monastery of San Marco. A short and jowly cardinal with bulging eyes was waiting for me, surrounded by several assistants, a number of servants, and Swiss Guards from the pope's private army. He'd also brought us two well-fed mules for the journey.

“I am Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, nephew of the late Pope Leo,” he said. “My mother, Lucrezia Salviati, is Pope Leo's older sister. You will make your home with her, as you did when you were an infant.”

“Cardinal Giovanni seems kindly,” I murmured to Betta as the procession prepared to move out.

“Everyone seems kindly at first,” she said drily.

A band of musicians played, drawing a small crowd to the piazza. It was meant to be a festive occasion, but the mood remained dark. The crowd watched sullenly as we rode down the Via Larga and past the Palazzo Medici, now empty and shuttered. On every building the Medici coat of arms with the seven balls, called
palle,
had been defaced or destroyed.

“It's not like it was once,” muttered Betta. “There would have been cheering throngs whenever a Medici rode through the streets of this city
‘Palle, palle!'
the people used to shout.”

But there was no cheering now for the Medici
duchessina
and a Medici cardinal. I stared straight ahead, relieved that there were no shouted insults, no hurled garbage. When our entourage crossed the Arno, I turned back for a final view of the Duomo, the red-tiled dome of the great cathedral gleaming in the midmorning sunlight. Then I set my sights forward, toward Rome.

M
Y EXCITEMENT
dimmed as the hours passed and the journey grew long and exhausting. We stopped each night at monasteries along the way, where we were fed a simple meal, given plain beds, and sent along our way in the morning under stormy skies. On the fourth day we reached the Porta Flaminia and entered Rome in a downpour. Cardinal Giovanni led the way to the Piazza Navona in the heart of the city and the stately palazzo nearby.

I climbed down from the wooden seat on the mule's back. Liveried guards opened the massive door, and I stepped inside the great central courtyard decorated with marble statues, many of them beheaded or completely smashed. An elderly woman in a velvet gown of several vivid colors slowly descended the broad staircase. She was short and heavy bodied, her face round with sagging chins and protruding eyes—clearly a Medici. Jewels shone around her neck and on her wrists and sparkled on every finger, so that she seemed half buried in ornaments. Once she'd looked me over, a smile brightened the deep grooves of her homely face.

“I am Lucrezia de' Medici Salviati, your great-aunt,” she said in a warm and pleasant voice. “I welcome you once again to Palazzo Medici. The last time I saw you, you were little more than an infant, and now you're a fine young lady! I hope you will be happy here.”

Aunt Lucrezia led the way up the broad stairs from the courtyard to the
piano nobile,
and then, breathing hard, up a narrower stairway. Betta came along behind us carrying my little
cassone,
and a servant followed with the rest of my belongings. There wasn't much.

“We're fortunate to be alive,” Lucrezia said, as she showed me to my apartment. “The palazzo was attacked and looted during the sack of Rome. As you can see, it was badly damaged and nearly everything destroyed or stolen. By luck, we were away at our country villa, and I had my jewels with me.” She stroked her pearl and sapphire necklace. “How my dear brother, the late Pope Leo, would have wept to witness the ruin of the most glorious city in all Christendom.”

I remembered the night the young cleric and the old priest had come to the Palazzo Medici in Florence and repeated stories of rape, murder, thievery, and destruction in faraway Rome. We hadn't realized then how our own city was about to suffer. In both cases, the blame lay on Pope Clement and Emperor Charles.

Over the next day or two, while I rested and began to find my way around the battered palazzo, Betta befriended the servants and delivered a report on the large household, which seemed to include dozens of people. It would have taken me a week or more to find out what Betta managed to extract in a matter of hours.

“Lucrezia's husband, Jacopo Salviati, is old and ill and seldom leaves his rooms,” said Betta. “Her son, Cardinal Giovanni, and his assistants spend most of their time at the Vatican. Her widowed daughter, Maria, lives here—she always dresses in mourning. A younger daughter, Francesca, was about to marry a distant Medici cousin in Florence, but the wedding has been postponed because of the siege. Francesca is in a black mood. You'll see for your
self soon enough—you're to take your main meal each day with Lucrezia and her daughters. The women eat together, separate from the men, and Lucrezia usually invites her friends to join her.”