The Medici Queen aka The Devil’s Queen

Back at Le Murate, I mourned bitterly. I wrote impassioned letters to Clement, begging to stay in Florence. It didn’t matter. By the end of the month, I was forced to say farewell to Sister Niccoletta and Mother Giustina and my beloved Piero.

I was orphaned again.

Rome sits upon seven hills. After hours of rolling green countryside, I glimpsed the first of them, the Qirinal, from the window of the carriage that carried Uncle Filippo, Ginevra, and me. Filippo pointed at an approaching expanse of worn, unremarkable brick, sections of which had dissolved with age and sprouted greenery.

“The Aurelian Wall,” he said reverently. “Nearly thirteen hundred years old.”

Moments after, we reached the wall and passed beneath a modern archway: the Porta del Popolo, the Gate of the People. Beyond, a sprawling city stretched to the horizon, dotted with campaniles and cathedral domes rising above the flat roofs of villas; white marble glittered beneath a hot September sun. Rome was far larger than Florence, far larger than I could have imagined. We rolled through common neighborhoods, past shops, humble homes, and open markets. The poor traveled on foot, the merchants on horses, the rich in carriages, a preponderance of which belonged to cardinals. Yet the streets, though busy, were uncrowded; a third of the buildings were still empty three years after the devastation wrought by the Emperor’s troops. Rome was still licking her wounds.

As the districts grew wealthier, I saw more evidence of the Sack. The gaudy villas of cardinals and of Rome’s most influential families exhibited damage: Stone finials and cornices had been smashed, wooden doorways scarred. Statues of gods were missing limbs, noses, breasts. Over the entrance to one cathedral, a headless Virgin held the Christ child in her arms.

Hammers rang on every street; wooden scaff olding embraced the facade of every other building. Artists’ shops were crowded with clients arguing over commissions, apprentices grinding gems, sculptors chiseling huge chunks of marble.

At last the carriage slowed, and Uncle Filippo said, “The Piazza Navona, built on the ruins of Emperor Domitian’s circus.”

It was the largest square I had ever seen, wide enough for a dozen carriages to travel side by side. Ostentatious villas, newly built, lined its perimeter.

Filippo pointed to a building at the far side of the square and proudly announced, “The Medici Palace of Rome, which rests upon Nero’s baths.”

The new palace, of pale stucco edged with marble, had been built in the popular classical style-square and flat-roofed, three stories high. The carriage rolled into the long, curving driveway, then stopped, and the driver jumped down to call at the front door. Instead of the expected servant, a noblewoman appeared.

She was my great-aunt Lucrezia de’ Medici, daughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico and sister of the late Pope Leo X. Her husband, Iacopo Salviati, had recently been appointed Florence’s ambassador to Rome. Elegant, thin, and slightly stooped, she wore a gown of black and silver striped silk that precisely matched her velvet headdress and hair.

At the sight of Uncle Filippo helping me from the carriage, she called out, smiling, “I have been waiting all morning! How wonderful to finally set eyes upon you, Duchessa!”

Aunt Lucrezia led Ginevra and me to my new apartments. I had come to think of my room at Le Murate as lavish; now, I entered a sunny antechamber with six padded velvet chairs, a Persian rug, a dining table, and a large cherry desk. Paintings covered the marble walls: an annunciation scene, a portrait of Lorenzo as a young man, and one of my mother, an arresting young woman with dark eyes and hair. Lucrezia had brought the painting out of storage for me.

She explained that my great-uncle Iacopo was meeting with His Holiness that very hour, arranging a time for my audience. She left me in the company of a seamstress, who fitted me for several fine gowns.

Before supper, Lucrezia’s own lady-in-waiting arrived. With Ginevra’s help, she laced me into a woman’s gown of daff odil yellow brocade. An inset of sheer silk, fine as a spider’s web, stretched from the low bodice to my neck. My hair was smoothed back at the crown with a band of brown velvet edged with seed pearls.

Sheepish in my grand costume, I followed her down to the family’s private dining chamber. At its entrance, Aunt Lucrezia and Uncle Iacopo, an authoritative, balding old man, greeted me. They led me inside, to my place at the long, gleaming table, and I found myself staring across it at Ippolito and Sandro.

I had known they would be there, of course, but had not allowed myself to think about it because facing them was simply too awful: I could never forgive them-but they were now the only family I had.

Now nineteen, Sandro looked more than ever like his African mother, his clean-shaven face dominated by heavy black brows and great dark eyes ringed by shadows; he wore a drab, old-fashioned lucco, the loose tunic of a city elder.

“Cousin,” he said formally and bowed on the other side of the table, keeping his distance, at the same time that Ippolito came grinning round the table.

Beneath an attractively hawkish nose, Ippolito’s mustache and beard were blue-black and full, his large eyes brown and rimmed by thick lashes. Dressed in a tight-fitting green farsetto to show off the broadness of his shoulders and narrowness of his waist, he was, simply, beautiful.

“Caterina, sweet cousin!” he exclaimed. The diamond on his left ear flashed. “How I have missed you!”

He reached for me. In my mind’s eye, I saw Aunt Clarice staring down in horror at a tangle of hastily discarded leggings and tunics; I put my hand up to keep him from touching me, but he bent down and kissed it.

“The Duchessina is tired,” Aunt Lucrezia pronounced loudly. “She is glad to see you both, but she has been through too much; let us not tax her. Take your chair, Ser Ippolito.”

We sat down. The food was exquisite, but the sight of it nauseated me. I went through the motions of putting a small bite into my mouth and chewing it, but swallowing it made me want to cry.

Conversation was polite, dominated by Donna Lucrezia and Ser Iacopo. The latter asked what I thought of Rome; I stammered replies. Donna Lucrezia inquired politely about the cousins’ studies; Ippolito was the quicker to answer. A lull followed, during which I felt Ippolito’s steady gaze on me.

Softly, he said, “We were all horrified, of course, when we heard that the rebels had taken you prisoner.”

I pushed back my chair and ran from the table, out the French doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the city; thousands of windows flickered yellow in the darkness. I crouched in the farthest corner and closed my eyes. I wanted to vomit up the food I had just eaten; I wanted to vomit up the last three years.

I heard footsteps and looked up at Ippolito’s silhouette, backlit by the glow from the dining room.

“Caterina…” He knelt beside me. “You hate me, don’t you?” “

Go away.” My tone was ugly, raw. “Go away and don’t ever speak to me again.”

He let go the saddest of sighs. “Poor cousin. It must have been dreadful for you.”

“They might have killed us,” I said bitterly.

“Do you think I feel no guilt?” he countered, with a trace of vehemence.

“Consider my point of view: I was about to make a very dangerous escape, one I might well not have survived. I didn’t tell you for fear you would be endangered. We dressed like common thugs; our accomplices were thieves and murderers. We didn’t feel safe with them ourselves. What would they have done to a young girl?”

“They tore her gown when we were climbing the wall to escape,” I hissed. “It broke her heart to lose Florence. It broke her heart, and she died.”

His features, faded by darkness, twisted with anguish. “It broke my heart to leave you both. I thought the rebels would rightfully blame us, pursue us, and let the both of you go free. I thought that, by confiding nothing, I had protected you. Then I heard you were imprisoned. And when Clarice died, I…” He turned his face away, overcome.

I startled myself by reaching toward him-but when he faced me again, I withdrew my hand, uncertainly.

“Sweet little cousin,” he said. “Perhaps in time you will be able to forgive me.”

In the end, Ippolito led me back into the dining room. Supper continued in subdued fashion. Afterward, I went up to my room, unnerved yet relieved by the ease with which Ippolito had coaxed me back. That night, as I struggled to fall asleep in my fine new bed, with Ginevra snoring enthusiastically out in the antechamber, I recalled the regret and sorrow in Ippolito’s voice when he spoke of Clarice and wondered what might have happened had I not drawn my hand away.