maneuver. His deference paid off: Our army decisively defeated the Imperial invaders. As a result, Henri and Montmorency became close friends and were welcomed home as heroes. The King had nothing but praise for both of them.
The crucible of war had transformed Henri into a man and brought him confidence. It also left him determined to hide his affair with Madame de Poitiers no longer. He proudly wore her colors, white and black, and adopted as his emblem the crescent moon-symbol of Diana, goddess of the hunt.
But within days of his return, Henri appeared at my bedchamber door. He brought with him resignation, not joy, but neither did he bring resentment. Diane had surely told him everything; I think he was relieved that I would cause them no trouble.
His manner was removed but kindly. The sight of his body-utterly a man’s now, with a full, muscular back and chest-made me ache with longing. Each time I lay with him, I convinced myself that surely this time I would say or do the very thing that would win his heart; and each time he rose from my bed too quickly, I lay watching him, replete yet shattered. Never did pleasure bring so much pain.
A year passed, then two, three, four, and I did not conceive. I consulted the King’s astrologers and had dutiful intercourse with Henri at the recommended times. I uttered pagan chants and spells; Madame Gondi put a mandrake root beneath my mattress; I followed Aristotle’s advice and ate quail eggs, endive, and violets to nauseating excess. Following Agrippa, I made a talisman of Venus for fertility and put it beside the mandrake. All of it availed nothing.
Anne, the Duchess d’Etampes, began to whisper again into the ear of her lover and anyone else who would listen. The Court parted into two camps: those who supported the aging King and his devious paramour, and those who looked to the future and supported Henri and Diane de Poitiers. The Duchess was extraordinarily jealous; she perceived Diane as her rival and wanted to see her cast down. The best way to do so, she had decided, was to bring Henri a new wife-one headstrong and willful, who would not accept Henri’s mistress as graciously as I had. And if this caused harm to me, favored too well by the King, so much the better.
So I watched over the barren days and months and years as the smile His Majesty directed at me grew fainter, as the warmth in his eyes and embrace slowly cooled. The talismans, the physicians, the astrologers… all had failed. Yet in my mind I kept returning to the memory of the night my late mother had spoken to me. Her words had been uncannily accurate; as I could not trust the living, I decided to trust the dead.
I had been very ill the night that the magician had summoned her, so I could not remember the proper chants or gesticulations. I recalled only that Ruggieri had anointed us with what seemed to be old blood.
I saved some purplish black menstrual blood and, on a chilly day in March, 1543, in the privacy of my cabinet, I anointed my forehead with it, then pricked my finger with an embroidery needle.
Fresh blood was required, Ruggieri had said. The dead would smell it.
At my desk, I squeezed my finger, milking several fat red drops onto a small piece of paper. I dipped my quill into it and scratched out a message:
I cast the paper into the hearth. The fire jumped as it caught and blackened at the outer edges, curling inward as the flame raced toward the center.
The ash fell onto the glowing logs; pieces of it broke off and whirled about before sailing up the flue.
I repeated my plea, staring into the writhing flames. I did not address myself only to my mother, to the dead, to God or the Devil. I spoke to whoever might answer. My heart opened until there was no separation between it and the power that fueled the universe. With my will, my desire, I clutched that power and would not let go.
Heaven-or Hell-opened in that instant. I knew not which. I knew only that I touched
The next day, I followed the King’s movements until the afternoon, when I was required to hold audiences. As Dauphine, I had many petitioners, mostly Florentines asking for assistance. Enthroned, I listened to each sad tale.
The first was that of an elderly Tornabuoni widow, related to the Medici by marriage. She had lived in her deceased husband’s villa until Alessandro’s henchmen seized the property after illegally taxing her into bankruptcy; she had left the city with nothing. I granted her sufficient funds so that she could live comfortably in one of the better convents outside Paris.
There was also a banker with a wife and six children who had long ago worked as an apprentice to Uncle Filippo Strozzi, which had been enough to endanger his life. He had fled Florence with his family, leaving behind all his assets. I promised to find him work in the Treasury.
There were several others, and after a few hours, I grew tired.
Madame Gondi said, “I will tell the others to return tomorrow. But there is one, Madame-a rather strange- looking gentleman-who insists that he be seen today. He says that you know him and will be glad to see him.”
I had opened my mouth to ask the name of the impertinent beggar when revelation suddenly stole my voice. When it returned, I told Madame Gondi to bring him to me.
He entered wearing red and black, the colors of Mars and Saturn; he was fully a man now, but there was no meat on him, and his striped doublet hung upon his bony frame. His face was gaunt and sickly pale against his blue-black brows and hair. At the sight of me, he doffed his cap and bowed very low.
I stepped down from my throne. When he rose, I took his cold hands in my own.
“Monsieur Ruggieri,” I said. “How I have prayed that you would come.”
Twenty-two
I immediately appointed Cosimo Ruggieri my court astrologer. He brought with him no belongings, as though he had materialized from the ether with no purse, no trunk, no wife, no family.
I led him at once to my cabinet. I asked after his past: He had left Florence for Venice and, on the day of his arrival there, had fallen ill with plague. From Venice he had gone to Constantinople and Araby, though he would not explain why or what had happened there. I told him of my joy at receiving, during my imprisonment, the volume of Ficino and the Wing of Corvus. I told him how my mother’s words had proven true, how a man named Silvestro had saved me from a hostile crowd. I shared with him the details of my self-education in astrology, and my efforts to cast nativities.
If anything in my long tale surprised him, he did not show it. Never once did he remind me of his prediction that I would become a queen.
At last I said, “I have had a recurring dream ever since you gave me the Raven’s Wing. I dream of a man with his face drenched in blood. He calls out to me in French. He is dying, and it is my duty to help him-but I don’t know how.” I lowered my gaze, troubled. “It’s Henri. I knew the instant I met him. I feel bound to protect him from a gruesome fate.”
He listened dispassionately. “Is that all? Only Henri, in your dream?”
“No,” I said. “There are others in the field-hundreds, thousands, perhaps, but I cannot see them. The blood… it swells like the ocean.” I lifted my fingers to my temple and massaged it, as if to work the memory loose and make it fall away.
“This is your destiny,” he said. “Yours is the power, Madame, to spill that ocean… or to stanch its flow.”
I wanted suddenly to weep. “But Henri… Some ill will soon befall him. If I can stop it, then perhaps the others won’t die. Tell me what will happen to him, and how I can stop it. You’re the magician-there must be spells to protect him. I tried; I made a talisman myself, another Wing of Corvus, but he wouldn’t wear it.”
“A simple talisman, a simple spell, could never be enough,” he said.
I flared. “It was enough for me, when I was in the hands of the rebels.”
