The Medici Queen aka The Devil’s Queen

pooled artfully at her feet. Her arm rested on the table, and her face, nestled in the crook, was turned from me. Her chestnut hair hung upon her shoulder, restrained by a gold net studded with tiny diamonds.

She heard me and languidly lifted her head. She was full awake, but her expression was lifeless; I was too young to interpret it then, but over the years I have come to recognize the dull look of undigested grief.

“Caterina,” she said, without inflection; her eyes were heavy-lidded with exhaustion. She leaned over and patted the seat of the chair beside her. “Come, sit with me. The men will be down soon, and you might as well hear.”

I sat. Her wrist, propped upon the table, was badly swollen, with dark marks left by Passerini’s fingers. Within a few minutes, Leda led Passerini and the cousins to the table. Ippolito’s manner was reserved; Passerini’s and Sandro’s, angry and challenging.

When they had taken their seats, Aunt Clarice waved Leda out of the room. Capponi had guaranteed us all safe passage, she said. We would go to Naples, where her mother’s people, the Orsini, would take us in. With their help, we would raise an army. The Duke of Milan would support us, and the d’Estes of Ferrara, and every other dynasty in Italy with sense enough to see that the formation of another Venice-style republic was an outright threat to them.

Passerini interrupted. “You gave Capponi everything he wanted, didn’t you? No wonder they preferred to deal with a woman!”

Clarice looked wearily at him. “Their men surround this house, Silvio. They have soldiers and weapons, and we have neither. With what did you intend me to bargain?”

“They came to us!” Passerini snarled. “They wanted something.”

“They wanted our heads,” Clarice said, with a faint trace of spirit. “Instead they will grant us safe passage. And in exchange, we must give them this.”

She spoke tonelessly and at length: The rebels would let us live, if, in four days, on the seventeenth of May at midday, Ippolito, Alessandro, and I went to the great public square, the Piazza della Signoria, and announced our abdication. We would then swear oaths of allegiance to the new Third Republic of Florence. We would also swear never to return. Afterward, rebel soldiers would lead us to the city gates and waiting carriages.

The cardinal swore and sputtered. “Betrayal,” Sandro said. The magician’s face rose in my imagination and whispered: One that threatens your life. They both fell silent the instant Ippolito rose.

“I knew Florence was lost,” he told Clarice, his voice unsteady. “But there are other things we could have purchased our safety with-properties, hidden family treasure, promises of alliances. For you to agree to humiliate us publicly-”

Clarice raised a brow. “Would you prefer the bite of the executioner’s blade?”

“I will not bow to them, Aunt,” Ippolito said.

“I kept our dignity,” Clarice countered; the tiny diamonds in her hairnet sparkled as she lifted her chin. “They could have taken our heads. They could have stripped us and hung us in the Piazza della Signoria. Instead, they wait outside. They give us a bit of freedom. They give us time.”

Ippolito drew in a long breath, and when he let it go, he shuddered. “I will not bow to them,” he said, and the words held a threat.

Four miserable days passed; the men spent them closeted in Ippolito’s chambers. Aunt Clarice wandered empty halls, as all of the house servants-except the most loyal, which included Leda, Paola, the stablehands, and the cook-had left. Beyond the iron gate, the rebels kept watch; the soldiers who had guarded our palazzo abandoned us.

By the afternoon of the sixteenth-one day before we were all to humble ourselves in the Piazza della Signoria- my room was stripped. I begged Paola to pack the volume of Ficino, but she murmured that it was a very big book for such a little girl.

That evening, Aunt Clarice prevailed upon us to have supper in one of the smaller dining rooms. Ippolito had little to say to anyone; Sandro, however, seemed surprisingly lighthearted, as did Passerini-who, when Clarice voiced her regret over leaving the family home in hostile hands, patted her hand, pointedly ignoring her bandaged right wrist.

The dinner ended quietly-at least, for Clarice, Ippolito, and me. The three of us retired, leaving Sandro and Passerini to their wine and jokes. I could hear them laughing as I headed back toward the children’s apartments.

That night, I dreamt.

I stood in the center of a vast open field and spied in the distance a man, his body backlit by the rays of the dying sun. I could not see his face, but he knew me and called out to me in a foreign tongue.

Catherine…

Not Caterina, as I was christened at birth, but Catherine. I recognized it as my name, just as I had when the magician had once uttered it so.

Catherine, he cried again, anguished.

The setting changed abruptly, as happens in dreams. He lay on the ground at my feet and I stood over him, wanting to help. Blood welled up from his shadowed face like water from a spring and soaked the earth beneath him. I knew that I was responsible for this blood, that he would die if I did not do something. Yet I could not fathom what I was to do.

Catherine, he whispered, and died, and I woke to the sound of Leda screaming.

Four

The sound came from across the landing, from Ippolito and Alessandro’s shared apartments. I ran toward the source.

Leda had fallen in front of the wide-open door onto all fours. Her screams were now moans, which merged with the song of bells from the nearby cathedral of San Lorenzo, announcing the dawn.

I ran up to her. “Is it the baby?”

Gritting her teeth, Leda shook her head. Her stricken gaze was on Clarice, who had also come running in her chemise, a shawl thrown around her shoulders. She knelt beside the fallen woman. “The child is coming, then?”

Again, Leda shook her head and gestured at the heirs’ room. “I went to wake them,” she gasped.

Clarice’s face went slack. Wordlessly, she rose and hurried on bare feet into the men’s antechamber. I followed.

The outer room looked as it always had-with chairs, table, writing desks, a cold hearth for summer. Without announcing herself, Clarice sailed through the open door into Ippolito’s bedroom.

In its center-as if the perpetrators had intended to draw attention to their dramatic display-a pile of clothes lay on the floor: the farsettos Alessandro and Ippolito had worn the previous night, atop a tangle of black leggings and Passerini’s scarlet gown.

I stood behind my aunt as she bent down to check the abandoned fabric for warmth. As she straightened, she let go a whispered roar, filled with infinite rage.

“Traitors! Traitors! Sons of whores, all of you!”

She whirled about and saw me standing, terrified, in front of her. Her eyes were wild, her features contorted.

“I pledged on my honor,” she said, but not to me. “On my honor, on my family name, and Capponi trusted me.”

She fell silent until her anger transformed into ruthless determination. She took my hand firmly and led me ungently back into the corridor, where Leda was still moaning on the floor.

She seized the pregnant woman’s arm. “Get up. Quick, go to the stables and see if the carriages have gone.”

Leda arched her back and went rigid; liquid splashed softly against marble. Clarice took a step back from the