The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany (38 page)

P
ART
VII

The Reign o
f
Granduca Ferdinando

A
NNI
1586–1591

C
HAPTER
79

Florence

O
CTOBER
1586

After the death of his brother and sister-in-law, Cardinale Ferdinando wasted no time in renouncing his position as cardinale of the church and returning to claim the dukedom of Tuscany.

Ferdinando’s first act of kindness as duca was to release his stepmother, Camilla, from the convent. Sadly, she had spent too many years in sorrow. She arrived at the Pitti Palace a stooped and demented old woman, barely able to make sense of her surroundings.

The new granduca quickly declared Antonio to be illegitimate, with no de’ Medici blood in his veins. The rumor of his true birth spread like wildfire through the streets of Florence. Yet once that was done, Ferdinando kept Antonio as a member of the Court and as a royal envoy. As long as Antonio was not a threat to the dukedom, he would remain in the embrace of the de’ Medici. Granduca Ferdinando also saw that Isabella’s children, Virgino and Nora, were brought up in the de’ Medici Court.

But despite these good deeds, the granduca forgot one promise he had made.

A visitor approached Florence’s walls on a black stallion. He dismounted at the Porta Romana, asking permission to enter the city walls.

“I am here to see Granduca Ferdinando. He knows me.”

“What business do you have with the granduca, Senese?” said the city guard.

“I cannot speak of it. But Granduca Ferdinando knows me.”

The guard scoffed.

“A Senese with a country accent and no papers. If the granduca wishes to see you, his secretary will send you a letter of admittance to these gates.”

The stranger and the big black stallion with the white star on his forehead set off a trot away from the Florentine walls.

“You ride a good-looking stallion,” the guardsman called after him. “For a Senese!”

The man didn’t look back. He was deep in thought. In the past, Cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici had summoned him to Florence. But now, because he had become granduca, the path to an audience was harder. But no matter. Cardinale or granduca, Ferdinando de’ Medici owed him a great favor. He would find a way.

With the death of Francesco, Granduca Ferdinando inherited the dwarf Morgante. He was quite old now, and dwarves usually lived short lives. The little man tried his best to entertain the children of his new master, though he was too aged to juggle or caper.

But the granduca himself, struggling with the effects of his brother’s ruinous reign, found Morgante’s company comforting, for there were few who had hated his dead brother more.

“I have often wondered about the man from Siena. If he had anything to do with the death,” said Morgante, watching the granduca’s eyes scan the wall where his sister’s portrait once hung.

“What’s that?” Ferdinando was startled out of his reverie. His face grew pale.

Could Morgante know about the painter from Siena?

“Here in this room,” said Morgante. “A man who wore a black silk scarf. There was a look in his eyes that chilled my heart. I remember thinking a man like that could murder a princess.”

Ferdinando sat up, unfolding his hands. He breathed freely now. Of course. The death of Isabella.

So many de’ Medici deaths.

And even though he now knew Morgante was speaking of the death of Isabella, Granduca Ferdinando thought about his brother. The dwarf was still prattling on. Something about a donkey and visitors. But the granduca wasn’t paying attention. He was remembering his promise to a Senese artist.

He shook his head, ridding himself of the memory. It was far too soon to associate himself with the artist whose paintings hung in the death chambers of his brother and sister-in-law.

Giorgio Brunelli must wait.

C
HAPTER
80

Fiesole

A
UGUST
1587

The trip to Fiesole was harder than ever. Giorgio had developed headaches that seized his whole body, nauseating him. Under the heat of the sun, his vision was blurred.

But this was worse.

He knelt on the hard stones of the floor. “Why will you not marry me?” he pleaded. “Have I not shown you my love, my devotion? Come with me to Siena!”

Carlotta shook her head, making the veil of her hair wave. “I cannot. I must remain in this house all the days of my life. I love you, and I will always be your lover. But I cannot marry you, Giorgio.”

“But why?”

“I belong to this house. I cannot leave.”

Giorgio’s face burned. “You could not be a Senese?”

“Fiesole is my home. I do not wish to leave here any more than you could leave Siena.”

“But
. . .
you—”

“But I am a woman? You think I should follow a man and take his identity, like wearing a new cloak?”

Giorgio looked into her eyes. She was right.

He looked down at the foot-polished stones of the house as if he could find some consolation there. His hands were clasped as in prayer.

Carlotta took his hands in hers.

“Can you not survive on my love without marriage?”

She grasped his hand. He still did not look up. He felt her inspecting his fingers.

“Giorgio!” she said. “Look at your fingernails!”

Cazzo! I speak of my eternal love, and she chides me about my cuticles.

“You have the sign of the crescent moon in the nail beds. What should be pink is speckled with white stars. Oh, Giorgio!”

Giorgio looked down at his hand.

“How strange,” he said. He did not spend time studying his hands.

“Giorgio! The paints! I warned you never to touch the pigments.”

He thought of the day his left hand had shot out, the nail on his pointer finger etching Virginia’s face on the canvas. Was the poison that had killed the de’ Medici to take his life now?

“State your business,” said the granduca, his eyes focused on the papers on his desk.

Carlotta let the silence draw out for a moment and then, when Ferdinando still didn’t look up, said, “I request the favor that you look at my face when addressing me, Granduca.”

Now he looked up. Astonished.

“How dare you!”

“Good, I have your attention. I come to you to discuss some unfinished business.”

“Ah! Compensation for your—services—to my younger brother, Duca Pietro?”

Carlotta narrowed her eyes in disgust.

“I rendered no services to him. When I was finished with our relationship, we parted ways. And there is no compensation due from a lover who asked me for poi—”

“Enough!” He cut her off midword. There was a moment of silence. Ferdinando looked at the door, making sure it was shut tight. “You tread on dangerous ground. What business do you have with me, Carlotta Spessa?”

“You know very well the business we had together. Some special paints, do you recall? And an arrangement was made between you and a certain Senese artist.”

Once more, the granduca’s eyes flicked to the door.

“He delivered his services,” Carlotta continued. “Now he finds you impossible to reach.” She paused. Her look was opaque. “You may not have known—”

“Yes, yes,” Ferdinando interrupted. “Do not play games with me.”

“So. I come to collect the debt long overdue.”

“You come on a very dangerous mission, Carlotta Spessa. I am sure you are aware of the long reach of a granduca. Fiesole is my back garden. I can pluck what I like—”

“I do know the reach of the de’ Medici. But I also know you are a most honorable man, unlike your brothers.”

He inclined his head, acknowledging the double-edged compliment.

“You are not a bad man, Granduca Ferdinando,” said Carlotta, fingering a pearl seed in her hair. “Merely a forgetful one. It is time to pay your debt to Giorgio Brunelli.”

The Granduca of Tuscany sent messengers to every convent within his land.

Nothing.

He made a trip to Siena, summoning Giorgio to the de’ Medici palazzo. Looking down from the balcony, he saw the artist dismount from a black stallion with a constellation of white blazing its forehead.

Look at this wreck of a man,
thought the granduca.

Giorgio’s face had wrinkled like a pumpkin left in the snow. His cheeks and eyes had sunken, his freckled skin withered over his thin face.

There is a despair about this one, a weakness from much more than the sun and the years.

When Giorgio was shown into his presence, the granduca could see the frost obscuring the once fierce red hair. He could almost smell the dull husk of age that clung to his visitor, a premature decay that bespoke grave failure.

“How is your father?” he asked.

“He died last winter,” answered Giorgio, unblinking.

“I am very sorry. He was a great horseman. Governor di Montauto was forever praising him.”

“Dead, too, of course,” said Giorgio, dismissing the memory with a wave of his hand. “A year after Virginia’s ride in the Palio. He was more Senese than Florentine—Siena mourned his death.”

As if agreed to, the two men bowed their heads in silence. They could hear the ticking of the gilded clock, a present from the Habsburg Court in Vienna.

“I want you to know that I have sent emissaries to every convent in Tuscany,” the granduca said finally. “There is no record of Virginia Tacci.”

Giorgio drew in a breath, letting the air rest in his lungs. He expelled it in a gush.

“I thank you for that—although that is ground we have already tilled. Perhaps you should have questioned Giacomo di Torreforte.”

The granduca wrinkled his forehead. “Di Torreforte?”

“He was a visitor to your brother’s court. A frequent visitor, he would have everyone believe. He always bragged of his presence there.”

“I know the di Torreforte family. The old
conte
is a distant cousin. This is the son, I presume?”

“The eldest son. His coach was seen near the Tacci pastures the day Virginia disappeared.”

The granduca’s eyes narrowed. “But you have no proof he kidnapped her?”

“None whatsoever,” said Giorgio. “Just the word of a shepherd, a cousin of Virginia, who saw the di Torreforte coach in the vicinity.”

The granduca folded his hands together, reminiscent of his long days of prayer.

A long moment of silence passed. Giorgio leaned forward, his voice hot with torment.

“I have killed two souls, and the one I seek is lost forever.”

“I am sorry,” said the granduca, fingering a ruby ring that had replaced his cardinale’s signet. “But if it is any consequence to you, I can tell you it is doubtful your paintings were the cause of my brother’s and his wife’s deaths.”

Giorgio stared at him.

“The paints were potent. I am certain. I am proof of that.”

“Perhaps,” whispered the granduca, bringing his face close to the artist’s. “But the cause of my brother’s death was arsenic, baked in a pear tart Bianca prepared. Meant to poison me.”

“I have heard that report,” said Giorgio. “There is no end to the wild fantasies and Florentine gossip! But we know better, you and I. You and I, Granduca Ferdinando. You and I.”

The granduca’s eyes lit up in anger. Giorgio held his gaze.

“We both know it was my work—our work,
ours!
—that killed them both,” said the artist. “Vengeance has been just. And now it kills me.”

“God will forgive us both more easily if we were not murderers,” said the former cardinale, clasping his hands in prayer. “As will history, in my case.”

“God,” said Giorgio, “knows the truth. No matter what we say. And for my part, I do not care how history colors me or whether I am included or not. I only care about Virginia. I regret that I did not poison di Torreforte. Would that I had pulled the ends of his black scarf tight around his neck until he strangled.”

Ferdinando unfolded his clasped hands and stared at Giorgio.

“Black scarf?”

“He always wore a black scarf tied loosely around his neck. Summer or winter. An affectation. Pretending to be an artist—”

“Wait!” said the granduca holding up his palm. “The dwarf Morgante spoke of a man in just such a scarf.”

Giorgio leaned forward. “Serenissimo! What did he say?”

Morgante arrived from Florence two days later in a de’ Medici coach.

Standing before the granduca, the aging dwarf craned his neck like a turtle.

“Forgive me, my hearing is gone,” said the dwarf. “Would your grace please be so kind as to repeat the question?”

The granduca spoke directly in the little man’s ear.

“The man from Siena, the one with the black scarf who met with my brother Granduca Francesco? Did he speak with a Senese accent?”

Morgante’s tongue poked around in his mouth, trying to remember.

“No. A bit queer, but no. He spoke like a Florentine, perhaps from the provinces. A nobile, all the same.”

“And you mentioned
. . .
something about a donkey, was it?”

Morgante swung his head back and forth.

“I beg your forgiveness. I have grown old and forgetful. I cannot remember.”

“Yes. Yes, you did. There was a donkey. I am certain.” Granduca Ferdinando’s eyes slid upward, unfocused in thought. “Yes. And a mention of visitors. No visitors. That’s what you said. No visitors.”

“A convent!” blurted Giorgio. “So it is true. She was sent to a convent!”

“Not any convent in Tuscany. And my contacts have found nothing in Rome. Morgante, you are dismissed.”

The dwarf suddenly raised a finger in the air. “I remember now. The granduca said she was ‘in the heart of the enemy.
’”

“Bravo, Morgante,” said Granduca Ferdinando. “Rest here tonight—tomorrow the coach will deliver you back to Florence.”

The old dwarf bobbed his head in gratitude. He shuffled toward the door.

“Take care, good servant,” said the granduca.

“You are a kind master,” said Morgante. His gnarled hand reached up to the handle of the door.

Giorgio watched the little man list left, then right, like a rocking boat, as he tottered out into the hall.

When the door clicked shut, the granduca’s eyes lit up.
“‘
Heart of the enemy.’ Yes, that is what I remember now, too.”

“It is hard to think of what states are not enemies of the de’ Medici,” said Giorgio.

The granduca flashed an acid look at his visitor. “You would do well not to forget your place, Senese.”

“My place is finding Virginia Tacci. Nothing else.”

The granduca rubbed a finger back and forth over his mustache, thinking.

“So,” said Giorgio. “What quarrels and enemies come first to mind?”

“Siena, of course,” said the granduca, fingering his cropped beard. He gave a curt chuckle. “But no Senese convent would keep such a secret.”

Giorgio glared at him, saying nothing. His dark look sent the granduca back to thinking. He chewed his lip.

“Again, Milan. The Sforzas are envious of the status of granducato that the Pope gave our Tuscany. France is our sworn enemy. Napoli detests the de’ Medici for the murder of Leonora. The Habsburgs bear a grudge for my brother’s treatment of Giovanna—”