I will summon you home as soon as it is safe, Caterina calls after him, her tone gay.
Once the door has closed behind him, her false cheer evaporates; she goes to the bed and sits down abruptly, heavily, on the edge. She presses her palms to her eyes, and as her lips suddenly contort, I go to stand beside her, and rest a hand gently upon her shoulder.
Im all right, she says from behind her hands, but I hear the tears in her voice. We remain as we are for a long moment, and then she lowers one hand and pats the mattress beside her. Giovanni is not coming back tonight. Sleep here, beside me.
I do as I am told, and lie down beside her. For a long time, she does not extinguish the bedside lamp, but stares up at the ceiling, thinking. I close my eyes and do my best to feign sleep. After an hour, perhaps two, Caterina puts out the light. Some time later, I can tell from her breath that she will not fall asleep. Nor will I. We lie awake together until dawn, each of us lost in dread of what is to come.
News of Imolas fall spreads quickly throughout the town of Forlì; Valentinos massive army is only two days march away. By the following evening, two town elders come to Ravaldinos fortress, where the Contessa of Forlì has taken refuge.
Unfortunately, I am not available to serve as my ladys ever-present talisman at the meeting. Caterina indulged in a hot bath half an hour before, and I am making use of the still-warm water when the elders arrive and request an audience with my lady. She gives me leave to remain behind, even though I suspect the citizens appearance does not bode well. I therefore bathe as quickly as possible, and struggle to pull my chemise and gown over still-damp skin.
The encounter between Caterina and the elders lasts only minutes. By the time I hurry out of Caterinas new chamber and up the vertiginous steps to Paradisethe lavish apartment she had built for herself in more peaceful times and where she receives all her gueststhe elders, Ser Ludovico and Ser Niccolò, are coming down the stairs and pass me. With them is one of the contessas personal bodyguards, guiding them out of the maze that is Ravaldino Fortress.
They nod politely and cordially enough to me, though they seem preoccupiedwho would not be, with Valentinos army on the way? I nod in response and make way for them to pass, deeply relieved that they seem calm. Obviously, there had been no argument with the contessa; perhaps they had come to express support for her.
Buoyed, I lift my skirts and hurry upstairs to find Caterina in the nearly bare reception chamber. She has left her chair, behind which a second impassive bodyguard stands, and is on her toes at the window, craning her neck to stare down at the stone courtyard Ser Niccolò and Ser Ludovico will cross on their way out of the fortress.
When I enter and pause to curtsy, she jerks her head over her shoulder to look back at me, and I know in an instant that all is lost.
Bastard! she swears. Son of a filthy whore . . . ! Her lips are trembling, her teeth gritted, her blue eyes wide with rage. I do not move, but remain genuflected as she turns her face back to the window and continues her tirade.
Luffo Numai! she shouts. Numai is the richest man in Forlì; he has served on the city council for some years and considers himself the spokesman for the townspeople. Thats who it wasthats the traitor! He convinced them all that they had no chance with me, that Valentinos army would slaughter them, that they were safer surrendering to him. She lets go a wild laugh. Theyll learn soon enough what becomes of those who trust the Duke of Valentino!
I lift my head. The Forlivese? I whisper.
They will not fight in my defense, she says, still facing the window. The bitter words steam the glass, and she wipes them away angrily as she stares down at the courtyard below. They are sending a messenger to Valentino to tell him so. And according to my apologetic guests, it was Luffo Numai who worked tirelessly to convince the citizens that surrender was their only hope for survival. Many of the people supported me, wanted to raise their swords for me, but Numai bullied them until they gave in. She lurches toward the window as her eye catches something below. Hah! There they go!
She turns toward me, skirts whirling, words tumbling out of her so rapidly I can scarcely follow them. I was polite to Niccolò and Ludovico, of course. I was gracious; I told them that, given the fall of Imola, I could not expect the citizens of Forlì to defend me. But they would have, had it not been for Numai. How much money, do you think, Valentino promised him? And governorship, of course, since Valentino will not be able to look after the cities himself.
She moves swiftly to the chair and throws on her cloak, then strides out of the chamber, through the door, and down the same steps Niccolò and Ludovico had recently trodden; since she continues to address me, I follow, breathless from the effort to keep pace with her.
Numai thinks he will steal my lands from me, she says darkly, and from my sons, but he will pay. The bastard will pay! I will see to it personally.
I follow her down to the second level, where tunnels have been cut deep into the stone wall to accommodate artillery. Caterina leads me to the end of one of them and calls to a nearby soldier.
Bring the gunners! she shouts, and as the soldier runs off to obey, Caterina moves to the side of one of the long bronze cannons, which is tilted upward forty-five degrees.
My lady does not need to search for the long-handled ladle, or the great wooden box that houses the gunpowder; she knows where both are kept, and fills the ladle full of the sulfurous powder with practiced ease, then pushes it down the cannons long barrel. At her bidding, I run and fetch a huge handful of hay to serve as wadding from a pile kept near the gunpowder box, and the long wooden rammer.
As I drop the hay into the muzzle and push it down with the rammer, Caterina goes to fetch the ball from a large pyramid-shaped stack. She staggers beneath the weight of the dressed stone sphere; she can carry it only crouched over, in both hands, with the ball at mid-thigh. But carry it she does, and as she steps toward the muzzle, I join her, and together we manage to lift the ball high enough to push it into the barrel.
By this time, six gunners have finally assembled, and they take over the rest of the duties.
Aim it at Numais palace, Caterina orders, knowing full well the likelihood of accurately striking such a distant target at dusk is poor. Even so, she watches avidly as one of the artillerymen uses a weighted plummet line to find the true perpendicular, then measures the angle with a quadrant and adjusts the muzzle accordingly. And when at last the metal cover is lifted at the cannons base, and the botefeux holding the lighted match is applied to the touchhole, she claps her hands with dark glee.
For you, Luffo Numai! she cries, a split second before the officer in charge waves us back, then orders:
Fire!
I flinch and put my hands over my ears.
At once, I find myself living the fortune-telling card known as the Tower. The cannon roars, paining my ears, and the heavy stone of the fortress walls, of the solid floor beneath my feet, trembles. In my mind, I feel myself falling, falling amid shattered stone, to the ground, to certain doom, to the end of everything I know.
At Caterinas command, the cannon fires again, and again.
The Lady of Forlì and I have been through the experience of the Tower twice now, and survived. But this third time will surely be our last.
At Caterinas command, the cannon fires again, and again.
The Lady of Forlì and I have been through the experience of the Tower twice now, and survived. But this third time will surely be our last.
In the midst of the deafening song of the artillery, I see our end and our beginning. And my mind turns to the distant past. . . .
PART I
Milan
December 1476April 1477
Chapter One
At dusk the screams cameoutraged, feminine, shrill. We would never have marked them had it not been for the smoke and the singers sudden silence. I heard them eight days before Christmas as I stood in the loggia, gasping in stinging cold air from the open window, brusquely unshuttered by a quick-thinking servant.
A moment earlier, I had been sitting in front of the snapping hearth in the duchesss quarters while one of her chambermaids roasted pignoli on a wood-handled iron peeltreats for the ducal heir, seven-year-old Gian Galeazzo Sforza, who stared blankly into the flames while his nurse brushed out the straw-colored curls covering his frail shoulders. Beside him sat his six-year-old brother, Ermesthick-limbed and thick-waisted, slow to move or thinkwith a straight cap of dull red hair. To their left sat their mother, Duchess Bona, a sheer white veil wrapped about her coiled, muddy braids, her lips pursed as she squinted down at the needle and silk in her plump hands. She was twenty-seven and matronly; God had dealt her a stout frame, squat limbs, and a short, thick neck that dwarfed her broad face. Though her features were not unpleasanther nose was short and round, her skin powder-soft and fine, her teeth small and fairly evenshe had a low forehead with thick, overwhelming eyebrows. Her profile was flat, her eyes wide set, her small chin lost in folds of fat, most of it acquired after the birth of her first child; yet at the court of Duke Galeazzo, to my thinking, there was no lovelier soul.
To Bonas left sat the dukes two natural daughters, results of his dalliance with a courtiers wife. The elder, Caterina, was, at thirteen, an example of physical perfection, with a lithe body that promised full breasts, clear skin, and a straight, well-proportioned nose, though her lips were rather thin. Two attributes propelled her past mere attractiveness into true beauty: full, loose curls of a gold so pale and bright it glittered in the sun, and eyes of a blue so intense that many who met her for the first time let go an involuntary gasp. The effect was enhanced by the natural confidence of her gaze. That afternoon, however, her gaze was sullen, for she had no patience with the needle and she hated sitting still; she paused often in her embroidery to glare at the fire and emit sighs of vexation. Had it been summer, she would have ignored the duchesss insistence on a sewing lesson and joined her father on the hunt, or gone riding with her brothers, or chased them across the sprawling courtyard. No matter that such activities were exceedingly inappropriate for a young woman, already betrothed and certain to wed within three years. Caterina had no fear of the duchesss wrath, not just because Bona was disinclined to anger, but also because her father the duke favored her and rarely allowed her to be punished.
The same could not be said of her nine-year-old sister, Chiara, a rail-thin, timid mouse with bulging brown eyes and a narrow, sharp-featured face. For all the attention the duke showed Caterina, Chiaraa slow-witted, obedient girlreceived only his unwarranted abuse; she rarely met anothers gaze and kept close to Bonas side. For Bonas heart was so great that she treated all the dukes children equally; her own son, Gian Galeazzo, who would someday rule Milan and all her territories, was shown the same tender kindness as Caterina and Chiara, both living proof of her husbands philandering. She was also good to his two bastard sons, who were then almost men, off in Milan learning the military arts at their stepfathers home. Although she had encouraged all of us children to address her as our mother, Chiara alone called her Mama. Caterina called her Madonna, my Lady; I called her Your Grace.
Bona was kind even to me, a foundling of murky origin. She claimed publicly that I was the natural child of one of her disgraced cousins in Savoy, and therefore related to the king of France. I had only the vaguest memory of a beautiful raven-haired woman, her features blurred by time, who murmured endearments to me in French; surely this had been my mother. I had recollections, too, of kindly nuns who cared for me after the raven-haired woman had disappeared. But when I pressed Bona privately on the subject, she refused to give any details, hinting that I was better off not knowing. She adopted me as her daughterif a lesser one, fated to spend my days as her most coddled lady-in-waiting. I was grateful, but ashamed of my origins. And being ashamed, I imagined the worst.
Almadea, she named me: soul of God. Over the years, I came to be called simply Dea, but Bona made sure I never lost sight of my soul. She was a pious woman, given to prayer and charity, eager to raise her children to serve God. Since Caterina took no interest in the invisible world, Gian Galeazzo was destined for a secular fate, and Chiara was slow, I alone was the diligent recipient of her ardent religious instruction.
The duke, who praised Caterina to the skies and cursed poor Chiara, had little to say to or of me. I was strictly Bonas projectalthough I, four years older than Caterina and often her chaperone, had many opportunities to be in the presence of His Grace, who doted on his blue-eyed, golden-haired daughter and paid her frequent visits. At those times, his eyes belonged to Caterina, and in those rare instances when his gaze strayed and caught mine, he quickly averted it.
On that eighth day before the Feast of the Nativity, the castle at Paviathe dukes favorite country lodgingswas bustling. Every servants expression was one of harried determination, every courtiers one of eager anticipation. In two days, the entire court of several hundred would make the daylong procession to the city, Milan, and the majestic Castle of Porta Giovia. There, on the day before Christmas, the duke would address the people, issue pardons, and distribute charity; when the sun set, he would ceremonially light the ciocco, the great Yule log, for his staff and servants in the great banquet hall. The fire would be faithfully tended throughout the night. The duke had never lost his childhood love of the holiday, so he also privately celebrated the ciocco ritual with his family each Christmas Eve, followed by a lavish banquet.
On that particular afternoon, in a festive gesture anticipating the annual pilgrimage, the duke sent a quartet of carolers to his wifes chambers. These were members of Duke Galeazzos choir, the most magnificent in all Europe. The duke took only a vague interest in the arts, leaving the acquisition of books and paintings to his underlings, but music was his passion, and he took great care to seek out the most talented vocalists and composers in all of Europe.
Gian Galeazzo, Ermes, Duchess Bona, Caterina, Chiara, and I sat facing west before the fire, with the open doorway to our left, while the carolerstwo men and two lads, the latter chosen by the duke for their pretty bodies as much as their talentstood just left of the hearth, lifting their amazing voices in song. Behind us, two chambermaids were busy packing Bonas Christmas wardrobe into two large trunks. Sitting on the floor by his elder brothers feet, Ermes dozed while little Gian Galeazzo sat dutifully enduring his nurses brush as he stared into the fire and listened; Duchess Bona hoped that the boys would catch their fathers passion for music. She and Chiara were distracted by their embroidery, and Caterina by a wooden ball at her foot, a toy belonging to her younger half-brothers. She slyly nudged it with her toe until it rolled a short distance and gently bumped the nose of the dozing greyhound coiled at Bonas feet. The dogthree-legged and, like me, one of Bonas rescuesopened one eye and promptly returned to its nap.