The Devil’s Queen. Jeanne Kalogridis

and I shared a supper of greasy soup, then went upstairs. Clarice undressed me herself. When she undid the laces on my bodice, the smooth black stone hidden there dropped to the marble floor with a click, and the battered bit of herb followed mutely. I bent to pick them up, bracing for angry words.

      “Did Ser Cosimo give you those?” my aunt asked softly.

      I nodded, flushing.

      Clarice nodded, too, slowly. “Keep them safe, then,” she said.

      She sent me to bed while she sat just outside, in the antechamber, and laboriously penned letters by lamplight. I put the herb and gem beneath my pillow and fell asleep to the halting scratch of her quill against the paper.

      Some time later, I was awakened by a wooden bang; an early summer storm had ridden in on a cold wind. A servant girl hurried into the room and closed the offending shutters to keep out the rain. I stared at the antechamber wall, where Aunt Clarice’s shadow loomed and receded as the flame danced, and listened to the shutters’ muted complaint.

      My sleep, when it finally came, was troubled by dreams—not of images but of sounds: of Clarice screaming for men to let go of her skirts, of horses neighing, of rebels chanting for our downfall. I dreamt of hoofbeats and the pounding of rain, of men’s voices and the faraway roll of thunder.

      Consciousness returned like a lightning strike; with a start, I realized that the drum of hoofbeats, the strident cadence of Clarice’s voice, and the lower one of men’s were not part of any dream.

      I pushed myself from bed and hurried to the shuttered window. It was low enough that I could look out easily—but the shutters were latched, and I too short to reach them. I looked about for a chair, and in that instant the door opened and a servant entered. She was not much older than I, but she was tall enough to unfasten the shutters at my impatient command and open them, then step back, her eyes enormous with fright.

      I stared out. On the vast, downward-sloping lawn, two dozen men sat on horseback in four militarily precise rows, sheathed swords at their hips.

      In that instant, my faith in Ruggieri’s magic crumbled. The Wing of Corvus was at best a harmless piece of jet. I would never grow up to rule; I would never grow up at all. I backed away from the window.

      “Where is she?” I whispered to the girl.

      “Madonna Clarice? At the front door, talking to two men. They told me to fetch you.

      “She is so angry with them,” the girl continued. “She did not want them to wake you. She is swearing at them so, she will surely provoke them—” She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she was going to be sick, then forced herself to calm. “Last night, she summoned me and said that, if anything happened to her, I was to see you safely to her mother’s people.” She glanced nervously at the door. “They will come looking for you, if we don’t appear soon. But …”

      I lifted my brows questioningly.

      “But we could leave by the servants’ stairs,” she continued. “They wouldn’t see us. There are places to hide here. I think Madonna Clarice would want that.”

      I expected Clarice did want that, and that she knew if I did not appear, the rebels would torture her in the hope of learning my whereabouts; they might well kill her. Escape seemed possible but unlikely—but my disappearance would undeniably put Clarice in terrible danger. Weighing this, I moved slowly to the bed, reached beneath the pillow, and found the hidden stone. I stared at its glassy surface, a black mirror in my palm, and saw my aunt refleeted there:

      Aunt Clarice, lifting me up to touch Lorenzo’s childish face. Clarice, lifting me out of the rebels’ reach, even as they tried to tear her apart. Clarice, who could well have departed with her husband and children, leaving us heirs in rebel hands. But like her grandfather, she did not abandon those of her blood, no matter how fatally afflicted.

      I placed the worthless gem upon the pillow, then pulled off the silver talisman, on its leather cord, and coiled it beside the stone. Then I looked up at the servant.

      “Get my gown, please,” I said. “I will be going down to meet them.”

       PART III

       Imprisonment May 1527–August 1530

       Six

      Images from that day are etched clearly in my memory: the long walk down the stairs, the sight of Clarice in the vestibule, a shawl tossed over her shoulders to hide the fact that a swath had been torn from the back of her gold gown. Her wrist—resting now in a sling—had left her pale with agony. Although the man she spoke to was more than a head taller and flanked by two aides of similar height, she seemed larger than them all. Gesturing sharply with her free hand, she railed as fearlessly at him as she had at Passerini the morning he came to tell her Pope Clement had been routed.

      As I moved down the stairs, the man listening to her glanced up. He was intense and very quiet, and made me remember something Piero had once said, that a dog who did not bark was far more likely to bite. His hair and beard and eyes matched his new brown cloak. He was Bernardo Rinuccini, head of the rebel militia.

      I remember how his eyes grew rounded at the sight of me, how Aunt Clarice’s mouth fell open as she glanced over her shoulder, stricken and profoundly speechless.

      “Promise me you won’t hurt her,” I told the general, “and I will go with you.”

      Rinuccini stared down at me. “I have no reason to hurt her.”

      “Promise me,” I repeated, gazing steadily at him.

      “I promise,” he said.

      I walked past Clarice to Rinuccini’s side; there was horror in her eyes as she watched me slip irrevocably from her care. But the greater horror was mine, to glimpse the proud spirit behind those eyes and to mark the instant it broke.

      They led me away. When I appeared in the doorway, the troops waiting on the lawn cheered. I moved quickly so that they had no cause to touch me, not until I was lifted up onto a horse and into the lap of a well-born soldier. He wore not a sword but a weapon I had never seen before: an arquebus, a contraption of wood and metal designed to blast balls of lead into distant victims, like a miniature cannon one might hold in one’s hand. He regarded me with victory and loathing; never was a trophy more scorned or prized.

      The ascending sun coaxed the previous night’s rain from the earth; the horses moved through low swirls of mist as we rode across the quiet countryside. Numbed by the enormity of my decision, I rode in mindless dread, my back pressed to my guardian’s chest.

      By midmorning we had returned to the city. We headed not south to the great Piazza della Signoria and the gallows but north. As the streets were busy, we attracted much attention, but most failed to notice a little girl huddled against one of the soldiers; by the time a few had, we had already passed, and their faint curses, like stones hurled from too great a distance, did not frighten me.

      Our procession turned onto an unfamiliar street lined with stone walls. They were thick and high, unbroken save for three narrow doors at long intervals.

      We stopped at one of the doors. Set into it were two iron grates, one at eye level, behind which a black cloth had been hung, and an uncovered one at foot level.

      An aide dismounted and called at the covered grate, while another soldier swung me down from the horse. The door opened inward, an aide pushed me inside, and someone quickly shut the door behind me.

      I stumbled forward onto a stone patio that lay in the shadow of a large building and glanced up at the woman who faced me. She was worn and colorless and dressed in black but for the white wimple beneath her long veil. She put her finger to her lips for silence,