The Devil’s Queen. Jeanne Kalogridis

across the cobblestone patio, she called out to the men behind the wall, but the battering was so loud her words were lost.

      Sister Niccoletta rose and seized my arm. “Come.” She pulled me with her toward the refectory door, and suddenly we were encircled by others—Maddalena and Sister Rafaela, Barbara and Sister Antonia and Sister Lucinda—all of us moving together.

      Lisabetta and Pippa remained at the table. “They’ve come for you,” Pippa gloated. “They’ve come and God will see justice done.”

      The others engulfed me. We swept out into the corridor, past the archway that opened onto the patio, past the nuns’ cells.

      Behind us, the hammering abruptly stopped, giving way to voices calling back and forth over the wall: Mother Giustina’s, a man’s. The sounds faded as we moved deeper inside the convent, passing the scriptorum and emerging from the other end of the building. Outside, the dying light colored the clouds in sunset shades of rose and coral against a greying lilac sky.

      We crossed the walkway and entered the chapel, the candles already lit for vespers, the air hazy with frankincense. The sisters brought me to the altar railing and formed a half-moon barrier around me. I knelt trembling at the railing; Saturn weighed so heavily on me I could not breathe. I reached for the rosary on my belt and began to recite from memory but stumbled over the words. My mind was not on the beads in my hand but on the black stone over my heart; my prayers were not truly to the Virgin but to Venus, not to Jesus but to Jove.

      Giustina’s shouts filtered in through the open doors. “You commit sacrilege! She is a child, she has done no one harm …!”

      Bootheels hammered against stone. I turned and saw them enter: men with heads unbowed, hearts uncrossed, as though these walls were not hallowed.

      “Where is she?” one demanded. “Where is she, Caterina of the Medici?”

      I crossed myself. I rose. I turned and looked beyond the shoulders of my sisters at four soldiers armed with long swords—as if we were a danger, as if we might give fight.

      The youngest of them, all gangling limbs and nerves, had eyes as bright and wide as mine. His chin was up, his hand on his hilt. “Back away,” he told my sisters. “Back away. We must take her, by order of the Republic.”

      Niccoletta and the others stood fast and silent. The soldiers drew their swords and advanced a step. A collective sigh, and the women scattered.

      All of them, except Niccoletta. She stepped in front of me, her arms spread, her voice hard. “Do not lay a hand on this child.”

      “Move away,” the young soldier warned.

      I caught hold of Niccoletta’s arm. “Do as he says.”

      Niccoletta was stone, and the soldier so nervous, he swung his sword. The flat hit Niccoletta’s shoulder and dropped her to her knees.

      The sisters and I cried out at the same instant Niccoletta did. I knelt beside her. She was speechless, gasping in pain, but there was no blood; her spectacles were still in place.

      The other more seasoned soldiers elbowed the younger man back before he could do further harm.

      “Here now,” one said. “Don’t press us to violence in God’s house.”

      As he spoke, two more soldiers entered, followed by a dark-haired man with silver in his trimmed beard and an air of authority. He had come to take me to die.

      Mother Giustina, red-eyed and resigned, walked beside him.

      With one hand, I gestured at my white veil and raised my voice; it echoed, clear and ringing, throughout the chapel. “What sort of excommunicated fiend would enter a sanctuary to drag a bride of Christ from her convent? Would dare to drag her to her doom?”

      The commander’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

      “I dare do neither,” he said, in a tone so good-natured that it broke the spell of fear. The women, arms raised in protest, slowly lowered them; the soldiers sheathed their weapons. “I have simply come to transport you, Donna Caterina, to a safer place.”

      “This place is safe!” Mother Giustina countered.

      The commander turned to her and politely said, “Safe for her purposes, Abbess, but not the Republic’s. This is a den of Medici sympathizers.” He settled his gaze again on me. “You see that we have sufficient force to take you, Duchessa. I would sincerely prefer to use none.”

      I studied him a long moment, then lifted my fingers to Sister Niccoletta’s face and stroked it; she touched her forehead to mine and began to cry.

      “Stop,” I said softly and kissed her cheek. Her skin was powder-soft and weathered, and tasted of bitter brine.

       Ten

      The commander asked me to dispense with the habit and change into a regular gown, but I refused. He did not ask a second time. Haste was critical, and when, for the first time in two and a half years, I stepped outside Le Murate’s walls into the street, I understood why.

      Eight soldiers on horseback had fanned out in a half circle around the cloister gate. Four of them held torches; four of them brandished swords against a crowd thrice their number but steadily growing.

      As the soldiers and I passed through the gate, a man in the crowd shouted, “There she is!”

      I could not see much of the crowd beyond the men on horseback, only a leg here, an arm there, a glimpse of a face. Color fled in the wake of twilight, leaving behind black and grey.

      In the center of the group of soldiers, two men held the reins of unmounted horses and a donkey. One of them handed off his reins to the other as he caught sight of us and hurried over.

      “Commander,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know how word got out …”

       No, it’s her, it is! The little nun—

       The Pope’s niece—

       Pampered in a rich nunnery all this time while we starve!

      The commander’s face grew still, save for a muscle that spasmed in his cheek. He looked out at his men and said softly, “I chose you because I thought you could hold your tongues. When I learn who has done this—I care not why, I care not how—I will see him swing.”

       Death to the Medici! a woman cried.

      A hurled stone struck just inside the ring of soldiers; it skipped and clattered to a stop near my feet.

       Bastards! Traitors!

       Give her to us!

      The commander looked down at it, then back at his second. “Get her mounted,” he said. “Let’s move on before it gets worse.”

      The troops ran to their horses. The second, a large, sullen-faced man, took my elbow as if I were an unruly commoner and swung me up onto the donkey. The animal looked reproachfully back at me, showing large yellow teeth that worried the bit.

      The commander, now astride a pale grey stallion, rode up alongside me and called to his men. We began to move: the commander and I side by side, each flanked by a mounted soldier. In front of us, behind us, men rode three abreast.

      Before all the men were in formation, three street thugs dashed between the horses’ bodies; one reached for me, the tips of his fingers grazing my leg. I cried out. The commander bellowed and leaned toward him with such urgent ferocity that the filthy youth shrank back, and was trampled by a horse.

       Abaso le palle! someone shouted. Death to the Medici!

      The soldiers closed ranks around us, and we made our way down the broad Via Ghibellina at an earnest trot.