The Scarlet Contessa. Jeanne Kalogridis

as though you’ve heard rumors.”

      “I have,” she said coyly.

      “From whom?”

      “From Nonna Beatrice,” she replied. Nonna had been Bona’s girlhood nurse and had accompanied the duchess from Savoy when the latter had married Galeazzo; Nonna had died the previous year. “She said your mother was a witch and saw the future.”

      I controlled the urge to shake the duke’s favorite daughter by her shoulders. “What else did she say about her? What else?”

      Caterina shrugged; her shell pink lips curved upward in delight at my agitation. “Just that.”

      Nothing I said could force her to say more. Shortly afterward the duchess joined us, with the curt remark: “No good ever came of fortune-telling.”

      With that, Bona dismissed the subject completely and ignored all of Caterina’s attempts to revive it. I spent the rest of the day marking the movement of the sun and struggling to suppress my growing dread. When dusk came, Bona dismissed me. While she was undressing and the chambermaids distracted, I did an unthinkable, inexplicable thing: I went to the trunk, slipped my hand beneath the fur throw, and made off with the diamond-littered velvet box. I wrapped my shawl tightly around me, tucking the hand that held the box beneath it, around my waist, and headed down to the first-floor loggia, bound for Matteo’s apartment.

      Lorenzo was there, leaving one of the guest quarters with his two gentlemen; the three of them wore cloaks and caps and riding gloves, and carried saddlebags. My hand was on the door when Lorenzo caught sight of me and waved.

      “Madonna,” he called, and handed his saddlebag to one of the men, then gestured to both of them to go on to the stables ahead of him. It was an odd hour, I thought, to be setting out for distant Florence.

      “A word with you,” he said as he approached. But the loggia was crowded with servants headed wearily back to their quarters; a pair of Cicco’s apprentice clerks brushed past us, laughing and joking. Lorenzo looked pointedly at the door handle to Matteo’s room. “Might it be a private word, Madonna Dea?”

      I dropped my gaze. He was a man in his late twenties—homely, to be sure, but with an accomplished swordsman’s shoulders—and I a young woman. His request was faintly inappropriate, but his manner held no whiff of impropriety. He was also unquestionably my better, so I unlocked the door and gestured for His Magnificence to enter. As I did so, I could not help but reveal the velvet box in my hand; he marked it without comment, and I offered no explanation.

      Inside, the fire was reduced to glowing embers, but the hearthstones still gave off a good deal of warmth. I stood near the door, the box still in my hand.

      Lorenzo removed neither cloak nor glove; his expression was as darkly serious as I had ever seen it. “Forgive my brazen request, Madonna,” he began. “I intend nothing improper. But I did not wish to be overheard.” He paused. “As I said, I know your husband well. It was my understanding that he was to have arrived home yesterday.”

      “Yes,” I said, embarrassed that my voice betrayed all my repressed tears. I expected him to reassure me then, to say something comforting, but Lorenzo was, apparently, no liar. Or perhaps, like me, he had recognized the danger in the Hanged Man.

      “I am sorry for that,” he said softly, “and for your worry. I had hoped for a word with him in private. But I can tarry no longer, as my wife and children will never forgive me if I’m not home by Christmas.” He studied me for a long moment. “I can trust you to deliver a message for his ears alone, can’t I, Madonna?”

      “Of course,” I answered, and he smiled faintly at my indignant tone.

      “If Matteo returns before tomorrow evening, would you tell him that I have taken the route to the north, and will await him at the lodge? He knows which one.”

      I lifted my brows in surprise at the direction; Florence lay well to the south of Pavia and Milan. “I will be sure to tell him, Your Magnificence.”

      “Lorenzo,” he admonished me cheerfully, then grew serious again; his gaze strayed to the velvet box in my hand. “God gave you a gift, Madonna Dea, one best practiced with discretion, and shown to few. I am glad to see your interest in it. It is not my place to give such a new acquaintance advice, but—”

      “I should like to hear it,” I interrupted bluntly.

      “The duchess and others mean well, but . . . Do not let them keep you from it. Such a gift was meant to be used. Remember the parable of the servant and the talents.”

      “I will,” I said.

      “Good. Then God keep you, Madonna Dea, until we meet again.”

      “And you,” I responded.

      As I watched him slip out the door, I felt a sudden conviction that our next encounter would come too soon.

      Chapter Four

      I spent that evening staring at the gilded illustrations on the cards. At times, the images evoked something very like recognition in me, so much so that for long moments, I was able to forget my worry. When exhaustion overwhelmed me, I stacked the cards neatly and returned them to the box, which I hid in the trunk at the foot of the bed.

      I slept poorly that night, pulled from sleep again and again by the clatter of frozen rain pelting Bona’s window. By dawn, the storm had passed, leaving the glass coated with a wavy layer of ice; even though the window stayed closed and shuttered, the groaning of the trees was audible, and the occasional ear-splitting crack of a breaking limb made me start. By midday, all clouds had cleared, and the sun gained strength. The ice on Bona’s window began to melt, revealing the hunting park beyond, glazed and glittering like a jewel.

      On the sixth day before Christmas, all at Castle Pavia were filled with festive cheer as preparations for the procession to Milan intensified; even Bona had forgotten her distress over the incident with the young woman and my reaction to the triumph cards. The season inclined Bona to be even more generous than usual. She feted her servants and courtiers in the great dining room, setting out the Milanese sweet bread called panneton, cheese, and good wine. I had no taste for any of it. When the duchess kindly released me in the early afternoon to do as I wished, I went to light the fire in Matteo’s quarters, then climbed the southwest tower steps and stood staring out toward Rome for hours.

      They came at dusk, galloping across the Lombard plain: a solitary horse and rider, black against the graying sweep of snow and ice and sky. I let go a cry of infinite relief; my breath clouded the glass, and I wiped it away, compelled and squinting as I struggled to recognize the rider.

      At last he reached the moat, reined in his horse, and shouted for the castellan to lower the drawbridge. Only then did I see the body slung over the saddle; I gasped and pressed my fingertips to the freezing glass.

      Somehow I calmed myself, gathered my skirts, and hurried down the stairs. I ran outside, across the cold, endless courtyard to the main gate just as the horse’s hooves struck a last, hollow thud against the wooden bridge and passed, ringing, onto the cobblestones inside the gate.

      I ran to Matteo, his belly pressed against the saddle, his long legs hanging down one flank of the lathered steed, his head and torso down the other, his arms horribly limp and dangling. He would have slipped easily to the ground had the rider not held him firmly in place.

      I cried out, thinking he was dead, but when the rider dismounted and helped him slide into my arms, he groaned.

      I do not remember the rider carrying him to his bed or shouting for the doctor. Others ran to help, but I do not remember them at all. Of the breathless moments before the doctor came, I recall fragments: Matteo’s hazel eyes, the whites now red, sparkling, utterly lost; Matteo’s brow and cheeks, an ugly mottled violet; his skin slick and glistening; Matteo’s limbs, spasming as cramps seized his gut. I held his head as he retched yellow-green vomit streaked with bright blood. I wiped his sunken face with a cold cloth that appeared magically in my hand and called his name, but he did not know me.

      If