The Scarlet Contessa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “Why would I not?” I countered.

  She drew a long hitching breath and loosed a torrent of childish tears. “Don’t leave me,” she sobbed, and threw her arms about my shoulders, pulling me to her. “Don’t ever leave me, Dea!”

  Her distress was so honest, so wrenching, that I returned the embrace. “Hush, Madonna, hush,” I murmured maternally. “I’ll stay as long as you like.”

  I soothed her for several minutes until she finally fell quiet, then let loose a hiccup.

  “I hated my father,” she said suddenly, her chin resting upon my shoulder. “Hated him.” I waited for her to speak of his heinous crimes, but instead, she added, “He never loved me—not at all. He loved my beauty. I was only a bauble to him, like his jewels or his choir or his mistresses . . . something he would parade in front of others to provoke their envy.”

  “That’s not true,” I said perfunctorily, but she drew back and looked solemnly into my eyes.

  “It is true, Dea. Men don’t deserve to be loved.”

  “I knew one who did,” I said with sudden vehemence.

  Caterina did not let me leave her that night. She would not even let me go to one of the cots, but insisted I lie beside her on her soft feather bed. She was exhausted from weeping and quickly fell asleep; I lay listening to her soft breath and thought about the duke, and Matteo, and the mysterious cards.

  On the next day, the Feast of Saint John, news of the duke’s assassins arrived in the afternoon and spread swiftly throughout the court. Shortly after the murder, Lampugnani’s body had been stolen from the Church of Santo Stefano by a group of young toughs and dragged over the city’s cobblestones. By the time the crowd was done, the corpse was mutilated beyond recognition, and the citizens took gruesome glee in feeding the tattered remnants to pigs.

  Visconti and the third conspirator, a youth named Olgiati, who had gone into hiding shortly after the murder, had been betrayed by relatives and captured; they were awaiting their fates in Porta Giovia’s dungeon. Bona had coolly sentenced them to the wheel, where they would be ripped in two from neck to loins while still alive.

  According to her chambermaids, the duchess had not shed a single tear since hearing of her husband’s death. Newly widowed myself, I felt certain grief would soon overcome her, and wanted to be at her side when the storm finally broke. But one of Galeazzo’s attendants informed me that the duchess would not need my services that day; I was at liberty, except for the fact that I needed to gather up my belongings, as the court was to return to Pavia the very next morning.

  I headed for my little closet, thinking to make quick work of packing. I had not made it far, however, when Caterina, curiously unaccompanied, came running after me. She was breathless and pale in a high-necked black velvet gown; her hair had not yet been crimped, but hung uncombed and tousled about her shoulders, free of nets or veils. Apparently she had seen me pass by her chambers while her ladies were in the midst of grooming her. I stopped and turned to look askance at her, until I noticed the red velvet box in her hands.

  “Where are you going?” she gasped.

  There was no point in lying; Caterina would have her way regardless. “To my closet, Madonna,” I admitted. I could scarcely lift my gaze from the box.

  She looked about to reassure herself no one could hear us. A pair of launderesses were down at the far end of the loggia, laughing as they collected soiled linens from the rooms and paying us no heed.

  “I will go with you,” she said softly.

  I bowed to indicate assent. Together we entered the little closet adjacent to Bona’s chamber, and pulled the curtain so we would not be seen. I gestured for Caterina to sit upon the cot I shared with Francesca. She did so, and set the box down upon the mattress with a look of sly complicity.

  With a small, triumphant smile, she said, “Ask me no questions; suffice it to say that Bona does not know I have the cards, and she need never know. You may keep them, on one condition.”

  “That I read them for you, whenever you wish,” I said slowly. “Madonna, I cannot do that. Bona will discover the theft, and I will be blamed.” I picked up the box and proffered it to her. “This was a priceless gift to her from Lorenzo de’ Medici. It must be returned.”

  She rose quickly and stamped her foot, a childishly imperious gesture. “You will obey me!”

  She would have added the phrase, or I shall tell my father, but clearly realized that she had lost a great deal of bargaining power. Instead she sputtered and cast about for some new threat to evoke my obedience.

  Softly, I responded, “Bona of Savoy is my mistress. I am obliged to obey her.”

  “You took the cards from her once before!”

  “Yes,” I allowed, “but that was before I saw how it offended her. Surely you have seen it, too, Madonna; she no longer trusts me with her whole heart. And now she is regent of Milan, and obliged to mete out justice. Should she find me to be a thief—with me knowing full well she did not want me to touch the cards ever again—she would be forced to punish me.”

  Caterina sat back down and let go a grudging sigh. Without looking at me, she admitted, “That’s true. But . . .” She leaned sideways and lifted the diamond-studded lid, exposing the cards inside. They were facedown, revealing the floral design on the back. I reached for them involuntarily, and Caterina caught my wrist.

  “Read them for me,” she said. “Tell me my future.”

  The fire flared suddenly as it found a bit of pitch; Caterina and I both started. She laughed nervously, and let go of my wrist.

  I took hold of the cards. “Only this once, Madonna,” I warned. My lip still felt the sting of the duke’s blow. “And if you wish me to be honest with you, you must swear that if the future is not to your liking, you will not turn your anger on me. Otherwise, I will confess everything to Bona.”

  Caterina nodded eagerly in agreement. I did not trust her, but I also could not resist the cards.

  Just as I had for the duke, I mixed the cards thoroughly, instructed Caterina to cut them, then gathered them up and set three cards facedown in front of her.

  “The past,” I said, turning over the first card. Four golden goblets were painted against a white background decorated with green leaves and tiny flowers; a banner reading a bon droyt, rightfully, was unfurled across the center of the card. It was a motto often used by the Sforza, indicating that God had made them earthly princes because they were deserving of it.

  Words came unbidden to my lips. “The Four of Cups. Luxury. A coddled childhood, and much wealth.” I paused; the shining, gilded cups held something as dark and bitter as the draught Bona had forced me to drink when Matteo had died. “Yet this is not a good thing, but a tarnished past to be overcome. This is a dream from which you must wake.”

  I turned over the second card. There again was the image of a barefoot young man in rags, with a walking stick resting upon his shoulder.

  “The present,” I said. “Once more, the Fool. The beginning of a long journey, one that will leave she who takes it much changed. The fool loses his naïveté in the end.”

  Caterina leaned an elbow upon the desk and frowned down at the image. “Of course, we’re returning to Pavia, but there will be no more journeys after that.”

  “Perhaps not immediately,” I countered, “but soon.” I turned over the third card, and announced, “The future.”

  I had barely set it down again when Caterina reared up, almost knocking the cards from the bed.

  “No!” she whispered harshly. “It’s a trick, all of it! You’re doing this to frighten me!”

  She began to weep as I stared down at the image of the Tower, torn asunder by a lightning bolt. Abruptly, I saw myself standing inside a wall made of thick stone; not only Caterina but I, too, dwelled inside the very Tower that would someday be blasted to its foundations. I heard a sudden deafening boom, like thunder, and put my hand against the wall to steady myself. It trembled violently, but did not fall.

  A second boom
, and the wall quaked harder, but it did not crumble. Not yet.

  But in time it would be lost, just as the duchy of Milan had been torn from Galeazzo’s iron grip.

  My attention returned suddenly to Caterina; I cast about for whatever truth might calm her. I, too, was shaken. I had not wanted to scare her.

  “This does not mean death,” I said honestly. “Not for you. You will not die as your father did, Madonna. But . . .” I gazed at the image, and fancied the ground shook beneath my feet. “This is an upheaval, an end to old ways. This is destruction.”

  “I don’t want it!” Tears streaked Caterina’s cheeks as she wrung her hands. “I don’t want any trouble! A bon droyt! A bon droyt! Why does God give us noble blood? Why does He give us power, but refuse to protect us? It isn’t right!”

  “Perhaps not,” I answered soothingly. “But the Tower stands a long way from you, and you have a long journey ahead. Perhaps along the way you will find the means to avert whatever disaster this represents.” I paused. “But there is one thing you must know.”

  She looked over at me, stricken.

  “These are castle walls. Your castle, Madonna. You will rule someday.”

  She wiped her streaming eyes and nose upon her black sleeve and settled back onto the cot, faintly mollified.

  “You must never leave me,” she said. “Never.”

  Though I was sorely tempted to keep the triumph cards, I convinced Caterina to return them to the duchess’s trunk. Early the next morning, on the twenty-eighth of December, the court returned to bucolic Pavia. Bona traveled in a private carriage, accompanied only by Galeazzo’s right-hand man, Cicco, and the military adviser, Orfeo da Ricavo, in whose arms the duke had taken his last breath. I would have made my way on horseback, but Caterina insisted that I sit in the wagon beside her on the long ride home, along with Bona’s children and their nurses. Caterina had frantically demanded that I sleep in her chamber every night, and Bona kindly allowed it, even though I far preferred the duchess’s calm company to that of the duke’s selfish daughter. The weather had finally warmed, and a slow drizzle of rain accompanied us as the wagon’s wooden wheels slung mud on the soggy journey home.

  Once back in Pavia, eight-year-old Gian Galeazzo and his younger brother, Ermes, moved into their father’s luxurious bedchamber, while their mother, Bona, declared herself regent and formally assumed power until Gian Galeazzo reached his majority. She spent her first day back privately consulting Cicco in the duke’s gloriously appointed study.

  She summoned me briefly to the study, where she sat at Galeazzo’s huge ebony desk. The new regent of Milan looked haggard and distracted by numerous worries; at the same time, there was unmistakable relief, even lightness, in her gaze and bearing.

  As Cicco looked on, Bona handed me a letter. I glanced down at it. It was dated the twenty-fourth of December, and it bore the signature of the abbott of the monastery of San Marco in Florence.

  “You will be allowed to bury your husband at San Marco,” Bona said gently. “I have made arrangements for your travel. When you arrive in Florence, you will stay at the convent of Le Murate.”

  I put my hand to my mouth in an effort to stifle a sob, but failed altogether. Bona rose from Galeazzo’s desk and wrapped her arms around me as I wept.

  Late that afternoon, I resorted to subterfuge by asking Francesca to pack my things and leave them in Matteo’s room. After nightfall, when Caterina was fast asleep, I went to my husband’s chamber and retrieved his secret papers and the little black pouch containing the mysterious brown powder, and slipped them into the trunk Francesca had filled with my things.

  At Caterina’s insistence, I lay beside her in her feather bed, and woke well before dawn. Happily, Galeazzo’s daughter did not stir, but lay so silent I could not hear her breath. I slipped from the bed, dressed quickly, and hurried down to Matteo’s chamber. Just before sunrise, a pair of grooms came to take my trunk, and the three of us headed for the stables. The cold, light mist settled upon my cheeks and eyelashes.

  My covered wagon was waiting. The driver, who before age had taken its toll had been master of Bona’s stables, was a tall, skeletal man with sunken cheeks and a cottony white beard. Beside him sat his aged wife, a tiny, equally frail-looking creature with one blind, clouded eye. To my amazement, the driver leapt from his seat and helped the young grooms push my trunk into the back of the wagon with ease. He then caught my elbow and, with an arm thinner than my own, pulled me up into the wagon with impressive strength.

  I would have sat beside the pair, but the driver, Gennaro, gestured emphatically for me to sit in the back, and held open the canvas flap for me; he pointed in the direction of the sun, which had just begun to infuse the thick, gathering clouds with a pinkish red glow. The mist would soon turn to cold rain.

  I yielded, and crouched low as I moved inside the wagon, half of which was covered with cushions, pillows, and fur throws. The other half bore my trunk, and a coffin fashioned from fresh-hewn, fragrant pine.

  I fell to my knees upon the cushions and threw my arms about the coffin as if it were Matteo himself; I put my cheek against the smooth, sanded wood and wept. I had known, of course, that my husband would accompany us, but I had not realized he would travel at my side.

  Perhaps later we could go together to Florence.

  In the distance, thundered rumbled, and the mist turned abruptly to steady rain. The driver called to the horses; the wagon shuddered and began to sway. I held fast to the coffin, and did not look up until I heard a girl shriek and the horses neigh. I poked my head out through the half-open flap and saw Caterina.

  She was barefoot, clad only in her woolen nightgown, her long braid bouncing as she rushed toward the wagon. I watched, stricken, as she waved her arms, her face contorted with grief, and shrieked my name.

  “Dea! Dea!”

  Her desperation and fear were unfeigned, her voice so heartrendingly shrill that I squeezed my eyes shut.

  I retreated back into the wagon and clutched the coffin, sobbing, until distance and pelting rain swallowed the sound of her cries.

  Chapter Eight

  We traveled southeast across the plain, along the banks of the Po, and crossed the rushing waters at San Pietro, before the river grew wildly serpentine. From dawn to dusk I rode inside the covered wagon next to the pine coffin, my palm pressed to the wood as if it were Matteo’s hand. From time to time, the rain grew deafening as it pelted the canvas, but it stopped altogether as we passed Piacenza’s city walls in the late afternoon; I opened the back flap and glimpsed the region known as the Emilia, its hillsides terraced with vineyards. We did not pause there, but continued half an hour after the sun had set, coming to rest finally at an inn. By then, I was chilled to the bone; the wagon’s interior had been so cold I could see my breath.

  There was but one room to be found, so I took the straw mattress while the driver and his wife—who, I learned, was totally deaf—lay snoring upon pillows on the floor. While they slept like the dead, I left the candle burning and delved into my trunk to take out Matteo’s papers. I meant to slip them into my cloak, intending to read them the next day, but was so restless that I began to read On the Egyptian Mysteries, attributed to Iamblichus.

  I did not read for long. It had been four years since I had applied myself to Latin, and my understanding was at times wanting, but what I understood frightened me. Iamblichus spoke of pagan gods, demons, astrology—and a personal demon whose name could be known by studying one’s natal stars. Worse, it spoke of telling the future: Ecstasy or alienation of mind is the basis of divination, also the mania which accompanies disease.

  Troubled, I soon left off reading. Even so, I slipped the papers into my cloak; if Matteo had thought this subject worthy, I was obliged to understand why.

  The next day we passed Parma, and more carefully terraced rows of grapevines, bare and gnarled in winter. I had no opportunity to read more; the elderly wife had begun to cough, and I made her lie in the wagon besid
e Matteo while I sat beside the old driver and stared at the nearby Apennine Mountains, forested with bare-limbed chestnut, beech, and oak.

  That night we stopped some hours past Modena. This time, the accommodations were better, and I had my own room. I stayed up quite late rereading Iamblichus; at the manuscript’s end was a letter in the vernacular, written in the same modern hand that had provided the translation of the ancient Greek ritual, yet not part of it.

  To my beloved, it said,

  This is in reference to the ritual I sent for your edification, in hopes it—and this translation of Iamblichus of Syria, a follower of our dear Plato—will set you well upon the path to union with the Divine.

  The ritual predates both men by centuries, but was assuredly used by them and their students. Its purpose: to invoke the personal daemon, as the Greeks called him; we know him better as the Holy Guardian Angel, that divine inner genius which guides our soul surely to union with its Creator. For God cannot be grasped through the mind, or through contemplation alone, but through the heart, which is exalted in ritual. As a pagan, Iamblichus was not blessed with the knowledge of our Savior, and so much of his writing reflects this ignorance, but much of it is of great use to us today. I am of the belief that God granted His grace even to the heathens, in order that those ignorant of Christ yet men of good will could come to know Him through the dedicated practice of the rite of the Bornless One.

  How shall we know, you ask, whether the ritual has been successful? Heed Iamblichus, who says, “The arrival of the archangels is preceded by the appearance of light.”

  Of the angel, I must say little, for each man has his own, and each soul must travel its own path to divine union; one man’s salvation cannot be another’s. It is therefore imperative that once you have attained conversation with the angel, you speak of it to no one, lest you fall into the error of believing that you alone have a special connection to the Divine, or that the lessons meant for you alone should be inflicted upon others.