The Scarlet Contessa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “My lady-in-waiting, too,” she said, staring at me. “I should not like to be the only woman there.”

  With a long-suffering air, the monsignor nodded, and I was helped from the wagon just as the bridge struck the earth with a thundering rumble. A sudden breeze lifted the stray, damp tendrils from my neck and made my white veil flutter as I followed Caterina and the guards over the long, narrow bridge. I was too busy watching my step to notice that, one by one, the guards slipped past Caterina to run into the open maw of the keep; I did not realize it until Caterina herself grabbed my elbow and spoke into my ear.

  I could barely hear the words above the sudden murmur of the crowd.

  “Quickly, quickly!” she urged. “Run!”

  Startled, I did as she ordered, and ran into the dank courtyard, where the guards were climbing the stairs toward the roof; the sweating Feo—a short, wiry spider of a man—was already reversing the crank. As the drawbridge lifted off the ground, Caterina was one step from entering the courtyard. There she turned, and, shaking her fist in the air, cried, “Death to the Orsi! Long live the Riario!”

  With that, she ran up to join the soldiers on the roof, where some of the cannon were kept; I following, gasping. By the time I made it up the stairs, Caterina was already at the battlement, taunting her former captors.

  “Assassins! Traitors! Remember this moment when you are being drawn and quartered in the town square! I will destroy the House of Orsi!”

  Some in the crowd cheered—not so much a display of loyalty, I suspect, as one of approval that the drama had just grown exciting. Monsignor Savelli sat astride on his horse, his hand covering his gaping mouth. Cecco Orsi was on his feet, red-faced, striking the air with his fists; his brother sat nearby, stunned into silence.

  “I will kill your children!” he screamed, and drew a dagger. “Do you see me? I will kill them all now unless you return at once!” He ran to the wagon and caught Ottaviano’s arm in an unsuccessful attempt to pull the wailing boy out. “I swear, I will kill him now!”

  Caterina’s face contorted with hatred. She bent down, caught the hems of her skirt and chemise, and in a single, swift move, lifted them to her waist to bare the golden tuft of hair between her thighs.

  She pointed to it, in a gesture of ultimate contempt, and shouted down: “Go ahead! Can’t you see, you fools, that I have the stuff to make others?”

  And with that, she dropped her skirts and turned her back to them.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  By then I was behind Caterina, and offered my outstretched hand to help her climb down from the battlement. Hers was trembling as she took the great step down from the stone ledge, and as she hopped down into my arms, her expression held no fury, no indignation, but only fear.

  “Stay hidden, but watch the Orsi carefully,” she begged, gripping my forearms. “The Orsi won’t dare harm my children, I know they won’t harm them, but . . .” Tears filled her eyes and she wiped them away impatiently. “I have to help Feo with the artillery now. But if it looks to you as though the Orsi really intend to hurt my darlings, call for me, and I will engage them in negotiations again.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Caterina hurried to the next battlement and crawled skillfully up the parapet to the platform, where Feo and three of his skeleton crew had finished loading powder into one of the cannons and were just dropping a bleached stone ball down the muzzle.

  I could hear Caterina questioning her castellan about the precision of his aim as I stepped onto the parapet and pressed my body against the rough stone of the battlement to peer down at the Orsi, as Caterina instructed. On the other side of the moat, Monsignor Savelli’s attendants had drawn longswords; they and their horses now stood between the wagon and Cecco Orsi, who had been forced to unhand Ottaviano. While his brother Ludovico sat dazed and downcast upon his horse, Cecco was still on his feet, waving his dagger and cursing the monsignor for his stupidity. In the wagon, little Giovanni Livio was crying as his nurse, Lucia, held him and attempted to shush him; Ottaviano looked just as unhappy as his youngest brother, but Bianca sat up straight and proud, a half smile on her face as she looked up at the battlement where her mother had just appeared.

  The Forlivese were buzzing. Suddenly, three of them ran forward to distract Savelli’s aides, and Cecco and Ludovico quickly seized Ottaviano and pulled him to the very edge of the moat.

  “Come out, Caterina Sforza, and see your eldest son die!”

  Young Ottaviano began to sob as Cecco held the dagger to his throat.

  I looked to Caterina. She had heard the shout, and calmly nodded at her castellan, Feo; in response, he held a flaming cord to the cannon’s touchhole.

  She peered around the battlement and shouted: “Here is my answer!”

  At once, she stuck her fingers in her ears; I did the same, and grimaced at the teeth-chattering boom.

  The ball sailed over the heads of those assembled on the other side of the moat, followed by a puff of white smoke. Many in the crowd screamed, and, as the smoke began to clear, I saw Ludovico Orsi and Savelli begin to ride off.

  Cecco was so unnerved, he dropped both his dagger and his hold on Ottaviano, who ran wailing back to the wagon as it lurched and began to slowly follow Savelli.

  Caterina howled gleefully at the chaos. “Run!” she shouted scornfully at Cecco. “Go ahead, run home, and see for yourself how accurate Feo is with his cannon. I will destroy your palazzo and the homes of all those who would attack the Riario!”

  As Cecco ran in pursuit of Ottaviano, who had managed to catch up to the wagon and was pulled inside, some of the Forlivese snickered.

  Caterina turned at the sound. “Laugh at Cecco while you may,” she shouted at the crowd, “but the homes of those who attacked my husband will suffer. People of Forlì, hear me! Destroy my enemies, and I shall treat you as my brothers from this time forth. Fail to act, and three days henceforth, you will rue it.”

  The Forlivese grew silent. By then, Savelli and Ludovico were out of sight, and the wagon fast disappearing. Cecco had swung onto his horse and was cantering after them. When Caterina came down from the battlement, the crowd began to disperse.

  By the time Feo fired the second and third shots—aimed at the palace of the Pansecco, who had supported the Orsi, and at the humbler home of Ronchi, the military captain who had finished Girolamo off—the crowd had disappeared.

  The castellan, Feo, was an odd-looking man, short of torso and long of skinny limb, with red hair shorn so close I could see the scalp beneath it. His face was triangular, with a long, sharp chin and overlarge nose and mouth; his great ears stuck out from his head like two open doors. His uniform looked and smelled as though he had worn it for months without washing it, or himself; his cheeks and hands were grimy from soot and black powder.

  One might expect crude speech from such a hideous, dirty little man, but when Feo swung down from his perch beside the cannon, he faced Caterina and cried, with diction that would have made any royal courtier proud:

  “All hail our Lady of Forlì! All hail the Riario! Bow, my fellows, and let us cheer the courageous and brilliant Caterina Sforza!” With that, he bowed deeply, with a sharp glance about him to make sure his men did likewise, then he went down on one knee and removed his helmet.

  “All hail the Lady of Forlì!” he crowed, and his men echoed the cheer. “All hail the Lady of Forlì!”

  Caterina beamed, exultant; she grasped Feo’s filthy hands and lifted him to his feet. “All hail to my clever castellan,” she said happily, and beneath the grime, Feo’s gaunt cheeks blushed. “Without your loyalty and wit, Ravaldino would not be mine! You shall be well rewarded!”

  And with that, she pulled the velvet purse Savelli had given her from her bosom, and presented it to him.

  Feo cleared his throat and dropped his adoring but reverent gaze, though he was not so overwhelmed by his mistress’s generosity that he forgot to weigh the coins in his hand. “You are too kind, Your Illustri
ousness. I shall put this aside, lest we need it to further our cause.” He shoved the bag into his pocket and gestured toward the staircase. “Our watchman will remain on duty and will call if anyone else comes to the moat. In the meantime, I took the liberty of having the cook prepare a feast from our finest provisions. Will you honor us by dining with us?”

  Caterina grinned at him. There was not a whiff of flirtatiousness in Feo’s tone, or in hers; they were comrades-at-arms who much admired each other’s courage and cunning. “The honor shall be mine, Captain,” she said.

  The food—roasted game, bread baked in Ravaldino’s ovens, and apples from the previous autumn—seemed heavenly after our imprisonment. To the music of the pipe and tambourine, Caterina danced with Feo and all of his men, and insisted I join them for a round.

  Yet even in the midst of victory, I was apprehensive. Although I had never before been inside the fortress, the interior walls of Ravaldino were eerily familiar to me, as if I had always known them, as if I knew that I would see them again all too soon.

  The very next day, a group of one hundred townspeople—the carpenter who had repaired the staircases in the Palazzo Riario and his family, the widowed seamstress who tailored Caterina’s gowns, the hunter who sold us fresh game, and all the others who had made a decent living providing services and products to the Riario family—appeared at the moat and politely asked to join Caterina. They did not care for the Orsi, they said; Cecco Orsi was “wild with fury” and had defied Savelli, calling him an outsider who had no business meddling in Forlì’s affairs. The townsfolk feared that violence would break out, and they wanted no part of it. None of them were rude enough to mention that they feared Caterina’s cannon just as much.

  Would the Lady of Forlì let them in?

  “First,” she shouted, “you must tell me what has become of my children.”

  The children were all safe in Savelli’s hands, leaving the Orsi brothers without the ability to negotiate. Power had shifted, and the Forlivese were not fools.

  We recognized each worker, who had brought with him his entire family. As the drawbridge was lowered, Tommaso Feo and his men stood on the battlements watching lest Savelli or Cecco Orsi take advantage of the situation. Caterina’s instincts were correct, and the refugees grateful; Feo was relieved that he had recently restocked the larder. Ravaldino was large enough to house the entire population of the town, with the result that we were not overcrowded, but quite comfortable.

  On the next day, the sixteenth of April, Feo’s watchman spied four riders galloping across the plain toward Ravaldino; they came not from town, but from the north. Caterina and I ran to the northern battlements to watch them come.

  As the riders raced toward us, they grew larger and larger, until my eye was just able to make out the banner one of them held: scarlet and white, the colors of the Sforza.

  “Milan!” Caterina bellowed next to my ear, almost deafening me. “Messengers from Milan!” Her tone contained both relief and apprehension: relief that Ludovico had heard and responded to her request; apprehension that these four men might not be heralds announcing an approaching army, but messengers come to break the bad news that the army would never arrive.

  She climbed down from the battlement and hurried down the stairs to meet them, but instinct held me fast to the spot. The riders grew closer, closer, until I could clearly see the scarlet and white tunics three of them wore, and the matching caparisons on their horses.

  The fourth wore a plain gray tunic and rode an unadorned black horse, yet he caught my eye more than the others. I had seen him before, riding across the icy Lombard plain.

  The next instant, I scrambled down from the battlement and ran after Caterina down the stairs, calling Luca’s name.

  Luca and I were still embracing as the herald from Milan and his two guards spoke briefly to Caterina before continuing on into the town of Forlì.

  Luca’s face was sun-browned and parched from the wind, his clothes dusty, his toothy grin dazzling. His lips did not pull away from mine until we heard the drawbridge start to retract; even then, he kept an arm about my waist, forcing me to bend with him as he bowed to Caterina.

  “Your Illustriousness!” he said, with excessive good cheer. “I am delighted, but not surprised, that you have turned the tables on your enemies. I have a letter from your uncle.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved a folded square of paper, sealed with red wax and worn at the corners. “May I tell you what it says?”

  “Troops from Milan!” Caterina crowed, snatching the letter from him.

  As she broke the seal and unfolded it, Luca was unable to contain himself. “More than just troops, Madonna. Five thousand troops from Milan and Bologna!”

  I let go a whoop of joy, which prompted Feo, who was finishing raising the drawbridge, to do the same; one of his men dashed up the stairs to spread the good news. Five thousand troops would not only strike terror into the hearts of the uncommitted citizens and send the Orsi running, but would also discourage Savelli from attempting to take the city for himself; even Pope Innocent would it challenging, if not impossible, to raise such a massive force in such a short time.

  Caterina waved us quiet and scanned the letter, her lips working silently, and frowned. “He does not say when they will arrive.”

  “It is not easy to move so many men so quickly,” Luca offered, “but they are on the march and should be on Forlì’s outskirts within four days. The herald has gone to the town square to read Duke Ludovico’s warning to the conspirators and the Forlivese; he will tell them as much.”

  “Four days,” Caterina murmured to herself, then spoke suddenly, giddily to Feo, as the realization of her triumph dawned. “These troops will attack on my command,” she told him, gesturing at the creased letter in her hand.

  As we stood together near the closed drawbridge, I heard another shout of joy from above us, followed quickly by another, and another, until word spread to the families housed inside the fortress with us. At that point, we could not hear each other talk for all the cheering.

  The people who listened to the herald in the town square chose to believe that his announcement was just another of Caterina’s tricks; they knew that Ludovico took no real interest in his niece’s affairs, but they had not counted on his determination to keep Sforza allies in the Romagna. The Orsi brothers scoffed and begged an unimpressed Lorenzo de’ Medici for military aid; Monsignor Savelli, revealing himself to be far from the disinterested observer who wished only to keep peace, sent a messenger to Pope Innocent asking for troops—not on behalf of the Orsi, but for “the papacy,” knowing that he, Savelli, would be appointed ruler.

  Even after the combined Milanese and Bolognese armies reached nearby Cosina and Villanova—both of which reported, in despair, that the soldiers and the vermin who followed them were plundering and terrorizing the villages—some Forlivese preferred to wait with Savelli for the massive army Pope Innocent was surely sending.

  The Milanese and Bolognese, however, were eager to descend on Forlì; messengers went almost hourly between Caterina and the commanders. Wisely, she held them off, lest Forlì be razed; instinct told her that the townspeople would soon be reconciled to her.

  “I have no wish to rule a razed city,” she insisted.

  Days later, troops did come from Rome—fifty of them, bearing the blue and gold standard of the Riario. Pope Innocent had decided against the foolishness of sending thousands of his own men to die in the Romagna over such a trifling bit of land as Forlì. But Cardinal Raffaele Riario, after learning from his aunt Caterina that she and his cousins were in grave danger, spared men at arms from his own private battalion.

  As the anxious citizens (and no doubt, the horrified Savelli) watched, Ravaldino’s drawbridge descended, and, in orderly formation, the Riario cavalry trotted into the fortress to join their new commander, Caterina.

  We learned much later that, upon hearing the news, the Orsi brothers and Captain Ronchi rode to the gate of Saint
Peter, whose little tower housed Caterina’s children and servants. The conspirators meant to kill them all, but the guards knew where the true power lay, and pelted the Orsi and their supporters with rocks and threats.

  That night, Girolamo’s assassins gave up all hope, and they and their supporters headed east, into exile.

  When dawn came again, Luca and I woke to a beautiful sound: the ringing of the town bell, summoning all citizens to the main square. We dressed quickly and ran up the stairs to the roof, where Caterina, her back to us, was standing silently beside the battlement facing the city, her palm pressed to the stone; the rising sun’s rays pierced her gossamer nightgown, showing the outline of her firm twenty-five-year-old body.

  Luca and I hurried to stand beside her. She half turned as we approached; her expression was solemn, her eyes shining with unwept tears. Unable to utter a sound, she turned her gaze back toward Forlì, rosy in the early-morning glow.

  The bell still sang, but its loud cry was soon matched by the throaty shouts from the filling streets.

  “Ottaviano! Ottaviano! All hail the Riario! All hail the Lady of Forlì!”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Over the next few days, most of the items stolen from the Palazzo Riario were quietly returned. Caterina sent the humbled Monsignor Savelli back to Cesena, minus the artillery he had brought with him in hopes of claiming Forlì. The city councillors expressed their loyalty to Caterina directly, although during our time in Ravaldino, they had sat on their hands waiting for the struggle between Savelli and the Orsi brothers to resolve itself. Caterina politely accepted their allegiance before informing them that they had all been removed from their positions. The townspeople had lost their right to any degree of self-government; from now on, the word of the Lady of Forlì was law until her ten-year-old son, Ottaviano, reached his majority at twenty-one.

  In the meantime, she reminded her subjects of her power. Never again, she vowed, would she set foot in the Duomo, whose priests had refused to accept Girolamo’s mangled remains on the night of his death; instead, she proclaimed the Basilica of San Mercuriale to be the Riarios’ sanctioned church. Several masses of thanksgiving were held there, followed by Ottaviano’s celebratory procession around the town square. On the same patch of ground, the people watched as the Orsi brothers’ father, the respected patriarch Andrea, who had known of the murder conspiracy but had failed to warn Count Girolamo, was chopped into pieces while still alive. Caterina claimed the estates of all the escaped conspirators, and offered a thousand ducats apiece for their return. At the same time, she heaped rewards on Feo, the tower guards, and all others who had helped her in her time of greatest need. And she showed the people, who marveled at her coldhearted expression as old Andrea was butchered, that she was not just relentless, but benevolent, by lowering taxes.