I stormed out of the parlor, unwilling to let anyone know how hurt I felt. Aunt Clarissa had warned me that resentment of the Medici ran deep, and I had seen it for myself when we fled from Palazzo Medici. The mother superior of Santa Lucia had told me directly how much the Medici were hated, and I had experienced more than enough of the ill feeling against my family at that convent. But Tomassa’s remark seemed more personal, designed to wound.
Later, when we were both calmer, Tomassa begged my forgiveness. I gave it, and in turn I begged hers. “Whatever my family is guilty of,” I reminded her, “it is not my fault!” Then we embraced and kissed, but as we did, I wondered if we were truly friends.
7
Siege
THE MONTHS PASSED. Toward the end of the summer, as the blistering heat began to subside, the abbess gathered the entire community into the refectory after vespers. The long wooden tables had been taken apart and moved aside to make room for more than two hundred women and girls—the older ones packed together on benches, the younger ones standing along the walls. We waited silently for Suor Margherita to speak.
“We must prepare for difficult times,” she announced somberly. “Early this summer the Holy Father in Rome reached an accord with King Charles of Spain. The pope promised to crown Charles as Holy Roman Emperor. In return, the Holy Father has been allowed to return to Rome.”
Suor Margherita forced a thin smile and sighed. “Last year during the sack of Rome, Florence declared itself a self-governing republic, free of the domination of the Medici.” I bit my lip and kept my eyes fixed on the floor. “Pope Clement refuses to recognize the republic. He insists that Alessandro de’ Medici will be made sovereign for life.”
Alessandro? My dreadful cousin, ruler of Florence? A wave of dizziness swept over me. I put my hand out to steady myself against the wall, if my uncle refuses to allow the people to govern themselves, why would he send Alessandro? Why not Ippolito?
The abbess continued. “Alessandro is to marry Charles’s illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Austria. Florence will be their wedding gift.”
Feet shuffled, and there was a faint whispering. I felt eyes darting in my direction.
The abbess calmly explained that the members of the Signoria opposed Alessandro’s rule but that my uncle was about to put the entire city under siege, to force the Signoria and the people of Florence to submit to his will. “Emperor Charles has promised to help the Holy Father compel us to accept Alessandro as sovereign. The emperor’s armies have been ordered to surround our city and lay siege until we surrender.”
No wonder the Medici are hated, I thought. I wanted to flee from the refectory to sort out my thoughts, but I didn’t dare. I would have to stay where I was and suffer through this. Niccolà’s warm hand grasped my cold one and squeezed it gently.
I couldn’t bear to look at her, or at anyone, as the abbess described plans being made to survive the siege. “Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great sculptor and painter and a native Florentine, has been summoned by the governors to design reinforcements of the city’s defenses,” she said. “And we have been warned to lay in additional food supplies. We shall begin at once to conserve our stores.” Suor Margherita rose. “I entreat all of you to beg God’s mercy during this difficult time.”
The abbess swiftly left the refectory, followed by the professed nuns, then the novices, the widows, and finally the young girls.
Niccolà tried to reassure me. “It’s not you they hate,” she said. “But they’ve forgotten all the marvelous things that Il Magnifico did for Florence. After his death his son Piero ruined it all. My father says Piero was stupid and spoiled everything for everybody.”
Piero was my grandfather, I thought; my father’s father. All the hateful things Suor Immacolata had said to me about my father came rushing back, painful words echoing inside my head.
I freed my hand from Niccolà’s grasp and rushed to my room. “Listen, Duchessina,” she called after me. “I’ll always be your friend. Even if you’re a Medici.”
OVER THE NEXT few weeks we watched food being delivered to the convent for storage: sacks of grain, barrels of dried fruit, slabs of salted meat, casks of oil and wine. The abbess, who regularly communicated with the world outside the convent walls, again called the community together to let us know what was happening. I dreaded this, fearing to hear even more condemnation of the Medici.
Her tone was unemotional. “Michelangelo Buonarroti has begun to rebuild the battlements around the city. It’s hoped that these earthworks will be strong enough to resist the cannonballs the attackers will hurl at us. Workmen are digging deep trenches beyond the walls.” But now the abbess’s voice cracked. “The great artist has also ordered that everything between the city and the foothills be destroyed.”
Everything destroyed? I heard the gasps of disbelief, and I remembered the man who had once disturbed me in the Chapel of the Magi. He’d seemed half mad then and completely mad now.
“Everything,” the abbess repeated. “Every farmhouse must be razed, every field and vineyard burned, every olive grove and orchard cut down. All of the villas are to be leveled, and the chapels, too.”
Next to me Giulietta lowered her head and began to cry. Her family owned a beautiful villa just north of the city, on the winding road to Fiesole.
“You are no doubt wondering why such drastic measures are being taken. Michelangelo insists it’s the only way to deprive the attackers of protective cover and food supplies.” Her voice became strong. “It is to be a fight to the death. We will not yield.”
NO MATTER HOW bad the news in the world outside our convent, nothing interfered with Suor Paolina’s lessons in the virtues. The walls could be tumbling down around us, but we were to practice our needlework and play our lutes and remember to glide as we walked and to keep our eyes lowered and our voices carefully modulated. Our rations shrank, but we still ate our meager meals with our forks and used our napkins properly.
In mid-October we heard the first distant boom of the cannons. We all dropped what we were doing and rushed to the chapel to pray.
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful, for I have taken refuge in you; in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by.
We watched the autumn rains pour down in sheets in the cloister gardens. Water trickled through the workrooms on the main floor. On the top floor the roof leaked, damaging some of the precious books before we were able to carry them to a safer place.
In the refectory Suor Margherita told us, “The area between the ditch outside the city walls and the earthen battlements has turned into a bog, and the emperor’s soldiers have given up the attack.”
“Thanks be to God, we are saved!” cried one of the younger nuns, and the rest of us took up the cry.
Suor Margherita signaled for silence.
“No, dear sisters, we are not victorious. Far from it.” The abbess’s voice was heavy with sadness. “When spring comes and the earth dries out, the soldiers will take up their positions and the bombardment will begin again. The farmers will not be able to sow their fields or replant their olive groves and vineyards. There will be no crops. Our stores will be exhausted. People will go hungry. The pope and the emperor are determined to starve us into surrender. Let us pray for strength and courage as well as God’s mercy.”
Starve us? How could my uncle do such a thing, just so that Alessandro can rule Florence?
We fell to our knees on the damp floor and recited the words of the twenty-seventh Psalm: Though an army should encamp against me, yet my heart shall not he afraid. And though war should rise up against me, yet will I put my trust in him.
For the first time in my life, I was ashamed to carry the name of Medici.
A BRUTAL WINTER descended on us. The soldiers had seized a number of forts along the Arno River, so that no supplies could be shipped up the river from the coast. This was the season of Advent, when fish was always served at least three times a week. Now we di
d without.
At Christmas we still had a plentiful store of grain and oil, but there were no fresh meats to roast on the spits in the kitchen, no soft cheeses for the lasagne. Instead, the cooks prepared pasta e fagiole, macaroni with white beans, seasoned with a little smoked ham, and we were grateful for it.
The Feast of the Epiphany was traditionally celebrated with cakes rich with eggs and studded with almonds. Now eggs were scarce, almonds rare. The citizens had always observed the feast day with a brilliant procession, the noblemen in velvet doublets embroidered with gold thread and pearls, hose with legs of different colors, and cloaks lined with fur, while the ladies watching from their palace windows were splendid in lustrous silks with jeweled garlands in their hair. There would be no procession this year, the abbess said.
In February, news reached Le Múrate that Pope Clement had kept his promise to the Spanish king and set the iron crown of Charlemagne on Charles’s head in the ancient cathedral in Bologna. Charles was now officially Holy Roman Emperor.
“The Holy Father can do what he wants for King Charles,” the abbess told us, “but Florence will not surrender.”
“We will not surrender!” we echoed.
We survived the winter, thanks to the convent’s well-stocked larders and the cleverness of our cooks, but crowds gathered daily outside our thick walls, clamoring for food. The abbess ordered rations to be set aside for the needy from our own shrinking supply, but it was not nearly enough to satisfy their hunger.
In their misery they shouted insults: “Down with the Medici! You harbor the harlot within your walls! You feed her while we, the citizens of Florence, are left to starve!”
The abbess tried to protect me from such insults. But not all of the professed nuns and novices believed that I deserved protection. Most of them simply ignored me, averting their eyes. Nevertheless, I was aware of the whispers: If Duchessina were turned out, sent elsewhere, perhaps our misery would be ended.
There was nothing I could do. After months of contentment in my new home, I was as miserable as everyone else.
No more orders came to the convent for the Book of Hours or trousseaux or fine woven altar cloths embellished with lace. We mourned the death of the artist who painted the lovely miniatures in the books, who, we learned, had been killed by enemy soldiers as he tried to leave the city.
“We’ll resume our work when our ordeal is over,” Suor Battista assured me.
I wanted to believe her, but like many others, I was afraid we would not survive.
AS SPRING ADVANCED, there was an outbreak of plague in which many people in the city sickened and died. Hoping to prevent the seeds of the horrible disease from entering the convent, the nuns placed a bowl of vinegar near the alms basin by a slot in the wall through which people sometimes pushed coins. The sister in charge carefully rinsed the coins in the vinegar. A sour smell permeated the cloister.
Despite the precautions, members of our community began to fall ill. Their coughs echoed through the damp chambers. I, too, came down with a high fever, red spots on my chest, a cough, an ache in my limbs. When my strength continued to ebb away and I showed no signs of recovery, Suor Margherita sent for a physician. She described my symptoms to him through the grille and provided him with a vial of my urine. At his direction an apothecary concocted herbs and other secret ingredients that at first made me even sicker.
My sole visitor during my weeks of illness—aside from Maddalena, who was an attentive nurse—was Suor Battista. The old nun with the crooked back came daily to sit by my bed and tell me stories about Il Magnifico and the wonders of Florence during his lifetime. Fortunately, I was spared the Black Death, and slowly my health returned.
The siege continued, and the bombardment resumed. There was no more ham to flavor the beans and macaroni; then no more beans; finally, no more flour for macaroni. We existed on cabbage soup and some rotting carrots. The sisters planted vegetables in every available space, but the gardens couldn’t yield enough to feed us all.
With little to eat, Suor Battista seemed to grow smaller. I went to sit with her in her cubicle in the scriptorium, although we did no copying, and she no longer told me stories of the Florence of her youth. Her strength ebbed. One day she didn’t come to her cubicle, and I was told that she had taken to her bed. I waited until the nuns had gone to the chapel for vespers and slipped into the forbidden dormitory.
Suor Battista lay on her cot in her black tunic and white veil; professed nuns always slept fully dressed in their habits. She was not the only one in the dormitory—half a dozen others were also unable to get up. I tiptoed past them and knelt beside Suor Battista’s cot. Her hands were folded on her breast, her eyes closed.
“Suor Battista,” I whispered and touched a blue-veined hand.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Dear Duchessina,” she sighed, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “Look in the box—” She stopped, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Don’t speak.” I laid my finger on her lips.
“In the box. Under the cot. Book. For you. Take. It.”
“Later,” I promised.
“Now. Per favore.”
I pulled the plain wooden box from under her cot—the box that had taken up so much space the time I tried to hide there. Inside was the Book of Hours with its glowing miniatures that she had often shown me.
“Yours. Take it,” she said in a whisper so faint I had to strain to hear it. “Now go. Before . . . you . . . get caught . . . trespassing.”
I promised to come back the next day, when the nuns were again at prayer.
But the next day the light in her blue green eyes had gone out, extinguished forever. I felt as though a light had gone out in my life as well.
Several days passed before a priest arrived to conduct the Office of the Dead, and when at last he did come, many of the sisters were too ill to attend or too weak to sing. I did my best to sing for her through my tears.
8
Escape
“DUCHESSINA!”
I awoke with a start. Someone was tapping on the door of my room, whispering urgently through the small iron grate.
“Duchessina!”
The abbess, I thought. Had I slept so soundly that I hadn’t heard the bell calling us to prayer? I glanced up at the window high above my narrow bed. The night sky was black with a sprinkle of winking stars—still too early for lauds.
“Duchessina!”
The whisper grew louder, the tapping more insistent. The latch lifted and the door opened, letting in the bright glow of a candle, the rustle of skirts, the click of rosary beads. The abbess, dressed in her black mantle and white wimple, peered down at me. Her face was pale. “Get up and dress quickly. The soldiers have come to take you away”
“Take me where?”
“To another convent. The governors of the Republic have ordered you removed. They say you’ll be safer. They’ve sent the soldiers to escort you. Silvestro Aldobrandini of the Signoria’s Council of Ten is with them, and he has promised to protect you.”
I was sure she didn’t believe the promises she was repeating. She must have feared, as I did, that these men intended to harm me, maybe even murder me, once they’d gotten me away from Le Murate.
There was no need to ask why. It was hatred of my family, and especially of Pope Clement. At my uncle’s orders the city had been under siege for nine months. Thousands had died of disease and starvation. The people of Florence were determined to take their anger out on someone. On me.
I shuddered, pulling the coverlet close, though the night was stiflingly hot. My teeth began to chatter, and I couldn’t stop them. I was eleven years old, and for the third time in my life I was being forced to flee. This time, though, I might not be fleeing to safety but to my own death.
The abbess carried a candlestick. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white in the candlelight. “Some men came earlier, just after we’d finished compline, and demanded to see you,” she said, her d
ark eyes filled with worry. “I told them that the convent had entered the hours of silence. Now they’ve sent Aldobrandini with the soldiers. An angry mob has threatened to burn our convent to the ground if you remain here.”
“Where do they say they’re taking me?” I asked.
“To Santa Lucia,” she said, avoiding my eye.
“Santa Lucia!” I cried, remembering the wretched months I’d spent there. “But that’s a horrible place! I can’t go back there! The mother superior, the nuns, the lay sisters, all of them despise the Medici, and me most of all.”
The abbess touched my shoulder. “I’m aware of their feelings. But they are women of God, and I trust that they will protect you. You must endure this. It’s your only hope, dear child. There is no other way.”
I was trembling, but I tried hard not to show how afraid I was. I didn’t want to leave Le Murate. I surely did not want to return to Santa Lucia. But more than that, I did not want to die. I didn’t trust the soldiers not to turn me over to the furious crowd, and I had to think of a way to protect myself. “Very well, Suor Margherita,” I said. “Give me a little time to get ready.”
The good abbess kissed my forehead. “Hurry, Duchessina,” she said.
I had the beginnings of a plan. If the crowd believed that I had become a nun, their religious beliefs wouldn’t allow them to kill a bride of Christ. When the abbess had gone, I first whispered a prayer to the Holy Virgin and then rushed to the alcove adjoining my room where Maddalena lay sleeping. I pulled back the curtain and shook her awake.
“Scissors,” I said. “I need scissors—now, Maddalena.”
She didn’t ask why I was demanding scissors in the middle of the night. She flew immediately to the cupboard where our work baskets were kept.
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