“Serenissimo,” interrupted the middle brother, silent until now. “May I remind you that as cardinal of the Holy Church, I cannot condone—”
“Stay out of this, Ferdinando! It was you who came to me, outraged at the salacious gossip and jeers in the streets of Rome! The Florentine cardinal has a whore for a sister. What chance do you have of becoming Pope with a sister like this?”
Ferdinando raised his chin, the muscles in his jaw tight.
Francesco stabbed a finger at his sister. “Why do you not use the saddle I gave you?”
“You jest! How could I jump fences sitting sideways? Or do you wish me to break my neck?”
The ensuing silence stretched out in an answer too clear to be mistaken. Finally he said, “Our cousin Catherine de’ Medici rides in a properly modest fashion, and she commands Europe’s respect as the queen of France.”
“Ha! You choose your model carelessly. Catherine despises you! She despises our alliance with Spain! And do you really want me to fashion myself after a woman whose husband lies in the arms of Diane de Poitiers—who does ride, I am told, very much astride. To King Henri’s delight.”
“Isabella!” said Francesco.
A hound bayed, catching the scent of prey. Isabella spurred her horse, plunging down the hill toward an enormous fallen tree trunk, her skirts flying back over the horse’s flanks.
And a young shepherdess forgot her flock of sheep for a moment as she stared, open-mouthed, at the woman and her horse, who seemed to fly over anything that barred their way.
CHAPTER 3
Siena, Pugna Hills
JANUARY 1573
At age six, I was painfully thin—all angular bones and knobby knees, with shoulder blades sharp as knives under my skin, not unlike a newborn foal. My body did not thrive on the sheep broth, gristle, and rough bread that were all we had to eat, but it was not just my body that was undernourished. My spirit felt hunger more keenly than my belly. I was starved, loved too little by a childless aunt and a kind but weak-willed uncle.
“Zia Claudia!” I shouted, opening the door. A wake of dried leaves chased in after me in a gust of wind. “There was a beautiful woman on a mighty horse who jumped the old olive tree—”
“Close the door! You let out the warmth!” snapped Zia Claudia. “Sweep up these leaves this minute.”
“But Zia! I saw a woman astride a horse. A woman who could ride as well as any man!”
“Speak not one more word of horses or I will take a broom handle to you, I swear it,” said Zia Claudia.
I fell into silence. I knew Zia’s threat was not hollow.
“You are late. The beans need shelling,” she said.
My fingers, numb from the cold, fumbled over the yellowed bean pods. I dug my broken nails into the withered shells, stripping the beans from their casing.
I bent over the cast-iron pot, my loose hair obscuring my view of Zia Claudia, though I could smell her sheep scent and mean-woman sweat across the room.
“Virginia!” snapped my aunt, bent over the soup pot. “Keep your hair out of our food!” She strode toward me, her cracked leather shoes kicking against the hem of a soiled apron.
Zia Claudia drew a dirty piece of string from her apron pocket and wrapped it around my hair. Her sooty fingers yanked it tight.
“Ow!” I cried.
“Next time you will remember to tie back that mop yourself. I have no stomach for picking your long hairs out of my soup.”
She turned away, leaving the mutton stink in her wake, greasy and rancid. I continued stripping the beans from their hard yellow shells. They rattled into the cast-iron pot.
For comfort, I glanced up at a crude painting of Santa Caterina fastened to the wall. My mother had bought it in the markets of Siena just before I was born. It was my christening present, fitting for a child born in the Contrada del Drago.
Though I was a villanella—a country girl—my mother and father had sacrificed everything to make sure I was born in the Drago contrada with Santa Caterina as my patron saint. No one could take away that birthright.
Santa Caterina was my protector. I prayed every night for her intercession, telling her my secrets and fears. And I was quite sure she hated Zia Claudia of the muttony hands.
“And stop daydreaming!” my zia called across the room.
My uncle Giovanni stomped his boots on the threshold, and I smiled.
“A little kindness, Claudia,” he murmured.
“Kindness won’t get supper on the table,” Zia Claudia snapped. Her mouth puckered like a withered raisin. “It’s only the beans the soup lacks. And don’t encourage her daydreaming. Horses, horses, horses! As if we could even afford a lame donkey.”
I felt a twist inside my gut, as if she had punctured something.
Giovanni sat down in his chair near the hearth.
“What harm does it do?” he said.
“She is a shepherdess! She fills her head with notions of riding horses, as if she were a signore’s daughter! Your brother—”
“Claudia!” he said.
“Well, it is time she accepted her lot and gave thanks to God. And to us!” she snapped.
Giovanni stepped away from her sour breath, looking at me with sad puckers around his brown eyes.
“She is a lonely little girl, Claudia,” he whispered.
He looked over at me and said in a louder voice, “Virginia, when you finish shelling the beans, I will tell you more of your grandfather.”
Zia Claudia grumbled, clanging the wooden spoon against the soup pot.
“Yes, Zio!” I cried. Now my fingers flew. The rattle of dropping beans filled the smoky room.
The moment I gave Zia Claudia the pot of shelled beans, I begged my uncle to tell me the story of my ancestors and the siege of Siena. He smiled, stroking my hair.
“You want to hear about the horses, ciccia?”
“You spoil her,” said Zia Claudia, stirring the beans into the pot.
“She has been out alone with the ewes for five days and nights. She deserves the comfort of a tale, Claudia.”
“Not a long story, the soup will be ready soon.”
My uncle winked at our victory. I hugged him tight.
His hands patted my shoulder blades.
“So thin, Virginia,” he said, shaking his head. “You need to eat more.”
“She eats enough,” said my aunt. “She is strong enough to hold a ewe for milking. A shepherd’s life will give her the brawn she needs.”
My zio let a moment of silence pass before he began his story.
“Your grandfather was a skilled iron smith with the Senese cavalry under the command of Piero Strozzi, the most powerful enemy of the de’ Medici,” he began. “All the world was at war in those years. And the European powers eyed Siena like vultures above a bloody kill. The French were our defenders, but that only drew in their enemies: the Spanish, the Swiss, and the Habsburgs. Siena was a bright penny on the table, surrounded by snatching hands. Strozzi was a great general, and his cavalry needed good blacksmiths, like your grandfather Tacci.”
I knew this story by heart—but I still loved to hear my zio tell it over and over again.
“But Grandfather rode the horses, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Piero Strozzi needed cavalrymen. Strozzi did not care that Grandfather wasn’t a noble. Pounding iron had forged his muscles, making him strong. He could sit on a horse and wield a sword. Another mighty warrior to kill the de’ Medici.”
“He rode well!”
“He killed many a de’ Medici soldier; Spanish, too. His sword tasted their blood—”
Claudia called.
“Soup is ready, subito!”
“Sì, Zia,” I answered.
“But Zio,” I whispered. “How did the de’ Medici defeat Siena and our fierce warriors?”
“We could not defeat all Europe,” said my uncle, sighing, “and Duca Cosimo de’ Medici wanted Siena more than any prize on Earth.”
“La più
bella!” I sang the ancient Senese anthem “Per Forza o Per Amore.” “Viva la nostra Siena, la più bella delle città!”
The most beautiful! Long live our Siena, the most beautiful city of all.
The song made any Senese’s eyes shine. Even a country peasant like my uncle. He nodded his head to the words.
“But how he made Siena suffer,” said Zio, rubbing his eye with a knuckle.
My uncle Giovanni was a good storyteller. I was as hungry for his tales as I was for hot broth after shepherding.
The siege of Siena was the most painful of his stories—the most painful story for any Senese. Now I needed to hear that story again, even as Zia Claudia tried to command us to come to the table.
“A year of siege,” my uncle intoned, recounting the story we both knew too well. “A year with no food from beyond the walls of the city. Many from the countryside risked their lives, running food to the walls at night for the city men to haul up in buckets. Many were slaughtered, their houses and fields burned for aiding the city. Inside the walls, the brave citizens weakened day by day until they were as weak as baby birds, straining their necks for food. They ate sawdust, rats—”
“Dogs?”
I ducked my head, my face hot with shame. I could not meet my uncle’s eyes. I knew they would be gleaming with tears. But I needed to see those tears. I lifted my eyes to his, drinking in his sorrow to match my own.
I knew too well that my great-grandmother had died of starvation in the siege of Siena, refusing to eat her pet dog. The mutt curled up and died at the foot of her pallet, a circle of fur and bones, within an hour of her passing.
Her daughter-in-law hurried past the corpse, snatching up the dog’s meager body. She stripped the fur and boiled the carcass for soup to save her starving children.
And with that terrible thought in our minds, Zia Claudia’s screeching shattered the story and brought us to the table.
Aunt Claudia’s cooking was invariable. The broth shone with a bubbling slick of grease, the beans shiny white pebbles beneath the gray scum. Wild garlic and dried parsley defeated some of the old mutton’s acrid taste, but the strong essence of our ancient flock still lingered on my tongue.
My belly growled for the repast, despite its grim look. Walking the Tuscan hills tending sheep in the raw cold of winter left me ravenous. For days at a time, I ate nothing but hard, stale bread with ewe’s cheese and greasy olives.
I lifted my wooden spoon to my mouth, my lips puckered to blow on the broth to cool it.
That is when I heard the dogs growl in their pens and, a moment later, a pounding on the door.
“Who knocks?”
“Open up, in the name of the Granduca of Tuscany.”
Giovanni slid open the iron bolt.
Two men dressed in chestnut woolen jackets and crimson velvet hats stood at the threshold. Their leather riding boots shone copper-bright against their woolen leggings.
“We have come to warn inhabitants of Vignano that the de’ Medici family are hunting these hills. Keep your dogs under control and your sheep in a tight flock, close to your sheds. Should you see the hunting party, keep out of their way under penalty of law.”
“Sì, signori.”
“Do nothing that might spoil their sport. Is that clear?”
“Yes, certainly.”
As he turned to leave, the huntsman called over his shoulder, “Buon appetito.”
I saw him wrinkle his nose in disgust as the door shut.
“The de’ Medici! Here?” I gasped. “That is who I saw, the woman who jumped the fallen tree!”
“What?” said Zia. “Isabella de’ Medici? Why did you not tell me—”
“You should have seen her, Zio!” I said, ignoring Zia. “She plunged down the hill from Quattro Torra at breakneck speed. Then her horse lifted off the ground like a bird taking flight. Never have I—”
“Your flock might have frightened the horses!” said Zia Claudia, her hands flying to her face. “We would be held responsible if she had fallen. They would think nothing of confiscating our home, our flocks—”
Zio Giovanni tipped his bowl of soup to his lips. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve as he stood up and took his cloak from the peg by the door.
“Where are you going?” demanded Zia Claudia.
“To the lambing sheds,” he said. “I will need to make sure everything is in order for castration this week. And if the de’ Medici are in the western hills, we will need to move the flocks closer to the sheds, as the signori ordered.”
“I want to go, too!” I said, jumping up from the table. Secretly I hoped that Zio would stop by Smithy Brunelli’s stable, and I could pet the horses’ muzzles.
“No, it is getting cold and dark out. I will whistle for Franco and the boys to move down from the hills for the night. But after Sunday Mass tomorrow, you can help us herd the old ewes, Virginia. We will need another shepherd by evening after the tupping.”
He lit his lantern and closed the door behind him. My chin dropped to my chest in disappointment.
“Odio le pecore,” I muttered. I hate the sheep.
I felt the sting of a slap.
“You! You ingrate! How dare you curse our sheep!”
Zia Claudia—her muttony breath hot in my ear—insisted I thank God for each blessed ewe that bleats, each ram that ruts.
“The flocks keep you alive,” she said, shaking her finger in my face. “They clothe you, give us their meat and milk.”
“I do not curse our sheep. It is just—”
“You think you are above shepherding,” said Zia. “Just like your good-for-nothing father, who brought pestilence into the House of Tacci.”
“That’s a lie!” I shouted.
“He brought killing sickness to this house,” she spat at me, her face an ugly mask of hatred.
I knew she was right. My father—then my mother—had died of the fever after his journey trading leather in Piombino, on the swampland coast near Pisa.
“Your dream-sick father, traveling so far from his God-given land. For what? To earn money to buy a horse.”
A horse?
“My father was going to . . . buy a horse?”
“Bringing home sickness instead. And ruin! He killed your mother with the swamp fever, and he nearly dragged you to the grave with him.”
A horse? I felt the ghost of my father draw his arms tight around my shoulders.
For you, ciccia. A horse.
Then I smiled. My father wanted to buy me a horse! Zia Claudia had told me a secret I would never forget.
CHAPTER 4
Florence, Pitti Palace
JANUARY 1573
Leonora di Toledo, first cousin of Isabella de’ Medici, and thus first cousin—as well as wife—of Isabella’s brother Pietro, sat in front of the polished looking glass as her attendant brushed her red-gold hair.
“Do not put the tortoiseshell comb in my hair, Maria. It makes me look too Spanish,” Leonora complained. “I am a de’ Medici now.” The stiff rustling of brocaded satin made Leonora turn as two women brought in her dress for the afternoon.
“The peacock blue is a beautiful color and contrasts magnificently with your glorious hair, signora,” said Maria, addressing her mistress in Italian, though her tongue still yearned for Castilian sounds.
“Yes, it suits me, I think,” said Leonora, “though Pietro despises it. He calls the color vulgar. It is good that he will not attend Isabella’s salon,” she added, smiling, which made Maria’s job easier as she outlined her mistress’s lips in beet juice and beeswax.
“Our discussions bore my husband,” sighed Leonora. “But there are others who find Isabella’s concerns quite stimulating.”
Leonora’s retinue exchanged knowing looks. Their mistress saw their reflection in the mirror. She raised an eyebrow, causing the women to look at the floor.
“If it were not for Isabella, I would die of boredom,” Leonora continued, her ladies properly chastened. “Isabella and his grac
e, Cosimo, the old duca.”
Again, two of the ladies exchanged looks. Maria scowled at them.
“Duca Cosimo calls us his huntresses, his Dianas! Ah, if only the de’ Medici sons were like their charming father—”
A knock on the door interrupted her. Maria stopped powdering her mistress’s face, the plumed puff in midair.
“See who it is, Clara,” said Leonora.
The attendant nearest the door opened the door a crack.
“Mistress, it is your husband.”
Pietro de’ Medici threw open the door, slamming it hard against Clara. She shrieked with pain, her hands thrown up over her face.
Leonora rose from her vanity, pulling her dressing robe tight around her.
“What—you’ve returned from Siena earlier than—”
“The stablemaster informed me you requested the gray mares tonight to pull your carriage. We have no engagements this evening!”
“I am attending Isabella’s salon—”
Pietro took two strides toward her. Maria stepped closer to her mistress, blocking him.
Pietro flung the elderly maid to one side.
“Do not dare to come between me and my wife,” he snapped. “You ignorant Spanish cow!”
“Do not address my lady in that way, sir!” said Leonora, squaring her little shoulders.
“I will address her as I see fit.”
His eyes shifted to her mouth.
“And what is that red sap on your lips? You look beastly—”
Leonora’s hand flew to her mouth, covering it.
“It is only beet juice to enhance my—”
“Since when does a de’ Medici have to enhance herself in order to discuss linguistic dilemmas?” said Pietro. “Take it off immediately, you look like a puttana. And you shall not have the grays tonight. I have my own plans in Fiesole.”
Leonora’s back stiffened. Pietro’s favorite mistress lived in the hills of Fiesole, in a villa he had paid to furnish despite the debts he could not pay for his own family.
“But—”
Pietro grasped Leonora’s arm, twisting it.
“You are hurting me—”
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