The Girl Who Tempted Fortune

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  A choked noise escapes me before I can stop myself. My own throat has tightened as if I am strangling. My mouth fills with vomit. I turn and rush from the room for the privy. I am shamed by my weakness but it is beyond my control, a primal reaction: what happens to my son happens to me. Behind me the others resume talking as if my response is to be expected, for which I am grateful.

  When I return, holding my handkerchief to my mouth, Joanna’s man is telling them the violent performance is over, that the Dukes of Taranto and Durazzo have taken Raymond to the Taranto castle for further questioning.

  “Public questioning?” My voice is raw but steady.

  “Yes, my Lady,” the knight says, his eyes downcast.

  “You have done well to bring us this news,” Louis says.

  The man wipes his face. “Thank you, my Lord,” he mumbles. He looks up, his eyes pleading, as though he wants forgiveness just for watching the atrocities of others.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Louis says when the man has left. “They have a right to question him.”

  “Raymond will maintain his innocence and we will soon have him back in our care,” Joanna says. Neither of them mentions the lashing, the mutilation of his tongue. Raymond is not being questioned, he is being sacrificed. I despise their platitudes. Joanna, at least, is pale and shaken, with a vulnerable, wounded look in her eyes. I beg her indulgence to lie down.

  “You will not be disturbed,” she says, not quite meeting my eyes.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  As I rise to leave she leans forward and clasps my hands. “His innocence will be proved. He will return to us.”

  I look at her steadily for a long moment. Then, because I raised her also, I allow her this. “God willing,” I murmur, the lie nearly choking me.

  Her blue eyes fill with tears.

  “Your Majesty.” I curtsey and leave, unwilling to see this. What right has she to weep? My Raymond is suffering because of her.

  Not fair. We have also risen higher than we had any right to expect because of her, and her royal grandparents before her, and I made no complaint then. The wheel of fortune spins and we spin upon it. I remember my great-grandmother’s prophecy then, but it is not my fate that concerns me now; it is my son’s.

  Sancia comes toward me as I cross through the queen’s presence chamber. “I must lie down. See that I am not disturbed,” I tell her. I do not have the heart to answer the questions in her eyes. What all of Naples knows will reach the palace soon enough.

  Approaching the door to the bedchamber I am sharing with Sancia and another lady-in-waiting, I bend my back into an aged stoop and slow my steps, pulling a few strands of grey hair from under my headdress. I have lost some of my height but I am still a tall woman, able to hide the assault of age. I do not hide it now as I signal a passing chamber girl. “I am tired,” I tell her. “I feel the cold these days. If you bring me your cape to cover me while I sleep, I will give you this to buy a new one.” I fumble to unclasp the silver brooch from my bodice.

  Her eyes widen. “Of...of course, my Lady. I will fetch it at once.” She curtseys, already stumbling backward, my brooch clutched in her hand to prevent my changing my mind.

  “See that it has a hood, to shield the light from my eyes so I may sleep.”

  She curtsies again, almost tripping herself in her backward flight.

  It is a weak invention, especially as I have not asked for a fire to be built up. I hope her greed offsets her suspicions. To ensure this, I hesitate when she returns with her cloak, a dark, well-worn thing, as though I am reconsidering.

  “Is it warm?” I ask, letting a whine creep into my voice.

  “It is very warm,” she assures me with the false earnestness of one who knows she is taking advantage. “And see, it has a dark hood, to keep out the light. You will sleep soundly.” She holds it out eagerly.

  “You would not take advantage of the queen’s old nurse?” I ask plaintively.

  “No, never!” she cries. She is in too far to back out now, but I see in her eyes the look I have been waiting for. No one will hear from her about this transaction.

  “Do not let me be disturbed,” I tell her, letting my voice tremble. “It is so difficult to return to sleep after being disturbed.”

  “No one will come near this chamber,” she assures me.

  And no one does, so I am not seen creeping down the stairs and outside, cloaked in the servant girl’s dark rag.

  They have resumed torturing my son when I arrive. I stand back, apart from the crowd, the hood of my cape covering my head and pulled forward to shield my face. There is a cool wind and I am not the only woman with her hood raised to shield her from it. No one gives me a second glance. Their attention is all focused on the second-floor balcony.

  Raymond stands there, slumped forward, his head lolling from side to side, eyes closed. His shirt has been stripped off and his torso is covered in angry red welts. His lips and chin are black with dried blood. They have tied a rope around his chest under his arms and attached it to the upper balcony to keep him standing. Robert of Taranto stands on one side of my son, calling out questions loudly enough to be heard by the people below. Hugo del Balzo is seated behind a small table on the other side of the balcony.

  “Were you a part of the conspiracy to murder Prince Andrew, Duke of Calabria?” Robert of Taranto shouts.

  One of his men, standing close to Raymond, raises a pair of pincers, no doubt pulled from a bucket of burning coals. He holds them up so we can see the red-hot iron tips. I cover my mouth, choking back a scream as he fastens them to Raymond’s chest, just below the bared nipple. Raymond’s head jerks up, his eyes open. He gives a mangled cry that is drowned in a drum roll. Hugo del Balzo effects to write something down.

  I moan under my breath, reaching a hand to steady myself on the wall of the building behind me as the pincers are released and plunged back into the metal bucket of hot coals, leaving another ugly welt on my son’s chest. The torturer is working his way up, I realize, staring at the row of red marks rising from Raymond’s abdomen. Around me faces are staring at Raymond’s burned chest, at the red line of agony reaching toward his exposed nipples. Their eyes are hungry, titillated, their mouths open, some of them panting or licking their lips.

  I want to be ill. If I had not already brought forth everything in my stomach, I would do so now. I want to leave but I cannot, nor even look aside. This is my son. I will stay here with him, one face that loves him and suffers with him, in this merciless crowd.

  The process is repeated, Robert of Taranto calling out his questions—Who was with you? Who else? Who placed the noose around Prince Andrew’s royal neck? Who hanged him from the balcony?—and then the pincers, Raymond’s tortured screams muffled by the deafening drum rolls, del Balzo writing studiously as though he were hearing answers from my son’s mutilated mouth. On and on until Raymond faints. Then they bring forward a second bucket, this one filled with cold water to revive him.

  I close my eyes and see Raymond as a baby, with his chubby cheeks and wide, intelligent eyes and curly black hair. He toddled around our house holding onto walls and chairs and table legs, trying to follow his older brother. When he fell he would struggle up again without complaint, disdaining my help—if Robert did not need help neither would he—and toddle on his plump little legs after his brother again. He never cried or begged Robert to wait. He wanted no concessions, made no excuses, but took what came and pushed himself to meet it. He will tell them nothing, no matter what they do to him. Anything they write down is a lie. When he loses consciousness again I find myself hoping he will not revive but find at least a temporary release.

  Or a permanent one. Even if he should be freed, cleared of their false accusations, how could he survive what they have done to him? The thought horrifies me; I will not pray for my son’s death, not even deep in my wounded heart, not even for his own sake.

  The gory spectacle reaches and passes its pinnacle. The crow
d’s frenzy begins to abate. They shuffle and look around, restless. Raymond no longer has the strength to scream, and even del Balzo cannot pretend to hear answers from a slack mouth.

  “Enough!” Robert of Taranto calls. “We have the information we need. Take him away and have a public notary document what we have learned! Then we will force this worthless regicide to affirm the names he has given us in public.”

  Another drum roll accompanies the crowd’s roar of approval as a notary steps onto the balcony to receive del Balzo’s notes, and carries them inside. The rope is untied and Raymond is dragged away, down to Robert of Taranto’s dungeon most likely, where he and the Duke of Durazzo and del Balzo can continue their torture, saving only that they keep him alive for the next demonstration of their merciless justice. And after that, when they no longer have any use for him?

  Slowly I sink down the wall I have been leaning against, as though the rope binding Raymond was all that held me up as well. I sit shuddering in the dirt, an old woman in a shabby, worn cloak, who tempted Fortune and whose son must now pay the price.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Autumn, 1298

  Court of King Charles II, Naples

  You are an interesting girl. The words reverberated in my head. No one had said such a thing to me before, let alone a royal prince. I had hoped Prince Robert would notice me; I had never imagined he would think me interesting. Was it because he thought I was a seer? His face had given nothing away when I made my prediction, a calculated guess on my part. Did he believe I could prophesy? Or was he humoring me, thinking I believed so? Did he know I lied? He might be the kind of man who would find that interesting.

  He did not speak to me again while we were aboard ship, although I caught him looking my way once. It gave me a delicious, plunging sensation in my stomach, both thrilling and terrifying. I told myself sternly that when a nobleman looked at a village girl, it did not end well for the village girl, and I did not return his glances. Glance. One glance. Most likely at the sea behind me, searching for land. (I did not believe that for an instant!)

  We sailed into the port of Naples at dawn on the third day. People swarmed the quay and its adjoining streets, walking, running, riding horses, driving carts of all sizes, leading donkeys laden with goods or bending under the weight of their own parcels and panniers. They shouted and pointed and laughed and argued in a multitude of languages, competing with the shrieks of the sea gulls and the neighing and braying and clucking and crowing of their livestock. The streets and buildings continued inland as far as I could see – a huge city larger than I had ever imagined. I could not believe we would soon leave the ship and struggle through that chaos—I would have felt safer leaping into the sea.

  A castle only a short way inland towered over the city, visible from the sea. “Castle Nuovo,” one of the soldiers told me, pointing out the castle Prince Robert’s father had built, where we would be going. Where I would be living! I gaped at its high walls and pointed turrets rising above us on the crest of a steep hill. A web of cobbled streets rose uphill from the port toward the castle grounds.

  “Come this way,” Violante’s maid snapped as she passed me on the deck with Charles in my arms. It was fortunate I had already bundled up the nurse’s belongings and my mother’s herbs, for that was all the notice I received that we were disembarking.

  I followed her down the gangplank, holding Charles tightly to me. She paused at the bottom. As I stepped off beside her she gave me a look of such ill will it shocked me. She leaned close and hissed into my ear, “Do not imagine the men here will look at you as those on the ship did. They had no other female to look at!”

  “They had you,” I said. “If they had wanted to.”

  Her hand lifted as though to slap me, but she satisfied herself with a glare and flounced off after Princess Violante and the two guards escorting her.

  We had barely stepped off the ship and already we were engulfed by a sea of people. Where did they all come from? They were of every size and complexion, some pushing purposefully forward while others stood in conversation, though how they could hear each other I did not know. They accompanied every word with large gestures—perhaps that was how they understood one another? I stuck close to Violante and her maid, terrified that if I lost them I would be swallowed up in the crowd and vanish forever. The palace guards ordered people aside, breaking a path for the princess, but it was up to her maid and me to follow close enough to make our way through before they closed in again. Shops and houses lined the streets in unbroken rows, more than I could count. Mountains covered in trees stood in the distance, and over all the bright sunlight streamed from a clear blue sky. I could not decide whether Naples was the most beautiful of cities or the most appalling, but it was certainly astounding and I was surprised to realize that I loved it on sight. What other surprises would this city unfold for me?

  A carriage waited for us as soon as we had crossed the pier. Violante and her maid preceded me and sat on the seat facing front. I bent my head and put my foot on the step, watching anxiously not to bump Charles’ head in the narrow doorway—I had never got into a carriage before—and clambered in behind them.

  From the protection of the carriage I peered out at this teeming city that would be my home. The closer we came to the castle the smaller I felt as the sheer mass of it rose before us. Its thick stone walls towered above our carriage, climbing into the sky, each corner rounded by a tall tower topped with a spire that pierced the clouds. We clattered over the wide drawbridge in our little carriage and passed through enormous gates into a large open courtyard. The inside walls rose around us, forming a huge rectangle and shutting the city out.

  I had never been inside a castle. If I had ever imagined being in one, I would have pictured luxurious rooms and decorations, not this solid, overwhelming weight of stone enclosing me. I had lived all my life outside in the woods and fields near my village. Even the nursery tent in the encampment offered only a light shelter from the elements, not a solid barrier from the surrounding countryside. I had never thought what it would feel like to be confined inside stone. I climbed out of the carriage and stopped, unable to make myself follow Violante into the castle.

  The guard holding the carriage door open coughed softly. I threw him a terrified glance. To my astonishment, he winked at me. It was so incongruous with the solemn formality of his expression that I nearly giggled. At that moment baby Charles yawned as if the entire drama bored him, and my immobility left me. I walked forward into the new texture of my life as though I had never hesitated.

  Inside the entrance hall Violante left Charles and me in the care of a manservant instructed to take us to the nursery. I gaped at everything as we walked through the castle, stunned by the beauty and wealth displayed in the painted and gilded murals, the rich tapestries, and the intricate mosaics of colored marble on floors and ceilings.

  We climbed a wide stairway past two levels of rooms and walked down a long hall before stopping outside a door manned by a weaponed guard. The manservant whispered something to the guard, who laughed. I blushed, certain they were talking about me in their foreign French language. Holding my back straight and my chin high, I entered the nursery.

  The walls were covered with paintings of animals and flowers. Brilliantly-painted birds fluttering across a blue ceiling. A cradle and a little child’s cot were set against one wall, with three beds for the nursemaids against the other. In the middle of the room was a small table with two little chairs, and beside it a larger one for the adult caretakers. Near the back wall, under the window, was an intricately-carved wooden rocking horse. A small boy, perhaps twenty months, sat astride the horse, rocking it wildly and laughing. He looked much like Charles, but older, the youthful image of their father. A nurse stood by scolding him in French, no doubt telling him to slow down, to be careful or he would tumble, but he paid her no attention. She looked up as I walked in.

  The scolding frown on her face did not diminish as she straightened
, taking me in. She said something to me but I shook my head. “So you are the Sicilian wet nurse,” she said, this time in the formal Neapolitan Italian I had practiced on the ship. She crossed the room and reached for Charles.

  I held him closer to me. “He will be hungry after the journey here.”

  Her frown deepened. “You may change his clout and feed him after I have examined him.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her he was perfect, but she might take that as a challenge to find fault with him, and with me as his wet-nurse. “As you wish,” I said, handing him over.

  While she unwrapped his swaddling cloths I went to see his brother. “You must be Louis,” I said, bending down. “You have a fine mount.” The little boy rocked faster, ignoring me.

  “He has a mind of his own,” I observed to the head nurse, rising again.

  “He does not speak Sicilian. Come and change the prince’s clout.”

  “I have not got his clean ones with me.”

  She pointed to a table beside the child’s cot, where a stack of square cloths lay folded. “The older prince is not trained, then,” I observed, trying not to sound smug. In my village a child was trained by the time he could walk.

  “Prince Louis has missed his mother.”

  I glanced at her with the barest hint of a smile. “She is overly devoted to Charles, as well.”

  “Hm.” She did not look up from watching me wrap the folded clout around Charles’ bottom and tie it in place, but her frown eased.

  “My name is Philippa.” I settled into the chair beside the cradle and began unlacing my kirtle to feed Charles.

  “Cover yourself!” She sounded shocked as she handed me a shawl. I blushed, although I had never been self-conscious about breast-feeding before.

  “You are in a royal castle! Anyone might walk in—the nursery guard, a kitchen servant, Princess Violante and Prince Robert...”

  Why ever would they care? Everyone knew why I was here. But I flushed hotter, remembering the princess’s reaction when she found me breastfeeding Charles on the cabin floor. I pulled the shawl up over Charles’ head on my breast.