I knew that I should not go in there, but the calm face of the Virgin drew me to her, past the long rows of narrow cots made up with plain covers of unbleached wool. I knelt before the painting and gazed up at the scene: The Angel Gabriel has just told the Blessed Virgin that she will give birth to the Son of God. What must it have been like to receive such a piece of news? Mary had been just a young girl, like many at Le Murate. She must have been frightened, not knowing what was going to happen, having only her faith to sustain her. The Virgin would have understood how I often felt, swept along by events that I couldn’t control.
My eyes were still fixed on Our Lady when I realized that I could no longer hear chanting. How long ago had they stopped? Would I be missed? What if I were found here, where I didn’t belong? When it was discovered that I’d broken a rule, would I be told to leave?
Hearing footsteps, I dropped to the floor and wriggled under the nearest cot. A plain wooden box took up much of the space. I pulled my knees up to my chest. My heart thumped much too loudly. Dozens of pairs of feet hurried by but two pairs paused and entered. One pair soon left, but the other pair limped, one foot dragging, and stopped near where I lay. I squeezed my eyes shut, scarcely breathing, hoping the owner of the feet wouldn’t see me. Mary, Mother of God, help me. After the nun had shuffled softly away again, I crept out of my hiding place, vowing to explore only the parts of the convent where I was allowed.
The week before Christmas I discovered the scriptorium. Here, in a series of small cubicles on the upper floor, a dozen nuns sat at slanted desks and copied manuscripts, missals and graduals and prayer books intended for private devotions. An elderly nun with gnarled fingers, her back twisted grotesquely, glanced up from her work and smiled. Her face was deeply seamed, but her eyes were a luminous blue green, shining with intelligence.
“I’m Suor Battista,” she said. “And you are Duchessina, are you not?”
I said that I was.
“A child possessed with great curiosity, I believe.”
I nodded, puzzled.
“I saw you hiding beneath my cot,” she said.
I stared at the floor, ashamed. “I wanted to see the painting of the Annunciation. It was as if the Blessed Virgin was calling to me. I promise I won’t do it again,” I whispered.
“Of course you won’t. And you’re not supposed to be here, either, until you’ve finished your classes. But now that you are, let me show you the copyist’s art. Silence, per favore.”
I stood behind her and watched her hand move unhesitatingly across the parchment, copying line after line of text, until the bell rang for prayer. “Will you teach me to do that?” I asked as we hurried to the oratory.
Suor Battista smiled. “Perhaps.”
BY CHRISTMAS my cough had disappeared and my scabs were healed. The violet hangings on the altars were replaced with white damask embroidered with gold thread. During Mass in the convent church, the nuns sang in ethereal voices that I thought must be the way angels sounded. Afterward, the community of Le Murate feasted on roast meats and puddings as fine as anything I’d ever tasted at Palazzo Medici.
The next day I was allowed a brief visit from Aunt Clarissa. Convent rules prevented us from meeting face-to-face, but we could converse through the iron grille that separated those on the inside from those outside the convent wall. Although I couldn’t see my aunt, it was a pleasure just to hear her voice again, to learn that her four sons were all well and that Betta had been taken into the Strozzi household to help look after the boys.
“I have wonderful news, Caterina,” Clarissa murmured close to the grille. “I am again with child. Perhaps this time it will be a daughter!”
Naturally I rejoiced with her, although I felt a pang of jealousy: I had always been her daughter! Will she forget me when she has one of her own? I fretted.
Too soon the abbess signaled that the visit must end. I squeezed back tears.
“Don’t cry, dear Caterina,” my aunt said soothingly. “I shall come again, as soon as I’m allowed. But it will be difficult,” she warned. “The Medici are hated more than ever. An angry mob attacked Michelangelo’s magnificent sculpture of David in the Piazza dei Signoria, believing the statue is a symbol of the Medici! I can’t leave the palazzo without an armed escort, although my husband opposes my going anywhere at all these days. But I wanted a chance to speak with my darling Caterina.”
I recognized the dangers she faced. Over the past year I had been smuggled out of my home disguised as a boy, torn from my family’s villa by soldiers, and rushed from one convent to another accompanied by men armed with pistols. “Be careful, Aunt,” I begged. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
“Of course I will,” she said.
Her footsteps faded away, and I wept unashamedly.
DURING THE JOYOUS yuletide observances that lasted through the Feast of the Epiphany, I got to know the other girls who lived under the care of the nuns of Le Murate. These were girls from wealthy families whose fathers wanted them to remain at the convent until their marriage had been arranged. Until their wedding day was near, they were not allowed to leave, even for a short visit.
Most of the girls suffered from a painful separation from their families and wanted desperately to go home. They longed to be with their mothers and little sisters not yet old enough to be sent to the convent. They missed their fathers and brothers, although the boys’ lives were mostly separate from theirs. When I told them that I was happy to be at Le Murate, they stared at me, incredulous.
“But you’re la duchessina!” exclaimed Niccolà, a slender, rather bold girl. “Everybody knows Caterina de’ Medici is the richest girl in Florence, and the pope is your uncle. How can you like being here?”
“Because my mother and father are dead,” I explained. “I have my aunt Clarissa, who loves me, but I didn’t see her very often. My uncle the pope is far away in Rome and has no time to spend with me. Betta, my nurse, cares about me, but she has no say. Cardinal Passerini is supposed to be in charge of me, but I dislike him, and I’m sure he doesn’t care about me. Before I came here, I was at Santa Lucia,” I told the girls, “and they hated me. Here I feel safe, and the nuns are very kind.”
“It’s in the normal course of things for a young girl to leave her family,” Giulietta, the oldest of my new friends, said knowingly. “Once the choice has been made for a girl—marriage vows or monastic vows—she no longer belongs to her family of birth. She belongs to her husband or to God. That’s what my mother always told me.”
“Do you really believe that, Giulietta?” asked serious-minded Tomassa.
“‘One must accept it. It isn’t easy, but it is life,’” Giulietta replied. “That’s what my mother said, and I guess I believe her.”
EPIPHANY HAD ALWAYS been my favorite feast day, celebrating the arrival of the wise men at the manger in Bethlehem. This year it reminded me of the chapel at Palazzo Medici with the frescoes of the journey of the magi. I wondered if I’d ever see the palace and those vivid paintings again, and I suffered a bout of missing my old life. Even the trays of pastries from the convent kitchen didn’t cheer me. But then Giulietta sailed in with an announcement that excited us all.
“Beginning tomorrow, we’re to be tutored in the virtues,” she said. “We must learn how to conduct ourselves at all times in order to be proper wives. The nuns will instruct us.”
“But how can the nuns teach us to behave like proper wives?” I asked. “What could they know about it?”
My question wasn’t meant to be disrespectful, but my friends erupted in shy giggles.
The four of us, all recent arrivals at Le Murate, were assigned to a class with several girls who had been there for some time and didn’t pay much attention to the awkward newcomers. Instruction was conducted by Suor Paolina, whose beauty couldn’t be hidden even by a nun’s long tunic and veil. Her skin was smooth as ivory, her eyes the color of violets. Her slender fingers gestured as gracefully as birds in flight.
&nbs
p; “Young ladies, your attention, per favore,” she said in a voice as silvery as a flute. “It is important that you discipline your body to move in only the most refined manner. You must walk at a measured pace and with a bearing that bespeaks the dignity of your gender and your station in life. Like this.” Suor Paolina glided silkily across the room.
“It’s as if she has wheels instead of feet,” Niccolà whispered, not softly enough.
A tiny frown creased the nun’s forehead. “Signorina Niccolà, per favore, let us see you walk from here to there.”
Niccolà tried so hard to be dignified that she tripped over her own feet. The older, more experienced girls permitted themselves the hint of a smile, but I made the mistake of laughing out loud. The nun swiftly turned her attention to me.
“Signorina Caterina, the first thing you must learn is not to laugh in such a barbaric manner. Now, all of you, notice that my steps are never hasty, that my hands are lightly but firmly clasped and do not flap and wave about, that my eyes are lowered modestly, and that my mouth remains closed.” Suor Paolina gazed steadily in my direction. The older girls smiled as though their lips were stitched together.
We new girls tried hard to do as we were instructed, but it didn’t come easily. “Mouths closed gently, young ladies!” Suor Paolina reminded us. “Do not grimace!”
Tomassa seemed to possess effortless poise. Suor Paolina often used her as an example to the rest of us—especially me. I was short and still too thin, no matter how much I ate, and I was not naturally graceful. Giulietta, on the other hand, had trouble disciplining her eyes. Like me, she was always gazing about, and this brought constant reprimands from Suor Paolina.
“Do not regard anyone with your eyes, young ladies,” Suor Paolina lectured us, although this was mostly aimed at Giulietta and me. “Keep them fixed and firm, lowered modestly. You must never, ever look at a man directly! Do you understand me?”
“But why not?” asked Niccolà, who already had made a reputation in the convent school for asking too many questions. They were often the questions I wanted to ask, but Niccolà saved me the trouble. “Why must we not look directly at a man?”
“Because your look is likely to inflame their carnal appetites, causing them to fall helplessly into sin. And surely, Signorina Niccolà, you would not want to be responsible for that!”
Niccolà had to agree that, indeed, she would not want such a thing. Afterward, though, we discussed among ourselves what Suor Paolina could possibly have meant.
“Lust,” explained Giulietta, and we nodded knowingly, although we knew next to nothing about the subject.
We had much more to learn besides the virtues.
Suor Paolina accompanied us to our meals and turned her attention to our table manners. We had spoons for soup and knives to cut portions of bread and meat, which we ate using only the thumb and the first two fingers, then wiped our hands clean on a linen napkin. But now we were told that we must learn to use a fork, something new that had become accepted among the best families of Florence.
“It’s essential that you learn to use a fork instead of your fingers,” said Suor Paolina. “All it takes is practice.”
“A lot of practice,” Niccolà lamented, as a forkful of pigeon pie dropped into her lap.
The virtues were just one part of our training. Suor Rita was assigned to tutor us in arithmetic. “When you are mistresses of your own households, you’ll need to know how to keep records of expenditures.” I enjoyed arithmetic—there was something fascinating about numbers—and had already received some training from Fra Matteo at Palazzo Medici. But the others scowled through every lesson.
Suor Assunta tried hard to instruct us in the arts of needlework: spinning and weaving, which I found tedious but Tomassa took to immediately—"You don’t have to think about it,” she said. Sewing and embroidery seemed to be a pleasant way to pass the time, although I had small talent for it.
When the four of us were sent off to work on our stitchery, we found it an ideal time to discuss matters that we couldn’t very well speak about in front of the nuns.
“Do you really think,” Niccolà whispered, “that we can make men fall into sin? That we can inflame their carnal appetites just by looking at them?”
I hadn’t any idea. Not quite nine, I was the youngest in the group and hadn’t the advantage of growing up in a household with a mother and older sisters who might have imparted some basic knowledge of the ways of the world. But Giulietta had.
“Women are far more lustful than men,” she informed us. My needle hung in midair, and I leaned closer in order not to miss a single syllable. “Everyone knows that. But we’re also much stronger, and that’s why it’s up to us to keep men’s passions under control. They can’t resist us, you know.”
I didn’t know, but I found the subject interesting.
I thought of Suor Immacolata, the hateful nun at Santa Lucia, who claimed that my father had taken her virtue and left her with child. If she had been trained in the virtues, as we were being trained by Suor Paolina, surely nothing bad would have happened to her. Even if she had been a servant, she would have walked sedately, kept her hands still and her mouth closed, and—this was most important—she would have lowered her eyes and not inflamed my father’s helpless lust. So it was not my poor father’s fault that he had fallen into sin. It was the fault of the brazen servant who had led him there—or so I believed then.
WHILE I LIVED at Palazzo Medici and Fra Matteo was my tutor, he had abruptly stopped giving me instruction in reading.
“But why?” I’d asked, deeply disappointed.
“Cardinal Passerini’s orders,” he’d replied.
“But why?”
“I don’t know, Duchessina. But I do know that you ask too many questions.”
I’d taken my questions to Aunt Clarissa. The next time she’d gone with me for one of the cardinal’s monthly inspections, she offered him her opinion.
“Surely, Reverend Father,” she said, “you agree that it is entirely desirable that Caterina continue to develop the skill of reading. Undoubtedly it would stand her in good stead as she prepares for her future.”
Passerini had shaken his head sternly. “Surely you understand, Signora Strozzi,” he’d said in his arrogant manner, “that reading presents real dangers for women and girls?”
Wide-eyed, I’d looked from one to the other during this debate.
“I know of none,” my aunt insisted stubbornly. “And for every danger, there is doubtless a positive good.”
“You know nothing of the world, that much is clear,” the cardinal had continued loftily. I thought he must be wrong about that; it seemed to me that my aunt knew a lot more than he thought she did. “A woman who can read is very likely to read the wrong things. I cannot allow such a corrupting influence.”
“But surely, someone wise may guide her choices,” my aunt had dared to argue.
“Reading is not wholesome for the pure minds of girls,” the cardinal lectured her sternly. “Young women must heed only God and the will of their husbands! This ends our discussion. Good day, Signora Strozzi.”
Aunt Clarissa had lost the argument, but it didn’t really matter. Thanks to Fra Matteo, I could already read well, both Latin and the everyday Italian of Dante Alighieri, whose Divine Comedy I had studied before Cardinal Passerini had imposed the ban. Now, at Le Murate, I was pleased to learn that the nuns believed one must be able to read Latin in order to perform the Opus Dei—the work of God—at each of the devotional hours. Prayers and psalms were the heart of convent life. Reading, therefore, was essential.
Girls who’d had no previous tutoring—as most of them had not—were to receive their first reading lessons from the old priest who came to the convent church each day to say Mass. Not wanting to be left out, I went with them to stand at the iron grille. We listened as the priest on the other side mumbled each letter or combination of letters, and then tried to repeat after him, following along in a crude book
. The lessons were very dull. It was a wonder anyone could learn that way, but somehow they did.
FAR MORE INTERESTING were the lessons I learned from Niccolà, Tomassa, and Giulietta. I listened as the girls chattered about their families, discussing the plans their fathers were making to marry them into this noble family or that one and the problems that came about as wealthy parents of young men demanded huge dowries from the brides’ parents. I hadn’t thought much about my future—I’d been too concerned with surviving the present—but now I began to wonder what might lie ahead for me. I mentioned this to my friends.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Giulietta said, dismissing my question with a wave. “Pope Clement has no doubt been shopping for a husband for you for years. You’ll get a good one.”
“And you’re luckier than most of us,” Tomassa sighed. “You’re a Medici, and you’ve got heaps of money for a dowry.” She pressed her knuckles to her lips. We all knew her story: Several ships owned by her father had been lost during a storm, leaving her with a dowry too small to attract a husband of her social class. “My father wants me to stay here and take the vows. The dowry is much less.”
“Or no dowry at all,” said Giulietta, who always seemed to know such things. “Like Suor Marta, the one who sings bass in the choir. I’ve heard that they let her come for nothing, because she has a beautiful singing voice as low as a man’s.”
Niccolà was sympathetic. “When my older sister married last year, Papa said it nearly bankrupted him. Now he has me to worry about. He’s glad that his other children are boys.”
I listened wide-eyed to these conversations. According to Aunt Clarissa, Pope Leo had been thinking of a proper husband for me when I was an infant. He had arranged the marriage of my parents, and he’d have done the same for me. But Pope Leo was dead, and Pope Clement was a different story.
Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Page 6