Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici

by Carolyn Meyer

“I want you to cut off my hair,” I said. “All of it.”

  Maddalena stared at me. “But Signorina Duchessina,” she stammered, “I . . . I cannot.”

  “You must,” I insisted, “and quickly.” When she still hesitated, I took the scissors from her, seized a hank of my long hair in one hand, and hacked it off. Maddalena gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth, watching me with horrified eyes, as though I had lost my senses.

  I dropped the clump of hair on the stone floor and lopped off another handful. There was no mirror in my room, so I couldn’t see what I was doing. “Here,” I said impatiently. “Now cut, as short as possible. And then you must help me find a novice’s habit. Who is a sound sleeper? Whose garb can we borrow without disturbing her?”

  “Marietta,” Maddalena said, reluctantly taking the scissors from my hand. “She sleeps as though she were made of wood.” Still she hesitated. “But why must we do this to your beautiful hair?”

  “Because the angry crowd out there may not believe that I am a nun, that I’m trying to fool them. If it comes to it, I will show them my naked head, and they will have to let me go.”

  Within minutes my servant had chopped my hair nearly to my scalp and slipped away to the dormitory where the novices slept on straw mattresses. While she was gone, I opened the miniature cassone with my most precious treasures: my mother’s ruby cross, my father’s gold ring, my aunt Clarissa’s rosary, and now Suor Battista’s Book of Hours—all mementos of the dead. I shut the box, making the decision to leave the cassone there, at Le Murate, rather than take it on such a dangerous journey.

  Maddalena returned with Marietta’s tunic and veil. “Signorina Duchessina, am I to come with you?” she asked as she helped me into the tunic. Her voice was brave, but I knew that she must be as frightened as I was.

  I hesitated. The journey through narrow city streets would be far too dangerous. I wanted her company, but I feared for her life almost as much as I feared for my own. “No, Maddalena, they won’t allow it. I’ll send for you later,” I promised, although I knew it was an empty promise.

  Maddalena had finished arranging the white veil over the stubble of my hair and knelt to fasten the straps of my sandals when we heard another anxious tapping at the door of my cell. “Duchessina? You must hurry! The men are restless, and they’re growing angry at the delay. A dozen of the sisters are blocking the door, but they can’t hold off the mob if they’re determined to enter.”

  “The cassone,” Maddalena whispered, handing me the wooden chest of treasures.

  “No,” I said. “Per favore, ask Suor Margherita to keep it safe for me.” I paused at the door and asked Maddalena the questions that had been simmering since I’d first come to Le Murate: “Who are your parents? How did you come here?”

  Maddalena stared at me, puzzled. “My father was a stonecutter. He worked for Michelangelo and died in an accident before I was born. My mother was a peasant’s daughter.”

  “Did she leave you here on the wheel?” I asked.

  “No. She died when I was small, and my grandmother brought me here. They were very old and poor. Why?”

  “No reason.” I sighed with relief—this was not Immacolata’s child—and flung open the door. “I’m ready,” I said.

  The abbess stepped back, eyes wide, fingers to her lips. “Duchessina? Is it you?”

  “Yes, Reverend Mother, it is. Now please take me to these officers, and let them see what they’re about to do.”

  I was afraid the abbess would refuse to let me use this disguise, even to save my life, but she simply bowed her head for a moment and then turned and walked swiftly across the dimly lit courtyard. Led by the sound of her sandals slapping softly on the stone floor, I followed her toward the heavy oaken door.

  I could hear the loud voices of men on the other side of the thick walls. The promises of their leader didn’t reassure me. I didn’t trust him, yet there was no one else to trust. I could only pray that Signor Aldobrandini was a gentleman true to his word and that he did not intend to kill me as soon as he had taken me from the safety of the convent. Or even worse, to turn me over to the soldiers to do with me as they wished.

  I was just eleven years old, and I did not want to die!

  The abbess glanced at me, and I clenched my teeth and nodded. She drew back two sets of bolts, and the low, narrow door, rarely opened, swung inward on creaking iron hinges. I hadn’t left this sheltered place since I’d arrived three years earlier. I stepped over the high stone sill, into the menacing world outside the convent walls. The sky had begun to lighten; soon the nuns would be gathered in the chapel, chanting lauds, but now several of them stood with arms linked, facing the crowd and blocking the entry with their bodies.

  I glanced at the band of eight soldiers, grumbling among themselves. In front of them stood an elegantly dressed man in a crimson cloak trimmed with ermine; this I took to be Silvestro Aldobrandini. Not so frightening, I thought. But beyond the soldiers and their leader I could make out the dark silhouettes of a gathering crowd and hear the murmurs that grew suddenly more threatening. The crowd surged forward. The soldiers ordered them back, but not all obeyed. The man in the crimson cloak approached, leading a mule.

  Suor Margherita hugged me fiercely, kissed me on both cheeks, and blessed me with the sign of the cross. The brave nuns, murmuring prayers, parted and allowed me to pass but quickly closed ranks against the threatening crowd. “Miserere mei, Deus,” they prayed. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness . . .”

  The man in the crimson cloak gaped at me. He was clearly expecting a young duchess, not a nun, and did not know what to make of what he saw. “Duchessina?” he asked uncertainly.

  I drew in my breath and let it out again. I had to go through with my plan. “Will you dare remove me now?” I called out boldly “And show yourself to the people carrying a nun from her cell? I will not go with you quietly, as you expect. Let us see who will dare to drag a bride of Christ from her convent!”

  I felt a little sorry for Aldobrandini. He had been given an order, and now he was finding it hard to carry it out. Clutching his feathered hat, he knelt at my feet. I wondered if he could guess how terrified I was.

  “My dear Duchessina,” he began, “I am here, not of my own will, but by order of the governors of the city of Florence.” He stammered out his proposal: We would proceed immediately to the convent of Santa Lucia, where I was to remain until the siege of the city was lifted. “With God as my witness, I will guarantee your safety as long as you are under my protection,” he said. “The good nuns agree that you will be safer at Santa Lucia than you are here. The crowd behind me has threatened to burn down Le Murate, but I believe that when they see you as you are now, no harm will come to you or to the nuns of Le Murate.”

  I prayed that he was right. The nuns had protected me by taking me in, and now I must protect them by leaving. Signor Aldobrandini helped me to mount the mule. I flinched when I heard the oaken door close firmly and the sound of the two iron bolts being shot into place. I wanted to weep, to turn back, but I couldn’t allow myself to show how frightened I felt. Chin lifted defiantly, I began the journey, Signor Aldobrandini leading my mule through the angry mob. When they surged toward me, their faces hate filled and mouths twisted with poisonous rage, I pulled back my veil, revealing my shorn head. Muttering, the mob fell back, and I passed through without further incident.

  Aldobrandini handed me down from the mule when we arrived at Santa Lucia, and, relieved to have survived the crowd’s fury, I thanked him for his protection.

  “I salute you, Duchessina,” Aldobrandini replied. “You are a courageous young woman.” With those words, which I never forgot, he led the soldiers away.

  I WAS NOT WANTED at Santa Lucia; Suora Madre made that plain the moment I walked through the door. “We’re taking you only because the governors have ordered it,” she said. “And surely you don’t expect us to believe that you’ve become a nun.”

  “I
expect nothing, Suora Madre,” I said, and I made my way alone back to my old cell.

  I pitied the nuns, who seemed even more starved, more wretched than those at Le Murate. The mother superior was no longer pudding faced but skeleton thin. Still, each day the nuns who had survived observed the devotional hours, just as they always had. I joined them. Suor Immacolata, who had made my life so miserable before, was not there.

  “Dead,” the nuns replied when I asked. “The plague.”

  The mother superior told us nothing of what was happening beyond the convent walls. Perhaps she didn’t know. Perhaps she was too weak from hunger to care. It was hard to care about anything when our stomachs were empty. Then, on the twelfth of August, after I’d been at Santa Lucia for three weeks, word came that the siege had ended. Suora Madre wept when she announced that the resistance had collapsed, the governors surrendered. Michelangelo’s fortifications had withstood the bombardment, but at least sixteen thousand citizens of Florence were dead from illness and starvation. Pope Clement had triumphed. His supporters were again in control of the city.

  Two days later I asked the mother superior for permission to return to Le Murate. “Go back to your Medici lovers, and good riddance,” she said, barely glancing at me. “It’s one less mouth to feed.”

  “I’ll need an escort,” I said. “The streets are unsafe.”

  “Then I suggest you go the way you came—disguised as a nun,” she said.

  And so I did, dressed in the novice’s tunic and veil, riding the mule the abbess managed to find for me. The poor animal was nothing but skin and bone, as starved as the peasant who led him. The menacing crowds were gone, Via Larga nearly deserted except for a few wretched souls begging for food. No one paid any attention to a lone nun on a skinny mule.

  “There will be something for you to eat at Le Murate,” I promised the peasant, whom I now recognized as the gardener at Santa Lucia. I hoped I could make good on my promise.

  I was welcomed back to Le Murate with tears of joy. My three good friends embraced me, once they’d gotten over the shock of my shorn hair, and wanted to know everything that had happened to me since they’d last seen me. Maddalena fell on her knees to thank the Blessed Virgin for my safe return before I sent her off to find a bit of food for the peasant, still waiting at the gate.

  My immense relief and pleasure at being among those I loved didn’t last long. The Medici were again in power. I should have been pleased—this was my family, after all—but I was not. Every promise the pope had made to the Florentines was quickly broken.

  Pope Clement announced that the republic was finished and gave the order to destroy the great bell that hung in the tower in the Piazza dei Signoria. Known as La Vacca, “the cow,” because of its deep tolling, the bell had rung to summon generations of young Florentine men to the piazza. “The sweet sound of liberty, silenced forever,” wept Niccolà.

  Suor Margherita made the announcement in the refectory: The pope declared that Alessandro de’ Medici would be installed as sovereign lord and absolute ruler of Florence, once proper arrangements had been made. I could not imagine anything worse than living under Alessandro’s rule.

  There is one more thing, the abbess added. The pope had called for the arrest, torture, and execution of the members of the governors’ Council of Ten. That included Silvestro Aldobrandini.

  After we’d been dismissed, I rushed to Suor Margherita’s chambers. “Signor Aldobrandini does not deserve to be put to death!” I told her. “He saved my life.”

  “Then ask His Holiness to spare him,” she said simply.

  In my old cubicle in the scriptorium I prepared quill and ink and sat down to write, addressing the letter to His Holiness, Pope Clement VII. In the fine hand that Suor Battista had worked so patiently to teach me, I wrote my defense of Aldobrandini, the passionate words flowing from my pen.

  “I beg Your Excellency’s mercy for this noble gentleman’s service in the protection of your grateful relative,” I wrote. I hesitated; should I add something else? No, I decided, there was nothing more to say. With a flourish I added my signature, Caterina de’ Medici, Duchess of Urbino. Then I sprinkled the wet ink with sand, folded the letter, and asked the abbess to have it sent to Rome by fastest courier.

  WEEKS PASSED with no reply I stayed with the nuns of Le Murate, having no other place to go and no desire to leave them again. I learned that the Palazzo Medici was virtually deserted. Cardinal Passerini, who had fled with Alessandro and Ippolito three years earlier, was dead, a victim of the plague. Alessandro was in Rome with the pope, preparing to take control of Florence. No one seemed to know where Ippolito had gone.

  Although the siege had ended and the gates of the city were again open, life remained hard. Gradually, though, food was brought to Florence from other parts of Tuscany—olive oil and grain and preserved meat. But there were no fresh fruits or vegetables, eggs or cheese. All the fields surrounding Florence had been destroyed, even beyond the margins ordered by Michelangelo. The besieging armies themselves must have gone hungry.

  In mid-September I received a letter from Rome. Nervously I took it to my bedchamber and opened it. “We have considered your request regarding Silvestro Aldobrandini, lately of the Council of Ten, and we are pleased to inform you that his death sentence has been commuted to lifelong exile.”

  My words had touched their mark. I had saved Aldobrandini’s life. I sat holding the letter, enjoying the feeling of triumph.

  But the letter continued. “Now that it is once again safe to travel, you are to begin preparations immediately to remove with all haste to Rome, where you will make your home under our loving guidance.”

  The letter was signed Clemens Pater Patrum VII— Clement, Father of Fathers, VII.

  I stared blankly at the letter in my lap.

  My life was about to undergo another enormous shift. The last thing I wanted to do was move to Rome to be with Pope Clement, but I had no choice but to obey Destiny had called me again.

  9

  The Road to Rome

  THE FIRST CHALLENGE in preparing to leave for Rome was gathering the proper clothes. I had arrived at Le Murate with only my wrinkled silk gown and a mildewed velvet cloak. The gown had fit me when I was eight years old, but now I was eleven. For most of the past three years I had dressed nearly every day in the drab gray tunic and underskirt required of the girls at the convent. On feast days we were allowed to dress up. I’d managed to squeeze into my old gown that the nuns in the sewing room had cleaned and let out and added to as I’d grown, disguising the seams with clever embroidery stitches. Then, due to the effects of the siege and the terrible shortage of food, I’d become quite thin. Now the old silk gown hung on me, worn out and ill fitting. I could not go to Rome in that dress or in the tunic and underskirt.

  Suor Margherita dispatched a letter by courier to the pope, assuring the Holy Father that I looked forward with eagerness to the honor of being in his presence. Then she added that, as impatiently as I wished to be on my way, my present wardrobe was unsuitable. I would need several new gowns, she wrote, as well as cloaks and undergarments, hosiery and slippers.

  The pope replied, telling her to provide whatever I needed. The problem was that he sent no money. The abbess instructed the seamstresses to do what they could with what they had. From their store of silks and damasks used to make vestments for priests and bishops, they fashioned a gown of green brocade, embroidered the bodice with gold thread and edged the white sleeves in lace; they also made me a plain russet dress for traveling. Nuns who’d specialized in creating exquisite bridal trousseaux for the daughters of rich patrons stitched new sleeping shifts and undergarments of fine linen. Cecilia, one of the older girls who would soon leave the convent to be married, made me a gift of a pair of slippers that she’d outgrown.

  Niccolà, Giulietta, and Tomassa watched these preparations with mixed feelings. “It’s not fair!” Giulietta complained. “No sooner do you come back to us so that we can be togeth
er again than you tell us you’re leaving.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Duchessina,” Niccolà said bluntly. “How can you bear to make your home with the pope, after what he has done to our city?”

  “How can I not?” I asked. “I have no more choice than the citizens of Florence do. When the Holy Father speaks, I must obey”

  “She’s right,” Tomassa remarked to Niccolà. “Duchessina has no more choice than we do.”

  “And what about your cousin, Alessandro?” asked Giulietta. “He’s to become the lord of Florence. Will we like him, do you think?”

  “No,” I answered frankly. “You won’t. He was a cruel boy, and I doubt that he’s changed for the better, now that he’s a man.”

  It would be much different if it were Ippolito, I thought, but didn’t say.

  BEFORE I LEFT FLORENCE, I wanted to see Filippo Strozzi to ask a favor. In reply to my request, Clarissa’s former slave, Minna, came to accompany me to Palazzo Strozzi. Filippo greeted me somberly. He’d sent his three younger sons with Betta to the country before the siege began, while he and his oldest boy, Piero, had remained in Florence. All had survived and were now reunited in the city, including Betta.

  This was the first time I’d seen my uncle since before Clarissa’s death, and I was shocked by how much he had aged, his face deeply lined, his eyes hooded and grave. I began to weep as though the news of her death were still fresh, but Filippo remained stoic, muttering, “God’s will be done.”

  He summoned his sons to the grand receiving room, once the scene of many festive entertainments but now stripped of its rich tapestries and furnishings. The boys’ faces were thin and sad, and they had little to say. But at that moment Betta sailed in, and the mood changed. Unlike the Strozzi father and sons, she was used to expressing her feelings. The barren receiving room echoed with her wails of grief for my dead aunt and cries of joy at the sight of me. Soon everyone was laughing and crying and talking at once.