When the excitement settled down, I spoke to Filippo. “The Holy Father has called me to Rome. He’s sending a cardinal with an escort to accompany me. I’ve come to ask if you’ll allow Betta to return to my service and travel to Rome with me.” I turned to Betta. “If she’s willing.”
Betta didn’t wait for Filippo Strozzi to signal his opinion one way or the other. She threw her arms around me again, burying my face in her pillowy bosom until I was half smothered. Filippo forced a thin smile. “Certainly Elisabetta may go with you to Rome. God protect you on your travels.”
ON THE MORNING of October first, my few belongings, including my precious cassone with its treasures, were packed in panniers slung over the back of a donkey. I said good-bye to Maddalena and my friends at Le Murate, promising that my visit to Rome was only just a visit and that I expected to return to Florence before long. We kissed one another, and wept, and kissed again. Suor Margherita gave me her blessing. My three best friends presented a going-away gift—a very pretty head covering they had taken turns stitching in secret.
My feelings that day were a tangle: I was sad to be leaving my dear friends and uneasy about what my life would be like under the pope’s thumb, but I was also thrilled by the notion of a journey to a faraway city. Except for my earliest years, of which I had no memory, I had never traveled outside of Tuscany. I’d spent the past three years shut up in one convent or another, and I was curious about Rome. I had heard much about its ancient ruins, as well as about St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel, and the Palazzo Vaticano, the pope’s palace. I wanted to see it all.
With Betta and four armed guards I rode off to join our traveling party on the piazza outside the monastery of San Marco. A short and jowly cardinal with bulging eyes was waiting for me, surrounded by several assistants, a number of servants, and Swiss Guards from the pope’s private army. He’d also brought us two well-fed mules for the journey.
“I am Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, nephew of the late Pope Leo,” he said. “My mother, Lucrezia Salviati, is Pope Leo’s older sister. You will make your home with her, as you did when you were an infant.”
“Cardinal Giovanni seems kindly,” I murmured to Betta as the procession prepared to move out.
“Everyone seems kindly at first,” she said drily.
A band of musicians played, drawing a small crowd to the piazza. It was meant to be a festive occasion, but the mood remained dark. The crowd watched sullenly as we rode down the Via Larga and past the Palazzo Medici, now empty and shuttered. On every building the Medici coat of arms with the seven balls, called palle, had been defaced or destroyed.
“It’s not like it was once,” muttered Betta. “There would have been cheering throngs whenever a Medici rode through the streets of this city ‘Palle, palle!’ the people used to shout.”
But there was no cheering now for the Medici duchessina and a Medici cardinal. I stared straight ahead, relieved that there were no shouted insults, no hurled garbage. When our entourage crossed the Arno, I turned back for a final view of the Duomo, the red-tiled dome of the great cathedral gleaming in the midmorning sunlight. Then I set my sights forward, toward Rome.
MY EXCITEMENT dimmed as the hours passed and the journey grew long and exhausting. We stopped each night at monasteries along the way, where we were fed a simple meal, given plain beds, and sent along our way in the morning under stormy skies. On the fourth day we reached the Porta Flaminia and entered Rome in a downpour. Cardinal Giovanni led the way to the Piazza Navona in the heart of the city and the stately palazzo nearby.
I climbed down from the wooden seat on the mule’s back. Liveried guards opened the massive door, and I stepped inside the great central courtyard decorated with marble statues, many of them beheaded or completely smashed. An elderly woman in a velvet gown of several vivid colors slowly descended the broad staircase. She was short and heavy bodied, her face round with sagging chins and protruding eyes—clearly a Medici. Jewels shone around her neck and on her wrists and sparkled on every finger, so that she seemed half buried in ornaments. Once she’d looked me over, a smile brightened the deep grooves of her homely face.
“I am Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, your great-aunt,” she said in a warm and pleasant voice. “I welcome you once again to Palazzo Medici. The last time I saw you, you were little more than an infant, and now you’re a fine young lady! I hope you will be happy here.”
Aunt Lucrezia led the way up the broad stairs from the courtyard to the piano nobile, and then, breathing hard, up a narrower stairway. Betta came along behind us carrying my little cassone, and a servant followed with the rest of my belongings. There wasn’t much.
“We’re fortunate to be alive,” Lucrezia said, as she showed me to my apartment. “The palazzo was attacked and looted during the sack of Rome. As you can see, it was badly damaged and nearly everything destroyed or stolen. By luck, we were away at our country villa, and I had my jewels with me.” She stroked her pearl and sapphire necklace. “How my dear brother, the late Pope Leo, would have wept to witness the ruin of the most glorious city in all Christendom.”
I remembered the night the young cleric and the old priest had come to the Palazzo Medici in Florence and repeated stories of rape, murder, thievery, and destruction in faraway Rome. We hadn’t realized then how our own city was about to suffer. In both cases, the blame lay on Pope Clement and Emperor Charles.
Over the next day or two, while I rested and began to find my way around the battered palazzo, Betta befriended the servants and delivered a report on the large household, which seemed to include dozens of people. It would have taken me a week or more to find out what Betta managed to extract in a matter of hours.
“Lucrezia’s husband, Jacopo Salviati, is old and ill and seldom leaves his rooms,” said Betta. “Her son, Cardinal Giovanni, and his assistants spend most of their time at the Vatican. Her widowed daughter, Maria, lives here—she always dresses in mourning. A younger daughter, Francesca, was about to marry a distant Medici cousin in Florence, but the wedding has been postponed because of the siege. Francesca is in a black mood. You’ll see for your self soon enough—you’re to take your main meal each day with Lucrezia and her daughters. The women eat together, separate from the men, and Lucrezia usually invites her friends to join her.”
Equipped with this information, I prepared for my first dinner at the Roman palazzo. Betta helped me dress in my new green gown and fastened my mother’s ruby cross around my neck. “What shall we do about your hair, Duchessina?” she asked. It hadn’t been quite three months since I’d cut it all off, and Betta hadn’t recovered from her first sight of my bare head.
“Perhaps I should simply go as I am,” I teased her. “To make a memorable first impression.”
“Let’s leave that for the second impression,” she said briskly. “Or maybe the last.” She began arranging the head covering my friends had given me, taking care to hide stray hair ends, and sent me off to dinner.
They were waiting for me. Lucrezia and a half dozen ladies in sumptuous gowns and masses of jewels all smiled pleasantly. Among them was a younger woman, remarkable in a plain black gown with a simple white head covering and no jewels of any kind—Maria, the widow, I thought. A beautiful girl wearing a lovely blue gown and a dark scowl stood apart from the others. That must be Francesca, the disappointed bride.
“Welcome, Duchessina,” said my aunt. I curtsied, and the meal began.
Listening to the conversation at Lucrezia’s dinner, I concluded that nearly every lady at the table was of Medici blood or had married some Medici cousin. That made me wonder about Ippolito. I hadn’t seen him for three years. Possibly he was in Rome. Very likely someone at this table knew where. Someone might even mention his name. I listened carefully waiting for a chance to ask about him that would seem entirely natural, one cousin inquiring after another. But as the days passed, I learned nothing, not even from Betta.
My favorite in the household was Maria Salviati. M
y great-aunt Lucrezia was always pleasant, but she was interested almost exclusively in her lady friends, who were polite to me but distant. Gloomy Francesca seemed interested almost exclusively in herself. Only Maria, who wore sadness as habitually as she wore her widow’s weeds, took much of an interest in me.
“I have a son just your age. Cosimo will soon be twelve,” she told me. “But I rarely see him.” When I asked where he was, she replied, “With his father’s family, of course, as he has been since my husband’s death.” She studied her long, thin fingers and finally managed a wan smile. “If you are in need of anything at all, Duchessina, come to me. I should be glad to help you.”
It was the custom in Rome to serve certain dishes on certain days of the week: macaroni dressed with a meat sauce on Thursdays, fish stew or ravioli stuffed with cheese on Fridays, and saltimbocca or some other veal dish on Saturdays. This custom seemed odd to me, but whatever was served was well prepared and plentiful, and it had been a long time since I’d had enough to eat. So, with no idea what else was expected of me, I ate my fill and waited to hear from Pope Clement.
ABOUT A WEEK after my arrival in Rome a papal messenger delivered a note. His Holiness would receive me at dinner in three days at the Belvedere, his private villa near the Vatican. I took the note to Maria.
“You’ll have frequent dinners with His Holiness,” Maria said. “And I’ve been thinking about this: You have only one proper gown. It’s pretty, but it’s not enough—you’ve worn it every day since you arrived. I’ll summon a tailor and a seamstress to begin work on a larger wardrobe. The bigger problem is your hair.” Maria rarely smiled, but the sight of it actually made her laugh. “What a disaster!” Maria declared. “It will be Easter until you can go about without a head covering.”
On the appointed day I anxiously dressed for dinner with the pope in my green gown. Betta fussed over me, adjusting the sleeves. Lucrezia loaned me some jewels. Maria arranged the headdress my friends had made.
“Are you nervous?” she asked when I dropped a ring for the third time.
“Si,” I admitted. “A little.”
“Don’t be. There’s nothing to be uneasy about,” she assured me. “My mother and sister and I will be with you. There’s sure to be a huge crowd. No one will pay the least attention to you.”
The sky was a perfect blue, and autumn sunshine bathed the buildings of Rome in a warm glow as we set out toward the Vatican, accompanied by a dozen servants.
“It’s a nuisance,” Francesca grumbled, riding beside me on a handsome gray mule. “The dinners are terribly dull, but we have to go. My mother is the pope’s official hostess.”
Our party skirted the Piazza Navona and made its way along a well-traveled street of half-ruined palaces. We crossed the Tiber by way of a graceful bridge, passed the Castel Sant’ Angelo and the walls of the Vatican, and arrived at the Belvedere.
I hadn’t seen Pope Clement, the man I remembered as Cardinal Giulio, since he’d ridden out of Florence in a gala procession on his way to Rome. I was just six years old then; now I was eleven and a half, and I believed I’d become quite a different person. My experiences at Santa Lucia and Le Murate had taught me much. Surely the Holy Father would notice the changes in me and be pleased.
I followed Lucrezia and her daughters along a crimson carpet. One set of doors after another parted, opened by white-gloved Swiss Guards in blue and yellow striped uniforms with red doublets, the Medici colors. We passed through room after room hung with rich tapestries and works of art, having no chance to admire any of it. Instead, I kept my mind on the lessons that Suor Paolina had drilled into us:
Eyes lowered modestly.
Hands still, clasped lightly.
Sedate walk, neither quick nor laggardly.
Thoughts quiet, reflective.
I failed that fourth lesson completely. I could discipline my body—hands, feet, even my eyes—but my mind raced unrestrained in every direction.
The last set of doors swung open. A tall, gray-bearded figure in white robes trimmed in gold was seated on a dais upon a high gilded throne, his feet resting on white silk cushions with gold tassels. He was surrounded by cardinals in scarlet from hat to slippers, bishops in purple, and men and women in splendid clothes and marvelous jewels, all watching as we made our entrance, one by one.
A page announced first Lucrezia, then Maria, followed by Francesca. I watched carefully as each of the women stepped forward, mounted the red-carpeted steps to kneel before the pope, kissed his feet, and then kissed the ring on the hand he extended. The pope smiled and nodded, and one of his cardinals helped each lady to her feet. I knew exactly what to do.
Next it was my turn: “Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duchess of Urbino!” intoned the page. I moved forward—eyes lowered, hands still— until the moment that I would kneel and bend to kiss the pope’s feet.
But Pope Clement rose abruptly from his gilded throne, thrusting aside the tasseled cushions, and threw his arms open wide. “Our dearest Duchessina!” the pope cried.
Surprised by this move, I glanced up. Tears glistened in the pope’s eyes, and while I stared openmouthed, breaking every rule Suor Paolina had tried so hard to instill in me, the tears began to course down the Holy Father’s whiskered cheeks.
“How happy we are to see our dear niece once again,” he proclaimed in a deep voice loud enough for everyone in the enormous chamber to hear. And then he clasped me tightly, my face muffled against his snow-white robes.
What do I do now? I wondered, quite breathless.
The pope released me from his embrace. I dropped to my knees, pressed my lips on the white slipper, reached for the hand with the gold Ring of the Fisherman symbolizing Saint Peter, and kissed it. One of the cardinals prepared to raise me up, but the pope brushed him away and did me the honor himself.
Pope Clement did not allow me to step aside. He kept me next to him, and even when we were escorted into the grand dining hall with long tables laid for a hundred guests or more, he led me to a place near the papal chair. You got through a vicious mob, I told myself; certainly you can get through this.
The table was set with square crystal goblets rimmed with gold; silver plates displaying the papal seal inlaid in gold; and silver knives, spoons, and forks bearing the Medici crest. This was a huge step from dining in the convent refectory with girls my own age or even eating with Lucrezia’s ladies. I decided that it would be better to eat nothing, rather than risk making some dreadful mistake that Suor Paolina had not prepared me for. Surely she couldn’t have known about all of this! And I had lost sight of Aunt Lucrezia and her daughters.
Over the next several hours the meal proceeded with course after course—I stopped counting when I’d passed twenty—each presented by a liveried footman, first to Pope Clement and then to his honored guests, which included me. Soon the Holy Father seemed to forget about me, hunger overcame me, and I began to sample the various dishes, wielding the fork with growing confidence.
While the pope was occupied with his friends or signaling for his goblet of wine to be refilled, I glanced around the vast hall, my curiosity overcoming all the cautions I’d been given about keeping my eyes lowered. How would I ever find out what was going on if I could only stare at my plate?
My eyes swept the great hall. Everyone was engaged with the food, the wine, their conversations. A small orchestra—a harpsichord, a harp, three large violas, two lutes—provided music, although people talked so loudly I can’t imagine they could hear it. I was listening to the music when I noticed a young man with finely chiseled features, standing to one side. He was dressed magnificently in a jeweled doublet and silk hose, one leg yellow and one red; his dark hair curled nearly to his shoulders.
I recognized him at once. Ippolito!
I gasped and stared, willing him to look at me, until at last our eyes met. He nodded and smiled slightly. I half rose, wanting to rush to his side but forcing myself to do no such foolish thing. Gazing after him,
I sank back onto my seat and watched him disappear behind a pillar near the orchestra.
A woman seated beside me spoke up. “Signorina, I’ve asked you a question,” she said crossly. I begged her pardon.
“I asked if you’re enjoying your stay here in the Eternal City” she repeated.
“Oh, indeed, signora!” I said, much too enthusiastically. “I know that I shall love it here!”
THE POPE’S elaborate dinner lasted for several hours. Riding back to Palazzo Medici beside Maria, I considered how to bring up the subject that had me in such turmoil. Finally, I simply blurted it out: “I saw my cousin, Ippolito, at the dinner. Does he live nearby?”
“Si, quite nearby,” she replied. “Ippolito and Alessandro both live at the palazzo. But we hardly ever see them.”
“They live at Palazzo Medici?” I echoed stupidly. “Both of them?
“Si. Ippolito is also my cousin, the natural son of Giuliano, my mother’s brother—Leo’s brother, too, of course. And Alessandro is here because he’s Clement’s favorite.” Not noticing my agitation, Maria added, “They’re cousins, they’ve grown up together, but it seems they’re not fond of each other. Their disagreements have become much worse since the Holy Father made it known that he’s preparing Alessandro to rule Florence in the very near future.”
“But why Alessandro? Ippolito is older,” I argued. “He should be the one to rule, shouldn’t he? He’s much beloved by the people of Florence.”
“You may be right, Duchessina. Ippolito would no doubt agree with you, and I know it was Pope Leo’s intention—he spoke of it often. But that’s not what Pope Clement has decided.”
This is not the way it should be, I thought stubbornly. Someday Ippolito will rule Florence. Then, for the first time, another thought came to me: And I will be at his side.
Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Page 10