The Daughter of Siena: A Novel

by Marina Fiorato

  She said, as warmly as she could, ‘Greetings, my lord. I rejoice to see you here. Your father and sister are well? And your lady wife?’

  Gian Gastone found this question slightly awkward. The truth was that he had broken his journey in Florence with the express intention of killing his father. During his overnight stay he had contrived to behave so badly that his father had had a severe seizure from which he was not expected to recover.

  Gian Gastone and Dami had arranged an orgy in his father’s chamber in the Palazzo Vecchio, and contrived that his father would walk in from evensong in time to catch his son and heir being importuned by his constant coterie of pretty Tuscan boys, the ruspanti. The acts taking place there, played out in Cosimo’s own bed for greater effect, were debauched enough to give Cosimo – who was as overweight as his son but considerably more advanced in years – a major stroke on the spot.

  Gian Gastone had left his father babbling and dribbling on the very same four-poster he’d sullied with his antics, and after a solicitous word with the doctor, who had assured him that his father could not live much longer, he allowed himself a little smile. His sister Anna Maria Luisa, passing him in the doorway of their father’s death chamber, caught him at it, but nevertheless extended to her estranged brother a long white hand of friendship. Gian Gastone not only refused her hand but cemented his schism with his one remaining sibling by hissing at her, once, like a cat.

  Now, Gian Gastone looked at his sister-in-law, his hooded Medici eyes almost closed against the Sienese light. He was surprised to discover what Riccardo Bruni could already have told him: that there was a certain balm to Violante’s presence. But however sympathetic she was, he could not, in all conscience, tell her what had really passed in Florence.

  He contented himself with saying: ‘My father is knocking at death’s door; would that my wife were too.’

  Violante exchanged another glance with Gretchen and saw from the corner of her eye Riccardo tuck down his chin to hide a smile. The slight movement of his head was his undoing; although, in fairness, a man of his physical charms would never have enjoyed many moments’ grace before he caught the eye of Gian Gastone de’ Medici.

  ‘Did that amuse you, my pretty popelot?’ Gian Gastone called across his sister-in-law with ringing, friendly tones.

  Riccardo, fully intending to remain in the background until he could quietly slope away, unwarily lifted his eyes to the velvet-clad mastodon before him.

  Gian Gastone was shot through with green fire and Cupid’s bolt all at once. He did not really understand why his sister-in-law had dragged him to Siena, although he appreciated it. It would not be politic to be standing over his father at the very moment he expired, but neither would it be prudent to be far away in his Bohemian sinkhole of a castle when Cosimo died, lest there be a vacuum of power to be filled by a greedy neighbour or, worse, his sister Anna Maria Luisa.

  Siena was a wise choice, just near and far enough. Gian Gastone could trespass on the hospitality of his favourite kin, help his sister-in-law with her little local difficulties and protect his Tuscan dominions. And the compensations, as he could see as his greedy eyes raked over her young ostler, were stupendous. If he had had the energy Gian Gastone would have walked all the way around Riccardo. But he contented himself to gawp where he stood.

  Violante, filled with a familiar foreboding, stepped forward. ‘Thank you, Riccardo, you may go now.’

  With a speed that belied his great weight Gian Gastone shot out a flabby hand and grabbed Riccardo’s arm.

  ‘No, no, Riccardo, you may not. Stay a while.’

  The hand beringed with jewels dug into the flesh, then rose and hovered upon Riccardo’s cheek. Riccardo jerked away as if stung, contempt in his eyes. Violante held her breath, but Gian Gastone merely laughed.

  ‘Spirit. I like him. Well, well, Violante, you sly old mare. And they say there is nothing to do in the country. I can see the local colour is amazing.’

  For a moment everyone was still and silent. Even the horses stood, heads down in the heat, waiting. Above the courtyard the starlings slashed across the high blue, and screeched to break the spell.

  Gian Gastone looked around him, gratified by the discomfort he had wrought, and rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said with dispatch.

  In that short moment the balance of power had transferred to him, and he was enjoying the sensation of outranking Violante, however benignly he felt towards her. He felt as though he were already grand duke.

  ‘Sister, call your cooks and minstrels. Let’s celebrate our reunion. And you, Riccardo,’ he caressed the name, ‘will be our guest of honour.’

  Riccardo and Violante exchanged horrified glances.

  ‘Ruspanti,’ Gian Gastone called to his boys, ‘bring my litter. Why are you all roosting around like woodcocks? Let’s be inside, let’s feast – I’m so famished my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

  There was nothing for it but to follow.

  An hour later, Violante was in the Hall of the Nine, beneath those extraordinary frescoes of good and bad government, in her best violet silk. She was sitting at the right hand of her brother-in-law who, as heir to the dukedom, had taken her place at the head of the table. To his left, in the place normally taken by Giuliano Dami, sat Riccardo Bruni, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else in the world.

  Gian Gastone ate and drank continually, his fingers and chin dripping with grease, his cup forever filled, forever empty again. Violante herself choked down a little bread and could not eat more. The only balm to her feelings was the quartet of musicians she had brought from the cathedral at short notice, playing Scarlatti on their viols and violoncellos. She had even had Ferdinando’s beloved piano brought up from the Hall, and found a harpsichord player to tackle this new and unfamiliar instrument. She did not want Gian Gastone to find the society in Siena wanting. She was, in the face of an outsider, fiercely proud of her city.

  While he was gorging, her brother-in-law did not speak, but she knew that between courses they must converse and she did not know what to say. Although she had written to Gian Gastone and bidden him come, now he was here Violante could not comprehend how his presence would aid their cause. Now he was here, she wished him as far away from her, from the city, from Riccardo, as possible. She didn’t know what to do. Should she lay the problem at Gian Gastone’s feet, let him deal with the Nine and walk away from it all? Or should she say nothing and proceed with their plan for Riccardo to go to the round church of San Galgano and hear the Nine’s final plans?

  Violante suddenly felt an enormous balloon of regret swelling in her chest. She experienced an overwhelming affection for her little group – Zebra, Gretchen, Pia, Riccardo and she herself, a ridiculous, premature nostalgia for their odd little band of brothers and sisters out to save the city. She looked at Gian Gastone, so bloated and decadent, so changed from the young, slim idealist she had known. Her instincts were to keep the plot from him. Yet her abiding memory of her brother-in-law was that he was fiendishly clever, endlessly observant and that Dami and his ruspanti had their eyes everywhere. She crumbled her bread thoughtlessly on the table, torn, sure that her thoughts must be as clear to her brother-in-law as the workings in a glass clock. She was surprised, then, by his opening gambit.

  ‘See,’ Gian Gastone’s wine-soaked breath warmed her ear, ‘how your toy enjoys the music.’ He waved his great paw in Riccardo’s direction. ‘He drinks it in like a horse at a trough.’

  Violante glanced at Riccardo. She could see that he had, as she had, found refuge in the Scarlatti. She realized, with a shock of recognition, that she had known another, once, who had listened to music in that way, as if he heard every single note, every individual thread of melody woven together in a tapestry of sound.

  ‘He taps his fingers and moves his eyes,’ continued Gian Gastone in her ear. ‘See, he is following the counterpoint. Put a fiddle or a clavier in his hands and he would be accomplished. He is not such a peasant
– you have chosen well for your paramour.’

  He could not be permitted to go on like that.

  ‘Really, brother, I hardly know the fellow. He is an ostler, the son of a farrier. You were lucky he happened by to stop your coach. I assure you, he is naught to me – truth be told, I think it a strange caprice of yours to invite him to so high a table.’

  Violante noted the ever-present Dami listening closely to her words and darting his violet glance at Riccardo. She bit her lip at the irony of what she’d uttered. Gian Gastone’s insinuations revolted her. True, she wished to look after Riccardo, to nurture him: she knew that some might say she was filling an empty cradle with a substitute for what she had lost, but she had never thought of him in the way that her brother-in-law suggested.

  ‘You assure me, do you? Then you will not mind if I fish in his sweet pond?’

  Without waiting for a reply, Gian Gastone turned to Riccardo, pressing meats and dainties upon him. Violante could not hear what Riccardo said and felt once again, with an uncomfortable trick of memory, that she had been here before: looking on while a young and beautiful man was importuned by a Medici sodomite. But she did not fear for Riccardo’s heart. She knew it was bound and sequestered in Pia Tolomei’s white hands.

  Before long Gian Gastone had turned back to her again. ‘Do you think Ferdinando ever loved you?’

  Violante started. Her thoughts flew to the one and only time she and her husband had lain together. Ferdinando had made her wear a man’s wig and had leaned her over the footboard of the bed, turning her face away, leaving her shift to cover her breasts. She had known, even then – for she was not so green – that he wished to hide all that was female from his sight. Worse than the bestial, painful, hideous act was the expression on his face when she cast a desperate, pleading glance over her shoulder. It frightened her that she did not know the person who did this to her. There was no love nor desire, no communion; she was being violated by a stranger. Violare. And worse: she saw in that moment that his eyes were closed. He did not wish to see her. And it was this that hurt most of all. Ferdinando was fulfilling his obligations, but did not want any piece of her. This terrible little episode had marked the moment she had known, finally, that he had never loved her and never would. Violante had never admitted the truth, even to herself. Now, fortified by the new friends she had made, numbed by the distance from Ferdinando, she was able to answer Gian Gastone’s question truthfully.

  ‘No.’

  Gian Gastone picked at his teeth. ‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘My father loved my mother once; she detested him and wanted him dead. I, in turn, detest my wife and would not shed a single tear for her. My sister Anna Maria Luisa, like yourself, married a syphilitic husband who could not give her living children. All he left her when he rotted was the Elector’s army: a regiment of lead soldiers to play with but no war to wage. One can quite see why the people talk about a Medici curse. No, we have not one happy marriage among us.’

  Violante considered these bold, stark truths. It was the moment for honesty. ‘I loved your brother, though.’

  For a moment the hooded eyes softened. ‘I know that too. Ferdinando was a fool. And yet, there was a strange morality to what happened to him. He took lovers: Cecchino, in particular, of course.’

  Violante froze. No one had ever dared to name Ferdinando’s amour to her face.

  ‘And it was that weakness, in particular, which gave him the malady of which he died. He was punished, in the end, for not loving you.’

  Violante considered. She had last seen Cecchino in Florence’s duomo at Ferdinando’s funeral. The singer was wearing the same wig, perfumed and powdered, that Ferdinando had made her wear in their wedding bed. At the funeral the castrato’s face had been a ruin of tears. She could not pity Cecchino, even though she was able to acknowledge that their union had been the true marriage in Ferdinando’s life.

  Nevertheless, her heart had become hardened against that sin of sodomy, the sin that had given her husband syphilis, the syphilis that had taken her sons. Of all the sins in the calendar, this one seemed particularly Tuscan. Saint Bernardino of Siena himself had railed against it from the pulpit, and in her own country homosexuals were known as Florenzen – Florentines. This sickness of the duchy shamed her, and her personal experiences added to political infamy to make her determined to cleanse her province. When she had fled to Siena, she had outlawed sodomy in the city and made sure that those who shared in the practice faced the harshest punishments of the law. Under her rule the Sienese spat at sodomites in the street.

  Violante lifted her eyes to Gian Gastone and recognized a new, complicit candour between them. She felt, for a moment, brave.

  ‘And what is to be your punishment for the same sin?’ She steeled herself for his anger, but Gian Gastone’s thoughts chimed, eerily, with hers.

  ‘I am childless. The dukedom dies with me. And yet, I have had a long and happy marriage of a different kind. We allow each other our freedoms, we speak the truth to each other and we are the closest of companions.’

  Gian Gastone turned to Dami and smiled, raising his hand to touch the hollows of his lover’s throat. Dami smiled back, and yet Violante could not look in those strange eyes, winded suddenly by a complicated pain. Dami was Gian Gastone’s Cecchino, but as Gian Gastone caressed Dami’s neck she realized that they did not trouble to hide their love, nor conduct their affairs with discretion. At least Ferdinando had always practised his amours in a clandestine fashion. He had afforded her that much dignity. She recalled, almost word for word, the statutes she had accordingly written against homosexuality in Siena, bitterness in every clause, pain in every line. Her brother-in-law would have to be very careful here.

  As the next trencher of food was placed before Gian Gastone, Violante recognized with an enormous weariness that he was only just beginning his feasting and drinking. She heartily wished herself abed. She dare do no more than glance at Riccardo, who, his head in the music, was eating nothing. There was no way she could speak to him, nor even send him a signal or message. Equally, she could not tell her brother-in-law of the city’s ills tonight: the company was too loud and he was too drunk. She rose and excused herself, but not soon enough to miss Gian Gastone, full at last, vomiting copiously on the table, then removing his wig to wipe up the stinking mess. She fled.

  Riccardo glanced at the fabulous feast before him and heartily wished himself at home at his father’s table, sharing a hard loaf and a cup of wine. He wondered, as he did at every moment, what Pia was doing now. He had no interest in the wonderful fare of Violante’s kitchens, unlike the monster beside him who was conveying all before him into his gluttonous maw. Riccardo could not look upon him, this soon-to-be duke, this noble man. How could his country, his city, belong, one day soon, to this creature?

  Riccardo stole a look at the gorging face, with its disgustingly full lips and hooded eyes, its multitude of chins. None of this would matter if the face was kindly or the eyes mild, but it had taken Riccardo very little time to identify Gian Gastone for what he was: a child, a wilful, dangerous child, with precocious intelligence and an iron will, a child who was absolutely used to getting his own way in the world, a child who had been taught that nothing was beyond his reach.

  The household of beautiful young men who revolved around him like satellite planets around the sun were smooth and silky and silent, and utterly untrustworthy. Once or twice Riccardo caught them regarding him jealously. He could have set their minds at ease; he had no interest in Gian Gastone’s breed of bedsport, no matter what size of remuneration the purse held. He had no intention of becoming the catamite to this walrus.

  Riccardo felt a pang for Violante, abruptly deposed from her rank. He knew that the duchess had invited her brother-in-law here to help them to stem Faustino’s climb to power, but he could feel nothing but boiling resentment against this interloper. Riccardo tightened his fist on his trencher knife. If he swiped the blade sideways into the flesh of Gian Gaston
e’s throat, would he bleed like a pig at slaughter? He relaxed his fingers and put the knife down.

  ‘Hungry, my pet?’ Gian Gastone leaned in, crushing Riccardo’s shoulder.

  Riccardo flinched imperceptibly. ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘You must call me “Your Grace”.’ What do you think of our sister the duchess?’

  There was so much that was wrong with this question that Riccardo took a moment to answer. ‘She is a truly good woman.’

  ‘You like the music?’

  This was easier. ‘I do, Your Grace.’

  ‘Would it surprise you to know that my brother, the duchess’s late husband, helped to invent the piano?’

  ‘Nothing would surprise me today, Your Grace.’

  Gian Gastone smiled abruptly. ‘Yes, indeed. He gave his patronage – and his cock, too, but that’s another story – to a fellow called Bartolomeo Cristofori, a pretty young harpsichord builder from Padua. They invented, together, the oval spinet and the spinettone, so that my brother could play counterpoint for him out of bed as well as in it. And from those two instruments they developed the piano, with the black and white keys: the fine sounds and airs of which you are enjoying tonight.’

  Riccardo turned to him with a look of haughty contempt, but was unnerved to find it met by the astonished gaze of Gian Gastone. Something had even made him put his fork down.