‘Let us conceal ourselves here.’ He pointed to a series of dark wood pews. ‘They will have to proceed through here to reach the chapel beyond.’
Pia lay down close behind the darkest pews and without a moment of awkwardness or hesitation Riccardo lay down beside her, opened his arms and she huddled into the curve of his chest. Feeling the length of her body pressed against his for the first time, she had to remind himself of the sanctity of the place. She raised her thoughts and eyes to heaven and in the dimness she could just make out the perfect dome of the rotunda, decorated in one long, perfectly described spiral, like the shell of a snail, turning ever inwards, constructed of white stone alternating with red brick. As the horseman held Pia close to him she followed the snail-spiral with narrowed eyes. Time crawled slowly, and she would have had it crawl slower still. It was enough to have him hold her and look at the spiral. She knew that if she met his eyes she would be lost.
It seemed hours later when the glow of torches lit the gloom. Pia’s heart beat fast and painfully. Riccardo held a finger to his lips and beckoned as they edged silently to the end of the pew. Nine torches processed forth and became a circle, each illuminating the cowled figure that held it. Once again Pia felt the echo of a monastic past, but here the echoes were not of sacred music and the footfall of a sandal, but the dark devilry of a black mass. For a moment she feared that the cowls held nothing within, just the gaping blackness of a demonic form.
As ever, Faustino was the first to speak.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘The hour has come, and Romulus will be with us presently to plan the attack. But first, our own civic business. Is all in place for the Palio?’
‘Yes. I have constructed the mechanism to determine the horse draw, aided by Romulus himself. Once that has proceeded successfully, the horses will be allotted as planned,’ said another voice.
‘And our syndicates?’
‘The betting will take place in blocks. We have formed syndicates in each of our contrade, and each merchant and noble, down to the humblest baker and water-carrier, has given me their tithe.’
‘And then?’
‘They trust us, as their captains, to lay the money on their own fantino. But I shall lay the money on Nello as agreed, and our contrada will be the winners too even though he will triumph.’
‘The losses shall be met by the other contrade who are unaware of our enterprise.’
‘Thus the Nine will be enriched and exalted, and the others impoverished, soon to disappear.’
Pia met Riccardo’s eyes. The betting would beggar half of the city.
‘And what of Romulus?’
‘His part in the bargain will be told soon enough. He will join us here shortly,’ said the voice of the one who had spoken of the horse draw. ‘In essentials he will move during the race, while the entire city is crammed into the piazza.’
‘I hear a carriage … it must be him!’ A younger, more nasal voice now; Pia’s body stiffened involuntarily. Nello – not among the Nine’s number, but lurking in the shadows outside the circle.
Pia lifted her head a fraction. There was indeed a rumble of carriage wheels. A carriage great and noble and heavy, of such bearing that Pia felt the vibration deep within her chest.
The Nine stood silently as they awaited the arrival of their master conspirator. Pia edged forward and craned around the pew. Each man in the church was still, their torches guttering and wavering slightly, breaking the circle. Pia held Riccardo tight, waiting too.
Outside, there was the sound of a horse whinnying and then the creak of someone descending from the carriage and moving on slow, shuffling footsteps across the stone flags of the lapida. The company turned as one as an enormous figure shuffled into the circle of torchlight. Pia heard Riccardo give a tiny gasp.
‘Who is it?’ she breathed.
‘Gian Gastone de’ Medici.’
Pia frowned. Could she have been mistaken in what she’d overhead in the castle stable? Was the duchess’s brother-in-law somehow embroiled in this plot? Faustino had seemed to fear him, had placed safeguards against his interference.
An elderly voice spoke up uncertainly. ‘Romulus?’
Swift as a knife-strike, Faustino spoke. ‘Shut your stupid mouth, Orsa. You are mistaken. This is the old duke’s heir, the fat sot from Florence.’
‘Careful, signor,’ Gian Gastone’s voice was dangerous. ‘You speak to the Medici.’
Pia watched the Nine carefully. She could see that they knew not whether to stay or make a run for it. Faustino had no such fears. He raised his head half an inch and prepared to face the situation, tempering the contempt in his tone just a fraction.
‘My lord, how may we help you?’
‘I’m here to help you.’
‘How did you know we would be here?’
Gian Gastone waved a massive paw, his shadow cutting through the torchlight. ‘We know all of your secrets. Moreover, there is one here who listens to all your council, wherever you meet, and who is loyal to me. This might surprise you, but you are labouring, I’m afraid, under a serious misapprehension.’
Pia’s flesh crawled. She knew Gian Gastone spoke of Riccardo, that he knew he was hidden somewhere in the church, that he was enjoying this cat-and-mouse game. She prayed he would not utter the horseman’s name, that he would take the opportunity to imply to Faustino that one of the Nine themselves was a turncoat.
‘That is not possible,’ Faustino said decidedly, then after a pause his tone changed. ‘What leads you to think this? Perhaps you could share your wisdom with your faithful subjects.’
Pia registered Faustino’s change of tone. He was keeping Gian Gastone talking, keeping him inside the church. There was something outside that Faustino did not wish the heir of Tuscany to see. She put her mouth to Riccardo’s ear.
‘Time wasting.’
He nodded and breathed, ‘Stay here.’ She felt the chill of his body leaving her, the chill of being alone.
The chill of foreboding.
Riccardo crept from his hiding place into the darkness, clinging to the shadow in the chapel. Once outside, he stole past the Medici coach, which loomed out of the dark in the glimmering greeny half-light of the forest. There seemed nothing amiss. He stilled the horses with a trailing hand and crept down the path on silent feet. He climbed an overhanging tree and settled in the leaves, controlling his breathing, prepared to wait.
His wait was not a long one. A covered carriage pulled quietly up the hill, a rival in size to the Medici carriage, drawn by six matchless bays. The driver halted the horses at the sight of the Medici coach. He jumped down to examine the Medici arms on the door, then walked back to the carriage and spent some little time in conference with its occupant. The coachman’s tricorne obscured the face of the passenger, but a white glove bearing two rings grasped the carriage door agitatedly. The driver mounted his box again and clicked his tongue to turn the horses around on the wide path, away and down the hill again in the moonlight, their hooves dulled by leaf mould. The carriage turning to a child’s toy, a speck, then nothing.
The meeting may have been aborted, but Riccardo was wiser than before. He had seen the insignia on the coach, a design that matched the ring that lay upon the glove. The crossed keys of Saint Peter.
Inside the round church, Pia sensed that Gian Gastone really did not know what to do. Having made his dramatic entrance, he seemed to have run out of bluster.
‘Count yourselves warned,’ he said, ‘by the Medici. Now I could,’ he went on, ‘have my regiments, who are even now hard by, take your names and your lands and your balls. But I’ll be clement, this time, so long as you undertake to disperse and make no more mention of this Nine nonsense.’
Pia understood perfectly that Gian Gastone had no regiments approaching. Having lived with her father’s dramatic posturing all her life, she knew Gian Gastone had drastically overplayed his hand. She edged to the pew’s end and watched as the duke began to back from the church, challenging the
conspirators.
‘So now, what do you say?’
The Nine, in a silent malevolent circle, watched him, none of them making an answer, the only movement coming from their guttering torches. Pia knew they could overcome this interloper and his footmen in a fight, but something restrained them and in some ways their silence and their immobility was even more threatening.
Gian Gastone retreated, still making grand pronouncements, but they sounded increasingly hollow. He delivered his parting shot on the threshold. ‘And don’t forget that one of yours is my creature! The eyes of the Medici are everywhere.’
As Pia heard the rumble of the Medici carriage speeding away, she realized the danger she was in. But even when Faustino cried, ‘Search this place!’ she did not feel fearful. There was nowhere to run; her capture was inevitable. She lay there, beneath the pew, waiting, looking up at the concentric circles on the round roof, following the path of the spiral as the Nine closed in ever-decreasing circles around her. And when the torches finally lit up her hiding place, and as she looked up into her husband’s cruel face, her only hope was that Riccardo might have got away.
Riccardo was nearly floored by the Medici carriage rolling past him.
With sudden foreboding, he ran on silent feet to the door of the hermitage, but the tableau he saw there stopped him in his tracks. Pia, who had been in his arms so recently, was now in the arms of Nello, who held her not tenderly, but with a knife to her throat. Riccardo looked at its wicked, keen blade. If he revealed himself Pia would die before he reached her, and he would give himself away into the bargain. If he did not, Nello would punish her, with nameless, hideous abuses that he could not bear to speculate upon. Then, unbidden, he thought of Violante and knew that he owed something to her, to finish what he’d begun.
Sick at heart, hating himself, he hid as the Nine rode past.
14
The Caterpillar
A caterpillar was crawling very slowly in a beautiful garden when he was met by a lively ant.
‘Out of the way,’ said the ant, ‘and don’t block the path of your superiors. It is beneath my quality to talk to such a mean creature as you.’
The caterpillar, unmoved, went upon his way, coiled himself into a silken cocoon and emerged the next morning as a beautiful butterfly. He flew into the air and spied the ant scuttling below on the ground. The ant was taken aback.
‘Proud creature,’ called the butterfly, ‘there is none so mean that he may not, one day, be exalted above those who thought themselves his better.’
‘Wake up, madam! Wake up!’
Violante opened her eyes to find Gretchen standing in her nightgown in a circle of candlelight, her old hands shaking so much that tallow dripped on the coverlet. The chamber was still dark, and below she could hear a loud banging and voices shouting.
‘It is the horseman. Come quickly!’
Violante flung back the coverlet. ‘On the tower?’
‘No, madam, at the doors – hammering fit to knock them in.’
Violante leaped to her feet and grabbed a shawl. ‘What’s the hour?’
Gretchen, already hurrying away, answered the question over her shoulder. ‘Barely sun-up, madam.’
The duchess followed her servant down the stairs to the main entrance where her guards were struggling to hold an impassioned Riccardo Bruni behind a cross of pikes.
‘Let him pass!’ she commanded.
As he came closer she could see the violet shadows beneath his eyes and knew that he had not slept. Something had gone badly amiss.
Riccardo pushed past Violante and mounted the great stair to the piano nobile, taking them three at a time. She followed at his heels, waving away the guards as they followed. Riccardo flung open every door he found until he came to Gian Gastone’s presence chamber. There he found his quarry, snoring in the solar. Dami, dressed and immaculate, and playing solitaire at a side table, waiting for his master to awaken, was flipping over the cards with his long white fingers.
Riccardo strode to the bed, ripped back the covers and grabbed an ample handful of Gian Gastone’s nightshirt. It was no mean feat to drag the heir of Tuscany’s bulk to a sitting position, but Riccardo did it, and with one hand too.
Dazed, Gian Gastone opened his eyes, snorted once and focused his gaze on Riccardo. At the same time Dami leaped to his feet and the card table tipped, spilling the cards on to the floor.
‘What,’ asked Riccardo of Gian Gastone, ‘did you do?’ He spat out every word, his tone barely below a shout.
‘What the—’ began Gian Gastone. He got no further.
‘I’ll tell you what you did.’
Riccardo’s heart and head were on fire and his anger was compounded by an unbearable feeling of guilt: if he had not left Pia alone, she might still have been safe. He had put the city above Pia, and would not do it again. He blamed himself very much indeed. In his passion he lost all coherence, all the arguments that had been marching through his head as he had ridden back through the night from San Galgano.
‘You as good as told Faustino Caprimulgo last night that you had a spy in the church. Pia was discovered there and now he will think she is the Judas in his own family, a traitor to the contrada. Never mind what the law may say; now, now, Nello will visit such retribution upon her that I cannot, I cannot—’ He broke off, balling his fists with frustration.
Gian Gastone held up both of his vast hands. ‘Wait … wait. I don’t know who any of these people are.’
Standing in the doorway, Violante covered her eyes with her hands. So Gian Gastone had barrelled into the clandestine meeting. With his ego and hubris, he would bring their whole secret scheme down. She took her hands away.
‘Faustino Tolomei is the captain of the Eagle contrada. Pia Tolomei is wed to his son, Nello.’
‘And you, you …’ Riccardo advanced on Gian Gastone again, but was halted by the tone of the duke’s voice.
‘Do not put your hands on Tuscany again,’ he said quietly. ‘You are lucky I do not have you whipped and thrown from these doors. You are fortunate that I will even question with you. For it is beneath my quality to talk to such a mean creature as you.’
Riccardo dropped his hands to his sides in a gesture of hopelessness. Violante looked from him to her brother-in-law, and Gian Gastone, missing nothing, caught her anxiety.
‘But, since you are the fortunate favourite of my dear sister-in-law, and because you are so pretty, I will forgive your transgressions.’ He sniffed. ‘If it means so much to you I can tell the Eagles’ captain that it was nothing to do with the silly little bird.’
Riccardo snorted with derision. ‘You won’t get the chance.’ With this, he turned on his heels and started down the stairs.
Violante followed him out of the room, pulling at his sleeve.
Riccardo rounded on her, all respect and rank forgot. ‘How could you tell him?’
Violante spread her hands hopelessly. ‘I thought he was the help we needed. I wrote to him, the day we first met. I never heard from him. Then he arrived, out of the ether.’
‘And you told him? We had the matter in hand. All of us together.’
She could have wept. ‘A little boy, an old lady, a middle-aged one and you? You said it yourself!’
‘And yet we could have stopped them. And now Pia is discovered. She’s under lock and key, she may be put to death under our laws – your laws! And now I am gone too.’
Violante did not move until she had heard his feet recede all the way down the steps and out of the palace. Then she moved to the window and watched his back depart through the crowd gathering to watch the horse draw. The Palio was in less than a week, but now it seemed not to matter anyway. Their scheming was at an end.
She pressed her hands to the place below her ribs where the stays of her corset bit. Lest the pain might kill her dead upon the spot, she transformed it, with a conscious effort, into blind fury at her brother.
So it had come to this. Pia was, at last, a pr
isoner.
Not in a tower like the first Pia, but back in Siena, in a dank cellar, deep underneath the Eagles’ palace. Nello had dragged her down there himself, as if he would not entrust anyone else with the task. She had fought him then, and laid open his cheek with her nails. But he had shoved her into her cell regardless.
It was a stone room, with a studded door on one wall and a stone relief of the Eagle on the other. The eagle seemed to be watching her with its stone eye. She would not go near it.
There was one torch in a sconce, but it gave little comfort, throwing stretched and hideous shadows long upon the floor, shadows that could hide nameless terrors. But reality was worse than imagination; there were bloodstains on the stone floor that the scattering of rushes could not hide. She put her hand to them and rubbed the rusty bloom between her fingertips. The Panther’s blood. Egidio Albani, beaten to death on this very spot. Egidio Albani, who had begun this whole coil with a stroke of a whip across Vicenzo’s face. But her charge was different. Medici spy. A grievous charge, enough to hang her.
She must be publicly tried, but this would not save her from the summary justice of the Eagles who had tried and condemned and executed a man in this very room. The evidence was black and white; by now Nicoletta would have found the Morte d’Arthur, and it would take Faustino little time to divine that it was the book that had given her the clue to the meeting place of the Nine. She could not enjoy the irony that Thomas Malory had written it while himself in prison in the Tower of London, nor that his heroine Queen Guinevere had been imprisoned for betraying her husband.
The Daughter of Siena: A Novel Page 22