The Daughter of Siena: A Novel

by Marina Fiorato

  As Domenico climbed the little stair to his room he regarded his truckle bed as he set his candle down. Ordinarily, after the Palio dell’Assunta in August, he would take to his bed with nothing but the drear cold winter to look forward to, a whole year to wait before the Palio di Provenzano in July. But this time he did not want to take to his bed; he wanted to be with Riccardo.

  For the first time since Dami had visited him late at night, he felt safe. Dami could not now tell anyone that, twenty years past, he had given a royal child to Domenico; he could not tell anyone that the child Domenico had loved and raised was not his.

  For the first and only time in his life, Domenico did not care who had won the Palio, or that, outside, a raucous feast was taking place under the Palio banner of black-and-white silk, which the valiant Leocorno had won for the Tower before he died. He did not even care that his son had stopped in the middle of the race to save a woman of the Owlet contrada. He did not even care to go down to his stable and make the arrangements for the Lipizzaner’s body, the corpse that Riccardo had insisted be brought home.

  All he wanted was for Riccardo to stay.

  Violante de’ Medici was not in the habit of walking abroad on the night of the Palio. Boisterous winners and doleful losers both could make for trouble on the streets. She took two sergeants-at-arms with her and left them outside Domenico’s door, sharing a cup with the jubilant citizens who had ranged a dozen trestle tables along the streets, bedecked in burgundy and blue. Violante had no idea what she would say to the old man.

  She didn’t knock but went straight into the little firelit room. There she found Riccardo on the settle, with Pia’s head on his knee, stroking her hair as she slept.

  Riccardo did not see her until she broke the firelight with her shadow, but he raised his eyes to her unsurprised. He had known she would come for him. ‘When will you tell them?’

  She was glad he understood. ‘Tomorrow. The Electress Palatine Anna Maria Luisa is in residence at the palace. She is a good woman and will not let her brother Gian Gastone act against you. She will see justice done. You will be invested as governor of Siena and grand duke of Tuscany.’

  ‘Grand duke?’

  ‘Yes. Can you not hear the bells?’

  Riccardo cocked his head. Above the crackle of the sticks in the grate, above the screams and songs outside, he could hear the great bell Sunto ringing a passing bell. All he could think of was that the last time he had heard that bell he had been riding Leocorno, about to start the race. At that moment it seemed that the bell rang for that valiant, troubled horse who had ended his life in a victory, not the defeat of battle.

  Violante said gently, ‘Cosimo de’ Medici, your namesake, your … grandsire, is dead.’

  She could not grieve for the grand duke, who had abandoned her when she needed him most. The only point on which she could be grateful to him was that he had needed a shoe for his favourite horse on the day the twins were born, and had called on the best farrier in Tuscany, a man who had taken Cosimo’s grandson home to Siena. She smiled at that child now.

  ‘It is your time.’

  Riccardo stared again at the fire. ‘Will he give up his inheritance so easily?’

  ‘Gian Gastone?’

  She thought of her sorry brother-in-law, sobbing in his bed at the palace, useless now that his paramour was gone. Justice had been well served for him and Dami – Dami had taken a child and lost his life; Gian Gastone had attempted murder for his dukedom and lost that.

  ‘I cannot imagine that, in his current state, he will even leave his bed, let alone fight for his dukedom,’ she replied.

  ‘And the Electress Palatine? Will she not wish to inherit? For it may easily be said that your brother-in-law has not long for this world.’

  She had not thought that he understood so much.

  ‘She has no living heir. Her husband died of the syphilis, like mine. She is too old to carry a child. She will be glad that the line will carry on, otherwise the dukedom will pass to the Bourbon or Spain. She loved Ferdinando well, and will love you too.’ She did not mean to lie to him but spoke with emphasis, as if her certainty would make it so.

  ‘And my father?’

  He had asked her this question before, in the Tower church, with exactly the same intonation. Then, he had sought to know more about Ferdinando. Now, she knew exactly whom he meant.

  ‘Domenico Bruni will have my thanks, and the city’s thanks. I will repay him for his service to you. But from today,’ she said gently, ‘he must be as one of your subjects to you.’

  The irony, the cruelty of her position was not lost upon her. She, who had lost Riccardo so long ago, was now to deprive a true father of his son.

  Still Riccardo said nothing but looked down at Pia. He stroked her hair and tucked a black lock of it tenderly behind her ear. ‘And Pia?’

  He asked the question with the air of one who knew the answer.

  Violante spoke softly, but clearly, so he should be in absolutely no doubt of the truth.

  ‘She will return to her father’s house, as a widow must. Faustino has lost everything and will not act against her now. I had the horse shears brought down from the tower and disposed of – there is no need for anyone to know that Nello was dead before he fell. Pia is guiltless and free.’

  ‘And then?’

  She loved him too well to wilfully misinterpret the question. ‘One day she may marry again, but she cannot marry you.’

  ‘Cannot?’

  Riccardo raised his eyes to hers. In his firelight reveries he had dreamed of being duke, of riding to Pia’s house to carry her away, a man of power, a man who could not be gainsaid. In these dreams he resembled his real father better than he knew, for Ferdinando had followed his own appetites without pause. But in reality Riccardo knew that if he was to rule, he could not rule that way. He could not be a despot. He should rule in the manner of his mother, justly and well.

  Violante lowered her voice still more, tender to the feelings of the sleeping girl.

  ‘She may marry within her own class. A high-born citizen of Siena will do well for her. But not a duke. A duke must marry for alliance, for fortune, but not for love. Believe me,’ she said with feeling, ‘I know whereof I speak.’

  ‘Did you not love, then, where you wed?’ Riccardo was almost pleading.

  ‘I? I did, yes. So much. Your father,’ she stumbled at the word, ‘he did not.’

  She had loved a man and lost him. She had loved his sons and lost one of them. Now she must take from her remaining son the only father he had known and the woman he loved. She knew that the replacement of them with herself could be no consolation. She could see it writ in Riccardo’s expression. He looked at her across fathoms of loss and there was no love there. He stared his duty in the face, not his mother.

  ‘How long do I have?’ It seemed to her that he hated her then.

  ‘Till noon. Come to the palace. All will be readied there.’

  She wanted to wish him to enjoy this precious night, but could not find the words to do it. She left them then to the little time that they had remaining.

  Violante went back across the piazza, that great scallop shell where all this had begun, where all this would end. She knew that there was no way forward for her and Riccardo. He could never, now, be her boy. They could never fill in those years, the seasons, the decades they had missed. She would be, at best, a benevolent stranger. A councillor, a dowager. Once Riccardo was installed, Gian Gastone would return to Florence, or his hated, chilly, marital castle, or wherever he would now go to eke out his existence without Dami.

  And she? What would become of her? Perhaps she would go to Rome, as she had once planned to do before Ferdinando died, to the Palazzo Madama, a Medici palace where she could console herself with the balm of having done her duty, and lighten her days with the twin wonders of religion and art.

  Violante stood in the middle of the campo and looked at the place where, yesterday, the starting line h
ad been. Then she turned around, slowly and methodically, the ageless palaces wheeling about her, until she faced the finish line. She looked at the ground, dizzy, at the nine divisions of the scallop shell, at the place where Vicenzo had died last month, at the fountain where Egidio had lain, and at the shadow below the balcony where Nello and Dami had died. Libations of blood, given to the ground by the sacrificial sons of Siena, dark blots on the perfect shell of the campo. If the Palio was Siena and Siena was the Palio, she could at least, before she left, leave a framework of laws for Riccardo, in the hope that no more young men would die. A series of proclamations would do, an attempt to codify this most ancient of sports, to prevent future tragedy.

  Violante quickened her steps toward the palace, her guard at her heels. She knew that tonight there would be no dreams of the twins, for she would not sleep. She climbed wearily to the library, called for paper and ink, and sat heavily at the round table. Before she lifted her pen, she laid one hand on the fine buckram of the Morte d’Arthur, the book she had once read to her son.

  Riccardo, too, spent the night awake. He cradled Pia’s dear head at his lap, spent long, long moments looking down at her, her raven hair burnished by fire. He could have waked her and ravished her, claimed her. So that whoever else had her in the future, he’d had her first. But he did not want to dishonour her, to destroy her peace. She was free, for one night, from Nello, from Faustino, from her father. She was in hiding, in harbour. He loved her completely, and if this was to be their last night together, his last night as Riccardo Bruni, he did not want to spend it in sin, no matter how much he wanted her. He touched her pearly wrist with one finger where it had been rubbed raw by the shackles of her prison, and then closed his fingers around it one by one like a jailer.

  She stirred, and he let go. Suddenly he knew what to do. He smiled with a complete joy that suffused his chest and warmed him more than any fire. He would not accept his heritage. He would go with her, now, before the city woke. They would go far away, together, tonight. He threw his head back and laughed, enjoying the moment, the fraction of still time before he would wake her and the world would change.

  Pia listened to him, smiling gently while her heart broke. Riccardo had told her an extraordinary tale of baby twins – one dead, one alive – a lost son and the heir to a dukedom. He might as well have been telling her a fairy tale by the fire, so incredible did it sound to her ears. Then he told her of the future, that they’d go now, tonight, and she’d put her hand in his as they walked through Siena at night and out of the Camollia gate, where they had oftimes ridden, this time never to return.

  When he’d done she shook her head, not too much lest the tears fall from her eyes. Who knew better than she that what he’d asked was impossible? Who but Pia, who’d lived her life bound by class and obligation, knew better that he had a duty not to her, but to his mother and his state? She knew her answer, but hardly knew how to express it.

  ‘When we rode from the Camollia gate on the day we were discovered by Nello, we saw a little pile of donkey bones. Do you recall?’

  He nodded.

  ‘They were a sign that the city was going to fall. It is no good, Riccardo.’

  The city would stand or fall by his actions alone, and when weighed in the scales with the wishes of two people, Siena, with her mass of history, outweighed them. They could not take hold of this future, this fantasy.

  ‘You must take your place in the palace, and … marry,’ she choked on the word, ‘suitably.’

  ‘Suitably.’ He was moved to anger. ‘You can say that? You who have suffered nameless cruelties under Nello, you would have me end my days with some royal miss, who …’

  Her tears spilled then and he stopped, mortified.

  ‘None of this is what I wished,’ she whispered. ‘But I do know this. You have to go.’

  She stepped forward and snapped Cleopatra’s coin pendant from his neck. He flinched, and she was glad; she did not have the strength to send him from her unless she used the force of his own anger. If he held her again she would be lost.

  So she snatched it back, hard, hurting him, and he left the room. She turned to the fire so she would not hear him go, concentrating on something, anything, so that she should not hear the bang of the front door. She stood for a moment, numb, and stunned, the tears she had held back now flowing freely to fall and hiss on the hot stones of the hearth. The door creaked behind her and she turned. She thought he was coming back, and sprang to her feet, ready to cover him with kisses, to say she’d been wrong, to hold him and never let him go.

  But it was Riccardo’s father. Domenico Bruni.

  She looked at him, small, squat and kindly. She did not have to wonder, now, why father and son bore no resemblance. She and he, though, shared something now. Pain and loss. She held out her hand to him.

  ‘He’s gone?’ he said, a pitiful hope in his voice.

  His accent: that was where the resemblance to his son lay. Somehow hearing it hurt the most of all.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said, sorry to be the one to kill that hope.

  By tacit consent they sat down on the settle and spent the rest of the night together next to the dying fire. Loss, thought Pia, loss for everyone and for Riccardo most of all. He had gained a dukedom, but he had lost everything else.

  The next morning Violante had her heralds give it out around the city that she would be making a proclamation at noon. She had spent the morning in discussion with Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici. She had sat with that redoubtable lady in the Hall of the Nine, and had caused two golden chairs to be set beneath the Lorenzetti fresco depicting good government. She hoped it was an omen.

  She regarded her sister-in-law, seeing in her strong dark features echoes of Ferdinando, and Riccardo too. Anna Maria Luisa had not followed her father and brother into corpulence, but was thin almost to the point of asceticism. She regarded Violante with a guarded eye, but did not seem unfriendly. The truth was that too much time had passed, too many pains borne, for her to feel any further hostility towards her sister-in-law.

  ‘Well, Violante, we have not been friends, I think?’ began the Electress Palatine in her cultured Florentine accents. Violante inclined her head to acknowledge the honesty of this. ‘But we have shared so much, in the fate of our babes, and the fate of our husbands, that we have much to ally us. And in the spirit of openness between allies, suppose you set before me the events that led to my intervention yesterday.’

  Violante told the Electress the story of the Palio, of the Nine. She did not, as yet, speak of Riccardo’s identity but merely included him as a player in this drama. She went on to talk of Francesco Maria Conti, and of the mysterious Romulus, who travelled in a carriage with crossed keys.

  ‘I now know, of course, that Romulus represented Rome itself.’

  She could have said a great deal at this point on the symbolism of this alias, and the personal significance of the boy twins to her own history, but she restricted herself to explanation.

  ‘Thus the pope himself, Innocent XIII, otherwise known as Michelangelo Conti, conspired with the Nine to destabilize the duchy, with the connivance of his cousin, my chief councillor Francesco Maria Conti. Conti fixed the horse draw by way of his scientific arts, and it was to be Nello Caprimulgo’s task to win the Palio for the syndicate on the horse Berio. The horse was dyed to appear black, so the Eagles could ride him to victory again in contravention of the rules. While the city was unguarded during the day of the Palio, the papal troops were to infiltrate the city in small groups by gathering at the statues of the She-Wolf, the statues of Romulus. Then, under the cover of the race when the city was deserted, they were to surround the square with all the citizens inside and take the palace, so that the Nine could be invested and I would be deposed.’

  Violante felt a cold finger of dread touch her heart at what could have been.

  ‘It was this, sister, which your Palatinate army prevented, in answer to your brother’s letter. I thank you with
all my heart.’

  The Electress inclined her noble head but said nothing.

  Violante, hesitantly, went on. ‘May I assume, then, that the papal troops are the prisoners of your army – their horses sequestered, their weapons taken?’

  Anna Maria Luisa leaned forward a little in her chair. ‘You may assume that if you like, sister. But the bald truth is that I let them go.’

  Violante sat forward abruptly. ‘You let them go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But … why?’

  ‘Diplomacy, my dear sister,’ came the reply. ‘I cannot move against the pope, or his troops. Nor would I, for I do not wish to accede the advantage I now hold.’

  Violante was reminded of the chess game of her daydream, when she had sent the black-and-white Palio banner to Faustino.

  ‘In the War of Succession the papal states lost this part of Tuscany to the Farnese family. The Conti papacy will do anything to regain control of Siena, even through their puppet government of the Nine, rather than see a Farnese ruler here.’ Violante could have sworn the Electress smiled a little. ‘As you know, my dear sister-in-law, because you and I and Gian Gastone have no issue, the kingdom will most likely pass to Don Carlos of Spain, son of Elizabeth Farnese. If I censure the papacy, or even reveal this plot, we will hand the balance of power to Don Carlos as my heir apparent. It is a conclusion the Conti will do anything to prevent. I must admit, I am not too keen on it myself, but as the three of my father’s children have been so remiss at providing heirs, it is one that will very likely come to pass.’