by P K Adams
Sanseverino had been the name of my first husband, but the rest was true enough. I waited for him to bring up my current association with the queen, but he did not. Was it possible he did not know? Should I reveal it now? I probably should, I thought, but, once again, my tongue was tied.
“I also want it done discreetly,” the duke went on, “and as a visitor from Kraków you will attract less attention than regular residents of the court. I will provide lodgings and food for you and your son at the palace until you discover the murderer.” His tone made it an order, not an offer. Not for the first time, he reminded me of Bona. For all the discord between them, they were cut from the same cloth—determined, stubborn, and convinced they need only command to be obeyed. But they were royalty: they had the right.
“I am at Your Grace’s disposal,” I said. In truth, he left me no other option. At least he hadn’t thrown me in jail. And who knew? If I could identify the culprit soon, I would still be able to depart this week. Perhaps not on Friday, but on Saturday …
“Thank you,” the duke said simply. He rose from his chair, walked over to Barbara, sat at the edge of her chaise longue, and took her hand. He kissed it, then pressed it to his heart. “As long as I’m here, nobody will hurt you,” he said, his voice soft and tender, as if they were alone. “I promise.”
“I know, my love. I trust you completely,” she replied. They were the first words I had heard from her. She spoke in Polish, with a melodic Eastern accent that enhanced the aura of fragility that hung about her.
She lifted her eyes, full of the trust she had just professed, to Zygmunt’s face. An unspoken communication passed between them. The scene transported me back to the day when Sebastian walked me to my chamber after my meeting with Chancellor Stempowski about the note Helena had slid under my door. Before we parted, he looked into my eyes and said similar words: You’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of that. That was the moment I fell in love with him.
Watching them, my own memories fresh and true, I grasped that a genuine affection existed between Barbara and Zygmunt. The Radziwiłł family may have been playing a political game, but Barbara loved the duke, and he loved her. I glanced at Chamberlain Opaliński, whose face told me that, whether he liked it or not, he saw the same thing.
Zygmunt rose from the chaise longue. “The body is still in the kitchen, and Doctor Nascimbene is there. I didn’t want anything disturbed until you had a chance to see it. Once you have, we will have the girl moved to the palace chapel so her family can claim her.”
I understood. My work was to start immediately.
* * *
That was how I found myself, just before two o’clock in the morning, in a small kitchen which, judging by the number of flights of stairs we descended, and the narrow windows set just below the ceiling, was located below the ground level of the palace. On the way down, Opaliński explained that it had been carved out of the main kitchen the previous autumn and given a separate entrance from the corridor. A palace guard manned that corridor day and night. Only two people worked in the new kitchen: a cook and a scullery maid. The duke planned to build a staircase—he added—that would link the kitchen to Barbara’s bedchamber directly, thus answering the question of whether she had moved into the palace.
The kitchen, although small, was fully equipped with a bread oven, a hearth with a spit, shelves and cupboards, a pantry, chopping counters, and a central table where the servants could roll dough and eat their meals. The larger kitchen next door kept it warm, even though the staff had long since extinguished its own cooking fire for the night. There were three people inside, but only two of them were alive.
I recognized Doctor Nascimbene and guessed the other—a middle-aged woman with swollen, red eyes and easily twice the size of the elderly physician—to be the cook. Like many of her profession, her face was permanently flushed from the heat of the ovens and hearths at which she spent her life. As we entered, she clambered laboriously to her feet.
Nascimbene acknowledged me with a nod and motioned me to follow him to the other side of the table, while Opaliński remained by the door. My pulse beat loudly in my ears as I made my way around the rough pine table until the corpse, whose legs I had already seen from the entrance, came into view.
I shuddered at the grim and pitiful sight. The unfortunate servant, identified by the doctor as Milda, was a slight girl with a shock of blond hair that had fallen out from under her cap and spread around her head like a halo. She lay on her side by the bench on which she must have been sitting when she was struck down. Her left arm was thrown out beneath her, but the right one lay close to her chest, its fingers still curled. Her shift was torn open at the neck, and together with the positioning of the fingers, it showed that she had clawed at her throat in her final moments. I understood why, too, for a grotesque grimace distorted her purple-blue face, and flecks of white foam had dried on her lips. Those lips framed a swollen tongue, pushed partly out of her mouth, indicating that she had indeed died of an ingested poison.
I said a silent prayer for this innocent soul. My pulse slowed, and my head cleared. A silver goblet stood on the table, half full of wine, undoubtedly the one she was supposed to carry up to Barbara’s bedchamber. Already I could picture the death scene as it unfolded. Without the doctor telling me, I knew what had happened, and now I needed to find out by whose hand—and why.
I touched Milda’s fingers and found them still warm.
“Dead less than four hours.” Nascimbene sighed. “Such a shame. She was only sixteen.”
A sudden fierce determination to avenge this wrong overcame me. The victim before me was poor, vulnerable, and younger than my daughter. I looked around. “Where is the parlor maid who found her?”
The cook remained on the other side of the table so as not to see the body. She pressed her hand to her bosom, which heaved as if she were about to start crying again. “Lina became so ’ysterical Doctor Nascimbene ’ad to give ’er a calming draft to put her to sleep,” she said, her breath catching. “But between the screams she told us what she seen.”
“And what was that?” I asked.
The woman’s eyes filled, and she sent a pleading glance toward the doctor. He stepped in, perhaps worried that she, too, might need a calming draft. “Lina came to check on the wine for Pani Barbara as Milda was late with it. It was a few minutes past ten o’clock. She found her on the floor, still twitching, and ran out into the corridor crying for help, but most kitchen servants had already retired.”
“She came banging on m’door, she did,” the cook said, some newfound resolve surfacing. “I ’ave a room on this level, as I can’t climb the stairs no more,” she explained. “The guard in the corridor isn’t allowed to leave ’is post, so Lina ’ad to run all the way up to ’is Grace’s apartments ’erself. By the time I arrived, Milda was no longer moving. I waited wit’ the guard outside as I was afraid to stay in ’ere alone.”
“Who came back with Lina?”
“I did,” Chamberlain Opaliński spoke for the first time. “Milda was already dead. Lina began to scream, and we couldn’t stop her, so I had to release the guard to go fetch Doctor Nascimbene.”
“The parlor maid was the only one I could help,” the physician said sorrowfully.
“Was Milda alone when Lina found her?”
“Yes,” Opaliński replied. “She said there was nobody else in the kitchen.”
I looked around again, taking my time. The kitchen had two doors: one from the corridor, through which we had come in, and one in a side wall. An iron key hung on a peg next to the latter door. “Where does it lead?” I asked.
“Outside,” said the cook, “It’s our delivery door. Used to serve the whole of the old kitchen, but now they ’ave to bring everything in through the corridor from another part o’ t’palace. The other cooks don’t like it, they don’t!”
Talking about something other than the murder, something as familiar and comforting as kitchen gossip and servants’ grievanc
es seemed to calm her.
“Is that how wine is brought in as well?”
She shook her head. “The wine comes from ’is Grace’s own stores in the cellar.”
“How often?”
“Every morning. The Master Cupbearer brings two flagons up.” She pointed toward a cloth screen covering one of the shelves.
I pushed the linen fabric aside. On the shelf behind it stood two silver flagons with ornamental handles and curved beaks that tapered off gracefully. They looked similar to the ones from Bona’s dowry, used to serve wine at Wawel in my youth. I wondered if they were the same flagons, and if so, did Zygmunt know? I inspected them to find one empty and the other only about one-third full.
“Do the duke and Pani Barbara usually drink all of the wine?”
“No. They rarely finish both flagons, and ’is Grace never drinks after seven o’clock,” the cook replied.
I carried the flagon that still had some wine in it to the table. Instinctively, everyone leaned forward, but they maintained their distance and only craned their necks, as if afraid that something might jump out at them. Fighting a similar irrational fear, I lifted a candle and gazed into the flagon again. I could see now that the liquid inside was dark red, its surface glossy in the light. My stomach clenched at the thought of the deadly danger lurking underneath it.
Then I paused. “Do you know what kind of wine this is?”
The cook looked uncertain. “The duke usually asks for Malvazia. Sometimes tokay, but not very often.”
I was puzzled. The wine in the goblet was neither. Tokay was the color of amber, and Malvazia was rose-colored.
“I’ll question the Master Cupbearer,” the chamberlain offered. “The duke has some Provençal wines in his personal store, but he drinks them only on rare occasions.”
I moved the vessel around in a circle, thinking. Then, as a faint aroma reached me, I stopped, my heart skipping a beat.
I brought it closer to my nose and swirled the contents again, as the others looked on with growing perplexity. I inhaled and paused, the breath filling my chest. My mind worked quickly, and then I knew. I had smelled this only a few hours earlier, the distinct spicy odor of black pepper. I lifted the goblet that stood on the table, from which the unfortunate maid had taken her final drink. I held its filigree stem and repeated the process. It had the same deep and rich color and the same peppery scent.
“This isn’t Malvazia or Provençal,” I explained to my stunned audience. “It’s Castilian.”
“If you’re correct, signora, this wine comes from the barrel gifted by the Habsburg ambassador,” Opaliński said, his face blanching.
I extended the goblet toward him; after a brief hesitation, he leaned in and smelled it. “Yes. I recognize it too. And the color—” He turned and rushed out of the kitchen, and we heard him order the guard to take a message to those minding the duke’s private cellars not to use that barrel’s contents anymore.
I placed the goblet back on the table. “Pour this away when we’re done here,” I told the cook.
“Yes, m’lady,” she whispered.
“When was the last time you saw Milda alive?” I asked her as the chamberlain returned.
The woman thought hard. “Just after eight last night, when we finished ’ere. When they dine privately, ’is Grace and Pani Barbara eat at six o’clock. They’re done by seven, and we take an hour to clean up. Then Milda returns at ten to prepare the wine for Pani Barbara and carry it upstairs.”
“And both of you followed that routine last night?”
“Far as I know, ’cept for the carrying upstairs, of course.”
So there were approximately two hours, from eight to ten, during which the kitchen was empty of staff. It was the only time the Castilian could have been sneaked in. But how? There was always a guard outside, and this one had not reported seeing any strangers about.
“Why would Milda have taken a drink from the goblet prepared for Pani Barbara?”
The cook’s eyes darted toward Opaliński, who gave a slight nod. “She wasn’t just a kitchen maid but also … a taster.” Seeing my puzzlement, she explained, “She ’ad to taste everything went on Pani Barbara’s plate and in her cups, even water. Earned an extra silver talon for it every month.” A sob rose in her throat. “That’s ’ow much ’er life was worth!”
I frowned. “Shouldn’t she have tasted the wine in Barbara’s presence, not here, alone?”
The cook was silent.
“Anything else you should tell me?” I prodded, sensing that she was hiding something. “Every bit of information can help, no matter how trivial.”
The woman burst into tears. “She was a good girl, she was! But she ’ad a tough life!” She put her palms on both sides of her pudgy face, like an old woman lamenting. “An orphan she was, never knew ’er mother nor ’er father, raised on strangers’ charity, and out on the streets when she was no’ yet fourteen.” She produced a stained and crumpled handkerchief from her voluminous skirt, which sat a bit crookedly around her large waist, suggesting she had already undressed for bed when Lina had raised the alarm. She blew her nose loudly. When she was done, she added, her chest still heaving, “She drank a little when nobody was looking. I tol’ her it won’t do—you’ll be discovered and dismissed, I said, but she didn’ listen. Or maybe she didn’ care no more. Poor soul …”
I sent the chamberlain an inquiring look, but he raised his shoulders in a gesture meant to signify that he’d had no idea.
“Did you believe her to be in any danger?” I asked the cook.
She looked at me fearfully but answered firmly enough, shaking her head so vigorously that her cap, which she had not tied under her chin, tilted sideways. “No. Never.”
I tried to make sense of it all as I waited for her to calm down again. At length, she put away her handkerchief and readjusted her cap. When I judged that she had her emotions under control, I asked, “What kind of mistress is Barbara Radziwiłł? Do the servants like her?”
Another glance at Opaliński.
“It’s all right,” he said. “None of this will reach the duke, you have my word.”
His tone was soft, almost soothing, and it inspired trust. The cook seemed reassured.
“She’s a grand lady,” she started hesitantly. “But ’aughty. And can be snippy wit’ the maids, impatient. Nobody really knows her well—she often locks ’erself in ’er chambers and won’t see nobody but the duke, sometimes not even ’im, from what I hear.”
Silence fell on our gathering as we contemplated that revelation, new to me, but, based on his look of studied indifference, not to Opaliński. In the distance, the tower clock struck three, its sound muffled by the stone walls. All of us in the small kitchen looked grim and hollow-eyed with exhaustion.
“Thank you,” I said to the cook, then turned to the others. “I don’t see what else we can learn tonight. We had better get some rest. Tomorrow”—I spoke to the chamberlain—“we should talk to the other kitchen staff and anyone else who knew Milda or shared her living quarters.”
Doctor Nascimbene and the cook gathered to leave. Opaliński and I waited for them to step out into the corridor, then followed. Outside, we found two new guards and a night duty servant. She had a bundle in her arms that looked like a shroud. Two wide, plain wooden planks tied together—a stretcher for the body, I assumed—rested against the wall.
The servant’s face was as white as the cloth she carried. I laid a hand on her shoulder. “It will be hard,” I said, “but know that you’ll be giving Milda the dignity everyone deserves in death.”
The young woman nodded, head bent and eyes closed, and the tension around her shoulders eased just a little.
A few minutes later, I slipped into my chambers as quietly as possible. I needed a few hours of sleep to get ready for what I knew would be a very difficult day—or days—ahead.
CHAPTER 10
Thursday, September 10th, 1545
I did not sleep much that
night. I dozed off only to dream of a prostrate figure on the floor covered with a white shroud. Fearful of whose body I might discover, I nonetheless wanted to lift the cloth, but someone or something was restraining my arm with painful pressure. And when I finally wrestled it from that invisible grip and reached for the fabric, I woke with a gasp. My right arm was pinned under me and tingling unpleasantly—I must have fallen asleep on it and the discomfort had found its way into my nightmare. After that I lay awake, listening to rain pelting against the window pane.
At length I rose, lit a candle, and began to pace my bedchamber, turning everything over in my head. With some consternation I realized that even though it grossly interfered with my plans, the case had piqued my curiosity. It revived that long-forgotten excitement of solving a riddle composed of clues that would give me the true picture if I managed to figure out how they fit together. It injected a strange energy into my mind and made me come alive in a way few things had done in a long time.
I decided to accept Zygmunt’s assumption that Barbara, not Milda, was the murderer’s intended target. Even in the unlikely event that the maid had made a mortal enemy in her short life, he—or she, for since the winter of 1519, I had been stripped of any illusions that a woman was incapable of violence—would not have chosen poison as the weapon. Poison was a sophisticated and expensive tool, far beyond the reach of most people.
It was also known as “the Italian weapon.” I shivered and wrapped my dressing gown more tightly around me. In recent years, the scar of the wound on my left arm inflicted by Helena’s knife started bothering me when the weather turned cool and damp. I now felt the tightness and the pulsing sensation where Doctor Baldazzi had stitched it together. Pausing in front of the rain-streaked window, I gently rubbed the area, an action that usually provided some relief, and thought about the manner of Milda’s death and what it could tell me.