by P K Adams
“You have my sincere condolences, Your Majesty.” I inclined my head and kept it that way for a few moments to give her time to compose herself.
When I looked up, her face had again assumed its familiar expression of stubbornness and intensity. “That toad and traitor Maciejowski, who is Crown Chancellor but takes his orders from Vienna the same way Stempowski once did, is the most likely candidate to replace him as bishop. But I will do all I can to prevent that from happening!” Her right palm curled around the end of the armrest.
I did not doubt she would try, although with her power so diminished it was anyone’s guess as to whether she would succeed.
“My son doesn’t always listen to reasoned arguments, especially from me.” She returned to the business at hand. There was only a touch of bitterness in her voice, tempered with a newfound hope. “But perhaps this whole sorry business with Zaremba will finally make him see the folly of his plans regarding that woman. It is, quite literally, driving his subjects to madness. Surely that will persuade him?”
“We must hope,” I replied, knowing it was in vain. “But there is something else I must convey to Your Majesty—something I haven’t shared with anyone.”
Lowering my voice—for it would not surprise me if Pappacoda was listening through a keyhole, with or without the queen’s consent—I told her of my last meeting with Zaremba and his claim that he had procured the powder from her favorite courtier. “I withheld this information from His Grace, as it would only have confirmed his suspicions of you,” I concluded, “but it shows the danger of continuing to put your faith in that man.”
When I finished, the queen’s brow was deeply creased and her lips pinched into an owlish look. “What proof have you of this?” she demanded.
“None,” I replied honestly. “Just as I have no direct proof of the Habsburgs’ involvement. But I have little doubt. Zaremba described Signor Pappacoda’s appearance quite accurately and said he had seen him here in this chamber.” I gestured toward the left side of her chair, where Pappacoda stood the last time I saw him.
“I cannot imagine Gian Lorenzo would do such a thing.” Bona shook her head. “Why, he barely leaves my side!”
I spread my arms. “I don’t see why Zaremba would have lied about it.”
“He may have been mistaken or been an agent himself. The man was a raving maniac, after all.”
I wanted to respond that there had been nothing raving or maniacal about Zaremba, that he had been clear-headed and calculating the whole time, but the thought gave me pause. Had Zaremba lied to me about this, too—to protect himself against being labeled a traitor in addition to a murderer—and had obtained the poison directly from the Habsburgs? Was Pappacoda, an Italian close to the queen, simply a dupe?
“The members of the court dislike him, true, but that’s because they hate me.” Bona pressed a clenched fist to her bosom, as if she begged for understanding. “They always have!” I saw again how lonely she was, how starved for sympathy and affection, and that her isolation heightened her suspicions of everyone around her. “I have received scant recognition or gratitude for all I have done here.” She pointed diagonally toward the corner of the chamber, in the direction of the city, and, presumably, the rest of the kingdom. “Instead, whenever I find someone I can trust, they try to destroy him.”
“Why not order a discreet investigation, then?” I suggested. “If it yields nothing, we will know that Zaremba lied.”
“But that’s exactly what they want, isn’t it?” She threw her arms out, exasperated. I wondered who “they” were. Her husband’s advisors? Her son’s allies? The pro-Habsburg faction? Bona had fought with all of these groups, whose membership often overlapped, at one time or another during her quarter of a century as Poland’s queen. “They want me to turn against the few who have remained loyal to me and to spend my time suspecting and investigating my supporters while my detractors take over the reins of power.”
As she spoke, her voice rose in pitch, and when she finished, a ringing and poignant silence wrapped us in its folds. The castle seemed deserted, and the idea of Pappacoda lurking in the shadows unsettled me. I yearned to flee the palace, which I barely recognized as the place I first saw in the spring of 1518. Then it was a beehive of political activity, a vibrant court full of music and foreign visitors, and my only concern was keeping an eye on the amorous intrigues of a gaggle of adolescent girls. I felt exhausted, as if I had run many miles, pushing myself along the way to manage just a bit more, then a bit more again, until I had nothing left.
“I believe it to be my duty to inform Your Majesty of the possibility that one of your men may have acted in a harmful way,” I said. Now it is up to you what you do with this information.
I did not speak that last part aloud, but Bona seemed to understand. “I thank you, Caterina, and I want you to know that I’m aware of the risk you have taken in coming to me with your conclusions. The people we are up against are not to be trifled with. You can rest assured that nobody here in Kraków will learn of your involvement in Zaremba’s arrest from me, nor will I share your”—she hesitated—“other concern. Your safety is important to me.”
She turned to a cherry wood table next to her chair, where, among the bowls of sweetmeats, lay a small velvet bag tied with a string. It tinkled softly when she lifted it and handed it to me. “This is a token of my appreciation for what you did in Vilnius and for arguing so forcefully to clear my name.” She must have heard that from Opaliński, too. “There is still time to dissuade my son from making this mistake; there is still time,” she repeated softly, with an inward gaze, as if speaking to herself.
I bowed. When I was almost at the door, I heard, “Caterina!” and when I turned, the queen asked, “And how fares your son?”
Incredibly, I had completely forgotten about that. “He is much better. I thank Your Majesty once again for making it possible for us to see Doctor Nascimbene.”
“We are glad then, we are glad.” She said it in that same inward way, and I wondered if the “we” she used was the royal one, or whether in her mind she was speaking both for herself and Duke Zygmunt.
* * *
I bid goodbye to Lucrezia and decided to walk the short distance from the castle to my in-laws’ house in St. Jan’s Street. As I descended the cobbled road from Wawel Hill, I fervently hoped I had set foot there for the last time.
The new purse at my belt was not heavy, which pleased me. Although I had completed my task, I did not consider the results a success. I was still full of doubts, and the only two people who could lay them to rest showed no willingness to do so. Mother and son, so deeply at odds with each other, were like two peas in a pod—caring and generous, but also headstrong and stubborn. Once they made up their minds, they did not change course. If a link existed and remained undiscovered between the Vilnius murders and the Habsburgs, it would be because of the obstinacy of the two most powerful people in Poland-Lithuania.
The queen had dismissed my warning because she saw Pappacoda as a faithful servant and believed—perhaps correctly—that she lacked such people around her. And perhaps he was faithful, and Zaremba had made common cause with the Habsburgs, who for different reasons also wanted Barbara dead and Bona blamed for the murder. I wrestled with the frustration of never learning the full truth and of seeing justice denied to the victims.
But I could not put my life and my family’s safety at risk by continuing on this quest alone. I had done my duty by informing Zygmunt and Bona of a possible conspiracy, and the matter was now out of my hands.
As it happened, the truth did not remain hidden forever, although it did not come out for another twelve years. And when it did, it happened in the worst possible way.
EPILOGUE
Bari, Kingdom of Naples, July 1560
Before I tell you of the terrible crime committed in this town three years ago, I should mention that I was disappointed if not surprised when, some weeks after my last meeting with Queen Bona, a lett
er arrived from Chamberlain Opaliński. In it he informed me that after an investigation, the details of which he did not provide, Zaremba’s death was ruled self-inflicted and the case closed.
I wrote to Doctor Nascimbene then, but he died in January of the next year, 1546, and my letter went unanswered. Thus I never found out whether the investigators consulted him and, if so, what medical opinion he gave, although I believe that, like me, he would have recognized a murder covered up as suicide. And there is always a reason for that kind of deception.
The reason was finally laid bare for all to see when Queen Bona—recently arrived in Bari from Poland, and still healthy and robust in her early sixties—came down with an unexplained stomach illness and died in November 1557. At that time, King Philip II of Spain, the son of the late Emperor Charles and a notorious spendthrift, owed her 450,000 ducats plus interest. Many at Bona’s new court immediately suspected that rather than repay the sum, the king had hired an assassin to dispatch the queen.
This suspicion was strengthened when it transpired that two days before the queen’s death, when she was already gravely ill, Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda had brought a scribe to her bedside to take down her last will and testament. In it she supposedly left her duchies of Bari and Rossano to King Philip and large sums of money to Pappacoda himself. Bona’s doctors, one of whom subsequently died under mysterious circumstances (as did the scribe who assisted in the drafting of the fraudulent will), found evidence that someone had been adding small amounts of St. Nicholas powder to her food for days. When these revelations reached the queen’s Polish heirs, they wanted to put Pappacoda on trial, but the traitorous courtier fled to Spain.
While the exact details of the Vilnius conspiracy of 1545 will always remain unknown, it is clear to me that Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda, a man of no loyalty and in the pay of the Habsburgs, played a central role in it.
As a Habsburg agent, he knew all about Vienna’s desire to get rid of Barbara and see Bona blamed for the crime. When the queen came up with her own plan to stop the marriage—which she almost certainly shared with Pappacoda, starved as she was for confidants—he took that information to his paymasters. That was when the plot took on a definitive shape: they would find someone to go to Vilnius at the same time and assassinate Barbara, ensuring that suspicion would immediately fall on the queen’s envoy. Pappacoda was therefore dismayed—as I had noticed without understanding the cause—when I arrived for the audience at which Bona entrusted me with the mission. He knew my reputation—most of the courtiers did—and worried that it might affect the success of the murder plot.
The Habsburgs pressed to continue regardless. Luck favored Pappacoda: around the same time he heard through his connections with the denizens of that shadowy world of poisoners, spies, and assorted assassins of a man looking for an Italian poison to kill the young king’s mistress in Vilnius. His Habsburg handlers duly supplied him with St. Nicholas powder, which he then sold to Zaremba—at a profit to himself, no doubt—with the results described here.
One of the greatest ironies is that Jakub Zaremba, who thought himself so clever for using the Spanish wine to cast suspicion on the emperor, was in reality an unwitting tool in the Habsburgs’ hands. You may wonder if Charles’s ambassador took part in the plot. I, for one, do not think so. My years at court taught me a thing or two about diplomacy, and the rules and decorum with which it is conducted, even when matters of life and death are at stake. I suspect the ambassador had no idea his masters in Vienna sought to ensure that if my mission failed, Barbara would still be out of the way. If von Tilburg had been in on the scheme, I doubt he would have sent Zaremba that flagon of wine.
In the end, everyone failed in their quest. Zaremba most immediately and Bona most obviously, for Zygmunt married Barbara in 1547. The union lasted only four years, until Barbara died in 1551, but even that turn of events failed to bring about a reconciliation between the queen and her son—if anything, it pushed them farther apart. Two years later—driven by the need to father an heir, more than anything else—Zygmunt married again. His third wife was none other than Catherine Habsburg, his first wife’s sister and Emperor Charles’s niece. But even that seeming triumph is now in question, for it is well known that the marriage quickly foundered and the spouses live apart. The latest news from Chamberlain Opaliński, with whom I still occasionally correspond, is that Zygmunt is thinking of having it annulled. If that happens, the Habsburgs will lose their tentative foothold on the Polish throne.
Would Bona have avoided such a grim fate had she not returned to Bari? Despite my sympathy for her, I cannot help but think that throughout her life she laid the foundations for both her success and her downfall. Her reforms and the wise management of her possessions made her rich, but she was never content; her greed and ambition only grew as she aged.
When her son became the sole ruler of Poland-Lithuania on the death of his father, the room for Bona’s aspirations shrank dramatically. Hating that lack of purpose, she eventually left Poland in 1556 in search of a new place in which to wield power. At first, she reestablished herself in Bari, where Sebastian and I had returned only a few months earlier when Giulio, a healthy young man of twenty, took over the management of Konary. Bona was still duchess here, and her subjects welcomed her back with great pomp. But she wanted more. Soon rumors began to circulate that she had set her sights on Naples, where she hoped to become viceroy. The exorbitant loan she made to Philip of Spain in the autumn of 1556 was meant to multiply her fortune and provide funds to buy that title. Instead, it led to her death.
Whatever her faults, Bona did not deserve to die that way. She had a forceful personality and she could be brash, qualities not welcomed in women anywhere but especially not in the land that destiny chose her to rule. She made mistakes, and enemies, but she also did a lot of good, not just in the agricultural realm but as a patroness of artists, supporter of monasteries’ charitable work, and founder of schools and hospitals.
So I weep for her as I write these words and the inky sky begins to pale through the shutters. Sebastian is sleeping across the chamber from my desk, but I am often awake at night. It gives me plenty of time to reflect on the past and worry about the future of the country I consider my second homeland, where my son still lives. Queen Bona worked tirelessly for the kingdom and the monarchy, and now both are in danger: one from the continuing power struggle between the szlachta and the magnates and the ambitions of powerful neighbors lurking at its borders; the other from the ongoing lack of an heir.
Already some people call the days of Zygmunt Stary and Bona’s rule the Golden Age. And they refer to it in the past tense.
HISTORICAL NOTE
As confusing as it may seem, both Zygmunts—father and son—held the title of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania concurrently from 1529 to the elder’s death in 1548. Due to the maneuverings of Queen Bona, her son was declared grand duke in October 1529 and king in December of that year, when he was only nine. Her motivation was to secure the succession, because the monarchy was formally elective. However, in practice the ruling king’s son was all but assured succession, so the move was largely symbolic. Worse, it made Bona more enemies—especially among the Polish nobility, which prided itself on its role in the election of kings, even if it was a rubber stamp. Moreover—and I allude to this frequently in the novel—Zygmunt August’s formal assumption of the ducal role in 1544 was a political catastrophe for Bona, as he quickly moved to curb her power in Lithuania.
Elizabeth of Austria, the ill-fated wife of the young king, died in Vilnius and was buried there. I moved the location to Kraków to fit the narrative, but the other details are accurate. It was a short and unhappy marriage that ended when Elizabeth died of epilepsy on June 15, 1545, at the age of eighteen. Frail, shy, and deeply religious, she held no interest for Zygmunt, accustomed as he was (thanks in no small part to Bona’s upbringing) to promiscuous and experienced women. During the two-year marriage, the couple spent much time apart, and it
is likely that Zygmunt’s affair with Barbara Radziwiłł (Lithuanian: Barbora Radvilaitė) started during Elizabeth’s lifetime.
Mikołaj Rudy, although a real historical figure, is a composite character in this novel. In reality, there were two Mikołajs in the Radziwiłł clan—Czarny (The Black) and Rudy (The Red), the nicknames deriving from the colors of their beards. Rudy was Barbara’s brother, while Czarny was a cousin. Together they formed a powerful team of (relatively) young and ambitious noblemen who did everything in their power to see Barbara married to Zygmunt August in order to advance the family’s standing. From the 1550s to the 1570s, both Radziwiłłs held some of the highest military and administrative offices in Lithuania, including those of the commander of the army, Grand Chancellor, and wojewoda of Vilnius. As their political interests, activities, and careers mirrored each other so closely, I chose to include only Rudy in this narrative to avoid confusion.
The relationship between Queen Bona and Captain Bernard Pretwicz is an interesting one. Pretwicz was a descendant of a German family from Silesia, which should have made it hard for him to enter the famously anti-Habsburg queen’s trusted circle. But he was a successful army commander, particularly against Tatar invasions in Lithuania. For that, Bona respected him and supported his career, showing that she was as politically savvy as she was pragmatic.
The issue of Zygmunt’s second marriage was of the utmost political importance. He was the heir to the throne with no living brothers, and the survival of the dynasty hinged on his fathering a son. Bona, in her typically energetic fashion, set out to look for a new daughter-in-law among the finest royal and princely houses of Europe. However, Zygmunt’s affair with Barbara prevented any of these plans from materializing. Although Caterina’s mission to the court in Vilnius is fictional, Bona did all she could to separate the lovers, even going so far as to dispatch the most beautiful courtesans to Vilnius. The women were sent back to Kraków without having rendered their service to the Crown, and Zygmunt married Barbara in 1547 in a clandestine, middle-of-the night ceremony straight out of the pages of a romance novel. The move marked the final break between mother and son. In 1548, when Barbara was on her triumphal way to Kraków, Bona left the capital to avoid meeting her daughter-in-law. Powerless, isolated, and resentful, Bona settled in Warsaw, in Mazovia, then left for Italy in 1556, a destination from which she was never to return.