The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany

by Linda Lafferty

  “What can I expect from a Fiorentino play soldier?” said Brunelli. “He has his mighty weapon in his hand. Senese have only wits, well-bred manners, and real palle between their legs, not on a flapping banner with painted balls!”

  The guard took a step toward him.

  Andrea Sopra whisked him away.

  “You certainly do not make friends easily, Brunelli,” said Sopra. “Your attitude could easily result in your death.”

  Inside, a guard escorted the two men to the private quarters of Cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici.

  “When the cardinale speaks to you, bow your head or give some semblance of respect,” warned Sopra. “Things will go better that way.”

  Giorgio’s lip curled in disgust.

  “I am Senese. The de’ Medici—”

  “I tell you this as another Senese. Study the floor when you enter. It will keep your head attached to your neck.”

  Giorgio gave a snort of disdain. The sound carried down the stone corridor of the palace. “You have lost your Senese heart, Sopra. I will look the cardinale in the eye, as an honest man should.”

  Andrea Sopra whirled around, looking to see who might have heard. He shook his head. “I should have had you wash. You have hay in your hair, soot and dirt on your face. The guard was right, you do stink of horse sweat and manure. In my haste—”

  The heavy mahogany door swung open while they argued. A servant ushered them into the cardinale’s office.

  “My smell?” hissed Giorgio. “It is the perfume of brave horses!”

  “Ah, Giorgio Brunelli,” said the cardinale, his voice breaking into their argument. He sniffed the air as he looked up from his writing desk. “So . . . it is the perfume of brave horses I detect.” Several parchment letters lay open on the desk, a gilded eagle paperweight taming their curl. An enormous tan leather Bible occupied the upper right corner of the desk, a red ribbon marking a passage. Giorgio strode forward, looking directly into the cardinale’s eyes.

  Ferdinando de’ Medici was dressed in crimson satins; bright jewels adorned his fingers. His dark eyes looked out from under hooded lids, grown heavy like the rest of his body with too much rich food and drink.

  “I had hoped you would accept my invitation.”

  The cardinale flicked his hand, dismissing his secretary and Andrea Sopra from the room.

  “Your invitation, Cardinale de’ Medici? I was summoned,” said Giorgio. “And escorted here by an armed guard.”

  “Yes, I suppose you were,” said the cardinale. “But please sit. I have some business to discuss with you.”

  Giorgio sat down cautiously, as if the chair might be pulled out from underneath him.

  “Ah! You do not like me,” said Ferdinando, raising his eyebrow.

  “The de’ Medici have given Siena reasons for our animosity.”

  Ferdinando glared back. “You are impertinent, Brunelli.”

  “I am honest, Cardinale.”

  The cardinale jutted out his thick lips, considering the young man across from him.

  “May I tell you, Brunelli, that your attitude toward the de’ Medici family could be easily construed as treason.”

  “Sì. I suppose it could be,” said Giorgio meeting his eyes.

  The cardinale did not answer right away. He walked to the window and looked out at the Duomo across the piazza.

  “You despise my brother, the granduca, sì?” said the cardinale. He twisted the rings on his fingers.

  Giorgio said nothing, but tightened his fists. To speak against the granduca would be treason.

  “I understand Siena’s frustration,” said the cardinale. He lay a hand on Giorgio’s shoulder for a brief instant. “You were once a free republic.”

  Giorgio sat up straighter in his chair, making the wooden frame squeak.

  What is he saying? It must be a trick.

  “Let me come to the point, Brunelli. We do not have to remain enemies, you and I. I know well your hatred for . . . the conquest. My Senese . . . friends have kept me well informed.”

  “Then there is nothing more I can tell you, Cardinale,” said Giorgio, starting to rise from his seat.

  “Sit down, Brunelli. Listen to what I have to say.”

  “As you command, Cardinale,” said Giorgio.

  The cardinale studied him as if he were contemplating a move on a chessboard. He poured himself a glass of wine, taking a sip.

  “Siena is now and forever under Florentine rule. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better.”

  Giorgio stared hard at his hands. He longed to lunge at the cardinale and strangle him before he could say another word.

  “I think, however, there is something I could do to help you,” said the cardinale, setting down his glass. He sat down across from Giorgio. “That is, if I believed I could trust you unconditionally. Hardly a simple task given your feelings toward the de’ Medici.”

  “Help me?” said Giorgio.

  “Yes, I do believe I can. Help you.”

  The two sat for a moment, watching each other, controlling their breathing and emotions.

  “We have a common interest, I believe,” said the cardinale at last, flexing his ringed fingers. “I know of your search for Virginia Tacci—”

  “What do you know of Virginia?” said Giorgio, half-rising.

  “Sit down, Brunelli. Your constant buoyancy in your chair is most annoying.”

  Giorgio forced himself down to sit.

  “I know very little. I believe she was, as you suspect, sent to a convent. I expect her name was changed to prevent you or any other Senese from finding her.”

  Giorgio’s felt his throat tighten.

  “Can she be found?”

  The cardinale sat back in his chair. He looked out his window at the Duomo. “I am not certain, Brunelli. At least under the current circumstances.”

  “But—you could find her! You could question the granduca,” said Giorgio. His hands stretched out in frustration. “She means everything to me, to Siena—”

  “I need some assistance,” said the cardinale, ignoring the emotional plea. “I understand you are a gifted painter. Especially of horses.”

  Giorgio looked up at the cardinale. “Yes, I paint. I am part of the accademia here in Siena.”

  What does this have to do with Virginia?

  The cardinale leaned forward in his chair.

  “If I were granduca—and quite clearly, I am not—I would use all of my power to search for la villanella.”

  Giorgio swallowed.

  There was a moment of silence as the two men stared at one another.

  “We have a great deal in common, I think,” said the cardinale at last. “Am I correct?”

  La villanella. Giorgio’s mind lingered on the word. Its resonance still floated in the air.

  La villanella.

  “Yes, you are correct,” he said looking back at the de’ Medici prince, not quite certain if he were agreeing to something.

  The cardinale sat back in his chair, a ghost of a smile spreading across his face.

  If he were granduca? What can that mean to me? What could I—

  “Good,” said the cardinale. “My concern with you, Brunelli, is your temper and impatience. If we were to begin a course of action, a course of action that would require your participation, a course of action that would ultimately find Virginia Tacci, you would have to wait. And wait perhaps years. I am not sure you are capable of that.”

  “Years?” said Giorgio. “Why?”

  “Because, you see, I am powerless in my present role to do anything to find the villanella. My hands are tied.”

  Giorgio felt his eyes sting. “I will do whatever I need to find Virginia Tacci and bring her home to Siena. Even if I have to sell my soul to the devil.”

  The cardinale sniffed. “I expect that will not be necessary. As I was saying earlier, I understand that you are an artist of extraordinary talent.”

  Giorgio stared at the cardinale. “What do
es my art have to do with Virginia?”

  The cardinale didn’t answer. He reached for the leather-bound Bible. “Brunelli. You will not hear from me for some time. The hour is not right . . . yet. But the first matter of business is to swear a holy oath of secrecy. To protect both you and me. And Virginia Tacci.”

  Giorgio hesitated. How could he possibly be in league with a de’ Medici? In his mind’s eye, he called up the memory of Virginia, riding Orione at full gallop through the streets of Siena.

  He dipped his head, assenting. He lay his hand on the holy book.

  “If I can find Virginia, I will swear anything,” said Giorgio. He met the cardinale’s eye.

  “Even on a de’ Medici Bible.”

  CHAPTER 74

  Siena, Brunelli Stables, Vignano

  JUNE 1585

  For three years, day after day, month after month, Giorgio had watched the road to Siena, waiting for a messenger in de’ Medici livery. And now Andrea Sopra was standing in front of him, waiting while Giorgio read the letter from Cardinale de’ Medici.

  The messenger watched Brunelli burn the missive in the smithy fire, and as the edges of the parchment curled and crumbled into black ash, he asked, “What response shall I give the cardinale?”

  “Tell him sì,” said Giorgio, his eyes still on the bright flame. “I will do it.”

  Giorgio rode up the winding road toward Fiesole, climbing the hills high above the red tile roofs of Florence. Soon his horse began to sweat, attracting horseflies whose buzz competed with the frenetic drone of the cicadas clinging to the tree branches. He let the gelding walk in the mottled shade of summer leaves. A stream gurgled alongside the road, spilling down the hillside.

  When he reached the stone quarries of Borgunto, Giorgio dismounted and let his horse drink. He stared at the men hauling rocks on their backs, sweating in the sun, their faces encrusted with powdered rock, their linen tunics stained yellow-brown with sweat.

  “You, traveler,” said a foreman. “What do you want here?”

  “Only water for my horse.”

  “And what else?” The foreman’s face narrowed with suspicion.

  Giorgio sized up the man approaching him—a man who surely recognized his Senese accent. He thought quickly.

  “I am seeking help,” Giorgio said, taking a step toward him. “My daughter is stricken with a high fever and cough. She has turned a mottled blue, with black splotches. I—”

  The foreman jumped back.

  “The pox! You must leave at once!”

  “I will,” said Giorgio, taking another step toward the man. “If only you will tell me where to find the healer Carlotta Spessa.”

  “La strega.”

  Giorgio frowned.

  Witch? The cardinale has sent me to speak to a witch?

  “I have been told she makes healing potions. To cure my daughter.”

  “Up there,” said the foreman, jabbing a finger toward a dark opening in the rock wall in the slopes far above the quarry. “The de’ Medici prince built her a villa over the grotto.”

  Giorgio made out the edge of a slate roofline above the quarry.

  “Now be on your way at once!” said the foreman. “We do not want your contagion here.”

  Giorgio tied his horse to one of the iron hitching rings outside the doorway, bored into the ancient stone. The lower half of each ring was worn smooth, the leather chafing away the metal over the centuries.

  A coal-tressed woman answered the door. Her eyes glittered like shards of emerald glass against her light brown skin. She studied him from foot to head, saying nothing.

  “I am looking for a healer,” said Giorgio, twisting his hat in his hands.

  The young woman glanced over his head, her eyes searching for watchers.

  “No, you are not,” she said. She paused, this time staring straight into his eyes.

  What deep green! Never have I seen eyes so piercing. Cat’s eyes—

  He felt his knees weaken. He shifted his weight to keep his balance.

  “Healing is not your business with me. But you may come in anyway, stranger.”

  Giorgio stepped over the threshold. A wild onslaught of aromas—sweet, herbal, acrid, fetid—stopped him, paralyzing him midstep.

  “You will get used to it,” said the woman. “The smells—pungent and potent—are the tools of my craft.”

  She spun around to face him. “I am Carlotta Spessa.”

  “I am Antonio Martini,” he answered. His eyes met her brilliant eyes.

  She shook her head. Her black hair rippled around her shoulders. “If you continue to lie to me, I shall ask you to leave.”

  He dropped his gaze to the rush-covered floor. “All right,” he said, eyes still lowered like a scolded child’s.

  “Speak,” she said. “You have only one more chance to tell me the truth.”

  Giorgio hesitated for only a moment. “I come on a mission that persuaded me to disguise my name and my purpose. I am Giorgio Brunelli of Vignano, just outside the southeastern walls of Siena. I am a horse trainer,” he said, his head bowed. “And an artist.”

  When he looked up again, her eyes were chipped emeralds, a fierce sparkling green. She smiled.

  “Si. Sì, Giorgio Brunelli of Siena. That is much better.” A fat black cat wove between her legs. “Now that I am hearing some truth, I shall ask you into my kitchen to sit by the hearth and have a cup of tea. Or wine, if you prefer.”

  “Grazie,” said Giorgio.

  He followed her into the interior of the house, her hair a black flag waving behind her.

  Giorgio had never met a more physically attractive woman than Carlotta Spessa. Her smell, her simple presence, made his body tingle, the hairs stand up on his arms. The fact that she had invited him, a stranger, into her house, seemed to send a signal that filled him with desire.

  He saw the curve of her breasts as she bent over the fire to retrieve a boiling pot of water. Her fingertips crushed herbs into two terra-cotta cups.

  What lovely hands. I would use lime-white paint, bianco di San Giovanni, to capture the skin color—perhaps a minute grain of madder lake red. A bit of scrubbing on the canvas. But no. Completely wrong. There is that undertone of brown, earthiness. An umber or—

  She interrupted his reverie.

  “Why do you seek me?”

  “You will be angry if I tell you.”

  “I shall be incensed if you do not. What do you want from me?” Carlotta handed him an earthenware cup of chamomile tea.

  “Revenge,” he answered. His eyes were still studying her skin. “And in the revenge, a reward. I seek a dear friend of mine.”

  Her eyes glowed back at him.

  “Vengeance kills the avenger,” she said, nodding to the cup. “Drink. You are agitated. It is filled with soothing flowers and sweet meadow honey. It will calm you.”

  Giorgio sipped the tea. He noticed Carlotta watching his throat and studying his hand on the teacup. When he set the cup down, she picked up his hand, admiring it.

  “You have the hands of an artist,” she said. “Look at the length of your fingers, the sensitivity in the fingertips.”

  She turned his palm over, to inspect it. He swallowed hard at her touch.

  “But you have tragedy written in your hand. You have suffered.”

  “How—how do you know?”

  “You told me, of course!” she said, laughing. Then her face turned serious, dark. “Yes. You seek revenge. And . . . I see the revenge you seek so clearly. What a pity.”

  “Where?” asked Giorgio, bending closer to his hand, to her.

  She looked away from his hand, and up at his face.

  “In your eyes,” she said, her voice softening. “You come for vengeance. Justified vengeance, perhaps. You seek to right a wrong. But all revenge poisons the avenger.”

  He said nothing. His eyes met hers, not denying a word. He sensed a great depth before him, an abyss. And he didn’t have time to wonder, to puzzle. Or to fear.
<
br />   He could taste honey on her breath before his mouth met her lips. Giorgio drank deep of those lips, of that breath. He forgot completely why he had come to Fiesole.

  But Carlotta had not.

  The next morning, his body was damp and sore from lovemaking. He stretched out on the bed, still feeling the warmth left by Carlotta, smelling her scent. He fingered the linen sheets, remembering. He closed his eyes, picturing the outline of her body in the moonlight, the black blanket of her hair spread over his chest.

  The sun began to rise, shafts of crimson finding their way through the open doorway. He walked naked to the hearth, where she stirred a cauldron. He kissed the place where her shoulder met her neck, his tongue lingering there.

  He closed his eyes, drinking in her earthy scent and the warmth of her skin.

  “You will find what you seek there, on the plank,” she said. He could feel the muscles in her shoulder work as she churned the wooden spoon.

  There on an oak board lay nuggets of the most vibrant pigment he had ever seen.

  Carlotta cracked eggs into two bowls, separating the sunny yolk from the clear membrane in preparation for tempera.

  “Let me do it,” he said, setting his hand on her shoulder. “I have been doing this all my life.”

  She stiffened at his touch, shrugging off his hand. “No. Watch me.”

  “But Carlotta—”

  “This is no ordinary paint,” she said. “It is from a source unknown to you. Until you know how to handle it the way I do, I will not permit you to touch it. You must earn the paint’s trust, its respect.”

  He dropped his hand, her words haunting him with a memory he could not retrieve.

  “Watch the care I use in the paint’s preparation. Never do I introduce a speck of my body oils, my flesh or fingernail. The color must not lick your skin, or . . .” She looked away.

  “Or what?”

  She turned back to him, the shine in her eyes vanished. Instead there was deadly matte green that reflected her warning. “The magic will be reversed. You may die as a consequence. Do you understand?”