“Tell me about the wolves,” Lorenzo said. “I can help.”
“There’s no help for the trouble I’m in.”
“Montguillon is suspicious. And he’s tenacious. Even if he’s unconscious, on the verge of death, he’ll whisper his charges to Simon, who will carry them to the Blackfriars. If you’re charged under the Inquisition as a witch . . . ”
“I will not burn. I’ll take my own life first.”
“And suffer in the Seventh Circle of Hell as a suicide? It’s better to burn for a few minutes.”
“The priests burned the other two women for six hours, kept them alive, their skin crackling and fat dripping into the fire, as they screamed and begged for release.”
“My God.”
“They were innocent. I am not.”
“My lady, whatever you did—”
“I’m not strong enough to face the fire. And besides, they’ll excommunicate me first. My soul is bound for hell one way or another.”
“Stop talking like that,” he said. “You’re not going to burn, and you’re not going to die. And you’re not going to hell, either.”
“You don’t know that.”
Lorenzo reached for her hand. She tried to pull away, but this time he was the one who tightened his grip.
“Please, trust me,” he said. “Whatever you’ve done, I’ll help you. I’ll protect you.”
“It’s too much, I can’t ask that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”
She was quiet again, and after a moment she rose from the bed. He thought she’d leave him and return to her own quarters, but she moved to the fire instead, where she threw on a birch log. It crackled and flared as the bark caught fire.
“Lorenzo,” she said, turning. “I’ll tell you what I know. Not to save my own life, but to stop this thing. If you choose to denounce me to Father Montguillon when I’m done—”
“I’d never do that.”
“Let me finish, please. If you do choose to denounce me, I shall not blame you as they tie me to the stake.”
Denounce her? What kind of monster did she take him for? Besides, it was for not denouncing heretics, for defending them with the words of ancient pagan philosophers, that he’d found trouble with the Inquisition in the first place.
If he’d do that for a Franciscan monk espousing heretical views on the motion of celestial bodies, what would he do for Lucrezia di Lucca?
Lucrezia studied him with a worried expression. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear this?”
“Nothing you say could shock me.”
“You might regret saying that. Very well, here goes.” She sat next to him on the bed. “It began when I poisoned my husband.”
Chapter Twelve
“The first thing you should know,” Lucrezia began tentatively, “is that I didn’t marry my husband through any great love. If I had, I might have chosen a painter or a poet, or maybe even a young Florentine trader.”
Lorenzo’s eyes had widened when she’d mentioned poison, but he didn’t recoil, which was good. She was beginning to trust him—was desperate to trust someone—but needed to tell it in a certain way or he certainly would denounce her.
“I was still a girl when I met Rigord Ducy, the Lord Duke d’Lisle. Like your father, mine believed in taking his children on trading missions. Even his daughters. By the time I traveled to Paris I’d already visited Constantinople, Venice, Geneva, Bruges, three cities in the Hanseatic League, Toledo, and even passed through al-Andalus. The sultan offered my father forty thousand silver dirhams to add me to his harem.”
“You must have made an impression,” Lorenzo said.
“I was thirteen!” Lucrezia said. “Father didn’t tell me this until later, thank God, or I would have been terrified. Of course he never would have sold me to the Moors. By the time I was seventeen and I met the duke, I had become unfortunately aware of how men stared at me. It was enough to drive a girl to the convent. My mother thought I should become a nun and cloister myself with the Carmelites. She said the attention was of the devil. At times I thought she was right.”
“I don’t understand,” Lorenzo said. His tone was careful. “Thirteen, yes, and from a Mohammedan who wants to add you to his harem—that sounds frightening. But when you were seventeen, didn’t you enjoy the appreciation of wealthy and powerful men?”
“I could tell you a few things that might change your mind. Or maybe not. A man could never understand.”
“Go on, then.”
She was grateful he didn’t argue. It sounded petty to complain of being pretty, like whining about how being wealthy attracted sycophants, even as beggars starved in the streets. And perhaps for a man, there was no drawback to great beauty. A handsome man could only use those qualities to his advantage.
“Father wasn’t so interested in turning me into a nun. Six months after we returned to Lucca, our financial situation turned dire. We’d invested in a Genoan spice venture and the ships were lost to pirates off the coast of Arabia. Father began hunting for a wealthy husband. Lucca, Pisa, Florence—there were several interested parties.”
A frown crossed Lorenzo’s face and she wondered if he knew that Father had even spoken to Bernardino Boccaccio about the suitability of one of his sons.
“Then Father received a letter from Lord d’Lisle,” she said. “The duke was in Rome on pilgrimage and wanted to know if he could pay a visit to Lucca on his way through Tuscany. My father made discrete inquiries. It seems that Rigord Ducy was one of the five wealthiest men in France, and possessed estates in France and Burgundy. He stayed three weeks at our villa, and when he left, my father had an agreement.”
Lorenzo said, “But when I saw you the following year at the Festa della Rificolona, you were not betrothed yet. I tried to kiss you, remember? You said nothing.”
“I don’t remember that,” she said with a laugh. “Are you sure?”
“We climbed that old stone staircase to the olive grove overlooking the city where we watched the lantern parades. I fed you pan forte. I tried to take advantage of the darkness to steal a kiss.”
“I remember the pan forte—so sweet and rich. But you didn’t try to kiss me.”
“I most certainly did.”
“Then not very effectively, it would appear,” she said. “Or I’d remember. That sort of thing didn’t happen very often.”
He smiled. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“Well, maybe it happened once or twice.”
Lucrezia felt a blush rising, because suddenly she remembered Lorenzo’s brother trying to kiss her. And with rather more success. It happened at the Medici palace during a midwinter masquerade the year prior to the Festa della Rificolona. She’d been wearing a feathered, jewel-encrusted mask in the Venetian style, shamelessly flirting with a young man in bright leggings and a bulging cod piece, who wore a hawk’s mask and whispered funny, outrageous things in her ear. Then somehow she found herself alone with the young man in a dimly lit hallway lined with Greek sculpture. He took off his mask and hers, and kissed her. She barely resisted—the best that could be said was that it was a closed-mouth kiss and she pulled away after several seconds, and even then reluctantly. Who was he? She couldn’t even see his face before they slid their masks into place and moved back into the light.
Upon her return to the party, Lucrezia made discreet inquiries about the man with the hawk’s mask and heard it from Piero de’Medici himself that her would-be lover was the oldest of the Boccaccio brothers, Marco. And further, that he’d been asking about her earlier, before the flirtation began. He had sought her out specially, the scoundrel.
She decided not to share that particular story with Lorenzo. He might not find it as amusing as the story with the pan forte.
“Anyway,” she continued, “there wasn’t any betrothal to the duke, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Only an agreement. Rigord was still trying to obtain an annulment from his wife. He didn’t have any grounds, of course. O
nly boredom with a woman who was too old and fat for his taste. That’s how I understood it, anyway.”
“But you never loved the duke?” Lorenzo said. “And that’s why you tried to kill him?”
“I didn’t try to kill him. I said I poisoned him. That’s different. But no, I never loved him.”
“Go on.”
“How could I love him? He didn’t speak Italian and made no effort to learn. His Latin was weak, and he could barely read. How could I love someone who couldn’t read Petrarch or Dante? Who didn’t know Homer from Hippocrates?”
Lorenzo smiled. “I would quote my favorite Latin verse to try to impress you, but I’m sure you would correct my delivery.”
“Oh, hardly.” She put a hand on his arm. “I don’t have to tell you. We are Italians. We love food and art. Music, poetry.”
“Not like these northern barbarians, is that it?”
“That’s right,” she said, smiling. “They are little better than Huns and Visigoths up here.”
“So naturally, you could never love Rigord.”
Lucrezia sighed. “He was proud of his ignorance. One of the most powerful men in France—could you believe that?”
“And what did he look like? A bloated old ogre?”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “He was handsome.”
Lorenzo struggled from the bed with a grunt and made his way to the fire. He fed it another log, then poured himself more of the watered-down wine. Lucrezia watched him carefully, concerned. He was wobbly, but perhaps a little stronger.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Get to the point where you poisoned him. I think I’ll like that better.”
Lucrezia helped him back into bed, then went to the flagons and poured herself a glass of the stronger, fortified wine. She took a long drink before she continued.
“Rigord had strange friends. Several men would come and go, but a few I remember in particular. One man Rigord called his brother, though the others called him Bayezid and his complexion was dark, like an Egyptian’s. And a second man, rough and hairy, like a woodsman. His French was good, but with a slight Occitanian accent. From the Pyrenees, I think. Not a wealthy man, I think. His name was Courtaud.”
“What did you say he was called?” Lorenzo asked with a frown.
“Courtaud.”
His frown deepened. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Really? Where?”
Lorenzo looked as if he almost had it, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. I can’t remember now.”
“There was a woman, too, with fair skin and dark hair and eyes. A striking combination. Like the women you see sometimes from Brittany or Wales, who they say are descended from the ancient druids.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“These people always arrived late at night, when no good folk are abroad. From my window I could sometimes see them crossing the bridge when it should have been closed. When they arrived, Rigord always sent me to my chambers and told me to lock my doors and go to sleep.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“In retrospect, yes. At the time I thought he was eccentric. They were dabbling in something—I heard whispers from the servants who cleaned up in the mornings after the guests had left. Glasses of a green wine. Powders and tinctures. And one time, they said, there was blood. A lot of it, staining the flagstones and carpets. They cleaned it up, but I could see the stains in the weaving when I entered the library.
“I began to suspect that he was involved carnally with this woman. I’m the daughter of a Luccan merchant and have traveled abroad with men. I have brothers. I understand how the world works. A girl who is overstimulated gets sent to a convent. Her brothers joyfully scatter their seed in whatever fertile field they can find.”
Lucrezia looked at Lorenzo, who was blushing.
“I don’t blame men,” she continued. “They have urges. Nature tells a man to satisfy these urges, and though God wishes that he would remain celibate, it’s difficult to refrain. When a man travels, when he is in a foreign city, he sometimes finds himself in the arms of a strange woman.”
“I try not to do those things,” Lorenzo said.
“Try?”
“I’m a young man and unmarried. When I falter, I always go to confession.”
“As you should. And if I thought my husband was confessing, or even trying to resist, I’d have continued in ignorance. Locked my doors when they came and tried not to dwell on Rigord’s actions.”
“Then what happened?”
“One summer night, when I’d had too much wine at dinner, and Rigord let slip that his visitors were expected, I asked him candidly why these people were coming. Discussing esoteric knowledge, he said. Esoteric knowledge, how? I asked him. Like Epicurus? Because I love to consider the old pagan philosophies. They don’t frighten me, even when I reject their reliance on natural philosophy over the mysteries of God. And there’s another woman there—so might not I join in too?”
“What did he say to that?”
Lucrezia shook her head. “Rigord didn’t know who Epicurus was. No, he said, not that kind of knowledge. From the east. Ruthenia, Rumania, Moldova, Egypt, Persia. Not Christian. Not even pagan. I pressed, but he wouldn’t say any more.
“That night, after he sent me up, I turned away the maid when she wanted to dress me for bed. Instead, I put on my finest houppelande, lined with velvet and fur, a jeweled coronet, and my most expensive jewelry. Then I opened the shutters to watch for their arrival. Courtaud came first, together with two younger men, crossing the Seine by boat. Nobody challenged them from the walls, and they gained the Cité via a staircase used in the day by fishermen. Bayezid crossed the bridge alone and by foot. The portcullis raised and let him in. The others came from elsewhere, perhaps from the island of the Cité, but the front doors opened and closed several times.
“About an hour after the last of the visitors arrived, when I was sure they’d begun, I stepped quietly down the hallway in the darkness. Then I descended to the ground floor, lit by torches in the hallway, continued past the tapestries, and into the library. I meant to introduce myself. To insert myself into their company and if they really were engaged in discussions of esoterica, to join them. But what I saw horrified me.”
Lorenzo stared, eyes wide, his hands twisting at the blankets. He still didn’t look altogether well, and some of that pasty look had returned to his cheeks. She should give him another tincture of poppy to help him sleep. Take another look at that scratch, to make sure it was still healing properly. But now that she was telling her story, it was difficult to stop.
Three years now since that night, and she’d never told a soul. How could she? She couldn’t trust anyone; if people knew how far she’d fallen into her husband’s unholy madness, they’d condemn her as a witch. And how would Lorenzo react when he heard? Badly?
“They had laid out a pentagram on the stone floor—an inverted star within a hoop—and lit it with candles. A dozen men circled the pentagram, chanting in a verse again and again. Twice—first in a barbarian tongue—guttural, full of harsh consonants. Like English, but even uglier. And second, in an archaic, vulgar form of the Latin tongue. Badly pronounced, to my ear. The men were naked, but with wolf pelts over their shoulders, including the wolf heads, which rested on their scalps. They passed around a pewter chalice filled with what looked like wine, but I later found out was their own blood.”
“My God.”
“The dark-haired woman was in the center of the pentagram, nude. Her body glistened with oil in the candlelight and she writhed and danced to the chant. The voices changed and one of the men in wolf pelts entered the center of the pentagram. And then . . . ”
Lucrezia broke off, ashamed to say it aloud. Telling it was awful, like she’d returned to that night. She could hear the chants, smell the expensive, perfumed candles. See the lust in Rigord’s eyes as he entered the pentagram.
“Tell me,
” Lorenzo said, his voice low.
“When the man entered, the woman dropped to all fours, like an animal. And the man in the pelt came up behind her, like a dog on the street.”
“Or a wolf,” Lorenzo said.
“They took her, one after another. For some time I stood watching. I felt like I was caught in a horrible dream, dragged off by mad horses. When it came to be my husband’s turn, he came upon her, hard and furious. She arched her back and moaned, and he let out an awful howl. I fled. When I got to my rooms, I drew the bolt and pushed chairs in front of my door. I took out my dagger and put it beneath my pillow. I didn’t sleep that night.
“Something was wrong in my head that evening,” she continued. “It’s foolish in retrospect, but I blamed the woman. One woman, surrounded by men. Taken like an animal. But she was the one I was convinced was at fault. A witch. A temptress. Perhaps even a succubus, a demon sent from hell to seduce and degrade men. Take their seed and plant it in her womb. A demon child would be the result. Why else would the men behave in such a barbaric manner?”
“That sounds like a village priest,” Lorenzo said, “who fines a man all of three deniers when he catches him in the arms of a harlot, but shaves the woman’s head and gives her fifty lashes.”
“Yes, I know. I am ashamed to say, but I wrote a letter to the bishop of Notre Dame, telling him about the succubus that had taken my husband, and asking for his Excellency’s help. Martin, bless his wise heart, balked when I tried to send him with the letter. I had time to reconsider. I decided to confront the woman myself. Put her to the question, as Montguillon might say. I needed to be certain.”
Lucrezia shook her head and licked her lips. She didn’t want to go on, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“Better that I had forgotten what I’d seen,” she said. “No, better that I had fled France for home. This woman, this beautiful Welsh woman with the luxurious black hair and eyes, the fair skin. Young, like a girl almost, certainly no older than twenty. Or so I thought. This woman was not a succubus at all. She was Rigord’s first wife.”
“What? How is that possible?”
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