by P K Adams
The morning after the interview, I was called to a private chamber reserved for high court officials during illnesses that required constant care. Inside, Queen Bona was awaiting me. She was alone.
I dropped into a low curtsy, my weakened body protesting dizzily. I would have fallen if the queen had not stepped forward, taken me by my healthy arm, and lifted me up. Her grip was strong and firm, unsurprisingly. She sat me on the bed and took a chair opposite, too large and too ornate to have been a permanent part of the sick chamber’s furniture.
I had not met her eyes yet, too embarrassed and a little scared. She and I had always gotten along well, but the queen had a quick temper, and I had heard the verbal lashings she had given others often enough. I waited for her to speak—or shout—first.
“How are you feeling, Caterina?” Her voice was mild, but her face was stern when I finally looked up. For once, she was difficult to read.
“Better, Your Majesty. Thank you.”
“I’m glad.” She reached for a tray of nougat that she must have brought with her and offered me the sweet squares. She knew it was my favorite confection.
I took one, but I could not taste it as bile rose to my throat. “Doctor Baldazzi did a fine job sewing up my arm,” I said instead. “The wound hasn’t corrupted and is mending well.”
The queen grunted. “I am glad to hear that, too, especially as he has never helped me in any way.”
I dropped my gaze. That is because you have never been truly ill.
“You are missed.”
My head snapped up. I was so surprised, I could not find the right words. “Has Your Majesty been—” I started. “Has Chancellor Stempowski informed Your Majesty of—” I faltered.
“Yes,” she said grimly.
I could not resist the impression that her tone had as much to do with what she had learned about Helena’s motivations as with the fact that her hopes for Stempowski’s downfall had been dashed. At least for now.
“I am so sorry.” I wrung my hands. If I had the strength, I would have fallen to my knees to beg her forgiveness for letting it all happen, but at that moment, I was not sure if I would be able to rise again.
Bona was silent for a while as I fought to keep my emotions in check. “I want you to know that I do not blame you for this,” she said at length. I looked up at her, my eyes widening in disbelief. She went on, “I know how hard it is to keep an eye on those girls. They flirt and they tempt, then they raise a great lament if they find themselves trifled with and cast aside. Men cannot be expected to resist charms that are offered so freely.”
I felt a heat of indignation rising to my cheeks. “Helena was not like that!” I protested vehemently. Then I changed my tone. “She didn’t provoke Zamborski or Mantovano. She was their victim,” I added quietly, but I held her gaze.
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “We will never know that for certain. After all, the dead cannot speak for themselves.”
I looked away, trying to hide my dismay. Of all people, I had not expected the queen to defend Helena’s tormentors. But I was hardly in a position to tell her that. “I believe her,” I said. “I saw her pain when she told me about it. She did not lie.”
There was something in the silence that hung between us that told me the queen was not convinced. Or perhaps she did not want to be.
“Be that as it may,” she said, her tone definitive, “Helena’s fate is sealed. A murder is a murder.”
I could not find a response to that. Instead I said, surprising myself, “If Your Majesty wishes me to leave my position and return to Bari, I will.”
“I do not. You can stay if that is what you want.”
Not long before, I would have been relieved to hear that. But now I was not sure anymore. “I don’t know if I am the right person for this role,” I confessed, articulating a doubt that had been building inside me for months. “Perhaps I don’t have the—” I broke off, not knowing how to explain it. The right mindset? Set of convictions? Lack of empathy? I was too close in age to those girls and still remembered what it had been like to be full of romantic notions, eager to experience the thrills of first love, dream that my future would not be determined by what my family considered to be convenient, prestigious, or financially desirable. These young women knew what awaited them, they knew there would likely be no love—or even attraction—in the match eventually made for them, and that was their way of rebelling just a little before they submitted to their fate. I did not want to stand in their way.
But of course I could not say any of that to the queen. “Perhaps this requires someone with a different approach,” I said. “Someone older and more experienced.”
Bona waved her hand. “I think you are just fine.” She was never one to pick up on subtle cues. “The girls respect you, and I am confident that when we put this deplorable episode behind us, you will guide them with a firm hand and keep them from getting themselves in trouble. We will have them dress more modestly and behave with more decorum, and this sort of problem will never happen again.”
I folded my hands in my lap and pressed them together so hard my knuckles turned white. She still thought it was their fault. She was not going to do anything to protect them. She would order a few small and meaningless changes, and then all would be forgotten and things would return to the way they used to be.
“And if you are worried about how this will reflect on you,” the queen went on, “well, there are so many rumors by now that only a few people will ever know the truth. Many seem to think that Helena killed Zamborski and tried to kill Dantyszek because of their reformist sympathies—her father is a staunch Catholic known for his speeches against reformists in Baranów, where that movement has been on the rise. They also say that poor Don Mantovano had to have been secretly a Luther supporter and that she had found him out. It is preposterous, of course, but better that than if they believed Helena’s story about his supposed infidelity to his wife. It would have been most unseemly,” she concluded.
I kept staring at my hands. There was no hope of persuading her. Not only because of her stubborn nature, the difficulty she had in letting go of her beliefs once she had formed them, but also because it was clear that she did not care for the truth if it was inconvenient, and she certainly did not care about Helena.
I took a deep breath. “I will think on it, Your Majesty. I still have a long way to go before I am fully recovered, and I must prepare to testify at Helena’s trial.” The thought caused a painful constriction in the pit of my stomach.
“We will discuss it again after . . . it is all over,” she said more softly.
She rose and I followed her out of the chamber, wiping the tears that had finally spilled when her back was to me.
When I returned to my bed, I curled up on my good side and covered myself with the blanket up to my forehead. I had told the infirmarian that I did not wish to see anybody else that day. A black melancholy descended on me, and if I had felt stronger, I would have gone to my chamber, packed a few belongings, gone out the gate, and never looked back. I would make my way to Bari, throw myself on my mother’s mercy, and live out my life as a lady on some minor rural estate, supervising winemaking or olive harvests.
But I could not do that. I was too still too ill.
And there was Konarski.
Chapter 16
March 15th, 1520
I went to see Helena in her jail cell in the early morning. It was still dark outside; only the first red streaks of dawn could be seen on the eastern horizon on the other side of the river.
It was our first private meeting since the events of the night of the Epiphany. Helena was calm, almost serene, and although she was thinner than before, she did not look unwell or emaciated. Konarski had paid the guards to take care of her, and they must have. The rushes on the floor were much cleaner than the ones I had seen in Maciek’s cell, and there was even a small coal brazier in a corner that made the air tolerably warm.
A week earlier, I had
testified at her trial. She had been just as calm throughout those proceedings, refusing to speak a word or answer any questions beyond the short confession she had made to Chancellor Stempowski after her arrest. Dressed in a plain linen gown without a headdress, her auburn hair pulled tightly back from her face and covered by a simple white coif, she sat quietly between two guards. She did not look at anybody—not the judges, not me, nor any of the witnesses that had been called forward, including Jan Dantyszek. Neither did she acknowledge her father, who had come down from Lipiny. He was a pitiful sight, white-haired and gaunt, a broken man who was a shadow of the jovial baron of voracious appetites Konarski’s cousin had once described to us.
The trial started at nine o’clock before a packed chamber of the royal court, which was located on the ground floor of a somber two-story building next door to Baszta Sandomierska. But after the chief magistrate had read out the indictment, based mainly on what I had told the chancellor while still recovering in the infirmary, as well as the contents of Helena’s chest, the crowd began to thin out. The spectators realized that this would not be a case of a religiously-motivated crime in which they could take sides; nor would it offer a sordid tale of an affair ended in murder committed in a jealous rage that could be water for the gossip mill. It seemed the fact that Helena had not wanted the men’s advances took the excitement out of it.
By the time we returned from the midday break, only a few stalwarts had remained, including the Princess of Montefusco. Thus the queen had been right in her own way—the truth did not matter. I imagined how, for years to come, people would talk about those events in the way that suited them best and that created the most dramatic effect. A legend would grow around Helena that would have little to do with what had really happened. In that, I would be proven to be correct.
From the whispered conversations around me, I could sense that the predominant feeling toward Helena was one of hostility. Her refusal to speak in her own defense and her indifferent demeanor were taken to mean a lack of remorse, which in turn fueled talk of her evil nature, a rot that had penetrated her to her core. She had committed the murders out of a lust for blood, she had enjoyed them, she must be a witch . . . I had to dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from screaming as I sat on a bench awaiting my turn to testify.
I knew that what I would tell the judges might send Helena to the executioner’s block, and the thought of it had tormented me for weeks, preventing me from sleeping and taking away my appetite. When I finally stood before the six men in their black robes and chains of office, I was still so weak that I had to lean on the railing, and the chief magistrate had to send for a chair for me despite the rules to the contrary.
After I finished recounting the events of that fateful night, it was the turn of the lawyer assigned to Helena’s defense to present his case. He was a short thickset man with neatly combed graying hair poking from under his cap, and his large black robe made him look like a fat crow. I cannot remember his name, but I still remember his tired-looking face dominated by heavy bags under his eyes. To his look of tiredness was added that of boredom so that it was hard to imagine anyone less suited for the job than he was in that moment. He was not sitting near his client, nor did he consult with her during the proceedings, although, to be fair, she did not appear interested in his services either. I knew from Konarski that she had refused to meet with him.
He stood up from his table, on which he had been shuffling papers all throughout my testimony.
“The accused Helena Lipińska’s weak and feminine nature is what predisposed her to react irrationally to a difficult situation,” he stated by way of an opening.
The judges nodded sympathetically as I tried to guess where he was going with it. A “difficult situation” was an understatement for what had happened to Helena. That said, I was sure that the judges would see it as a mitigating circumstance if the lawyer made a convincing case. I barely dared to breathe as I waited for him to explain why it warranted leniency.
“On the night of the twenty-fifth of December, the Feast of the Birth of Our Savior, she finally became guilt-ridden due to the carnal act committed outside of the lawful bonds of matrimony and attacked Kasper Zamborski with his own dagger in a manner that resulted in his death.”
“But—” I began to protest before a strong pull of Konarski’s grasp on my wrist made me sit back down on the bench. The chief magistrate frowned at me, then motioned to the lawyer to continue.
“It was a crime committed in a moment of hysteria, and thus I ask the court to show mercy to the accused.”
I turned to Konarski, appalled. “How can he say such a thing? He has completely ignored what I have just told the judges,” I hissed, making a supreme effort to keep my voice low.
He shook his head and pointed with his chin at the door. I understood his meaning immediately: if I disturbed the proceedings, I would be escorted out. I could not let that happen, not until I was able to speak again.
The lawyer went on in that vein for a good deal longer, occasionally wiping sweat from his forehead with a kerchief, his torturous argument, if indeed it was an argument at all, leading nowhere.
When he rested his case, I rose, and this time Konarski did not try to stop me. By now I had brought my emotions under control and spoke calmly. “Your Honor, I wish to say one more thing if you will graciously permit me to speak.”
I was aware that there was a good chance the magistrate would refuse me. But whether on the strength of the role I had played in discovering Helena’s crimes or because I was close to the queen, he reluctantly allowed me to speak. “Go ahead, Contessa Sanseverino, but pray be brief. We haven’t got all day,” he added sourly.
“Thank you.” The few remaining spectators turned to me with curiosity, a sentiment that was notably absent from the judges’ faces. I took a deep breath. “I feel obliged to repeat what I had already made clear in my testimony, namely that the ‘carnal act’ that was just referred to was not one that Helena Lipińska had invited, encouraged, or to which she had willingly acquiesced.” I looked pointedly at the lawyer, who scowled back at me then resumed shuffling the papers, an action that did not seem to lead to any specific outcome. Underneath his robe his shoulders moved with a barely perceptible shrug.
“In the months that followed, she endured anger and shame that eventually pushed her to seek justice in the absence of any other recourse. Should you condone or license a murder committed under such duress? No. But you can show understanding and compassion, for hers was a crime born of another crime, and of fear and desperation, not of a wicked and wanton nature.
“I appeal to Your Excellencies to imagine what it would be like for you to learn that your wife”—I locked eyes with one of the judges—“or your daughter”—I turned my gaze to another—“or your sister”—I nodded toward the chief magistrate—“had fallen victim to a similarly foul deed?” I pointed at Helena with a final and desperate appeal. “Do not let this young woman who had been so cruelly mistreated be counted among the traitors, footpads, and other villains who have passed through the king’s prison on their way to the block or the scaffold!”
As I uttered those words, Helena’s father, finally overcome, let out a loud cry and fell forward from his bench. He was caught by two younger men seated on both sides of him—probably relatives, for Helena had no brothers—who guided him out of the chamber as he groaned and his legs kept buckling under him. That was the only time Helena betrayed any emotion. She squeezed her eyes shut, and the muscles of her throat worked to try to stifle a sob until her father was gone.
The magistrate cleared his throat and turned his red-rimmed watery eyes on me. “Are you finished, signora?”
“I am.”
“We shall now close these proceedings,” he announced. He did not look at Helena. In fact, few of them had paid much attention to her throughout the trial. “We shall retreat to our chamber to deliberate on the sentence for the accused.”
I remained in t
he nearly empty courtroom with Konarski, Lucrezia, Carmignano, and the princess until the judges came back an hour later and the verdict was pronounced.
Helena was found guilty of the murders of Kasper Zamborski and Ludovico Mantovano, and the kidnapping of Jan Dantyszek with the intent of killing him. As a member of the szlachta, a noblewoman, she was to be beheaded rather than hanged.
Lucrezia squeezed my hand, and I saw the blood drain from her face. From the chill that assailed me despite the warmth of the chamber, I knew that the same thing had happened to me. The princess rose without a word to any of us and swiftly walked out, no doubt to be the first to deliver the news to the queen.
On my other side, I heard Konarski’s voice. “You have done all you could to save her. You spoke very bravely in front of the judges.”
“I have done nothing.” I shook my head, staring as the guards led Helena out through a side door and back to the tower. “I have done nothing.”
Helena’s father was not there when the magistrate read out the sentence in his flat, indifferent tone, and that was a small blessing at least.
On the morning of March 15th, the scheduled day for the execution, I went to see her in the jail.
We stood in silence for a long while, Helena gazing at me steadily without any hint of anger, fear, or guilt. It was as if she were incapable of feeling anything, or perhaps she was simply reconciled to her fate. And just as in that moment when I found her in the cellar with Dantyszek, too many questions crowded in my head.
“I should have asked to see that letter from your father summoning you home,” I said finally. In the past few weeks, as I had blamed myself—and despite what Konarski had said in the court chamber—I had come to believe that at least some of this calamity could have been avoided if I had been more diligent in my duties. That March morning I felt the guilt sharply, and although time would blunt its edges, it is a sentiment that I have carried with me to this day.