Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Read Online Free

prepared the two big meals served each day, the first at midday and another in early evening. In the courtyard I observed the comings and goings of high-ranking visitors to Cardinal Passerini, although why anyone would want to spend time with him I could not imagine. In the garden I enjoyed the birds and flowers and the small creatures that made their home there. But the place I came to know and to love most dearly was the Chapel of the Magi.
    The small, windowless chamber was lighted only by flickering candles. On each wall a painting on plaster showed a part of the procession led by the magi, wise men from the East, on their way to Bethlehem to worship the infant Jesus.
    The men wore fine garments richly embroidered and bejeweled. Their horses pranced through green wooded hills, and birds soared across an azure sky. Horses, dogs, deer, cattle, sheep, even camels and a cheetah, crowded the frescoes that covered three walls of the chapel. Candlelight reflected on the gilded crowns and the silver tips of lances.
    The artist had portrayed everyone in the procession, even the three wise men, as citizens of Florence, many of them prominent members of the Medici family. Aunt Clarissa identified some of them. A handsome boy with blond curls and blue eyes, dressed in white brocade, rode a high-stepping white charger. Aunt Clarissa insisted that the boy, representing the youngest of the wise men, was supposedly
Il Magnifico.
    â€œHe looks nothing like the portraits I remember from my childhood,” she mused. “But that’s who everyone says he is.”
    The procession followed that golden-haired boy whoever he was. How I would have liked to have
him
as my friend!
    The Chapel of the Magi became for me a secret treasure—a chamber where I could lose myself in the fantastical scenes and imagine myself as a part of them.
    Princes, churchmen, shepherds, citizens, slaves—but nowhere in the entire procession could I find a single grown woman, or a young maiden, or a little girl like me. Maybe they had all been left behind in the large white castle at the top of the hill in the distance, watching the procession from one of the narrow windows. And so I gave myself a place in the midst of the procession—nothing too large or prominent, just a small figure off to one side, riding behind the golden-haired boy. I half closed my eyes and dreamed that I was there, dressed in silks and velvet and pearls, mounted on a fine white horse—Caterina de’ Medici,
la duchessina,
on her way to worship the Christ child!
    One day as I was lost in my fantastic dream, the door of the chapel flew open, and a short, wiry man with a crown of wild, uncombed hair loomed in the doorway. I shrank myself as small as I could in one of the carved wooden choir seats, hoping to escape notice. But the chapel was not large, and he quickly spotted me.
    â€œHa! I’ve caught a little mouse!” he boomed in a voice that seemed too big for his small size. “Come here, little mouse.”
    Frightened, I sat perfectly still, as though made of stone.
    â€œWell, then,” he said, “at least tell me: What do you think of all of this?” He waved his arms at the frescoes.
    â€œI very much admire them,” I admitted cautiously.
    â€œOh, you admire them, do you? And what would you say, little mouse, if I told you the whole lot isn’t worth a fig? Pretty pictures, that’s all they amount to. Scarcely even art, let alone
great
art.”
    â€œI’d say that you are wrong, because I’m quite fond of them,” I said. Still a little frightened, I went a bold step further: “And I would like to be a part of them.”
    The strange man examined me more closely, and I in turned examined
him
—his bushy, untrimmed beard; eyes that burned with intensity; a misshapen nose; a high forehead furrowed with lines like a plowed field; an unsmiling mouth. “Tell me, little mouse, do you have a