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

with Alessandro to spend time at one of his hunting lodges. Ippolito, who was suffering from a catarrh and didn’t feel well enough to accompany them, stayed behind. After he had mostly recovered and his cough was improved, Ippolito surprised me in the palace garden. I was sitting in a pergola and practicing on the lute. I had a good ear for music and had learned to play well enough to accompany myself while I sang.
    â€œI thought I heard an angel,” he said. “And indeed I did!”
    I smiled. Much nicer to be called “angel” than “frog”! Or even “mouse.”
    He begged me to continue playing while he sat quietly nearby, nodding his approval. Lilac and lavender bloomed all around us, perfuming the air. Sometimes Ippolito sang with the tunes he knew, despite a hoarse voice. This scene was repeated over several days, to my great pleasure.
    Then Alessandro and the cardinal returned from their hunting trip, both of them bragging about the number of deer they had managed to kill, and the idyll ended.
    But I did not forget it.

    O NE LONELY DAY followed on the heels of the next. A year passed with little to disturb my routine. As a young child I didn’t understand the political strife that set the rulers of Europe at each other’s throats, but I soon grasped that conflicts among kings and emperors and popes could drastically affect my life. Fra Matteo explained it.
    In the year that I was born, Charles V, the king of Spain, had been elected Holy Roman Emperor, a title that gave him power over much of Europe. Emperor Charles and King François of France hated each other and waged war against each other until, in one final battle, Charles took François prisoner, finally agreeing to release him in exchange for the French king’s two sons. For four years he kept the two little boys as hostages in a Spanish prison. Pope Clement had been an ally of King François. But now, with François soundly defeated, Emperor Charles held the fate of the pope, the city of Florence, and all of the Medici clenched in his powerful fist.
    During the spring of 1527, as I was about to turn eight years old, disturbing rumors began to drift into Florence. Fra Matteo told me that Charles had ordered twenty thousand soldiers to march south to Rome. Each time we heard a new rumor, I quietly visited the cardinal’s library and studied the maps my tutor had taught me how to read.
    â€œThe emperor intends to show Pope Clement who’s in charge,” Fra Matteo speculated when these rumors turned out to be true. “He’s determined to teach the pope a lesson.”
    The rumors became much more frightening. The emperor’s soldiers were storming through Rome, murdering, raping, and pillaging as they went. No one wanted to believe the awful stories. There was no word from Pope Clement.
    When Aunt Clarissa and Filippo heard the tales brought by traders from as far away as Naples and picked up by the Strozzis’ servants in the market, my aunt rushed to our palazzo, accompanied by her Ethiopian slave, Minna. I was supposed to be at my lessons, but even my tutor, whose family was from Rome, found it hard to think of anything but what was happening there and what might happen next in Florence.
    â€œWhat a catastrophe!” Clarissa cried, slumping onto a bench, her fingers buried in her hair. “I will not try to deceive you, Caterina,” she told me. “I’m very uneasy about the future. Trouble will surely come to this city as well. Filippo’s banker friends say that feeling against the Medici is mounting steadily here, as it has in the past. We must prepare ourselves.”
    â€œFor what?” I asked tearfully as my dull but safe little world shook and seemed about to crumble. “What can we do?”
    â€œDon’t worry,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I’ll think of something.”
    And since I had no one else, I had to trust that she