The Devil’s Queen. Jeanne Kalogridis

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       Seven

      On one of Florence’s most oppressively narrow streets lies the Dominican convent known as Santa-Caterina da Siena. The convent’s denizens fiercely opposed the Medici and supported the rebels, no doubt because it catered to the poor. Its six boarders—girls of marriageable age or younger, from families who had discovered that it was cheaper to keep them at the convent—were born of the lowest class of workers: the dyers, weavers, and carders of wool and silk, men whose occupations stained their hands, twisted their bodies, scarred their lungs. These were men who fell sick and died young, leaving behind daughters who could not be fed. These were men who had torn down our Medici banners and ignited them out of hatred for the rich and well-fed.

      Santa-Caterina stank because its ancient plumbing and sewers were in disrepair. Nuns were always on their knees scrubbing floors and walls, but no amount of cleaning overcame the smell. The inhabitants were all thin and hungry. There were no Latin lessons here, no efforts made to teach the girls letters or numbers, only work to be done. The abbess, Sister Violetta, had no energy to like or dislike me; she was too busy trying to keep her charges alive to worry about politics. She knew only that the rebels paid for my care on time.

      I shared a cell—and a dirty straw mattress alive with fleas and a family of mice—with four other boarders, all of them older than I. One of them hated me bitterly, as her brother had been killed in a clash with Medici supporters. Two of them did not much care. And then there was twelve-year-old Tommasa.

      Tommasa’s father was a silk merchant whose mounting debts had prompted him to flee the city, leaving his wife and children to deal with his creditors. Tommasa’s mother was sickly; Tommasa, too, was frail and suffered from frightening bouts of wheezing and breathlessness, especially when she overexerted herself. She had the long, thin bones and delicate coloring of a Northerner: pale hair, white skin, eyes blue as sky. Yet she worked as hard as the others without complaint, and her lips were always curved in the gentlest of smiles.

      She treated me as a friend, even though her brothers were passionate advocates of the rebel cause, so much so that Tommasa never mentioned me to them.

      Tommasa was my sole link to the world beyond Santa-Caterina’s walls. Her mother visited weekly and always brought news. I learned how the Medici palazzo had been pillaged, how its remaining treasures had been seized by the new government. All the banners bearing the Medici crest had been torn down, and all sculptures and buildings bearing the same had been crudely edited with chisels.

      I asked about Aunt Clarice, of course, and tried not to cry when Tommasa told me she was still alive, though no one knew where she had gone. Ippolito’s and Alessandro’s whereabouts were also a mystery.

      When I commented on Tommasa’s kindness to me, she was taken aback.

      “Why should I treat you otherwise?” she asked. “They say your family has oppressed the people, but you are kind to me and the others. I can’t punish you for something others have done.”

      I loved her for the same reason I had loved Piero, because she was too good to glimpse the blackness hidden in my heart.

      I spent a dismal summer fearing execution and hoping for news. Neither came, and by the time autumn arrived, I dwelled in a haze of hunger and grief. I lost will and weight and stopped asking questions of Tommasa as she relayed the latest gossip.

      Winter came and brought an icy chill. Our room had no hearth and was freezing; I never stopped shivering. The water froze in the tiny basin we five shared, but we were too cold to bathe anyway. The fleas guaranteed that, if I slept at all, it was poorly. The cold never eased but grew more bitter.

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