The Devil’s Queen. Jeanne Kalogridis

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       Eleven

      As she closed the wooden gate on Ser Silvestro, Sister Violetta received me as she had before, finger to lips. Her lantern revealed the toll the past three years had taken; she was even gaunter now. She turned and led me upstairs to my old cell. A young woman with pale golden hair sat on the straw mattress; when the glow of the lantern found her, she lifted a thin arm and squinted at the light. Like Violetta’s, her face bore the pinched look of the hungry, but hers was growing into womanly beauty.

      “Tommasa?” I asked.

      She let go a gasp of recognition and embraced me as Sister Violetta again signaled for silence, then turned and disappeared down the corridor.

      Tommasa broke the silence as soon as Violetta’s footsteps faded. “Caterina!” she hissed. “Why did they bring you back? Where have you been?”

      I took in the filthy straw mattress, the stink of the sewer, and slowly sat down on the edge of the bed. Back at Le Murate, Sister Niccoletta was surely weeping, and I wanted to weep, too. I shook my head, too heavyhearted to speak.

      Tommasa was too lonely to be silent. Most of the sisters and all of the boarders had succumbed to plague, she told me, and because of the siege, the convent’s larders were almost bare.

      I lay awake all that night on the hard, lumpy straw, listening to Tommasa’s soft snores. All the while, I thought of Sister Niccoletta and Mother Giustina, and the life I had lost at Le Murate.

      When morning came, I learned the new terms of my imprisonment: I was not to do chores, nor eat in the refectory, nor attend chapel. I was to remain day and night in my cell.

      A miserable fortnight passed. There were no books at Santa-Caterina, and my requests for mending to pass the time were ignored. I lost weight on watery gruel. My only distraction was Tommasa, who returned in the evenings.

      One hot August morning, the cannon started booming again, so loudly the floor vibrated beneath my feet. Sister Violetta, hollow-eyed with fear, appeared in the corridor outside to confer with my guardian nun. After several concerned glances in my direction, Violetta stepped forward and shut the door to my cell. Had there been a bolt or lock, she would have used it. From that point on, the door remained closed. Tommasa did not return, and I spent the night alone on scratchy, sour-smelling straw, vacillating between hope and terror.

      The next morning, I woke again to the thunder of cannon; the merciless assault against Florence’s walls had begun. My guardian sister failed to bring food. When night fell, the fighting and the cannon ceased.

      On the second day, there were only the cannon, closer than ever; on third morning, I woke to silence. I got out of bed and knocked on the door. No one responded; as I caught the handle of the door, a bell began to toll.

      It was not a church bell marking the hour or summoning the faithful to prayer. It was the low, sad chime of the Cow—the bell in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, the Palace of Lords, the bell that called all citizens to the town’s central square.

      Overwhelmed by joy, I threw open the door to glimpse my captor disappearing swiftly down the hallway. I followed. We came upon other sisters, all rushing to the patio beside the convent wall. From there they ascended a steep staircase built into the side of the convent. I elbowed my way up the stairs to the slanting roof, dizzyingly free and open to the sky and the city; I spread my bare arms to the breeze. Florence sprawled out around me, her walls surrounded by rolling hills, once green but now dark earth, raw from the tread of enemy boots and the wheels of artillery.

      On roofs throughout the city, people were gathering. Some were pointing to the south, beyond the river, at Florence’s walls and their most ancient gate, the Porta Romana. There, just inside the city walls, huge white flags billowed as they slowly neared the gate. Soon they would pass outside, to the waiting enemy.

      Down below, people swarmed into the streets; beside me, the nuns sobbed openly. Their hearts were broken, but mine was sailing on the wind with the flags.

      Overcome, Sister Violetta sank onto her knees and stared out at the swelling white harbingers of defeat.

      “Sister Violetta,” I said.

      She stared at me, her gaze blank. Her mouth worked for an instant before she was able to say, “Remember us kindly, Caterina.”

      “I will,” I answered, “provided you tell me how to get to Santissima Annunziata delle Murate.”

      She frowned and finally saw my tousled braid and dingy, sleeveless nightgown, its hem lifted by the wind, the outlines of the black silk pouch visible beneath the fraying linen at my breasts.

      “You can’t go out onto the streets,” she said. “You’re not even dressed. There will be soldiers. It isn’t safe.”

      I laughed, an unfamiliar sound. I was bold, unstoppable. Mars had just surrendered its hold on me, and now lucky Jupiter was ascendant. “I’m going, with or without your help.”

      She told me. South and east, down the Via Guelfa, past the Duomo, to the Via Ghibellina.

      I hurried down the stairs, ran across the patio, slid the bolt on the thick convent door, and stepped out into the Via San Gallo.

      It was early but hot, the cobblestones beneath my bare feet already warm. The street was alive with noise: the low-pitched toll of the Cow, the clatter of hooves, СКАЧАТЬ