The Devil’s Queen. Jeanne Kalogridis

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СКАЧАТЬ I dashed out to the courtyard. The astrologer’s son was there, moving swiftly for the gardens.

      I cried out, “Ser Cosimo! Wait!”

      He stopped and faced me. His expression was knowing and amused, as if he had completely expected to find a breathless eight-year-old girl tearing after him.

      “Caterina,” he said, with odd familiarity.

      “You can’t leave,” I said. “There are men outside calling for our deaths. Even if you got out safely, you would never be able to come back again.”

      He bent forward and faced me at my level. “But I will get out safely,” he said. “And I will come back again tomorrow. When I do, you must find me alone in the courtyard or the garden. There are things we must discuss, unhappy secrets. But not today. The hour is not propitious.”

      As he spoke, his eyes hardened, as if he was watching a distant but approaching evil. He straightened and said, “But nothing bad will happen. I will see to it. We will speak again tomorrow. God keep you, Caterina.”

      He turned and strode off.

      I hurried after him, but he walked faster than I could run. In seconds he was at the entrance to the stables, in view of the large gate leading to the Via Larga. I hung back, afraid.

      The palazzo was a fortress of thick stone; its main entry was an impenetrable brass door positioned in the building’s center. To the west lay the gardens and the stables, viewable from the street behind a north-facing iron gate that began where the citadel proper ended.

      Just inside that gate were seven armed guards, warily eyeing the crowd on the other side of the thick iron bars. When I had last peered through the upstairs window, only six men had lingered by the western gate. Now more than two dozen peasants and merchants stood staring back at the guards.

      A groom handed Ser Cosimo the reins to a glossy black mare. At the sight of the astrologer, a few in the mob hissed. One hurled a stone, which banked off an iron bar and struck the earth several paces from its target.

      Ser Cosimo calmly led his mount to the gate. The mare stamped her feet and turned her face from the waiting men as one of them cried out: “Abaso le palle! Down with the balls!”

      “What,” called another, “did they bring you here to suck the cardinal’s cock?”

      “And his Medici-loving balls! Abaso le palle!“

      The commotion alerted others who had been standing watch across the street, who hurried to join those at the gate. The chant grew louder.

       “Abaso le palle.

       Abaso le palle.”

      Men shook their fists in the air and pushed their hands between the bars to claw at those on the other side. The mare whinnied and showed them the whites of her eyes.

      Ser Cosimo’s composure never wavered. Serene and unflinching, he walked toward the metal bars amid a hail of pebbles. He was not struck, but our guards were not as fortunate; they yelped curses as they tried to shield their faces. One hurried to the bolt and slid the heavy iron bar back while the others drew their swords and formed a shoulder-to-shoulder barricade in front of Ser Cosimo.

      The guard at the bolt glanced over his shoulder at the departing guest. “You’re mad, sir,” he said. “They’ll tear you to pieces.”

      I broke out from my hiding place and ran to Ser Cosimo.

      “Don’t hurt him!” I shouted at the crowd. “He’s not one of us!”

      Ser Cosimo dropped the reins of his nervous mount and knelt down to catch my shoulders.

      “Go inside, Catherine,” he said. Catherine, my name in a foreign tongue. “I know what I am doing. I will be safe.”

      As he finished speaking, a pebble grazed my shoulder. I flinched; Ser Cosimo saw it strike. And his eyes—

      The look of the Devil, I was going to say, but perhaps it is better called the look of God. For the Devil can trick and test, but God alone metes out death, and only He can will a man to suffer for eternity.

      That was that look I saw in Cosimo’s eye. He was capable, I decided, of undying spite, of murder without the slightest regret. Yet it was not that look that unsettled me. It was the fact that I recognized it and was still drawn to him; it was the fact that I knew it and did not want to look away.

      He whirled on the crowd with that infinitely evil look. At once, the rain of stones ceased. When every man had grown silent, he called out, strong and clear:

      “I am Cosimo Ruggieri, the astrologer’s son. Strike her again, if you dare.”

      Nothing more was said. Darkly radiant, Ser Cosimo mounted his horse, and the guard pushed open the singing gate. The magician rode out, and the crowd parted for him.

      The gate swung shut with a clang, and the guard slid the bolt into place. It was as though a signal had been given: The crowd came alive and again hurled pebbles and curses at the guards.

      But the astrologer’s son passed unharmed, his head high, his shoulders square and sure. While the rest of the world fixed its unruly attention on the palazzo gates, he rode away, and soon disappeared from my sight.

       Two

      My memories of Florence are blurred by terror, affection, distance, and time, but some impressions from that long-ago past remain sharp. The peals of church bells, for one: I woke and ate and prayed to the songs of the cathedral of San Lorenzo, which holds my ancestors’ bones; of Santa Maria del Fiore, with its vast impossible dome; of San Marco, where the mad monk Savonarola once dwelled. I can still hear the low “mooing” of the bell called the Cow, which hung in the great Palazzo della Signoria, seat of Florence’s government.

      I remember, too, the rooms of my childhood, especially the family chapel. On the walls above the wooden choir stalls, my ancestors rode on grandly caparisoned horses in Gozzoli’s masterpiece, The Procession of the Magi. The mural spanned three walls. The eastern one captured my imagination, for it was the wall of the Magus Gaspar, he who led the way after Bethlehem’s star. My forefathers rode just behind him, in dazzling shades of crimson, blue, and gold.

      The mural had been commissioned in Piero the Gouty’s time. He rode just behind Gaspar; my great-great-grandfather was a serious, tight-lipped man in his fifth decade, riding immediately in front of his own father, the aged but still wily Cosimo. His son Lorenzo il Magnifico followed them both. He was only eleven then, a homely boy with a jutting lower lip and wildly crooked nose. Yet there was something beautiful in his upward-slanting eyes, in their clear, focused intelligence that made me yearn to touch his cheek. But he had been painted high upon the wall, beyond my reach. Many times I had climbed onto a choir stall when the chapel was empty, but I could touch only the fresco’s lower edge. I had often been told that I possessed Lorenzo’s quick wit, and felt a kinship with him. His father had died when he was young, leaving him a city to rule; not long after, his adored brother was assassinated, leaving him truly alone.

      But Lorenzo was wise. His child’s gaze was sober and СКАЧАТЬ