The Daughter of Siena by Marina Fiorato Page B

and looked her in the face. But the words would not come. She looked at him, this handsome florid man, this lover of music and art, this man the people loved as the ‘good Medici’, saviour of an ailing dukedom, and knew that he was doomed by disease. He had failed his father and his inheritance, and she could not pity him.
    He moved to the head of the bed, sat gently beside her.
    ‘They were baptized. My brother did all, for I could not.’ His voice broke. ‘They were named Cosimo and Gastone de’ Medici.’
    He held her hand for the first time since they had been hand-fasted in marriage, in the very duomo she could see from the casement. Only then did she begin to cry.
    In the days that followed she was to learn that tears were infinite. She had thought that if she cried for days, weeks, months, eventually the well would run dry and she would begin
to heal. But no. Her tears, once they began to flow, seemed an unstoppable stream; a great wave, which, undammed, swelled to an amplitude fit to drown her.
     
     
    Violante always woke at the point in the dream when Ferdinando touched her hand. It was the last time he had touched her. Ferdinando, now gone too, had died lame, blind and raving from the syphilis. He was buried next to his sons. She envied him, wished she too was in that cold mausoleum in Florence, knew that if her remains mingled with her sons’ little bones, she could warm them again.
    So many ghosts. She wished they would leave her be.
    Always she woke with tears running into her ears, her heart pounding, and her breasts – even though she was nearly fifty – still aching, the nipples still pinching with the milk reflex. She had had the same dream, year in, year out, for nearly twenty years. She sat up in her bed, wiping her eyes, blinking in the pre-dawn gloom. She breathed in and out, heavily, then lit an oil lamp to chase away the dream and the memories too.
    At first, she had thought the killing grief would drive her mad. She had not known that the pain she had felt, as an unloved child and an unloved wife, could be more acute, that her loneliness could be any keener. With bitter irony, Gretchen, her own wet-nurse, whom she had called from her father’s court in Bavaria to tend to the babies, arrived in Florence the day after the boys died.
Gretchen never left, for one look at her little mistress told her that the duchess needed her now more than ever. But in truth, Violante had never felt so alone. After she had failed in her duty, her father-in-law Cosimo never spoke to her nor looked at her again. Her sister-in-law Anna Maria Luisa could barely conceal her joy. Her babes had been taken away; she could not have borne it if Violante’s sons had lived.
    The only kindness in her life came from an unexpected quarter. Gian Gastone de’ Medici, Ferdinando’s younger brother, offered her a sympathy that seemed little to do with the fact that he was now the heir presumptive of the dukedom. Gian Gastone detested his own sister Anna Maria Luisa, and had shown her no sympathy or solicitude through her multiple miscarriages, also caused by the syphilis of a faithless husband, the Elector Palatine. But, for his sister-in-law Violante, nothing was too much. Gian Gastone took upon himself the baptism and funeral arrangements – so close, more cruelly close than nature intended. Such events, normally separated by a lifetime, were held apart by the span of a few mere hours. Not only did Gian Gastone visit Violante in person – though the slim, handsome libertine had much better claims on his time – he also sent remedies to her room: sweetmeats, tonics, iced fruit, and made sure that she had the care of his personal physicians. She had never forgotten Gian Gastone’s kindness.
    Violante also remembered one of those doctors telling her that she could wait a twelvemonth and try again for another child. She laughed in his face. It had been trouble
enough to bring Ferdinando to bed with her once – that