The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici by Jeanne Kalogridis

I.”
    “I would like to go to the chapel,” I said.
     
    Clarice entered the chapel slowly, reverently, and I reluctantly followed suit, genuflecting and crossing myself when she did, then settling beside her on the pew.
    Clarice closed her eyes, but I could still see her mind struggling with some fresh challenge. I left her to it while I wriggled, straining my neck to get a better view of the mural.
    Clarice sighed and opened her eyes again. “Didn’t you come to pray, child?”
    I expected irritation but heard only curiosity, so I answered honestly. “No. I wanted to see Lorenzo again.”
    Her face softened. “Then go and see him.”
    I went over to the wooden choir stall just beneath the painting of the crowd following the youthful magus Gaspar and tilted my head back.
    “Do you know them all, then?” Clarice asked behind me, her tone low and faintly sad.
    I pointed to the first horse behind Gaspar’s. “Here is Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo’s father,” I said. “And beside him,
his
father, Cosimo the Old.” They had been shrewdest, most powerful men Florence had known, until Lorenzo
il Magnifico
supplanted them both.
    Clarice stepped forward to gesture at a small face near Lorenzo’s, almost lost in the crowd. “And here is Giuliano, his brother. He was murdered in the cathedral, you know. They tried to murder Lorenzo, too. He was woundedand bleeding, but he wouldn’t leave his brother. His friends dragged him away as he shouted Giuliano’s name. No one was more loyal to those he loved.
    “There are those who aren’t there beside him but should have been,” she continued. “Ghosts, of whom you have not heard enough. My mother should be there—your grandmother Alfonsina. She married Lorenzo’s eldest son, an idiot who promptly alienated the people and was banished. But she had a son—your father—and educated him in the subject of politics, so that when we Medici returned to Florence, he ruled it well enough. When your father went away to war, Alfonsina governed quite capably. And now . . . we have lost the city again.” She sighed. “No matter how brightly we shine, we Medici women are doomed to be eclipsed by our men.”
    “I won’t let it happen to me,” I said.
    She turned her head sharply to look down at me. “Won’t you?” she asked slowly. In her eyes I saw an idea being birthed, one that caused the recent worry there to vanish.
    “I can be strong,” I said, “like Lorenzo. Please, I would like to touch him. Just once, before we go.”
    She was not a large woman, but I was not a large child. She lifted me with effort, trying to spare her injured wrist, just high enough so that I could touch Lorenzo’s cheek. Silly child, I had expected the contours and warmth of flesh, and was surprised to find the surface beneath my fingertips flat and cold.
    “He was no fool,” she said, when she had lowered me. “He knew when to love, and when to hate.
    “When his brother was murdered—when he saw the House of Medici was in danger—he struck out.” She looked pointedly at me.
    “Do you understand that it is possible to be good yet destroy one’s enemies, Caterina? That sometimes, to protect one’s own blood, it is necessary to let the blood of others?”
    I shook my head, shocked.
    “If a man came to our door,” Clarice persisted, “and wanted to murder me, to murder Piero and you, could you do what was necessary to stop him?”
    I looked away for an instant, summoning the scene in my imagination. “Yes,” I answered. “I could.”
    “You are like me,” Clarice said approvingly, “and Lorenzo: sensitive, yet able to do what needs to be done. The House of Medici must survive, and you, Caterina, are its only hope.”
    She smiled darkly at me and, with her bandaged hand, reached into the folds of her skirt to draw out something slender and shining and very, very sharp.
     
    We returned to Clarice’s quarters, where Paola waited, and spent the next hour twisting silk scarves