Duchessina - A Novel of Catherine de' Medici Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Medici Family Tree

  Beginnings

  Palazzo Medici

  Flight

  Santa Lucia

  Le Murate

  The Scriptorium

  Siege

  Escape

  The Road to Rome

  Ippolito

  Alessandro

  Preparing for Marriage

  The Wedding

  Marriage

  Wife and Mistress

  Henri

  Historical Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2007 by Carolyn Meyer

  All rights reserved. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harcourt Children’s Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, 2007.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Meyer, Carolyn, 1935–

  Duchessina: a novel of Catherine de’ Medici/Carolyn Meyer,

  p. cm.

  Summary: While her tyrannical family is out of favor in Italy, young Catherine de’ Medici is raised in convents, then in 1533, when she is fourteen, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arranges for her marriage to Prince Henri of France, who is destined to become king.

  I. Catherine de Médicis, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of France, 1519–1589—Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. 2. Italy—History—16th century—Juvenile fiction. [I. Catherine de Médicis, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of France, 1519–1589—Childhood and youth—Fiction. 2. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. 3. Convents—Fiction. 4. Orphans—Fiction. 5. Clement VII, Pope, 1478–1534—Fiction. 6. Italy-History—16th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M5685DUC 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006028876

  ISBN 978-0-15-205588-2 hardcover

  ISBN 978-0-15-206620-8 paperback

  eISBN 978-0-547-53903-4

  v1.0216

  Duchessina is a work of fiction based on historical figures and events. Some details have been altered to enhance the story.

  For Ramona,

  and in memory of George

  1

  Beginnings

  “YOU ARE A MEDICI,” Aunt Clarissa used to tell me. “And you are destined for greatness. Never forget that.”

  And I have not forgotten, even though my very existence has been threatened—not once or twice, but many times. Before I was a month old, both my mother and my father were dead. Yet I have survived and endured. Not everyone is pleased about that. At my christening I was named Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de’ Medici. When I was a child, those who loved me called me Duchessina—Little Duchess. Now my enemies have begun to call me Madame Serpent. No doubt they have their reasons.

  This, then, is my story—and how my destiny was fulfilled.

  THE ENORMOUS Palazzo Medici—a ground floor and two upper floors—was an entire world, entered from the street through a grand arched portal and a foyer leading to a large inner courtyard. Marble statues stood silent guard among splashing fountains. I spent the days of my early childhood with my nurse, Elisabetta—I called her Betta—in a suite of rooms overlooking the courtyard. Sometimes I watched from my window as important visitors arrived, handed their horses over to the grooms, and climbed the broad stone stairway to the piano nobile, the main floor of the palace where Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici received them in his vast apartment.

  From Betta I learned part of my story:

  “You came into this world at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, the thirteenth of April in 1519. Three days later your aunt Clarissa and I carried you to the Medici family church of San Lorenzo for your baptism. Our hearts were bursting with grief as well as hope, for your mother had fallen victim to childbed fever and your father had been ill for some time. Less than two weeks later your mother’s bright soul left her suffering body. In another six days your father’s soul went to join hers.”

  I wept when my nurse reached this point in my story. How unfair it seemed that death had snatched my parents from me before I had a chance to know them! I cried for them, but mostly I cried for my orphaned self.

  As I grew, I became curious about other parts of the palace. When I thought I could escape Betta’s watchful eye, I began to explore. Betta had a habit of falling asleep over her needlework every afternoon following our midday dinner. I was supposed to be resting, too, but as soon as Betta nodded off, I crept down the narrow stairway from my apartment to the main courtyard. Beyond that I found a second, more interesting courtyard, where servants hurried back and forth and the business of the palace was conducted. Through a small door leading to a dark and scary passageway I could get to the splendid gardens, alive with bright flowers and trees and birds and sparkling fountains.

  During these explorations, I made a surprising discovery: Two boys, much older than I, shared a large apartment on the top floor with their servants and tutors. I hid from the boys, slipping behind the thick columns or squatting in one of the shadowed doorways, and listened to their conversations. The older boy, who I learned was called Ippolito, was handsome, polite to the servants, and good-natured, always ready to laugh. The younger boy, Alessandro, appeared to be just the opposite: He had a cruel mouth, frizzy reddish hair, and a dark scowl. He spoke rudely to the servants, mocked his tutors, and haughtily argued with Ippolito. I disliked this Alessandro and wanted Ippolito for a friend, without ever having spoken a word to either of them or even knowing exactly who they were. I thought the boys were my secret, and I didn’t mention them to Aunt Clarissa or Betta.

  One day when I was not quite four, I crouched quietly in the main courtyard. No one paid me much attention. I was intently observing a small lizard as it skittered across the smooth paving stones when the two boys thundered noisily down the stairs from their apartment. Alessandro spotted the little lizard at once and lunged at it. I had tried a few times to catch it, or one like it, but it was always too quick for me. I had decided it was better simply to watch it. Now Alessandro had it in his ugly paws, and in an instant he had pinched off its tail.

  Ippolito, my friend who didn’t yet know that he was my friend, protested. “Don’t be cruel,” he told Alessandro sharply, but Alessandro merely laughed at him.

  “It’ll grow a new one,” Alessandro said, heartlessly poking his victim.

  Could it really grow a new tail? I wondered. I didn’t know, but I felt deep sympathy for the poor lizard. Unable to keep still any longer, I popped up out of my hiding place. “And what if it does not?” I demanded, glowering at Alessandro.

  He jumped back, startled. “Well, well!” he cried. “What’s this?”

  “It’s la duchessina!” said Ippolito, smiling at me. I couldn’t resist smiling back.

  “Such tenderness you show for small creatures,” Alessandro said with a smirk, dropping the tailless lizard. It tried to scurry away, but Alessandro put a speedy halt to that. He stomped on it, ending its short life and leaving a bloody mess on the stones.

  “You killed it!” I cried, horrified. “How could you do that?”

  Alessandro glanced at me with heavy eyelids lowered disdainfully, looking somewhat like a lizard himself. “Perhaps you’d like to offer a prayer for the deceased? Or maybe we can ask His Eminence the cardinal to say a mass for it.�
��

  I burst into tears and ran away, the sound of Alessandro’s harsh laughter grating in my ears.

  Ippolito ran after me. “Duchessina, wait!” he called. Obediently I stopped and allowed him to take my hand. “May I call you that? We should get to know one another. We’re cousins, you know. Like you, we are under the direction of our uncle, Cardinal Giulio. His good friend, Cardinal Passerini, is our principal tutor. I’m sorry you witnessed such cruelty. I make no apologies for Alessandro—that’s simply the way he is, and I’ve made up my mind that I must tolerate it, since we’re always together. Can we be friends, then, you and I?”

  I gazed up at the handsome boy who offered me friendship. He bent down and kissed the hand he still held. “Friends?” he asked again, arching one dark eyebrow.

  “Friends,” I agreed. But I was still troubled by what I had just witnessed. “Is that nasty boy your brother?” I asked, thinking they did not resemble each other in any way.

  “No, no—Alessandro is a cousin, also. We live in a world of uncles and cousins, and no one is exactly who he says he is.”

  I wanted Ippolito to stay and tell me more about who he was and where he’d come from and who the dreadful Alessandro was and where he fit into this puzzle. But Ippolito simply smiled again and strode off in search of his despicable companion.

  THOUGH I LIVED at Palazzo Medici under the guardianship of Cardinal Giulio, it was the frequent visits from Aunt Clarissa, my father’s sister, that I looked forward to. When she thought I was old enough to understand, she told me more about who I was.

  “You are descended from an ancient family,” Clarissa said proudly. “The Medici is a family of great prestige and enormous wealth. They amassed a fortune through trade, in spices from the East and cloth from Europe, and an even greater fortune in banking. There is no greater family in Florence or in all of Tuscany—indeed, in the whole of the Italian peninsula.”

  She told me about my great-grandfather, the first Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as Il Magnifico—the Magnificent. He had reigned like a prince over the city of Florence. The Medici coat of arms appeared everywhere. One of Il Magnifico’s sons became Pope Leo. “He was the first pope from Florence,” Clarissa said. “The city went mad with joy when he was chosen.”

  But the Medici also attracted jealousy and hatred. The people had once enjoyed Il Magnifico’s rule, but the mood changed. They wanted to rule themselves. Even during my great-grandfather’s lifetime there had been attempts to drive the Medici from power. “As the daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, you are the last of the Medici line descended from Il Magnifico. You need to understand all this, dear Caterina, for your own good. Life may not always be easy for you.”

  She told me that from the beginning it had not been easy for me. Within a few months of my birth, I had contracted a terrible fever.

  “You hung suspended between life and death,” my aunt remembered. “We prayed over you night and day, and thanks be to God, you survived. I wanted to take you into my home and bring you up as my own dear child, but your uncle, Pope Leo, ordered you brought to Rome. I dared to argue with him: What did he know about raising a girl? But he would not relent. I begged to be allowed to accompany you. This time, Pope Leo agreed, and off we went to Rome with Betta and a large retinue.”

  “And our uncle? How did His Holiness receive me?” I asked eagerly. Her answer always heartened me.

  “The Holy Father unwrapped your fine linen swaddling, looked you over from the top of your curly head down to your sturdy little feet, and pronounced you fine and fat. Then he sent me back to Florence, saying he had no further need of me. You would stay in Rome, in the care of his sister, Lucrezia Salviati. I could hardly bear to leave you.”

  I had no memory of any of it, except that I did seem to recall a fat, jowly man with sparkling gems on his fingers. While I was still an infant, Pope Leo gave me my father’s title, creating me Duchess of Urbino. That was when everyone—everyone but Aunt Clarissa—began to call me Duchessina. To my aunt I always remained Caterina.

  I had been in Rome for two years when Leo suddenly sickened and died, a victim of Roman fever, caused by the bad air of the swamps surrounding the city. When Leo had first become pope, he’d brought his cousin, Giulio, to Rome as his chief assistant and made him a cardinal. After Leo’s death, Cardinal Giulio decided to return to Florence and to take me with him to live at Palazzo Medici. Although he was only a distant cousin of Pope Leo, Giulio insisted on calling himself my “uncle.”

  “You can’t imagine how happy I was to have you back in Florence,” Aunt Clarissa said. “Now I could visit you nearly every day.”

  ONCE A MONTH Cardinal Giulio called for me to be brought to him for a kind of inspection. These visits always unnerved Betta. If the cardinal found any fault with me, it was sure to be a reflection on her care. I knew she was nervous, because she always tugged at the snarls in my hair with more impatience than usual. Hair combed, faces and hands washed, clothes neat, we made our way through a series of connecting rooms that were hung with tapestries, until we were announced at the cardinal’s most private studio. Cardinal Giulio didn’t smile or rise to greet us but stayed seated behind his writing table.

  “She remains quite small,” the cardinal said, peering down at me and pursing his thin lips. “Does she eat well?”

  Betta dutifully recounted dishes I had eaten recently My uncle frowned and urged that I be fed more meat, especially veal, as well as macaroni. “But not too much fresh fruit. It’s known to be unhealthful for children,” he said. “Allow only dried figs, per favore.”

  Betta promised to do her best, although I made her task more difficult by pleading for fresh figs, which I loved, as well as cherries and pears.

  Sometimes Aunt Clarissa came from nearby Palazzo Strozzi, where she lived with her husband, Filippo, and their children, to accompany me on visits to the cardinal. Our uncle would question her about the development of my manners. “Progressing nicely,” my aunt would assure him, and to prove her right, I would execute a dainty curtsy, moving my left foot back and bending my knees as I had been taught.

  My greatest fault, though, was my inability to remember to keep my eyes modestly lowered. I was always gazing around curiously or unflinchingly meeting the looks of whoever was inspecting me. I had not yet learned how to steal sidelong glances.

  “Why don’t you ask me, Your Excellency?” I asked. “I would gladly answer your questions.” Speaking out too boldly when questioned was another fault.

  Cardinal Giulio’s eyes bored through me. “The child still has much to learn, Clarissa,” he said, his lips drawn in a disapproving scowl.

  I committed yet another error by staring back at him frankly and then made matters worse by asking, “Exactly what do you want me to learn, Excellency?”

  “To quell your impertinence,” snapped the cardinal. “Now leave us.”

  WHEN I TURNED FOUR, I gained more freedom to roam around the palazzo, and I learned more about my cousins, our “uncle,” and this palace in which we lived our mostly separate lives. Ippolito was fourteen, and Alessandro nearly twelve. Naturally, they had little in common with a four-year-old girl. Almost every day I saw the boys’ principal tutor, Cardinal Passerini, hurrying somewhere with an imperious air, shouting orders to the servants. I knew the servants didn’t like him; I saw the faces they made when he wasn’t looking. Except for the dreaded inspections, Cardinal Giulio remained a remote figure whom I saw only on feast days when he celebrated Mass at San Lorenzo.

  I was not yet considered old enough to eat at the table in the palace dining room or to join the festive dinners served in the beautiful garden. Instead, I took most of my meals in my apartment with only Betta for company. Occasionally, though, I was allowed to attend special feastday dinners. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici sat at the head of the table, his shrewd glance darting around the crowd, but my attention remained fixed on Ippolito and Alessandro.

  Betta claimed to know little about the boys. “You
must ask Signora Strozzi,” she said. “Your aunt can tell you more than I can.”

  “Who are those boys?” I asked Aunt Clarissa when she next came to visit. I was already digging into the packet of sweets she’d brought, little jellies flavored with saffron and formed into animal shapes.

  “Your cousins,” she answered vaguely. “Through the kindness of our uncle the cardinal you’ve all been provided a home here and an education and a good life.”

  I recognized this as the kind of thing adults said when they didn’t want to explain things to children. And, anyway, I already knew that much. “But who are their parents?” I persisted.

  “You wouldn’t know them,” she said, and briskly changed the subject. “Have I told you that the seamstress is coming to make you a pretty new gown for the Feast of Corpus Domini? I was thinking that pale blue over yellow silk would be lovely. Don’t you agree, Caterina?”

  FOR A WHILE I stopped asking questions about Alessandro and Ippolito. But lonely little girls have a habit of hovering in places they are not supposed to be and listening to the gossip of servants who have forgotten about the child perching quietly on a sack of grain in a shadowy corner of the pantry, pretending to play with a doll.

  One day I was wandering through the kitchen where a dozen cooks and helpers were plucking fowl, boning fish, stirring soups, rolling out dough for ravioli and lasagne, all in preparation for the Feast of Corpus Domini. Everyone was too busy to pay any attention to me. Suddenly, amid the rattle of pans and clash of knives, an angry cry went up. Alessandro raced by, making off with two ripe melons and a pile of almond cakes. The baker ran after him, shaking his fist.

  “Lorenzo’s bastard,” the baker muttered when he returned red faced and empty-handed. “Il Moro is worse than worthless, and a thief in the bargain.”