The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine De Medici by Jeanne Kalogridis Read Free Book Online

the great public square, the Piazza della Signoria, and announced our abdication. We would then swear oaths of allegiance to the new Third Republic of Florence. We would also swear never to return. Afterward, rebel soldiers would lead us to the city gates and waiting carriages.
    The cardinal swore and sputtered. “Betrayal,” Sandro said. The magician’s face rose in my imagination and whispered:
One that threatens your life
. They both fell silent the instant Ippolito rose.
    “I knew Florence was lost,” he told Clarice, his voice unsteady. “But there are other things we could have purchased our safety with—properties, hidden family treasure, promises of alliances. For you to agree to
humiliate
us publicly—”
    Clarice raised a brow. “Would you prefer the bite of the executioner’s blade?”
    “I will not bow to them, Aunt,” Ippolito said.
    “I kept our dignity,” Clarice countered; the tiny diamonds in her hairnet sparkled as she lifted her chin. “They could have taken our heads. They could have stripped us and hung us in the Piazza della Signoria. Instead, they wait outside. They give us a bit of freedom. They give us time.”
    Ippolito drew in a long breath, and when he let it go, he shuddered. “I will not bow to them,” he said, and the words held a threat.
     
    Four miserable days passed; the men spent them closeted in Ippolito’s chambers. Aunt Clarice wandered empty halls, as all of the house servants—except the most loyal, which included Leda, Paola, the stablehands, and the cook—had left. Beyond the iron gate, the rebels kept watch; the soldiers who had guarded our palazzo abandoned us.
    By the afternoon of the sixteenth—one day before we were all to humble ourselves in the Piazza della Signoria—my room was stripped. I begged Paola to pack the volume of Ficino, but she murmured that it was a very big book for such a little girl.
    That evening, Aunt Clarice prevailed upon us to have supper in one of the smaller dining rooms. Ippolito had little to say to anyone; Sandro, however, seemed surprisingly lighthearted, as did Passerini—who, when Clarice voiced her regret over leaving the family home in hostile hands, patted her hand, pointedly ignoring her bandaged right wrist.
    The dinner ended quietly—at least, for Clarice, Ippolito, and me. The three of us retired, leaving Sandro and Passerini to their wine and jokes. I could hear them laughing as I headed back toward the children’s apartments.
    That night, I dreamt.
    I stood in the center of a vast open field and spied in the distance a man, his body backlit by the rays of the dying sun. I could not see his face, but he knew me and called out to me in a foreign tongue.
    Catherine . . .
    Not Caterina, as I was christened at birth, but
Catherine
. I recognized it as my name, just as I had when the magician had once uttered it so.
    Catherine,
he cried again, anguished.
    The setting changed abruptly, as happens in dreams. He lay on the ground at my feet and I stood over him, wanting to help. Blood welled up from his shadowed face like water from a spring and soaked the earth beneath him. I knew that I was responsible for this blood, that he would die if I did not do something. Yet I could not fathom what I was to do.
    Catherine,
he whispered, and died, and I woke to the sound of Leda screaming.

 
     
     
Four
     
     
     
     
    The sound came from across the landing, from Ippolito and Alessandro’s shared apartments. I ran toward the source.
    Leda had fallen in front of the wide-open door onto all fours. Her screams were now moans, which merged with the song of bells from the nearby cathedral of San Lorenzo, announcing the dawn.
    I ran up to her. “Is it the baby?”
    Gritting her teeth, Leda shook her head. Her stricken gaze was on Clarice, who had also come running in her chemise, a shawl thrown around her shoulders. She knelt beside the fallen woman. “The child is coming, then?”
    Again, Leda shook her head and gestured at the