Midnight Fire (A Jagiellon Mystery Book 2) Page 3

  As the reception began, I studied Zygmunt August discreetly. Dressed in a black doublet under a short cape edged in gray sable, a gray feather in his cap, and no jewelry, the king cut an appropriately somber figure. He sat between his mother and an officious-looking man of middle age who wore clerical garb but also the insignia of Grand Chancellor, who therefore must have been Samuel Maciejowski. Zygmunt frequently leaned toward one or the other of them to converse.

  Yet I detected no signs of mourning in his face, whose swarthy complexion betrayed his Italian heritage. He had delicate, almost feminine features that I recognized from the medallion Bona had commissioned from the Italian artist Gian Maria Padovano, a copy of which I had seen in Bari some years earlier. It showed Zygmunt as a boy of twelve. That childish face had displayed affability and charm, with big dark eyes, well-defined eyebrows that resembled his mother’s, and a pensive expression. Now it seemed that only the pensiveness remained. He had a serious, even brooding air, but somehow it failed to convey grief. It was more like boredom. He looked as if he wished he were somewhere else.

  “You’re very curious about the young king, Caterina.” Lucrezia’s voice reached me.

  So much for discretion.

  “I am,” I admitted. “Since I came back to Kraków, I have heard”—I hesitated—“quite a lot about him.”

  Lucrezia laughed. It was a brief and joyless laugh, and it pained me. In her youth, she had been a cheerful, even frivolous girl, in love with gowns and pearls, whom I’d had a hard time keeping away from male courtiers and servants alike. But after she accidentally discovered Helena’s second murder victim, the queen’s secretary Ludovico Mantovano, she underwent a deep transformation. She refused all offers of marriage and had remained with the queen to this day. Like every other woman in the hall, she wore black, but something told me that for her it was not just temporary mourning attire. The lobes of her ears, once pierced, showed two barely visible indents, which suggested that she had not worn jewelry for years. Her only adornment was a silver chain necklace with a cross pendant. Although in her early forties, she looked a decade older—the once-luscious olive skin of her face thin and lackluster, pulled at the edges by graying hair gathered severely under her black headdress.

  “Most of it is probably true,” she said. She tried to sound neutral, but a note of disapproval crept into her voice nonetheless.

  I did not know how to respond. I raised my goblet and sipped wine—still Lombard, Bona’s favorite—savoring its forgotten flavor, rich and slightly tart, with a taste that lingered. The act of drinking helped me stifle the questions forming on my tongue. A funeral reception was not the right place to indulge in gossip.

  “How sad that Queen Elizabeth died when he was away,” I said instead.

  The scoffing sound Lucrezia made was barely audible, but it reached me all the same. “I doubt he sees it that way,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She took her time answering. I knew she needed to use the right words. And the right tone of voice. When she spoke, I needed to lean sideways to hear her above the murmur of the surrounding conversations, subdued though they were. “The young king has a mistress in Vilnius, a woman named Barbara Radziwiłł,” she said.

  This was hardly shocking news. Zygmunt’s father had supported many mistresses in his day, and from families far less distinguished than the Radziwiłłs, who were counted among the leading Lithuanian nobility.

  But Lucrezia had not finished. “Those who travel between the two courts say he is very much in love and has foresworn all other women for her, including his wife.”

  My eyes rounded. That was unusual. Royal marriages were arranged, and nobody expected the king to be lovingly devoted to his queen. Still, he had a duty to produce an heir at least.

  Lucrezia smiled sadly when she saw my surprise. “Poor young queen, she returned from Vilnius alone in the spring. So abandoned did she feel there that the company of her mother-in-law—who, as you know, has little warmth to spare for any Habsburg—appealed more to her than her husband’s indifference.”

  I shook my head as pity for Elizabeth filled me. Married off at such a young age, burdened with expectations she could not fulfill through no fault of her own, she must have experienced nothing but disappointment and humiliation in her short-lived role. I remembered seeing a portrait of her when the news of the royal marriage reached us in Bari. It showed a pretty young girl wearing a Spanish dress and a melancholy smile. I glanced at the king as he moodily beckoned an attendant for more wine and felt concern as I realized that the future of the monarchy rested on his shoulders.

  * * *

  After the reception, we lined up to pay our respects to Zygmunt and his mother. In the throne chamber, there were three thrones now: two for the elder royals and one for their co-ruling son. One of them was empty, the old king being too frail to attend any of the day’s events. I wondered if Elizabeth had had one, too, and it had already been removed. I turned to ask Lucrezia, but she had disappeared.

  From up close, the impression I’d had of Zygmunt August only intensified. The last time I had seen the heir to the throne of Poland-Lithuania was in the summer of 1520, when he was a red-faced, howling infant, already at the center of everyone’s attention. This intense interest in the kingdom’s only male heir continued, from what I’d heard, into his childhood and adolescence. The result was a young man of good looks but capricious temperament. A man raised by women and indulged by them, despite the fact that one of these women was as strong and forceful as any man. Or perhaps because of that.

  I approached the thrones and dropped into a curtsy. “My deepest condolences to Your Majesties.”

  Zygmunt nodded with perfunctory courtesy. My face held no familiarity for him. But not so for his mother. At first, the queen bestowed her customary icy blue gaze on me, full of studied graciousness and regal detachment. Then I saw a spark of new alertness in them as her mind began working through its store of information. Within seconds, it found what it was looking for.

  “Contessa Sanseverino—Signora Konarska.” Bona was as sharp as ever. “We have been told of your return to Kraków.” She gave me a small smile, the first I had seen on her face all night and a sign of high favor.

  “Indeed,” I replied. “My husband and I brought our son to Poland in search of a cure for his fevers.” I felt nervous as soon as I said it, for I had not intended to bring up the reason for our visit just then. Lucrezia had already promised to arrange an audience to present my request, although things had understandably gotten delayed due to Elizabeth’s death. In mentioning my concern, I might have gone against protocol. But Giulio’s health was never far from my mind.

  The queen’s stern face softened momentarily with a look I also remembered—one of motherly empathy—before she recomposed her features. In that, too, she had not changed: she was still loath to show the world what she perceived to be the weakness of emotions. “Yes. Lucrezia mentioned it to us. What ails your son?”

  “He is prone to bouts of the fever that affects some people so severely in the southern regions of Italy,” I replied, aware that Zygmunt was already talking to the next courtier in line. “He’s still weak from the journey, but we thank God he hasn’t suffered another attack yet.”

  “We are glad to hear that.” She continued to look at me, but I could see that she was thinking of something else; I could almost hear the wheels spinning. “When this is over”—she made a small gesture to encompass the gathering, although I suspected she meant the mourning period—“we will arrange for one of our doctors to examine your boy.”

  The finality of her tone suggested dismissal, and I curtsied again, gratefully. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  As I moved away from the throne, I felt exhausted after the long, busy day, hot and emotional. It must have been close to nine o’clock in the evening, the summer night had just fallen, and I wanted to go back to my sister-in-law’s house and rest. I also had another reason to withdraw.
Jan Dantyszek was among the guests at the reception and not far away, having paid his respects to the king and queen before me. Now the Bishop of Warmia, he had been the third of Helena’s victims in the winter of 1519, and the only one who survived.

  He must have been approaching sixty, but he was still a handsome man, though stout. The golden-brown wavy hair he once liked to show off now fell gray and limp from under his cap. He had exchanged his courtier’s doublet for ecclesiastical robes, but he looked as confident and at ease in the presence of power as ever. He did not recognize me, it seemed, but his face was burned indelibly into my memory. A quarter of a century earlier, we had spent a terrifying several hours in the cellars under the castle kitchens as Helena’s captives, and only the timely arrival of Sebastian saved us from death that night.

  I was glad Dantyszek had gone on to rebuild his life, to use his considerable talents to serve the kingdom and the Church. But I had no wish to speak to him. Anything we said to each other would force me to revisit that terrible time, and although I could never forget what had happened, I wanted to keep the memory as far from me as possible. Neither Lucrezia nor Bona had brought it up, although for different reasons. I doubted the queen had given it much thought during the intervening years, while Lucrezia’s feelings were probably even more complicated than mine. Whatever the case, I welcomed their discretion and preferred not to dwell on the past.

  Trying to stay as far away from Dantyszek as I could, I went in search of Lucrezia. I finally found her talking to the queen’s musician Alessandro Perenti, a young Veronese, who was taking a break from playing a mournful tune on his cithara. I bid her goodnight and left the banqueting hall with as much haste as propriety permitted.

  Minutes later, I was descending the gentle slope of Wawel Hill toward the city under a starry summer sky, its cloudlessness promising another clear day tomorrow. Above me, in the royal chapel, the young queen was spending the first night of her eternal repose under the layers of marble, gold, and already wilting flowers.

  CHAPTER 4

  August 5th, 1545

  After two months in Kraków, I had a better understanding of the factions and power plays at the court and of Bona’s own situation. She stood on shakier ground than I had thought. Elizabeth’s death may have cleared the path for a marriage more to her liking, but powerful forces opposed her. And those forces had a great deal of influence over her son, based on the gossip that went around.

  At their head was Grand Chancellor Samuel Maciejowski, who sat on the king’s left side during the funeral reception. Similar in build and military-like bearing to his predecessor Stempowski, he, too, wanted closer relations with the Habsburgs. Jan Tarnowski, the army’s hetman—its supreme commander—and one of the leading nobles of the realm, was Maciejowski’s most important ally. For reasons I could not fully understand, King Zygmunt appeared to be sympathetic to that political line and took advice from both of them. This meant that the queen’s influence waned steadily as the old king handed more and more power over to his son, in direct contradiction to her expectations and hopes at this point in her life.

  I crossed the colonnaded inner courtyard of the castle, its flagstones still wet after the overnight rain that had pleasantly cooled the air after weeks of incessant heat. This same courtyard had once been the scene of my desperate trek in knee-deep snow to the castle kitchen in search of the missing Jan Dantyszek, followed by the longest and most terrifying night of my life. I tried to keep that memory at bay as I approached Lucrezia, who was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps that lead to Wawel’s elaborate arched entrance.

  She greeted me warmly and inquired about Sebastian and our children—Aurora, recently married, lived with her husband in Rome—and I thanked her for her note confirming the audience for today. But when we entered the cool interior of the residence and retraced the familiar path to the queen’s gallery, we did so in silence. I had already noticed during our first meeting that the sight of me, while bringing a fond smile to Lucrezia’s face, also revived painful memories. I had seen it in the haunted look in her eyes before she averted them. We had not spoken of it then, and we remained silent now, but Helena’s ghost was with us, like a heaviness in the air.

  The presence chamber of the queen’s apartment was crowded, but the composition of the attendants differed greatly from what it had been in my day. For one thing, there were no maids of honor; young women served Zygmunt August’s wife, not Bona—and when his wife died, her household was dissolved. The new queen, when Zygmunt August remarried, would have to form her own.

  Three female attendants accompanied the queen. Beata Kościelecka, whom I had last seen as a spunky five-year-old, was a lady-in-waiting and the old king’s illegitimate daughter. She would be in her late twenties now. There was also Elisabetta Colonna, a few years older than Beata and a descendant of the dukes of Urbino. As such, she was Bona’s cousin and currently served as the Lady of the Queen’s Chamber, my old post. The third woman looked vaguely familiar, but I could not place her until Lucrezia introduced her as Maria d’Aragona, Marchesa del Vasto. Then I knew: tall and thin, with dark eyes shining with avid curiosity and a shock of unruly black hair barely contained by her headdress, she had to have been related to Giovanna d’Aragona, the Princess of Montefusco, who had stayed at the court in the early 1520s. As it turned out, Maria was her niece.

  There were also three men in the chamber, not counting Perenti, who sat in a window alcove softly tuning his instrument, ready to play whenever the queen desired. Bishop Gamrat huddled in a chair, looking even more frail than he had a few weeks earlier at the funeral. His right hand shook even though he pressed it to his stomach to try to still it. His presence suggested that despite being responsible for the two most important dioceses in the kingdom, he was still Bona’s advisor. Behind a small desk perched a young man—he could not have been more than twenty—who served as her secretary. I remembered him from the funeral, when he walked behind the queen, his beardless face streaked with tears.

  Finally—bent close to the queen and whispering in her ear when I entered—was Gian Lorenzo Pappacoda. He wore silver-striped puffy breeches that reached to his mid-thighs, shapely in tight white hose. A small ruff of nearly translucent lace, starched stiff, encircled his neck. That, together with his slithering proximity to the queen’s chair and his fawning demeanor, made him the purest example of a courtier, a man with no job other than to flatter and entertain, and thereby make his fortune. He reminded me of a young Dantyszek, but more shameless and less charming. In fact, his face—though it could have been considered handsome, with its olive skin and carefully tended black beard—had something cunning and shifty about it. And nowhere was the impression more powerful than when one met his eyes: small and so dark they were almost black, their look calculating and greedy. I took an immediate dislike to him, not suspecting that my repulsion would one day come to haunt me.

  The queen smiled as she responded to Pappacoda, although I did not catch her words. The smile revealed a row of browned teeth, the result of her lifelong enjoyment of sweet confections—which, judging by her girth, had not abated. As I waited for her to address me, I took stock of the other changes that had taken place in her, seeing her as I did up close and in the full light of day for the first time in a quarter of a century. The rumors were true: she had aged badly. I was a year older than the queen, and although I was not so vain as to believe everything my sister-in-law said about my looks, I had a slimmer waist, a smoother face, and—based on the little that was left uncovered by Bona’s austere white cap—less gray hair. The loose robes of shiny, dark-colored velvet in which she was draped only heightened the impression that her shape resembled a tree trunk more than an hourglass. Once again, I recalled the alluring young woman who swept into Kraków with trunks full of fashionable gowns in bright yellows, icy blues, and passionate crimsons. Noblewomen across the kingdom once imitated her style. I doubted they did anymore.

  Despite the smiles she had for Pappaco
da, I saw signs that Bona’s temper had gotten worse over the years. Her once full and voluptuous lips were now pale and pinched, to the point where she resembled Suor Modesta, the strict disciplinarian at the convent I had attended in my youth. The permanent lines running down both sides of her prominent nose gave her a stern look even when she was benevolently disposed. When angry, she must terrify her subordinates. Much of it probably grew out of her long and bruising tenure as Poland’s queen, for she had never been an obedient and submissive wife in a country whose customs demanded nothing else. She exceeded her husband in political astuteness, determination, and the ability to take advantage of opportunities. She had made a fortune—and lots of enemies—by investing in land and reforming agriculture. She had fought many battles, triumphed and failed, and she had the scars to prove it.

  “How has young Giulio been?” the queen asked after the introductions were completed. “We trust there has been no return of the fever?”

  “There has not, and we are grateful to God. But he’s still very weak,” I replied. That was not strictly true: Giulio, while still spending most of his time indoors, had in fact been able to get out of bed and move around the house more than when we had first arrived in Kraków. There was even a little more color in his cheeks, and his appetite had improved. But none of it meant that he would not suffer another attack—in the past, there had been times when he felt stronger before inevitably relapsing. I withheld that information from the queen for fear that she would decide he did not need to see a royal physician. “Sometimes the period between relapses lasts for months,” I said instead.