Excerpt
Sovereign Silk
Chapter I“Men in great places are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or State, servants of fame, and servants of business.” — Francis Bacon
10 d’Novembre, 1684With the skill of an accomplished swordsman, the White King dodged the crystal decanter hurled at his head. The missile shattered against the wall. Shards of glass and red wine flew everywhere, the ruinous results of the princess’ ill-temper. Even now King Alban saw her looking for something else to fling at him.
Fighting the urge to lay hands on his long-estranged cousin, the king turned instead to her husband, the whippet-like man seated, insouciant, in one of the cane chairs. “Pierro! Control your wife!”
“I’m not subject to the laws of the harem anymore!” Princess Ortensia hissed, seizing the paperweight.
With a beleaguered sigh, Prince Pierro rose and caught his wife’s sleeve. “Perhaps His Majesty will be more receptive to a less lethal argument,
mia bella. Another time, we can only hope that he will be more sensitive to our cause.”
Just outside the door, Strozzini, Alban’s bodyguard, cleared his throat loudly. “Majesty, is all well?”
Alban looked at Ortensia who still seethed, but it was to her right hand that his attention was drawn. She held herself in that instinctively protective fashion of a woman bearing seed. Was it possible that she could be bearing the deMedici’s child so soon? They’d married in
Agosto, four months ago. Until this time, the princess’ gowns had hidden her swelling middle, but now it was visible.
Did Pierro’s fortune really run so well, or had the Turkish Sultan who held Ortensia for the past seventeen years returned her already pregnant with a sixth child by him?
In either case, clearly, this coming year was to be prime for Tyrrhia’s population, which swelled portentously with the uncanny number of expectant mothers among the nobility. Alban’s sources indicated that the swell included all that was Tyrrhian. Everywhere and in everything, Tyrrhia ripened and bore fruit well beyond normal expectations.
With his own beloved Idala in the very condition the princess now displayed, Alban compelled his own irritation to fade. As he knew from his wife’s many pregnancies, women’s emotions were at the mercy of their condition.
Ortensia shot the White King a venomous glare and pushed away from the desk. Alban knew this discussion would not be over until she had her way. She meant the
trono, Tyrrhia’s throne, to be hers.
Alban met the princess and her prince at the door, gracious as a steward, ushering them from his private offices. Strozzini stood to one side, allowing them access to the stairs. Alban watched Ortensia and Pierro descend, the bastarde deMedici prince overly solicitous of his stolen bride. The prince’s pretty demonstrations sickened Alban. Pierro pretended at emotions other men, those Alban respected, genuinely felt for their wives.
Content that the interlopers were at last on their way, Alban dismissed his bodyguard and happily shut the heavy door. This time, he turned the key in the lock. As though summoned by the grating of the mechanism, a wooden panel in the far wall of his office slid to one side . . . with barely a whisper.
“If she’s anything like her sister, Majesty, then you’ll have even more trouble heaped upon your shoulders,” observed Duca Sebastiani, the elder of the two men who entered from the King’s War Room.
“I think we are beyond that speculative point, to be sure,” Stefano, Duca di Drago, said, sighing tiredly. “I did not wish Princess Bianca dead, but I cannot say that I was not relieved when . . .”
Alban watched him fall abruptly silent, apparently remembering that even as a senior member of the Palantini, Sebastiani was not privy to all of the actual details about Bianca’s death . . . or of Luciana’s involvement. Though to what degree Stefano’s wife was involved, probably even Stefano did not know and he, the king, knew even less.
Augusto Sebastiani nodded. “No need to hide your sentiments here. It would be a lie for anyone to deny that we had hoped the poison of their mother’s insanity ended with Bianca’s untimely death. Now, Majesty, the madness of your predecessor Queen Katerina is revisited upon Tyrrhia with the return of Ortensia . . . and who can know what was done to her during those years stolen by the Turks?”
Alban wiped a hand across his face. Though improving, the odd languor, which had sapped him these recent weeks, still troubled him. He stared, surprised, at the sight of blood, only then conscious of the sting caused by a shard from the decanter the princess had thrown at him.
“Majesty.”
Alban looked up and saw that Stefano offered him a bit of embroidered linen. Despite being his brother-in-law and lifelong companion, Stefano never let his sense of formality slip—especially when in the company of others. It made their relationship easier; one Alban deeply appreciated. He accepted the kerchief and hesitated. “It will do ruinous things to this fine piece of needlework.”
“But what purpose does a bit of cloth have, if not to serve at a moment’s need?” Stefano replied. “Besides, we will be fortunate if all we lose because of that lady’s vindictiveness is a bit of cloth and a gobbet of glass.”
Alban smiled thankfully and dabbed at the wound, but his gaze fell upon the elder duca. “Sebastiani?”
“Yes, yes, he most definitely has the right of it,” Sebastiani said, though his thoughts seemed miles away.
Alban followed the duca’s gaze to the closed door through which the leech, deMedici, and Ortensia, his new-found bride, had gone.
Duca Sebastiani seemed suddenly aware of his lapse and shook his head.
“I would be most appreciative, Augusto,” Alban said, using the familiarity of the elder man’s proper name, “if you would share your thoughts.”
“’Tis little more than the musings of an old man, Your Majesty, but it seems to me that the deMedici has the most inconvenient good fortune,” Augusto said, reclaiming the spindle-backed chair and accompanying footstool that he had recently vacated upon hearing Ortensia’s strident tones in the hall.
“Yes,” Stefano said with a nod. He took the adjoining seat and reached down to assist the other duca in positioning his gouty foot. “What business was it that put him on the western roads where the Turks just
happened to be releasing the princess—after nearly two decades when no ransom could save her?”
“I can’t believe the deMedici bastarde would have raised a hand to defend her on his own,” Alban grumbled. “So there comes one of the best men among the Queen’s Escalade—a man my lady holds above reproach—and his party on the very same road at the very same hour. It’s unnatural.”
“And then, that he should so easily convince the princess to . . . to plight her troth with his?” Stefano added. “They are too cozy too soon, those two.”
“Ah, yes, and as His Majesty says, a most
unnatural good luck,” Sebastiani observed.
The inflection in the deep timbre of the duca’s voice was not lost on Alban, nor, he saw from the sudden guardedness of Stefano’s normally open countenance, on his brother-in-law. But then, ever since his marriage to Luciana, the Romani merchant princess of all Tyrrhia’s Gypsy Silk, Stefano had become close-mouthed when the subject of magic came up.
Apparently sensing the tension, for Sebastiani was no one’s fool, the elder man pressed on quickly. “Am I an
imbecíle for thinking that magic might be afoot? He came to court, last year, I’m told, with his own ‘perfumer’! If he’ll bring as recognized a proficient in salts and scents as a poisoner to this court, what other dark arts might he be willing to associate himself with? And then there was the cardinal who took up his cause. The
cardinal, of all people!”
“He’s a devout Catholic,” Alban pointed out, almost reflexively. “And not given to our Neoplatonic philosophies of other beliefs than his own.”
“One would presume that he would be considered at least slightly less devout than a man of the cloth, a cardinal, by all means! I cannot suppose you have missed the rumors about His Eminence, Cardinal delle Torre? If word about court can be trusted at all, then you must know of the suspicious circumstances of his recently reported death,” Sebastiani said.
Stefano cleared his throat. “We have yet to receive confirmation—”
“Too true, but—”
Alban raised a hand, bringing both men to complete silence. “I think that the word we have received from Maggiore diMontago’s men can be taken as reliable fact.”
“Then he was involved in this agency,
Magnus Inique? These witch-hunters?” Sebastiani asked.
“I cannot help notice, Your Grace, but that you leap from hints of use of magic to this
Magnus Inique,” Stefano murmured.
“In point,” Sebastiani remarked thoughtfully, “neither is a friend of the throne . . . in this instance.” He added hastily.
Stefano fell silent, withdrawing. He crossed his arms, his expression almost unreadable, even to Alban who knew him so well.
“We don’t know that the prince has truck with magic, just infernal good fortune,” Alban said.
“But it would serve him well,” Sebastiani argued. “He has never shown a particular kindness to your regency.”
“One would expect him to be sympathetic with his wife,” Stefano pointed out.
“DeMedici’s
wives, Your Grace,” Alban said. “You must admit that something seems amiss. To marry again so quickly after Bianca died . . . barely out of the nuptials and not even to the bed!”
“By which argument, he has taken Princess Ortensia, Bianca’s own
sister!” Sebastiani said.
“And she
has taken to his bed,” Alban remarked. To the surprised look of his associates, he hurriedly explained. “She made a point of holding her belly in that guarded way women have when they bear seed. She shows signs of pregnancy that the cut of her gowns had previously hidden.”
“A pregnancy . . . so soon?” Sebastiani coughed. “Barely four months have passed since they were wed! Could his fortune be
that uncanny?”
“There is the possibility she
is pregnant, but by the Turk who kept her in his harem, instead of deMedici,” Alban said.
“We might only know by the date she presents this child,” Stefano said quietly. “A woman who has borne more than one child is inclined to produce early in subsequent births . . . or so I’ve been told . . .”
Alban noted the flush of red staining his brother-in-law’s cheeks. Embarrassment? He knew that Stefano had already hired a midwife for Luciana whose pregnancy was only about as far along as Idala’s. “If a Turk, instead of her husband, has fathered Ortensia’s child, we might be able to tell . . . but not every child betrays his parentage by his reflection.”
“Forgive me,” Sebastiani said, nodding first to Alban and then Stefano, “but we digress from my point. To be sure, it would suit deMedici to claim any child borne by the princess . . . and this, too, goes to my meaning. What chance their meeting on the beach that day? Further, that Ortensia would agree to marry him? Her sister’s widower? And now, that she be pregnant? There is this matter of, as you say, Majesty, of deMedici’s ‘unnatural good fortune.’”
“And where do these points lead us, but around in a circle?” Stefano asked.
“It leads us back to magic, Your Grace,” Sebastiani said.
“There is a reason that I sent deMedici from court,” Alban said, uncomfortable for his friend at the constant talk of magic and the avoidance of mention of his Gypsy duchessa.“I hoped that being sent to the country would help to sever ties to his more nefarious alliances. I even refused to continue the elaborate allowance he expected from the coffers of Bianca’s wealth. He had her bride price
and a title that not even his father or legitimate brother can aspire to. Now, he has broken every sense of propriety by taking another wife so soon—never mind that she is the elder sister of his dead wife.”
“We are agreed that no natural excuse could explain his good fortune, then?” Sebastiani pressed.
“There is still the possibility that he has connections that helped him in his timing,” Alban said.
“But, of course, those connections have worked
knowingly against the Crown and, as yet, are anonymous,” Stefano said bleakly.
“I say magic is afoot, Majesty!” Sebastiani proclaimed. “And, reluctant as you or the Palantini might be to welcome him—even
before he married Ortensia—he
is a member of
la famiglia reale.”
“There is nothing I can do to change that. I saw the legal wedding to Bianca. Now Ortensia, another member of
la famiglia reale, attests to a legal wedding by grace of law and Catholic supervision,” Alban replied.
“But don’t you see? There is his mistake!” Sebastiani exclaimed. “It was accepted that magic used in relation to
la famiglia reale was ill-considered until your predecessor made it high treason.”
“Yes, but what proof of magic is there?” Alban asked. He closed his eyes, trying to hide his wince. Against his enemies, it would be all too easy to pursue . . . given evidence, but he had more to consider than just this. He could not
prove Pierro deMedici and his first bride used magic; but, then, there were others, friendlier to the crown, who had most definitely used it . . .
Alban noted that Stefano sat very still, his gaze upon his toes and his arms crossed firmly across his chest. Sebastiani was a good man, but he had no idea of the impossible situation in which he placed his king.
------
Padre Gabera studied the plump Dominican’s back, turned from him in anger. He folded his hands inside the sleeves of his homespun brown cassock. “I offer you the sacraments, Brother; all you must do is confess.”
“The cardinal is my confessor,” the other man said.
“And he is dead. Consider where you are, where following the man has brought you!” Gabera said, waving to the dim, filthy surroundings of the dungeon. “Tomasi, save your eternal soul if not yourself!”
“I’ll not confess. Leave me in peace!”
“Peace? Here?” Padre Gabera pressed. He reached out and touched the other man’s shoulder. When Brother Tomasi shrugged off the physical contact, he sighed. “Is there anything I can bring you?”
“What would those men who arrested me let you do? Or the guards for that matter?” Brother Tomasi scoffed, his tone dismissive. “What would the Romani witches let you do?”
“No witch has say over you, Brother, and as to the maggiore’s men, they are not evil. Indeed, they are not even misguided in being cautious with you. You served a man who used magic . . . against all that we believe in—”
“How do you know what I believe?” the short Dominican demanded. “You, like the others, think I served an evil man, that—”
“They know what they saw. You were in league with the cardinal! You helped the cardinal of your own free will, or did he control your mind? Make you his unwitting servant in the service of evil—”
“How do you know what the cardinal served? Was he not a Prince of the Holy Roman Church? And you doubt him, without evidence—”
“He held the body of a young woman to use in his spells!” Gabera protested.
“Those men . . . the vigilare who arrested me . . . they killed Cardinal delle Torre!” Brother Tomasi spat, finally whirling around to face him.
Gabera stood his ground, meeting the Dominican’s wide, dark eyes, glinting with madness. “The cardinal was already dead . . . as the result of his nefarious magic. No mortal hand touched him while he lived. I saw that with my own eyes.”
Tomasi presented him with his back again.
“I will return,” Padre Gabera said reluctantly.
The Dominican Brother ignored him, striding over to the narrow little cot he used for a bed and began rummaging through the rags.
Gabera stuck his hand through the bars of the door and waved to the Palazzo Guard to let him out.
------
Tomasi turned in time to watch the priest leave. The man had been his daily companion since the death of delle Torre. The cardinal had promised him these would be trying times, that he relied upon him, Brother Tomasi . . . until his return. Tomasi spat into the straw. Beside the flame of delle Torre’s compelling arguments, this Padre Gabera’s persuasions were an unlit wick. Gabera possessed no foundation in the magic the Church could wield if pedants like Gabera did not hold them back or petty witches like the Romani did not toy with what belonged to the Church.
In amongst the rags, Tomasi found and gathered two silken white poppets made for him by the cardinal. The power of the White Throne was a serious threat to all the plans he and delle Torre discussed. According to the cardinal, the White King and Queen paid lip service to the Catholic Church but refused the magic power of the Church. They, instead, honored the traditions of the Neoplatonic State where the Jews and Muslims were equally recognized. They called magic blasphemy!
Tomasi sat with the poppets by the fire pit allowed him for warmth. It served pitifully to heat the dank dungeon. He laid the dolls out on his knees. One to represent the king and another his queen. Secreted within his robes, Tomasi pulled out the little bottle of anointing oil. There was little left, but he proceeded with delle Torre’s directions and began to whisper Last Rites over the poppets.
