Chapter 40
CHAPTER 40
A NNA M ARIA L UISA DE ’ M EDICI WAS TRYING TO ENJOY THE EVENING. Dinner had been hosted by her father, Grand Duke Cosimo III, the sixth from the House of Medici to rule Tuscany. He had occupied the throne for fifty years, the longest of anyone before him. The party at the royal palace had been organized to mark that glorious occasion, and the local nobility had turned out. Even her father, who rarely smiled in public, seemed pleased. Most had left after the meal ended, but her father had asked twelve of the noblemen to stay. Tuscany was in the midst of an economic depression with the downturn deepening. Compounding this was her brother, her father’s named successor, Gian Gastone, who was spending money at a rapid pace in Bohemia, racking up massive debts. Even worse, there were no grandchildren. Her older brother had died childless and Gian despised his wife. They lived totally separate lives in separate countries. Children for them was out of the question. Her own marriage to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, had been a long and good one. They spent twenty-five happy years together before he died. Early in their marriage she even became pregnant, but miscarried. In the end their marriage had seen no Medici heirs birthed either.
A royal family without heirs was a dangerous thing.
The vultures would descend from all over Europe to take Tuscany.
She knew there would be no place for her at the discussions about to happen. Men only. So she took her leave and left the palace. A lovely summer evening enveloped Florence. Many were out enjoying the warm air. A welcome respite from the bitter north winds that raked across the city each winter, sometimes bringing snow.
She walked at a leisurely pace, heading away from the palace and across the River Arno, turning right toward the Church of Santa Croce. The piazza in front of the building was busy with people, including children playing on the cobbles. She’d chosen a simple black dress, keeping with her official status as being in mourning, and had come alone so as not to draw any attention. Just a few weeks ago the annual Calcio Storico matches had been played right here in the piazza. She loved the violent spectacle, steeped in history, which was so utterly Florentine.
Her widowhood was in its fourth year. And she was tired of it. Grief did not become her. She was lonely. She missed having a husband. The only true relationship she had here in Florence was with her father. She and her brother despised each other, and the rest of the family viewed her as a threat, an interloper, who had returned after years of being gone, wanting it all for herself.
But it was her birthright.
After her father, she and her brother were the last two royal Medicis.
Life had been kind to her. She was still blessed with a fair complexion, eyes large and expressive, teeth white as ivory. She loved the outdoors, walking, hunting, horseback riding, and dancing. Especially the dancing. She was educated, refined, aware of her status, and she should be the one to succeed her father as grand duchess, not her vulgar and incompetent brother. He would do nothing but make a mess of things. Gian did not have the capacity to govern Tuscany. She knew that. Her father knew that. But Medici tradition demanded that the duchy only go to male heirs. Her father had tried to change that but to no avail. It seemed that Florence had become accustomed to the fact that male succession was sometimes based on nothingness.
She entered the church and found the family chapel. Though San Lorenzo was their main house of worship, the Medici had long maintained a presence at Santa Croce with a modest chapel dedicated to St. Cosmas and St. Damian, the family’s patron saints.
She liked coming here.
No one else was around.
Which she also liked.
After a few minutes she left the chapel and walked out into the open cloister. Above, in the rectangle of ink-blue sky, a brilliance of stars lifted her heart. At the far end stood the lesser-known Pazzi Chapel, an outward sign of the once disgraced family’s climb back to influence in the late fifteenth century. She had no desire to return to the palace, so she walked down the graveled path between two stretches of summer grass and entered through an open portal. Her eyes were immediately drawn upward to the spherical dome and its dark oculus. During the day light poured through but now, at night, it stared back black. The twelve windows along the dome ribs were likewise lifeless. The chapel’s overall emptiness could lead someone to dismiss the space as unimportant.
But that would be a mistake.
As it was the space itself that was the star.
The Pazzi had long been rehabilitated, their property restored. Their attempt to kill Lorenzo de Medici and their murder of his brother Giuliano had neither been forgiven nor forgotten, it was just that three centuries had dulled the anguish. The family still existed, though scattered, its wealth coming from land, farms, receivables, and business capital. Nothing like it once had been, but nonetheless substantial. She’d always admired their coat of arms, which depicted crescents, battlemented towns, and, of all things, twin dolphins on a blue field with nine crosses. They continued to trade on the legend of how the family was rewarded during the First Crusade with sacred flints. The annual Easter procession that featured them had once again become part of Florence’s yearly routine. Medici and Pazzi never mingled, but neither did they war with each other.
They just stayed apart.
She approached the altar, which filled a tall niche in one wall. The two stained-glass windows above were dull without the sun. In the dome above was a fresco, painted in the fifteenth century, depicting the constellations present in the night sky over Florence on July 4, 1442. Interestingly, an identical fresco was present inside the Medici’s Church of San Lorenzo. Both created by the same artist at relatively the same time. She’d always wondered how two families who hated each other tolerated having the same thing, especially considering the Pazzi purge that happened after the sinister plot failed.
“It is magnificent, is it not?”
A male voice. Behind her. Speaking in the local Florentine vernacular.
Which startled her.
She turned.
Before her stood a man about her age. Tall, like herself, with a stiff military-like bearing. He was brawny of the chest, a touch sunburned on his face, a beard and mustache neatly trimmed. A mass of auburn hair covered his head and fell to his ears. Marks of what appeared to be left over from the ravages of smallpox dotted his cheeks and chin but did not detract from his handsomeness.
“And you are?” she politely asked.
“Raffaello de’ Pazzi.”
Eric listened in amazement.
“That was the beginning,” his grandmother said. “When they first met. Within a few weeks they were lovers.”
“A Medici and a Pazzi?”
“They were, and quite happy with each other.”
He was skeptical. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Anna recorded many of her thoughts and feelings.”
Really? “You have never mentioned that fact before.”
She shrugged. “It was not necessary. It should have been enough that I told you.”
Don’t argue with her. “I agree. It should have been. But I would love to read her thoughts. Do you have Anna’s writings?”
“Of course. My father gave them to me.”
“Can I see them?”
A puzzled look came to her wizened face. “Why would I do that? You have shown no interest in this. Why now?”
He had no time to explain anymore. “During my entire childhood, into the time I was out of university, all I heard was how we are Medici and that we can never forget that. How the family is owed a debt that Rome never paid. How history has it all wrong. On and on you went. Yes, I thought it all a fantasy. Unimportant. Who cares. But now I believe you. If you meant all that you said, then it is time we do something.”
“You just want the money,” she spit out.
“No, I do not. Nothing is to be gained by bankrupting the Vatican. But I do want the church to feel the pressure from that long-overdue debt, and the world to know it exists.” The first part was true, the second a lie. “Is that not what you want too?”
She pointed another crooked finger. “The pope should pay. He owes us.”
“Yes, he does. And we, you and I, can make him pay.” He shifted gears. He had to know more. “What happened between Anna Maria and Raffaello de’ Pazzi?”
“They fell in love. But that was dangerous. Even in the eighteenth century, three hundred years after the attempt on Lorenzo the Magnificent’s life and the killing of his brother, Pazzi and Medici kept their distance. Her father, Cosimo III, never would have approved of the relationship. Nor would her brother.”
He had questions. “Why would Anna, a Medici, even consider such a thing? And was she not still in mourning for her husband? Would it not have been improper for her to have had an intimate relationship with anyone?”
She tapped her chest. “She followed her heart.”
He waited for more.
“She was lonely. Her father was old and would die within three years of her meeting the Pazzi. She hated her brother and knew that once he was grand duke, her life would never be the same.”
Eric knew his history. Cosimo III died in 1723. Six days before his death he issued a proclamation commanding that Tuscany remain independent and that Anna should succeed to the throne after her brother, Gian, died. Ultimately, the monarchs of Europe failed to respect his wishes, and her brother, for years, made her life miserable. Finally, she abandoned her apartment in the royal palace and left Florence. When her brother drew his last breath in 1737, the great powers of Europe gave Tuscany to the Duke of Lorraine.
Anna Maria was totally ignored.
“She became with child by Raffaello de’ Pazzi,” his grandmother said. “A total surprise since her only other pregnancy miscarried. Having a child was not something she expected. She was in her fifties. To have a child at that age then, or now, was dangerous. Even worse, Raffaello de’ Pazzi died in a carriage accident before the child was born. Some said it was no accident, though. Anna Maria believed he was murdered.”
That information surprised him. “She wrote that down?”
She nodded. “All of her thoughts and fears.”
Anna Maria died in 1743. History made no mention of a child born to her in the years before her death. Just the opposite, in fact. Her last will and testament was remarkable. She’d inherited all that the Medici owned, including art, land, buildings, cash, contracts, jewelry, and other valuables. Priceless things. She cemented her place in history with the Patto di Famiglia , the Family Pact, which ensured that everything the Medici acquired over nearly three centuries of political ascendancy stayed in Tuscany, provided that nothing was ever removed from Florence. And nothing ever was. All the art, architecture, and grandeur that was modern Florence owed its existence to her.
“You took me to where Gregorio Cappello is buried,” he said. “You told me that he was a royal Medici. I am a royal Medici. It is not a story anymore. It is fact. But the father, Nonna. Raffaello de’ Pazzi. He is now the key. I need to be connected to him, and I need to know if he and Anna Maria legally married?”
“Of course they married. She would not have had it any other way.”
“She wrote that down too?”
His grandmother nodded.
“So why not leave her child, a legitimate Medici, everything? Why give it all to Florence? Why allow the royal line to become extinct?”
“She had her reasons. Good ones too.”
Another non-answer. But intriguing. For another discussion. Right now he wanted to know, “Where is the Pazzi buried?”
“I have no idea.”
Not good.
He should be able to find that out now that he had a name and time frame. But this woman was the only one who knew where to find the other piece of the puzzle.
“Where are Anna Maria’s writings?”