duchessina a novel of catherine de medici carolyn meyer

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.ĭuring 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. Beyond that I found a second, more interesting courtyard, where servants hurried back and forth and the business of the palace was conducted. 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. Betta had a habit of falling asleep over her needlework every afternoon following our midday dinner. When I thought I could escape Betta's watchful eye, I began to explore. 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.Īs I grew, I became curious about other parts of the palace. I wept when my nurse reached this point in my story. In another six days your father's soul went to join hers.”

Less than two weeks later your mother's bright soul left her suffering body. 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. Three days later your aunt Clarissa and I carried you to the Medici family church of San Lorenzo for your baptism. “You came into this world at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday morning, the thirteenth of April in 1519. 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. I spent the days of my early childhood with my nurse, ElisabettaâI called her Bettaâin a suite of rooms overlooking the courtyard.

Marble statues stood silent guard among splashing fountains. T HE ENORMOUS Palazzo Mediciâa ground floor and two upper floorsâwas an entire world, entered from the street through a grand arched portal and a foyer leading to a large inner courtyard.

Duchessina a novel of catherine de medici carolyn meyer