Read Online The Daughter of Siena by Marina Fiorato - Free Book Online Page B

gladdened figures received the rewards of reprieve.
Violante felt inspired. Could she be the figure of Justice, could she take the reins at last and unite this divided place? Justice was not alone in her endeavours. At her feet, the personification of Virtue was also portrayed as a female figure, modelled on the Queen of Heaven. Mary, the patron saint of the city. Mary, the mother who had seen her son live and die too; Mary, to whom Violante had prayed throughout her pregnancy and her bereavement, that mortal woman who knew what it was to lose a son. Violante felt a kinship or a sisterhood, as if she, too, was not alone.
    But then, as she let her eyes wander over the fresco again, she spotted something she had never seen before. Another female figure held what was clearly an hourglass, two delicate curves of glass with the sand of time running between them. Violante knew she did not have much time. If she did not heal this city before the dukedom ended with her, Siena would be ruined for ever.
    The obstacles were great. In the fresco Mary passed out virtue among twenty-four faithfully rendered and recognizable images of prominent male citizens of Siena. The very men whose descendants now ridiculed her and made nonsense of her rule. She saw the faces that she knew: shuttered, circumspect, minding their own lucrative business. Families that had ruled this place from time out of mind: the Chigi, the Albani, the Piccolomini and, of course, the Caprimulgi.
    Violante knew Faustino Caprimulgo had corrupted the city for over half a century; that he had crossed her time
and time again over sumptuary rights and trading monopolies; that he flouted tithes and taxes, and disregarded the laws that were implemented to keep the citizens safe. He murdered, he trafficked, he stole. But he could not do it alone; there had to be complicity. He had allies, not only in his own loyal contrada but, of necessity, in others too. He had treaties and alliances. In each of the thirds or terzi of the city, the contrade , each of the seventeen wards, were operating in a complex web. In this intricate machinery, the separate wheels of commerce and corruption, from the tiny to the vast, functioned independently but were all inextricably linked, like the cogs in the belly of a watch. But however much she might know about the surface of the city, she could not hope to know about its fine workings.
    She needed someone on the inside. A Sienese.
    She toyed with the idea of asking her chief councillor, Francesco Maria Conti, for help. He was entrenched in the ruling party of the Giraffa contrada in the east of the city, where he lived in palatial elegance. And it was he who nominally helped her in her day-to-day government of this city, he who presided over his fellows in the council chamber, the Sala del Concistore, next to this very room. He should be the ideal candidate to unite city and duchy, but Conti had never been completely able to hide his contempt for her and Violante had never trusted him. She did not know whether his dislike proceeded from her sex, her Germanic origins as the Elector of Bavaria’s daughter, or her familial connections with the Medici. She only knew that he disagreed with her in chamber at
every turn, that in foreign policy his advice was so biased to the papal position as to be virtually worthless, and that he hampered any lawgiving that she embarked upon. No, he would not do. But she thought she knew who would.
    It was so light now that she did not need her lamp. She blew it out and, as she did so, the great doors opened.
    ‘Madam?’ An elderly waiting woman, her hair in a fat white plait, entered the hall. ‘I was worried for you.’
    Her accents were gentle and guttural, recalling for Violante Bavaria and home. This was the duchess’s wet-nurse and oldest ally.
    ‘Gretchen.’ Violante’s voice was excited. ‘Find that orphan boy for me – Zebra. And, while he comes, writing materials.’
    The old woman, who had opened her