Welcome to chapter two and thanks for the reviews! In this chapter, you will meet Simonetta, who is based on the real woman of the same name, although I don't know what her real age at the time was. Who is she? And how will Elizabeth's Italian marriage turn out to be? Read and find out!
TWO – Simonetta and me
Before I can speak about my relationship with Simonetta, I must first mention the circumstances which led to my meeting her and which transformed me from the obedient English princess I once was. In 1509, I married Lorenzo de' Medici and thus entered a world very different from mine. The Medici, despite their loss of Florence, were powerful and ambitious and extremely entangled in the current troubles of the country. Italy had been cursed by wars for some decades now. It was a "pit filled with snakes", as my mother-in-law told me the day before my wedding. I had no idea what I was entering into.
Lorenzo was no help. I do not want to join this new-fangled leaning to scold one's husband as ungallant, but neither will I lie. He wasn't a bad man nor a bad husband, but being only seventeen, like me, and having a rather close-lipped personality, Lorenzo wasn't someone I could rely on. But that was exactly what I needed, for I felt utterly strange to Venice. The climate, the clothes, the language, they were all alien to me. In the first months, I felt very grateful for having joined Harry's Latin lessons at an early age, for most of my fellow noblemen spoke Latin. Lorenzo, however, enjoyed conversing in the vernacular Italian, a language which sounded odd to my ears. It seemed like a dumbed-down version of Latin to me and I could not fathom what brought him to like it.
Nevertheless, I tried my best to learn and adapt quickly in order to please my husband. I did not want to bring shame to my family. Unfortunately, the news of my father's passing arrived only a few weeks after my wedding. Needless to say, I was devastated. He may not have been very close to me, but I assume every child loves their father unconditionally. My children certainly do, and they have barely any memory of him. But there I was then, a young foreign princess with a broken heart. My only comfort was Simonetta.
She was a maid of my mother-in-law, a sturdy woman in her twenties with darkish skin, but pale green eyes. Her father had been a moor, she told me, and that was everything I ever heard about the matter. It certainly did not matter to me, for Simonetta was an outsider just like me, and in this, we were alike. She took an immediate liking in me because, as she later told me, I looked like a "lost little duckling" at my wedding day. But it was my father's death that brought us together and founded our friendship, for she found me crying in my room.
"Do not cry, Madonna, or the mistress will hear you," Simonetta said and closed the door behind her. She then held me and listened quietly as I sobbed about my father and the fact that I had not been able to really say goodbye to him and that I had not expected him to die so soon. She was very sympathetic, but when I had ended she handed me a piece of cloth and told me to show strength. My mother-in-law, she said, would otherwise think me weak, which would not prove beneficial for my marriage. I was so surprised by her concern for me that I obeyed.
This relationship would continue over the years. Simonetta was a cunning woman with a heart-warming laughter, and despite her strange looks, many men were attracted to her. So, too, was Giulio de' Medici, son of the heinously murdered Guiliano de' Medici, who had been famous for his good looks. Giulio took after him in that and the fact that he was as close to his cousin, Giovanni, as their fathers had been. He was an aspiring man who supported the ambitions of Giovanni, the family head whom we all simply called "the Cardinal". I knew of his love affair with Simonetta and I knew it was not going to end well, but I helped her to conceal it from my mother-in-law Alfonsina nonetheless. Why not? We were friends, we were young, we were carefree. It was only when she got pregnant that things started to change.
I did not know it then, but the decision I made to save the day was the first of many hard decision my life would force me to make, and I was only eighteen at the time. Simonetta only confessed to me that she was with child, and this time it was her who was sobbing in my arms. I comforted her and told her I would think of a way to save her. But the stakes were high: The child's father would never be able to marry her since Giovanni had lately expressed plans of making him a clergyman, too. Even though clergymen often fathered bastards at the time, it would do no good to the family's cracked reputation, and I had inkling that a shining reputation would soon be necessary. The Cardinal would wait only a few years before proving me right.
"You can pass it off as Lorenzo's. He will acknowledge it," I told her a few days later.
"I can't, Madonna. It would put shame on you!"
"Not so much as it would shame the family if anyone knew the truth. The Cardinal will see that it is wise. He will make Lorenzo acknowledge it if we propose the thought to him. He will want to make sure that Giulio's child is safe and well taken care of, and you would not be separated from your child. Does that not make you happy?"
She nodded and embraced me, not saying anything further about the matter. I knew that people would laugh behind my back once this became public, that they would ridicule me for not baring my husband a child after one year of marriage when a half-Moorish servant could. Had my father still been alive, I would have been too afraid to risk this, but now I felt more compelled to help my friend than anything. My brother Harry, who was now King of England, would surely understand. He had always been more emotional than our father. If he ever heard of the matter, I knew I could make him understand. We had always been close.
I then wrote a letter to the Cardinal and somehow I feel that this was the moment I entered that special field of war which is euphemistically called politics. I had begun to meddle in others' affairs. There was no going back now.
The Cardinal accepted my reasoning and did as I suggested, and thankfully, he did so without ever mentioning my name. Gnawing his teeth, Lorenzo then came to me and told me he had been ordered to accept the Cardinal's bastard as his. He made no excuse towards me, though he did seem sympathetic for what this must mean for me, but instead he promised me that we would soon have legitimate children and Simonetta's child would be forgotten. I nodded and smiled, not telling him that I would make sure the baby would never be forgotten. It was a boy whom we named Alfonso to please my mother-in-law. Simonetta had originally wanted to call him Alessandro, but when I told her how much I liked that name, she stepped back and told me I should keep it for my own sons. I still think about that moment a lot, especially when looking at Alessandro today.
Whether or not Alfonsina ever knew that Alfonso was not her grandson I cannot say, but she was clearly as suspicious as she was furious. When he was born, she did not speak to either Lorenzo or me for a full month after telling him he had acted morosely and me that I did not fulfil my wifely duties properly. She could be very strict about matters that she deemed important and the future of her offspring was one such thing.
"You have to understand that she is an Orsini," Simonetta told me in the year after my wedding. "The Orsini are a very powerful family themselves. There were even Orsini popes. And when she married your late father-in-law, may God keep his poor soul, they had very high hopes for her. But the master was no fortunate man. He lost everything his father, the Magnificent, had built. He lost Florence. He drowned in a river. It is not easy being the wife of such a man."
To this very day, I have never liked Alfonsina, but I always reminded myself why she did things the way she did them. She wanted to make the best of a dreadful situation and ensure the fortune of her son and daughter. She was a woman playing the game of politics and thus no stranger to slanderous nicknames like "she-wolf." From today's point of view, I even pity her a bit, but to me, she was a mean old hag nevertheless because of her ill treatment of Simonetta after the birth.
Alfonsina kept her as a maid, but always made sure she got the lowest of tasks and had no contact with Alfonso. It was quite troublesome to distract her long enough for Simonetta to see her son, but somehow I always managed to perform this miracle. It was a dangerous game to play behind her back, but for me it was worth it. And fortunately for Simonetta and me, the events soon came thick and fast.
In 1512, Spanish troops financed by the Medici defeated the officials of the "usurper Republic of Florence", as the Cardinal called them. The siege of Prato led to the abdication of Piero Soderini, the head of state, and the Medici return to power in Florence. But what was even more important to me was the fact that in that year, I finally gave birth to my first child after an arduous ordeal of 36 hours which I am sure I only survived because Simonetta held my hand the entire time. It wasn't a son, but I still considered it a major yield for my marriage that I had given birth to a healthy child, so I suggested we name her Vittoria – victory. Lorenzo, who was just as eager to please his mother, readily agreed. "Pretty thing. She would be a fine bride for my Alfonso," Simonetta joked after the ordeal was over. Laughing weakly, I replied: "But they are considered siblings," to which Simonetta grinned and said: "Didn't stop the Borgias, though."
Not even a year later, the Cardinal was elected Pope and became Leo X. It was now clear to everyone that the Medici star was on the rise again. Alfonsina and I, however, could not enjoy this at first, for we both fell seriously ill with a fever like many other Florentines. The Lord decided to spare our lives, but the sickness lost me the child I had been carrying. Thankfully, my mother-in-law was still too weak to scold me for it, and Simonetta assured me that in time I would be having healthy children again. It had simply been bad luck, she told me.
That's what she was like: Optimistic, supporting, with a hint of sarcasm. I have met many women in my life, many of high birth and some of good education, but I have never found someone to resemble her cunning and good-heartedness. There was no malice in Simonetta da Collevecchio, which is more than I can say about any other man or woman out there. She was as true a friend as ever I had. When I had to leave Italy in 1519, I felt worse about leaving her than about leaving my husband. I got to see her again, for which I am very grateful, but it before I can speak about matters so far away from 1513, I need to tell you about another person of importance in my life, a man a met only months after my dreadful sickness and the painful loss of my child:
Niccolò.
