LITMIR.BIZ

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took the reliquary from the priest and stepped down from the altar to the throne. He held the square, silver-and-glass box before King Ferrante and waited for the monarch to unseat himself and approach.

      My grandfather neither rose nor knelt in the presence of such a marvel. He remained settled on his throne, forcing the bishop to bring the reliquary to him. Only then did Ferrante yield to ancient custom and press his lips to the glass, beneath which lay the sacred blood.

      The bishop retreated to the altar. The royal males of Aragon then approached one by one, my father first, and kissed the holy relic in turn. We women and children followed—I and my brother still firmly clinging to each other. I pursed my mouth against the glass, warmed by the breath of my relatives, and stared at the dark liquid housed inside. I had heard of miracles, but never before seen one; I was amazed.

      I stood beside Alfonso as he took his turn; afterwards, we processed back to our assigned places.

      The bishop handed the reliquary back to the priest and made the sign of blessing, two fingers of his right hand slicing a cross through the air, first over my grandfather, then over the assembled royal family.

      The choir broke into song. The old King rose, a bit stiffly. The guards left their positions about the throne and preceded him outside the church, where carriages waited. As always, we followed.

      Custom required the entire congregation, including royals, to remain in place during the ceremony, while each member came forward to kiss the relic—but Ferrante was too impatient to be kept waiting for commoners.

      We returned directly to the Castel Nuovo, the trapezoidal hulk of mud-coloured brick built two hundred years earlier by Charles of Anjou to serve as his palace. He had first removed the crumbling remnants of a Franciscan convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Charles had valued protection over elegance: each corner of the castle, which he called the Maschio Angiono, the Angevin Keep, was reinforced by vast cylindrical towers, their toothy merlons jutting against the sky.

      The palace stood directly on the bay, so close to the shore that, as a child, I often stuck an arm through a window and imagined I caressed the sea. On that morning a breeze rose off the water, and as I rode in the open carriage between Alfonso and Isabella, I inhaled with pleasure the scent of brine. One could not live in Naples without being in constant sight of the water, without coming to love it. The ancient Greeks had named the city Parthenope for the ancient siren, half-woman, half-bird, who for unrequited love of Odysseus had cast herself into the sea. According to legend, she had washed up on Naples’s shore; even as girl, I knew it was not for love of a man that she had been lured into the waves.

      I pulled off my veil to better enjoy the air. To get an improved view—of the concave lunar crescent of coastline, with dusky violet Vesuvio to the east, and the oval-shaped fortress, Castel dell’Ovo, just to our west—I rose in the carriage and turned round. Isabella reseated me at once with a harsh tug, though her expression remained composed and regal, for the benefit of the crowd.

      Our carriage rumbled through the castle’s main gate, flanked by the Guard Tower and the Middle Tower. Connecting the two was the white marble Triumphal Arch of Alfonso the Magnanimous, erected by my great-grandfather to commemorate his victorious entry into Naples as its new ruler. It marked the first of many renovations he made to the crumbling palace, and once the arch was in place, he rechristened his new residence the Castel Nuovo.

      I rode beneath the lower of the two arches, and stared up at the bas relief of Alfonso in his carriage, accompanied by welcoming nobles. Far above, his hand reaching beyond the towers, an exuberant, larger-than-life statue of Alfonso gestured toward the sky. I felt exuberant, too. I was in Naples, with the sun and the sea and my brother, and I was happy.

      I could not imagine that such joy could ever be taken from me.

      Once inside the inner courtyard with the main gate closed, we climbed from the carriages and entered the Great Hall. There, the longest table in the world held a feast: bowls of olives and fruit, all manner of breads, two roast boars, their jaws propped open with oranges, roast stuffed fowl, and seafood, including succulent little crayfish. There was much wine, too—the Lachrima Christi, the tears of Christ, made from Greco grapes cultivated on the fertile slopes of Vesuvio. Alfonso and I took ours diluted with water. The Hall was adorned with flowers of every variety; the vast marble columns were draped with swags of gold brocade, trimmed in blue velvet, to which were fastened wreaths of blood-coloured roses.

      Our mother, Madonna Trusia, was there to greet us; we ran to her. Old Ferrante liked her, and cared not a whit that she had borne two children to my father without the benefit of wedlock. As always, she greeted each of us with a kiss on the lips, and a warm embrace; I thought she was the loveliest woman there. She glowed, an innocent golden-haired goddess amidst a flock of scheming ravens. Like her son, she was simply good, and spent her days worrying not about what political advantage she might gain, but what love she might give, what comfort. She sat between me and Alfonso, while Isabella sat to my right.

      Ferrante presided over the feast at the head of the table. In the distance behind him stood a great archway which led to his throne room, then his private apartments. Over it hung a huge tapestry of Naples’ royal insignia, gold lilies against a deep blue background, a fleur-de-lis legacy from the days of Angevin rule.

      That archway held special fascination for me that day; that archway was to be my passage to discovery.

      When the feast ended, musicians were brought in and dancing began, which the old King watched from a throne. Without so much as a sidelong glance at us children, my father took my mother’s hand and led her away to dance. I took advantage of the merriment to slip from Isabella’s half-attentive gaze and make a confession to my brother.

      ‘I am going to find Ferrante’s dead men,’ I told him. I intended to enter the King’s private chambers without his permission, an unforgivable violation of protocol even for a family member. For a stranger, it would be a treasonous act.

      Above his goblet, Alfonso’s eyes grew wide. ‘Sancha, don’t. If they catch you—there is no telling what Father will do.’

      But I had been struggling with unbearable curiosity for days, and could no longer repress it. I had heard one of the servant girls tell Donna Esmeralda—my nursemaid and an avid collector of royal gossip, that it was true: the old man had a secret ‘chamber of the dead’, which he regularly visited. The servant had been ordered to dust the bodies and sweep the floor. Until then I had, along with the rest of the family, believed this to be a rumour fuelled by my grandfather’s enemies.

      I was known for my daring. Unlike my younger brother, who wished only to please his elders, I had committed numerous childhood crimes. I had climbed trees to spy upon relatives engaged in the marriage act—once during the consummation of a noble marriage witnessed by the King and the Bishop, both of whom saw me staring through the window. I had smuggled toads inside my bodice and released them on the table during a royal banquet. And I had, in retaliation for previous punishment, stolen a jug of olive oil from the kitchen and emptied its contents across the threshold of my father’s bedchamber. It was not the olive oil that worried my parents so much as the fact that I had, at the age of ten, used my best jewellery to bribe the guard in attendance to leave.

      Always I was scolded and confined to the nursery for lengths of time that varied with the misdeed’s audacity. I did not care. Alfonso was willing to remain a prisoner with me, to keep me comforted and entertained. This knowledge left me incorrigible. The portly Donna Esmeralda, though a servant, neither feared nor respected me. She was unimpressed by royalty. Though she was of common blood, both her father and mother had served in Alfonso the Magnanimous’ household, then in Ferrante’s. Before I was born, she had tended my father.

      At the time, she was in the midst of her fourth decade, an imposing figure: large boned, stout, broad of hip and jaw. Her raven hair, heavily streaked with grey, was pulled back tautly beneath a dark veil; she wore the black dress of perpetual mourning, though her husband had died almost a quarter of a century before, a young soldier in Ferrante’s army. Afterwards, Donna Esmeralda had become devoutly religious; a gold crucifix rested upon her prominent bosom.

      She

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