The House of Medici_Seeds of Decline by Edward Charles

Author:Edward Charles [Charles, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781591932
Goodreads: 18320297
Publisher: Claymore Press
Published: 2013-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Everything is Changing

13th March 1458

‘I suppose it was soon after Donatello’s statue was unveiled that you all moved next door; into the great palace?’ The abbess seemed as sharp as ever she was and her eyes were bright with anticipation. So much so that today she had started asking questions even before she had sat down.

Caught off-balance, Maddalena paused. ‘Yes it was, but I don’t want you to think that our life at that time was all domesticity. Great changes were happening; many of them, at first, inside Cosimo’s head.

Madonna Arcangelica gave a decisive nod and settled herself. ‘Of course. I am jumping to conclusions when I should be letting you tell the story in your own way. I shall be quiet and let you inform and entertain me in your usual way.’

Inform and entertain? Maddalena repeated the words in her head, looking quietly at the abbess as she did so. She was more than pleased that their conversations had kept the abbess entertained. But informed? She had had inklings that there was more to some of Madonna Arcangelica’s questions than she let her expression admit, but this, perhaps, was confirmation that she was using their meetings to prepare herself for something.

She was sure now that the expected visitation by the patriarch and the Bishops was part of it. She had drawn that conclusion at the end of the previous week’s conversation. But there was more; a desire to understand how the outside world, and more specifically, the men in the outside world, thought. But more even than that. There had been something very telling in that nod. The abbess had hidden it quickly, but not before its meaning had emerged. Then it dawned on Maddalena. It was Cosimo’s mind the abbess really wished to understand.

She took her mind back, quickly; to the very reason he had brought her here. His project, in recognition of his legitimate sons’ weaknesses, to put funds aside for Lorenzo. Lorenzo the grandson who would inherit it all: the bank, its obligations and its influence; as well as its profits, and the political power that arose from all that money.

Cosimo had never admitted how many preparatory meetings he had held with the abbess, but to judge by their mutual demeanour; they must have had a number of discussions and reached a considerable rapport with one another. Had she too been tasked with some part of the plan? Was the abbess an undeclared partner in the project that had caused Cosimo to bring her to this convent in the first place?

It was a conundrum; if you were given a secret to keep, how did you respond when you began to suspect that someone else, someone you had learned to like and to trust, already shared that secret? Perhaps she and Madonna Arcangelica were in the same position? Was the abbess, even at this minute looking at her and asking herself the same question?

Across the room, the abbess found her mind drifting. She let her eyes

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