Chapter 1: The Letter
Title: Tullia at Ferrara
Ferrara, Winter of 1537
The heavy scent of myrrh and candle wax lingered in the air of the dimly lit chamber, where tapestries hung like frozen music on the walls. Outside, the crisp early morning hushed the sounds of the bustling court, save for the murmur of lute strings and the distant pealing of church bells.
Tullia d’Aragona stood at the center of the room, veiled in silken crimson, her dark hair falling in a cascade of calculated disorder, and her fingers idly toying with a posy of heliotrope. The gold embroidery on her scarlett bodice caught the candlelight like the fire in her eyes.
The man before her, genuflecting in acutly pathetic desperation, Girolamo Muzio, poet and courtier, his doublet disheveled, his inkwell-stained hands trembling as he clutched the hem of her gown.
“lorem ipsum”
Tullia arched a brow, one hand moving from the posy to her waist. She did not smile. She observed him as a bored cat might observe a mouse trembling in its shadow.
“Signor Muzio,” she said, her voice a calm ripple across water, “you wrote of me as ‘Thalia’, the Muse of Comedy. Do I amuse you, then?”
“Nay, never! You inspire me, torment me, burn me! I would carve your name upon my flesh if the trees of the Po prove too few!”
She turned, her skirts brushing his shoulder like the brush of fate, and walked toward the window where moonlight poured in like melted silver. Her reflection shimmered faintly in the glass, shadowed by the trees where she knew Ercole Bentivoglio had recently scrawled her name in a fever of longing. Another soul undone.
“And lorem ipsumea.”
Lorem ipsum”
At this, Tullia finally turned, slowly, deliberately. “Liberty,” she said, tasting the word as if it were honey poisoned with rue. “I heard Ochino preach last Sunday. He spoke of free will as God’s highest gift.”
“Would you rather I withhold it?” he said, half-wild. “Shall I become cold, distant, pious? Must I play at being Bernardo himself to earn your favour?”
“You are not worthy to shine his boots,” she said, not cruelly, only with certainty. “Ochino seeks to elevate the soul; you seek to abase it before mine. One inspires. The other inspires disdain.”
Muzio’s face twisted. He could not tell if she had rejected him, or lorem ipds.
Lorem ”
Lorem ipsum t.
, the bells of San Francesco tolled again. Vittoria Colonna, in another part of Ferrara, wrote verses on the crucifixion. Tullia sang instead, her laughter sharp and as sweet as citrusr.
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