Page 156 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 5.

Meet the poisoner

Dr. Ludovico Valerius knew, in fact, he was not without his enemies in I Magistrati, the
so-called “offices” of the Duke Francesco de Medici, “il uffizi” in Italian. Duke Francesco
employed inventors, scientists, medical men, and other remarkable men teeming with curiosity
and the drive to investigate, invent, test and experiment, but also alchemists, astrologers and
occultists, not all of whose livelihoods would thrive if Valerius’s scientific approach won the
day. Duke Francesco had hired Dr. Valerius to help cure the Duchess dei Medici, Bianca
Cappello. The Duchess was growing paler by the day.

Francesco was putting great pressure on Valerius, indeed on many of those employed at
the Offices, to cure Bianca, saying very quietly and confidentially to Valerius, “Your life is
dependent upon hers, you know. If she dies, then you’ll be next. Oh, dear! I don’t mean that as
a threat,” he had said.

“If you had meant it as a threat,” responded Dr. Valerius, not without a certain level of
uncomfortability, “How differently would you have worded it?”

“Let me be clear,” said the Duke.

“I’d prefer that,” said the doctor.

“I mean, if you don’t succeed in curing my wife, I’ll have you killed.”

“Still a bit of a threat there. Am I missing something?”

“I mean...I would go mad without her, as mad as poor King Charles VI, and in my
madness I would, no doubt, kill everyone around me. Or have them killed.”

“Same result for me, sire.”

“Yes. So! What I’m saying is: Find a cure for her, Dr. Valerius.”

“Yes, sire.” The doctor truly didn’t need the threats to be motivated to heal Bianca
Cappello. He quite liked her, and found her cheery, bright smile a welcome contrast to all the
dour, serious faces of his fellow scientists in the offices, dodging day after day with the books
and ledgers and measurements and powers. So he was happy enough to spend all his day
working on the problem of helping her. But unfortunately for the Doctor, his day by daily
routine had become severely interrupted and turned upside-down several months ago when the
Duke Francesco de Medici had announced he was closing half of the Offices, repurposing them
into an enormous series of galleries for his growing art collections.

The problem, of course, was that the new galleries were currently occupied by all the
scientists and experimenters whom Francesco had hired, and he’d made the odd decision to keep
everyone working while the conversion was taking place. So now the offices were in utter
chaos. Workers, plasterers, scaffolders, measurers, painters, carpenters. Noise, the noise!

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