Page 226 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 26.

In what barren desert have I been sown!

Summer, 1576.

It broke Francesco's heart to have to let Bianca go. His feelings for her, although infused
with lust, were kind and loving. The happiest moments in his life were the ones he spent with
her. But it would not be long now before his elderly father, Cosimo, died, and Francesco was
crowned Grand Duke of Tuscany, at which point a clean, unquestionable lineage of legitimate
male descendants must be established. There can be no bastards. That would ruin the family
line for generations to come. Best to be done with Bianca and disavow any relationship to her
child. It has to be done, and the cleaner and quicker the better. Stoic as Francesco had had to be
with Bianca, as soon as he was alone in his chambers the afternoon he dismissed her, Francesco
burst into tears. My sweet! Why did I call her that? Why leave her with the hope there still
might one day be a future for us? Better to have led her to believe I no longer cared for her. I
should have called her whore and parasite. Scratch that; I couldn't bear to wonder her like that.
I should have ended the affair long long ago. Oh, but those warm, strong eyes of hers, those
apricotted cheeks, the softness of her zaftig skin and infinite depth of those bosoms....But no,
Francesco, that's over now. Bianca can be nothing to you now. Not even a memory. You
cannot think of her ever again. You cannot think of her eyes, her lips, her infinite bosoms.
Especially her infinite bosoms. Do not think of them. Francesco! I can hear you. You're
thinking of them, craving their taste. Stop it! Are you even listening to me?

It wasn't much use, his telling himself to forget Bianca. They had spent too many years
together delighting in each other's company. She'd become a part of everything he did,
everything he saw, tasted, heard, felt....He was still head over heels for her. However, he was a
Medici, and next in line for the throne, and that dictated his actions more than the giddiness of
his heart. So he was good to his promise, and stopped seeing her.

He had adjutants report back to him as to her safety and security, of course, but he sent
her no word. He sent her no more money. She was still living in that rather awkwardly-named
Casa di Bianca Cappello (what had he been thinking?), but he hoped it would be overlooked and
perhaps even forgotten in the grand and glorious plans he had to convert his offices in the next
two or three years to a magnificent art gallery! As grand as he could make it. Oh, and, this was
perhaps his best idea yet, he would have a new official royal portrait made of Joanna, his
Austrian wife, to be unveiled at the grand opening. A portrait of her would show his father and
everyone around him that he was a devoted family man and his days as a philandering scoundrel
were behind him, without, thanks be to God, a litter of any illegitimate bastards, not one.

He'd heard from his adjutants about the birth of Bianca's child. A son. He longed to go
to her, to him. But such things could not be. No, his duty now was to his lineage. But
Joanna...oh, poor, dour Joanna. Poor doury Joanna; such doury in exchange for her dowry. Poor
uninteresting grey-skinned foreign Joanna, how could a son possibly come out of their
passionless night together? Noblesse oblige! Duty! Such an exhilarating athletic event it used
to be with Bianca, of whom I no longer think, we were so raucous and sweaty! But with Joanna,

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