Page 420 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Translator’s Note. If you look closely at Allori’s official royal portrait
commissioned for this occasion, you will notice conspicuously missing are the
“dragons” -- Bianca was so upset at their loss, she had Allori paint them over
and not include them in this portrait. You can see the dragons in other pictures of
her, either with the oval mandola shaped red ruby amulet around her neck, and
less often, with the locket she wore about her forehead. The dragons’ absence,
historians believe, was a great contribution to her famous physical relapses of
1583 and 1584, leading to her renewed insistence to Francesco that they spend a
month at Villa a Caiano, trying to recover their long-past-recoverable health.

Tertian fever ran rampant through Italy that whole decade, and consumed Chimento
Zaccario, both of the Cardinal’s whispering assassins, the three ladies in waiting, the apothecary
who sold the del Meglio’s the Astragalus at such an exorbitant rate, and the cowardly Clemenzo
di Fesa, who refused to defend Valerius. Tertian fever in later years became known as malaria,
the official cause of death of the Duke and Duchess of Tuscany.

*

Luzetta, Carola’s prison-mate, was cleared of the charges against her, and went on to
form an important and highly profitable hospital for women and children. The guard who
accepted Tozzo’s bribe to free Carola used the money to school himself at university, and he
became a powerful voice for cleaning corruption in the Italian judicial system, until a cadre of
magistrates paid him to take his advocacy to Austria, which he did.

The dragons were eventually found, years and years later, in England, by a descendant of
Dr. Gerolano Cardano who had apparently accepted them as payment from an extraordinary deaf
man with whom Cardano had great success teaching to speak. Dr. Cardano reports in his diaries:

“The deaf man is highly motivated to learn the technique of laryngeal
manipulation. He and his travel companion speak of an urgency for the young
man to testify in person -- they use the word ‘stipulate’ -- in some family matter
having to do with the deaf man’s Italian inheritance. This pair has developed a
most intricate system of written symbols in order to speak with each other! I am
as intrigued by their written language as the deaf man is by my laryngeal one.
But they are secretive. They make only veiled and, I must say, rather juvenile and
even silly pantomimes about feigning their own deaths. Though whether they are
about to feign their deaths, or have already done so, I cannot learn from them.
They are most closed off to me. They speak more to my little four-year-old
grandson, Roberto, than they do to me! Maybe some day Robert will tell me what
secrets they confided in him. I do so hate secrets.”

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