The Red Lily CrownBy Elizabeth LoupasNew American Library, 2014The setting of Elizabeth Loupas’s fast-paced and extremely winning new novel The Red Lily Crown is Florence in 1574 as a shadow looms over the city: the Grand Duke Cosimo de Medici is dying, and his successor is Prince Francesco, rumored to be a weird and vindictive crackpot with a penchant for sadism and a fascination for alchemy.The Grand Duke’s is not the only death that sets the novel’s plot lines in motion. Feisty young Chiara Neroni’s bookseller father has recently died, leaving his family bereft and prompting Chiara to a desperate course of action to save her loved ones: she’ll somehow manage to offer her father’s old alchemical books and materials to Francesco. Of course the plotting and duplicitous Francesco takes one look at her and has more in mind than an estate sale. He takes Chiara into a broiling Medici household of mistresses, backstabbers, and the faint hints of darker powers.In this dangerous new environment, Chiara meets a fair-haired and handsome Cornishman named Ruan, a fellow dabbler in alchemy, who was once a besotted admirer of Francesco’s sister, Isabella, whose allure brings out Loupas’s lyrical propensities (readers will remember these from her utterly delightful earlier novel The Second Duchess):

Once, she had surrounded herself with dozens of candles, hundreds of them, welcoming their light. Once, she had studied the cosmos, sponsored readings by poets, judged debates between fine young gentlemen over fine shades of meaning in words. Once, she had sun and danced like an angel, patronized composers and singers, surrounded herself with books so beautiful and expensive, she herself was the only one who dared open them to read. Once he had loved her – more than loved her, worshipped her, as any headstrong sixteen-year-old boy who thought he was a man would have worshipped Isabella de’ Medici, princess and duchess, first lady of Florence.

Ruan is a reluctant player in Francesco’s new court, in frequent and clandestine correspondence with Dr. Dee from the court of Elizabeth I (of course! As we’ve noted many times, Dr. Dee was the busiest man in the Elizabethan era), although none of his other activities distract him for long from the proto-science that fires his enthusiasm:

His thoughts circled back to alchemy.He did not really believe there was such a thing as the Lapis Philosophorum, at least not in the magical sense Grand Duke Francesco believed. However, he had seen elements combined, and in the course of the combination become something entirely different. Who would have believed such a metal as bronze to exist, until by accident some man had melted together copper and tin? Who would have known that crystals of silver contained silver and sulphur, until some alchemist had separated them into their component parts with strong acid? While playing at alchemy with the grand duke, who knew what new combinations or separations he might discover, and which ones might result in new, pure gold?

The legendary Philosopher's Stone is just one of the many well-orchestrated distractions running through Loupas's novel, which fizzes and pops on so many levels that even experienced readers of this sort of thing will find themselves guessing about some plot-resolutions right up to the book's final chapters. But what's most remarkable about The Red Lily Crown is how little it needs such theatrics; underneath all the personal intrigue and well-drawn historical detail, this is foremost a character-driven novel. And perhaps it's not surprising to note that despite the heroism of Chiara and Ruan (and despite the former's very commendable love of dogs), the book's standout character is Duke Francesco; our author seems to take special enjoyment in bringing his every depravity and duplicity into high relief. In fact, all her Medici characters are far more self-aware - for good or ill - than anybody else sharing their stage. Which is nothing but simple historical accuracy, after all.