Belladonna (7 page)

Their fingers were still intertwined, their foreheads touching. Connected. So close. Their eyelashes practically weaving together.

Cass realized she could kiss him. She could just tilt her head slightly and their lips would meet. For the first time she wanted to. She wanted to show him that she cared for him, that she was a good and decent woman, not the kind of person who would just let him die because it was convenient to do so.

Luca reached up with his free hand again. Cass felt certain he was going to angle her mouth toward his. Her eyelids started to flutter closed, but then stopped when she felt a point of pressure against her throat. She realized her cloak had fallen open, and that her lily pendant was exposed. Luca was touching it.

“I’m so glad you’re wearing it,” he whispered, his voice growing hoarse. “It’ll be something for you to remember me by.”

Cass swallowed down a lump in her throat. She touched her lips to the corner of his jaw, exhaling hard against his skin. “Stop it this instant. I will not give up on you, Luca da Peraga.”

Luca turned his mouth so his lips just barely brushed against hers, so quickly her mouth formed an O of surprise. Her legs wavered and her body threatened to crumple to the floor. She didn’t know if it was the unbearable heat or her uncomfortable position. Or the kiss. She closed her eyes for a second, holding fast to Luca’s hand until her bones went steady again.

He chuckled, an actual laugh. “Now, no matter what happens, I’ll have that to remember you by.”

Cass leaned forward and felt the metal bars of the grate digging into her skin. She didn’t care. Suddenly she wanted to be as close as she could to Luca. Luca, who now wanted her to forget his death and find someone else with whom she could be happy. Cass had never known such selflessness before. She pressed her mouth hard against his, ignoring his sweat and the stubble of his beard digging into her skin. His whole body tensed in response. For one sweet moment, the filth and the stench and the grimness of the situation dissipated. All Cass felt was herself and Luca, connected.

When they broke apart, she struggled to catch her breath. “Now stop talking of remembrances and tell me where to find this book.”

Luca touched his free hand to his lips. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright. “My father believed the book was in Florence, the birthplace of the Order.” He dropped his voice. “But I can tell you for certain where to find the pages.”

“Where?” Cass asked. Around her, the prisoners’ moaning seemed to fade; the whole room fell quiet.

“Locked inside your family tomb.”

“What?” Cass wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him right. “The Caravello tomb?”

“Yes.”

“But why would your father put them
there
?” Cass asked.

“He didn’t,” Luca said. “Your mother did.”

What? Why would my mother—”

Heavy boot steps sounded behind her. The jailer was coming. Cass was out of time.

“The key is in the study at my family palazzo,” Luca whispered. “Hidden in the fireplace.”

Before Luca could explain further, the jailer took hold of Cass’s arm and hauled her back to her feet. “You must go now,” he said, prodding her roughly through the door that led back into the passageway.

Wiping the perspiration from her brow, Cass retraced her steps to the room with four doors, where she quickly exchanged her shoes and cloak with Siena.

“Let’s go,” Cass said. “I’ll explain on the way.” She towed Siena across the vestibule and down the stairs. A pair of noblewomen stood just inside the porta della carta, their handmaids hovering dutifully at their sides. Cass could feel all four sets of eyes burning into her back as she passed.

“Get everything you came for?” the shorter soldier asked as Cass slipped back into her chopines. She ignored him, heading quickly across the smaller part of the piazza to the lagoon, where Giuseppe and their gondola bobbed in the quay.

For one brief second, Cass allowed herself to replay the kiss, the prickle of Luca’s beard against her chin, his lips on hers. Softness. Pressure. How could he just tell her to forget him and find someone else if he loved her? Even if Cass were to be executed, she would want her husband to weep over her corpse, to declare her the great love of his life.

Without waiting for Giuseppe’s assistance, she wobbled her way into the boat. She instructed him to take them down the Grand Canal.

“Where are we going?” Siena asked, taking Giuseppe’s gnarled hand in her own as she lifted her skirt over the side of the gondola.

Cass yanked open the slats on the felze. “We have to go to Palazzo da Peraga, but first we’re going to pay a little visit to Donna Zanotta.”

Giuseppe obeyed wordlessly. He had been working for Agnese’s estate for more than thirty years and had learned not to question the whims of Cass or her aunt. It occurred to Cass for the first time that he must know many secrets about Agnese. She wondered what sort of stories he might be able to tell.

As they passed into the wealthiest part of the San Polo district, Cass balled her fists tightly in her lap. Hortensa had everything. What could Dubois possibly have promised her in exchange for her testimony? Had she done it just to be cruel, to be hurtful? Or had he threatened her to get her to comply?

Giuseppe slowed the boat to a stop in front of Palazzo Zanotta, a vast and ostentatious building with a façade made of brick and brightly painted marble trimming. Don Zanotta’s private dock featured a pair of mooring posts carved in the shape of knights wielding broadswords. Giuseppe tied up the gondola and helped Cass and Siena from the boat.

Cass glanced up as she stepped onto the dock. The sun had made its way across the sky. It must be late afternoon already. She adjusted her lace collar, which seemed intent on strangling her.

The front door of Palazzo Zanotta was made of carved wood and gold filigree. An ornate bronze doorknocker in the shape of a wreath was mounted at eye level. Cass reached up and knocked the circle of metal leaves, wincing when the foliage’s sharp edges pricked the skin of her hand.

No one answered. She knocked again, this time more insistently. Louder. More knocks. “It appears no one is home,” Siena ventured.

“Of course someone is home,” Cass said crossly. “Don Zanotta wouldn’t just let his palazzo sit empty, not even if he and the donna were away.”

Eventually the front door opened a crack and a wrinkled, pasty face appeared. “The don and donna are away in Florence,” the servant rasped.

Cass wasn’t even sure if she was speaking to a man or a woman. The door started to close and Cass jammed her foot in the crack. “When will Donna Zanotta be back?” she asked. “It’s important that I speak to her as soon as possible.”

“Not until the end of summer. They left yesterday at daybreak. You just missed her.”

How convenient. Hortensa Zanotta had given false testimony and then immediately fled the city. And to Florence of all places, where Luca believed the Book of the Eternal Rose to be. Could it be a coincidence? Or was everything somehow connected?

Cass nodded at the servant, and then she and Siena returned to the gondola. Giuseppe made quick work of rowing them through the network of smaller canals to Palazzo da Peraga. The whole place looked a little worn, as if even the servants were neglecting it. The shutters were fastened tightly and the mooring post was in bad need of a repainting.

It had been years since Cass had last visited Luca’s family home. Back then, her parents would always speak quietly to his parents in the study while she and Luca were either abandoned in the portego or ushered out into the tiny courtyard to “play.” For Luca this usually meant time to read. Sometimes he would pick out a book for Cass too. Then they would sit curled up in garden chairs for hours. Cass had found it dull, and even a little rude, that Luca spent so much time reading around her. Now she thought perhaps it had just been his shyness that kept him from speaking more.

The girls exited the gondola, and Cass stepped up to Palazzo da Peraga’s door and rapped sharply. Siena stood next to her, worry manifested in her posture, in the way she kept threading and unthreading her fingers.

Cass knew it should bother her—really bother her—that Siena was in love with Luca, especially if she was going to continue serving her after Cass and Luca got married. But right now, Cass was just grateful to have such a staunch ally.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Siena asked.

“A key.” Cass didn’t explain further, that the key unlocked her family tomb. She was still struggling to wrap her mind around that fact. Surely her parents hadn’t been members of any Order that included Joseph Dubois, but then how had her mother come into possession of the documents Dubois was so desperate to acquire?

The da Peragas’ butler, a tall lanky man with silvery hair and piercing brown eyes, opened the door. Though she had been just a child when she had last visited, he recognized Cass immediately. “Signorinas, do come in,” he said.

“Signore,” Cass said, trying to recall the man’s name, but failing. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

Two men were sitting in the portego, sorting through stacks of crumbling parchment.

The butler noticed Cass staring. “They’re looking through the estate’s finances. We are trying everything we can to help Signor da Peraga during this difficult time.” The butler stumbled over the last couple of words.

“Do you believe he is innocent?” Cass said.

“Of course,” the butler said, looking shocked. “But sometimes it isn’t the truth that matters. It’s what other people think is true.” He sighed. “What can I do for you, Signorina?”

“I was hoping to look around,” she said. She tried to make her voice wistful, as if she were merely interested in acquiring a few tokens to remind her of her fiancé. She didn’t want to tell the men she had spoken to Luca earlier. They would not approve of her bribing the Palazzo Ducale jailer.

“Go ahead. The soldiers came to search the place this morning. We’ve done our best to return everything to its place.”

Cass’s stomach tightened. So the soldiers had been here. She could only hope they had not discovered the key.

Siena trailed behind her as Cass pushed open the thick wooden door to the study. It swung inward, creaking on its rusted hinges. She went immediately to the fireplace. Kneeling on the tile floor, she peered up into the darkness of the chimney. She reached a gloved hand into the flue. Soot rained down, blackening her glove and making her cough. She examined the entire fireplace, running her hands across the bricks, wondering if maybe she’d misunderstood Luca’s words.

Then her fingers skimmed a rough edge. She paused and peered closer. Once again, she traced a finger of her dirty glove over the thin strip of mortar between two of the bricks at the back of the fireplace.

One of the bricks was definitely loose. She jiggled it, biting her lip to keep from crying out as the brick fell into her hand, exposing a hollow space at the back of the fireplace. Cass reached back into the dark opening. Her fingers closed around something wrapped in fabric. She pulled it out for examination. It was a bright red bundle. Inside it was a key.

Siena sucked in a breath. “Whose crest is that?” She pointed at the carving of a lion holding a shield. “The da Peraga family?”

Cass shook her head. Her mouth was dry. “It’s mine,” she croaked out. “It’s the Caravello crest.” She had seen the emblem on sashes and wall hangings and even some of the dinner napkins she had used as a child.

Turning the key over in her hands, she ran one finger along the dulled edges of its teeth. How did her mother come to possess documents from a mysterious Order? Why had she hidden them among the dead?

When Cass and Siena arrived back at the villa, there was another surprise waiting for them: a wide blue boat with long leather privacy curtains was tied up at Agnese’s splintering dock. A black silk banner emblazoned with a gold griffin holding a flaming sword was mounted on the stern of the boat. The word
victory
was splashed across the sword’s blade.

The rage that Cass had been fighting all day threatened to overwhelm her. She knew that crest. She had seen the blue boat before. “What is Joseph Dubois doing here?” she spat out.

She didn’t even wait for Siena to exit the gondola behind her. She kicked off her chopines as she ran across the damp lawn, sprinting up the stairs and into the portego. Dubois was sitting across the table from her aunt Agnese, sipping from one of Agnese’s painted teacups. They both looked up at Cass in surprise.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Cass burst out. Blades of wet grass fell from the hem of her skirts onto the clean portego floor. “Letting thieves and murderers go free while sending an innocent man to the gallows? Now you’ve come all the way out here to revel in our misery? Is that it?”

“Cassandra!” Agnese cried out, shocked.

Dubois looked unfazed. “Signorina Caravello,” he said, rising from his seat to bow. “Your passion is so like your mother’s.”

“You have no right to speak of my mother,” Cass said, wishing her voice wouldn’t shake.

Agnese looked as though her eyes were about to pop out of her head. “I apologize, Signore,” she said quickly. “I can’t imagine what has made my niece behave in such a fashion.” She turned back to Cass, scowling so deeply that her silvery eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead.

“It’s all right, Signora Querini,” Dubois said. “Young Signorina Caravello is under a great deal of stress. Perhaps, Signorina, it will please you to know that we have apprehended the man responsible for Sophia Garzolo’s death. He is scheduled to be hanged at sunset exactly a fortnight from now.”