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Authors: Cecelia Holland

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BOOK: City of God
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The ceiling was very high; the four ample walls of the room were painted with vistas of hills and olive trees, a sky half blue and half cloud. The small, light furniture was set well away from the walls, to keep from disturbing the effect. It was supposed to be as if they stood on a hillside in the country. Nicholas was so accustomed to it that he had forgotten how to be amused by it. He went to the sideboard and slid open the top drawer.

“This is magnificent,” Stefano said.

“Do you think so?” Nicholas took a purse from the chest. “I used to enjoy it, but now it seems obvious. Fifty crowns.”

He held out the purse, and after a moment Stefano crossed the room and took it. Nicholas had seen several members of the Baglione family but hone as handsome as this one, with his red-brown hair and pale eyes, almost amber, and his fine sensuous mouth.

“Why are you doing this?” the fine mouth said.

“As I told you I am the resident secretary at the legation of the Signoria of Florence to the Papal Court. I collect news. I would pay to know the news of the Trastevere.”

Stefano gave the humph of a half-formed laugh. The purse slipped away inside his coat. “Corn is dear and the wine is always watered. Why should the Trastevere interest Florence? No one lives there—no one great. Only whores and thieves and working folk.”

“Cesare Borgia has a palace in the Trastevere,” said Nicholas. “Sit down, if you please. We'll have some wine. Unwatered.”

They sat in two facing chairs near the middle of the room. The old servant came silently in with wine in glasses.

Stefano sat perched uncomfortably on the edge of his chair. His gaze traveled over the painted walls. He held the wine a while in his hand before he drank it; then he drank it without tasting it, as if it were well water. He had no manner of a prince, for all his looks and name. His coloring was not that of a peasant. Wide-spaced, his eyes, above a large straight nose and a jaw that flared back from the chin into a belligerent wedge. Nicholas enjoyed this beauty. He let the wine lie on his tongue before swallowing.

“Oh.” The big man rose out of his chair, staring across the room. “That's clever—I never saw that until now.”

He meant the Roman temple painted in among the olive trees on the west wall. Nicholas said, “I'm pleased it amuses you.”

Stefano sat down again heavily in the chair. Something had put him on edge, perhaps Nicholas's tone of voice. He still held his empty glass and he set it down on the floor by his foot.

“I told you, I know nothing of Valentino.”

“What is your opinion of him?”

The pale eyes opened wider. “Valentino? He is a man, that one.”

“Ah.”

“A few years ago, what was he? The bastard son of a Spanish Cardinal. Now—Gonfalonier of the Church, conqueror of the Romagna—”

“Nor is his father a mere Cardinal, now, but the Pope. There have been men before who shone like stars while their relatives were Pope, and went out like candles when their patrons died. Girolamo Riario, for instance.”

Stefano shrugged. His clothes were badly cut of cheap fabric and did not suit him. “That is in the future,” he said. “Now Valentino is the greatest man in Italy.”

Nicholas propped his chin up on his fist, his elbow on the arm of the chair. “I want to know the gossip of the Trastevere. As much to know what folk believe as to learn what is true.”

“I'll do anything I'm paid for.”

Stefano put one hand on his coat, where the purse bulged. The door into the kitchen squealed and Juan returned, collected their glasses, and went out again.

“When you want to see me, leave word at the Fox and Grapes,” Stefano said. “That's a taverna, near Santa Maria—do you know it?”

“I am somewhat acquainted with the Trastevere.”

Juan returned with the glasses filled. Stefano's eyes turned to the old man as he crossed the room toward them. Nicholas touched his fingers to his cheek, softly, stroking his own skin. He wondered how Stefano would answer another proposal.

The old man brought his glass. Nicholas gave him a quick, weighted look and Juan left them. He would not come in again.

“I'm pleased you like my house,” Nicholas said.

“Yes,” Stefano said. He was sitting back in the chair, now, with the glass in his hand. “You must have a lot of money, to have a house like this.”

“Would that were true. I would enjoy showing you the rest of it.”

“Oh? Are there other rooms like this one?”

“Only the bedroom.”

The younger man's head snapped back. His shocked stare met Nicholas's and the color rushed into his cheeks.

“So. You are that kind. I thought so, when first I saw you. Well, I am not!”

“Very well,” Nicholas said.

“I enjoy women. Many women. I am very good with them, too—they adore me.”

“I dislike women,” Nicholas murmured.

“Yes, your kind does.”

Nicholas muttered behind his hand. He regretted letting this talk happen.

“Still, as I told you,” Stefano said, “I will do anything for money.”

Nicholas smiled, relaxing. He stirred in his chair, one hand on the arm. He wondered why Stefano had changed his mind, or if he had: perhaps he had only been defending his honor.

“How much?”

“One hundred crowns.”

“Per Baccho,” Nicholas said. “This is Rome, after all. For ten crowns I could buy a red hat. Twenty crowns, which is generous.”

“What am I—a whore? Besides, I am a virgin.”

“That is no advantage to me.”

“Forty crowns.”

“Thirty.”

Stefano looked away, casual, his attention going to the painted wall again. “Very well.”

Nicholas stroked his fingertips lightly over the oiled wood of the chair. “We'll have some more wine,” he said, and rose.

At nine the next morning Nicholas went into the Leonine City, across the river from the center of Rome, to attend Pope Alexander.

His walking stick tucked under his arm, he waited in a corridor of the Vatican Palace for his ambassador to arrive. The walls of the corridor were hung with indifferent paintings on mythological themes. Through an open window Nicholas looked out on a brick courtyard, half in sun, half in the shade of a tall stone pine; at the foot of the slender trunk there were piled several empty terra cotta wine jars. Nicholas stood admiring the accident of art in this scene through the window. He compared the sun-warmed colors of the brick and the pine with the lifeless painting of the Minotaur on the wall beside the window.

Bruni came, the Florentine legate to the Curia, a tall, solid man, smiling. “I am late,” he said, as if that pleased him. “As usual. What happened last night at your tryst?”

Nicholas cleared his throat. “Nothing.”

“No one came?” Bruni said sharply.

“They came. It was a trap, for the money.”

“Did they get it?”

Nicholas aimed his gaze out the window, unable to meet Bruni's eyes. “Yes.” The money had come out of Bruni's pocket.

“Fifty crowns!” said Bruni, in a rising voice.

“I could have refused to give it up,” Nicholas said, “and had my throat cut. And lost the money anyway.”

Bruni made a sound in his chest. Planting one fist on his hip, he glanced around them to see who might overhear. “How many were there?”

“Two.”

“Only two? You couldn't have escaped? I knew this was a mistake from the beginning. Well, never mind, it can't be avoided, I suppose, in our position. Let's go in. Maybe there's something to be learned here.”

Nicholas went after him down the corridor to the door at the end. They passed into a crowded, noisy room. Bruni sniffed. As his custom was in crowds, he thrust his head up and his chin into the air. “Get us through this mob,” he said. He maneuvered his way to the nearest window, took a handkerchief from his coat, and stood looking out and fluffing the handkerchief before his nose. Nicholas went toward the head of the room.

This was only the antechamber; the Pope would keep his informal audience in the next room. At the door between the two, several pages were loitering, some wearing the livery of the Borgias, some in other colors, and Nicholas moved in among them to the doorway.

This room was dark, but the next room was full of a golden light: its windows faced the sun. The walls were painted with murals, court scenes and crowds, like the court scene and crowd moving around the room. Nicholas could not see the Pope for the milling men and women, but he knew everyone there, and before half a minute had passed he had caught the attention of three or four people. Turning away from the door, he moved off a few steps along the wall.

Bruni's remarks about the fifty crowns still ruffled him; he wished that he had spoken up more for himself. He steered his thoughts away from the uses he had made of Stefano Baglione, who now had Bruni's money. Bruni was standing framed against the window. He wore a splendid coat of Milanese stuff, green with an intricate pattern woven through it in silver thread. The Florentine Signory would frown at that. They wanted a sober, mercantile appearance in their orators. Someone tugged on Nicholas's sleeve.

It was a page in the Borgia colors, little bulls embroidered on his fluffed-up velvet cap. He said, “His Holiness will receive the legate from Florence.”

Nicholas went to tell Bruni. The ambassador, putting on his smile, strode toward the door, Nicholas in his wake.

At this hour Pope Alexander saw only a few people outside his court. In fact he was not even in the golden room beyond the antechamber. The page led them through the scattering of people there; the chatter of voices made a complex music, and because of the painted courtiers on the walls they seemed many more than they were. Going out the far door, the page turned a corner and went through another door. Bruni and Nicholas waited in the tiny empty room where the page had left them. Nicholas could still hear the muffled voices in the sala grande.

“Are you coming in?” Bruni asked, between his teeth.

“Excellency, perhaps I could accomplish more without going in with you.”

“Very good.” Bruni waved at him, a vague salute, half blessing. The page returned and Bruni followed him away through the narrow door that led to the Pope.

Nicholas remained there, listening. Through the door he heard the patter of the page's announcement, and then the round jovial boom of Pope Alexander.

“There you are, Monsignor Bruni. What a shame you do not play tarocco, we might make a better game of it.”

Nicholas wondered whom the Pope was playing cards with and guessed it was his mistress, Giulia. The Pope's favorite partner, his daughter Lucrezia, was not in Rome. There was a screen across the door and he could hear very little of Bruni's peroration to the Pope. For months now the Florentine legation had been trying to persuade the Pope to release a prisoner from the dungeons of Sant' Angelo and this audience today was supposed to deal with that, not with the threat Valentino's army posed to Florence herself.

Nicholas wandered away from the door. He did not go back to the golden room full of courtiers; he went on deeper into the private apartments of the Borgias.

In the next room, which overlooked from another angle the pretty little courtyard he had admired from the corridor, kitchen servants in white scarves were setting out plates and glasses on a table. He turned toward the next room; he could hear music ahead of him, and a woman laughed. But before he could go on, a little page in pink satin ran out the door and all but collided with him.

The page blinked at him, round-eyed. “Messer Dawson!”

“Good morning, Piccolo.”

The page shrugged, still looking surprised, but of course he would not expect to find Nicholas here. He said, “Come with me, please.”

“I am looking for—”

“My mistress urgently wishes to see you.”

Nicholas raised his eyebrows. He followed Piccolo into the next room. That explained the little boy's look of surprise, that he had found Nicholas already on his way. They crossed the next room, where a man in work clothes was scrubbing off the wall; the Pope intended to paint every room of his apartments, but the work was hardly well begun yet. The page took him toward the music.

It came from a narrow sunlit room, the music of flutes and a little harpsichord. Nicholas paused just inside the threshold. The floor was of black and white tiles, like a chessboard. Two people were dancing across it like errant chessmen. The page went off to the musicians, and Nicholas stood there waiting to be noticed.

“Ah.” The woman abruptly stopped in the dance and turned out of her partner's arms. “Messer Nicholas.” Her bell-shaped skirt, weighted with jewels and metallic thread, went on swaying around her in its own dance.

“You may kiss my foot,” she said, and tittered and pulled her skirts up halfway to her knees to thrust out her slippered foot.

Nicholas bowed deeply over one knee. “As you have said it, Madonna Angela, consider I have done it.”

“Show me some respect, now—” she said. “I keep one of the keys under my pillow. Cecco, you may go.”

“Madonna.” Her dancing partner bowed and went out, with the musicians trailing after in his wake.

“I require something of you,” Angela Borgia said to Nicholas.

“Madonna, you need only ask.”

“Do you still keep your secluded house by the Colosseo?”

“Yes, Madonna.”

“I would like the use of it, tomorrow night.”

Nicholas said, “I will bring you the key to it with my own hand. Shall you need my house servant?”

“No—remove him. And yourself, entirely, Nicholas.”

“As Madonna wishes.”

“I shall send Piccolo for the key.” She sauntered closer to him; she had a little looking glass on a chain, at her belt, and she took it and looked at herself in it, then turned it to look at him in it. “And you, my love, will you need some other place to stay? I can provide you one.” She touched the enameled back of the mirror to his arm.

BOOK: City of God
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