Communion Blood (45 page)

“Oh, yes it was,” said Leocadia, in the voice of one in the midst of revelation. Taking a long, uneven breath she finally stopped her tears. “He intended that I should be miserable. He has done it deliberately. He
wants
me to be unhappy so I will not mind wedding a debauched husband.” Saying this aloud made it more real, more accurate. “Yes. I see it all clearly: that is his plan.” She became very quiet. “Well. Now I know.” She found the sash to her wrapper and pulled it around her waist. “He says he wishes to see me. Let it be now, and let it be here.”

“But Signorina, you are not dressed,” Feve protested, shocked.

“He is my brother and a Cardinal. If he demands to speak to me at once, I will accommodate his demands.” Her dismay was gone; in its place was a cold-burning anger that frightened her maid.

“He should come to this room?” Feve asked, looking around its gloom. “Let me light the candles.”

“Leave me your flint-and-steel. I will attend to it,” said Leocadia, sounding as if she were speaking in a dream. “This might as well be setded.”

Feve was confused; she had not been in the household long enough to comprehend the undercurrents that ran in it, but she had heard the servants whisper about things that were too outrageous to be true. She took her flint-and-steel from her pocket and handed them to Leocadia as she sidled to the door, “I will tell him you are waiting to see him,” she said before she made good her escape.

Leocadia was unable to move as she waited for her brother to enter the room. She wondered if she had set a trap for herself and was now caught in it. All the courage she had summoned up to insist that he come to her was lost as quickly as it had arisen; her pulse was loud and weak at once, and she could not convince herself that he would be content with excoriating her. When his wrath took hold of him, he lost all semblance of virtue and did these things that would send them both to the innermost circle of Hell: he had forcibly lain with her three times since her return from the Villa Vecchia, and no importunities on her part had kept him from possessing her; he had told her that she was the cause of his sinning, and had been the cause from the first. As much as she denied it, she was afraid that he was right, for the Church taught that women were intrinsically more sinful than men. His recriminations echoed in her mind as she strove to keep her purpose uppermost in her thoughts.

His knock on the door seemed loud as cannon-fire. “Leocadia!”

“I am here, brother,” she answered, hating the whine she heard. The door opened and the Cardinal stepped inside, very grand in his red satin. “You must know why I have to speak to you.”

“No,” she replied, seeing the glint in his eyes.

“Do not be coy with me,” her brother said in an edgy voice that told her that he was already lost in his litany of reproach.

“I..
. don’t know,” she said, trying not to be cowed. “I suppose it is about my forthcoming nuptials.”

“So willing you are that you are pleased with your arrangements, or you have tried to make me believe you are.” He shook his head in an exaggerated kind of sympathy. “How much of an idiot do you take me for?”

“I would be the idiot, to try to deceive you,” she said, hoping she could placate him. “How could I hope to succeed?”

He took a hasty step toward her. “You are flippant with me?” His disapprobation became more marked. “You are pretending innocence—to
me?”

Leocadia felt sick; she had seen this pattern before, too often, and knew that it boded ill for her. “You bafHe me. I have done nothing to earn your condemnation, I swear by the Virgin and the Saints.” She crossed herself, as much for her own protection as to demonstrate her piety. “Whatever you have discovered that you attribute to me, I cannot guess: it is not mine to own.” As she did her best to summon up other protestations of her rectitude she tried to back away from him, to get out of reach. “If someone has spoken against me, it is a falsehood or a mistake—”

“Do not be sly with me, sister. You are a font of deception.” He took two brisk steps toward her and struck her a sharp blow across the face. “Now, think. Tell me what lies you have spoken. Do not suppose you can hide your mendacity from me: I know the black depths of your soul.”

“I have not lied!” she protested as she brought up her hands to shield her face from more blows.

He lashed out again. “You have plotted and schemed, and you will stop at nothing to ruin me. You have made it your purpose to bring ignominy upon me. You have!” His fist landed on her hip, hurling her back; she struggled to stay on her feet.

This was worse than she feared, for his wrath was growing so quickly that she had no way to circumvent it. “Feve is coming,” she said desperately, wanting to forestall any greater damage. “You do not want her to witness this.”

“She will not come,” her brother panted. “I have sent her to supper. What would she see but a chastisement you have brought upon yourself?”

“But I have done nothing,” she cried out, and hated the lie she knew it was, for she had been planning her escape for weeks. Had he discovered her plans?

“You are perfidy itself,” the Cardinal exclaimed, pursuing her; there was a glaze to his eyes that Leocadia dreaded. He reached out to grab her arm and snagged the front of her wrapper; the fabric tore, revealing her corset beneath. “There! You see how you—how you exploit your charms to my ruin.” He lunged for her, but she eluded him.

“Martin, don’t do this. I pray you, do not do this,” she whispered, moving back along the cutting-table. “You are in error. Someone has misinformed you.” She was as consumed with fury as much as with fear. “You shall not do this to me!”

The Cardinal laughed. “You delight in compromising me, in turning me away from my chastity in the most execrable way. That is bred in your bones from the time of Eve. You are one with her. Desecration is the heritage of all women.” He nearly caught her in a sudden lurch that caught the edge of the cutting-table and made it shift, scraping hideously as it moved; her deep-rose dress slid off the edge and onto the floor between them. “The very color of shame! Your own garments condemn you!” he exulted.

“You are wrong to accuse me,” said Leocadia, her voice rising in pitch. “No, Martin, do not—”

He snared her near the fireplace; his arm went out around her, and he shoved her around so that he pinned her against the cutting- table. “You are made of prevarications. Mendacity is your virtue. You corrupt and debauch everything you touch. Ursellos is depraved because of you, and I have fallen into sin at your temptations.” He began to fumble with her clothes. “You sought this of me. You received me as the loose woman you are. It is your nature to defile those who strive to live Godly lives.”

Leocadia struggled against him. She wanted to scream, but knew if she did, it would gain her nothing but a beating, for in this palazzo, no one would dare to answer her calls for help. Tears smarted in her eyes and she tried to wriggle free of him. “Martin, let me go. For the love of God, let me—” She got no further.

“Trollop!” he raged at her. “How can you—you are appalling!” He struck her face several times.

“No!
No!”
She flailed at him, trying to kick him or shove him off of her, but he landed a blow to the side of her head that dazed her and left her feeling nauseated and dizzy. She began to swing her arms, trying to find some vantage-point to hit him; she was as angry as she was frightened now, and she could not bear the thought that he would use her yet again—not when he was forcing her to marry a degenerate. Her eyes stung and the back of her mouth tasted of bile. She wanted to escape, to vanish from this room, from Roma, from the world. “Martin,” she begged. “Don’t.”

He was beyond listening; already he was fumbling with his clothes while trying to keep her pinned against the table. When she was able to strike him with her fists, he took her by the hair and banged the back of her head against the table, smiling at the sound of the impact and her shrieks.

Dazed and hurting, Leocadia squirmed and flailed; behind her the fabric was bunched and wrinkled, and occasionally she touched pins and other sewing gear, but all of them were useless. She shouted curses as she began to weep. “You have no right—no
right!
You are a priest, a
Cardinal!”

Her brother grunted as he tried to hold her down in order to penetrate her; his features were mask-like and ugly. “Lie. Still.” He struck her again, so hard that she felt a tooth loosen. “Lie still,” he repeated.

All the resistance went out of her as if she had lost her breath. Disgust and hatred immobilized her: if Martin could become something alien, then so would she, she told herself, letting her hands fall back, no longer resisting.

“Good,” her brother grunted, leaning over her and beginning to thrust.

The back of her hand struck metal; it took a moment for her to recover from her apathy to realize that the object was the pair of wedge-bladed shears. The enormity of this—its possibilities—banished her indifference in a heartbeat. She turned her hand and grasped the metal loop of the handhold, then in one rage-driven motion, swung the shears around, open, to ram the shear into the place between his neck and shoulder. Her scream of outrage and triumph was scarcely human.

The Cardinal spasmed, his eyes bulging. He pounded on her breasts with one fist as he tried to pull the shears free with the other. As soon as he had the shears out, blood fountained out of the wound. “You
whore!”
he bellowed, and tried to slash her face with the blade; he left a long furrow in her cheek, and grinned. Then he went pale and sweat stood out on his face. “Por Dios,” he muttered, and began to fall.

Leocadia seized the shears and pushed free of him as he collapsed. Then she straddled him and began to plunge the gory blade into him over and over again until the blood ceased to spurt from his wounds and his chest no longer rose and fell. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth. Abruptly she was cold, wondering what was wrong with the room. What had been so carelessly spattered about that the walls and floor and even her wedding dress was full of it? “Martin?” she whispered, dazed and now shaking with a rush of nausea that was as intense as it was sudden. The acrid odor of vomit mixed with the hot-metal smell of blood; Leocadia was now stupefied by what she saw. What in the Name of God had happened? She stood up, shaking severely. The shears fell from her hands as she perceived the red stain on her hands and ruined clothing for the blood it was. She wanted to scream, but the only sound she made was a mewing cry.

Then the door opened; Leocadia yelped and crouched down behind the cutting-table, shaking and doing her best not to weep.

Jose Bruno could not see well enough to discern the magnitude of what had occurred, but he knew from the odor that violence had been done. “Leocadia?” he whispered, half expecting her not to answer.

She rose unsteadily. “Oh, Jose Bruno,” she murmured in relief, and clung to the edge of the table.

“What happened?” Jose Bruno asked as he came a litde farther into the room. He was able to make out shapes now, and color. “Dear God,” he muttered, and crossed himself.

“Martin is dead,” Leocadia said, and began to wail.

Jose Bruno went to her and clapped his hand over her mouth. “Hush. We must not let this be discovered.” He peered closely at the body on the table, at the bloody shears, at the gaping wounds in the Cardinal’s chest and neck. “Did he attack you?”

Leocadia could only nod. “He was ... It was my fault. He ... he
...”
She broke down, sobbing wretchedly.

Abruptly Jose Bruno made up his mind. “You cannot stay here. If you do, you’ll end up in the Pope’s Little House.”

The very name made Leocadia cringe. “No. No. No.” She punctuated this by striking herself on the breast with every word.

“Stop it,” Jose Bruno ordered. “You can do that later.” He looked at her ruined wrapper and blood-stained corset. “You cannot leave this room like that.” He looked around, concentrating in an effort to see as clearly as possible. Finally he noticed the bolt of muslin. “There. We can drape you in that.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Leocadia without any trace of understanding.

“Now, you must be quiet,” he told her very gently. “You cannot make a sound. Will you do that?”

Leocadia nodded repeatedly, her hands knotted together, her eyes vacant. She would not face in the direction of Martin’s body, nor would she look toward the door; she put one hand over her mouth as if to keep the words in.

It was the best he could hope for; Jose Bruno went and tore off a length of muslin, then brought it back to Leocadia and wrapped her in it as if it were a blanket. He moved slowly and carefully, not only because he could not see well, but because he was afraid of what Leocadia might do if she were startled or frightened. “Now, I am going to take you out of here. You are not going to say anything to anyone. If we are stopped, let me do the talking.”

“You talk,” Leocadia agreed, and passively let him lead her away.

He took her down the servants’ stairs and into the stableyard at the back of the palazzo. They met no one on their short journey; so far as he knew, they were unobserved. As he shoved her into a empty box-stall, he said, “Lie down and make no noise. I’ll come back in a little while.”

She was listless as she sank down on the straw bedding. “He’s gone.”

“Yes,” said Jose Bruno with deep compassion. “He’s gone.” He knew she would have to find sanctuary, and that might be difficult in Roma. He frowned as he closed the stall door.

He had no idea of where he should look for sanctuary for his half- sister. He would need an ally for that. Perhaps, he thought as he made his way back into the palazzo, that musician would come back again, and perhaps he would know how to protect Leocadia from the wrath of the Church and Ursellos.

Text of a letter from Giorgianna Ferrugia, Marchesa di Scosceserto, to Ferenc Ragoczy, Conte da San-Germain.

To the esteemed, the excellent Conte, Ferenc Ragoczy, the affectionate greetings from Giorgianna Ferrugia, Marchesa di Scoscescerto.