Immortal Muse (27 page)

Ruffo scowled. His fingers prowled the purple sash around his scarlet robes. “Certainly a
priest . . .”
He paused, emphasizing the word. “. . . would offer up his suffering to the Lord in return for the miracle He grants us during the Mass.” He waved away the protest that Lucio started to make, and Anna saw the cardinal glance quickly to her, the scowl deepening on his face, before returning his attention to Lucio. “But that is a small thing compared to the vile rumors that are circulating regarding Signorina Giraud, her sister, and you, Signor.”

“Your Eminence—” Vivaldi began, but the cardinal again waved his hand in dismissal.

“I cannot, in good conscience and with my duty to the church, allow you to work in Ferrara, especially under my patronage. I am therefore rescinding the offer made to you, and must insist that you and your . . .” He seemed to consider the word he wished to use. “. . .
companion
depart Ferrara immediately. The monsignor here will give you twenty ducats for the expense of your journey, and we have made arrangements for you and the Signorina tonight in a palazzo outside the city walls.” He took a long breath. “I am genuinely sorry for this, Signor Vivaldi, but this behavior of yours . . .” He shook his head. “I cannot condone it.”

“Your Eminence,” Lucio began, but the cardinal held up his hand, stopping any protest Vivaldi might have made.

“I have nothing more to say.” Ruffo inclined his head to Lucio, who appeared numb and stricken, and—perfunctorily—to Anna. He turned to leave as the priest opened the inner door for him.

“Your Eminence,” Anna spoke, and the man looked back at her over his shoulder. “Who told you these poisonous lies?”

“Lies?” he asked, with seeming amusement. “I assure you that I trust my source, Signorina.”

“Who told you?” she persisted. “I ask you to name our accuser so that we might defend ourselves.”

Ruffo's scowl deepened with her blunt insistence. “I trust my source, Signorina,” the cardinal repeated. “That should be sufficient for you. I will pray for a safe return journey for the both of you.” And with that, he was gone.

The priest closed the door after the cardinal. “Your carriage is waiting,” he said to them. “I'll give the driver directions to the palazzo.”

 * * * 

“
Signorina,” the house valet said as Lucio started up the stairs toward his bedroom, following a quartet of servants with his trunks. Her own servants, with her two trunks, waited as she paused. “I was asked to give you this when you arrived . . .”

The valet handed her an envelope with her name inked across it in a familiar, ornate hand. She peered at it, her stomach suddenly knotted. “Who gave this letter to you?” she asked.

“Monsignor Lorenzo Ceribelli,” the man answered. “He arrived here yesterday from Rome, on business with Cardinal Ruffo.”

Anna could feel her hands sweating as she held the envelope. She thanked the valet and went to her own rooms, pointedly well down the hall from those of Lucio. There, she opened the envelope. The missive inside was brief, but unmistakably in Nicolas' hand, and written in French:
Cour. Une heure après dîner
. Courtyard. One hour after dinner.

She sent a note to Lucio that she was not feeling well and would dine privately in her room. She made certain that the traveling pistol was serviceable, that the flint was secure and the powder in the pan dry, the ball in place in the barrel. She nestled the pistol in the pocket of her cloak, its weight a reassurance. She thought of her chemicals, still packed away in one of the trunks, but there was no time for that, even if one of the servants could bring them to her. The vials she had sewn into the padded satin belt of her dress would have to suffice.

She waited, eating almost nothing from the tray the kitchen servants brought to her. From the balcony of her room, she could see the small courtyard; she watched the shadows lengthen and evening spread its purple veil over the olive trees there. No one entered the courtyard, no one walked there—the family who owned the palazzo was away. Once, she thought she heard Lucio's voice from an open window, but otherwise the palazzo was quiet and serene. She heard one of the pages escort Lucio down to his dinner, and return with him an hour and half later. Finally, she left her room and went down the stairs, passing through open arches into the court.

The smell of jasmine, growing on trellises around the court, was strong in the still evening, the petals now opened and full. The courtyard was shielded on three sides by the house and its two wings, but was open to the field and pastures beyond at the far end. There were benches set at intervals along the path that wandered through the garden, and Anna sat on the bench nearest the main house, where she could see much of the courtyard. The moon was rising, bathing the landscape in its silvered glow but making the shadowed corners seem darker yet.

She heard him before she saw him, a rustling at the open end of the courtyard, then the sound of boots on the flagstones of the path. She rose, and he stopped a few strides from her. He bowed, then smiled when she didn't respond. Like her, he appeared to be in his twenties, and he was dressed (as he had been when she'd last seen him) in a monsignor's robe and sash, with a crucifix around his neck. She remembered the features now: Maroncelli's face, Nicolas' face. “Perenelle,” he said. He spoke in French, not in
Veneziano
. “A lovely pendant you're wearing. And your face is as smooth and untouched as ever. What a shame; I'd hoped to rob you of your beauty forever, but alas. We both know now that the elixir had more than one gift to give us.”

The fingers of her left hand started to lift toward her cheeks but she stopped them; they went instead to the cameo on her breast, the pendant he'd given her so long ago. Her right hand she kept in the pocket of her cloak, curled around the wooden stock of the pistol. A knife would not kill him, any more than it would kill her, but a lead musket ball, ripping and tearing through his body, perhaps even into his heart—it was possible that might. She put her hope on that. “You were the one who went to Cardinal Ruffo.”

A grin. “
Oui
, I did. He's a very old-fashioned man, the cardinal, and very firm in his faith. He was most terribly distressed to learn about the sinful behavior of the composer he'd hired.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “A priest who won't celebrate mass, and who plows the field between the legs of his favorite singer and housekeeper, and probably that of her sister as well.”

“Bastard!” she hissed. “Murderer!”

He spread his hands wide. “Did I lie to the cardinal? Did I tell an untruth? I think not.” His smile collapsed and his eyes narrowed. “We will live forever, Perenelle, and the one thing that will make my long life a pleasant one will be if yours is a misery. You can't believe how sweet your torment tastes to me. You're like a fine dinner: not something I want every night, but for those special occasions.”

“Why? Why can't you simply leave me alone? Go live your life, and let me live mine.”

He shrugged. “We both have to pay for what's been given us,” he answered. “I know what your payment has been: I know that you
need
these artists that you find. And me . . . Well, I have my own needs, my own requirements for the gift of life. Should I tell you what your elixir has given me as my need, or have you already guessed? Being in the church for many of my lives has allowed me to fill my own hunger most excellently. Ah, the Inquisition . . .” He paused, then his lips curled momentarily. “It's
your
fault, Perenelle,
your
fault. Your fault for having created the elixir, for tempting me after I saw you run from me as a young woman again. If I'm a monster, then I am of your own creation.” He took a breath.

“What do you want, Nicolas?”

“Why, I've already told you,” he said. “Why don't you sit? I've a rather long tale to tell, one I think you'll find interesting.” When she didn't move, he shrugged. “As you wish. Stand, then. Do you miss your old notebook, Perenelle? I know you've been trying to recreate the potion, and I know that so far you've not been able to do so. You were always the best of us with alchemy, as I was the better with magic.” He lifted his hands as if he were about to cast a spell, and she stiffened, ready to fire the pistol. But his hands dropped again. “Yet I have something you don't.
I
have your notes, all nicely written down and detailed. Every step of the process. Not that it's done me much good. Those mice you kept: they all died, didn't they? Age caught up to them, in a single moment, and they died in agony. I know, because I replicated your experiment after you left: first with mice, then . . .” He paused. “. . . with people. You should know, by the way, that it's a truly horrible death for a person. I can't imagine the pain they must experience, but I can hear it in their shrieks and see it in the terror fixed on their faces after they die.” He smiled. “And I can
taste
their pain, also. It's wonderful. Still, your elixir is a failure, Perenelle.”

“But it
does
work,” she protested. “Look at me. Look at you.”

He shook his head. “There was something different with that version of the formula, some change you made but didn't write down, or perhaps it was only an accident—something introduced to the potion that you didn't notice. When I finally decided that if I didn't take the elixir I was going to die myself, it was
your
potion I took—what was left in the vial from that day that you took it and changed before my eyes.
That
one worked for me as it did for you.”

She was already shaking her head. “That one was the same as all the rest. I did nothing differently.”

Nicolas shook his head. “You're wrong. It was different. I've followed your notes
exactly
.”

“Then give
me
the notebook,” she told him. “Let me try. You've missed something. As you've noted, you were always best at spells, Nicolas; I was your superior in the laboratory. I can find what's wrong with the formula.”

He laughed. “Handing you the notebooks would give you what you want, and I've no intention of allowing you that much satisfaction. You'd give the potion to this red priest of yours, wouldn't you? You'd keep him with you forever. No, no, no. I intend to keep the notebook—your misery at watching everyone you love inevitably age and die is part of my pleasure.”

He took a step toward her; she retreated the same distance, removing the pistol from her cloak and showing him the weapon. He chuckled dryly. “Is this a jest? You can't kill me with that.”

The barrel trembled with his words. “You can't know that.”

“Ah, but I do. Remember your face, my dear wife? We both heal very well. I know: three times now I've sustained wounds that would have killed a normal person, including being shot by a firearm. That won't kill me. I
do
know that much.”

“We're alchemists, Nicolas. We believe in what we learn. Maybe you're right, but it's an experiment I'm willing to try. After all, you sent a man with a sword after me.”

He scoffed. “My little friend at the opera? He was just a reminder, as I said. I told him that if he didn't kill you, then I'd kill his lovely wife—she was already dead, of course; he just didn't know that. He couldn't have killed you. I haven't figured out quite how to do that yet, though I will, I will. In the meantime, I've taken that woman you called a sister as the first step. For the second—well, you actually are fond of that fool of a musician Vivaldi, aren't you?”

“You leave him alone, Nicolas,” she grunted. The pistol quivered in her hand as her finger tightened on the trigger. “You've done enough damage already to him.”

He was watching her intently, studying her. “Ah, you
are
in love with him. That's so delicious. Well, let me make a deal with you then. I'll leave him alone—if you do the same.”

“No.”

“So quick an answer; it says so much. I warn you, Perenelle, if you don't do as I tell you, I'll make you regret it. I might not be able to permanently hurt you, but your Signor Vivaldi isn't immune, is he? And there's
so
much gossip I can spread, too. I wonder which would be the most painful for him and you: to destroy his career, or destroy him physically as I did to Paolina—that was her name, wasn't it? Or maybe I should do both, and have the pleasure of his death and of tasting your grief.”

“I'm warning you, Nicolas.”

He shook his head. “You've nothing with which to bargain, Perenelle. I've told you what I want—and I'll have it, one way or another.”

“No!” The word was a shout; with it, her finger convulsed on the trigger. There was a click, the flint struck metal and sparked, and the powder in the pan flashed. The pistol bucked in her hand and with a cry, Nicolas spun around, blood blooming from a sudden hole in his chest, his priestly robes going dark and wet as he collapsed to the ground, sprawled awkwardly on the courtyard's path. His breath gurgled in his throat, and a line of blood flowed from his mouth.

She dropped the pistol. Nicolas still didn't move, lying on the flagstones of the courtyard.

“What's this commotion!” She heard the cry from the palazzo. She saw Lucio at his balcony, staring down at her. “Anna! What's happened?” She heard footsteps from the house as Lucio disappeared from his balcony. She ran toward the house, meeting the house valet on the way out.

“I was attacked,” she told them. “There's a man in the courtyard. I had to shoot him . . .”

The servant stared, then moved past her, waving at the other servants gathering, gape-mouthed, in the area. She could hear Lucio lumbering down the stairs, puffing like a great bear and shouting for her. She went to him, embracing him hard. “Oh, Lucio! It's so dreadful. I had to kill him, I had to. He's the one who killed poor Paolina . . .”