Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (24 page)

“Almost prime,” he said. “Guillaume brought food and, as promised, news.”

“What news?” David demanded, waking at the same time. He rose to his feet just as though he had enjoyed a full night’s rest in a sumptuous bed.

“The city is quiet,” Rocco said. “There is no hue and cry about
anyone escaping the
castel
last night, nor is there any sign of trouble near the ghetto or anywhere in the streets. All seems to be in order.”

A blessing, to be sure, so far as it went. Vittoro had been right: Without hard evidence of a plot to kill the Pope, Morozzi could not say anything without baring his own throat to Borgia’s revenge. However, that would not prevent him from getting the edict signed and the Jews doomed. Only Innocent’s death would do that.

“No word about the Pope?” I asked.

Rocco shook his head. “Nothing new.”

I could not believe that we had gone through so much only to fail, and yet I knew that there had never been any guarantee of success. Although I had managed to switch the blood, I could not be sure that Innocent had received it. Even if he had, it might not have affected him as it had Rebecca. On the other hand, he might yet die from his own dissipations, which were legion. Or God, in His infinite mercy, might decide to remove his servant by some other means before he could do yet more harm. With so many unknowns, there was only one course open to us.

“We have to find out what is happening at the
castel,
” I said, intent on setting off at once. My stomach had other ideas. Sensing food, it emitted a growl that would have done a hungry wolf proud. At the same moment, the bells rang for prime.

As we waited for the service to be over and the friars to leave the church, we devoured the bread and cheese Guillaume had brought. When the way was clear, we slipped up the steps from the crypt and out the same door through which we had entered. Emerging from the bowels of the earth, we stood blinking in a morning so bright it hurt the eyes. A fresh breeze carried the scents of the lavender fields south of the city, softening the edges of the stench that clung to us still.

Near the Pantheon, we parted. I feared for Rocco’s safety and pleaded with him not to return to his shop, but he dismissed my concern out of hand.

“Let Morozzi come after me,” he said. “It will keep him from you long enough for Borgia to bring him down.”

I would have suspected another man of bravado but not Rocco, who was the very soul of strength and determination. Even so, I gripped his hand tightly.

“Please, be careful. I would never forgive myself if—”

“Send word,” Rocco said as he squeezed my hand in turn, “if anything is amiss. But do not trouble yourself over me.”

I meant to answer but unaccountably my throat was thick and my eyes stung. By the time I might have spoken, he was hurrying off. But he looked back once, catching me looking after him, and smiled. I did the same but I don’t think he saw for he was already gone.

Filthy and bedraggled, David and I made our way through the crowd that, as always, thronged the streets. Our odor preceded us. More than a few passersby gave us startled looks and a wide berth.

By the time we reached the palazzo, I had worked out a plan of sorts.

“We must find out where Borgia is and what is happening with the edict. You can hide in my apartment while I—”

David took my arm gently, stopping me. “I will not hide anywhere, Francesca. Once you are safely within the palazzo, I am going back to the Quarter.”

I started to protest but he would not hear me. “If the edict has been signed,” he said, “it will be proclaimed very soon. Once that happens, we will be attacked as the Jews of Spain were as soon as the order for their expulsion was given. They were not prepared to defend
themselves but we are.” His face set grimly. “The time for killing Jews without cost is over.”

Dread filled me. Humans being children of the Fall, there will always be some eager to take out their own fears on those they see as too weak to retaliate. But if what David was promising came to pass, the consequences would be horrible in the extreme. However many Gentiles died attacking the warren of streets and lanes that was the ghetto, Christendom as a whole would not rest until every Jew in Rome was dead.

“You must know the cost of what you intend,” I said.

“We will die. But if we don’t fight, most of us will die anyway. The survivors will be like Rebecca, facing death alone in a world where we are denied any right to exist at all. If by our deaths we embolden Jews elsewhere to rise up or even cause those who would attack us to think twice, our deaths will not have been in vain.”

My eyes burned. I scarcely trusted myself to speak. “The children . . . Benjamin . . . all the others?”

The sorrow in David’s eyes was unbearable to see. For a moment, I thought his resolve might weaken, but I should have known better. What arrogance on my part not to understand that this was a battle he had fought within himself long ago. Fought and won, however terrible the burden that victory laid upon him.

“Forgive me,” I said before he could answer. “I have no right to assume that I know better.”

He smiled faintly and squeezed my hand. “You are a surprising woman, Francesca. A professional poisoner who values life far more than others, who would toss you into the pit of Hell without a second thought. But don’t despair quite yet. While I have very little faith in God, I have more than a little in Rodrigo Borgia. His ambition may yet carry this day.”

I could only pray that he was right, assuming I could pray at all.

We parted then, David disappearing quickly back into the streets. I made my way up the walled staircase and managed to reach my rooms unseen. With a groan of relief, I stripped off my clothes, stiff and stinking from the moat. Naked, I stood in front of the copper sink in a corner of the room, scrubbed myself from head to toe and washed my hair as well. Time was precious, to be sure, but I could not approach anyone in the household before I was clean without rousing intense suspicion as to where I had been. When I had dressed in fresh garments, I braided my wet hair and coiled it around my head. I was still sticking the pins in as I hurried from my rooms in search of answers.

My hope was to find Vittoro and discover what had happened in the
castel
after our escape, but there was no sign of him. Nor was the Cardinal at the palazzo; his office was empty and his secretaries were not in evidence. A shame, as one of them might have been able at least to tell me his whereabouts.

With no other choice, I made my way to the cramped room just off the main entry to the palazzo, situated to give its occupant a constant view of all comings and goings of importance. The steward Renaldo was there, hunched over his ledgers. He did not look up when I arrived, so engrossed was he in the columns of figures, but he stiffened at the sound of my voice.

“Your pardon, signore. Do you have a moment?”

I had resolved on courtesy but I had also brought patience, which was just as well in dealing with the small, anxious man who ever seemed on the verge of leaping out of his own skin. Strangers assumed that he feared the Cardinal, but the truth was at once broader and sadder. Renaldo was one of those poor souls who went through life in terror of ever making a mistake. The least thing—a misadded
column, a misplaced digit, a lost receipt, an illegible bill, anything—might become an occasion for him to be questioned by someone in authority and that he could not bear. Accuracy was the protection he had chosen against the world, the shield behind which he crouched.

He turned and looked at me with suspicion. “What do you want?”

“Nothing very great,” I assured him. As soothingly as I could, I said, “I merely thought you could tell me where I might find His Eminence.”

Renaldo shrugged and returned his attention to his ledgers, giving me his back. “If he wanted to speak with you, you would know where he is.”

His logic was irrefutable, as was the intense rush of annoyance it brought. Despite the few hours sleep I had enjoyed, if that is the word, in Minerva’s crypt, I remained exhausted. The strain of the previous night had taken more of a toll than I cared to recognize, especially when added to all that had gone before.

Forcing myself to pleasantness, I said, “You are correct, of course, signore. But a matter has only now come up that requires the Cardinal’s attention.”

“Really? And what would that be?” His voice suggested that he found pleasure in frustrating me.

Desperation steeled my resolve. I bent down so close to him that he started, though whether only with fear or with some added emotion I could not have said.

Softly, as though to an intimate, I whispered, “I have completed the new poison sooner than I had hoped. It is astoundingly effective. His Eminence left instructions to be informed the moment it was ready so that he could tell me who to use it on.”

God forgive me, the poor man blushed beet red, then swiftly
paled. He dropped the ledger, knocked his quill onto the floor, bent over to retrieve it, and banged his head on the bottom of the desk. The jolt jarred his ink pot, which skittered toward the edge and would have fallen had I not caught it in the palm of my hand and gently set it back in place.

By now, I had Renaldo’s full attention. He stared at me wide-eyed.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” I asked. “People get so flustered at talk of poison.”

“No! That is, no, of course I won’t . . . tell anyone, that is. What do you want me to do?”

“Just tell me where the Cardinal has gone.” Before he could demure, I added, “I know that you know, Renaldo. I see how you watch everything. Nothing escapes you.”

Sometimes I embarrass myself, but there are moments when shame must be thrown to the winds.

His color brightened, he took a deep breath and straightened such shoulders as he had. “Yes, well, I suppose I do keep a good look-out, but it’s necessary to do that in a household of this sort. After all, His Eminence counts on me.”

“He does, Renaldo, he surely does. As do we all. I am counting on you right now.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in agitation. “I don’t actually know anything officially about where His Eminence went, but—”

“But . . . ?”

He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “Messengers came to find him in the middle of the night. No one knew what to tell them. We all knew where he was, of course, he was with La Bella. But no one was about to say that.”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “We all know His Eminence values discretion above all else.”

“Exactly! I hope he knows that not a one of us spoke.” Voice dropping, Renaldo continued. “He finally came back here at dawn. The messengers must have found him. He was in a terrible mood, let me tell you, roaring like a bull. He was shouting for you and for the captain. When he learned that neither of you was here . . . it was as though Vesuvius was erupting! Finally, he was dressed and out he went . . . to the Curia, I believe, although I could not swear to it.”

“How long ago did he leave?” I asked, struggling to conceal my excitement.

Renaldo thought for what seemed a very long moment. Finally, he said, “Not an hour ago. Does it matter?”

It might . . . or it might not. Borgia would delay as long as possible but ultimate authority still rested with Innocent. If he was determined to sign the edict, he would do so . . . assuming he had breath left in his body.

Despite the gathering warmth of the day, a chill swept over me. Standing in Renaldo’s cluttered burrow—surrounded by stacks of ledgers, contracts, scrolls, and the like, all the effluvia of everyday existence—I had the sense of standing on the edge of an abyss. Almost, I could hear the ground falling out beneath my feet.

So many people, so much pain, and all of it hanging on what might happen in an instant, the space of one heartbeat to the next.

Please, God . . .

“Are you all right?” From a great distance, I heard the steward. He had risen without my noticing and was staring at me with concern.

Please . . . for David, Sofia, Benjamin, and all the rest . . .

“Signorina . . . ?” Vaguely, I heard his alarm and wondered what could be causing it.

Suddenly, I knew. Behind him I saw in my mind a vast and terrible landscape blighted and seared in which nothing lived that could be recognized as human. A world in which smoke belched from the earth to blacken the sky. Where wolves howled in grief.

In horror, I recoiled and cried out. Only then did I see the slender ray of light that offered me escape. Saw and seized.

Lord, I beseech you, if my soul is the price, I give it gladly . . .

“Signorina!”

A great sound tolled in my head. A vast, cavernous peal blocking out all thought, all fear, filling every breath, expanding to encompass everything that had ever been or ever would be. A sound unlike any I have ever heard before or since.

On and on and on . . . the bells of each of the hundreds of churches in Rome joining in with another and another until the very air shook with their power. Closer, feet came running, enough to make the earth tremble, and then voices from within the palazzo, from outside in the streets, from every quarter of Rome and ultimately the great world beyond.

So many voices crying out as one:
Il papa è morto! Il papa è morto!

The Pope is dead.

The answer to my prayers? Perhaps, but certainly the question I have lived with ever since in the dark quiet of my soul: By whose hand?

Borgia did not return to the palazzo for three days after Innocent’s death. The Cardinal remained within the Vatican, overseeing preparations for the papal funeral in his capacity as vice chancellor of the Curia.

Meanwhile, Rome ran wild with rumor. The Pope had been murdered. No, he had died from his own dissipations. Or by the curse of a gypsy whore. Or because of an ancient prediction found within the tomb of one of the Caesars. Or . . .

Uncertain of my own guilt, I was unsure how to feel other than relieved. Innocent was dead, by my hand or nature’s, it did not matter except to me. The edict had not been signed, that much I was able to glean from the hastily scrawled message David sent from the Quarter. The vast wealth the Jews had assembled from throughout Europe was flowing into Borgia’s accounts in the Spannocchi banks in Siena, where Cesare had gone. Ostensibly, he was preparing his
horses to run in the Palio races held each summer in that city. In fact, he was watching the money.