Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (31 page)

David was silent for several moments. Finally, he looked at me
and said, “This is not La Guardia. The Cardinal must understand that. Under no circumstances will we allow Torquemada to do what he did there.”

Despite the warmth of the day, a shiver ran through me. La Guardia was the Spanish town in which the Grand Inquisitor had claimed to uncover the crucifixion by Jews of a Christian child with the intent to use his heart in a ritual meant to poison the local water supply. Without evidence except what he could obtain under the most excruciating torture, he brought nine Jews and
conversi
to the flames. He had also used the alleged crime to convince Their Most Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella, to issue their edict. In a real sense, all the Jews of Spain were the victims of La Guardia, and of Torquemada himself.

“You must have faith in Il Cardinale,” I replied, the injunction more for myself as for them. “He understands the gravity of the situation full well and he will do everything necessary to ensure his victory.” I saw no reason to mention that this included bartering his daughter in marriage and taking his sworn enemies to his bosom.

“Good,” David said. “He has been paid to Heaven and beyond. Now let us see him earn it.” He looked at me directly. “Tell him that, Francesca, and make sure he understands. He cannot ride to the papacy through our blood. If we fall, so does he.”

Perhaps it was because Sofia’s vile tea had not entirely banished my queasiness. Or perhaps sleeplessness was responsible for my ill temper. Whatever the cause, I answered him harshly.

“It is bad enough to be Borgia’s messenger, I will not be yours as well. Tell him yourself.”

“And where shall I do that?” David demanded. “Shall I stroll into his office at the Curia as you can do, or perhaps he’d like to invite me to dinner at his palazzo? Or better yet, I could invite him here. Sofia,
you wouldn’t mind, would you? You can rustle up something to please the Cardinal’s palate, can’t you?”

“David . . .” she began, but I interrupted. My patience, never in great supply, had evaporated.

“You have made your point,” I said. “Now hear mine. Whatever you think of Borgia, he is right about this. Torquemada is coming to prevent the election of a pope who can be seen as favoring the Jews. Nothing less would get him out of Spain right now. The question is, with so little time left before the conclave, how can he possibly hope to assure that Borgia does not win?”

“You’re going to say that he means to incite us—” David said.

But in fact I was not. Thoughts that had drifted in the back of my mind since I learned of the Grand Inquisitor’s approach were coming to the fore now that I was finally able to give them the attention they deserved.

“Why would he think you can be incited at all?” I asked. Without realizing it, I had fallen into Borgia’s habit of asking questions in order to work out puzzles. “Have Jews ever risen in rebellion, as you threaten to do here?”

Slowly, David shook his head. “There has been talk—”

“But no action. For centuries, Jews all over Europe have kept their heads down and suffered quietly no matter what is done to them. You want to change that, don’t you? You want to show that killing Jews carries a price. Isn’t that so?”

“You know it is but—”

“I think I understand what Francesca is saying,” Sofia interjected. “Borgia knows what we intend, so do perhaps a handful of others. But Torquemada would never believe it. Given his experience with us, he’d be more likely to laugh at the notion that we would defend ourselves.”

“Then why is he here?” I asked. “If he isn’t planning to incite an uprising in the ghetto—”

“He is planning to incite the Christians,” David said. “Just as he did in La Guardia. The result is the same. We will not allow that to happen here.”

“But it won’t,” Sofia said slowly. “It can’t. La Guardia took Torquemada almost two years. He had to work that long to convince the authorities to condemn those he claimed were guilty, and then he was only able to do it by subjecting the accused to extended torture. He doesn’t have time for that now.”

“Then what can he hope to achieve—?” David began.

“What did he not have in La Guardia?” I asked and answered in the same breath. “There was no body. For all the claim that a Christian child had been crucified, there was no proof. There wasn’t even a rumor of a missing child.”

My gaze drifted to Benjamin, who was watching us all attentively. Benjamin, a child who made his way in the streets like so many other abandoned or orphaned children, boys and girls alike, but ironically enough, one who would be protected in this incidence because he bore the mark of the covenant of Abraham on his body. Benjamin could never be mistaken for a Christian child and that was what Torquemada would need.

“My God . . .” Sofia murmured and pressed a hand to her lips.

Even David paled. That a priest would engineer the ritual murder of a child to achieve his perverted ends appeared too much for him.

But not for me for whom the idea had a clarity that made it indisputable.

“Not even Torquemada could arrive in Rome and within days perpetrate such a crime,” I said, my mind racing ahead. “He has to have an ally, someone who is already here and prepared to act.”

As one, David and Sofia said, “Morozzi.”

I nodded. “It must be. With all he has to occupy him right now in Spain, how likely is it that the Grand Inquisitor would come all the way to Rome at his own initiative? Morozzi must be in contact with him.”

“If the edict had been signed, Torquemada would be here to celebrate it,” David said slowly. “Along with the edict in Spain, it would be a great triumph for those who seek our destruction. But with it as yet unsigned . . .”

“And awaiting the hand of a new pope,” I finished his thought. “With all that, Morozzi has every reason to want the most famous Jew hater of our age nearby to lend his name and prestige to assuring Borgia’s defeat.”

I stood, clear now on what had to happen very quickly. “I must get word to Rocco. He can reach Friar Guillaume. Torquemada will be staying at the Dominican chapter house. Somehow we have to discover exactly what he and Morozzi intend, and how to stop them.”

David was also on his feet. He appeared to have shaken off most, if not all, of his shock and was working out for himself what had to be done.

“We are not without our own resources,” he said, and by that I suspected he meant
conversi
throughout Rome who, for the sake of maintaining their anonymity, could be pressured to cooperate with him. “I will find out everything I can.”

Benjamin was at his side and looking at me solemnly. “So will I.” He nodded in the direction of the gate leading from the ghetto. “Out there, no one knows I’m Jewish. Around the Campo, everywhere they think I’m just another street kid like them. If anyone’s missing, I’ll hear about it.”

“Morozzi was recruiting boys to be bled for Innocent,” I said. “If he could do that, he can—”

“Can Vittoro get someone inside the
cantoretti
school to keep a watch on the boys there?” David asked.

“If not he,” I replied, “Borgia himself will have to do it.”

Off in the distance, beyond the ghetto, I heard the bells tolling terce. The morning was aging and would soon be gone. In four days the cardinals were due to be sealed in conclave. Before then Morozzi had to convince the people of Rome to rise up against the Jews.

To do that, he had to kill a child.

“We have very little time,” I said, and went out quickly, gathering the startled Jofre in my wake as I sped back to the palazzo.

By evening we had learned a great deal. But not enough.

Thanks to Friar Guillaume, we knew that Torquemada was in Rome. The Grand Inquisitor had arrived quietly that same day and was installed in the Dominican chapter house next to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, ironically enough where David and I, with Rocco’s help, had found sanctuary after our escape from the
castel
.

Rocco himself brought the news of Torquemada’s whereabouts. He found me in the courtyard near the guards’ quarters, where I had gone to speak with Vittoro. Amid the bustle of armed men and harried servants, we stole a small measure of privacy in the shadows of the loggia.

I had not seen Rocco since our last meeting at the palazzo. The memory of the kiss we had shared caused me to miss the first few words he spoke.

“. . . slipped into Rome with only a dozen or so companions. They
were disguised as friars arriving for the conclave. Since reaching the chapter house, Torquemada has not ventured outside but he has received visitors.”

“Was Morozzi among them?” I asked, hastily recalling myself to the matter at hand.

“He was not, but Guillaume recognized two who came as members of della Rovere’s household.”

My stomach tightened. If Borgia’s great rival was throwing in his lot with Torquemada, Il Cardinale stood in even greater danger than I had feared.

“I must tell His Eminence of this,” I said. But before doing so, I lingered a moment longer, studying the man who put himself at such risk on behalf of people he had no particular reason to care about, including the woman who had rejected him.

“You have done enough and more,” I said. “But now it might be wise for you to join Nando in the countryside.” I thanked God that Rocco had had the foresight to send his son to safety.

He smiled and touched a hand gently to my cheek. It did not occur to me to move away, so preoccupied was I in looking at him. He was a handsome man, not in the way of mercurial Cesare or the false angel, Morozzi, but with a calm steadiness that sat well upon him and shown in everything he did. The creations he drew from fire and air were possessed of great delicacy, but I was coming to realize that the man himself was as an oak, unshakable in the greatest storm.

“My son is a child, Francesca. I am a man. I will be here to see this through.”

Rather than risk speaking just then, and likely making a fool of myself, I squeezed his hand and nodded. A moment longer we lingered before the tug of the world, unrelenting in its demands, drew us apart. Even so, I watched Rocco go from the courtyard until he
was lost from my sight. Only then did I seek out Borgia to tell him what I had learned.

“Damn Giuliano,” the Cardinal said when I informed him of Torquemada’s visitors. “Are there no depths to which he will not sink?” This from the man who had cheerfully solicited the death of a pope.

Of necessity, my suspicions regarding Torquemada and Morozzi’s intentions had been revealed to Il Cardinale. He heard me out in silence, grunting once or twice, before pronouncing his verdict.

“Your father would be proud of you.”

Startled, I said, “How so? He never wanted this life for me.” To the contrary, he had wanted a husband I could accept and grandchildren he could spoil. That he got neither and died instead, cut down in a Roman street, was just one more of life’s twists and turns.

“He saw things more clearly than most people,” Borgia said. “Possibly because he had very few illusions.”

Except the misbegotten belief that he could somehow keep his only child from following in his footsteps.

“What are we to do?” I asked, because he was there and not my father, whose advice I would have greatly preferred.

Borgia shrugged. “What can we do? I think you are right about what Morozzi and Torquemada are planning. Nothing else explains the Grand Inquisitor’s presence here at this time. As to whether we can stop them, that remains to be seen.”

“If we don’t—”

“We will have a Holy Child of Rome,” he replied, referring to the unknown child of La Guardia supposedly killed by the Jews. A shrine was being built to “him” that promised to draw the faithful in droves.

“Heaven forfend,” I said, and truly meant it. If any such thing happened in Rome, Borgia’s bid for the papacy was doomed and the Jews
with it. Already, della Rovere was putting it about that he was
marano,
yet the public mood remained with Il Cardinale, thanks to his being seen as a practical man who would solve problems rather than cause them, as well as one open with his purse. Nothing less than a La Guardia–style event would turn the populace against him, and then it would do so not only in Rome but throughout Christendom.

“As far as we can tell,” I said, “no street children are missing.”

Benjamin had reported as much after his sortie beyond the ghetto. Passing as Christian, he had drifted from the Campo across the Tiber almost to the gates of the Vatican, all the while listening, watching, murmuring a question here and there in the right ears. Rome had its share and more of homeless children, but they were anonymous only to those who willed them to be so. To themselves, they formed a tribe of sorts, each being well known within it. Had any been missing, their absence would have been noted.

As for the
cantoretti
school, Vittoro had confirmed no boys were missing from there except those Morozzi had procured to be bled for Innocent. I had fears for the safety of those he had taken, but I was confident none of them would fall prey to Torquemada. Under other circumstances, the condition of their bodies, most particularly the obvious evidence that they had been bled over an extended period, would have encouraged the blackest accusations against the Jews. But this was Rome—rumor-swept, sophisticated Rome. Talk of the late Pope’s desperate attempts to stave off death had swirled around the city for months. Let the body of a boy showing evidence of repeated bleedings suddenly appear, and it would be seen as a sign of the Church’s depravity, not the Jews’. No, the child would have to come from somewhere else.

Wherever Morozzi was. Of him, there had been so sign.

“He hasn’t been seen since leaving here after the party,” I told Borgia
when I met with him again in early evening. “He isn’t at the
castel
or within the Vatican. No one seems to know where he is.”

“That isn’t good,” the Cardinal observed. “He has to be found.”

I could not have agreed more, but short of calling on the angels of Heaven to help us, I had no idea how to discover the whereabouts of the mad priest. He might be anywhere.