Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (5 page)

“Something weighed on my father in the final days of his life,” I said finally. “Whatever it was, it drove him to prayer at all hours, which was very unlike him. Several times, I found him on his knees, almost in tears. He would not tell me what tormented him, but he was making plans to send me to the country when he was killed.”

“You think it had to do with Giovanni’s work for Il Cardinale?”

“It is hard to think what else could have been involved. My father lived for his work and for me. There was nothing else in his life, at least not that I know of.”

“But he served the Cardinal for many years. Why would he be so troubled now?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Perhaps it became too much for him.” Would it for me as well?

I set down the goblet and looked out into the backyard, where the furnace that Rocco used to turn ordinary sand into works of unsurpassed beauty burned night and day. Through its open vent, I could see flames flickering and could almost feel their purifying heat. Even so, the sight made me shiver as though I were in the grip of deep, uncontrollable cold.

“But I do know,” I said, “that I will not rest until I find who killed him. Find them and make them pay. I cannot do less.”

Nando returned moments later, lurching with a child’s eagerness into the silence that followed my declaration. He stood, uncertain, until his father smiled. Taking the loaf of bread he had brought, Rocco made a show of smelling it appreciatively.

“Well done,
mi figlio
. Come, sit, let’s eat.”

Over bread, cheese, sausage, and more of the good wine Rocco poured, I relaxed a little. Certainly, I was in better humor by the time we finished and pushed the plates away.

“What is it you wish?” Rocco asked when we were done refreshing ourselves.

Wasting no more time, I said, “Tubing mainly, very thin, such as you made for my father last year. It is very good quality but inevitably it breaks after awhile. I need to replace it and I also need more
of the pipettes you made, as well as beakers, bulbs for heating, and several lenses.”

I drew a paper from my pocket and laid it on the table. “I have the list here. The Cardinal has been very generous, payment won’t be a problem.”

Rocco waved that aside as though it were of no matter, but I was proud all the same to be able to say it. Proud, too, when he looked over the list carefully, giving it his full attention.

“It all seems in order apart from the lenses. I may have to find someone who can make those for you.”

I nodded. “So long as he is discreet.”

“He wouldn’t last long in our business if he wasn’t.”

Unspoken between us was the knowledge that equipment such as I sought and Rocco made was believed by many to be used by servants of the Devil. Who else would want to plumb the secrets of nature so thoroughly, transform matter in new and possibly dangerous ways, and even try to understand the very essence of Creation? Such was the province of God, not Man, as any right-thinking person should surely know.

Yet here in Rome and elsewhere in the Italian states, reaching up into La Francia and the Low Countries, even, it was said, as far away as L’Angleterre, there were daring men and women willing to give their lives for the conviction that faith is not a substitute for knowledge.

It was even whispered that some had dared to band together in mutual support, calling themselves that which they most longed to bring into the world: Lux—Light. If my suspicions were correct, my father had been one of them.

With my business concluded, I lingered, enjoying Rocco and
Nando’s company. The love so evident between them reminded me of all I had lost, yet it was still a comfort to know that such love remained possible in a world that seemed to be spiraling into ever greater darkness and danger.

When I finally rose to leave, Rocco walked me to the door. Keeping his voice low so the boy could not hear, he touched my arm lightly and said, “Giovanni’s murder shocked everyone, yet so far there has been very little talk. That won’t last. If I hear anything, I will send word to you. In the meantime, guard yourself well, Francesca. Your father would want nothing less.”

I nodded in gratitude. Rocco might seem a simple, even humble man, but the nature of his work meant that he had contacts in the universities, among the great families, and, it was even said, within the Curia itself. Inevitably that meant he was also privy to a great many secrets. It was possible that he knew those my father had been associated with, who might in turn have information regarding the circumstances of his death. It was even within the realm of possibility that Rocco himself was part of Lux, assuming that it truly existed. As not even my father had ever confided in me directly concerning it, I could hardly expect Rocco to admit any such involvement. But I could and did count on him to deal with me honestly.

I pressed his hand in thanks, bade a fond farewell to Nando over his father’s shoulder, and set off for the Palazzo Borgia. It was in my mind that I needed to unpack the chest I had so hastily filled after learning of my father’s death, all that I was able to secure before the Cardinal’s guards sealed the apartment. They had searched the chest, but finding only my own clothing, had seen no reason not to let me take it. Had they known of the compartment hidden beneath the false bottom, they would have acted differently.

The thunderheads were passing off toward the west and a freshening breeze blew out of the north. The relative coolness lightened my step and may, along with my general preoccupation, have contributed to my failure to pay proper attention to my surroundings. Whatever the cause, I was taken by surprise when, almost within sight of the palazzo, a trio of men appeared suddenly from an alley.

Blocking the street in front of me, they looked me up and down and sneered.

“Puttana,”
the largest of them said. “What do you think you are doing, whore?”

“Get away from me,” I snapped. At that moment, I was not yet afraid. They seemed just three more idiots bent on harassing women. My clothes marked me as not of the nobility but still far from poor, a woman who would have a degree of protection. They could be bold enough to verbally assault me but nothing more. Even so, I did not wait for their response but began to go around them.

Only to be stopped when the one nearest me grabbed my arm.

“Puttana,”
he repeated and threw me to the ground.

In that instant, everything changed for me. The illusion of safety built on my success challenging Il Cardinale shattered. I had taken a terrible risk, even killed a man, only to come to this? That seemed impossible and yet it was happening, right then and there. Even as my mind screamed that I had to regain my feet and flee, shock paralyzed me.

Before I could recover and act, one of the men kicked me in the stomach. Pain and disbelief made me cry out even as I instinctively curled into a tight ball, trying to protect myself.

“What are you doing? Stop!”

I was a servant of one of the most powerful men in all of Christendom, protected by his might and my own skill. They were insane
to attack me. Yet my father had been similarly protected and he was dead, beaten to a pulp in a street very like the one where I lay, helpless to shield myself from the blows that fell like crimson rain.

“Stop!”

“Get yourself to a nunnery,
puttana,
” one of the men said. He leaned down and yanked on my skirt, pulling it up to expose my bare legs and beyond. The primal terror of rape filled me and I stopped thinking entirely, becoming only a desperate animal struggling to escape.

They laughed, the sound enveloping me. I looked up just then, saw the medal dangling from around the throat of one of them, and heard myself moan. It was a papal medal, identical to the one given to my father the previous year by the hand of Pope Innocent VIII himself, an honor the Cardinal had procured for his trusted servant. My father had worn the medal faithfully but it had not been found on his body. Its disappearance had been a mystery—until now.

“Don’t cause any more trouble,” a different voice said, and another blow landed, the metal-tipped boot driving hard into my ribs. “Or you’ll end up the same way your father did.”

I couldn’t breathe, my heart hammered so frantically I thought it would burst. Pain filled me, vying with maddened fear. As though from a great distance, I heard:

“We’re going easy on you. Learn from this and you might even live.”

I cringed, hating them, hating myself, hating the horror of what had happened to my father, what he must have felt as he died.

And then it was over; the attackers were gone. There was only the damp cobblestones hard and sharp under me, the stink of the street, and the cool breeze on my bared skin.

That and the old woman looking at me from the terrace of an
apartment above a shop from which everyone else had fled at the first sign of trouble. Just an old woman with her knitting, her toothless mouth wide open as she grinned, vastly entertained by the doings in the filth below.

I slipped back into the palazzo through a little-used door. Clutching my bruised side, I made my way up a narrow flight of stairs hidden in the wall. Having regained my rooms without being seen, I slumped, shaking, on the bed. For a brief time I gave into the storm of emotion that threatened to consume me.

The men had lain in wait for me, either that or they had followed me without my being aware. In either case, I had been singled out deliberately for attack as it was now beyond doubt my father had been. But why? What had he been doing that had led to his murder? What did someone want to prevent me from doing?

Even as such questions tormented me, grief for my father more than equaled fear for myself. Before, I had merely imagined what had happened to him. Now I knew for certain what his final moments had been like. That knowledge fueled the hatred that grew within me, becoming stronger with each labored breath.

Hatred for the men who had made me cringe and sob. Hatred for my father’s murderers, who, if they were not all the same men, were surely allied with them. And above all else, hatred for whoever had given the orders. That man in a quiet room somewhere with his clean hands, he would have to suffer more than any other. I would see to it.

At length, I sat up and wiped my eyes. Unwilling to call for help and set off a maelstrom of gossip and speculation, I resolved to see to my injuries myself. Removing my clothes, I winced and had to bite my lips to keep from crying out. My ribs and stomach had taken the worst of it, but bruises were forming on my arms, my legs, and when I looked over my shoulder into the mirror, I could see that my back was already a patchwork of darkening splotches the size and shape of boot tips.

With great difficulty I managed to apply salve to most of the worst areas and to get a bandage around my ribs, which I suspected were cracked. By the time I was done, and had dressed myself again in clean garments, my hands were shaking and I was so exhausted that I could do nothing but lie back on the bed, propped up by a bolster, and pray that sleep would take me.

It did, but only briefly. Too soon the acute discomfort over every inch of my body woke me. I considered taking an opiate but decided against it. With the easing of pain would come a loss of control that I could not afford. Instead, I forced myself off the bed and knelt beside a carved wooden chest. Opening the lid took almost all my strength; I had to pause and inhale slowly against the stabbing pain that came with every breath. Pacing myself, I removed each item of clothing until I reached what appeared to be the bottom of the chest.

Anyone suspecting that the bottom was false would look for a
slit to pry up the wood and reveal a hidden compartment. But they would look in vain, for the chest itself was an ingenious mechanism designed to keep the false bottom in place. To free it, the right sequence of steps had to be carried out on the four outer sides of the chest itself, a procedure that involved sliding separate sections of wood in different directions until at last the hidden lock was released. Only then would the bottom tilt slightly, revealing itself. One misstep and the lock would reset.

My father had taught me the secret of the chest while I was still a child. He said it had been crafted by a sailor from the east whom he had befriended and who claimed that such chests were common in his homeland. Whatever its origins, it was more secure than any strongbox and had kept its secrets inviolate throughout the years.

When the bottom was freed, I lifted it out carefully and set it to one side. The compartment beneath was fitted to hold sealed vials and bottles, each labeled in my father’s neat hand. As important, it also contained the records we had both kept of our experiments and discoveries.

The supplies and records were all I had been able to gather up and hide in the moments immediately after learning of my father’s death and before the Cardinal’s guards rushed to secure the apartment. In the small, tidy workroom hidden behind heavy curtains, the condotierri had found shelves of chemicals and several tables holding equipment—some of the sort Rocco made but also scales, mortars, grinding stones, and the like. To their untrained eyes, it would have appeared that nothing had been disturbed. Satisfied, they had backed away hastily, several going so far as to make the sign of the cross.

Given a few hours, the Spaniard would have realized that there were gaps among the supplies, certain compounds that should have
been present but were not. Questions would have been raised. However, he had not lived long enough to make that discovery. It remained my secret.

Sitting on the floor, I read slowly and carefully through the last entries my father had made, dating back to several months before. So far as I could see, there was nothing unusual except for the lack of more recent entries. While maintaining a careful watch over the Cardinal’s households, he had been free to pursue his search for the
alchaest,
the universal solvent in which all substances could be dissolved and which, he believed, could be used to produce medicines capable of curing every illness.