Suicide Kings (27 page)

The woman at the desk turned at the sound of their entrance. Francesca. She arose, dropping the blanket. There she stood, still weak, her legs quivering with even this effort. Isabella Savrano’s green dress gleamed with magnificence in the late morning sun. Francesca di Lucca seemed like a seraph basked in God’s radiance.

Diana locked eyes with the other woman, unable to speak. At last, Francesca approached, her steps like those of a newborn fawn. She stopped a few feet from Diana. “In my death I saw many faces. I thought that they were angels, but when I woke the only face I saw was you. You were my angel.”

Diana raised her hands just up from her sides a bit, palms out helplessly. She tried to respond, found no words, and then at last blurted, “That doesn’t make any sense!” She burst out laughing as she said those words, but even as she laughed she knew it was fragile and that somehow, Francesca standing there in her mother’s dress, incoherent as ever, had been the one to pierce her.

Even before she felt Francesca’s thin arms around her the tears began to come. She collapsed into Francesca’s embrace, unmindful of the other woman’s weakened state. Sobbing turned to shudders and she clenched up handfuls of her mother’s dress in angry fists. The two of them slowly collapsed to their knees. Francesca rocked her back and forth, like she was a frightened child. Diana buried her face into Francesca’s neck as the tears flowed unstoppable and raw, burning her eyes.

Siobhan joined them, kneeling down and wrapping her own arms around the two of them, lending her strength to their fragile embrace.

“It’s all right, Diana,” Francesca whispered over and over. “We three are bound together. We three will surely prevail.”

****

A good while later when there were no tears left to be spent, the three of them sent for a bowl of fruit and sequestered themselves into a forgotten upper floor room. With a bottle of fine wine between them, and the requested plate of figs, they tried to make some sense of their predicament.

“Besides ourselves,” Siobhan asked, “who can we trust?”

“Friar Savonarola,” Diana pronounced, “for only so long as our interests coincide.” She already had explained to them her reasoning—that her mother would have died in flames had Savonarola wished her dead. The other two agreed and it was decided.

“It’s like a rabbit kit finding concordance with a bear working together to dig up roots,” Siobhan observed with a somber voice. “So long as there are enough roots, they remain fast friends. Once the roots run out, the rabbit kit starts looking tasty to the bear.”

“What about your father,” Francesca offered meekly. “Could we turn to him?”

Diana shrugged sadly. “He has been less than supportive. For what I know, he might very well have killed my mother himself.”

“I doubt that, but she won’t listen to me,” Siobhan added.

“Perhaps we could take this matter to Cardinal Lajolo?” suggested Francesca.

“With the luck you’ve had in a Catholic convent, I’d just prefer to keep the religiously inclined authorities at bay,” Siobhan groused. “Bad enough we’ve got Savonarola watching over our shoulders.”

“Perhaps I could confide in Bernardo?” Diana thought out loud.

“Just because you fancy him,” Siobhan replied, “doesn’t mean you can trust him. You’ve spent time with him twice. Besides, your other paramour, Niccolo, has been less than helpful, despite being well advised on current matters.”

Diana nodded. Siobhan was right.

“Wait, you have
two
suitors?” Francesca looked at her with wide eyes.

“It’s a bit more complex than that.” Diana looked down at her hands.

“It would be a deliciously romantic tale if one or both of them mightn’t have murdered her mother,” Siobhan clarified rather bluntly.

“Oh,” Francesca said, still looking amazed.

Diana looked sideways at the older girl. “You’ll have more than your share of suitors now that you’re out of that convent.” At once, she realized she’d misspoken, assumed too much. “You’re not going back, are you?”

Francesca stared down at her hands. “I don’t think I’m welcome. They haven’t even inquired after me.”

“Odd about that, don’t you think?” Siobhan piped in. “Here they have a nun returned from the dead, as good a miracle as any. If that wouldn’t bring in the gold I don’t know what would. That they don’t show any interest speaks of guilt to me.” She nodded as if her opinion was the surest thing ever.

Diana looked up, watched her friend for a moment. It was odd.

Francesca twisted a little ring around on her finger. “I’m not sure what direction my life takes now. If they don’t take me back, I’ll be a scandal to my family.” She sighed. “And even if they don’t, I don’t feel released from the vows I made to God.”

Diana’s heart sank. “I’m very sorry that my situation has brought harm to you, Francesca.”

Francesca reached out and patted her hand. “It’s nothing you could help. Whatever is happening, it is part of God’s plan. His plan for us may not always be pleasant, but it always has purpose.”

“I wish I could always be as sure of that,” Diana said.

“So,” observed Siobhan, “it seems that, aside from the dubious exception of the Mad Friar, we can trust no one?”

A minute of silence underscored her comment.

“Then it will be just the three of us,” Francesca concluded softly, at last.

“That’s two good friends more than I had when I started,” Diana said with a smile for them both. “We’ll begin with you Francesca. I’m reasonably certain the same poison was used on you as on my mother.”

Francesca turned paler than before. “I can’t think of why someone would want to kill me. As I told you before, no one has imparted any knowledge about the death of your mother unto me.”

“You don’t know who might’ve slipped you the poison?” Siobhan pressed. “Someone who might have brought food the day Diana visited you?”

Diana chewed on her tongue a bit at that. Thinking, thinking…

Francesca shook her head. “I can’t remember much of that night, past when I prophesied for Diana. I wish that I could!”

Siobhan looked visibly disappointed, but Diana said, “It’s all right. Probably a side effect of the poison. Nothing you could do about it.”

“Why that particular poison with such an odd effect?” Siobhan wondered aloud. “Why not something like arsenic to get the job done without error?”

“Arsenic brings on a bloody agonizing death. It could easily raise suspicions of poisoning. Nightshade brings a quicker, less messy semblance of death, consistent with apoplexy, which comes on all the time. By the time the drug wears off, it is too late. As we saw.” Diana squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the memory of her mother’s corpse, grasping desperately for freedom.

“I was fortunate that the ground was too frozen, and the gravedigger’s spade broke,” Francesca said with wonder. “And that you were clever enough to figure out what they did to me, Diana.”

Diana looked at her and nodded. Who, though, were
they
? She was beginning to have a suspicion as to one of those involved. “I’m not sure how much you should thank me. I believe it is my fault that you were poisoned in the first place.”

“Why?” Francesca asked, clearly disbelieving.

“Because you had prophesied to me about my investigation. Prophesies that began to come true.” She looked up and met Francesca’s gaze. “And I told someone about that.”

Chapter Sixteen

Fire on Babylon

Seeing the convent at Saint Cecilia always filled Diana with wonder. Even in the depth of winter, God’s hand seemed to brush against the place. Every stone, every tree, every pane of glass seemed in the perfect spot. Only today were the cracks in the edifice becoming apparent. A pile of rubble toppled unattended where the wall of Francesca’s cell had been torn down to remove what had then been believed to be her dead body. The livelihood of the place, the frenetic energy of the sisters who did so many good works in the city bled out of that wound in the convent wall. Those few sisters who stood outside the place watched Diana with a helpless wonder as she approached, no longer a mere penitent, but increasingly the woman who would undo them. Diana felt their eyes on her and in their gaze felt a flare of real power swell within her. Flanked by two of Agon’s tall Swiss, and wielding Savonarola’s writ, she was now as powerful a force as she could ever hope to be. A fleeting moment, she reminded herself. With her mother’s death avenged, she’d cast it away herself if Savonarola didn’t wrench it from her. She could only hope to flirt with such darkness for so long without becoming afflicted by it. She had enough gloom of her own to contend with for the foreseeable future.

Diana rapped her hand against the thick wooden door. The young and plump novitiate who answered, watched her with doe eyes. “I’m here to see Sister Ophelia,” Diana stated.

“I’ll fetch her at once,” the novitiate promised, beginning to close the door.

One of the Swiss mercenaries put his paw of a hand against the door, and pushed it fully open instead. The young novitiate stepped back with a gasp.

“Best that we come with you,” Diana told her.

The novitiate dropped her eyes and nodded, acquiescing meekly. So was this how it was to wield power, Diana wondered, to leave the teaming masses quivering before you? Did people only seem to love you out of fear? Who could live like this for any length of time, separated so fully from one’s fellow man?

The novitiate led them to the main chapel where Sister Ophelia knelt before the altar. The sight of her, back turned, the very image of humility before the image of Christ filled Diana with burning. The hypocrisy of it… She gritted her teeth though, sucked in a deep breath. “Sister,” she called at last, her voice echoing across the cavernous room.

Ophelia turned her head, slowly pushed herself up. She coughed once, a loose watery rattle filling her chest. Her eyes looked Diana up and down. “The other sisters speak of you as if you are a saint. They say you have brought Sister Francesca back from the dead.”

“But we both know that isn’t true, don’t we?”

Ophelia’s eyes dropped and she turned back toward the altar.

“Which God do you pray to?” Diana asked accusingly. “Do you whisper to Christ, or to Lucifer, as your wronged and fallen God?”

Ophelia looked back out of the corner of her eye. “I was sixteen when my father exiled me to this convent. I’d made the error of falling in love with a man of little promise, you see. I gave that man my virtue, and my father discovered my sin. Here I have been ever since. I can no longer remember the appearance of either of their faces. You can’t imagine what pure Hell is here in God’s service.”

“I
can
imagine it,” Diana replied. “I see it in the look of loss and fear I see in the faces of the girls. I acknowledge that I don’t envy you your life course.”

“Nor I yours,” Ophelia said, with words that surprised and stung.

“You didn’t need to kill Francesca over her prophecies. They’ve brought me no closer to answering my quest.”

“They will,” Ophelia said, her voice barely a whisper. “They will.”

Diana frowned, finding a well of pity for the older woman. “Savonarola will have you burned for what you’ve done.”

“So you’re in his league now. Some saint.”

Diana bristled. “I could speak on your behalf.”

“For a price, of course. You’d have me betray all that I’ve come to believe.” Ophelia stepped forward into the nave, her head held high. Not an ounce of shame in her manner. A heretic, a murderer, all a source of pride. “What else have I got? I’d rather die on the stake, than live as a hollow shell of a person in one of Savonarola’s dungeons.”

“Who brought you into the Sacred Council of Apostles?”

Ophelia’s expression soured and she stomped her foot. “I’ll never tell you that! Your cleverness has brought you to me, but the trail ends here.”

“But Sister Maria Innocentia, you brought her into the Council, didn’t you?”

Ophelia ground her teeth for a moment, regarding Diana coldly. At last she deigned to speak. “Maria Innocentia came to us as a lost and troubled soul. The church of Christ could offer her nothing but the promise of damnation, so great were her sins, so deep her misery. The Lightbringer…he could promise her true redemption in a Heaven meant for the glory of everything humanity could achieve. It was he who brought wisdom to man, where God would keep us forever in ignorance. What was his reward for this act of generosity? An eternity of pain and suffering, Prometheus on the rock, Lucifer in Hell, the parable across faiths is consistent. He who reached out to us with the greatest love was made to suffer the most.” Ophelia wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “Maria Innocentia found one brief moment of comfort in the promises of the Lightbringer.”

“Promises.” Diana spat the word. “What good are they?”

Ophelia frowned. “What more does your faith offer you? Look around and see what the reign of your God has wrought. His ministers on Earth…the Borgia Pope, consorting with his own daughter, murdering the good people of Rome to steal homes he finds beautiful, sending his assassins against any who speak against him, but you prefer the Mad Friar with his burning stakes and bonfires.”

“I have no love for either man.”

“Careful what you say,” Ophelia observed with a grin. “It will be you who is the heretic.”

“You mistake the failings of man for the failings of God. If we have made this world a wretched place we are all that much more wretched for placing the blame on a remote deity when we should take it for ourselves.”

“What use is a remote deity,” Ophelia said. “A God who lets wars ravage the land, disease shroud us in pain and fear, and who allows rape and violence to take seed in the hearts of men.”

“You are ignorant to expect this world to be the Paradise of the next life. Much as a mother must allow her child to take his own steps, make his own mistakes, should not God expect the same of us? If this life is meant to prepare us for the next, why should we expect more than pain and suffering and loss?” Diana’s lip trembled as she spoke these last words, her thoughts on her mother. “Do we not become stronger for the pain we endure?”