The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (25 page)

I nodded and stumbled to my feet, taking care how I set the goblet on the desk lest it fall and I shatter with it. Somehow I managed to collect myself sufficiently to walk from the room and out of the antechamber. I moved through a well of silence, acutely aware of the eyes on me from every direction. Every priest, every clerk, every hanger-on stopped and stared at me.

They might not have existed so far as I was concerned. The taste of copper lingered in my mouth. I waited until I had exited the Vatican Palace, then spit against a wall, discovering in the process that I had bitten my tongue. My blood stained the pale stone and dripped into the ground. I shuddered and moved on.

Despite Borgia’s admonitions, I was not inclined to return to my apartment at once. In the aftermath of what had happened, a strange restlessness overtook me. I felt an irresistible need to keep moving.

On the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I stopped and stared out toward the southern bend of the river. At that time of year, the Tiber is a sluggish beast writhing its way through the heart of the city. Matters are different in winter when late rains can swell the river’s banks to bursting, but just then a twig dropped from where I stood would have had a leisurely trip down the length of the river and out into the Tyrrhenian Sea less than a hundred miles away. When the wind is right, the scent of the sea overlaid with the perfume of the country it passes through fills the city. But just then hardly a breeze stirred the torpid air.

I watched as the ferrymen pulled their long, narrow boats up onto the muddy bank. During the day, vying for customers, they were as cutthroat as any competitors could hope to be. But with food and their beds beckoning, they worked together to hoist the boats up onto the road. There the ferrymen’s children waited to help their fathers carry the vessels back to their humble dwellings. In the morning, the operation would be reversed. In another city—perhaps the city of Plato’s Republican dream where all men dwell together in peaceful congeniality lacking even the need for laws, far less lawyers—in that city, the ferrymen would leave their boats safe on the riverbank and return with the dawn to find them still there. But Rome is a city of thieves or, if that seems unkind, of scavengers, many of who live in tumbledown wooden shacks huddled along the river where they find their livelihood trawling for anything they can sell. An unattended boat would be gone in the flick of an eye with not so much as a splinter to mark its passing.

But the Tiber takes even as it gives. Stand on the bridge below the looming hulk of Castel Sant’Angelo long enough and you are assured of seeing at least one body drift by. Daily, the dead inhabit the river. Whether the victims of violence or of their own hopelessness, they tend to look the same, bloated remnants of the souls who once possessed them. Very few of the bodies are those of children, and it is even rarer to find a baby, but that is because they tend to be so small that their remains lodge in the pillars beneath the city’s bridges, where they escape notice.

I leaned against the stonework, grateful for its coolness in the day’s lingering heat, and tried to forget what had happened in Borgia’s office. No doubt he was right that I was overwrought, though I hated to think of myself in such terms. I was sleeping badly, as always. The Devil’s wind that had blown through the city of late had robbed me of appetite. I longed for Cesare … ached for Rocco … worried that I would never be able to avenge my father properly … and wondered, when I dared, why I could not simply be like other people, living a life of blessed ordinariness.

It was an affectation, of course. No one really wants to be ordinary. As much as they looked at me askance, more than a few women—and a great many men—happily would have exchanged their humdrum lives for the wealth and power that I possessed. No doubt they would laugh at me for longing after what they had.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps just a few were wise enough to appreciate the virtues of love and honor, faithfulness and humility. They might well pity me.

But I was damned if I would pity myself.

I went home. I fed Minerva. I changed out of the heavy formal clothing I wore within the Vatican into the boy’s attire that I resorted to on those occasions when I wanted to move about the city unrecognized and unhindered. I awaited word from Alfonso and when very shortly I got tired of waiting, I left and walked across the river into Trastevere.

Twilight was fast approaching when I entered the piazza in front of Santa Maria. I took up my post a little off to one side and waited. The square and the nearby streets began to empty out. I watched the shapes in the shadows, tracking their movement. Soon enough, one approached me.

“I didn’t recognize you at first,” Alfonso said. He grinned cheekily at my boy’s garb.

“Have you ever tried to chase someone while wearing a skirt?” I asked.

“Can’t say that I have. There’s been no sign of him, if that’s what you’re here to ask. He’s gone to ground.”

“No, he hasn’t. He has sent a message. We cannot wait any longer.”

Alfonso looked skeptical. “What do you want us to do?”

I told him. When I was done, he puffed up his cheeks and let his breath out in a rush. “You’re sure about this?”

“I think it is the only way.”

“Well, then … here.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small wooden whistle, handing it to me.

“What is this for?”

“It’s one of my ideas,” Alfonso said proudly. “They’re cheap and easy to make. I give them to all my crew. A single whistle means come on the run. That’s good if there’s somebody who hasn’t got the word yet about my being in charge, maybe they’re causing a problem for one of my boys. We gang up, let them know what’s what, and more times than not, they fall in line. Two whistles means scatter, run. That’s good when the condottierri show up and we want to avoid trouble.”

It was an ingenious idea and I said as much. He preened, just a little, but quickly turned serious.

“I understand what you’re saying about tightening the noose, flushing him down into the tunnels and not leaving him any way out except through the church. It’s a good plan. But with all respect, why do you want to face him alone? Wouldn’t it be better to have guards there with you?”

“Certainly, provided I could be sure that Morozzi would not realize that they were there until it was too late. I have learned to my sorrow never to underestimate him. The only way he will show himself is if he is certain that I am alone.”

“You’re the bait?”

I nodded. Borgia had sought to use me as such when he allowed the villa to be attacked. As distasteful as that was, it was too good a tactic for me to ignore.

“Morozzi wants to kill me for reasons that lie between the two of us, but also because I stand between him and his ultimate target, the Pope.”

Such are the times we live in that the notion of someone daring to strike at the Supreme Pontiff did not surprise Alfonso. He merely nodded.

“And you think you can stop him by yourself?”

I did not blame him for being skeptical but—as Vittoro had said—Morozzi had never shown any tendency to sacrifice his own life. On the other hand, a sufficiently committed assassin can penetrate anywhere.

It was not that I wanted to die, not in the sense of seeking my own death as did those poor souls swallowed by the writhing Tiber. But the thought of being done with the darkness, the nightmares, the visions, the sense of being set apart from others and alone, which had grown so powerful since the murder of my father … all that had a certain seductiveness. Of course, against that weighed the teachings of Holy Mother Church regarding the hideous sufferings that awaited the apostate, murderess, fornicator, and possible
strega
in the Inferno below. But what had begun as a canker of doubt within me had blossomed into a thorny hedge wherein questions, outright disbelief, and growing contempt tangled impenetrably. Behind it, I sheltered, defiant and resolute.

“I will do what I must,” I said.

For all his youth,
il re dei contrabbandieri
had not risen to his exalted position without understanding when a storm can be navigated around and when it must be gone through. He nodded and laid a hand lightly on my shoulder before vanishing back into the shadows.

I was alone in the gathering darkness. Before me, the stone bulk of Santa Maria loomed. I lifted my gaze to the mosaic of the Virgin suckling her son and, in defiance of all those who would condemn me, said a silent prayer that if there was anything out there, anyone to hear me and care, I would not die by Morozzi’s hand.

Before fear could overcome me, I ran up the steps and into the church.

21

There was disagreement later about exactly who was responsible. Some claimed it was the apprentices, always suspected of running riot at the least or no provocation. Others declared that the culprits were imps from Hell who cavorted naked on cloven feet. A few insisted that it was the smugglers, but as no one could explain why they would behave in such a way, that was not taken seriously.

What is known is that Trastevere did not sleep that night. How could it when mischief-makers ran riot through its streets, singing loudly, bursting into homes and shops, upending tables, sending chickens and pigeons alike into a frenzy, freeing pigs into the roads, and all the while inexplicably chanting, “Come out, priest, come out! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

The plain truth is that there were more than a few priests in Trastevere that night—as any other. One or two may have been chastely in their own beds. Perhaps not; those numbers seem high. The rest were content to drink and carouse right along with a bevy of bishops, several archbishops, and at least one cardinal.

Some tried to flee when the trouble began only to be caught by what was rapidly turning into a torchlight parade drawing even decent people into a whirling bacchanalia where, amid pounding drums improvised out of kettles and staves and clashing cymbals thrown together from metal plates, liberated wine flowed freely and a general mood of good cheer prevailed.

Others of the cloth dove under beds from where they were rousted when the happy, singing mob threw open doors, dragging all into their midst with most—presumably not the members of the clergy—joining in the cry that resounded through every alley and lane: “Come out, priest, come out! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

It was even said that the cry was taken up in other neighborhoods, carried from rooftop to rooftop wherever people sought relief from the oppressive warmth. To this day on the anniversary of the Imp’s Parade, as it came to be known, you can still hear the mocking admonition from the throats of all those brave enough to utter it.

“Come out, priest, come out! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

The goings-on in Trastevere meant nothing to me save that they should accomplish their purpose. I reasoned that the threat of discovery coupled with the mocking nature of the mob would compel Morozzi to seek safer ground. In hope of that, I took up my position in the church near the wooden door that Alfonso had revealed.

In my hands, I held the knife I had used to kill the assassin Morozzi had sent, likely a member of the Brotherhood, not that his identity mattered to me. I had gotten lucky with him thanks to the element of surprise and Cesare’s coaching. But I could not count on luck again.

Accordingly, I had made a slight alteration to the blade. It was now coated with a contact poison that, unlike that encountered by the feckless Donna Lydia, I knew to be deadly. Of course, this meant that it required the most careful handling. I drew a deep breath to steady myself and kept my eyes on the wooden door.

I did not have long to wait.

Before I had barely settled myself, the door was flung open and Morozzi hurtled through it. He wore a black cloak that obscured him from head to toe, and moved as though demons were in pursuit, although I suppose that if they had been, he would have embraced them. At any rate, he took no more notice of me than he would have of a gnat.

So quickly did he come that he got beyond the door and into the aisle that traversed the church from apse to nave before I could react. He was running toward the altar when I leaped in pursuit. It was in my mind that there had to be many ways out of the old church and that Morozzi would know of them. He seemed to have spent all his time in the city investigating its hidden byways. I could not risk him vanishing into another of them.

“Hold!” I cried. “Bernando Morozzi, hold!”

He stopped and turned, looking toward me from the deep obscurity of his hooded cloak.

“It is I, Francesca Giordano. Will you run from me, coward? Or will we finish this now?”

I was counting on his hatred of me as well as the assumption made by every male that women are the weaker sex, unequal in any struggle. Sadly, that is too often true, but I had to believe that in my case it would be otherwise. I was prepared and I was determined. All I had to do was draw him close enough to so much as nick him with the knife. That would be enough.

Lest he sense my intent, I kept the blade lowered at my side as I walked toward him.

“Not so brave when you are alone, are you?” I taunted. “You can send someone to try to kill me but you are afraid to do it yourself. It was the same with my father. You could not do that either but had to act through others.”

He did not move or speak but I felt his eyes glaring at me.

I moved closer, propelled by the utter rightness of what I was about to do. Killing Morozzi would rid the world of a monster, avenge my father, protect the Jews, and help to preserve Borgia all at the same time. The certainty of what it would mean filled me with strength unlike any I had ever known.

I was so close.…

An arm wrapped around my throat from behind. In the same motion, I was yanked off my feet. I had only an instant to realize what was happening before the breath was squeezed out of me.

“Strega,” a voice hissed in my ear.
“I will watch your bones crack in the fire.”

A witch. But far more important, a fool. I had fallen into the trap of my own arrogance, forgetting what I not only knew but had warned other people of—that Morozzi was far too clever ever to be underestimated. Like Borgia, he played a deep game, always thinking many moves ahead. For certain, he had outmaneuvered me.