The Malice of Fortune (19 page)

We walked on and shortly came to the Inn of the Cap, where a good dozen couriers in riding boots and short jackets milled about in front of the stables. When we had passed through that crowd, Niccolò looked back the way we had come—as he had done several times since we left the piazza.

“Do you know him?” He pulled me aside and gestured with his head at the tall, robust-looking man in a long
cioppa
with a sable collar, who stood perhaps twenty steps behind us, in the loggia of an apothecary’s shop, where the tables glittered with glass flasks and
vials. Making no effort to disguise his interest, Signor Oliverotto da Fermo touched his fingers to the little velvet cap that crowned his long, sand-colored curls. His smile deepened the creases beside his mouth, so that they resembled scars.

“He killed her. He killed my angel.” This was my oracle voice. But Niccolò already stood in my way, his hands like vises on my arms.

“If he did,” Niccolò said between his teeth, “you cannot settle with him here.” He grunted as he pushed me back, even as I whimpered angrily at his intervention. “We will gather the proof against him. You can do nothing for Camilla or your son if you confront him now.”

We did not speak again until we reached the entrance to our stables. Niccolò studied me, his face flushed, breath streaming from his nostrils. “Why do you think Oliverotto da Fermo killed Camilla?”

If ever Niccolò needed and deserved to know the truth, this was the time. “Niccolò, as you suspected, this has to do with the Duke of Gandia’s assassination. An amulet His Holiness gave to his son was in the charm bag carried by the first woman …” I fought the images that came to me. “That amulet can only have been removed from Juan’s body the night he was murdered.”

He nodded slightly but I could almost hear the gears of his brain, so to speak, grinding away like a millstone. “So the pope does in fact believe that the
condottieri
murdered his son.”

“I believe His Holiness knows in his soul they did,” I said. “But he has desperately wished to evade that truth. Because if he accepts that the
condottieri
murdered Juan, he must confess that he himself cast his most beloved son like a lamb into a den of lions when he sent him to attack the Orsini and the Vitelli.”

Niccolò looked at his feet, thus sparing me whatever accusation or suspicion I might have found in his eyes. “Yes. At the time the Duke of Gandia was murdered, the Orsini probably wanted peace with the pope—even if Gandia succeeded in nothing, the cost of defending all their estates and fortresses had certainly become onerous. The Orsini value their prosperity above all else. But the Vitelli in fact did much of the fighting on behalf of the Orsini. They have no properties around Rome to defend, so a war between the Borgia and the Orsini was only to their profit.” This was also as I remembered. “And Oliverotto da
Fermo is a creature of the Vitelli—they took him in as an orphan and raised him like a son, and now he is married to Vitellozzo’s daughter.” I had not known they were actually
famiglia
. “Was he in Rome when the Duke of Gandia was murdered?”

“I don’t know.”

“He is certainly capable of worse.” Niccolò eyed me warily. “I presume you know about the business with his uncle?”

“I know that Oliverotto da Fermo’s name is nearly as notorious as Capua. But in the Trastevere it is difficult to obtain reliable particulars.”

“Early this year Oliverotto came home, after some time away campaigning with the Vitelli. He hosted a supper to honor his uncle, the reigning Lord of Fermo, in company with most of the other leading men of the city. After they had gone through the courses, Oliverotto invited his uncle and the guests into a smaller room for a private dessert …” Niccolò audibly exhaled a cloud. “They were all murdered. And then Oliverotto’s thugs rode to these gentlemen’s houses …” He hung his head as if he shared their guilt. “Suffice it to say that Oliverotto no longer fears any challenge as the sole and legitimate Lord of Fermo.”

Despite Niccolò’s laundered language, I understood that Oliverotto had ordered the children of the leading noblemen slaughtered as well. But I could not conjure the images he had intended to spare me, regardless; in my mind I could see only a landscape of gray, smoldering ruins, scorched to ashes and cinders by the ambitions of men like Oliverotto, and indeed the pope himself.

“Niccolò, I came to Imola with a simple faith,” I said desperately, as if in confessing that faith, I could still cling to it. “I believed that the
condottieri
who murdered the pope’s son also butchered that poor woman, that I would discover her association with these evil men, that Camilla and I would return to Rome with the proof of this, that I would use that secret to ransom my precious son and leave the pope to seek vengeance against those who bear the actual guilt, rather than harrying the innocent—”

I stopped because my first sob threatened to choke me. Niccolò held me and I wept and heaved as if retching up my entire soul. When
I was done, all that remained to me was a little boy patiently waiting for me in Rome, who could not yet know that behind his grandfather’s charming smile and glib promises was the Devil’s grin.

At last, I blinked away my tears. “Niccolò, I must go up there now.” I meant my own rooms. “You needn’t guard me from the truth any longer. It is time for you to tell me what you found.”

XIII

I presume Niccolò had locked the door to protect my possessions, because he produced the key and opened it. A little light came in through the cracks in the shutters. A basketful of charcoal sat on the floor next to our box of wine, the bottles still packed in straw. The coals in the iron brazier had long ago burned to ashes and the room seemed colder than the streets.

I went to the threshold of the bedroom and stood there for a moment. “Open them,” I said to Niccolò, who had gone to the shutters but seemed to wait for my permission.

Our walnut traveling chests were still on the floor at the end of the bed, Camilla’s with the legend of Patient Griselda, which so suited her, painted on the side, mine decorated with a scene of Saint George spearing the dragon, a tale I have always loved. The secondhand sideboard was to the right of the bed, upon it our blue faience pitcher and basin, our towels, combs, and cosmetic jars arrayed beside them. On the little table beneath the window, the brass candleholder was nearly buried beneath congealed wax; even Camilla’s copy of Petrarch’s canzone was still open. Only when I saw this little book did I think I would sob.

Evidently Niccolò had been careful to disturb nothing, except that the cotton mattress was now barren of the down coverlet. I gestured at the bed, unable to ask the question.

“The caretaker burned it.”

I continued to look at Niccolò, only then realizing that his drawn, pained face was no doubt a mirror of mine. “Tell me now,” I said. “It
will never be any easier. For either of us. She wasn’t cut into quarters, was she?”

His face was almost as pale as it had been that night. “Her head …”

“I know, Niccolò.” I had known when he insisted I could not see her. “Was it like that woman?” I meant the woman whose half torso we had found in the olive grove, her neck a neatly trimmed collar of flesh, the cut clean and careful. I wanted this same dreadful mercy for my beloved Camilla.

“He cut partly through her neck … with a knife. The rest … the flesh was torn away.”

I shuddered so violently that I thought I would fold up like a marionette. This creature had nearly ripped off her head. “He was a powerful man,” I said, thinking of Signor Oliverotto’s huge hands. “What … else?”

“He did not remove her clothing, much less apply the unguent to her. He … removed … her arm. Her right arm. Just as he did the head. First the partial cut … then …”

Perversely, my mind tried to picture it. “Is there more?”

“No. And he left no objects or messages with her.”

“But he took her head. And her arm. The same arm that held the other messages.” It astonished me that I could observe this.

Niccolò shook his head. His eyes roamed a bit.

I shouted at him, “What is it?”

He swallowed as if the words were stuck in his throat. “I believe you will mislead yourself if you see poor Camilla’s murder as of a piece with the first two.”

“Madness!” I shrieked. “Can you possibly believe this? They are not related?”

“I believe they are related. But they did not have the same necessity. I do not even believe that the same man did them.”

At the very least I owed Niccolò a hearing. Yet it occurred to me that having seen the horror in this room—and now forced to relive it—he was perhaps closer than I to the precipice of reason. “Why do you think this, Niccolò?”

“The meticulous nature of the first two murders. No physician could cut more precisely. The nipples carefully sliced away. The
unguent applied to the skin. The riddling messages he left on the
bollettini
, the figures of geometry derived from Leonardo’s map—”

“You have already noted these things.”

“And they have led me to this man’s necessity.”

“It is necessary for him to torment and provoke the pope,” I said. “Or if you must believe your most recent theory, he merely needs to draw us into his cruel game.”

“I see now that he regards this as more than a game. Vanity is his necessity. He has created this
disegno
with human flesh, and he is no less vain of it than any maestro of painting, sculpture, or architecture. We are his audience, who must admire the cleverness and accomplishment of his creation.”

“The pope is his audience,” I said, returning to my first faith. “He does not care about the rest of us.”

“No. From the very first he was as much interested in Leonardo as he was in the pope. And now … As you observed, he was watching us the other day. Watching you, I fear.” The late-afternoon sun must have come from behind the clouds and reflected off the opposite roof, because a brilliant light haloed Niccolò’s head. “Once he knew you, he sent someone to your rooms, to search them, to learn something about you.”

“He ‘sent someone’?”

“He cannot do this on his own. Like any maestro of a painter’s
bottega
, he must employ assistants or an apprentice—in his case there are probably only one or two, because of the nature of his art. The man who impersonates the Devil is almost certainly one of them. I would guess they assist their master in measuring the countryside and placing body parts on the points of a wind rose. Little different than Leonardo and his people.” From his look, Niccolò might have tasted rotten meat. “But I believe that his apprentice also abducts these poor women beforehand.”

I clapped my hand to my eyes. “He intended to take my Camilla to that farmhouse. But she would not have let him take her across this threshold. The Devil himself could not have forced her. She would have fought … Did you find her knife?”

“No. He might have taken it with him. But you must understand
this: The apprentice killed your dear friend in anger. Because he could not do what he wished with her. He could not do what I believe his maestro instructed him to do with her. The maestro of the shop would not have permitted him to …” Niccolò held up both hands like a priest giving the blessing. “This evil maestro does not kill in anger. He murders with calculation. With a remorseless disregard for his victims. I do not believe he kills with any sort of passion at all.”

I was suddenly so weary that I collapsed into the ancient chair beside the little table. Where my beautiful Camilla had sat, in her last moments among us poor and miserable sinners.

“Niccolò, I know who he is. I have looked into his face. His very eyes. And it does not matter to me why he kills if I cannot establish that he has done so.” I spoke to him as gently as I could. “All I require now is proof. Perhaps Maestro Leonardo will find something in these figures of geometry, some key that will lead us to the … heads.” Perhaps my lovely Camilla’s as well. “The cold will have preserved them. When we have the first woman’s head we will know. We will connect this evil man to his crimes.”

Niccolò blinked rapidly. “No. Leonardo’s measuring wheel, maps, and figures of geometry will lead you nowhere. The journey we must now take is inside him. Within his head. Whether this maestro of the shop is Oliverotto da Fermo or another man, we must first inhabit his mind.”

We live in an age of marvelous
invenzioni
, where even an obscure secretary might stand upon the shoulders of the ancients, aspiring to some sort of
scienza
of men. But having seen Leonardo’s anatomical drawings, I regarded the maestro as considerably more likely than Messer Niccolò to journey inside a man’s skull.

“
Mille
,
mille grazie
, my dearest Niccolò,” I said to him. “I can never begin to thank you enough for all you have done for me. And for my Camilla. I will always be grateful to you.” I got up to embrace him, although it seemed I carried the world upon my shoulders. “Now I must try to be alone with my grief.”

Niccolò looked guardedly at me. Perhaps he was as much concerned with the state of my reason as I was with his. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself, closed his eyes, and turned and left me.