The Malice of Fortune (47 page)

I know now that I spent only one night in confinement. But when the door clanked open, I had no notion how long I had been there. Still hooded and bound, I was wrestled to my feet and shoved along until I found myself again seated on a horse.

We went up and down hills for some time before I was pulled from the saddle, on this occasion staying on my feet. My hood was whipped off and the light from all the snow burst upon me like a vast explosion of gunpowder. I stood in a small field surrounded by a dozen
irregular plots similarly strewn across the hills, all of them pushed together as if they had collided by chance; this was more like our Tuscan countryside than the flat orderliness of the Romagnole
pianura
. In the distance were higher, barren slopes, sheathed in ice and shrouded in clouds.

Amid this melancholy landscape sat Vitellozzo Vitelli, upon the same tasseled cardinal’s throne he had occupied at the
primero
table. Strangely, in this considerably brighter light his features appeared less bloated and malformed.

Attending him was Oliverotto da Fermo, attired in the same chain mail and cape as the previous day. The two
condottieri
—Signor Paolo had for some reason not joined them—were accompanied by six or seven soldiers in padded jerkins, most armed with crossbows, although two of them were
scoppiettieri
, the butts of their guns planted in the snow. In the field beyond these men, a dozen grooms tended an equal number of warhorses and mules. I knew there were soldiers at my back as well.

Here I must confess that I have exercised a bit of the fabulist’s art in describing this scene, because only after I had been there for a time did I begin to make the preceding observations. In truth, almost as soon as the hood was snatched from my head, I nearly fell to my knees in gratitude and relief.

Damiata stood beside Vitellozzo’s throne, the snow a white curtain behind her, her unflawed features framed by her sable hood.

I did not expect her eyes to seek mine; in truth I was grateful that she did not risk even a glance. Yet I could not keep myself from staring at her face, lovely as a bust of Aphrodite—and less animated than cold marble with life or feeling. She did not, however, appear to have suffered the horrors I had imagined.

“We must finish our business quickly,” Vitellozzo said, wrenching my attention from Damiata. “Duke Valentino is going to join our forces for the final assault on the fortress at Sinigaglia.” One of the most important fortified cities on the Adriatic coast, Sinigaglia had yet to submit to the pope. “When we have Sinigaglia, the Romagna will be
entirely secure and our combined armies can move north.” Vitellozzo raised his hand to his forehead as if he had sighted this signal victory on the horizon just behind me. “Before the first of January, the duke and I will prepare our plan for the conquest of Florence.”

As many times as I had conjured this grim prophecy in my own mind, to hear the words “conquest of Florence” from the man most capable—and most desirous—of effecting it was a kick in the testicles; only by some great exercise of will was I able to keep from doubling over.

No sooner had Vitellozzo announced the fate of my republic, than Oliverotto da Fermo pointed at the men behind me. A moment later I heard the crackle of a burning fuse, followed by the sharp thunder of a
scoppietto
, twice in rapid sequence.

But I did not feel my flesh rip and my bones shatter. Hardly believing that the marksmen could have missed me at this range, I dared to turn.

The two
scoppiettieri
were surrounded by a cloud of smoke. Beyond them, at a distance of about a hundred
braccia
, a man wearing only a peasant’s sand-colored work tunic had been tied to a tall stake. The round wooden gag stuffed into his mouth gave him a dreadful, gaping, fish-out-of-water aspect, as he writhed and tossed his head, trying desperately to escape his bonds.

I quickly turned from this ugly game.

“The problem with the
scoppietto
is the man, not the mathematics,” Vitellozzo said, pouncing on my terror-filled eyes. “With a fixed artillery piece, assuming the foundry is reliable and the powder likewise consistent, I have only to calculate the mathematics. The wind, also, but that is predictable in most conditions. But the
scoppiettiero
moves to his own momentary tics and whims. He allows his arm to drop slightly with one shot, then stray to the right with the other. The force the weapon exerts on him as the ball is expelled will also cause considerable variation. But that is the usefulness of this weapon, is it not, my sweet ’Liverotto?” He glanced at his pupil, more reprovingly than with expectation of an answer. “Will the gunman’s whim provide the correct mathematics? Only Fortune knows.” He nodded past me. “The target cannot know. Each errant shot only heightens his terror.”

Vitellozzo went on to other business. “This whore the pope sent to find his son’s murderer.” He inclined his head slightly toward Damiata. “You are familiar with her.”

“I know the lady.”

“The whore,” Vitellozzo corrected me. “At least she has convinced us she is a whore, even if she has not convinced you.” Oliverotto smiled slightly, as if at last his mentor had amused him. “She claims the pope trusts her. Should I?”

I presumed that Damiata had used her connection with the pope in a desperate attempt to save herself and her son. “She has the pope’s trust,” I said, believing the truth could only help her. “Her son is his hostage.”

Vitellozzo received this intelligence with no expression whatever. Perhaps he already knew it.

Behind me the fuses spit and the
scoppietti
again issued their dreadful percussion. The two shots were far enough apart that I could hear the brief, moaning flight of each ball. And the impact of the second, like an ox stepping on a melon.

Vitellozzo squinted past me. “Now, that is a turn of Fortune. But let us go on to another matter.”

Here Vitellozzo reached into his riding cloak and extracted the
Elements
we had examined at his
primero
table. “We must finish yesterday’s tale, mustn’t we?” He leafed quickly through the pages. “I believe we left off with Duke Valentino expecting the Devil to appear in a jar of water and tell him the name of his brother’s murderer.”

Vitellozzo nodded to Oliverotto, the latter drawing from his belt the same ivory-handled dagger with which he had hoped to gut Ramiro da Lorca. Oliverotto lunged at me theatrically, as if he were an actor miming that very attack. Seemingly satisfied with my instinctive cringe, he slipped his arm around my back and sliced the rope binding my hands, so quickly that he nicked my wrist.

“Careful where you are bleeding,” Vitellozzo said, offering the
Elements
to me.

I wiped the blood on my jacket and accepted the book. Vitellozzo had opened it to the preceding day’s question:
Gevol int la carafa
, tell us who kill Duca Ganda.

Vitellozzo whispered, “Turn the page and you will find the answer.”

My hands trembled, even though the seeress’s answer could scarcely be considered credible. The parchment crackled, almost as if my fingers had set it on fire.

Zeja
Caterina had misspelled the names, but they were clear enough:
Sgnor Vitel. Sgnor Ferm
. And the last:
Madona Damata
.

I met Vitellozzo’s eyes and told him the truth as I saw it. “The duke got the answer he expected. As you said,
Zeja
Caterina was a shrewd fraud.” It occurred to me that the seeress had perhaps heard Damiata’s name, and her alleged crimes, babbled by one of the
condottieri
during their goat ride—or had “divined” it from others at Valentino’s court. Yet I observed to myself:
Even a fraud can tell the truth once
. Or perhaps in this case, two truths and one lie.

Vitellozzo winced as his shoulders heaved. “Turn the page.”

The only words in the margin of the next page had also been written in the witch’s scrawl:
Traget di capra. Zeja Caterina. Duca Valentin
.

“Just the two of them,” Vitellozzo said. “On a goat ride together. I imagine that while they were greasing themselves our gallant Valentino showed his
strega
some things even the Devil—or even our dear ’Liverotto—hadn’t. But I see you’ve noticed the odd thing there.”

The page that should have followed was missing. I could clearly see the line running along the stub of the parchment where it had been scored by a knife—recently, it seemed, because the cut edge was not soiled like the rest of the book.

“Someone has cut out a page of this book, isn’t that so, Messer Monkey-Macchia? I imagine, as I am sure you do, that it was removed because Valentino said something of great import while he was taking his journey on the back of a goat—or on the backside of a
strega
.” Vitellozzo offered me his dolorous smile. “So my clever little Florentine pet, what do you think the duke discussed with his
strega
whore—or perhaps chattered to some party not present—while in this narcotic transport?”

I looked at Oliverotto. His eyes, nearly the same hue as the bluish-gray light, appeared to hover before me. Only then did it occur to me that perhaps Valentino was protecting Oliverotto because the two of
them had formed some conspiracy against Vitellozzo Vitelli—much as Oliverotto had already betrayed his uncle.

But I answered Vitellozzo with a more likely possibility. “I believe the duke confessed to crimes at Capua.”

“We were all at Capua,” Vitellozzo said flatly. Valentino had used these same words.

“Then you understand the remorse he might feel.” I could not escape imparting a certain irony to my words.

Vitellozzo merely heaved a bit, with what sentiment I could not say, but it seemed he regarded me as a fool. “I have a final question for you,” he said, the word “final” freezing me at once. “Who do
you
think murdered the Duke of Gandia?”

I might never have another chance to reveal the truth. “He is the same man who cut a Romagnole
strega
into four pieces and scattered her to the corners of the winds, then proceeded to construct an Archimedes spiral with the flesh of her entire
gioca
, an endeavor in which he was assisted by a faceless priest.” I searched in vain for something within eyes open no wider than the edge of a coin. “At Cesenatico, he created a salt tomb for the heads of the
streghe
and a reliquary for the skulls and other mementos of the women he raped and butchered at Capua.” I still waited for some sign. “Signore, the man who murdered the Duke of Gandia is a rare and most exceptional individual. Only when he takes life, can he live. He must kill in the same fashion that the rest of us breathe.”

Vitellozzo blinked at me like a lizard on a fence, his nostrils steaming the air. After a moment he lifted his swollen hand, then let it fall heavily into his lap.

Several of Vitellozzo’s liveried attendants swarmed his chair, quickly turning it about and transporting it like a litter toward the waiting horses. The rest of Vitellozzo’s company followed with similar haste.

Before she joined this parade, Damiata at last met my eyes. The poets write of a single glance that haunts a lifetime, casting a spell of desire and regret that can never be broken. But this liquid blue glance, so nakedly pained and remorseful, answered every question of a lifetime.
I believed in my reborn soul that Damiata still loved me, even as she had to abandon me.

Then she, too, turned away.

Vitellozzo’s party quickly vanished over the nearest hill; by the time Damiata slipped from sight, sitting sidesaddle on a white mare, draped in her red cape, she might have been a duchess in a miniature painting. And then I could hear only the wind sifting the snow.

I took stock of my situation. I had taken no sustenance for almost two days; nevertheless, I was adequately clothed. It seemed that once again I had been deliberately spared; perhaps my recitation of a murderer’s history had convinced Vitellozzo Vitelli that I was a keen-eyed and useful witness, if nothing more—much as I was regarded as nothing more than a reliable observer by my own government.