The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (18 page)

“Maybe not.” He rose and began tugging the knives free from the wall, and my pulse leaped in sudden violent hope. “Do you know who I am, little man?”

“No.”

“I am Cesare Borgia, Bishop of Pamplona. My father is Rodrigo, Cardinal Borgia.”

“Father?” I raised my eyebrows. “Isn’t it traditional to pretend he’s your uncle?”

“I never pretend anything,” said Cesare Borgia. “And my father will be Pope after Innocent dies, and can do what he likes.”

“Last I heard, he was running a distant third in the pools.” If the young Bishop wished to banter, by all means, let us banter. For a chance at life, I’d talk papal gossip till the sun rose. “Behind Cardinal Sforza and Cardinal della Rovere, I believe.”

“My father has already bribed Sforza,” the young Bishop said. “Four mules loaded with silver.”

“Christendom comes cheaper than I thought.”

“Fortunately for my father. I’ve come from Pisa to aid His Eminence in angling for the votes he needs while he attends the Pope’s deathbed. He had time today, before returning to the papal chamber, to give me a few instructions. He wants me to hire someone.”

I laughed. “Surely not me!”

“I am to use my discretion. My father has enemies. They will not be able to reach him once the Conclave begins, but they might try to reach his family instead. My brother Juan and I can look after ourselves, but we have another brother not eleven years old.” His face softened briefly. “And a sister.”

“
Dio
,” I said, “His Eminence your father has been busy.”

“My family is vulnerable. We have guards, but visitors ushered past guards can turn out to be assassins in disguise. My father wishes a bodyguard who will stay close to the family, as a last defense. Someone easily overlooked.”

“You might want to choose a taller man than me.”

“I would,” Cesare Borgia said coolly. Outside the leaded windows, I heard the distant pealing of a bell. “But my father also wants his mistress protected. He’s making a fool of himself over a girl of eighteen, and he doesn’t want a strapping young guardsman trailing her footsteps day and night. A stunted little man like you will suit him far better where she is concerned. And your skill with knives”—tossing my blades to the desk with a clatter—“will suit me very well. No one who comes looking for my sister or my father’s mistress will look twice at you, not as anything more than the jester who makes Lucrezia laugh or the attendant who carries Giulia Farnese’s train. They’ll think it until the moment they have a blade in their throat.”

“Well, well.” I found my mouth suddenly dry. The tolling of bells was louder now, as though another bell tower had joined in. “This task you offer me—will it save me from the gallows?”

“If you perform it satisfactorily. There may even be lasting employment for you, past the election of the new Pope. I have no objection to hiring murderers, and neither does His Eminence my father.” Cesare Borgia scooped my knives up in one hand, careful of the sharp edges. “Useful souls.”

“We are.” The nicely calculated set of odds I’d constructed around the likelihood of my death went tumbling down. Outside, the clamor of bells had risen to a storm, but nothing could match the storm of emotion raging inside me. Who knew hope could be such a violent thing when it surged in the chest like this? “Oh, we are.”

“What is your name, little man? You would not tell my guards. Even Michelotto, and he has a frightening way about him.”

“I am Leonello, and no one frightens me. What in the name of God are those bells pealing for?”

“Those?” Casually, Cesare Borgia crossed the room and flung open the leaded windows. The mad cacophony rushed in, assailing my ears. Surely every bell in Rome was ringing. “I imagine the Pope is dead, God be praised. Which means my father has a funeral to attend, and I have a Conclave to bribe.” Turning to face me in a swirl of purple cassock, he proffered my knives back to me in a hilt-first steel nosegay. “What do you say to my offer, Leonello?”

“I have a condition.”

His brows drew together. “You are hardly in a position to name conditions.”

“This house you speak of, for your sister and the mistress,” I said, ignoring him. “Does it have a library? And can I use it?”

He laughed. “Yes. And yes.”

“Then, Your Excellency”—I gave my most elaborate courtier’s bow, taking my knives back from his hands—“I am your man.”

CHAPTER SIX

Habemus Papam.

—OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT UPON THE ELECTION OF A NEW POPE

Carmelina

R
oast peacock,” Marco told me dreamily. “With a flaming beak and a gilded breast. And a sugar subtlety for a sweet afterward, molded in the shape of a bull—the Borgia bull, you understand?—dyed red . . .”

“No, no, and no,” I said firmly. “Cardinal Borgia doesn’t care for elaborate meals at the best of times, and this is hardly the best of times. You’re cooking for a Conclave, not a wedding!”

But Marco was full of dreams, not listening to me at all. Cardinal Borgia, in the insane rush of preparing for Pope Innocent’s massive funeral and the papal Conclave to follow, had suddenly found himself in need of a cook to provide his meals during the protracted voting. And having far too much caution to hire a strange cook when his own grew ill, he had asked his cousin Madonna Adriana if he could borrow her cook: Maestro Marco Santini.

“Think of it!” Marco was striding up and down the kitchens, waving his arms. “Cooking for the College of Cardinals!”

“Just
one
cardinal. Everyone else in the College will rely on his own cook too, to guard against poison.” Except for those cardinals who announced their faith in God, prayer, and the integrity of his fellow churchmen, and trustingly ate the food that came from the papal kitchens. In other words, those cardinals who had no chance of being elected Pope and were thus in no danger of being poisoned by anybody.

“—dining with Cardinal Borgia after the votes are cast every evening, everyone admiring my roast peacock—”

“All of them far too busy scheming and dealing to pay any attention to your roast peacock.”

“—noticing how delicious my hot sops are—”

“I wouldn’t count on your sops being very hot, considering they’ll have to be passed through who knows how many sets of gates and servants and tasters. Cold meats, Marco, chilled salads, and sauces that won’t form a skin when they cool!”

“And afterward if just one remembers my name and the food I served . . .” Marco’s eyes glowed as he punched a big fist into his other palm. He could see it now, I knew: cook not only to a cardinal’s cousin but to a cardinal himself. Maybe even the future Pope, whoever that would be. The Conclave, locked together for a day or a week or a month or however long it took to form a majority, would decide. I put my chin on my hand, looking at my cousin ruefully.

“Stuffed croquettes with sturgeon.” Marco snapped his fingers. “Carmelina, the recipe, let me see it. Is it mint, sweet marjoram, and burnet in the filling?”

“I like to add a little wild thyme too.” I flipped to the folded page in my father’s collection, deciphering the coded lines (page 227, Chapter: Pastry). “And be sure to roll them up like wafer cornets, see here . . . Sturgeon croquettes, though, far too rich. I’d just serve a good roast fowl.”

Marco was dreaming far too large to hear me, though, and I couldn’t help but catch his enthusiasm as we spent the night poring over my father’s recipes and packing the requisite dishes, supplies, spices, and utensils he’d be able to take along in Cardinal Borgia’s entourage. The Conclave would not convene for another ten days at least, not until after the mourning period for Pope Innocent was traditionally concluded, but Marco was to join Cardinal Borgia’s household now. “You’ll look after the kitchens for me here, won’t you?” Marco asked me as an afterthought. “Keep the apprentices in order? It will just be Madonna Adriana, Madonna Giulia, and the children to cook for . . .”

“I think I can feed four in your absence.”

“That you can.” Marco laughed. “Good thing you’re not a man, little cousin, or I’d be worried you’d steal my place here.”

“If I were a man, I would,” I told him. I could tease him now without seeing resentment flare in his eyes. Marco might not have liked the way I’d thrust myself into his life, but in the end he was far too good-natured to hold a grudge for long. “You really should go now, Marco. Cardinal Borgia has the funeral rites to get through before he even starts thinking about the Conclave, and he’ll want a hot meal tonight.”

Marco rose, stretching. “Remember,” he said, taking my face between his hands and giving it a playful shake for emphasis. “Count all the spices twice or Madonna Adriana will dock your pay.”

“I don’t
get
paid.”

“She’ll dock mine, then.” He stood, still holding my face between his hands. “You know, Carmelina, I’m glad you’re not a man. I like you better this way. I should have paid more attention to you when you were running about underfoot in your father’s kitchens. Skinny little thing you were.”

“Still am,” I pointed out. “My sister used to say I looked like a basting needle.”

Marco wasn’t listening. “I should have . . .”

What?
I thought. Married me when he was an apprentice; taken my skillful hands for a dowry? If he had, we might still be standing here in these kitchens—but we’d have babies, and I’d be so busy looking after the babies that I’d have no opportunity to cover for him when
zara
games lured him away from the banquets he was supposed to be preparing. No, it was better this way.

“Time to go,” I said again, and made a show of dusting off the table so I could turn away from his touch. Hopefully before he could feel my cheeks heat against his palms. My cousin was a fool, but he was a handsome one with his black hair lapping over his eyes. And I wasn’t immune to the touch of a handsome man—even if it was far more a sin for me to enjoy that kind of touch now than it had ever been when I was a girl, given what I had become.

No use dwelling on what I had become after girlhood.

“Shall I place a bet for you on the new Pope?” Marco was asking me as he shouldered into his doublet. “They’re running odds on Cardinal Sforza at three to one!”

The soft look in his eye, I saw with some amusement, had already gone.

Marco was gone too, at dawn the following morning, as Pope Innocent’s funeral rites began and the cramped wooden voting cubicles were erected in the Sistine Chapel for the coming Conclave. I found the silence in the kitchens unnerving. After all the tumult of the Pope’s long-awaited death, now there was nothing to do but wait. Half my apprentices—that is, Marco’s apprentices—did not even come to the kitchens, and I dismissed the rest after the midday meal was done. They scampered off to watch Pope Innocent’s funeral cortege, and to gossip about who the Conclave would elect to succeed him.

Though how long that would take, even Santa Marta herself probably didn’t know. I’d heard of one Conclave that went on for literally years, but we lived in more practical times. If the voting dragged on too long, Marco’s meals would no longer be needed: the cardinals would be restricted to bread, water, and wine until they chose a new pope.

Still, I couldn’t help but design a menu as I started preparing the midday
pranzo
for Madonna Adriana and her clutch of Borgia wards. “What would you serve to a group of power-mad churchmen in the grip of voting fever and indigestion?” I asked Santa Marta, whose hand I’d placed in a nice decorative box on the spice rack. Altogether it seemed a more respectful place for her than forever being squirreled away under my apron. And if anyone saw her, well, half the servants in the household carried some kind of relic for good luck. No one would have any reason to guess that mine had been acquired a trifle more illicitly than most. “Clear broths, you think?” I went on. “Something very light and soothing on an uneasy stomach and an even uneasier conscience . . .”

“Whoever are you talking to?”

I turned from my trestle table to see Madonna Giulia in the doorway to the kitchens, one hand on the jamb and her blond head cocked inquisitively. I curtsied, but she waved me up as she always did.

“Don’t let me interrupt, Carmelina. I’m just down for something sweet to nibble. I rang for a page, but he never answered—must be off clustered in the
piazza
with everyone else, waiting for the white smoke. So I thought I might as well come down myself.” She threw an envious look in the direction of the
piazza
. “I wish I could be out there, too.”

“Can’t you, Madonna Giulia?” I moved to the larder, rummaging for sweets. I’d run out of her favorite marzipan, but I had half a cold strawberry
tourte
I’d made with a chilled summery sauce of honey, mead, and lemon.

“I promised I wouldn’t leave the
palazzo
.” She made a face. “Lucrezia and Madonna Adriana and I are to stay inside until the funeral
and
the Conclave are done. We’re not even to go to confession. Rodrigo says it won’t be safe.”

She said the all-powerful Cardinal Borgia’s name quite unselfconsciously, I noticed. The servants were running a collection on how long it would take Madonna Adriana’s daughter-in-law to succumb to him—Marco had lost a week’s salary when a month passed and she still hadn’t (to anyone’s knowledge) given in. Maybe I should put a bet in myself that the
castello
Farnese had fallen at last . . .

Madonna Giulia picked a strawberry out of the flaky
tourte
crust to pop into her mouth whole. “What’s that you’re making there?”

“Part of your midday meal,
madonna
.” I added a few pinches of sugar and began cracking eggs into the mix. “Elderflower
frittelle
.”

“I don’t see any elderflowers. Just cheese.”

“The elderflowers are soaking in cold milk. I’ll add them with a little saffron, then roll the dough out into balls and fry them in butter. Right now it needs more sugar.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even taste it.”

“I just know.” Adding a pinch more.

“Don’t you even have to measure it?”

“It only needed a pinch.”

“And that’s something else you just know?”

“Yes,
madonna
.”

“Can you show me how to do that? When Rodrigo comes back I can give him a plate of
frittelle
I made with my own hands. He’d like that, I think.”

“His Eminence doesn’t care for delicacies. Very plain tastes in food, he has.” Perhaps the only thing he liked plain—his taste in wine, decor, and mistresses was certainly luxurious enough.

“Teach me?” She made a tragic face. “Please?”

I relented, and my mistress soon stood before me giggling and ready to work, her silks wrapped with one of my aprons. What a strange household I had landed in, where the mistress of the house presented herself not only to a possible pope as bedmate, but to her own cook as apprentice. “Combine those two creamy cheeses there into the mortar,” I instructed, and began showing her how to knead them together.

“I’m not getting in the way, am I?” She already had a dribble of cheese down her apron. “I’d hate to put you behind on your work . . .”

“No work to do, not with such a reduced household. More of a kneading motion, Madonna Giulia, you’re just poking at that cheese—” I reached for a crock of grated bread. “I’ve been sitting about all morning planning what I’d serve the cardinals if I were summoned to cook for the Conclave instead of my cousin. It’s a dicey business, dishing up
cena
for a college of nervous old men plotting the day round.”

“Cardinal Borgia’s not so old as that.” Madonna Giulia gave a blush at what looked like some reasonably blissful memory. “What would you serve a Conclave?”

“Nothing elaborate—add a pinch of grated bread now, and we’ll measure in the elderflowers.” She got bread crumbs all over everything and upset the bowl of milk. After I’d strained the flowers out of it, fortunately. “First I’d serve a simple thick rice
zuppa
with almond milk, I think. Very bland, very soothing—half that flock of cardinals will have stomach sores by the time the voting’s done. Now, give that
frittella
mixture another good hard knead, and turn it out on the table—too fast, too fast!” I rescued it before it went to the floor after the milk. “After the
zuppa
, a spit-roasted capon with just a squeeze of juice from a lime, nothing more—poisons can hide out too easily in a spicy sauce.”

“And the Cardinal says the cavities of birds are excellent for passing bribe offers back and forth to other cardinals.” Giulia fetched a crock of flour at my direction, dipping her pink fingers in and sprinkling flour far too lavishly over the table, the floor, and her own skirts. “They’re supposed to inspect all the birds, but he says you can always hide a slip of parchment under a wing.”

“An unstuffed capon, then.” I took the flour away from her before she had us wading in it. “Roll out the dough on the surface, now—not too hard—just patch that hole there where it stretched too thin—” I rolled a handful of dough into a neat little ball. “Like this. Unstuffed capon, a plain salad of lettuce and borage flowers—borage makes you brave, and they’ll need that for the vote. And simple sugared
biscotti
for a sweet, since sugar aids the digestion.”

“I suppose it’s all very stressful,” Giulia said a bit wistfully. Misshapen little balls of dough were piling up under her soft hands. “As soon as the Pope died, well, Cardinal Borgia vanished like he’d been magicked. I suppose he’ll have time for me afterward, however it turns out.”