The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (9 page)

At least not where anyone could see me.

“—bastards, of course,” my brother was continuing in his cheerful recitation of my suitor’s vices. “Seven or eight by various mothers, in Spain
and
Rome—”

“Five living, he told me.” I made a face. “I’ve met one—Juan; he’s sixteen. He’s forever dropping in to smirk at me and make rude remarks. There’s another son, supposedly; he’s only just returned from the university in Pisa; and a younger boy and girl who still live with Madonna Adriana, but they’re all visiting their mother now and I’ve not met any of them. If they’re anything like Juan, they’ll be a sorry batch.”

“All provided for, though,” Sandro allowed. “The daughter’s been dowered to the skies; Juan Borgia is Duke of Gandia in Spain—”

“I know. He’s forever underfoot. Duke or not, he’s still a witless, lecherous idiot.”

“—and the elder boy in Pisa was made Bishop of Pamplona by fifteen.” Sandro gave an envious shake of his head. “Oh, for a doting and all-powerful father. How am I ever supposed to be a bishop or a cardinal someday without one? I’m far too lazy to
earn
it.”

All-powerful.
I kicked at a stone, wobbling for a moment on the tall wooden stilt clogs I wore to elevate my slippers out of the mud. Comfortable tooled-leather slippers; an old pair. In my chamber I had a prettier set, gold-buckled and brand-new, made of supple diamond-patterned snakeskin. Yet another gift that had appeared anonymously at my bedside one afternoon, all tied up with a silk ribbon the color of a cardinal’s robes.
Not just any cardinal, but one of the richest and most powerful of cardinals.

Too powerful for a humble notary of twenty-four to challenge, even over such a serious matter as a sister’s virtue.

“Why the sad face,
sorellina
?” My brother stopped in the street, his smile disappearing from his lean handsome face. Thanks to the stilt clogs my head reached his shoulder instead of the middle of his chest, and he didn’t have to look down so far. Cardinal Borgia was tall too—I was forever craning my head up at the men in my life. “The Cardinal hasn’t been pressing you in earnest, has he?” Sandro continued. “Flirting is one thing, but if he thinks he can turn one of the Farnese into a common courtesan—” Sandro looked ominous, but he still couldn’t resist striking a pose: the noble Galahad, hand on imaginary sword. “That Borgia bull is a powerful man in Rome, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a rapier to him! Chase him through the streets at swordpoint—”

“Oh, be sensible!” I snapped. “A notary from the provinces, taking on a cardinal of Rome? He could swat you like a fly.” That now seemed perfectly clear.

“Maybe.” Sandro dropped his theatrics. “Doesn’t mean a brother isn’t obligated to try, if someone threatens his sister’s honor.”

That’s what Orsino should have done
, I couldn’t help thinking.
That’s what husbands
always
do, brothers and fathers too.
I’d grown up listening to wives whisper, complaining of strict husbands and the jealous guard they kept on their wife’s virtue—but how queerly flattening to have a husband who wasn’t jealous at all. Of course Orsino Orsini didn’t love me; I was resigned to that. We didn’t even know each other, after all. But he married me with the intention of giving me to someone else, and that I wasn’t resigned to at all.

I’d tried sending him a letter, telling him so. Telling him to come for me, telling him what the Cardinal said to me, telling him—oh, Holy Virgin knew what
.
But my maid Pantisilea said apologetically that she’d just have to hand the letter over to my mother-in-law. “I’m sorry, Madonna Giulia. She’s a right interferer, Madonna Adriana is, but all the servants have got their orders.” I’d yanked my letter back and burned it myself rather than give my mother-in-law the satisfaction.

“Giulia?”

“Don’t worry, Sandro.” I aimed my brightest smile up at my brother, who still looked worried. “I shouldn’t have troubled you. It’s just an old man with a wandering eye, after all—you think I can’t defend my own honor against that? In truth I’m flattered! It’s much more entertaining to be a wife than an unmarried girl, I can tell you. Come, we’re almost back to the
palazzo
, I’ll show you my new quarters. I live better than a princess now—I know you said the Orsini were rich when Orsino began inquiring for me, but you have no
idea
. Embroidered Spanish velvet for my bed hangings, and such a carpet . . .”

Carmelina

T
he room I was allotted in the servant quarters of the Palazzo Montegiordano was tiny. Just enough for a pallet and a small chest that doubled as both chair and storage for my clothes. I could touch all four walls without moving from the spot.

Santa Marta save me, it was paradise.

Madonna Adriana da Mila had started to fuss when Marco presented his newly orphaned cousin from Venice. “Cousin?” she said dubiously, looking from Marco to me, and I suppose she thought he was just trying to bring his whore into the household for easier access.

“Cousin,” I said firmly, and cast my eyes down and let Marco do the arguing as a good girl should when accompanied by the man, be he father, husband, brother, or cousin who owns her life.

Madonna Adriana brightened when Marco mentioned my skills as a cook: “The marzipan
tourtes
, those were her own contribution to the wedding feast,
madonna
. I believe the bride spoke highly of them? Carmelina’s skill with sweets is surpassed only by my own—”

I took a moment to huff quietly through my nostrils at that, but I kept my eyes lowered and let Marco take the credit. Maybe he was getting the credit for my wedding feast, but I was getting something in return, so all in all you couldn’t say I hadn’t been paid a fair wage for my work.

Madonna Adriana brightened even further when I murmured that of
course
I would be adding my hands to the kitchen at no extra cost to Marco’s wages. “I can’t give you a room, now,” she warned. “Perhaps a pallet in one of the storerooms . . .”

In the end I had my little cubby, which had once been a spare storage space for oil jars. I didn’t mind; the whole little space had the tang of good olive oil, and when I stretched out in my little bed at night I breathed it in rapturously as I slid into sleep. The first sleep I’d had in months that hadn’t been broken by fearful dreams.

Not that there was much time for sleep. Adriana da Mila had a constant stream of guests: innumerable Orsini cousins who expected equally innumerable trays of nibbles and wine; matrons who called to inspect the new golden-haired daughter-in-law; and of course Cardinal Borgia, who everyone said was laying siege to that same golden-haired daughter-in-law. Except for that one surprise visit to the kitchens the morning after her wedding, I still hadn’t seen much of Madonna Giulia except for the occasional glint of bright hair as she drifted past in some distant upstairs loggia, but she did keep a steady stream of servants running upstairs with plates of my baked
crostate
of quinces and apples, and my white peaches in grappa, and my
offelle
thick with sweetened French cream. The girl did love her sweets, or rather, she loved
my
sweets, and if Marco was freshly annoyed every time he saw me and was reminded of how neatly I’d angled my way into his life, well, he did like having an extra pair of hands in his kitchen. Particularly if those hands were mine, and particularly on days like today, when a page boy brought the order down from Madonna Giulia for a plate of stuffed figs with cinnamon, sugar, and chopped almonds, right in the middle of the midday rush.

“Carmelina!” Marco didn’t even glance at me, his hands flying as he stuffed a roast suckling pig.

“Yes,
maestro
.” My own hands were already reaching for the figs, the sugar, the almonds, and a knife to chop them fine. “Piero, the cinnamon.”

“It’s over there.” He tilted a brusque shoulder in some vague direction.

“And I want it over here, apprentice.” The steel in my voice got him moving, but he slouched his way across the kitchens with deliberate slowness, took his time selecting among the spices, and tossed it down before me so it spattered my workspace.

“Now you can get me a cloth to wipe that up,” I ordered, and he looked at me resentfully. Half the apprentices already loathed me, and the maidservants only grudgingly followed my orders. I had saved Madonna Giulia’s wedding banquet, and perhaps their positions along with it, but what did that matter? Kitchens have a hierarchy as rigid as any royal court, after all, and I was an interloper: not quite cook, not quite scullion, not quite servant. Someone Marco had brought in personally but clearly disapproved of; someone who gave orders but took them too; someone trusted with the delicate pastries for the daughter of the house, but who also pitched in with the scouring and cleaning fit only for the lowest pot-boys. I was an unknown quantity, and no kitchen likes an unknown quantity of anything, be it spices or servants. Marco really would have to make my place clear if he wanted peace in his kitchens, but for the time being he preferred not to look at me, and I’d have to carve out whatever authority for myself that I could.

“Piero?” I said, making my voice a whip. “A cloth.”

“Yes,
signorina
,” he said, insolently polite, and took his time with that too.

“Thank you,” I told him, aware the others were listening, and turned back to my work. Only to see the cat wandering across the table, tracking his paws through my neat spread of flour.

“Out!” I brandished the cloth at him, but the lazy bastard just hissed at me. As far as I was concerned, a cat who didn’t earn his keep by mousing might as well be drowned under the cistern. “One of these days I will turn you into sausage,” I warned. “With a little garlic and fennel and splodges of pork fat, and then I’ll eat you with a smile, just you wait.”

The cat
miaowed
at me insolently and managed to knock over a jug of cream I was saving for whipping as he jumped to the floor. The cream went all over my skirt, and I could hear the maids giggling as I rushed back into my little chamber for a fresh apron.

I stopped there, closing the door behind me and folding my floured arms across my breasts. “I thought I’d left
you
well hidden,” I said finally.

A withered and mummified hand lay half exposed in the nest of my clothes inside my small chest. I suppose I’d uncovered it in the dawn darkness this morning when I’d been hurriedly rummaging for a clean shift.

Why did it look different, sitting on a heap of clothes, than it had in the reliquary? I’d seen it so many times when I was a girl: the blessed and sacred hand of Santa Marta, carefully preserved and displayed in the convent of the same name in Venice. Not the largest and most illustrious of Venice’s many convents, not by any means—but one where my father said most of his infrequent prayers. It made sense to a thrifty soul like his that Santa Marta was the one to intercede if you wanted to cook for the Doge at Carnival or were hoping to be hired for the wedding banquet of the latest Foscari heiress. What does the Holy Virgin know about the desperate prayers that come from a kitchen, after all? No one ever saw the Holy Virgin cooking. So when my father felt the need of a little divine assistance in his work he would take us—my mother, my sister, and me—to the Convent of Santa Marta, to pray at the altar of their church. And on that altar you could very clearly see the severed and preserved hand of the patron saint of cooks herself.

Of course, I never laid much faith that it
was
the saint’s true hand. There’s nothing more practical than an order of nuns with choir stalls to repair, and with so many convents in Venice competing for well-dowered novices, an abbess needs a little something extra to bring the wealthy families flocking to her doors. San Zaccaria had countless relics; Santa Chiara had one of the nails that had pierced the hands of Christ; and they had rich young girls lining up to join. So, some long-ago abbess of the Convent of Santa Marta might well have shrugged her worldly shoulders and made a discreet perusal among those purveyors of relics who can get you anything from a fragment of the True Cross to a lock of Mary Magdalene’s hair as long as you’re not too fussy. And lo and behold, the Convent of Santa Marta had a relic of its own to display: the hand of its patron saint, which was said to come to life and make the sign of the cross whenever it granted the prayers of the faithful. Not a famous relic; I doubted anyone had heard of it outside Venice. But it brought a cluster of novices with hefty dowries, and the hand soon had a beautiful new reliquary of silver and ivory, studded with garnets and pearls along its sides and set with a rock crystal viewing window through which the worshippers could see the hand itself: a little withered, a little dark and dried, but still boasting a carved gold ring on one small curled-in finger.

I shivered, looking at the hand now in the heap of my clothes. Maybe it looked different now because I’d stolen it.

So help me, I didn’t mean to. I only wanted the reliquary. I was desperate to get out of Venice, desperate to get to Rome, but not so desperate that I would have stolen a sacred relic (or even a not-so-sacred one). I’d needed money, and I reckoned the reliquary would be worth a good three hundred ducats after I broke it down to its anonymous components of cabochon jewels and carved silver panels. I should have had three hundred ducats as a dowry from my father—three hundred ducats he’d given to the convent of Santa Marta instead as an offering, once it was clear I’d never marry. That convent
owed
me. And what with one bit of bad luck after another, it was really the only place I could go for quick money after I’d stolen my father’s recipes and bolted. The only place with anything valuable at all, anything that might stake me enough for my journey south.

So I took the reliquary, but I’d never have taken the hand. I broke the rock crystal viewing window with the heavy base of an altar candlestick, looking desperately about the empty church as I shook out the shards. I couldn’t bring myself to reach inside and touch the relic itself, so I just muttered an incoherent prayer of “Santa Marta, please forgive me” as I shook her hand out of the reliquary. I meant to wrap it respectfully in the embroidered altar cloth, but I heard a noise from the nave and panicked. I’d managed to distract the nuns, get in alone, but I’d known I’d only have moments, if not seconds. I just snatched the reliquary box and ran.