Wolves in Winter (32 page)

I walked in the park and tried to make sense of it. My loyalty was creeping back on me. Somewhere, in the dark streets of Trastevere, I had lost my hatred. Caterina would make use of me, but
then who was there that she would not make use of to obey the call within her that held her enslaved, as powerless in the end as I had been on the merchant ship to Genova?
Mind and be nice to
the gentleman.
She had been, as I had, a bride before she was a woman, shivering in her shift before a man who owned her, and I saw it then, why she might never bow, never submit. The wolves
ran in both of us. Had I too not tasted the pleasures of cruelty? I would not betray her a second time. I would see her safe, I thought, and find my way to the troupe, and go with them, as I was
meant to, to my place outside the world. I had never been much for the God of churches and priests, but I knew what I had done was sinful, and in this way I might atone. Besides, I did not think I
could face another season of riding and running. I was sickening, I felt it. Sometimes I was gripped by a pain in my belly so sharp I bent with it like a scythe, trying to cram it down inside me.
My stomach was tender and sore, I shook as if with fever and thought longingly of the little phial of poppy tincture that would take it away. I made a tisane of camomile, which soothed it some, and
hoped it was an ague that would leave me when the heat came to Rome.

But in loving her thus again, even just a little, I had forgot the curse that was on me. In April, Fra Lauro came with a sorrowful face and a letter to show that Il Moro was once more fled from
Milan, locked up at Loches, the prisoner of the French. My lady refused to be discomfited, she would join her son still, she said, and then they would work from Florence to retake their city
together.

‘Perhaps you should sign, Madonna? It is no disgrace now, with Milan lost.’

‘I tell you, Mora, I will not sign, I will never sign.’

‘But then you would be free, and in time—’

‘I will not sign. Do not press me, little witch. I would not think you a traitor, too.’ I keened inside, to hear that.

Fra Lauro agreed, and reassured her, and took his leave. Just a little longer, he said, and he would send word where the horses waited, and I should pour out the poppy and we would fly. I knew
that we should not see him again, that he would melt into the chaos of Rome with the last of my lady’s money, lost like a snowflake in a Lombardy spring. Though it was not he who betrayed
her, at the end. Valentino’s men came and searched the Belvedere and found the letters and the promises of money, but it was not this alone that sealed her fortune. It was that parchment I
had worked over a corpse in Forli, that the plague might fall upon the Pope. They had kept the Forlivese prisoners alive, saving them in case they were needed to testify that the Countess of Forli
had tried to murder the Holy Father. They waited until she was friendless, until they were sure of her stubbornness, and then they pounced, running down the thread of her fate to bind her and bleed
her for the last time. No chivalrous French gentleman would ride out for her now, the poisoner, the whore. There was no name for it even, no name for such a crime. It was beyond treason, it was
blasphemy, and she would be lucky if she did not burn.

She was to be tried at once, they told her. The oily legate was with them, his rancid mouth grinning in triumph. She wore a blue gown, that day, Caterina, with scarlet strings in the sleeves
where her shift showed white. Quite calm, her hair drawn off her face, her long hands arranging a little posy of snowdrops, behind her the darkening gloss of the trees and the hills of Rome, she
sat and listened to the legate as he read the charges.
Witch
, he called her, and the soldiers spat upon the floor. I saw her eyes move swiftly across them, and I feared that she would try to
run, that she would provoke them to cut her down there, in sight of St Peter’s, and stain the floor with her blood. I could not be still.

‘It was I,’ I yelled at the legate, ‘my lady knew nothing, nothing! Look!’ I pulled the phial of poppy where it had lain safe in my gown all these long days. ‘This
is poison, see. I did it all.’

I made my eyes as wide as they could.
Maligno, demonio
.

‘I did it,’ I hissed, ‘I summoned the plague on the Pope, I made the corpse walk to the Rocca that night that I might drain it of poison. I had the devil to help me, do you
hear? Ask your master,’ I yelled, muffled now by the arms that moved to grab me while the legate stared and crossed himself, ‘ask Valentino if I am not a witch!’

I was panting, my hair was undone, I twisted and writhed like a mad thing as they fastened ropes around my wrists and stuffed a rag in my mouth until all I could move was my eyes. I was beyond
myself, gulping for air between my screams. I tried for the fear then, I tried to fetch the
seid
from my blood and ensorcel them with it, but even then my sickness came upon me and I groaned
and clutched at my belly, and fainted away.

The rooms in the Vatican were just as I had dreamed them. Painted all over with the double crown of Aragon, its blazing rays streaming over the walls and ceilings, the rampant Borgia bull, a
putto
astride. It was all here, why Valentino had wanted to believe in my conjuring. These were not Christian rooms, they flamed all over with the power of the old gods. Here the Egyptian
Apis, black and virile, there a lunette of spinning planets, all set in multicoloured gemstones that recalled the intricate abstractions of Toledo stonework. Perhaps this was what Maestro Ficino
had sought, and failed to understand. Here were the symbols and stories he had pored over all his life, here was the potent, humming heart of the strange power that had beguiled the Holy City, and
triumphed. Wisdom and knowledge, the philosopher’s kingdom on earth, all laid out by a painter’s hand, the true reflection of the mysteries the Borgias had summoned and controlled. They
were all there, the unholy family, disguised as saints. The Pope himself, on his knees, in a gold mantle worked with signs far less subtle than my papa’s rendition of the
Almandal
. The
Madonna he worshipped was a portrait of his young lover, a cardinal’s sister. Here was black magic, and it was the only proof I had ever seen that it could work.

Valentino waited for us at the end of the long enfilade, the doors so perfectly aligned that they seemed like mirrors, that they would project hundreds of him, black clad, surrounding us in a
Borgia labyrinth. Before him were the prisoners, Tommasino of Forli and his servant. A third man, I saw to my horror, was good Signor Moise. The Forlivese were grub-white, blinking dumbly at this
sudden and luminous world, the poor old Jew twisting his hands and babbling. His beard was wet with spit, his eyes strayed back again and again to the bound wrists of his fellows. Each of them, I
saw, was missing a thumb, though the Forli men had healed stumps on their hands, whilst Signor Moise cradled a sodden red rag. The legate approached Valentino, bowing so low I thought his nose
would leave an oily mark upon the floor. The guards were closing the shutters, plunging us into night, there were no clerks waiting with quills to make a record. This was Valentino’s way, to
move in secrecy and darkness.

‘Read the charges.’

Caterina had refused a chair. He came close to her, their heights were matched, and he flinched a little at the look of her.

‘I will hear no charges. I am in the keeping of the King of France, I will answer to no one else.’

‘Recall, madam, that you revoked that trust in Forli. You chose to answer to me.’

‘I will not.’

‘Come, madam, we both grow weary of this. Read them.’

‘I will not.’

Slowly, delicately, he removed his glove, drawing each finger from its casing of velvet. The Riario ruby burned on his finger, as quietly, casually as he might swat a fly, he brought the back of
his hand abruptly against her cheek. There was no other sound except the sharp tug of her breath. He left a tear of blood on her face.

‘Be silent, madam. Try my patience no further.’

The legate read the charges. That Caterina, Countess of Forli had sought by means diabolical to poison the sacred person of His Holiness the Pope. That she had conspired with the enemies of the
Holy See. That she had dealt with heretics and made use of magic arts. The Forlivese were questioned as witnesses, and they swore what they had been harried and tormented into swearing in their
cracked prison voices. Then they called on Signor Moise to confess that the Countess had bribed him to furnish her with poison. I wriggled and spat the rag from my mouth and called out that it was
I who had done it, that I had stolen it from his shop, that he had never set eyes on me, that it was no poison, but merely a tincture of poppy seed such as helped women with their monthly pains. I
gasped it out, for the sickness was so strong in me that I almost swooned with it, there were throbbing blows of pain striking through my body.

Signor Moise looked at me sadly. ‘They have the collar,’ he said, and I knew that he was lost.

It was no trial, I knew that. Caterina would not sign and Valentino wanted no trouble in his newly taken lands. The poison plot was a sop to the French that they need concern themselves no more
with her. He would lock her up and he would rule the Romagna, and I could not let it happen. I tried again. I wept and raged and confessed with the pain tunnelling through me, and they heard me
out, and I was too stupid to see that each one of my stupid brave words was another turn of the key in the cells of Sant’Angelo. They would take her there, Valentino said when I had done.
They would take her as a captive where once she had reigned. I could not save any of them. Not my father, not Cecco, not Ser Giovanni, not poor Signor Moise, not my lady the Countess, for she would
not save herself. It was quickly done, for that too was Valentino’s way, to move so swift and silent that his enemies barely felt the blade between their shoulders. In moments, it seemed, the
testimonies were done and my lady was to be escorted from the room.

‘My slave is not in her wits,’ she said quietly. ‘Look at her. She is unwell. She lost her mind in Forli, poor thing, and I was permitted no better servant. Have a care for
her.’

She leaned towards me, and brushed a lock from my brow, as once she had done before.

‘Let me go with you, Madonna,’ I whispered. ‘Let me stay with you. I will go with you anywhere.’

‘No, good Mora,’ she answered very quietly. ‘It is done, now. It is finished. I thank you, for all that you have done for me.’

‘But I—’

‘No. It is finished.’

She leaned forward and I felt the brush of her lips on my cheek. As she straightened, I could see her leaving me, going far away across the years, past the Belvedere and the litter and the road,
past the Numai palazzo and the walls of the Rocca, past Ser Giovanni, past her son reaching out his tiny fists in the starlight, past the
farmacia
and the park and a game we played on All
Hallows Eve, until she was back in the courtyard of the Paradiso, the most beautiful lady I had ever seen, and I no more than a gift, unacknowledged amongst so many others. We were strangers again.
When she spoke her voice was cold and haughty, and she would not meet my eyes.

‘I will come, now.’ And she walked from the room where once she had danced with her bridegroom, her back as straight as a Sforza sword.

‘And the other one, Your Grace?’ asked the legate cautiously. ‘The witch?’ I could see him salivating at the prospect of a pyre and a screaming, living coal at its
centre. I did not care.

‘She is no witch. I have seen her at Forli. As the Countess said, she is out of her wits. Leave us.’

‘Have a care, Your Grace. I will see that the men are without.’

‘Leave us.’

I was glad of the pain, though my legs were all weak and swimmy. The thump of it kept my head up, so I could look into his eyes.

‘Clever girl, Mora,’ he said in Castilian. ‘ A remarkable masquerade. It comes out well for you, I think.’

‘There was no feigning, Your Grace. I loved my lady truly.’

There was something in his hands, streaming between them, green and gold. I saw the serpents on the clasp.

‘Are you a woman then, to talk to me of love? I thought better of you. Now, shall I give you this, for my pleasure, or shall I burn you? Should you like to burn, little witch? Or would you
shift into smoke and fly away from me? As once you did in Toledo, so they say?’

‘Toledo.’

All the time. All the time, over and over. I had thought to seem true and play false and he had been one step ahead of me. I had thought myself so clever with my conjuring trick, I had thought
him so easy to deceive.

‘I was a student once, at Pisa. We had a master there, a famous scholar. One Ficino? You reminded me yourself of your good old master.’

‘You knew – what I am?’

‘And greatly enjoyed its confirmation. You have been very useful to me, yet as you know I have a great deal of business. Now, which is it to be? The collar or the fire?’

‘All along, you waited for me. I dreamed of you.’

‘As your mistress said, it is finished. Choose.’

Those wolf’s eyes moved away from me, toward the shuttered windows. His city was beyond, framed in the blazing Spanish sun.

Awkwardly, my hand on my belly, I sank to my knees. I reached for his hand, the bared hand and its twice-bloodied ruby. He did not resist as I pulled it towards my mouth and set a kiss upon the
ring.

‘I will have the collar, sir. And I will be silent.’

A doubly soft touch on my nape, flesh and velvet, the hard weight of the gold.

‘You will find me out, sir, if you have need of me? I shall come to you.’

I was craven, I could not bear to relinquish the last of his touch. His shadow shifted impatiently, he was bored, I was already gone from him.

‘Do not doubt it. Perhaps I shall. Take your payment and go.’

I had walked alone in Toledo, where they had cursed me, and through the streets of Florence in my slave’s motley, through Forli and Trastevere on my lady’s business. No one had
thought, or dared perhaps, to take the poppy from me. So before the goggling eyes of the legate and the Spanish guard, the witch of Forli walked free from Valentino’s chamber, paused for a
swig of poison in the stairwell and stepped out into the streets of Rome with a Pope’s ransom in emeralds brazen round her throat.