Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (15 page)

Left to myself, I wasted no time. From the bottom of my chest, I drew the boy’s clothing that I had worn on more than one occasion, though not so often as to be comfortable in it. The short tunic, shirt, and hose left me feeling exposed and self-conscious at the same time they transformed my identity, free to go where I must without fear of harassment or censure.

As I final step, I tucked my hair up under a broad-brimmed felt hat, a struggle I accomplished with the help of a handful of pins. A glance in the mirror reassured me that no one other than the closest observer would take me for anything other than a slender lad, an apprentice or a servant perhaps, hurrying about his master’s business.

As soon as the corridor outside my rooms was clear, I slipped out and down the stairs set inside one of the exterior walls. From there it was only minutes before I reached the same door through which I had returned to the palazzo after being beaten. As before, I was not seen.

Mindful of my disguise, I was careful to move with the combination of brisk self-importance and slightly endearing clumsiness that seems to characterize the passage of young males through the world. Fortunately, this did not require a great effort on my part. My father had made only the most passing effort to instill in me the graces of a lady, and for that I am deeply grateful. Several times, I glanced over my shoulder, but I never had any sense that I was being followed. By the time I reached the Campo dei Fiori
,
my ribs throbbed and I was glad to slow down.

I was also desperately hungry. Unwilling to arrive at Rocco’s in such a state, I stopped to buy fresh bread and grapes before going on, and was gratified when the women selling both scarcely glanced at
me before taking my money and handing over their wares as brusquely as they would have with any boy. I finished a hunk of the bread and brushed the crumbs from my tunic before I turned into the street of the glassmakers.

It was still early enough that the shops were just opening. Rocco was propping up the awning that shaded the tables where he displayed a small selection of his most everyday work. Nando was helping him. I riffled the child’s hair as they both greeted me.

“Are you a boy now, Donna Francesca?” Nando asked with a giggle.

I bent down, the better to address him, and smiled. “I am in disguise. Isn’t that exciting?”

He frowned uncertainly. “Like at a masque?”

“In a way. What do you think, do I look like a boy?”

Nando hesitated. In my experience, children are vastly more honest than the most forthright adult. Too often they are condemned for it, so they learn to lie.

“You look like . . . Donna Francesca,” he said at length.

I offered an exaggerated sigh and rose. Beside me, Rocco showed no surprise at my boy’s garb, which he had seen before. He accepted the bread and grapes with a smile for the vanished heel and ushered me inside.

“Will you take cider?” he asked.

It being a little too early for wine, I accepted. Soon we were seated at the table looking out onto the inner courtyard where the furnace glowed. Rocco had just begun to build up the fire for the day’s work. His dark hair was swept back and secured with a band around his forehead. As he moved about the ordinary tasks of pouring drink and setting out the bread and grapes, the muscles of his upper arms, left bare by his leather tunic, rippled lightly.

He turned, saw me watching him, and flushed.

When Nando had finished his drink, his father sent him out to play with a handful of grapes and an admonition not to go far. Rocco waited until the door closed behind him before he asked, “Have you been back to the ghetto?”

I nodded. “I believe I have discovered what my father was doing and why. There is a plan in the works to issue a papal edict expelling all the Jews from Christendom. Innocent hasn’t signed it yet but he is about to.”

Rocco’s eyes darkened. He stared at me for a long moment as he absorbed the impact of what I had revealed. The expulsion from Spain had been terrible enough, creating tens of thousands of refugees, many of who were dying from starvation and disease. How many times greater would the horror be if the same fate befell all the Jews of Europe?

“Where would they go?” he asked.

I shrugged. “The Turks have allowed some to come from Spain, but I have no idea how many more they would accept. It probably wouldn’t matter. The Jews I spoke with believe that the real intent is to destroy them completely as a people.”

“And Giovanni knew of this?”

“He did.” Hesitantly, I asked, “Did you ever hear that he might be a
converso
?”

In a gesture that took me by surprise, Rocco reached across the table and covered my hand with his. His touch was warm and strong. To pull away from him would have been churlish. Besides, the truth is I had no wish to do so.

“Your father loved you dearly and only ever wanted to protect you. If he didn’t tell you everything about himself, that was why.”

Mother Mary and all the Saints, had everyone known about my
father save me? Since Borgia had first made the claim, the possibility that it was true had been growing in my mind. Even so, I still had difficulty accepting it.

“He didn’t tell me . . . but he told you?”

Rocco withdrew his hand and leaned back. Carefully, he said, “When I first met your father I was suffering a crisis in my own faith. He sensed that and he helped me. In the process, we got to know each other well.”

“Then he truly was a Christian—?” How desperately I wanted to believe that. Everything I had ever been taught told me that if my father was not of the One True Faith, his soul was lost forever. Yet when I actually thought about it, I had trouble understanding why God would arrange for that to be so.

We are not supposed to wonder about such things. Yet I suspect that more than a few of us do, especially when we yearn for a God who loves all His children without condition or reserve.

Quietly, Rocco said, “Your father saw in the teachings of our Lord evidence that the Messiah truly had come. Yet he still honored the beliefs of his people and he wanted to help them.”

And for that, I was now certain, he had died.

Later I would think about all this but just then there was nothing for me to do but push on.

“I think my father was seeking a way to stop the edict from happening.”

“If Innocent is about to sign it—”

I waited, knowing that he would put the rest together but uncertain how he would react. We were, after all, speaking of the pope, God’s own anointed, set by His divine hand to rule over us. What my father had contemplated was not merely assassination, it could
also be taken as sacrilege of the worst sort. I would not have been surprised if Rocco had expressed shock and outrage, perhaps even ordered me from his home. But I should have had more faith in him. He paled, to be sure, but he did not falter.

“When Giovanni counseled me on matters of faith, he drew on the teachings of Saint Augustine, whose writings impressed him greatly. He agreed with Augustine’s conclusion that evil has no independent existence. It is simply the absence of good. It comes into being only when good is rejected.”

I had scant interest in theology, but even I understood that the undeniable existence of evil in our world would make belief in an infinitely good God impossible had not Augustine shown so brilliantly that it is not God who creates evil but Man himself through his rejection of God’s goodness.

“How can Innocent embrace evil and still serve God?” I asked carefully.

Without hesitation, Rocco replied, “He cannot. No man can, not king nor prince . . . nor pope.”

Greatly relieved that we were in such accord but still presuming nothing, I changed tack and said, “I met a priest named Bernando Morozzi. He says that he knew my father and knows you. He also has knowledge of what my father was doing and claims to have been willing to help him.”

“I know Morozzi,” Rocco said. “I’ve made apparatus for him.”

“He is an alchemist?” I really wanted to ask if Morozzi was a member of Lux, the secret society of alchemists that I wanted to believe existed, and to which I hoped my father had belonged. But I could not bring myself to go that far.

“He may aspire to be one. I met him for the first time last autumn
when he came here. He was very friendly, asked a lot of questions, even befriended Nando. At first, I couldn’t make out what he wanted, but eventually he admitted to what he sought.”

“He was being careful.”

“I suppose,” Rocco said. “At any rate, he’s bought a few items and he seems sincere enough. He asked me if I could introduce him to others with similar interests.”

“Did you?”

He thought for a moment. “Your father came by one day when he was here. I introduced them and they got to talking. He met one or two others the same way but that was the extent of it.”

I nodded, understanding what Rocco was saying. One of the great hindrances to the advancement of knowledge is the need for secrecy. Scholars are either afraid to share their knowledge for fear of condemnation or unwilling to share it out of professional rivalry. Both make progress very difficult. If Lux truly did exist, it would be largely for the purpose of overcoming that.

“Father Morozzi suggested that we meet here,” I said. “But I will leave now if you prefer.”

Lest you think too badly of me, know that even then a part of me regretted the need to involve Rocco in any way. I knew full well that in doing so, I was taking advantage of his fundamental goodness. But the greater part, that which drove me, saw no alternative. Such was my nature. I have improved in years since but not so much as I could wish.

He hesitated as I contemplated the calculation I was forcing him to make: On the one side, the life he had managed to build for himself and his son that would be put at terrible risk if he helped me; on the other, the lives of uncounted thousands that were hanging in the balance and beyond even that, the possibility that so great an evil
would overwhelm Holy Mother Church herself and cast us all from God’s light forever.

“Stay,” Rocco said. Meeting my eyes, he added, “Do what you must.”

We finished the food and I helped him clear up. A few minutes later, the door to the shop opened and the priest entered. He was not wearing his cassock, being dressed instead in the modest tunic of a tradesman. I thought this a sensible precaution. While I couldn’t be certain how much Rocco’s fellow glassmakers knew about his activities, the appearance of a priest at his premises might have raised eyebrows. Even so, simply by virtue of his looks Morozzi was bound to be noticed.

“Father,” Rocco said courteously. “It is good to see you again.”

“And you, my son,” Morozzi replied. His smile appeared warm and genuine but it gave way to a frown as he looked at me. “You are—?”

“It’s me, Father, Francesca Giordano. I came without escort, as you asked, and took the precaution of concealing my identity.”

Whatever good reason I thought I had for dressing as a male, it was clear that the priest did not approve. He stared at me in shock before quickly averting his gaze.

“It is not seemly,” he protested.

Rocco raised an eyebrow but wisely allowed me to calm Morozzi as best I could.

“These are difficult times, Father. Surely we all understand the need for caution?”

When this failed to elicit more than another condemning glance from him, my patience faded. With some asperity, I said, “Please correct me if I am wrong, Father, but is it not the position of Holy Mother Church that a woman may wear man’s garb without sin if she does so to preserve herself from the threat of molestation?”

I knew perfectly well that it was, the Church having been forced to declare that in order to nullify Joan of Arc’s conviction for heresy and set her on the path to sainthood.

Rocco made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “I must see to the furnace,” he said. With what I took to be a pointed glance at me, he added, “The fire waits for no one.”

He was gone out into the courtyard while I was still wondering if he intended a hidden warning in his words. Morozzi appeared ill at ease but disinclined to argue doctrine with me. Or perhaps he was merely at haste to conclude our business and be gone.

He took a breath and finally seemed to relax somewhat. At least, my appearance no longer made him flinch.

Softly, Morozzi asked, “How much do you know of your father’s activities, signorina?”

As I was wondering the same about him, I answered carefully. “Enough. Why did you want to see me?”

“His death was a great loss.”

“So you have said.” However anxious Morozzi might be, I was not prepared to indulge him very much longer. “Tell me what you know of my father’s murder.”

The demand—it could not be mistaken for anything else—surprised him. Clearly, he had presumed he would control our conversation. Instinct, honed in my years beneath Il Cardinale’s roof, drove me to prevent that.

He fumbled for an answer. “It was very tragic . . .”

“I know all that. Tell me who ordered it.”

The priest looked taken aback. His appearance and his holy office both assured that he would receive the utmost reverence from almost any woman he encountered. Clearly, I was outside his experience, but to give him credit, he rallied quickly.

“You don’t know?” he asked.

“Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not. What do you know?”

As I have said, a man subjected to torture will say anything to stop the pain. That does not mean that what he says is necessarily false. Even so, a sensible person seeks collaboration.

“The Pope feared that in his eagerness to gain the papacy, Borgia intended to deploy his poisoner,” Morozzi said. “By killing your father, he sent a message to the Cardinal that he would not succeed.”

It was as I suspected, but even so, hearing it was very hard. I had to force myself to speak. “Why hasn’t Innocent ordered my death since I assumed my father’s office?”

“He does not fear you,” the priest said. “Not as he did your father. You are only a woman.”

God help me, I smiled. Innocent would have all of eternity to contemplate his error.