Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (19 page)

David carried him into the back room and laid him on a pallet near Rebecca. Mercifully, he was unconscious and did not react at all when Sofia slit his uninjured arm, making a deep, wide cut so that
his blood flowed swiftly out into the bowl she had placed on the floor directly beneath. The smell of copper made me gag.

“How much do you think?” she asked as she worked.

I had my face averted and a hand over my mouth. Through my fingers, I said, “I doubt that Innocent can be drinking very much at any one time.”

Seeing me, David asked, “Are you all right?”

I nodded mutely and concentrated on breathing. If I thought about doing that and nothing else, perhaps I would not disgrace myself.

It was done at last, the bowl filled and covered with a clean cloth. Sofia bandaged Joseph’s arm, though it continued to bleed through the linen. She took the bowl over to Rebecca and knelt down beside her.

We had discussed what to do next. David had suggested mixing the blood with wine to make it more palatable and that seemed a reasonable course to me. Even so, I swear I could still smell the copper as the strong red wine was prepared.

Sofia lifted Rebecca’s head so she could drink. She gagged at first—apparently the taste was not completely concealed—but soon enough the wine took effect and she finished all of it.

We waited. The day wore on. Sofia went to tend those in the outer room, but David stayed with me. Joseph’s wife came at midday and spent an hour or so with him. She left in tears, comforted by her sister, who had accompanied her. I was not present when she said her farewells; we gave them that much privacy. So far as I could tell, Joseph was not there, either, being too gone with fever.

Benjamin brought food and drink, and urged both on me. I sipped a little wine and ate a crumb or two of bread. My stomach
rebelled at anything more. Toward midafternoon I was holding Joseph’s hand. David was praying in a language I could not understand. I prayed after my own fashion, to the Madonna, reminding her that Joseph had a mother, probably already dead, and that he had been a babe like her own. I asked her to watch over him.

He died a short time later. I suppose his death was peaceful as such things go, but that was scant comfort. By the time we covered his face, Rebecca was unconscious. She had deteriorated very quickly after receiving the blood. Within an hour, she no longer knew us and within two she was burning with fever. When Joseph was gone, I moved over to her, bathing her face and limbs in cool water.

“She is past feeling that,” David said. He was very pale, as I suppose I was, too. His hands shook as he held the basin for me.

“You don’t know,” I countered. “Neither of us has been close enough to death to know what it is like.”

“How do you know?” he asked. “Perhaps I have been close.”

I looked at Rebecca and shook my head. “She is very far from here, too far to ever return.”

Sofia came then and sat with us for the remaining time that Rebecca lived. Right at the end, the old woman’s eyes opened, giving us all a start. But whatever she saw, it was not us or any world in which we dwelled. I can only tell you that she died quietly, without a struggle. Kneeling beside her, I said a prayer that she would find those she had loved and lost.

Barely was her face covered with the worn blanket than I called Benjamin to my side. I gave him the note I had written on paper Sofia provided and instructed him carefully.

“Go to the Via dei Vertrarari. Find the glassmaker named Rocco and give him this. He will know what to do.”

When Benjamin was gone, I waited as Sofia drew Rebecca’s blood. We had decided to use hers because we thought the blood should be as fresh as possible when I reached the Castel Sant’Angelo.

By that time, a blessed numbness was settling over me. “I must be gone from here before the checkpoint is closed for the night,” I said as Sofia poured the blood carefully into a large vial and sealed it.

All through that long and painful day, I had been conscious of the sun slanting westward. Wait too long and I, too, would be sealed in. The blood would begin to spoil. My chances of substituting it, hardly great to begin with, would grow slimmer with each falling grain of sand.

“I’m going with you,” David said.

I made a halfhearted effort to argue, which he rightly ignored. We got out through the gate minutes before it was closed, trapping the Jews in the ghetto until the sun rose on a new day. If we failed and were exposed, what would that sunrise bring for them? The rage of a rampaging mob? Fire and death? All that and more were far too possible.

I glanced back once over my shoulder, thinking of Sofia and Benjamin, of the sick and dying in the apothecary shop, of all the suffering people I had seen in my visits.

Truly, the ways of the Lord are mysterious.

David took my hand. Together, we walked into the night descending over Rome.

We were halfway to Rocco’s shop before we saw the first foot patrol. Until then, we had passed only the usual revelers, prostitutes, and rats that make Rome’s nighttime streets their own. The humans cluster around the taverns and brothels while the rats spill from their hiding places in the ancient sewers and catacombs. No matter how many steaming heaps of their carcasses the rat catchers pile in the public squares, there are always far more live ones just out of sight, waiting to rise with the night.

I abhor rats, which surprises me a little because in general I like animals. Not snakes, but even they are better than rats. And both are better than the foot patrols paid by wealthy residents and merchants to strut about with swords and cudgels, extorting money or worse from any lesser mortal they come upon.

David and I pressed into the shadows near a tavern on the edge of the Campo dei Fiori as one such patrol passed. When they were
gone, we waited several minutes before stepping back out onto the street. The moon was in darkness, not a sliver of light showing. But a stiff wind from the west had cleared away much of the cloud of smoke and haze that hangs over the city on still days. By starlight and memory, we were able to find our way to the street of the glassmakers.

Rocco had left a lamp burning at the front of the shop, hopefully too small to attract the notice of his neighbors, who would be busy in any case having supper and preparing for bed. When we knocked, he opened the door and waved us in quickly before shutting it again behind us.

At first, he appeared to see only me and the warmth of his gaze brought an answering warmth to my cheeks. But quickly enough he widened his attention.

“Who is this?” he asked, looking at David.

“A friend,” I said. “You got my note?”

Rocco nodded. “I have sent word to Father Morozzi. He should be here soon.”

“Nando . . . ?” The thought of the danger I was bringing into Rocco’s house clawed at me even as I saw no alternative.

“I have sent him to the countryside to stay with his grandmother.”

I nodded in relief. We waited, seated at the table, largely in silence the brief time until the priest came. He slipped in nervously and frowned when he saw David.

“What is this?” A small thing and petty of me to mention it, yet it lodged in my mind. Rocco, asking the same question, had said “Who?”

I credited it to the priest’s fear, which under the circumstances was not unreasonable. He looked startled enough to flee and I could
not blame him. I thought that as a
converso,
he must live every day on the edge of discovery and disaster.

“A friend,” I said quickly. “He can be trusted.”

“You should not have—” Morozzi began but he got no further before David stepped forward.

“I am no danger to you, Priest. I have to hope you are none to me.”

Silence hung between them before Rocco decided the matter. “Let’s get on with this.”

“Very well,” Morozzi said, though his reluctance was evident. He turned to me. “Are you ready? Do you have what is needed?”

I assured him that I did and was about to ask him how he intended to get us into the
castel
when Morozzi interrupted.

“Let me see it.”

“See what?” Taken aback, I did what I always do in such circumstances and stalled for time to get my thoughts in order.

“What you intend to use. I want to see it.” When I continued to stare at him, he said impatiently, “You can’t expect me to risk everything to get you close to the Pope without being sure that you can actually do it.”

“It isn’t enough for you that she says she can?” David demanded, frowning.

Rocco, too, appeared uneasy. “Francesca wouldn’t be here if she was not prepared.”

I put a hand on David’s arm in silent caution, smiled reassuringly at Rocco, and reached under my gown. Slowly, I drew the golden locket from between my breasts.

The priest’s gaze focused on it intently.

“You want to see it?” I asked. “Very well.” I snapped open the locket, exposing the lozenge I had made for myself. “Don’t get too
close. This is the most deadly poison I know of, capable of killing in minutes. It will not fail.”

Morozzi stared at it for a long moment, his avid regard making me uneasy. It seemed out of keeping with our serious and desperate business. Finally, he said, “Good, then we can go.”

As I closed the locket and slid it back under my clothes, David looked at me curiously. Had we been alone, I would have told him that I thought it best for the priest to know no more than he had to. As it was, I spread my hands just a little, so that only he could see, hoping that he would understand why I had done as I had. I was trusting Morozzi with our lives and yet I was not trusting him to know the means of Innocent’s death. Whether David understood or not, he seemed to accept my decision, for after a moment, he nodded silently.

Meanwhile, Morozzi had produced a brown robe and held it out to me. “I had no idea that there would be two of you,” he said. “I only brought one of these.”

He handed me a monk’s robe, the all-encompassing brown wool more than sufficient to hide my womanly shape. As I shook it out and prepared to don it, I asked, “What about David? We must find a way to disguise him.”

A priest and a monk entering the
castel
together might draw attention but would not be challenged. A man in ordinary clothing, without the livery or insignia of a great house, would be treated very differently.

“Wait,” Rocco said, and went to the back of the shop where a small ladder led up to the storage loft. He returned in a few moments carrying a white robe and a black cloak. Handing both to David, he said, “I think these will fit you.”

“This is the habit of a Dominican friar,” Morozzi said. “How did you come by it?” Clearly, he did not know Rocco’s history.

“It was left here,” Rocco replied shortly.

David hesitated before donning the garments. I understood his reluctance to put on anything associated with the Dominicans, who claimed among their own the loathsome Tomás de Torquemada, inquisitor general of Spain and one of the chief authors of the edict expelling the Jews from that land. But there really wasn’t any alternative and David knew that.

The garments covered him from head to toe. When he had them on and had pulled up the cowl, he became just one more of the anonymous mass of clergy who came and went between the
castel
and the Vatican without notice or question.

“Thank you,” I said, and squeezed Rocco’s hand. Despite the warmth of the night, his skin felt cold. With a glance at the other two, he drew me aside so that we could speak privately.

“Whatever God intends, you have done enough, Francesca. Let me go in your place. You can explain to me what to do and I will do it.”

Before I could reply, he went on, “Morozzi won’t object; he’s not comfortable with you being a woman anyway. And surely if you tell ben Eliezer to trust me, he will have no choice but to do so.”

The magnitude of what he was offering almost undid me. To not only take my place in such dangerous circumstances but to also take on his own soul the act I intended to commit, the murder of a pope, was more than I could contemplate. As much as Rocco, I wanted to believe that it was God’s will that Innocent die before he could commit an act that would bring about hundreds of thousands of deaths. But what if we were wrong? I was willing to risk my own immortal soul, but I would not risk Rocco’s.

Besides, there were other considerations.

I smiled faintly and raised a hand to touch his cheek, roughened by the day’s growth of beard. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. Truly, you are a valiant friend. But you are also a father, and I could never agree to anything that could leave Nando an orphan.”

I let my hand drop and stepped back. “This is my struggle and I must wage it.” Without giving him a chance to reply, I turned away.

We went—Morozzi, David, and I—out into the darkness. Rocco stood at the door and watched us go. For a moment, as I passed him, I saw his hand rise and thought he would try to stop me. But he let it fall, the sorrow in his gaze telling me that he accepted what could not be changed.

Morozzi moved with speed and confidence through the streets. He showed no concern about the foot patrols, and indeed, when we encountered one, they gave way quickly before him. His manner—he possessed the natural arrogance of those who have received a superfluity of nature’s gifts—as much as his clerical garb warned off any who might have challenged us.

We crossed the Pons Aelius, to use its old Roman name, and moved directly toward the main gate of the
castel
. The dark mass of stone rising above the city was illuminated by a hundred torches, their reflected light creating pools of rippling silver in the slow-moving river. I had thought Morozzi might know of some secret entrance, such as must surely exist in a structure more than a thousand years old. But if he did, he did not care to use it. Instead, he walked us right past the guards who, as I had hoped, made no effort to impede our entry.

The massive structure looming above us could not have been better designed to strike fear into all who approached it even for the most innocent of reasons. Intended as the mausoleum for the Emperor
Hadrian and his family, it still had traces of classical elegance, but most of that had vanished centuries ago when it was transformed into a fortress and prison. The moment we passed into the small courtyard just beyond the entrance—the Courtyard of the Savior as it was called, ironically for those who never left the
castel
alive—I felt a sense of the walls pressing in on us, cutting off all hope. From there, the ground descended slightly into the entrance vestibule. The temperature dropped and I shivered, although not entirely with cold. Here, too, guards were stationed and here, too, they let us pass.