Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (39 page)

Like so much in life, that was both good and bad. I could see into the distance much more clearly but at the same time, I could also be seen.

The figure still a hundred feet or so down the length of the basilica turned suddenly and looked toward me. He was hunched over something I could not make out, but as I watched, he straightened and let whatever he had held drop to the floor.

In the next instant, he started toward me.

I possess the normal instincts for self-preservation, at least I think I do, but there have been times when they are overridden by imperatives I cannot deny. This was one such.

Without thought or hesitation, heedless of Cesare’s shout behind me, I raced forward. Twice, my feet broke through the floor and several times, I tripped badly enough to fear I was about to fall only to right myself at the last moment and keep going.

Quickly enough I saw, to my immense relief, that the figure I had seen was Morozzi. He was in his priestly garb, no doubt in order to pass without question in the basilica, but he was not alone. The small, huddled form of a child lay where he had dropped him.

“Bastard!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and—perhaps I truly am not entirely right in the head—launched myself into space and straight at him.

We collided with a heavy thud that sent both of us sprawling.

“Monster!” I grabbed hold of him by his golden hair, slamming his head against the floor. In all honesty, I could have done that over
and over until his brains splattered over us both, but Morozzi had other ideas.

“Strega!”
he howled and, having seized me by the shoulders, hurled me off him so hard that I landed a considerable distance away with such force as to rob me of breath.

As I struggled to straighten up and rejoin the fray, I was treated to the vision of Cesare, sword drawn, making straight for Morozzi. One horrified look at him was enough to send the mad priest fleeing, but not before he seized Nando.

The clamor had drawn Rocco’s attention. Seeing what was happening, he joined Cesare in pursuit of Morozzi. I tried to do the same only to stumble and fall, sprawling facedown over something hard and oddly familiar. Raising myself enough to look at what was beneath me, I realized that I was stretched out on top of a wooden cross, of a size large enough to accommodate a child.

With a scream, I struggled to my feet and went after Morozzi. Caught as he was in the confines of the garret, surely we had him! He would have to be able to take flight like the archangel Saint Michael to escape us.

Or so I thought. One mad priest, one terrified little boy, one equally affrighted father, one warrior, half a dozen men-at-arms, and me . . . all in the maze that was the garret of Saint Peter’s. All running—or in Nando’s case being carried—over a dangerously weakened floor as below . . .

Who knows what was happening below? Did they look up and wonder at the strange sounds emanating from the starry heavens? Did they imagine devils had roosted there? I have no idea and I spared it no thought. All my attention was on rescuing Nando from Morozzi’s grasp. Even capturing the mad priest came second to that.

As much as it pains me, I give Morozzi full credit. He thought
not one or two steps but many steps ahead of me. Over time, I came to realize that he always had a multitude of plans layered one upon the other, to be executed as need arose. Had he turned his abilities in saner directions . . .

A pointless speculation. He was mad, and being mad, he thought only of his own survival. Confronted by both Cesare and Rocco, he turned like an animal at bay, his handsome face distorted in a hate-filled snarl.

“You will burn! The fires of damnation will consume you!”

Perhaps so, but before that happened, Morozzi had to face Cesare’s sword. And Rocco’s wrath.

Rocco almost reached him first. He was within an arm’s length of Morozzi when the mad priest threw his burden at him and fled. I did not notice which direction he went, all my attention being focused on the boy. As Nando fell, the floor where he landed crumbled beneath him.

I saw it all as though time itself had slowed. The fraying of the wood, the way pieces of it rose at an angle to the floor, breaking off as they went, the collapse of what lay beneath and the sudden sight of space fading away an unknowable distance below.

Rocco turned from Morozzi and toward his son, but he was not close enough to stop Nando’s fall. It was left to me to hurl myself across the floor, my arm thrusting through the opening to grasp the boy’s shirt in the instant just before he would have passed beyond my reach.

Together, we slid toward the abyss.

“Francesca!” Rocco shouted my name, but I scarcely heard him. My breath and the frantic beating of my heart were all I knew, that and the fierce grip of my hand holding the child above the hundred-foot drop to the floor of the basilica.

I assume that we were seen for certain then. I assume eyes turned
toward us. I assume there was a murmuring among those gathered below.

I assume because I do not know. No one has ever spoken of it. Perhaps we were not seen at all. Perhaps some fragment of plaster remained to conceal our presence. Perhaps there has been a conspiracy of silence drawn over that which no one wants to acknowledge almost happened that day in Saint Peter’s.

Whatever the case, we slid, Nando and I, toward the hole that had opened up in the floor. I clung to him with one hand and tried to reach out desperately with my other to grasp hold of something, anything that would stop us.

And found Rocco’s arm.

“Francesca,” he said again as I grabbed him, “don’t let go!”

I remember being startled and then, rather absurdly under the circumstances, offended at the notion that I could do any such thing. Did he have such scant confidence in me? The woman who had drawn him into the maze of deceit and treachery surrounding Innocent’s death and in the process imperiled his son’s life? How could he do other than expect the worst from me?

“Save him!” I screamed, and heard my voice as though from a great distance. “Don’t let him fall!”

But in truth, we were both in danger of that fate. I could feel my fingers weakening—on Rocco and on Nando both—and knew it was only a matter of moments before all was lost.

“Save him!” I screamed again, and tried to twist around so that Nando was in easier reach of his father.

For just a moment, my gaze met Rocco’s. I saw him hesitate, trying to measure how he might reach us both, but I was having none of that. With all my strength, what little remained, I pulled Nando up toward his father.

Rocco wrenched his eyes away and reached out, seizing his son in his strong and capable grasp. I heard the boy moan, heard his father breathe his name, heard, too, my own gasp as my hands gave way. All in an instant, I yielded the child to life and myself to whatever fate God chose to bestow upon me.

Cesare saved me.

At the last possible moment, he turned away from pursuing Morozzi and lunged toward the hole, grabbing hold of me just as I would have plummeted to certain death.

As he hauled me up, shaking and gasping, I glimpsed the back of the mad priest vanishing into the darkness. I tried to shout, to call attention to him, but my throat was clogged with dust and tight with terror. At any rate, it was too late. Although several of Cesare’s men-at-arms went clattering after him, Morozzi was gone.

But Nando was alive and safe in his father’s arms. The little boy appeared dazed but otherwise unharmed. Clutching his son, Rocco met my eyes over his tousled head. The joy of relief bubbling up within me vanished in the face of his dark stare. He looked at me with what I took to be well-deserved condemnation. Without a word, he turned his back and sped Nando away.

Vaguely I recall Cesare carrying me down the steps from the garret. He was muttering to himself as we went, something about the foolishness of women and of one woman in particular, but I scarcely heard him, so deep was I into the pain of losing Rocco as a friend and, forgive my foolish heart, perhaps more. So do the longings we shy from confiding even to ourselves vanish down dark tunnels into oblivion.

As for Cesare and I, we emerged into the basilica as it was filling with prelates and nobles arriving for the funeral. The sight of a glowering warrior carrying a dazed woman drew startled stares. He ignored them and pushed his way through the crowd until at last we reached blessedly fresh air.

Cesare set me down on the low wall surrounding a small fountain on the edge of the square. I huddled there, my arms wrapped around myself in a futile effort to stop the convulsive shaking that gripped me. He knelt, wet a cloth in the fountain, and slowly washed away the thick layer of grime covering my face. His touch was soothing and undemanding, very uncharacteristic of him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked when he had removed the worst of the dirt and filth, enough so that I could breathe more easily and open my eyes without wincing.

I shook my head. Rocco had broken my heart with a single glance, but aside from that, I was remarkably intact, as though Nature itself dismissed my suffering.

“You look hurt.”

I said nothing, only shook my head again, but Cesare, who normally could be counted on to be oblivious to any concern not his own, chose that moment to become perceptive.

“It’s that glassmaker, isn’t it?”

Again, I tried to deny any such thing and might have succeeded
had it not been for the trail of tears etching furrows down my still grimy cheeks.

“Ay, Francesca,
il mio dio
!”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, and balled my hands into fists, the better to scrub away my foolish tears. Somewhere in the days since I had first gone to Rocco for help, I had fallen into the trap of imagining that my life could be different from what it was. That the wall around me might crack open and that I might step out at last, not into the scene of my nightmare but into the light.

Instead, I had lured a good man into risking not only his own life but that of his son. I could not believe for a moment that Rocco would ever forgive me, nor did I imagine myself to be deserving of such forgiveness. Rather I had to confront the truth: Morozzi and I were alike at least in so far as we were both creatures of the dark, doomed to struggle within it until one of us, at least, was dead.

Cesare got to his feet and held out a hand. As I took it and rose, he asked reluctantly, “Will you be all right?”

If I had come to such a pass that Cesare Borgia was worried about my bruised heart, truly I was pitiable. My pride stung, a welcome pain in which I gladly took refuge.

“The less we are seen here,” I said, “the better. We must return to the palazzo.”

As I must return to who and what I truly was. Morozzi had been thwarted for the moment, but my father was far from avenged and, just as important, the great evil he had died trying to prevent would still be unleashed should Borgia lose the papacy.

Cesare’s men-at-arms formed up around us, clearing our way through the crowd. Only a small fraction of the people gathered in the piazza in front of Saint Peter’s would be admitted to the basilica
for the funeral, but thousands more wanted to be close to the seat of power. Throngs were still arriving even as we attempted to leave, but it seemed that we were not alone in our eagerness to be gone from the area. A contingent of guards tromped past, escorting in their midst an elderly man in the black-and-white garb of a Dominican. Despite his age, he appeared to be departing in great haste.

Cesare stopped abruptly, his fixed stare drawing my attention to the man.

“Torquemada,” he said under his breath.

I stared at the tall, pale friar passing directly in front of me. He had a thick boxer’s nose and was bald save for a ring of hair above bushy eyebrows. So fierce was his expression that I suspect I would have noticed him under any circumstances.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I saw him once in Valencia when I was a child. My father pointed him out. He said then that no good would come of Ferdinand and Isabella’s determination to blame the Jews for every ill, but I don’t think even he imagined the depths to which they would sink.”

Unable to help myself, I stared at the figure who haunted the nightmares of so many innocents.

He turned his head just then and for a moment, our eyes met. I would like to tell you that I saw the face of evil when I looked at the Grand Inquisitor, but in fact he seemed like so many men who serve Holy Mother Church: a bureaucrat for whom the suffering of humanity is of no account when compared to his own imagined vision of God’s will. It is said that the Devil enters through back doors and in disguise but men such as Torquemada never seem to consider that. He is dead now, as I tell this tale. I wonder how warmly the One he served welcomed him into eternity.

Still in this world, he passed by in a rush, as though eager to
absent himself now that what he had been led to expect was not occurring. Without a crucified child to proclaim as evidence of Jewish perfidy, he had nothing to look forward to from the citizens of Rome other than suspicion and humiliation. Morozzi had made an enemy of him, I judged. If Borgia survived to become pope, the mad priest would have to look elsewhere than to Spain for sanctuary. God willing, he would not find it.

As we left the environs of the Vatican, the bells of Saint Peter’s began to toll, their dolorous cadence announcing that the funeral had begun. Great flocks of startled pigeons rose into the sky. For an instant, they seemed to obliterate the morning sun.

But no, that is not possible. Only poets claim that birds can do any such thing. It was the darkness within me that rose up and, for a time, blotted out all light and hope. If waves roil the river Styx, one such threatened to swamp me then.

How is that for poesy? The more mundane fact is that Cesare tossed me up into the saddle, swung up behind me, and, with the hard thrust of his spurs, took us back across the river to the palazzo at a trot.

Renaldo was waiting for us when we arrived.

“Where have you been?” the steward demanded with what seemed to me an excess of petulance. “His Eminence sent word that the patriarch of Venice has arrived. The conclave will begin day after tomorrow. There is much to be done and precious little time to do it in.”