Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (4 page)

“We must hope for the Pope’s recovery,” I said noncommittally. “Now, if you would not mind, I would like to speak of more immediate matters. As you know, it has become my responsibility to help safeguard this household.” Lest that sound pompous, I added quickly, “Not that there is any need for you to be concerned, of course. I only ask that if you hire a new servant, if you change your habits in any way, or if you just notice anything unusual, you tell me at once. Does that meet with your approval?”

Silence reigned in the scented garden for a moment . . . another . . . until Giulia’s laughter, likened far too often to the pealing of silver bells, rang out.

“Dear Francesca, so serious! How glad I am not to have the duties of a man! But of course, fear not, we will tell you whatever we must.”

“Oh, yes, of course we will,” Adriana assured me. “But for now, let us put aside such dark thoughts.” She raised her hand again, summoning one of the blackamoors. “Bring us some amusement . . . music, games, oh, I remember, there is a letter from Cesare. Fetch that.”

I ducked my head, concentrating on the pattern of my skirt, the antics of the dog at my feet, the scent of lemons on the freshening air. Anything other than the unwelcome reminder of Cesare, the not-quite-seventeen-year-old son of Il Cardinale, handsome as a dark angel, dangerous as Satan. A memory I would be best advised to forget forever.

“Cesare,” Lucrezia sighed. “How I miss him!”

Giulia laughed, as did Adriana. Only I remained silent, there in the walled garden of the Cardinal’s harem. Beyond, ancient Roma seethed and roiled, baking in the summer heat, waiting eternally for whatever was to come.

A year before, when he was in Rome for a brief visit with his papa, Cesare kissed me. Such a foolish thing for me to remember! Foolish and dangerous. He would have done a good deal more—indeed, he had his tongue in my mouth and his hand under my skirt very close to where the memory of him makes me damp—when I remembered that I was not an idiot servant girl to be tumbled for a few minutes’ rough pleasure.

Yet neither could I afford to anger him. I had known him most of my life as I had known his sister. Until three years before when he was sent off to school, we had seen each other almost daily. His frequent visits home confirmed that his nature had not changed with exposure to the wider world. He was mercurial, this son the Cardinal meant to make into a priest. He took offense easily.

Thank God I am no such slave to emotion, as women are so often said to be. Yet it is men, I have observed, who are more likely to
think with their nether parts than with the brain the good Lord gave them. Certainly, Cesare was one such. I waited until he freed my mouth and had turned his attention to my breasts before I said, “Be careful you do not break the vial in my girdle. It contains a deadly poison.”

He looked up, slack-faced in the grip of passion. Like his father, he had a highly carnal nature. At barely thirteen, he became an adept at the altar of Venus. From then, his conquests were legion. But for all that, he was not without some sense.

“Poison?” he repeated.

I smiled sweetly. “Did you not know? I assist my father now in making potions. He says I am quite skilled.” In truth, I had long since ceased to be the assistant, having mastered all my father could teach me and far more. But, of course, I would not reveal that.

He dropped his hands and stepped back, staring at me. I held my smile and made no attempt to cover myself. Let him not think I was denying him lest vanity prick him to foolishness.

“Ay, Francesca!” he muttered at last and whirled away, his crimson cloak flowing out behind him as he strode down the corridor and disappeared.

Only to reappear from time to time in dreams I blush to recollect.

Thunderstorms rumbled to the west but no hint of rain fell to relieve the torpor of the day. Having finished my business at the Palazzo Orsini, I set off for the market. I kept my pace brisk and my gaze straight ahead, ignoring the sallies flung by the young men who favored parti-colored hose and exaggerated plumes in their hats, and who seemed to have nothing better to do than loiter in the streets insulting lone women and looking for fights. Because of them, there were times when I preferred to travel the city in boy’s
garb. I admit to this practice with some hesitation because, as we all know, the “crime” of dressing as a male was the principle charge upon which blessed Saint Joan was brought to trial only a few decades ago, found guilty of heresy and burned alive. That the Church has since reversed itself on her account is scant comfort to some of us.

Between the Basilica di San Rocco, the seat of the bishop of Rome—which is to say, the pope—and the Vatican lies the thriving Campo dei Fiori, the city’s most important market and the place where it is said everyone in Rome eventually comes, if only to watch the frequent executions. Here the preference is not so much for travertine as for the good red brick made from Tiber mud, which, on a summer day, glows like blushing gold.

As always, the market teemed with sellers, buyers, gawkers, and the inevitable thieves who vied with the cudgel-waving patrols hired by the merchants to create at least the illusion of security. All this went on over and around piles of garbage, offal, and manure, adding their aromas to the hanging baskets and trailing trellises of flowers that filled even the most modest lane.

I passed by the streets of the crossbow-makers and coffer-makers, glanced briefly at the offerings of the cloth merchants and goldsmiths, and made my way finally to the Via dei Vertrarari, where the glassmakers clustered.

I had been there before, many times, but even so I hesitated before turning into the street. In a city that lives for gossip, news of my advancement in Borgia’s household was bound to be in the air. Conscious of the glances following me, I walked quickly past a dozen shops, stopping finally in front of a modest, timbered building half-hidden between its neighbors on either side.

A young boy of almost six years with a mop of dark hair and the
lingering softness of babyhood in his features sat cross-legged on the ground, playing at marbles as he guarded a small selection of glassware. He gaped at me for a moment before jumping up and running full tilt to fling his arms around my waist. I knelt to catch him and found myself smiling.

“Donna Francesca,” he exclaimed and pulled away a little, the better to look at me. “Are you all right?” Patting my cheek with his grubby little hand, he added, “I am so sorry about your papa. You must be very sad.”

My throat tightened and for a moment I could not trust myself to speak. I had watched Nando grow from a babe in swaddling clothes, laughing at his antics and cosseting his small hurts and disappointments. If there were ever moments when I yearned for a child of my own, they were in his company.

“I am sad,” I said, because I would not insult him with dishonesty, “but I am also very glad to be here with you.”

Satisfied, he let go of me and darted inside. I just had time to rise before a tall, powerfully built man in his late twenties, his bare chest covered by a leather apron, stepped from the shop.

“Francesca!”

I mustered a smile that I hoped concealed my unease. Rocco Moroni had appeared in Rome half a dozen years before, bringing with him a rare gift for glassmaking and his motherless son. My father was one of his first customers. I had stolen my share of glances at him during our frequent visits to his shop, for he was by any measure a handsome man. The previous winter, he had approached my father about the possibility of a marriage between us. I could only conclude that in the innocence of his own nature, he had not realized that my interest in my father’s trade went far beyond that of a dutiful daughter, for what man would ever knowingly link himself
to one skilled in such dark arts? Nor could he have sensed anything of the even greater darkness within me, that place where my nightmare lives.

For a fortnight after Rocco’s proposal, I struggled to convince myself that I could be the woman he and Nando both deserved before conceding defeat with a mixture of relief and grief that haunted me still. Rocco seemed to accept my demurral with good grace, but he had become more watchful in my presence, as though realizing belatedly that I was more complex than he had thought me to be. Now, though, he seemed only kind and welcoming even as he cast a quick look up and down the street before stepping back toward the shelter of the shop.

“
Venite,
the air has ears. Come inside.”

I followed him into the cool shadows of the single ground-floor room. He shut the door behind us and looked at me closely, his dark brown eyes alight with sympathy.

“I am so sorry about your father. We came to the palazzo—” he nodded at Nando, who stood nearby, looking from one to the other of us.

“We wanted to give you our condolences, but they would not admit us or even acknowledge what had happened.”

“They buried him at night.” I hadn’t meant to speak of it, but in the presence of a man I knew to have been my father’s friend and, I dared to hope, my own, the pain of my loss would not be denied. “In the graveyard at Santa Maria. All in a rush, as though they thought they could hide what had happened to him.”

Rocco nodded. He reached out a hand as though to console me but let it fall in the air between us. Gently, he said, “Giovanni is with our Lord now. He has left the trials of this world for the eternal joy of paradise.”

His certainty pricked me, who had none. I envied him at the same time that I resented his acceptance of what I could only question.

As though understanding the fear such doubts provoked in me, he added, “Your father was a good man at heart. Surely, the blessed Lord will receive him. Besides, he—”

“Did the bidding of Il Cardinale,” I interjected, “prince of Holy Mother Church, who gave him absolution. So I tell myself. I can only hope that is enough.”

As for myself, who had killed without the bidding of Il Cardinale, indeed in opposition to his wishes, I could only wonder what price I would pay in the world beyond.

The glassmaker’s broad chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. “
Cara,
I believe in a loving God, a God who forgives—”

Mindful of the presence of his son, he stopped there, but I understood. Rocco, too, had his own need for forgiveness. While still a child, little older than his son, he had been pledged to the Dominican Order and had lived as a friar for several years. Only love for a young woman had driven him to leave the Order to marry her and then to care for his son, the child of that love left motherless at birth. For those loving acts, he still could be hunted down, scourged, and branded as a betrayer of his faith, all this by the same men who kept their priestly offices at the same time they kept their mistresses and plotted to advance the children they had by them.

So much for the state of Holy Mother Church. As to the state of any person’s soul, who could say?

With a reassuring smile for the boy who could not take his eyes from us, I moved away, pretending interest in a glass vase set in a niche near the far wall. “But I forget myself. I came to discuss business.”

Rocco glanced at his son and nodded. “Nando, go down to the bakery and get us a nice fresh loaf, all right? Tell Maria I want it warm from the oven, and while you’re there, get yourself a biscotto. ”

He drew a coin from his pocket and sent it sailing through the air, to be caught by the child who, grinning broadly, took off out of the shop and down the street.

When we were alone, Rocco opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of wine along with two goblets. Having filled both, he handed one to me.

“We have a few minutes before he gets back. Tell me, is it true what I hear? Did you—”

I had dreaded this moment, when I had to admit what I had done and face the possibility that Rocco would turn away from me in disgust. As I had when confronted by Borgia, I spoke in a rush.

“I did what I had to do. My father was murdered and no one has lifted a hand to bring his killers to justice. It is left for me to do so. But as a woman without power or influence, how could I? I had no choice. Besides,” I added, emboldened as he continued to look at me with deep concern but no sign of abhorrence, “the Spaniard was no innocent. By all repute, he had killed many times.”

Rocco studied me for a moment before he asked, “Is it justice you seek . . . or vengeance?”

I understood that the question was critical for him, speaking as it did to the condition of my soul. Yet I was reluctant to confront it.

“Is there a difference, at least where my father is concerned?”

Had Rocco remained a Dominican, I believe he would have shown a talent for theological debate. His propensity for it annoyed me at times yet I will not deny that when I was most troubled in my conscience, I sought him out. He was, and will always remain, the lodestone guiding me through dark waters.

“Of course there is a difference,” he said. “Justice serves the good of all. Vengeance is purely personal, therefore selfish. It cannot find favor with God.”

“Do not expect me to feel
impersonally
about my father’s murderers. When they pay, and they will, the world will be the better for it.”

Rocco did not dispute that, but he raised another concern. “All well and good, but what of Borgia? Now that you are in his service, won’t he expect certain things of you?”

I took a sip of the cool, crisp wine in the hope that it would steady me and shrugged. “He can expect whatever he wishes, but contrary to rumor, he deployed my father very sparingly and only as a last resort. I see no reason for that to change.”

To my great relief, Rocco appeared reassured by my responses, at least enough to move on. “What is known of your father’s killers?” he asked.

“The Cardinal’s steward informed me that they were thugs bent on nothing more than robbery. And why not? We all know that Rome is a dangerous place.”

“Yes, of course, but still . . .” he looked at me carefully. “You don’t believe that?”

I hesitated. I trusted the glassmaker but was unsure if I wanted to involve him in my troubles any more than I was already doing simply by being there.