The Lion and the Rose (27 page)

“I’m sorry.” Bartolomeo held out his big freckled hands, placating. “I never meant to startle you.”

“Well, you did!” I couldn’t quite put my knife down, even seeing the familiar red hair and wide shoulders of someone who was decidedly not Juan Borgia. “What are you doing here, Bartolomeo? You quit, and that was a good while ago!”

“I’ve found work. A new position.” He indicated his neat new doublet and the bundle of a fresh apron under one arm. His sleeve was marked with a badge that seemed familiar. “Or rather, Madonna Giulia found me a new position. She heard I was departing, and she said she always loved my fried lake smelt, so she’d be happy to recommend me for a new post. I’ve been hired today, undercook in the household of that Neapolitan lord, Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto.” Bartolomeo’s eyes as they looked on me had none of the sullen anger he’d shown since the night we shared a bed. “I thought I’d come back to give my thanks to Madonna Giulia.”

“I see.” I should have been happy for him, should have congratulated him. All I could think was that it was my fault he’d left the Palazzo Santa Maria in the first place. I averted my eyes from his gaze, feeling a flush mount up from my neck.

“Also,” he said candidly, “I came back so I could lord it over you. ‘Call me a boy now,
signorina
’—that sort of thing. But Maria the laundry maid’s already told me that you’re to leave with Madonna Lucrezia tomorrow.”

“Yes.” I looked down at my still-bleeding hand, the bandage that trailed over one shoe like a dead snake, and found that at least I was able to lower my knife.

His voice was very neutral. “I know why you’re going.”

“Maria the laundry maid tell you that too?” I managed a bare modicum of tartness, if not quite enough to cover my pride, as I began washing out my bandage under the cistern.

Bartolomeo’s face had no expression at all as his eyes fastened on my bruised mouth, then flicked to my hand. “How badly did he hurt you?”

“Not near as badly as he wanted to. Leonello came along.” I wrung out the bandage and began wrapping it around my palm. The bleeding looked to have stopped.
Sweet Santa Marta, Bartolomeo, just go away.

“I never liked Leonello. He was always eyeing you. And he’s got charm, you know, for all he’s a dwarf, so I was afraid you’d start eyeing him back.” Bartolomeo hunkered down on his heels beside me, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. “Then again, I didn’t like anyone who gave you the eye besides me.”

“Well, most of the time I just thought Leonello was horrible, so nothing to fear there.” I struggled with the wet bandage. “But there’s no denying those knives of his can be very useful.”

“I’ll have to thank him, then.” Another pause. “Maria said it was your cousin Marco who was to thank for it. Something about a letter he wrote—”

“Leave it, Bartolomeo!” I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t even want to think about Marco. Just the sound of his name made me sick. I didn’t know why he’d helped lure me for the Duke of Gandia, but I had a fair idea money was involved. I didn’t care if I ever saw my cousin again in this world.

Bartolomeo reached for my injured hand as I fumbled to knot the bandage. “Here, let me—”

I flinched back.

“Or not,” he said, and stood up again. I clumsily tied off my hand, and he stood looking at me in the fading orange sunset with his arms folded across his chest.
Please not another proposal of marriage
, I thought, but his gaze was thoughtful rather than moony. “You should be resting, you know.”

“I’ve
cena
to finish.” My hands were shaking again, and I felt a childish urge to hide them under my apron. “I can’t leave them all unfed, I—”

“You’re a wreck, Carmelina.” Bartolomeo’s voice was mild. “You’re trembling, you’re white as rice broth, and I doubt you can chop so much as an onion with that hand. Lie down in your chamber, drink a great deal of wine, and try to sleep.”

“But I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” Somehow Bartolomeo steered me back into the scullery without touching me. He rummaged behind a door and took down a spare apron. “I’ll take charge of
cena
tonight.”

“You don’t work here anymore,” I protested. “And even if you did, you’re still junior to Ugo and all the undercooks. They’ll never listen to you—”

“They will. Because I’m a better cook than any of them, and they all know it.” His voice was calm and confident. A man’s voice, not a boy’s, and his touch on my shoulder was a man’s too, brooking no argument as he steered me back to the chamber he knew was mine. “Take that knife inside with you, and bolt the door if it makes you feel better. I’ll knock twice after
cena
, bring you some wine and some hot sops. I doubt you feel like eating anything, but try for me.”

“Bartolomeo—” I felt a wave of such weariness, leaning against my chamber door. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to cry. My erstwhile apprentice just looked at me, his eyes warm as cinnamon and his body even warmer as we stood in the close shadows beside my door. He wanted to kiss me so badly, I could see it in his eyes, and my stomach gave a viscid roll because I thought I would shriek and shriek and shriek if I ever felt any man’s hand on me again.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I blurted. “Stop it, you hear me? Because I’m a
nun
, Bartolomeo, I’m a
nun
. I was called Suora Serafina and I hated her, but just because I ran away from my convent doesn’t mean I ever stopped being her. Suora Serafina can’t marry you, because you’d lose your life for violating a Bride of Christ, and
that’s
why I kicked you out of your own bed like a stray dog after we—I had to; I had to, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. So will you stop looking at me like that and just—just go find someone else to moon over? Someone good, like you. Someone who deserves you. Please just go away.”

My eyes had blurred all over again, so I couldn’t see what expression was on his face. Surely revulsion. A boy with not a stain on his soul, not a sin on his conscience that couldn’t be confessed to his priest, and I’d made him a despoiler, an adulterer against God Himself. Surely he had to be thinking that.

But Bartolomeo just picked up my hand, the wounded one, and his kitchen-rough fingers brushed very lightly over the bandage. “Go lie down,” he said. “I’ll finish
cena
. Then I’ll make you a hamper to take to the convent.”

And as I shot the bolt on my door and toppled trembling into bed, I could hear a man’s authoritative voice in the kitchens, calling out, “Dear God, Ugo, venison in royal sauce
and
stuffed fingers of veal
and
gilded
capirotata
? Who do you think you’re feeding, the King of France?”

Strangely comforting, that voice. I fell asleep to the sound of it, and I did not dream of Juan Borgia.

Leonello

I
will kill you.

Words most of us have spoken at one point or another in our lives. Usually in the heat of a quarrel. Few of us mean it. What happens when you
do
mean it?

A question I’d gone to the roof of the
palazzo
to ponder, throwing my knives over and over the length of the loggia as the sun sank in the sky beside me. Below I heard the rumble of cart wheels in the streets, the clop of hooves, the shouts of vendors packing their wares for the night, shopkeepers shuttering windows and latching doors. The smells of night soil, mud, horse manure, the stink of the river in summer’s heat rising even as high as my loggia.
I will kill you.
I’d seen those words in Juan Borgia’s eyes when he last looked at me, and now I said them to him, silently, as I threw my blades into the makeshift target where I still performed my daily hour of practice.

Killing a man is easy enough, if one has the will. But killing a pope’s son? That is a different question altogether. And a question I must answer, because as surely as Juan Borgia would come for Carmelina because she dared to escape him, he would come for me because I had dared to humiliate him.

How fortunate, then, that I could think of nothing more pleasant than coming for him first.

If I could puzzle out how. Because as much as I wanted to conclude this deadly business with Anna’s long-sought killer, I had no desire to pay for it stretched on a rack or dangling from a rope.

“Will.” I sent a blade winging the length of the empty loggia. The sun was a fiery ball at my right, sinking into a mass of charcoal cloud. Yes, I had the will. Perhaps it was a great sin, but murder had never troubled my conscience as long as I could justify it, and the Gonfalonier’s worthless soul would not be missed by any but his blind and doting father. No, I’d not blink an eyelash at the thought of removing Juan Borgia from the world. Finding the opportunity would prove more difficult. For that I would need—

“A site.” I sent the dagger at my belt whipping at the target. The killing ground would have to be chosen in advance. Somewhere secluded enough for the asking of questions, for the telling of answers, because killing the man who’d killed Anna was not enough for me. I wanted him to look me in the face and admit he’d done it; I wanted him to explain how his brother’s dagger had turned up on one of the bodies; I wanted to know how the one girl had died when Juan had still been far away in Spain. And I would therefore require a site far away from the
palazzo
, to lead suspicion from the household here and anyone in it. That was why I hadn’t killed Juan on the spot in the wine cellar, though the thought had flashed briefly through my mind. If he died in the
palazzo
, everyone in the household would become suspect. And I fully intended to walk from this without a shadow of suspicion attached to me.

“A lure.” I winged the knife from my boot top after my waist dagger. Juan Borgia would not be easily drawn to remote killing grounds. He had enemies aplenty: the Orsini whose castles he had attacked last fall; the husbands and fathers of the women he had despoiled—even his own brothers. Cesare, who wanted his position, and little Joffre, who looked at him with helpless hate for bedding Sancha and soiling her reputation all over Rome. The young Gonfalonier went nowhere in Rome without his armor, his retinue, and his guards. A lure would be needed; something to get him alone and helpless.

“An accomplice.” I hesitated, and the wrist knife wobbled as I flicked it away and missed the target altogether. I could see no way to spring an ambush like this without a second pair of arms. Strong arms, too, because Juan would need to be dragged from his horse and bound securely. I was stronger than I looked, but I could not haul a full-grown man off a horse, much less if he was struggling.

How hard is it to kill a pope’s son? What do you need to do it?

Will—yes. A site—I had a few places in mind. A lure—that too could be managed, maybe. But an accomplice—that was where my brain stopped. Because I had friends, but no friends I could ask to help in a matter such as this.

Almost I thought of Cesare. He hated his brother, after all, and he lusted for the opportunities that Juan had squandered. And he knew about his little brother’s hobby; Cesare Borgia knew every secret the family had. He hadn’t bothered to expose Juan, of course—any secret against a rival brother would be kept until the day it proved useful.

Might he . . .

No. If Cesare Borgia ever turned Cain against a member of his own family, he would do it for his own reasons. Not merely to avenge a few lowborn serving girls and tavern maids.

The sun was gone by the time I descended from the loggia with my knives sheathed again and my dilemma no nearer a solution. I had missed
cena
, so I took myself to the warren of small chambers behind the kitchens, looking to find my wounded
Signorina Cuoca
and perhaps cadge a little food. But I had no answer at her chamber door, and I wandered out to the kitchen courtyard with a shrug. Where I saw a young man standing in the shadows, one elbow propped against the wall and his face buried in his arm as he aimed the other fist over and over, with great softness and precision, into the stones. “I will kill you,” I heard him mutter indistinctly. “I swear to Christ, you filthy whoremonger, I will kill you—”

“Kill who?” I called across the courtyard.

His head jerked up, and I recognized Carmelina’s red-haired apprentice. “What?”

“You seem to be planning violence.” I sauntered closer, watching my shadow dance in the dim light of a rising half moon. “Violence is my business.”

“And my business isn’t yours.” He straightened from the wall, and I could see that his knuckles were bruised from where he’d driven them into the stones. Bruised, but not bloody—even in fury, he was taking great care to save his fists. For a more specific target, I would wager.

“Let me guess.” I smiled, taking out my dagger and stropping it against my boot top. “Could your distress have something to do with our
Signorina Cuoca
leaving for the Convent of San Sisto tomorrow morning? Or perhaps
fleeing
for the Convent of San Sisto would be more accurate. And you’ve been in love with our bad-tempered Venetian cook since you were, oh, fifteen?”

“Carmelina said you saved her from the Duke of Gandia,” the boy cut me off. “So I’ll thank you for that. But don’t twit me, Messer Leonello. I’m no boy anymore.”

“Debatable,” I said, but Carmelina’s apprentice had grown since I’d last bothered to notice him. A strapping young fellow, really, standing with one shoulder jammed truculently against the wall of the courtyard and his face leveled down at mine in a cool stare. Whipping egg whites and cream tops might not be as noble a calling as the sword, but it evidently built men every bit as strong.

“So you have heard what happened to Carmelina,” I said, and pushed the knife back into my boot top. “Regrettable, but hardly uncommon. I hope you’re not thinking you can take on the Duke of Gandia in revenge?”

“He’s too high for me,” Bartolomeo returned. “I’d sink a meat cleaver in his skull if I could, but I don’t want to die or be excommunicated just for crossing the Pope’s son. I’d rather live, marry Carmelina, take her to Milan so we can learn how they do that leavened citron bread of theirs, and come back to Rome someday to cook for the next Pope.”