The Lion and the Rose (34 page)

“There,” said Leonello, swinging inside. “Alone at last.”

I laughed, surveying him. He pulled a rickety chair over to the trestle table and hopped up, feet swinging as insouciantly as always, but his face looked sunken and grained, and his black cap was tilted well forward over his eyes. “Are you suffering from the effects of too much wine?”

“This morning I was vomiting from the effects of too much wine.” He removed his cap with care, stubby fingers gingerly massaging through his dark hair. “Mere suffering seems a great improvement.”

“Chilled lemon water,” I said briskly. “Nothing like it for a sore head. Not that they have lemons here, or even water that I’d care to serve my guests. So—” I uncorked a jar with a cross carved into it. “Communion wine.”

“Stealing from this convent too, now?” Leonello winced at the thump of the jar on the table as I put it before him.

“I robbed a reliquary from my last convent,” I said after making absolutely certain the two lay sisters weren’t eavesdropping outside in the courtyard. “You think I would balk at communion wine?”

Leonello managed a grin. “Can you possibly be bantering with me, Suora Carmelina? You haven’t spoken a word to me in years except to scratch and spit.”

“Any man who comes to my rescue with knives drawn must be viewed in a better light,” I informed him. “Even if he does know every secret I have.”

He studied me. “I would not have told, you know. I did like to torture you with it now and then, but as for truly giving you away?” A shrug. “Even I am not so cruel as that.”

I looked at him, my little adversary sitting with elbows propped on the trestle table and his chair tilted back on two legs, hazel eyes serious under cocked black brows. He looked small and wry and unexpectedly kind, not at all as sinister as I’d first found him. And though he was far beneath my eye level as usual, his broad-chested, big-headed little figure in its plain black had more quiet authority than Juan Borgia ever had in his most swaggering finery.

“I am sorry, you know,” I told him, and didn’t mind the apology. “That I was so prickly with you, and for so long. I misjudged you.”

“Most people do. You at least did not misjudge me as a drooling idiot or some fool in motley. For that”—raising his cup—“I thank you.”

I gave him an answering grin, wondering if we might have cleared the distrust away for good, and retrieved my ladle and bowl. “So?” I asked as he drank an abstemious mouthful from his jug. “What brings Madonna Giulia here? And why aren’t you with her instead of putting your feet up in my kitchen?”

“She has gone to see the Countess of Pesaro in private.” Leonello tilted the jug, looking down into it. “To tell her, in fact, that her brother is dead.”

I stopped stirring, feeling my mouth grow dry all at once. “Which brother?”

Leonello looked at me straight. “Juan.”

I dropped my ladle for the second time as I made a grab for the edge of the table to steady myself.

“Sit down, dear lady.” Leonello pushed a stool out for me with one booted foot, and by the time I was seated with a cup of that thin communion wine in my own hands, he’d outlined the bare and brutal details of the Duke of Gandia’s death.

“Stabbed
nine
times?” I shivered. “Someone wanted him very dead.”

“They did,” Leonello said.

I eyed him. “Any ideas who . . .”

“Take your pick of enemies. Rome is swarming with rumors.” Leonello waved a hand. “The Orsini, for his attacks on their lands? The Sforza, for the slight done to the soon-to-be-annulled Count of Pesaro? The Count of Pesaro himself, to punish His Holiness for this attempted annulment?”

“Leonello—”

“Or perhaps we must look closer inside the family. There was no love lost between Juan and Cesare, as all Rome knows. Or Juan and Joffre, who could perhaps have been more angry than we all thought about Juan bedding his wife.” Leonello looked thoughtful. “Though if Joffre is that angry to be cuckolded, he’ll have to wipe out Cesare next, which would be considerably more difficult. And after Cesare, the whole papal guard, most of the palace pages, and everyone else to whom Sancha of Aragon has given her kisses and her greedy little hands. Even myself.”

“You? And the Tart of Aragon?” Even with my head still reeling from the news, I couldn’t help but make a face. “I thought you had better taste.”

“Fortunately for me, her taste runs to the exotic. Even as far as the deformed and short-statured.” Leonello waved the Tart of Aragon away with one hand. “Back to Juan. There are, of course, all those outraged husbands and fathers out for his blood, the ones who had to console weeping wives and despoiled daughters. Count Antonio Maria della Mirandola, most recently, whose daughter surrendered her virginity most unwillingly. Who knows how many more like her have vengeful relatives?” Leonello gave a long innocent blink. “So, how are we ever to know who killed our good Duke of Gandia?”

I eyed him back in silence. Maybe he
was
as sinister as I’d first thought, at that. “How indeed.”

We looked at each other.

The Duke of Gandia is dead
, I thought
,
and felt a bubble of violent relief swelling in my chest. Probably a sinful bubble, but there was no stopping its rise. I felt like laughing, or weeping, or maybe both. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Another death will sober you rather more, I think.” Leonello nursed another small sip of communion wine. “Your cousin, Marco Santini. He was serving as Juan’s squire that night. He was not killed in the initial attack, but he was wounded and knocked unconscious. It seems he was dragged to a nearby house and tended there, but he died without waking.”

Sweet Santa Marta. Marco too? My eyes flew open; I gaped a moment, and Leonello looked at me inscrutably. I put the heels of my hands to my face to hide from his gaze. Marco.

Marco dead.

Ever since the attack in the wine cellar, rage had festered in my belly toward my cousin—a flinty, straightforward fury; almost comforting. But now I felt rage muddling together with shock, with disjointed memories of the boy who had first captured my heart when I was twelve with his easy smile and broad shoulders. I thought of the amiable gambler I’d tousled and chivvied out of wine shops and
zara
games, the shame-faced fool who thought nothing of leaving a wedding banquet in midpreparations just to put a bet on a bullfight, the man whose bed I’d sometimes shared when he felt like celebrating a win at the cards . . .

My cousin, who had given me to Juan Borgia because he owed money, or because I had taken his place in the kitchens, or both. Maybe Marco hadn’t really guessed what the Duke of Gandia would do to me, but I was sure he’d been careful not to think about that part. Marco didn’t like to think about ugly things. He’d just screwed his eyes firmly shut, lured me into the trap, and told himself nothing ugly would possibly happen.

I made myself take my hands down from my eyes, because unlike my cousin, I could look at things when they were ugly. “Marco
and
the Duke of Gandia, Leonello?”

Madonna Giulia’s bodyguard sipped calmly, not deigning to answer me. I didn’t know what to think, whether to rejoice at the end of Juan Borgia’s life or say a prayer for the end of Marco’s.
Is this the price?
some part of me wondered.
Juan Borgia dies, but so does a foolish, laughing man who used to share my bed?
I sat feeling very cold in the hot kitchen, breathing shallowly through my nose and trying to keep my head from flying into pieces, as the dwarf opposite me swirled his wine thoughtfully in its cup.

“You know, I’ve never seen you drink more than a cup of wine at a time, Leonello.” I managed to speak around the confused choke of emotions in my throat. “Much less get reeling drunk.”

“Sometimes even I feel the need for oblivion.” He tilted a shoulder. “It was a bad business, Carmelina.”

“The Duke of Gandia—did he—”

“When there is a viper loose,” Leonello said in a neutral voice, “you can run all you like evading the fangs. But sooner or later, someone will have to risk the fangs and kill the viper.”

“True,” I said faintly. “All the same—please don’t tell me any more.” If I heard any more, I was going to be sick.

“Ask Bartolomeo for details, then,” Leonello said. “When you are ready.”

“You involved
Bartolomeo
?” I shot to my feet.

“I thought you didn’t want details.” Leonello blinked innocently.

“You odious little man, I will hate you all over again if Bartolomeo came to any harm!” Sweet Santa Marta, if he was caught and executed for this, it would be all my fault. Was God so jealous of His brides that I was a curse to any man who laid hands on me? I’d bedded three men since taking my vows: Marco, who was dead; Cesare Borgia, who said he was the Devil and was surely damned to hellfire—and then, Bartolomeo. Who had become embroiled in God knew what dark business, and all because of me.

“Calm yourself,” said Leonello, seeing my face. “He’s unhurt. Though probably even more hungover than I am. He knew I was accompanying Madonna Giulia to the convent today and made me promise to seek you out. I was to tell you—let’s see—” Leonello cast his eyes up to the ceiling. I folded my arms, glowering, heart pounding. “Ah, yes. He’s taken a position as undercook in the household of Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto. That Neapolitan lordling who collects paintings and pretty page boys.”

“I knew that already. That’s all Bartolomeo said?”

“There was a great deal more in the way of flowery protestations,” Leonello said. “I shall not embarrass you by repeating it all verbatim. He adores you, he will write to you until you can leave here, he would wait for you forever—”

I could feel my cheeks heating. “He told you all that?”

“He was very drunk at that point, I admit. He came to me troubled in his soul, you see, because he did not regret our actions, and thus feared he could not repent as one is supposed to after the doing of evil. As I was the only murderer and evildoer he knew, he wanted to find out how one made the proper atonement. An odd mix of purity and practicality, that boy . . . he needed reassurance, and even more badly he needed wine, so I broached a cask and gave him a little practical advice about how exactly one confesses the more serious sins to one’s priest without giving away the details that get one caught. Sins like, say, accidentally killing a clumsy lout despite doing everything possible to save him.”

My heart squeezed.
Oh, Bartolomeo
—“How could you drag him into this? He’s just a
boy
—”

“He’s no boy.” Leonello’s tone brooked no argument. “He’s a man grown, Carmelina. And he’s done nothing he need feel remorse for.”

Easy for Leonello to say, with his conscience as flexible as a snake and as impervious as burnished steel. Bartolomeo and his finely tuned sense of wrongdoing were another matter entirely. “He’ll never forgive himself,” I said into my hands. “Sweet Santa Marta, I wish he’d never met me.”

“Do you?” Another arched eyebrow.

“I’m sure he does, too! What if he’s caught and hanged because of me?” Dread pooled sickly in my stomach, replacing all my stunned shock. I could not even imagine the vengeance the Pope would unleash on anyone with a hand in the death of his favorite son. “Bartolomeo should take himself away to Naples or Milan, and as soon as possible. He can just as easily build a career outside Rome.” Just as easily, and far more safely.

I looked up at Leonello and I couldn’t help a shiver, meeting his calm, unrepentant gaze. I didn’t see him fleeing to Naples or Milan—he’d see this terrible business out to the end, whatever the cost. “Thank you,” I said. “I am grateful, you know. Even if it had to come at such a price.”

“I hate gratitude,” Leonello said, and tilted his head upward as the bells began to ring overhead, calling the nuns to Terce. “Unless it’s the kind of gratitude that offers itself up naked across my bed, but you clearly like your bedmates quite a bit taller and younger than myself.”

I felt too worn even to muster a glare. Instead, I leaned across the trestle table, and I touched my lips to his broad forehead. Leonello grinned and rose, and I hoped he wouldn’t be damned to hellfire for this unholy business. He didn’t seem to care one way or another, but I found that I cared. I crossed myself, shivering again, and he made a dusting-off motion of his hands as if to push my prayers and my sympathies away.

“Now,” he said, clearly done discussing vengeance, guilt, and all the rest of it. “Shall we go to Madonna Giulia, then, and tell her you will be accompanying us back to the
palazzo
?”

Back to the Palazzo Santa Maria, back to my kitchens, back anywhere I wanted. Juan Borgia was no longer anywhere in this world to threaten me. “Home,” I said, and the first faint stirrings of hope rose in me.
Home.

“Yes,” Leonello agreed. “I’m sure the Countess of Pesaro will be far too busy weeping for her brother to put up a fuss over your leaving.”

Madonna Lucrezia was not weeping, however. She was screaming.

* * *

T
he little suite of rooms in the gatehouse for illustrious travelers would have been luxurious enough sanctuary for the Countess of Pesaro all by themselves, but she had brought her own little comforts as well. Silver combs and basins for the washing of her hair, little ivory pots of rouge and hair potions, three elaborately carved and painted chests containing all the gowns and shoes and linens deemed necessary to her retreat, her own fragile Venetian goblets and majolica plates, a pearl-inlaid lute so she could practice her music . . . Just today when I brought the Countess of Pesaro her midday
pranzo
of pastry
pasticcetti
stuffed with milk-fed veal, her little
sala
had been a bower of silks and laughter and bunches of flowers as she read aloud from Ficino’s
De Amore
while Pantisilea dressed her hair. “Stupid Ficino, I’m tired of him,” Lucrezia had been complaining. “I hear there’s to be another book of sonnets from Avernus to his Aurora, but who knows when I shall get them . . .”

Now as I edged into the
sala
wishing I could hide behind Leonello, the bower’s peace had shattered right along with the bowl of fresh violets and lilies that now lay smashed on the floor. Cushions had been torn off the wall benches, books lay facedown on the floor, and Lucrezia Borgia’s hair stood out wildly in all directions as she sobbed in the middle of her bed.