The Malice of Fortune (10 page)

My companion was not any taller than he had appeared in the courtyard—not considerably taller than I. But now, walking at his side, I felt a stature as lithe and sinewy as Mercury. Still clutching
his arm, I recommended myself. “I am Madonna Damiata. From Rome.”

“Messer Niccolò, as I’m certain your girl told you. Niccolò Machiavelli, from Florence, secretary to the Ten of War.”

So his position, it seemed, was a bit more elevated than clerk and mule trainer; he was a secretary in the higher ranks of his government—and perhaps even of some use to them. Yet in my former trade, I had once considered it necessary to hold in memory the names of all the important families in Italy, and I could not recall the Machiavelli anywhere upon that list. “So Messer Niccolò Machiavelli, I must presume that you are attached to the Florentine ambassador.”

He turned his head and studied me, as I did him. He had a scholar’s pale forehead and a refined nose, though with a sharp, impish tip, almost on fire from the cold. His dark eyes glittered. “If I were presently attached to our ambassador, it would necessarily be a very long leash. He remains in Florence.” He spoke in a rat-tat-tat cadence, lively and careless. I could see at once why Camilla had been charmed.

“Ah, I see. When I supped with Duke Valentino last night, he told me that Florence had sent him an amusing secretary to delay negotiations on a security agreement. I presume His Excellency was speaking of you.”

This erased Messer Niccolò’s smirk. He observed me again, now as if weighing my claim to familiarity with Duke Valentino. “It is scarcely a secret,” he said, “that His Excellency is as weary of listening to my government’s circumlocutions as I am of singing him the same
cantafavola
every time we meet.”

“No doubt your lordships in Florence will send you a new song,” I said, “if Valentino cannot conclude his treaty with the
condottieri
.”

He did not hesitate. “My lordships’ most devout hope is that this treaty is never signed—they pray to that end three times every day, at lauds, terce, and vespers.”

I noted his mocking tone. “You do not believe these prayers will be heard.”

“I fear this treaty is all but signed and sealed.”

We came to the mill canal. It raced along, nearly as musical as a brook, although the banks were lined with snow; I was forced to clutch
Messer Niccolò more closely than I would have wished as we crossed the icy planks.

By this time Leonardo’s party had reached the wooden bridge over the Santerno River, which in this season resembled a turbid lake more than a hundred
braccia
wide. Yet the bridge was a temporary construction that seemed entirely made of toothpicks, despite its enormous size. The thought of crossing it gave me a shudder.

“I will tell you, Messer Niccolò, why I determined to follow you, in the same fashion you are following Maestro Leonardo.” I gave him a moment to say something smart, but he did not. “As I told you, I have come from Rome. On an errand for Pope Alexander. His Holiness has instructed me to examine the murder of this woman who was cut into four pieces and scattered about the countryside.”

“Five. If you consider her head, five pieces.”

I had expected to startle him, but his quick reply gave me a shudder. “Yes, the head,” I said. “Which remains absent, when it might identify the unfortunate woman, as well as inform us of her associations.”

Here he did observe a careful silence, though I could not say whether I had assumed too much or if he regretted revealing his interest in the matter.

Moments later we reached the Santerno bridge. Leonardo’s party not only had crossed already; they had left the road, marching down a slight slope onto the river’s opposite bank, which was covered with snow-clotted reeds. As we began to cross, I could hardly keep my feet; these planks were glazed with compacted snow and so carelessly fitted that I could see the muddy water rushing along beneath them. The entire structure swayed before me like a bough in the wind—and there was no railing of any sort.

No doubt I mouthed the Ave Maria a thousand times before we reached the other side. Here Messer Niccolò halted and looked out over the right bank, where we could see Leonardo’s pewter head bobbing through the tall reeds, more than a hundred
braccia
beyond us.

“There are gravel pits and quicksand down there,” Messer Niccolò said, evidently believing that this would dissuade me from accompanying him farther.

“Yet here you are, Messer,” I replied, “all too eager to follow the duke’s military engineer into a frozen swamp.” I did not bother with much of a pause before I added: “Why is your government so concerned with Maestro Leonardo’s excursion into the countryside?”

He stared out over the reeds, searching for his vanishing quarry. All at once he crossed himself like a comic mime, as if making a satire of the perils ahead. “If you are going to come along, we had better go at once.”

We had not gone twenty steps through the reeds when I plunged into a soup of icy water, halfway to my knees. Yet I stiffened my resolve and ventured on, the gravel always shifting beneath my feet and often threatening to suck me down, the water sometimes to my thighs. I could see nothing ahead save the slender back of Messer Niccolò Machiavelli, secretary to the Ten of War. Now and then he peered back at me; I could not say if he was anticipating my rescue, or merely hoped to find me gone.

Just when I feared I had lost sight of Messer Niccolò, I nearly stepped on him, as he crouched in the reeds. He signaled me to keep quiet, though I could hardly help snorting like a horse after the
palio
, I was so breathless. Someone was speaking just ahead, a strident tenor: “Start clearing the snow. It is buried somewhere in this vicinity.”

I exchanged looks with Messer Niccolò, who pointed to where the bank sloped up from this dreadful marsh. We scuttled along, soon escaping the icy gravel, and ascended perhaps a hundred
braccia
before Messer Niccolò halted amid a small grove of poplars, stripped to gray skeletons by the early winter.

We were afforded a view of the three men thrashing around in the reeds beneath us, the snow-covered rooftops of Imola half a mile distant. I had hardly stood up and shaded my eyes against the glare, when I received a revelation of such stridor that I might have been Saint John of Patmos, thunderstruck by the unearthly heralds of Judgment.

So that my words would not carry, I urgently whispered to Messer Niccolò, “They believe her head is buried down there.” And the cold
would have preserved it sufficiently to reveal who she was, so that we might soon discover the unfortunate associations that had led to her death.

I observed the little cloud made by his sigh. “I am not certain.”

“Leonardo said it was buried down there. I heard clearly enough.”

“Oh, I am certain they expect to find something beneath the snow.” Messer Niccolò did not offer what else this might be but instead eyed me keenly. “I know you came from Rome, because the caretaker at the palazzo told me. And I saw Duke Valentino’s messenger go to your rooms yesterday, so your tale that you dined with His Excellency last night is certainly credible.” Here he frowned, no doubt wondering why the duke had not provided me a pass to join Maestro Leonardo in the countryside. “The rumor going about is that the murdered woman had some connection to the Duke of Gandia’s assassination.”

In this fashion I heard another herald of Revelation: the Florentines already suspected that the woman’s murder had something to do with Juan’s assassination, though perhaps they were only following vague rumors. But even so, that entirely accounted for their considerable interest in all this—if by any chance they could connect the
condottieri
to the crime, they might provoke the pope to discard the yet-unsigned treaty and seek vengeance, regardless of Valentino’s desire to keep the truth buried.

And I had to give Messer Niccolò his due; he was testing my bona fides with this question, which perhaps he and the Florentines had already answered to their satisfaction—or perhaps not. Regardless, I would have to answer, if I hoped to learn anything about the Florentines’ inquiry. So I offered this: “I can tell you that His Holiness believes there is a connection to his son’s assassination.” If Messer Niccolò knew about Juan’s amulet he would understand the particulars, and if not, I had no intention of bearing him gifts, so to speak.

Messer Niccolò betrayed little, saying in a musing fashion, “A connection Duke Valentino would find inconvenient if he hopes to conclude his treaty with the
condottieri
. He still doesn’t have Vitellozzo Vitelli’s signature.”

As I had presumed. “And if the Vitelli were to fall under suspicion in the Duke of Gandia’s murder,” I said, “I can imagine that instead of
praying three times a day, you Florentines would shout hosannas for your deliverance.”

I thought I would see his ironic little smile. Instead he merely looked down upon Leonardo and his companions. “I would certainly regard that event as a miracle,” Messer Niccolò said. “Because lacking this or some similar caprice of Fortune, within two months we can expect to see Vitellozzo Vitelli’s army at the gates of Florence.”

He narrowed his eyes. “They have found it.”

Leonardo and his two assistants had gathered around something within the reeds, from which they urgently scooped away the snow with their hands. In short time they excavated a little pyramid of smooth river stones, which rose to Maestro Leonardo’s high waist. However, for all their urgency in finding this cairn, the three men made no effort to dismantle it.

“Surely the head is buried beneath it,” I said.

“The head isn’t there,” Niccolò said flatly. “I believe this is where they found one quarter of her.”

“Do you mean that the murderer marked these locations?”

“Not unless Leonardo is the murderer,” Niccolò said. “I believe that the maestro constructed this marker so that he could return to the precise location.”

Here was my third revelation: Messer Niccolò had kept watch on Maestro Leonardo’s house because he knew that the duke’s engineer general had already investigated the murder and was likely to return to the countryside for further inquiry. Thus I asked, “So the maestro discovered the parts of her body?”

“No. Peasants found them, before animals could begin scavenging.” He raised an eyebrow a bit, as if he found this peculiar. “Leonardo was sent to collect them—the poor woman would not be the first corpse he has examined in his basement. But most likely she was the first to have been previously butchered.”

I had not considered that Maestro Leonardo’s interest in the corpse might go no further than the science of anatomy; a number of our modern artists, as well as a few physicians, have undertaken this study, the better to decipher Nature’s secrets. I had even known learned gentlemen who attended these dissections, as if they were theatrical events.
Even so, I could hardly imagine that Leonardo would have examined this woman’s remains without Valentino’s permission—any more than he was presently wandering about the countryside absent his employer’s instruction.

“Now where is
he
going?” Messer Niccolò said. The pretty boy, easy to mark in his bright jacket, had started off by himself, forsaking his barrow-less wheel. He trudged through the reeds, in the direction of the hills that framed the city on the west. As we studied his progress, a bright light glinted up at us. Here I observed that Maestro Leonardo had placed upon the pile of stones the little reliquary-like wooden box he had transported from his house; the top appeared to be glass, with sunlight dancing upon it. Leonardo repeatedly looked up and down at this device, his head bobbing. Now and then he gave the box a nudge with his hand.

“That is a mariner’s compass, isn’t it?” I said, having once known a cardinal who kept a
studiolo
crowded with many astrolabes, compasses, and other such navigational and astronomical instruments. The faces of these compasses are invariably marked with a wind rose, a circle divided into an octave, so that each direction is named after one of the eight principal winds.

I almost gasped.
The corners of the winds
. Did the pylon beneath us mark one of these corners?

But I said nothing of this suspicion, even as Leonardo and his assistants proceeded to a baffling series of measurements. Climbing into the shallow hills, the pretty boy halted more than a quarter mile distant and turned around. He took a step or two from side to side while Leonardo moved his arm like a weather vane, evidently placing his pink-clad marker at some precise compass point. This done, the maestro and his astrologer swung their canvas mule packs upon their backs and started off. The latter placed the barrow-less wheel on the ground and rolled it before him over the snow, heading directly for the pretty boy. Leonardo followed with the compass reliquary in his hands, as if he and his astrologer were a peculiar procession of country priests.

Messer Niccolò and I hastened after them. Despite the snow, the gentle hills allowed a much quicker transit than the marshy riverside; soon Leonardo and his assistant arrived at their landmark. Here they turned at a right angle and marched up the steeper slopes more distant
from Imola, where venerable olive trees with massive, corkscrewing gray trunks stood in rows. Occasionally Leonardo knelt on the ground to consult his compass, whereupon he redirected the path of the barrow-less wheel.