The Pop’s Rhinoceros (57 page)

“What of the animal itself?”

“What of it? They need only know that their Pope would have it and, as good Christians, that they will fetch it.”

Kneeling behind the door, Eusebia thought of the big fish waiting in the dark water, of herself swimming directly into their mouths. It would be easy to stand, open the door, walk coolly into their openmouthed amazement. …
Bite, and I will pull you home with me. …
The boy jerked suddenly. Again the pole bent. And bent further, the line taut and straining. The boy looked up at her and grinned his embarrassment. The hook was snagged. He angled the pole about, trying to free the line. She smiled back, but he could not see this with her knees drawn up close to her mouth. The earth was black and soft, good for sitting on.

Yes, she thought, the big fish bite when they like. And then they are brought to shore. Vich was talking in scathing tones of his secretary, who thought he had made a fool of his master. “A particular pleasure of this business will be dealing with Don Antonio Seròn,” he was saying. She felt the line tautening, the hook tugging, the arm tensing like the great brown muscle of the river itself and pulling her back to Nri with her prizes. …

Eventually the boy gave up and waded into the pool, running his hand down the line but watching only her and moving toward her through the water. She did not stir, thinking only that he would be wet and his flesh cool. His eyes narrowed as he found the hook. She watched the water run over his skin when he straightened. She rose, too, thinking that he would have her here, on the soft earth that she was brushing from her feet. She was not frightened. She had seen two of her brothers do it. When she looked up, though, everything had changed.

The boy was staring at her face, not her eyes, which followed his, not her mouth, which wanted to press itself against him, but her cheeks, and the
ichi
-scars that ran in neat lines down each side of her face. She took a step forward, but his face had already dropped. He was making odd little bows and backing away from her across the pool. He was frightened. When he reached the far side, he picked up his pole, drew his creel from the water, turned, and jogged away through the trees.

Somewhere above her head, the floor creaked. Her head came up. Fiametta turning over, she thought. She and Namoke had stayed in Atani another three days, and she had not seen the boy again. But his
chi
came and made love with hers underneath her bed that night. If she closed her eyes, she could feel his hand against her cheek.

“And what shall be done with Venturo?” Vich’s voice came through the door.

“Leave him to us,” answered the other.

The ship, the beast, these clumsy men with their clumsy dreams. She was the tiny silver fish and the girl who saw the tiny silver fish, which was the future.

She closed her eyes.

She felt a hand against her cheek.

When Faria had bade his farewells, Vich had gone upstairs and had her again. She was bleary and protesting as he roused her. He held her by the ankles and took her briskly while the woman rolled and flopped beneath him. She sweated sour wine, and when he woke at daybreak the next morning the air in the room was foul with the smell of her. She had begun to irritate him, offering foolish pieces of advice in a hectoring tone. He did not need her to tell him how to behave as Fernando’s orator in Rome. The sheets were smeared with her facepaint. She disgusted him.

Yet she drew him to her, too. The thick flaps of her flesh folded him in. He pressed his face between her breasts. Sometimes, sweating and bucking between her thighs, he felt himself sinking as though into a bath of soft fat. In the dark her hands were soft bolsters of human meat tipped with porcelain nails. He shuddered and pressed his mouth against her to keep himself from shouting out at the moment of climax. Her own pleasure arrived in the form of drawn-out sighs broken by little grunts and groans. Flecks of rheum had clotted on her eyelashes. A tiny bubble of spit ballooned and burst at the corner of her mouth. She leaks, he thought, dressing. Washed-out yellows stained the eastern sky, promising another day of heat. He closed the door behind him softly so as not to wake her.

An unfamiliar horse stood in the courtyard of the palazzo. Diego was giving instructions to one of the stableboys. The soldier looked up as his own mount entered.

“There is a merchant,” he said.

“Here?” He glanced down at Diego’s hand, which was bandaged. “Trouble at the tavern?”

“Trouble with a wall,” said Diego. “He arrived yesterday. I told him you could not be found.” The other stableboy had roused himself and now approached, coughing into his sleeve.

Vich dismounted and handed him the reins. “Where is he? What does he want? Don Antonio should be …” He let the sentence fall silent.

Diego gestured inside the palazzo. “I do not know what he wants. He calls himself Don Alvaro Hurtado of …” The soldier paused and thought. “A town called Aya-something.”

“Ayamonte?” Vich questioned the soldier, whose expression did not change.

“You have heard of it, Excellency. I supposed it unimportant.
Ayamonte.”
He rolled the syllables around his mouth. Vich watched impatiently. “I believe it was
Ayamonte,” he agreed. The Ambassador was already disappearing inside the door to the palazzo.

Vich found the merchant sitting on a short bench that stood before the fireplace in the
tinello
. He rose and nodded as the ambassador approached.

“You know me?” he asked.

“I have been waiting for you,” replied Vich.

They moved through the palazzo, still cool and quiet at this hour, upstairs to Vich’s study. Vich closed the door carefully. The two men watched each other for a moment, then both broke into broad smiles and embraced warmly.

“When I saw the horse, it was all I could do to keep from laughing,” Don Jerònimo said, chuckling. “I knew it was you then and there.”

“Best-bred horse in the world,” Alvaro replied in mock gruff tones. “It goes up …” He indicated with his hand.

“And it goes down.” Vich joined in the recitation, and both men laughed. “Is Tendilla still alive?”

Tendilla was the master of horse to the counts of Burgos, the author of the phrase that had first bound them together in laughter more than twenty years before, and the passionate advocate of mountain ponies as the only animal both native and suited to the kingdoms of Spain. They began to chatter freely of their service at Burgos, the cold in the winter, the burning summers, their escapades.

“We were boys, mere boys,” Vich said, wiping his eyes at a memory of the Countess, a woman even larger than Fiametta who had recommended clemency to her husband when they had been caught amongst her ladies-in-waiting.

“Your head is to be found on your shoulders, not between your legs,” Alvaro imitated the Countess. “She spoke like a peasant,” he said.

“Fine woman,” Vich added.

Don Alvaro agreed. “And where was your head last night?” he asked, still smiling.

“Going up …” Vich began.

“And going down.”

In chorus again. More arm movements. More laughter.

They called for breakfast, and a tray of bread, oil, and cold meats arrived. The two men fell silent as they ate.

“The soldier, your Captain Diego,” said Don Alvaro, wiping his mouth, “knows I am not a wool-broker. Or suspects as much.”

“Is that your story? Diego can be trusted to keep silent. Tell me your news now. How did you engineer this journey, my dear Alvaro?”

In answer, the other merely spread his arms wide and shrugged helplessly. “The drying of fish and the drawing of lines on maps. That is all that happens at Ayamonte; that and the plague spreading up from the Marismos. The agreement is all but complete. Don Joao will approve it, the Portingales believe. Our King Fernando still keeps his counsel.”

“He is unfathomable,” said Vich. “The policy suits him well.”

“We must proceed on the assumption of his favor if our efforts are to harmonize with those of the Portingales. How do the preparations go?”

It was Vich’s turn to shrug. “Don Antonio has the business in hand.”

“Can he be trusted? I mean, is he competent in this subterfuge?”

“No one is more suited,” Vich said smoothly.

“Of course. I intended no slur. … The Portingales are all but ready. A month, I am told.”

“The ship and crew will be ready by then,” said Vich. “Faria has proved a faithful ally. It is right that we find common cause with the Portingales, in this matter, at least.”

“It has not been so amicable at Ayamonte. Does Faria talk of Fernão de Peres?” Vich nodded. “Face like a bag of nails, tongue like a rasp. If I see him again, I will spit. The architect of their parley,” he explained at the sight of Vich’s raised eyebrow. “Very clever, tireless, precise. And facing him across the table, the dullard of Burgos!” Don Alvaro laughed aloud.

“Has this business not gone well for you, my old friend?” Vich asked quietly.

“Well enough. An equal mixture of sugar and poison is being poured into Fernando’s ear on the subject of Don Alvaro. …” He paused, and when he looked up Vich saw that his face was strained. “There will be no mishaps, will there? No mistakes made here in Rome?”

“There will be no mistakes,” said Vich.

Alvaro glanced about the room. His gaze fell on the sheaves of papers and charts stacked on shelves against the wall. “It is a thankless task,” he said. Vich said nothing. “And will remain so, Jerònimo. When it is over, there will be a reckoning, do you understand me?”

Vich said, “Go on.”

“Distance yourself. To the vulgar eye there will be only a shipwreck, a failure, and the crowing of the Portingales. Fernando moves his court to Seville in autumn. You have enemies there whose intrigues will demand an object.” He paused to weigh his next words. “Do not allow yourself to be made the scapegoat. I do not know if I will be able to protect you then.” Alvaro’s voice had dropped. “I am ashamed to say this,” he said.

“There is no shame in it,” Vich replied briskly. “Do not trouble yourself with these things. My honor is spotless and will remain so.” Then, when he saw the anxiety undiminished on Alvaro’s face, he went on, “Your intelligence is welcome but anticipated, my friend. Whether he and the gossips of Seville know it yet or not, the scapegoat is already chosen.”

They talked then of their time together at Burgos, of the country about Valencia. Vich inveighed against the Italians and their manners until Don Alvaro laughed aloud. It was almost midday before he looked down from his window to watch Don Alvaro saddle his horse and ride slowly out of the courtyard. He stood there for some time after man and horse had both disappeared, turning his old friend’s reappearance over in his mind. Malice was to be expected. Fernando’s ear
had had enough poison poured into it to fill an ocean. His eye wandered idly over the jumble of rooftops and chimneys. The sun beat down, bleaching the clay pantiles to pale orange and glaring off the walls. Something nagged at him, but he could not grasp it. Something unaccounted. … He wrestled to discover it amongst their sentimentalities, the man’s patent worry (as if he would not know to guard his back), the talk of scapegoats and gossips.
I am ashamed to say this. …
Why shame?

But whatever it was that bothered him eluded him, too, and finally Don Jerònimo shrugged the thought aside. At Burgos, Alvaro had been clever and useful, and weak.

He remains so, Vich told himself then. There was no mystery. Nothing had changed.

A soldier, by his bearing. … Who else could it be?

There were all kinds of soldiers, Salvestro told himself. And their bearing? A strut, a swagger. A feathered hat on a tousled head. Sword-hilt upmost and codpiece outmost. The best soldiers, as everyone knew, were Walloons, Savoyards, Gascons, Croats, and Corsicans. And Dalmatians, who were insane. Harquebusiers went about with gloomy faces pitted and blotchily tattooed with greenish-blue gunpowder-specks. They fiddled about with swabs and bits of wadding, and on the march to Prato, one of them had confided to Salvestro that he kept a store of waxed matches up his rear to guard against sudden downpours. Swiss
Reisläufer
and
Freiharste
did everything in formation except fight, and Breton companies could be identified by the black crosses they painted on their foreheads. There were fat soldiers, who waddled. And thin ones, who did not. A good pikeman wore his corselet at all times (he had never managed to acquire one himself). Virtuous men-at-arms slept in their cuirasses and took the field in suits of Missaglia armor topped with brightly colored banderoles astride horses the size of houses. Little bands of squires and crossbowmen trailed them on ponies. Field-masters and
Trossmeisters
were large with red faces and shouted a lot. Bombardiers spoke a numerical language that nobody else understood, and practitioners of the arme blanche talked to nobody at all unless able to trace their family back fourteen generations. … He thought also of the still figures, scattered over the fields after Ravenna, that looked like dark grave-mounds as the dusk fell. Did the dead have a bearing, too? Rodolfo was of little help on the question that had dug its barb in him a week ago and would not be drawn out farther.