The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (11 page)

“
I said quiet!
” Don Luis shouted, and he obeyed his own words. He never spoke again.

I whispered no prayer as the knife left my hand. Santo Giuliano the Hospitaller is said to watch over the souls of murderers, but only penitent murderers, and I had never felt less penitent for any act in my sorry little life. I just murmured, “Anna,” and her name winged the blade from my hand straight as a spear. I saw the bare glint of metal in the dim moonlight fading through the clouds, heard the gurgle of blood trapped in the Spaniard’s throat, and knew I’d thrown true.

He pitched over onto the mud-fouled stones of the
piazza
, the apple of his throat cored by my knife. Niccolo the guardsman gaped for a moment, still peering through the darkness for a glimpse of me. Then he gave a wail and fled.

I had already slipped a second knife from my cuff, at the ready, but he stumbled as I made my throw. The blade sank deep into his hip rather than his back, and he gave a howl that set dogs to barking clear across the vast expanse of
piazza
. I cursed silently and flung a third blade through the dark, but that one missed altogether, clattering on the stones as Niccolo picked himself up and hobbled on.

My legs were far too short to achieve more than a spraddle-footed jog, an effort I’d pay for later when my bowed leg bones protested having to carry me so fast. I’d never be a match for any full-sized man in a footrace, or any able-bodied child for that matter. But for a wounded man with a knife in his hip, and a leg now bleeding and buckling beneath him? My scuttle was quick enough.

I tracked Niccolo across the
piazza
and into the maze of dark twisting streets beyond.
Idiot
, I told myself harshly,
you’ll be robbed and murdered yourself in streets like these
. Foolhardy for any man to set foot in Rome’s lawless alleys once dark fell; sheer insanity for a dwarf who was anybody’s prey even in daylight. But I heard Niccolo panting before me, moaning whenever he had to lean his full weight on that weakening side; I smelled his blood rank and metallic against the night smells of tallow smoke and sewage, and another finger knife had already somehow found its way from the tiny sheath inside my belt seam to my hand.
You could let him go
, a voice in my head suggested, maybe even the voice of Santo Giuliano, who would like me to repent for my taking of life. The man who had staked Anna’s hands with knives was dead, after all, and Don Luis had likely been the one to cut her throat. But Niccolo must have held her down, too. He’d protested, perhaps; winced from the pangs of guilt; even bought Masses for her soul—but he had held her down, all the same, and I felt not one drop of mercy.

Ahead of me, my quarry was slowing. I heard whimpers in his gasps, and the scent of blood came even more sharply to my nose. He must have tugged my knife out of his hip; the wound would be running freely now. I hesitated when he turned limping and panting over the Ponte Sant’Angelo—it provided a long straightaway, and I could have flung my finger knife at the shadowy shape scurrying away across the bridge. But it was my last knife, and if I missed I’d be weaponless, and if there was one bitter lesson I’d learned it was never to be without a weapon. I’d have to take Niccolo up close, and I quickened my screaming legs to a splay-footed sprint. Pilgrims crossed the Ponte Sant’Angelo for a look at the Basilica San Pietro, but I didn’t think that was Niccolo’s goal.

I trapped him within sight of the Palazzo Montegiordano’s vast façade. He was stumbling and whimpering ahead of me, looking back over his shoulder in frantic terror to see what thing was chasing him through the shadows. Maybe he thought it was Anna, come from the grave to wrap her butchered hands about his throat. I veered to scrabble a stone out of the gutter, slimy with sewage water and rat droppings, and sent it thudding into the small of his back. He let out a scream and went down, and before he could clamber to his feet I was squatting over his back like an incubus. I grabbed a handful of his sweat-slick hair, yanking his head up and setting the knife point at his throat.

“Niccolo,” I purred into his ear. “Tell me who the boy was.”

“What boy?” He was weeping now. “What boy? I don’t—”

“The boy in the mask. The one you took out for a night in the slums, and somehow cards and wine led to staking a girl on a table. I know you remember who
she
was.” I spared a glance for the imposing facade of the Palazzo Montegiordano. There were more guards in the Borgia bull, standing watch under the torches—any instant now they’d notice the little struggle in the street just outside their circle of torchlight. I tightened my grip on Niccolo and lowered my voice. “The boy in the mask—who was he?” Another young guard in the Palazzo Montegiordano, perhaps, someone Niccolo had taken under his wing? A page? Someone richer; maybe a cousin of Don Luis or some young bravo who was a guest at one of the Cardinal’s banquets? “
Tell me his name.
”

Niccolo thrashed, gibbering in terror, but I sank all my weight into his shoulder blades and he couldn’t dislodge me. I might have a child’s legs and arms, but I had the torso of a man, and I was heavier than I looked for a man just a hand-span taller than four feet. I had him pinned like a dog, and he froze when the point of my knife drew blood at his throat.

“Who—who are you? The whore’s brother?”

“
Anna
,” I whispered into Niccolo’s ear in a venomous hiss.
“Her name was Anna.”

And a stunning blow took me across the back of the head.

I caught a bare glimpse of a guardsman with a red bull on his chest, gazing down at me as I toppled from my perch on Niccolo’s shoulders. The guard reversed the pike he’d used to club the back of my head and drove the butt into my wrist, and through a blaze of pain I could feel the knife slipping from my fingers.
No
, I thought,
no, a dwarf can never go without a weapon
. But my weapon was gone, and I blinked to see the sickly gray of dawn lightening the sky as boots thudded past me, thudded toward me, thudded all around me.

“Your Excellency?” A voice floated somewhere overhead. “Look what we’ve found!”

“Sharp eyes,” replied a young man’s voice, and a booted foot kicked me over onto my back. I blinked at the yellow glare from the torches that now surrounded me like a witch hunt. “And what have we here?”

In the jagged shadows of dawn and torchlight I saw a boy’s narrow amused face. A handsome face, with auburn hair and a pair of black bottomless eyes. The eyes were the last thing I saw before the dark swallowed me.

Giulia

I
’m a lazy creature, God knows, but I wasn’t used to such idleness as this. As an unmarried girl in my father’s house, there had always been some duty at hand: handwriting exercises to copy out for my tutor, an altar cloth to be embroidered under my mother’s exacting eye, the turns of the
basse-danse
to practice with my sister for a partner, songs by Machaut to finger on the lute. When I wasn’t occupied by tutors, my mother believed in making me useful: setting me to help the maids with the household mending, or taking me with her to dispense alms to beggars.

And now? I had nothing to fill my days at all. The vast
palazzo
ran smoothly, servants whisking through their tasks and making their reports to Madonna Adriana, who sat in the middle of the busy web like a most competent spider. I had no tutors now to make me memorize verses of Dante, and the daily mending was done with no assistance from me. I could still embroider altar cloths, I suppose, but I hated embroidery. I could go to church, but I had only so many sins to confess. I was surrounded by more luxury than I’d ever dreamed of; I slept on silk and wore French brocades; I could eat roast peacock and strawberries for every meal if I wanted—the richness that lapped all around still took my breath away, and I won’t say I didn’t appreciate it. But I had nothing to
do
.

“Tend your beauty,” Madonna Adriana said, patting my arm. “Hair like that needs daily sunning, you know. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you are putting on just a tiny bit of weight, so perhaps fewer candied cherries and some daily rides. We shall have to see about getting you a horse . . . Yes, do go brush that hair. Beauty like yours is a gift! God knows it won’t last forever, so you should get whatever you can from it while it’s in full bloom.”

But there were only so many hours I could spend buffing my nails and brushing my hair and massaging rose-petal creams into my neck to keep it white and soft. I twanged flatly on my lute for a while, flipped through a book of verse Cardinal Borgia had sent me—but finally gave in to the temptation of the summer heat outside. I laced myself into a peach linen overdress embroidered about the bodice in spring flowers, and trailed in my bare feet down the shallow flights of marble steps leading from my chamber to one of the enclosed gardens within the Palazzo Montegiordano. Only to be accosted by a cherub in pale blue silk who flew across the garden staring at me as though I were a unicorn.

“Is this her?” the cherub breathed, bobbing up and down like a puppy. “This is La Bella? Oh, Madonna Adriana, she’s
beautiful
! You said she was beautiful, but I didn’t know
this
beautiful!” And she flung her arms around my waist.

“Ooof!” The child nearly took me off my feet. Righting her, I saw she was no child but a girl a year or two from betrothal age: eleven or twelve with a lively little face, pale blue eyes, and a cloud of curling blond hair just a shade darker than mine.

“Lucrezia,” my mother-in-law chided, gliding down into the garden like a well-oared galleon. She had a boy by the hand, a few years younger than the girl, wide-eyed and curly-haired in a miniature doublet of slashed velvet.

“I’m sorry, Madonna Giulia,” the girl said, and withdrew to make a beautiful little curtsy before me. “I am Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of His Eminence Cardinal Borgia, who said I was to make you love me if at all possible. And I very much want to make my father happy, so can you love me at once, please?”

“Your father is very cunning,” I told her, but couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of me at her earnest expression.

Madonna Adriana beamed. “This is Joffre, His Eminence’s youngest son,” she said, indicating the boy she held firmly by his plump ten-year-old hand. “They have been visiting their mother this past month or two, but they have finally returned home. Lucrezia has been bouncing since dawn to meet you.”

“I have heard
so
much from my father,” the girl in blue confided. “He did not exaggerate at all. Do you really have hair down to your feet? Can I see it? Do you use a bleaching paste or just the sun? I would use a bleaching paste on my hair, but Madonna Adriana won’t let me—”

I wanted to make my polite excuses and return to my chamber—refuse to be charmed by anything connected with Cardinal Borgia—but somehow I found myself dragged farther into the garden by my would-be lover’s bastard daughter as Madonna Adriana disappeared back into the
sala
with little Joffre. Lucrezia went on chattering even on the in-breath, and I should have enjoined her to be silent and godly as befitted a girl on the brink of womanhood. But I remembered being twelve and bursting with words no one wanted to hear, so rather than reprove her I smiled and unnetted my hair and shook it down around my feet.

“My father said you had beautiful hair!” She clapped her hands in admiration. “He calls you Giulia la Bella.”

“Does he?” I hesitated, but I couldn’t resist adding, “What else does he say about me?” Not that I was
interested,
of course. But I had to talk about something, didn’t I?

“My father says he loves you,” little Lucrezia said, matter-of-factly. “I want hair like yours. How do you make it grow so long?”

“Massage your scalp every night when you comb your hair out,” I found myself telling her. “Until your head tingles, like this—” And somehow we were both sitting in the grass under the sun, Lucrezia sitting with her back to me.

“Ouch!”

“It’s good if it hurts; that means it’s growing.” I rubbed her scalp until she yowled some more. “For beauty, you have to suffer a little.”

Lucrezia tilted her little chin over one shoulder to look at me. “Is it worth it?”

“Very much. Don’t let the priests tell you differently.” I produced the little silver comb that I always tucked into my sleeve and began stroking it through her untidy curls. “So your father talks about me?”

“Yes, he wants to have you painted for his study! With a blue dress and a dove in your lap, as the Virgin.”

Apt
, I thought a touch sourly.

“I’m to have my portrait painted soon too,” Lucrezia confided. “For my betrothed. He wants a look at me, and I have to look pretty, I
have
to. If I don’t he’ll marry someone else, and my heart will break!”

“And who is your betrothed?” Gently I teased a knot out of a curl behind her ear.

“Don Gaspare Aversa, Count of Procida.” She pronounced the name with satisfaction. “A very noble gentleman in Spain.”

“A good match. Have you met him?”

“No, but my father says he’s young and handsome. I’m only to have the best.” Lucrezia gave a wriggle of satisfaction. “Father loves me.”

“Sit still,” I told her. “You’ve got tangles.”

“I always do.” She heaved a gusty sigh. “I wish I didn’t have curls.”

“Yes, you do. Because you won’t need a hot poker to make ringlets, the way I do.”

She gave a little bounce of satisfaction at that, then sat still as I worked the comb. I found I was humming and felt a twinge that I realized was contentment. I hadn’t had a companion since I came to this
palazzo
, not really—not someone with whom I could sit and giggle, someone who wanted nothing more out of me than a few words of gossip and my hands combing her hair. Just Madonna Adriana and her coin counting, or the innumerable Orsini cousins who came to inspect me over plates of honeyed
mostaccioli
and make equally honeyed inquiries about why I hadn’t accompanied my husband to the country. I ask you!