The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (17 page)

He set his lips against my bare shoulder for a long moment, and then he turned me so we stood face-to-face again. I stood naked and quivering, but he didn’t look at my body; he looked into my eyes. “Do you believe me?”

For answer, I yanked the pearled net from the nape of my neck and shook my hair down around me in a billow of gold. I’d wanted to give myself to Orsino like this on our wedding night but I’d been bundled into a sheeted bed in a dark chamber instead, and hadn’t had the courage to get out of it because a wife above all things must be modest. But modesty wasn’t required in a mistress, so I faced my lover in nothing but a cloak of loose hair and a pearl.

His eyes were full of me. He held out a hand and said something in Spanish I didn’t understand.

I reached out, linking my fingers with his. “What does that mean?”

His free hand slid around the smooth skin of my waist, up to my breast. “‘
Come to me
,’” he whispered, and he lifted me up and carried me back through the empty, echoing rooms. I was too breathless to reply, but not too breathless to look around as he laid me down on a carved bed with a striped cover of black and white velvet. The same bed I’d lain in alone on my wedding night, now moved out of its chamber for dismantling, and I had a fleeting moment of wonder. Just what had I done?

Then he was kissing me again, mixing Italian and Spanish with every other word as he pulled me to the velvet bed beneath him.

“Rodrigo,” I whispered. And let it happen.

Leonello

I
passed my imprisonment calculating the mathematical odds of imminent death. Frankly, my gift for analysis was proving not at all helpful. The odds of survival were decidedly against me.

Murder is a small enough sin, providing the victim is no one of great value. No one had fussed about searching for Anna’s killers, after all. Who cared for the death of one common tavern maid? A cardinal’s steward, that was a more serious matter, but not insurmountable. In the end, most courts of law prefer money to blood. Had I been a rich man, I would have laid a judicious bet that my punishment for knifing a man through the throat would be a hefty fine and a sentence of banishment from Rome. One could live with such a punishment; there were other cities besides Rome to make a living, and they all had drunken men waiting to be relieved of their money by a man who knew what to do with a deck of cards.

But I had no money for such a bribe, no assets worth seizing. And a dwarf could hardly be sentenced to the galleys to pull an oar or exiled to some ragtag army to fight Turks. Besides, if there was anything a court of law liked better than coin, it was a spectacle of public punishment to give the mob. The hanging of a dwarf, now that was an event to draw a crowd. Better than a play any day.

I looked around my dank little cell. Not much bigger than the room I rented in the Borgo. The difference was all in the details. My rented room was meticulously clean, the floor swept and polished instead of riddled with rat droppings; the bed an impeccable square of clean linens instead of this pallet of moldy straw. My room had a window with a tiny sliver of a view out onto the domes and spires of the Vatican, a bracket for tapers that gave cheerful yellow light when I stayed up too late reading as I always did. My room had a modest chest of clothes and my even more precious cache of books, mostly purchased from the printing shop downstairs. That printing shop survived chiefly on cheap smeary broadsides and scurrilous pamphlets, but over the years I’d culled a fair collection out of their shelves: Marcus Aurelius, even though I thought him a poxy bore; some plays by Sophocles; Dante and Boccaccio and Ovid. My books. For my days I had cards, but at night I had books. And now I was stuck in a cell darkened to perpetual twilight, and I doubted I would ever read a book again.

My eyes stung.

I didn’t even know how long I had been held here, wherever
here
was. A few days? Maybe I’d be saved until after the Pope died, whenever that was. Rome always erupts into violence when a pope dies—what better way to keep the mob calm than to give them a dwarf’s bloody execution?

Perhaps I had another week. Or perhaps only a few days. However long poor old Innocent could hang on.

I almost wished he’d hurry up and die. There were only so many hours I could pass massaging the cruel aches of my shackled legs and running mental odds on my method of execution. My battered deck of cards and the worn volume of Cicero’s letters had been taken from my doublet when the guards searched me. Providing the boredom didn’t kill me first, I’d soon be marched out through a jeering crowd, up a crude flight of steps to a gallows, and feel a rope snugged about my neck. Or perhaps I’d be lucky. Perhaps they’d let me go after lopping off my hands, or my nose, or my ears. Cut out my viper tongue; gouge out my eyes. Then let me go, as an example of Christian mercy.

Dio.
Sometimes I wish I were a stupider man. A clever imagination is no blessing in a cell.

So I was almost glad when a guard with the Borgia bull on his chest came and took me away.

I could barely walk after being kept shackled so long. The third time I tripped, doubled over with knifelike pains down my exercise-starved legs, the guardsman simply hauled me up by one elbow and dragged me along so my toes trailed the floor. I was content to be dragged, bumping up a series of stone staircases, through a long passage and then a richer series of anterooms. Elaborate carpets, gorgeously dyed tapestries, gold and silver plate proudly displayed to gleam on an intricately carved
credenza
 . . . Where
was
I?

“Your Excellency,” the guard grunted as I was hauled through yet another set of wide doors. “The dwarf you wanted to see.”

“Put him down, Michelotto.”

I was dumped onto another very fine carpet and had to bite back a scream as my legs protested. The guardsman faded back against the wall, and I gave him a cordial nod before turning my attention to the figure slouching behind the desk. “You will pardon me, Your Excellency,” I managed to say politely. “I fear I must remain seated for a moment, or else fall over when I try to rise.”

He looked at me with a thoughtful gaze as I began to rub my knotted thigh muscles. The same boy I remembered from just before my fall into unconsciousness: a lean amused face, auburn hair, a pair of black and penetrating eyes. Up close I could see he was perhaps seventeen, but he lounged back in his carved chair like a man grown—like a man who was master of all before him.

He continued to inspect me, top to toe, like a spavined horse he was nevertheless considering for purchase. “Fascinating,” he said at last. “How in the name of God the Father did someone such as yourself manage to murder one man, wound another, and then chase him halfway across the city?”

“Did you see the men afterward, Your Excellency? The man I killed, and the man I tracked?” No point in denying it; I’d been squarely caught.

“I saw them,” he returned.

“Then surely you know how I did it.”

“I wish you to tell me, which is entirely different.”

My turn to inspect him top to toe. He gazed back as calm as a leopard, not offended at all by my scrutiny. He wore an ornate silver cross over a bishop’s purple robes, but I saw nothing of God about him other than his clothes.

“I killed the first man by a knife through the throat,” I said at last.

“You are not tall enough to reach his throat.”

“I threw the knife.”

“From a distance, in the dark? Impressive.”

“Yes,” I said. It
was
impressive. Even the guardsman against the wall, a colorless sort of fellow with eyes like wet slate, had pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “The second man I hit in the hip, when he turned and stumbled,” I said. “It slowed him enough that I could pursue him.”

The young Bishop steepled his fingertips. “And what did you mean to do when you caught him?”

“Ask him a few questions. Then cut his throat.”

“Even if he gave you the answers you wished?”

“Yes.”

“What questions did you want answered so badly?”

I remained silent. He grinned, a flash of white teeth in a swarthy face.

“It was about money, or a woman. It always is.”

“A woman,” I said.

“He stole her from you, I suppose.”

“No. She was just a common tavern maid. But three men decided to kill her, including Don Luis and Niccolo the good guardsman, so I decided to kill them.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed? Murder, imprisonment, the gallows: so much trouble for a woman I didn’t even love. It would make a better tale if I had loved her—songs of brokenhearted men and the revenge they wreak for lost love are always popular in taverns. But I hadn’t loved Anna, or she me—in another year, I doubted I’d remember what her face looked like. There were so many faces like hers, overtired and ill-used and quickly forgotten.

“Why?” the young Bishop asked again.

“Because she mattered,” I said. “Tell me, what has happened to the guardsman? Niccolo.”

“The wound in his hip was very deep. It suppurated, despite the surgeon’s best efforts. He is raving now, and sinking fast. Did you poison the blade?”

“No.” Sometimes even a dwarf could simply come up lucky. I smiled.

“So, you bagged two of three killers.” The Bishop noted my smile. “Is that worth your current imprisonment?”

“Had I managed to kill all three, yes.” I saw no point in lying to him. My end on the gallows would come regardless of whether I groveled or swaggered, whether I spat rude words or fawned at his feet. I managed to rise, wincing as my tingling legs protested, and rubbed my chafed wrists together inside their rope.

The Bishop continued to watch me thoughtfully. “These men weren’t your first,” he said at last. “You’re accustomed to killing. I know the look.”

“From your own mirror, Your Excellency?”

He laughed. “You have a viper’s tongue. I’m surprised no one’s cut it out before now.”

“I’m surprised myself.”

“How many have you killed?”

“Four or five.”

“For money? Or on behalf of some other tavern maid?”

“For protection. Men who sought to rob me and thought they could kick a dwarf about in safety.”

“Most men think that. You killed them for it?”

“Men of normal size don’t have to kill when they are attacked by drunks or thieves.” I felt very numb but oddly pleased at how conversationally my words were coming out. “They use their fists; they make a few lunges with a dagger; they kick and wrestle. That can make an attacker think twice and maybe retreat with a few bruises.” I gestured down at myself. “I can put a knife through a man’s eye at a distance, but once he closes the gap I am helpless. I cannot hit him, punch him, wrestle him, bruise him, or in any way stop him from doing what he wishes. A man moves to attack me, and I must make the decision to kill him at once or let him do whatever he likes to me.”

“You could wound rather than kill.”

“Ineffective,” I said. “Wound a man, and he’ll be so angered at being bested by a dwarf that he’ll report the attack, either to the constables or to his friends. I have a distinctive appearance. I’m not likely to remain unfound if someone unfriendly is looking for me.”

The young Bishop regarded me another moment. “If you still had your freedom, little man, what would you do? What is it you most wish for?”

Books
, I thought.
To be tall. To
matter. “I’ll settle for the woman’s third killer,” I said.

“To put a knife through his throat, as you did with poor Don Luis?” The Bishop leaned forward between two elaborate branches of beeswax tapers, taking a dagger from his belt and laying it down on the desk with its hilt toward me. “Perhaps you would favor me with a demonstration.”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t like being refused.” His tone was mild, but his brows met over the bridge of an eagle nose.

“And I don’t like demonstrating my skills with an inferior blade.”

“It’s Toledo steel.”

“It’s a dagger. Fine for a street fight, but not for throwing.” I was starting to feel lightheaded. Hunger, fear, or danger? I wasn’t sure. “Give me my own knives.”

He looked at me for another moment, then tilted his head at the expressionless guard still standing before the wall. The man fished in his doublet and handed over my set of slim finger knives. “These?”

“Those.” Only two of the four, but I suppose two had been lost in the nighttime chase. I held up my bound hands. “Well?”

“You are a rude little man.” But the young Bishop nodded, and his guard cut my hands free. I took my time flexing my fingers, working the blood back into my tingling palms and massaging my aching wrist where the colorless guardsman had struck me with the pikestaff. The Bishop looked impatient.

“I’m a busy man,” he began.

“And I’m a dead one,” I told him. “Of the two of us, I think my time is the more valuable.” With that I picked up the first of my knives and whipped it past his ear close enough to stir his auburn hair. It bedded itself in the tapestry behind him with a soft
thrum
.

He never moved. I sent the second knife whizzing after the first, burying it deep in the wall. He turned to look and saw that I’d thrown them so close together that he couldn’t have passed a sheet of vellum between the two blades.

“Impressive,” he said. “Where did you learn your skills?”

“As a child, from a mountebank’s show,” I said. “They wanted me to tumble and juggle. I joined the knife-throwing act instead.”

“More dangerous than juggling.”

“But less humiliating.”

He picked up something from his inlaid desk, and I saw my weathered volume of Cicero. “Unusual for a man of letters to work a mountebank’s show. You read Latin?”

“Poorly.”

“You did not pick up that from a knife-throwing act.”

“No, from school. My father wanted more for me than a mountebank’s show; he thought book learning might get me a post someday as a secretary or a tutor. Pity he was wrong. Why all the questions, Your Excellency? No matter where I learned my skills, flight is not among them, and so I am still bound for the gallows.”