The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (49 page)

“Bartolomeo?” I crawled to my apprentice where he lay still, his hair almost as bright against the white road as the trickle of blood from our fallen guardsmen. “Bartolomeo, sit up. Sit
up
, I did
not
spend a year teaching you to cook only to have the French murder you in a road! Sit up and tell me what goes in a
zabaglione
, sit up,
please
—”

He was so still. Behind me a woman screamed on a rising note, underlaid by that snickering French laughter.
My fault, my fault.

“Ho, what have we here?” The French captain broke into heavily accented Italian, leaning one elbow on the pommel of his saddle and looking down at the carriage. The last of our guards had thrown down their weapons, and now at a gesture from the captain, a sergeant jerked open the carriage door. “
Viens ici!
” he snapped.

There was a pause, and then Madonna Adriana stumbled down. My employer no longer looked like the Pope’s most trusted cousin, the complacent sharp-eyed dowager who combed my storeroom lists to point out any place where I might save ducats. She looked old, old and terrified as she stared up at the French captain. Madonna Giulia’s salt-and-vinegar sister stumbled out next, no longer full of vinegar but terror as she sobbed and clung to Pantisilea, and then little Laura’s nurse, who was babbling prayers. Madonna Giulia came last, clinging tight to her daughter and burying her beautiful face in the little girl’s furs.

“Very nice,” the French captain said in his repellent heavy-accented Italian, looking at the fine cloaks, the tooled leather slippers, the furred hems arrayed before him. “Very nice indeed. Don’t you rich ladies know better than to travel at times like these?”

Adriana da Mila drew herself up. “My cousin is His Holiness the Pope, and I will thank you—”

The captain guffawed, and his ring of soldiers were quick to guffaw with him. “And I’m the King of France!”

“How dare you treat—”

He lashed out casually with one boot, still in its stirrup, and caught Madonna Adriana in the jaw. She collapsed gagging, and one of the maids gave a short scream, and the French captain laughed. His men laughed too, and the hulking sergeant with a spray of blood on his arm reached for Madonna Giulia. “Not just rich, Captain, but pretty too! Look at this one—”

Madonna Giulia jerked away, but the sergeant’s hand had already fallen from her arm. He was staring down at the knife in his throat.

It appeared as suddenly as though it had grown there, a damascened hilt showing over the top edge of his rusted breastplate, its Toledo steel blade splitting the Frenchman’s throat as neatly as an apple. The sight of it seemed to freeze everyone—the laughing captain, his ring of men, the little huddle of women, all staring as the French sergeant gave a slow gurgle and toppled into the dust. And a small figure in black stepped calmly down from the carriage with a knife in each hand.

Leonello took another man down before they even registered him as Death in their midst, a tiny finger blade evaporating from his stubby fingers and reappearing in the soft gullet of the soldier beside the fallen sergeant. The dwarf’s face was emptily, terrifyingly calm as he advanced from the carriage, his hazel eyes flicking to a new target even as he pulled another knife from his boot top. The blade winged like a tiny angel; a man screamed as much in surprise as fear, but Leonello had already dismissed him and looked to the next man, and the impassive, inexorable slowness of his march never stopped. He reached Madonna Giulia and swept her behind him with one arm, even as he sent one of his dark Toledo blades flying at the French captain.

It clanged off the man’s helmet, and the sound seemed to galvanize everyone into motion. The captain’s horse reared, the captain himself began shouting in French, the soldiers lunged forward, but Leonello’s face never moved. A man seized Madonna Giulia’s arm but got too close; he screamed as a knife made a lightning double-slash across groin and thigh. Leonello whirled and flung the same blade as another soldier grabbed Adriana da Mila by the hair and jerked her to her feet, but the knife missed the man by a whisper and went spinning into the dust. The French captain roared something else then, and Leonello fired off one more blade before they converged on him. The little man went down in a welter of furious French soldiers, and even so I saw him draw the dagger at his waist and slam it through a man’s knee before they brought him down.

Then he was gone.

Bartolomeo gave a groan, stirring on the ground. I dropped over him instinctively, keeping us both from view if God and Santa Marta were good, but I couldn’t tear my horrified eyes away from the storm around the carriage. Madonna Giulia’s sister was being dragged off by another French soldier, shrieking. Laura was crying in thin baby wails. Leonello was nothing but a huddled mass in a circle of boots and pikestaffs. The French captain was swearing and urging them on, and how her silver bell of a voice pierced the din I did not know.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”

I had seen Giulia Farnese as the Venus of the Vatican, jeweled and poised in a throng of cardinals. I had seen her as passionate lover, naked in her bath, rosy and ripe for eating as a peach. I had seen her as doting mother frolicking with her baby; as everybody’s friend who always had time for a joke and a gossip. I had never before seen her as a cold and furious queen.

No, more than a queen. Queens had only their birth to give them arrogance, but La Bella was loved by God Himself.

She had passed her little wailing Laura to the whimpering nursemaid without a glance and tossed aside her cloak to show the rich dress underneath. She threw her head back in stark cold fury, golden hair shining like a coin under the morning sun. The huge pearl at her throat gleamed like a chain of office. Her eyes went sword-straight to the French captain and she advanced on him in icy majesty: a lethally offended goddess ready to hurl thunderbolts at any mortal who dared rouse her rage.

“I am Giulia Farnese,” she spat at him, her words slicing like another fistful of flying knives. “You have all heard of me. I am Giulia la Bella, the Venus of the Vatican, the Bride of Christ. I am the Pope’s mistress. Lay one dirty finger on me or mine and it will be cut from your body. The rest of you will follow in small screaming pieces and then your soul will scream in hell for all eternity, cut off from God’s grace when my Pope excommunicates you for daring to touch what he loves best in all the world.”

“Madame—”
The French captain’s eyes flicked from her pearls to the white breasts underneath them, then hurriedly to her famous golden hair.
Please let him have heard of the hair
, I found myself praying, still hunched over Bartolomeo on the ground.
Please let him have heard of the Pope’s golden mistress.
Or they would strip Madonna Giulia naked and pass her between them just like the rest of us. “
Madame
,” the French captain began warily, “if you might prove—”

“Is that how you address a woman of my rank?” she interrupted icily. “So much for French manners.”

The captain fumbled off his helmet. He had looked huge and imposing with his loud accented voice and extravagant plumes and big horse. Now he hardly looked older than Bartolomeo. “
Madame
, I do apologize—”

“And so you should. Is it the custom in France, boy, to make war upon defenseless women?” Giulia turned a slow circle, allowing her furious eyes to pass from the captain to his men, and her nostrils flared in freezing contempt. “You there, release my maid at once. It is quite impossible that I be left to wait upon myself. Release my bodyguard as well.”

“
Madame
, he has killed three of my—”

“He has his orders direct from His Holiness Himself to kill anyone who threatens my person. Your men, rest assured, are already writhing in hell for daring to offer me offense.” Her fine brows drew together. “Release him.”

The soldiers were already moving before the French captain rapped out the command. My heart squeezed as I saw the still figure of Leonello on the ground, curled into a ball in a fruitless effort to protect his face and innards. I saw the bright ooze of blood coming from somewhere beneath him and my heart squeezed again, but then I saw his broken fingers twitch. At least he was alive.

“Carmelina?” Bartolomeo whispered muzzily.

“Shh,” I hissed.

Giulia’s eyes did not change as they swept over her bodyguard. She twitched her hem away from his small crumpled form and looked back up at the French captain. “Since you have incapacitated my bodyguard and guardsmen, I require an escort,” she announced. “I suppose these ungroomed louts you call soldiers will have to do.”

“Madame Farnese,” the French captain began.

Giulia simply ignored him, tugging a pair of embroidered gloves from her belt and putting them on finger by finger. “Since my carriage has been ruined, I will need a horse.” She nodded at the captain’s gray gelding. “That one will do.”

I heard the soldier who had hauled me from the wagon whisper to another, “That’s the Pope’s whore?”

“Acts like she’s protected by God Himself,” another grumbled, but his eyes dropped when Giulia’s gaze fell on him. Her eyes regarded him like a louse, then traveled to me. I thought I saw a flash of relief, or maybe it was fear, but her cool arrogance never faltered as she found her servants one by one. The French captain tried to say something, but she rode over him with the same lordly impatience the Pope used when he rode over interrupting cardinals. “You may all take your places,” she said, waving a hand to us all from the maids to the few remaining guards to her terrified sister and frozen mother-in-law. “No one will touch you. We are guests of the French King now, and we all know the French do not wage war upon women.” She turned and raised an eyebrow to the captain until he flushed and scrambled off his horse. She stared at him again until he cupped his hands to receive her foot and boost her up into the saddle. “A litter for my bodyguard at once, and whatever sawbones hack of a surgeon you have on hand. I want him bandaged and tended before he is moved an inch. I assume we will be taken to see your general?” she said disinterestedly, arranging her skirts. “If I am to be taken captive, I must at least be captured by a man of suitable rank. Rest assured I shall have words for him about your conduct in this matter,
capitano
.”

“Madame—”

“Do send ahead and be sure there are suitable amenities awaiting me. After such a trying journey I will require a rosewater bath and a good meal. None of that swill you French call wine, either, I drink only sweet whites from Ischia. See that your general is informed.” She looked down at the young captain in faint surprise. “You may go.”

Still looking flummoxed, he turned and rattled off orders in French to his men. They began to collect themselves, their dead, our dead. I saw Madonna Adriana take Laura in her arms and soothe her, turning to climb into the wagon with the servant girls now that the carriage was useless. The soldier who had begun dragging off Madonna Giulia’s sister looked faintly sheepish and handed her up after Madonna Adriana with a placating smile. Leonello still lay in a crumpled heap, Pantisilea gingerly straightening his limbs as two soldiers began to improvise a litter. The Pope’s concubine spurred her horse ahead, looking neither left nor right.

“Get up,” I muttered to Bartolomeo, hauling on his arm. “Get up, and don’t so much as look crosswise at any of these damned French soldiers.”

“What?” He looked around him, still dazed from the blow that had tossed him out of the wagon. He’d have a bruise on the side of his face to match mine by tomorrow.
At least there will
be
a tomorrow
, I thought. “Wha’s happened?” my apprentice slurred.

“We’re prisoners of the French army,” I told him grimly, helping boost him back to the wagon. “But on a happier note, we’re not dead. La Bella, if I’m not mistaken, has just saved all our lives.”

Giulia

I
t was a fair distance to Montefiascone where the French army was currently quartered, and I spent the long ride that day putting myself together. A recipe all my own, and not one to be found in any of Carmelina’s recipe collections, either. Stir together Juan Borgia’s arrogance with Vannozza dei Cattanei’s malice, toss in my sister Gerolama’s sharp tongue (when she wasn’t paralyzed by terror, that is), add a good dollop of Caterina Gonzaga’s regal self-importance, and season with the temper of a fishwife: clop after clop of my horse’s hooves, I choked down the fright that gibbered in my throat and made myself into a haughty, highborn bitch.

I complained that my borrowed horse’s gaits were too rough. I browbeat the French captain into stopping for half an hour just so I could get a pebble out of my shoe. I sneered at the French soldiers for being unshaved and unwashed. I turned up my nose at the bread and cheese I was offered at midday, then whined of my empty stomach for the next three hours. I pouted and bit my lip and pushed my breasts out, flashed my pearls and dropped my Pope’s name every third sentence, and all the while I was aware, so terribly aware, of my sobbing sister and bruised mother-in-law and beaten guards, of my huddled maids and my terrified daughter and my poor, valiant, bloodied little bodyguard. All of us contained by that ominous ring of French soldiers who could turn on us at any moment, rob us or rape us or cut our throats, if they ceased believing that I was a prisoner of great value who must be handled with velvet gloves.

But all my manufactured complaints dried in my mouth when we came over the hill approaching Montefiascone and I saw the French army spread out before me. A vast lake of filthy doublets, of horses and pikes and tents and wagons, flapping with French lilies and stinking of blood. For months I had been hearing talk of the French army, of the havoc they had wreaked as they crossed Savoy in their inexorable march south—but it had only been idle talk over the table, far less real than the wine in my cup and the silk on my back; far less interesting than the question of what delicacy Carmelina would be providing next on my plate. Now I was in the thick of it, swallowed up by that lake of filthy swearing men as the young captain led our party down into the camp’s outskirts. I was close enough to smell onions and rotten teeth on the breath of those thousands of soldiers, to see the fires and the horse manure and the mud, to feel the weight of so many leering, curious eyes as I trotted past, bracketed by my guards. I took in the sight of those lethal horse-drawn bronze cannons that flung iron shot at such a ferocious rate that a town’s fortifications could be reduced to rubble within hours; saw those fearsome French pikes that had spitted babies all across Savoy, the savage destriers who could stove in a man’s skull with one hoof, and it was now so horribly real.