The Wolves of St. Peter's (18 page)

Francesco pictured Calendula's body turning on an eddy of filthy water, the yellow dress pulling her body under as if she were being dragged down to Hell by an invisible hand, her beautiful hair all muddied and matted with seaweed and blood. But as he stood over the fire, picturing this in his mind's eye, her hair turned from gold to black. Black gypsy hair. Susanna's hair …

A
tall
man on a horse had taken her away. A
big
man on a horse had thrown a torch at his house. And a
fat
man had taken Calendula's body. Could all three be the same man?

IT
wasn't until the Pope and his boy entered through their new front door a few hours later that Francesco remembered the wolf outside St. Peter's. It was His Holiness's cape of white fur that brought back the memory, and for a moment he even wondered if the same wolf was now adorning the Pope. But of course that was impossible, and besides, the fur was shorter and softer, perhaps that of a winter hare. Lined with red velvet, the cape was slung over a long white robe, while the cap covering the Pope's thick white hair was made of the same
fabrics but reversed, with the fur on the inside. The hem of his white robes was splattered with the muck of the street, and Francesco realized His Holiness had not taken a carriage or a litter but had walked here himself. It was a good thing they now had a front door. He could not envision the Pope picking his way through the alley. Susanna would have said the appearance of the new front door had not been a coincidence. Surely, she'd say, a divine force had guided the man with the torch to open the door just in time for His Holiness's visit.

With his head grazing the low beams, Pope Julius filled Michelangelo's house. Francesco had only seen the Pope from afar, and he was overwhelmed by the man's powerful presence. He might be a white-haired old man of sixty-five, but he didn't look it, and Francesco could well believe the stories that he still fought alongside his men in battle.

Nicknamed
Il Papa Terribile,
the man christened Giuliano della Rovere had waited a long time to become Pope and had been bribing, slandering, and perhaps even poisoning his rivals for decades. Now that the position was his, he was making up for time he saw as lost. He had taken the name of Julius after Caesar himself, and it was his goal to see Rome restored to an empire worthy of his namesake.

Following Michelangelo's lead and bearing in mind rumors of the disease that was said to riddle the Pope's feet with sores, Francesco kissed the air above them. Feeling weak and nauseated from a sleepless night of worry, he fought against the rising bile in his throat. Did the Pope share the same disease as the port's prostitutes? Would this be the man's undoing? Would it eat away at him until he, too, was forced to wrap his face in rags?

The boy stood serenely next to Pope Julius, one dimpled hand stroking the fur of his cape as if it were a pet. If anything, he was even more beautiful than Marcus's portrayal of him in
The Marigold
Madonna.
His golden hair, washed and combed in soft curls, shone in the dim room as if it contained its own source of light. And when he looked up, his eyes were of the softest blue.

“Why aren't you at the chapel today?” the Pope demanded in a booming voice. “Your assistants tell me you had a fire, and yet I see you are unharmed.” Pope Julius tugged at his long white beard as he spoke, each finger on his large hands adorned with an enormous ring. He seemed to have a special liking for rubies, perhaps because they matched the lining of his cape.
They match his nose too,
Francesco thought,
the red nose of a mean, gouty old man.

“I beg your forgiveness, Your Holiness,” Michelangelo said in a servile tone Francesco knew must have nearly killed him with humiliation. “But I cannot enter the chapel when my life is being threatened.”

“By whom? Tell me and I'll have the bastard whipped.”

Francesco could see this invitation was giving Michelangelo pause. He told Francesco to put more wood on the fire, and Francesco obliged, knowing his master was just buying time. The thought of Di Grassi and Asino getting a good whipping would be a delectable notion to Michelangelo, but the artist was not unaware that these men outranked him. To openly accuse them could be dangerous. Still, if he could carefully lead the Pope to draw his own conclusions, victory would be his …

While Michelangelo was not to be dissuaded from his theories, a sleepless night had only further convinced Francesco of his own. At dawn, he had gone down to the bridge where he'd seen Calendula's body. He'd found nothing unusual, but it didn't make him feel any less afraid for Susanna. After crossing the bridge three times, he'd come home. He didn't know where else to look, but his inaction was driving him insane.

Francesco lifted the chicken from the topmost log and held it under one arm as he took advantage of His Holiness's presence to add not one but three pieces of wood to the fire. It might do his own aching head some good, and besides, he couldn't risk the Pope catching a chill, could he?

“There have been complaints about my work being blasphemous,” Michelangelo began cautiously, casting a warning glance at Francesco.

“Your work blasphemous? Jesus Christ Almighty! Who is saying my chapel is blasphemous? It isn't that ass Asino, is it? I always thought him very deserving of his name. He has the face of an ass too, and not the four-legged kind.”

“You know him better than myself, Your Holiness, but someone has been spreading vile and baseless rumors, and I fear they're the reason for the attack on my house last night. Would Your Holiness like to sit? I shall pour some wine. I'm sorry I have nothing more to offer. It is but a humble room.”

Francesco listened to this as he poked at the fire, relishing the unaccustomed warmth. He would hear about this later. Busy as Michelangelo was at manipulating the Pope's views of his most trusted servants, Francesco knew that glance he'd cast was a warning against wasting firewood.

“I like your chicken.” Francesco turned to see the boy behind him. “Why does it have three legs?” he asked quietly. “Is it bad?”

“It is but an accident of nature,” Francesco replied gently. “And makes him neither good nor bad.”

Behind the boy, the Pope had taken the chair, and he and Michelangelo were now in earnest discussion, talking in lowered but still intelligible voices, heads close together in a study of ugliness: the Pope with his swollen red nose and beady eyes, and Michelangelo
with his sallow, squashed face that had probably not met with a bar of soap since August's Feast of the Assumption. In contrast, here was this boy with his golden curls, long blond lashes over blue cornflower eyes, clean cheeks with a wholesome flush, and a tiny, girlish mouth. It sickened Francesco to think The Turk might be right about the Pope and this child.

“There is a parrot in a cage in the Vatican,” the boy was saying. “It has blue and red feathers and can talk. That's better than having three legs. It can say my name.”

“And what is your name?” Francesco asked as he looked over the boy's head to the men, who were now poring over Michelangelo's sketches for the ceiling medallions. They seemed to have forgotten they weren't alone.

“Agnello,” the boy answered.

Agnello di Dio,
Francesco thought.
Lamb of God.
Or perhaps, more appropriately,
I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter.
“What else does the parrot say?”

“Words I am not allowed to say.”

“I see,” Francesco said. Words the Pope was very free with and whose meanings the boy was probably well acquainted with. “I won't ask you to repeat them. Do you want to pet the chicken?”

Agnello nodded and lightly stroked the bird. It blinked at the boy.

“I have seen your likeness in a painting,” Francesco said.

The boy blinked up at him, not unlike the chicken. “I look like a little baby in the picture.”

“Only because it's supposed to be the baby Jesus. How old are you, Agnello?”

“Six.” Old enough to be apprenticed out to a tradesman. Old enough to be a houseboy. But when would the Pope decide the boy was too old to be his “companion”? When he was as old as the boys
on The Turk's boat? How old were they anyway? Ten, The Turk had said. And what would happen to Agnello then? Where would he go? Would he be made a member of the court or be pushed out the door to fend for himself? Francesco was still haunted by those boys on the boat. Freed or stolen, had they perished in the cold, been eaten by wolves, or been taken by their “rescuers” to be sold into bondage elsewhere? He couldn't save them, and he stood even less of a chance of saving this one.

He looked over at the Pope and the artist, who were too engrossed in their own conversation to care what he and the boy were talking about. “There will be no more visitors to the scaffolding. Your assistants, myself, and no one else,” Pope Julius was saying. “This is my legacy, and I will not have it jeopardized by a couple of jackasses. Five hundred years from now, people will see that ceiling and thank me …”

“Where is your mother, Agnello?” Francesco asked the boy quietly as the Pope continued to eulogize himself.

“In Hell, sir.” It was as easily answered as if his mother had gone to market or been doing her needlework by the window.

“You cannot think that of your mother.”

“His Holiness says she is in Hell because she was a whore.”

“Do you know her name?” Francesco realized they were whispering now, the chicken under his arm looking from one face to the other as if following the conversation with interest.

“My mother was the Virgin Mary, sir. She was in the painting with me. Before she went to Hell.”

Francesco saw nothing but innocence in Agnello's eyes, and it saddened him to realize that this boy, never knowing his own mother, had decided, because of this painting, that it was Calendula.

“I shall put di Grassi and Asino in charge of your safety,” Pope Julius was saying. His chair scraped over the floorboards as he rose. “There will be no more trouble.”

“You think it wise, Your Holiness?” Michelangelo asked. Francesco could imagine his nervousness, even as he sensed victory.

“Sometimes it is wise to let the fox guard the henhouse,” Pope Julius said. “You'll see, Michelangelo. There will be no more problems, for it will be on their heads if there is. And it saves me the trouble of pointing a finger at them.”

Francesco could see this meeting was swiftly coming to a close. His Holiness would leave, take the boy with him, and Michelangelo would return to the chapel. Just another day. If only Susanna were home.

And then he heard it. Another scrape, a muted thud. Footsteps even? All from the other side of the wall. He strained to hear.
Please let it be Susanna.
If he were to go over there only to find Bastiano again, or another intruder, he would kill him.

He no longer regretted not having more time to talk with the boy. He only wanted them to leave, but Michelangelo was holding up the Pope with almost slavish thanks and grandiose promises for the ceiling's swift completion.

The boy went and stood next to the Pope, holding his cloak again, stroking the soft white cape with his clean, dimpled hands. He did not look at Francesco again.
I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter.

MICHELANGELO
was triumphant on the Pope's departure. “At last I am free of that pair of papal leeches,” he said to Francesco once the door had closed. Francesco thought Michelangelo might break out into a jig, he looked so happy.

“Who was that boy with Julius?” Francesco didn't think he could use the title “His Holiness” ever again. From now on, he'd just be Julius.

“A nephew, maybe? The boy seems to do well by him.”

Francesco didn't enlighten him, but he was certain he could add “willfully blind” to Michelangelo's many character flaws. But for all the things Michelangelo was—a petty, obstinate, obsessive, proud, stingy, moody hypochondriac, for a start—Francesco knew he didn't have one drop of the Pope's evil in him.

He left Michelangelo in probably the best mood he'd ever seen him, happier even than the night he'd swindled the wood seller. No doubt he felt he'd one-upped Julius, along with Asino and di Grassi, and was now free to finish the ceiling without interference. Francesco would never tell Michelangelo, but he felt the artist's talents were wasted on this city.

AS
anxious as Francesco was to investigate the commotion next door, he opened the door with trepidation. Not wanting to alert a possible intruder, he opted to enter without knocking, and the door swung slowly inward on its leather hinges.

“There you are!” Susanna said. She stood scrubbing down the table while behind her a small fire burned in the grate. He could see
she had rescued the notice he had angrily placed there—
Devils in the Guise of Wolves Eat our Children!
“I was just about to come looking for you. Did you miss me? I brought some good bread for you. Olives and cheese too.”

The flippancy in her tone angered him most. After he had spent a sleepless night worrying about her safety, how could she stand there and so lightly ask:
Did you miss me?

“Where were you?” he demanded. “I was ready to have the Tiber dragged for your body.”

“Whatever for? I was only gone for a day.”

“Who were you with?” Now that he knew she was safe, his jealousy returned.

“No one.”

“No one? That's not what I heard.”

“And what did you hear?” she asked with seemingly genuine puzzlement.

“That you left with a tall man on a horse.” He was still irate, but her bafflement and his recollection that the information had come from Bastiano, not the most trustworthy of sources, tempered his tone.