Wolves in Winter (29 page)

‘I will have the bed warmed, and send for your supper, Madonna.’

I kept my voice as quiet and soothing as I could, moving softly about her, making as if to tidy her things so that she did not see me filching a gown and hiding it under a pile of linens,
sliding a ribbon into my pocket. When she was settled, I put on my boy’s clothes, looking at her submissively as I did so.

‘Poor Mora.’

‘I do not think I suffer worse than you, Madonna.’

The knock came and I went meekly into the passage where I told the attendant to turn his back and wait. It seemed to take forever to fasten the gown and arrange my hair as I had planned, I could
not allow Valentino’s impatience to spoil his temper. If the guard was surprised at my metamorphosis he said nothing, I supposed he had seen stranger things. I dismissed him as we reached the
door.

‘My, but we are fine, this evening, Mora. I am flattered.’

‘I am not Mora. I am a lady, a Roman lady.’

And then I said something in Castilian that I thought might get me whipped, or worse, something I had practised over and over so as to get the shocking words out smooth. He took a long breath,
and then I feared that he might laugh, but he simply took me and turned me, his hands playing in my loose hair as I raised my gown. I could see the dish of peaches set on the table by the fire. He
followed my eyes.

‘A pretty touch, the peaches. Elegant, as I would expect from my sister.’

This time, I did not allow either the pain or the pleasure of his touch to send me away into that half-swoon where I knew nothing but the quiver of my hurt and my longing for release. I bit my
lip and made the sounds he expected of me, I moved just so in his arms, enough for him to hurry on through my suffering until he collapsed on top of me, his face buried in the silver of my hair. I
let him rest a moment, then turned beneath him, shaking out my gown and fetching the plate from the fireside. I poured wine calmly, allowing him time to order himself. When I turned, it seemed he
had already forgotten me, would not even hear the sound of the latch that marked my going.

‘Would you take some wine, sir?’

‘Would you poison me again? You may leave me.’

‘Sir, I have discovered something. Something you would wish to know.’

‘Very well. Quickly.’

‘I worked in the
scrittoio
of Maestro Ficino before I came here from Florence. I saw much of his art, sir. He said I had . . . a gift.’

He was curious now, curious and fearful, I could see it in the change of his face as he looked on me.

‘Ficino, you say?’

‘If you will come with me, sir. We will need a torch, and a guard, if you wish.’

He bridled at the idea that he might fear to be alone with me. I took him down through the sleeping house and as he held the flare with his own hands I prized up the paving slab and reached
inside. I thought on my mummings with Margherita’s customers, and when that didn’t work, I thought on my papa, to keep myself from laughing. It was really so very easy.

‘ To speak with angels, sir,’ I whispered, making my voice as quiet and mysterious as I could. ‘My master taught me this. It is from the Kabbalah, sir, from the lands of the
East before Our Lord even walked there.’ I sounded just like Margherita, I had to turn a giggle into a cough. ‘To speak with angels, one says a message over the image –
thus.’ I held up the icon I had filched from the cathedral to the light. ‘And then it must be buried at the threshold, so, with the name of the person who is to receive it, and a piece
of parchment for the angels to leave their answer. And then, if the calculations are correct, the answer will come within a day. And here it is.’

I had made it myself, written in wine which I hoped would look like blood in the flickering light of a torch. It was a poor charm, in truth. Maestro Ficino had never made it work, he said that
he had never made the calculations correctly, but then Valentino was not to know that. I held out the paper to him with a puzzled look, appealing to his wisdom to interpret these strange
scratchings.

‘I asked the angels, sir, I asked them what would happen to my lady. When I saw the writing, I knew they had answered, so I came to you.’

‘And I am to believe this, this Moorish nonsense?’

But his eyes were scanning the paper. It told him just what the coded letter had told Caterina, of Il Moro and his great army, raised by his relative the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, of how
they had massed in the frozen fastness of the Alps and were even now descending on the lake country in their pursuit of Milan. I could see his mind, working quickly, calculating how this would
affect his plans, his pact with the French, but also his suspicion, his inability to believe that this could be anything other than another slave’s trick.

‘How can you know this? Have you spoken with the Countess? Seen a letter? You can read?’

‘No, sir, but there are many ways of reading. And there is no letter. My lady knows nothing of this.’

‘Mind to whom you are speaking! Be clear.’

‘As I said, sir, I assisted Maestro Ficino at the Medici palace in Florence. You might send your couriers, sir, to see if I am correct. But perhaps it will be Monsieur d’Allegre who
wishes to ride north.’ I made my voice servile, wheedling. ‘I thought you might be glad, sir.’

‘D’Allegre. Yes. I will send at once. Return to your mistress.’

‘I await your pleasure, sir,’ I answered, allowing just a hint of insolence in my voice as I bobbed him a curtsey and skittered out of the range of his hand.

He screwed the scrap of parchment into his palm and turned into the house. In moments I could hear his voice rousing the guard, summoning his horse. I could have run then, if I had wished it,
slipped through the streets of Forli before I was missed, yet, meekly, I waited his bidding.

The key was turned in the lock after me as I entered our chamber, and the door remained locked as two short winter days crawled past. Caterina was mad with anxiety, craving to know what was
happening, where Valentino was and why she was being treated as a prisoner again. I said the words she expected to hear, that we must be calm and simply wait, for would not her uncle of Milan send
his men south as soon as he had recovered his duchy? So intent was she on her own plight that she missed the mechanical hum in my voice and the dullness in my eyes. For myself, I no longer cared.
If I had failed, Valentino would kill me and I should be glad to be quit of my wretched life. I knew, though, that my dreams were not done with me, for had I not seen him there, in the Holy City? I
trusted calmly that I should live that long, at least.

On the third day, Valentino returned. We heard the shouts in the
cortile
, the noise of hooves. Caterina was at the window, she turned as the men entered, but not quickly enough to move
before they clapped a pair of iron cuffs on her wrists.

‘What is this? How dare you use me so? You will answer to the King of France for this.’

‘No, madam. There are no Frenchmen left in Forli. You, girl, pack your mistress’s things and look sharp about it. You’re moving.’

Caterina sank on the bed, her hands twitching uselessly in their fastenings.

‘You must do as you are bid, Mora,’ she sneered wearily. ‘It seems once more we are betrayed.’

‘Take courage, Madonna. We will go to the coast, no? To Pesaro? You have your kinsman there.’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘If the French are gone against my uncle, Valentino will not continue his campaign in the Romagna without their lances. He will cut his losses. And my
cousin of Pesaro has been burned by the Borgia once. Rome. He will take us to Rome.’

PART THREE

1500

CHAPTER NINETEEN

O
N THE FIFTH DAY OF THE SECOND MONTH LUDOVICO
Il Moro made himself once more Duke of Milan, while Cesare Borgia was
proclaimed Duke of the Romagna. We were long gone from Forli, then, even had he troubled to send his men against Valentino to deliver his troublesome niece. Caterina was placed in a litter, its
leather curtains laced tight, concealing, at least, the ignominy of her fastened hands. For three weeks we crawled through the filthy February weather, to Cesena, towards Urbino, cross-country to
Spoleto, then Vicovaro. Caterina’s litter was carried on the middle of the train, behind the company of five hundred horse that remained of Valentino’s cavalry; I travelled further back
in the baggage train, where I heard my own Spanish tongue and the strange, guttural speech of the Gascon and German mercenaries. We entered no cities, at night we bivouacked wherever we were
ordered and I was permitted to attend Caterina and make her what poor toilette I could. We might have been passing through Hades, so thick was the grey mist that surrounded us, so silent the
villages we passed. Even their church bells stopped at the approach of Valentino, all the peasants hiding in their huts or run away.

I did not expect to see him until he had use for me again. The news from the north had proved that the little Spanish slave was serviceable in more ways than one. Caterina was kept under the
guard of twelve Spaniards at all times, who searched me before I was permitted to enter the litter, mussing my mud-splattered gown and making bawdy remarks, until I silenced them with a few of my
own. After that they treated me cautiously and then, as the journey wore on, began to speak a little to me of the news from the couriers who occasionally passed us like spirits, the sweat on their
horses discernible in the still, icy air, long before they came in sight, riding for the head of the train. Il Moro was at Novarra, the French were closing in. The Sforza, it seemed, would not hold
Milan for long, and Monsieur d’Allegre, it appeared, had forgotten his French gallantry. We were served the same poor rations as the men, hard black bread, thin greasy soup and a few handfuls
of dried fruit, no plate or napkins, not even wine. Caterina was permitted to leave the litter only to squat and relieve herself, where I did what I could to shelter her with my skirts. She was
weak and grey faced and her unwashed hair dulled to a greasy bronze. Nothing in her treatment indicated what she had been, no courtesy was paid to her rank or her state. When I heard the men
talking of the use she had accepted at Valentino’s hands when he had kept her in his rooms at Forli night and day, I did nothing to check them. She was of no more account than a discarded
alehouse trull, and though I was sure to keep my countenance about her, I rejoiced inside that she too now knew what it was to be nothing.

It was as we descended the spine of Italy into the softer lands of Lazio that I saw the troupe. We had seen very few travellers thus far, but as we came upon the route to the Holy City we began
to meet pilgrims, some on foot, with stout walking staves, worn and weary with walking and fasting, others fine people with litters or even carriages, all bound for the jubilee celebrations in the
Borgia city. Caterina barely glanced at them, though even the sight of a new face made for a little diversion in the grim tramp of our journey, and they often stopped to exchange news or share
their provisions with the men, who were kept in good order, bound by Valentino’s discipline and the promise of reward when we arrived. Their wagons came out of the mist as we broke camp one
morning, plodding slowly along the crowded track. I felt a little flutter of happiness as I recognised their colours, fresh-painted since they had taken leave of my master and me at Careggi, in
another life, and Addio’s bright cap, blue this time, perched above the straining rump of the horse. I clambered down from the cart and trotted along the line to where Caterina’s guards
surrounded her litter. I would speak with these people, I explained in Castilian, they might have news from Florence.

Without waiting for permission I ran back to the wagons, letting down my hood, and as they recognised me a flurry of hands reached down to haul me in. I rode with them all that day, reliving our
escape from the palazzo, eager for news of their travels. They had been south to Naples, the most beautiful city you had ever seen, set in a horseshoe of blue water with islands like jewels, and
then further, to Palermo, where there had been storms and a shipwreck, and where they had spent a sweltering season eating oranges and fish that swam into your hands if you dipped them from a rock.
I could see the colours, feel the brightness of that southern sun, and I wished a little that I had gone with them when they had offered, to a life with its own ever changing rhythms, secure in
nothing but the pace of the horses and the uncertainty of tomorrow.

Chellus told me that my old friend was still with them, grizzled and fat, but good enough to frighten the children, and I wondered at that; perhaps he could sense me, and bring them to me when I
had need. It was fanciful and I did not share my thoughts. Of Caterina I spoke little, though of course they had heard of the siege of the Rocca and the defeat of the Countess of Forli. All Italy,
they said, was talking of it. I told them only that I was following the path that had been set for me – Ser Giovanni was gone and I had seen his son go safe to Florence; I followed my lady as
a good maid should. In truth, I was a little ashamed to expose them to what had become of me since they left me in Tuscany. As dusk fell I left them, with promises that I should seek them out in
Rome and a cloth of provisions that I had begged from the guards. They could not move so quickly, they explained. They would move back down the line and perhaps make a few coins from a show for the
men, who would pay well for a little entertainment.

I was warmed by their acceptance of me, their lack of curiosity as to how they came upon me always in such odd ways. This must be the lesson of the life they led on the road, I thought –
that everything comes around, in a while, and that it is best to accept what joy there is in it, and not ask too many questions.

I thought of him, though, my old wolf, as I lay tight in my cloak that night at Caterina’s side. It meant something, I was sure, that he had come to me again, and I could not sleep for
waiting for it. A day passed, then another, and on the third a gentleman came for me, one of the captains of whom the men whispered at night, and said that I should get up on his horse before him,
and come with him to Valentino. The column was settling for the evening, we passed between little glow-worm fires in the twilight, the men easing off their stinking boots, passing skins of wine,
arranging their packs as pillows. I kept my head down, avoiding curious eyes. My heart was fluttering at the thought that I should see him again, trepidatious, thrilled. We came to a clump of
tents, I was set down and the gentleman led me inside, withdrawing behind me so that we were alone.