Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (14 page)

I did not hesitate. My reply was clear and unequivocal.

“No, absolutely not.”

Those were either the most daring or the most foolish words I had ever spoken, perhaps both. Not even when I challenged Borgia to make me his poisoner had I gone so far.

Ben Eliezer, Sofia, and the others were desperate, poised as they were on the keen edge of catastrophe. With the knowledge I now possessed, they had every right to see me as an intolerable danger. If it had not occurred to them that I should not leave the cellar alive, it would soon.

Yet I felt I had no choice. “I will not help you,” I said. “This matter is far too delicate to be in your hands.” Before they could protest, I added, “However, I will allow you to help me.”

Under other circumstances, the look on Ben Eliezer’s handsome face would have been comical. It was clear in that instant that he had a trait in common with Cesare: namely he was not accustomed to hearing “no” from a woman.

Sofia, on the other hand, looked amused. “You think you should be in charge?” she asked.

“I think I have to be,” I told her truthfully. “You have no contact inside the Vatican nor any prospect of acquiring one. That is key to our success. Moreover, you don’t even have the support of your own people.” I gestured at our surroundings. “If you did, we wouldn’t be meeting in such a place.”

“The rabbis think they can pray our way out of this and the merchants think they can buy our way out,” Ben Eliezer began, but Sofia hushed him.

“She is just saying what is true, David. Be thankful. That will save us a great deal of time.” Turning to me, she said, “Are you prepared to make an attempt?”

“No,” I replied, “not yet. I don’t know if my father even had a contact inside the Vatican. I will have to discover if there is such a person and, if there is, convince him to cooperate again.” I did not add that at the moment I had only the faintest idea of how to accomplish that.

“We have very little time,” Ben Eliezer warned. “The edict could be issued at any moment.”

“We have no more than a few days,” I told him. “Borgia made that clear.”

A look passed between Sofia and Ben Eliezer. I saw how dismayed they were.

“The Cardinal is said to know everything,” Ben Eliezer said. “Surely, he can discover who your father was working with?”

“Borgia is going as far as he can by employing me in this affair,” I replied. Everything I knew about Il Cardinale told me this. He possessed ruthlessness and prudence in equal measure. Only with both had he risen so high, within reach of the very pinnacle of power in all of Christendom.

“He will have nothing more to do with the matter,” I went on. “If we are caught, he will throw us to the wolves. Be sure you understand that.”

“I would expect nothing less from a prince of Holy Mother Church,” Ben Eliezer said drily.

That was as well, for once embarked on so deadly a mission, we could count only on ourselves to see us through. As it was, we would be very lucky if any of us survived.

I was about to say as much when I stopped myself. Though Sofia, Ben Eliezer, and the rest showed great courage, they might as well have been in a waking nightmare. Death and despair were all around them, with the prospect of even worse to come. I did not have to remind them of how bad things were.

“Sofia,” I said, “in whatever time we have, can you try to determine how to improve our chances for success? Some way of discovering what blood might work best?”

“I can try, but in all honesty, I have no real idea how to go about that.”

“Just do your best and I will do mine.” If anyone had told me that I would make such a pledge to a Jew, I would have thought him mad, but there it was.

“You should get back,” Ben Eliezer said. He rose and went to open the door leading up to the street. I stood and followed him.

Vittoro was waiting in the front of the apothecary shop when I arrived. Of Benjamin, there was no sign.

“I was worried,” the captain said. “You’ve been talking all this time?” His nose wrinkled slightly, calling my attention to the odor of brine that clung to me.

“We had much to discuss,” I told him but offered nothing more. To Sofia, I said, “I will return when I have news.”

She nodded and reached out, taking my hand. Softly, she said, “Go with God, Francesca. He has made you a Righteous Gentile and as such you are blessed.”

I had no idea what she meant, but her words reminded me again of Saint Augustine, who wrote that the Jews were a people specially chosen by God whose continued existence reminds us of the truth of biblical prophecy. Since they serve God’s purpose, it would seem ill-advised to torment them, but then I am no theologian.

I arrived back at the palazzo exhausted and filthy. After a bath and a light meal, I was still desperately in need of rest. My ribs throbbed and numerous other bruises made every movement painful. Even so, the thought of sleep terrified me. To sleep is to invite dreams, or, in my case, nightmares.

Instinct drove me out into the sun and from there into the city itself. Vittoro sent along a young guardsman—not the hapless Jofre, who was still cleaning latrines, but another he assigned to me after I assured him I only wanted to walk a bit to clear my thoughts.

“Better you rest instead,” he said, but he did not try to insist.

I went out into the day, the guard trailing behind me. The afternoon being very fair, the streets were even more crowded than usual. Wagons jostled for space on the Pons Aelius that spans the river just below Castel Sant’Angelo. Much as I tried to avoid looking in the direction of the vast fortress with its curved stone walls that has loomed over Rome since the days of the Emperor Hadrian, I could not. The news in the street was that Innocent was living there now, having left his pretty little palazzetto near Saint Peter’s for the far more secure
castel
. No doubt his quarters had a more pleasant view than onto the inner courtyard where prisoners were brought to be executed. It was said that more and more such executions
were taking place each day, and I knew of no reason to doubt it.

Halfway across the bridge, I stopped and glanced back over my shoulder. I had the sense that I was being watched. Seeing what I did, the young guardsman stopped, too, and looked around. He saw nothing to concern him in the throng of passersby and neither did I. Convinced that my anxiety was due to weariness, I went on.

Crossing the river, I came within sight of the once magnificent Basilica of Saint Peter. Nowadays, it is in such disrepair that visitors can be forgiven for looking up anxiously at its gabled roof as they scurry from one point to another in fear of falling masonry. Despite this, my father and I had been regular visitors. We shared a fascination with antiquity, which the thousand-year-old basilica offers in abundance.

As always, the courtyard in front of Saint Peter’s teemed with priests, trades people, lawyers, and visitors of every degree. Many lingered in the atrium, admiring the magnificent Navicella mosaic depicting Saint Peter walking on the waters. I slipped past and gained the interior, pausing for a moment to gaze down the length of the central nave to the main altar. I have said that I am not a pious woman, but even I could not help be moved by the magnificent marble and gold table set to receive the sacrifice of the Lamb. It stood surrounded by columns said to have been taken from the temple of Solomon by the great Constantine himself.

But such glories were not for me. I moved off across the side aisles to one of the numerous small altars lining both sides of the nave. This one was sanctified to Saint Catherine of Siena, she who was said to have experienced a mystical marriage with Christ and who devoted her life to caring for the poor and sick. My father gave
me her medal, cast at her canonization a little more than twenty years before. He said it had belonged to my mother. I have it still.

There in the relative quiet of the side aisles separate from the main part of the basilica, I tried to pray. The young guard moved some distance away to give me privacy. As always, praying did not come easily to me. The more I tried to concentrate on the holy image of the saint and the flickering prayer candles lit before her, the more my attention wandered. I thought of the Spaniard and the medallion man, of Borgia and Innocent, of the Jews in general and Sofia and David in particular, and hardly lastly, of Cesare who gave way in turn to thoughts of Rocco. Really, I have a most wayward mind. I was endeavoring yet again to direct it in more appropriate paths when the sensation of being watched returned.

For a moment, I remained with my hands clasped and my eyes raised to the saint, but all my attention was elsewhere. I was aware of the rustle of cloth to my left and behind me. A hint of camphor and citrus hung in the air. When I focused very hard, I could hear someone breathing.

I stood and turned all at once. The sudden movement almost wrung a gasp of pain from me as my bruised ribs protested, but I bit it back and stared into the face of an angel.

I do not exaggerate. His features were the classical expression of masculine beauty—straight nose, square chin, high brow, and chiseled cheekbones. His eyes were large and of the purest blue. His hair was a nimbus of golden curls clinging to his perfectly shaped head. He was, in short, an enticement to the purest virgin.

Fortunately, I was neither pure nor a virgin. Which is not to say that I was not tempted.

The golden angel looked to all sides before he bent closer to whisper, “Signorina Giordano?”

When I nodded, still not quite trusting myself to speak, he smiled. I missed the next few words he spoke and recollected myself only when he said, “. . . must talk but not here, it is not safe.”

“Then where, Father . . .” Did I fail to mention that he was a priest? Only they wear the black cassock, although few look as virile in it as he did. Fewer still seem to remember the vows they put on along with their priestly garb.

“Morozzi, Bernando Morozzi. I was a friend of your father’s. His death . . . what can I say?” His eyes glistened with tears. “I pray for him daily.”

My throat tightened. Such were my worries for my father’s soul that I felt profound gratitude. “Thank you, Father. That is very good of you.”

I would gladly have stood there talking with him for any length of time, but his evident anxiousness—he continued glancing around—reminded me of the precariousness of our position.

“We have a mutual friend,” Father Morozzi said. He looked at me expectantly. “The glassmaker, you know him?”

“Of course—” A spurt of excitement shot through me. If the priest considered Rocco to be a friend, was it possible that he was one of those seekers of knowledge rumored to risk the condemnation of Holy Mother Church from inside its greatest fortress? And if he had also considered my father a friend, was it too great a leap of faith to hope that he might be the one I sought?

“Meet me at his shop tomorrow in the hour after terce,” Morozzi urged. He gestured toward the nave, where my escort waited, oblivious to what was happening mere yards away. “Cardinal Borgia must not know that we have spoken. Do I have your word on that?”

Thinking his caution both prudent and necessary, I nodded.

“Of course.” A sound behind me caused me to glance away. When I looked back a moment later, the priest had vanished.

I remained kneeling before Saint Catherine a little while longer, struggling to calm myself. Morozzi had sought me out—I was certain now that he must have followed me from the palazzo. Surely, he would not have done so without good purpose. If he was my father’s contact inside the Vatican, perhaps convincing him to go forward would not be so very difficult after all.

That could mean that very soon I would reach a point from which there would be no turning back. It was what I wanted, of course; what I had been working toward, and yet it terrified me. The plain truth is that at the same time I could not imagine living without avenging my father, neither did I want to die.

Most particularly, I did not want the kind of death to be found within Castel Sant’Angelo, whose grim walls had absorbed so many raw and hopeless screams.

With that in mind, I returned to the palazzo and finally did what I knew could not be put off any longer. In the quiet of the workroom I had shared with my father, using compounds taken from his chest, I ground dried monkshood, paternoster pea, and star of Bethlehem with a mortar and pestle. Any of the three alone is deadly; together they kill with lethal speed. When the mixture was ready, I added a small quantity of the sediment that is found at the bottom of wine vats. This substance has a binding effect on most anything it comes into contact with.

The final result was a small brown lozenge that fit neatly into the gold locket, a gift from my father, that I secured around my neck. He had meant it for a far happier purpose, but I was glad that it fit my need. Placed in my mouth or dissolved in anything I ingested, the
lozenge would kill me within minutes. It would be an unpleasant death, to be sure, but at least it would be swift.

With that accomplished, I laid down. The nightmare came almost at once and was as bad as always. I awoke to my own cries. Instinctively, I reached for the smooth gold talisman lying between my breasts. Holding on to it, I fell at last into restful sleep.

I was awake before daybreak and ready to leave for Rocco’s long before the appointed hour, but first I had to deal with Vittoro. Morozzi had made it clear that he did not want Il Cardinale to know his identity, a prudent measure under the circumstances. While Vittoro had no qualms about ushering Innocent out of this world, I doubted very much if he would agree to keep anything from Borgia. That being the case, I needed a means of escaping the captain’s scrutiny.

I considered seeking him out but decided against it, fearing to arouse suspicion. Instead, I waited patiently until he came to ask my plans for the day.

“I have much to do here.” I tipped my head in the direction of my workroom. “But if I decide to go out, I will send word to you.”

If Vittoro wondered what could keep a poisoner busy all day, he was too sensible to ask. Indeed, after a glance at the table on
which I had set a variety of bottles, boxes, and casks, he withdrew quickly.