Suicide Kings (21 page)

Diana slumped in her seat. She had her answer sure enough, but she’d pushed him too hard on the matter. Of course he had matters of propriety to keep in mind. She hadn’t given enough thought to his position. Whatever feelings he might have for her, he could do nothing about them, not now in the middle of this investigation. Trying to convince him otherwise would lead nowhere. Niccolo would never be the sort to act in such a risky, careless manner. No, that would be Bernardo.

She ran her tongue over her teeth as she watched him go. Hmmph. Now what? Breakfast, for the first thing. Food in her stomach would give her the presence of mind to know what to do next.

Diana enjoyed a breakfast of strawberries freshly imported from Egypt. She dipped the fruits in a cream made from beans the Spaniards found during their New World explorations. Being alone, save the servants, gave her an opportunity to clear her head. She pushed her father and Niccolo from her mind. Complicated men, the both of them. She wouldn’t countenance the idea her mother killed herself until she had further proof one way or another. Until she actually had evidence to support one hypothesis or the other, ruminating on the matter would serve no purpose.

The first thing for today would be to check on Francesca. She’d left the young nun in a questionable state. Her unease would only be given succor by seeing for herself that the older girl retained her health.

She’d only just decided her course with certainty when the matter concluded without her. Agathi escorted in a young novitiate, the same girl Diana had first seen at the convent. The girl huffed, struggling to breathe air into strained lungs, leaning on Agathi for support.

Diana stood, gawking at them. “What’s the meaning of this?” Deep in her heart, she already knew the dreadful answer.

The novitiate looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Sister Ophelia sent me to fetch you, for she thought you would want to know. Sister Francesca di Lucca, your friend, has gone to her heavenly embrace during the middle of last night.

Diana could only stare. How much strain could her heart take in one day?

The novitiate took her silence for confusion. “Francesca the anchoress…she’s dead, Lady Diana!”

Chapter Twelve

Breath of the Dead

For the second time in barely a week, Diana ran her fingers along the cold arm of a corpse. Francesca occupied a simple wood coffin. Her arms had been positioned at her sides, a crucifix clutched in one hand, a rosary in the other. Eyes closed, lips slightly open, she appeared deep in sleep. Only her pallor, ghastly and nearly gray, revealed her true status among the dead. Running her hand along the top of Francesca’s arm, she could feel the soft fine hairs. Under these the skin was cool.

The body lay in the main convent chapel, just under the image of the Virgin Francesca adored. Nuns, like bees, tittered in and out, differentiated from each other only by age and height. No others were here to be in attendance for Francesca. Her parents, it seemed, were away in Naples, fleeing the cold. The people of Firenze for whom she had offered intercessions, prayers, and even worldly advice, by and large did not see fit to come out and attend to her as she left this world. Granted, today must be the coldest day in years and snow piled thick on the streets. Nonetheless, the absence of gratitude saddened Diana. So be it. She would be family for Francesca tonight. She’d sit in vigil for her friend, if they had even been that much to each other, until the nuns lowered her body in the frozen ground.

“They won’t bury her tonight,” Siobhan informed her, rejoining Diana following a conversation with a few of the nuns. “The workmen broke a pick axe on the frozen ground. Darkness approaches. They’ll pick up the work in the morning. Francesca will lie here tonight.” Siobhan peered into the wooden box. “One night won’t make a difference.”

Her body won’t begin to stink, Siobhan meant. The chapel held too much heat to stave off decomposition. If the burial party couldn’t hammer through the winter ground soon though, they’d have to toss the body into the snow to thaw out in spring with the ground. Assuming animals didn’t get at it first.

“Don’t act so forlorn,” Siobhan said.

Diana couldn’t look at her. “I should have known Francesca was unwell. I spoke to her yesterday when I left here, but she did not answer. Rather than help her I just left her in her cell. What manner of friend was I to Francesca?”

“I admit in retrospect it seems bad,” Siobhan stammered. “All errors are clear looking behind us. I am sure you just thought she slept.”

Which had been exactly the case. Still, a little extra effort could have made the difference. Call it apathy or lack of wisdom, either way the result was the same. Diana had contributed to Francesca’s undoing. Diana let out a long sigh in hopes it might relieve some of the pressure on her heart. It didn’t.

A hand came to rest on Diana’s shoulder. Sister Ophelia.

“Thank you for letting me know,” Diana whispered, glancing away.

“She regarded you as a friend.” Ophelia withdrew her hand. “I can give you only a few minutes more. It will be nearly time for vespers, and none from outside our community are permitted. You are welcome to attend the burial proper if you wish. We expect it will be undertaken tomorrow in the late morning, once the grave may be dug.”

Diana nodded, blinking away moisture. Sister Ophelia turned and walked off.

Poor Francesca, thought Diana. Stupid girl for choosing a life walled off from proper shelter. Mad too, what with those visions of hers. She’d meant well in her eccentric way. Certainly she didn’t deserve to die. She deserved better protection than she’d gotten. She deserved better friends than Diana herself had been.

Diana wrapped her fingers around Francesca’s, cold and lifeless. She felt the hard rosary beads in her own hand. She’d have to remember to replace them properly. She lifted up Francesca’s hand as if coaxing the girl out of her coffin. Underneath her arm the skin was pale and unblemished. Francesca might as well have been a perfect porcelain doll. Even in death her cool, light beauty was unmistakable. She’d chosen to secret it away here in this chaste jail. Then again, had Diana done much different? Rejecting one man after another in fear of the prison of marriage. One prison or another. Only death offered freedom. Perhaps Francesca was better off now.

“What are you doing?” Siobhan hissed, noticing her tampering with the body. “I’m sure that’s sacrilege, or ill fortune or something!”

“Don’t be a fool,” Diana murmured. Chastised though, she let the arm fall back, and replaced the rosary beads in a rough approximation of how she had found them.

Siobhan put her arm around Diana’s shoulder. “We should go. There’s nothing more to be done here tonight.”

“I’ll arrange for the finest cenotaph for her at the Basilica no matter what the cost. She deserves nothing less. She deserves much better than the anonymous grave she’ll have here.”

“Of course. I’m sure she would appreciate that very much.” Siobhan guided her for the door.

Diana looked back, her vision blurred. “What am I to do now?”

Outside the sun lay a sliver on the horizon. Feeble rays cast purple, pink and orange against the dark winter clouds moving in for the kill. The vision was astonishing and so remarkably transient.

****

At home, Diana determined to be left alone. It was not a difficult matter. Her father could not be found. Siobhan had already done her best to console Diana, and now kept her distance. The other servants and slaves had no wish to intrude upon the moods of an unhappy mistress. Diana secluded herself in the palazzo library, candles lit, surrounded by books. She always felt comforted by them. She’d spent enough time immersed in them rather than interacting with the real world outside the palazzo. The fireplace was already going. Wrapped in a blanket, she stared at the blackness outside the plated glass window.

A deep hurt suffocated her heart. The death of her mother was bad enough. Now her indifferent reaction to Francesca’s silence had led to her death. A mistake that could not be undone.

A tear ran down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it away. She deserved to be miserable. To allow herself any comfort would be an abomination. Better to let the pain fester, to wallow in it, to explore it thoroughly. Perhaps it would never end.

Diana couldn’t stop picturing Francesca’s body laid out in the coffin, an exquisitely beautiful corpse. Crucifix in one hand, rosary in the other in that unnatural pose of holy slumber preferred for the dead. She had seemed perfect, unblemished. Unless one felt the coolness of her skin, it might have seemed she were sleeping.

Tomorrow they’d put her into the ground. That would be that. How long would it take for her body to freeze solid? Somewhere in an ancient text she’d read that frozen bodies bounced if dropped rather than shattered. Of course, you could never be entirely sure if what the Greeks or Romans said was true. Ancient wisdom could turn out to be obsolete.

Diana tapped her chin. With the coming of spring, the ground would warm and Francesca’s body would putrefy. Diana had read an account of the process, the experimentation done with pigs of course, not humans. A physician at Salerno detailed the process. Diana ruminated on it, imagining Francesca’s body as the veins ran green, the abdomen bloated with fetid vapors and finally split wide. Her tongue would protrude, the eyes sink away to nothing. Noxious fluids would soak her burial clothes. The skin would peel back from the nails and teeth, and a bloody seepage would ooze from her orifices. Some ignorant fools, digging up decaying bodies, mistook this as evidence of vampirism, the bodies bloated from feeding, and still dripping with a recent meal. Eventually Francesca would dry out, turn black, leaving little more than dried skin, bones and ruined garments.

Thinking of things in such a clinical way helped her get some distance. No matter what, king or madman, everyone eventually came to the same end. Someday it would be Diana herself in the same state. Perhaps not so far away.

Bodies didn’t keep long. Even in the cold, they didn’t stay perfect for long. Francesca still looked perfect though, didn’t she? Maybe eight, nine hours dead when Diana had seen the body? She tapped her chin some more. She stood. Scanned the bookcase. What was that physician’s name? On faculty with Salerno, not a terribly well known author. Books about dead pigs got you only so much readership. Diana’s voracious interest in medicine was all that had drawn her to the tome, although the details of death were fascinating in their own way.

Diana’s eyes darted from one book spine to another. Regrettably the books were in no particular order. Some were not labeled. She hoped she might recognize it. Otherwise there were hundreds of books here to go through. Her mother and father had both added to the expansive collection. Diana had as well, when she’d come of an age. Books had been one appetite they all shared.

Diana took a few down that looked familiar. Medical books, but the wrong ones. Finally a small, leather bound tome fell into her arms. Cover unlabelled, the book still in good condition. Inside the author, Centuri Pagoria di Caccamo of the University of Salerno. All right, she had to admit, she would never have remembered the name without seeing it. She flipped through, page after page of script punctuated by rough anatomical drawings.

Okay, this was the part that got stuck in her mind. According to Pagoria, several hours after death, the body began to show dark discoloration on whichever portion sat lowest to the ground. The stain became most noticeable by ten to fourteen hours following death. Pagoria suggested that the extent of the discoloration could indicate the time of death, although no conclusive guidelines were offered. Pagoria also didn’t know what caused the discoloration. Several postulations included the possibility that contact with the ground sped up the process of decay, or, citing Ibn al-Nafis, blood settled to the lowest portions of the body following death, although why this should be, he offered no explanation.

Pagoria could very well be an idiot. That alone never seemed to preclude anyone from writing a book. If he was right, though…

Diana snapped the book shut. The flesh of Francesca’s arm had shown no discoloration.

Her mother’s death had appeared originally as malaria. Perhaps Francesca’s apparent demise at the hands of exhaustion and the elements had little to do with the forces of nature or the hand of God. Easy enough to believe that a girl daft enough to live nearly exposed to the worst of winter would succumb to illness. Perhaps, as with her mother, the hand of man brought about Francesca’s fate. More to the point, perhaps they had botched the job. Were there not poisons that could mimic the symptoms of death if taken in the right dose, without actually killing the imbiber? What if Francesca had been given some of just such a poison, and ingested just enough to render her into catatonia, but not yet death? Would that not explain the lack of discoloration on her arm?

No doubt, a dose of wishful thinking played a part in this line of inquiry. Still, Diana felt a stab of excitement…and hope. She searched the bookcase one more time, more certain this time. Xenophon’s
Ephesiaca,
wherein the heroine imbibes a potion willingly to enter a deathlike trance. Mythology, to be certain, but perhaps an element of truth? Diana tossed this tome aside, indifferent to any harm that might come to such a valuable book. Her hands flew over the dusty librams, agitated now. A book on herbology and potions. Arsenic, belladonna, rare seeds of the
nux vomica
tree, hemlock, oleander, mushrooms… nightshade. Most of the rest brought on vicious and painful deaths, but the nightshades brought on delirium, catatonia and death in high enough doses. A good way to mask a death as due to the elements.

Believing she had found the answer, Diana read on, excited. The antidote for nightshade poisoning consisted of crushed calabar beans, hardly something she had on hand. The book warned the beans themselves could be toxic if too many were administered. Wonderful. She closed the book, and stared at the blackness outside the window. Could Francesca still be alive? She wouldn’t be for much longer. Once they put her in the cold ground, she’d die.