The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (16 page)

I had finished at last and was sipping chilled lemonade and wiping my brow when Renaldo appeared.

“There you are,” he said on a note of exasperation. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I can’t decide whether I’m working or hiding,” I admitted as I lifted the beaded carafe and poured a glass for the steward. Borgia had been incessant in his demands of late, seemingly requiring my presence half a dozen times a day. It had been all I could do to slip away long enough to see to my actual duties.

And that did not even take into account the matter of Cesare, who, unless I was very much mistaken, had moved in with me. Officially, he was still supposed to be in Spoleto, but he had a house in Trastevere not far from where Juan also resided, and there was talk of an apartment in the Vatican being prepared for him adjacent to his father’s. Even so, he showed no inclination to go elsewhere. His clothes were all over my chamber, his guards stood duty outside my door, he continued to charm Portia at every turn, and Minerva—shameless hussy—ignored me completely when he was present, preferring to crawl into his lap and have her ears rubbed.

Ah, well, I could understand that urge readily enough.

“I can’t say that I blame you,” Renaldo said when he had emptied his glass and held it out to be refilled. “These are hardly the best of days.”

“God willing,” I said, “we will see better. What brings you here?”

“A message came for you from Signore d’Amico.” He held out a folded paper.

I broke the seal and read swiftly, only to sigh with disappointment. Luigi was making every possible effort to help me but so far his
portatori
had discovered nothing of use. No one had seen so much as a hint of Morozzi. Nor had Guillaume been able to discover any trace of him, although he did say that the Dominican chapter house was in an uproar over the disappearance of a friar. Whether that had anything to do with Morozzi, he could not say. I was beginning to fear that my foe truly was invisible.

To distract myself, I asked, “What is the mood in the city?” Between spending so many hours at the Curia each day and being occupied with Cesare each night, I had no opportunity to judge the disposition of Rome’s citizens.

“Tense,” Renaldo said succinctly. “His Holiness has men out scrubbing every inch of wall but they can only do so much.” So did he delicately refer to the continuing proliferation of obscene graffiti libeling Borgia as an incestuous father and Lucrezia as his whore. Grace to God, she seemed to have no awareness of what was happening, or so I concluded from our conversations during the rare moments I was able to visit her.

“Has anyone been caught?”

He shook his head. “Not that I have heard. Rumors abound, each wilder than the last. Della Rovere is on the outskirts of Rome. He has raised an army of angels. Borgia has fled and sought refuge among the Moors. Or he has been caught in the arms of an incubus sent straight from Satan.” His voice dropped a notch. “Or he is Satan, sent to torment us in the end of days when the pure shall be separated from the sinful.”

I rolled my eyes but as much as I would have liked to dismiss all that as the ramblings of the ignorant, I suspected that they were far more. Someone was embarked on a deliberate campaign to paint Borgia as a figure of unrivaled evil, the better to justify his expulsion from the papacy. I had no doubt as to who that was.

“What are the touts saying?” I asked.

Renaldo shrugged. “Around the Campo, odds are five to three that Borgia will survive. But in Trastevere, it’s three to two that he’ll be gone by autumn.”

“Isn’t that unusual? I mean, aren’t these things typically decided ahead of time?” By which I meant the general understanding that the touts of Rome formed an unofficial guild, in which they did not compete against each other in the matter of setting odds.

“People may just be responding differently to what they are seeing,” the steward suggested. “Some of the graffiti has been particularly … imaginative.”

I did not care to think what could be worse than what I had seen. Moving on quickly, I asked, “Is there any news of the Spanish envoy?”

Don Diego Lopez de Haro had yet to arrive in Rome, but if Luigi’s information was correct, and I had no reason to think otherwise, he could not be far off.

Renaldo glanced around to be sure no eager ears lurked nearby.
Sotto voce,
he said, “He is en route but seems to be in no great rush. Perhaps Their Majesties are giving our master time to think things over. That may be working. When His Holiness is not raging against their effrontery, he is considering ways to placate them.”

That was as I had feared. What with one thing and another, I had not managed to slip away to speak with Sofia or David. Nor had I heard anything from either of them. Such a state of affairs could not continue. If Borgia did intend to sell out the Jews in return for the support of the Spanish monarchs, something would have to be done to stop him.

Sadly, I was at a loss just then to imagine what that might be.

“Can you do something for me?” I asked Renaldo after we had finished the lemonade. Matters seemed to be well in hand in the kitchens and I had no real reason to think that there was any danger from that corner. It was vital that I get away for a few hours unobserved.

“If His Holiness asks for me, would you tell him I am—” I was what? What excuse would be sufficient to hold off Borgia the Bull when he wanted, nay demanded attention?

“Tell him I am attending to a gynecological matter but will return shortly.”

Renaldo turned beet red, so much so that for a moment I feared for his immediate health. In an effort to soothe him, I patted his hand and said, “My thanks, Master d’Marco. I know I can rely on you.”

Before he could inform me otherwise, I made my escape. Saint Peter’s Square was packed as always, even more so because Vittoro had so many guards stationed about. As always, I averted my gaze from the basilica as I made my way toward the river. My mind was occupied with thoughts of the task Borgia had laid on me. The plain fact was that I had yet to make any progress in the matter of determining how to kill Cardinal della Rovere. The combination of the practical difficulties and my own disinclination was proving a formidable stumbling block. I resolved to work harder on the problem.

I had not gone very far before a prickling at the back of my neck made me turn. The street was crowded with shoppers, tradesmen, wide-eyed visitors, and the like. A faint ripple of movement caught my eye. Not twenty feet away, a man emerged from beneath an arch, stepping out into the light for just a moment. In that fragment of time, I saw him clearly. He was bathed in the soft light of a Roman afternoon, his somber garb in no way detracting from the startling beauty of features that were the classical expression of masculine beauty—straight nose, square chin, high brow, and chiseled cheekbones. His eyes, even at that distance, were large and of the purest blue. His hair was a nimbus of golden curls clinging to his perfectly shaped head. He looked like an angel.

He was, in fact, the devil Morozzi.

You will say that I was tired, preoccupied, worried, and you will be right. But there was not an instant’s doubt in my mind as to whom I saw, who had been following me. Morozzi himself did not leave room for any such uncertainty. He stepped a little farther into the street so that I could have a better view of him. As I stood frozen in place, he smiled at me.

I had my knife. Cesare had seen that it was restored to me, cleaned and keenly honed. It nestled in the leather sheath near my heart.

Twenty feet, a handful of steps. He would not expect me to attack him in public, in the midst of a crowd, with no hope of escape. It did not matter. I wanted only to kill, after which I would gladly proclaim to the world why I had done it.

The darkness stirred within me but too slowly, like a poor chained beast hampered by the weight of its own yearning. I took a step through air so strangely thick that I had to push against it as though it were a wall. It occurred to me suddenly that he might be using a charm against me. Not that I believed in such things but with Morozzi all facets of evil seemed possible.

His smile deepened. He watched me a moment longer before he turned back into the archway through which he had come, and vanished.

Scarcely had he done so than my limbs unfroze. I sprang across the intervening distance, heedless of those I shoved aside. Beyond the archway was a wooden door. I thrust it open, startling a young boy who jumped at sight of me. Ignoring him, I raced through the fabric shop, finding myself facing a blank wall on the other side of a narrow lane that led toward the river. Frantically, I looked in both directions but there was no sign of Morozzi. Long moments passed before I finally acknowledged that my adversary had vanished into thin air.

I staggered the rest of the way to the Jewish Quarter without clear memory of getting there. Sofia took one look at me as I entered the shop and hurried to help me into a chair.

“Francesca, what is wrong!”

I tried to speak but my chest was so tight that I could not seem to catch my breath. That good woman pressed a cup of water—she filtered and boiled every drop before allowing anyone to drink it—into my hand. I drank and the tightness eased. After a moment, I was able to speak.

“I cannot believe … He was there, in my sight and I did—nothing. Nothing! Merciful God, what is wrong with me?”

Sofia bent down so that she could look at me directly. Her hands grasped my shoulders. “Who, Francesca? Who was there?”

I took a breath, forcing myself to think clearly, but the image of the mad priest smiling at me continued uppermost in my mind, threatening to block out all else. As though throwing off a yoke, I forced it away and concentrated on Sofia. Her face was creased with worry even as her eyes assessed me carefully. She had more knowledge and more good sense than any I knew who posed as physicians and were as likely to do harm as any accidental good. I knew that I could rely on her.

That knowledge eased me further so that finally I was able to answer her. “Morozzi. He was in the street, following me. I saw him clearly. But when I went after him, he vanished as though he had never been.”

Sofia continued to regard me steadily. “Morozzi? You saw him but he vanished?”

“Like smoke. He went through an archway that led to a shop. I followed but I couldn’t find him. He was gone!”

To my horror, sobs welled up in me. I tried my best to contain them but could not. With a cry, I buried my head in Sofia’s shoulder and clung to her.

“I failed! He was right there, I could have killed him and been done with all of this! What is wrong with me that I could not do it?”

Sofia held me tightly until the worst of the storm had passed. Softly, she patted my shoulder and said, “You carry a terrible burden. It is bound to affect you in ways you cannot imagine. Do not berate yourself for what happened. Perhaps it was only an illusion—”

I straightened with a cry wrung from my heart. “No! He was there, I know it. Morozzi is in Rome and he is so emboldened that he showed himself to me in broad daylight. What am I to make of that? What power protects him?”

In the grip of my despair, ancient fears stirred within me. Was it possible that the man who sought the destruction of an entire people was not merely mortal? Did a demonic force move through him? And if so, how then could I ever hope to stop him?

Sofia was having none of that. Looking me squarely in the eye, she said, “You know as well as I that human beings need no special encouragement to do evil. We are all too capable of it entirely on our own. Morozzi is a man, plain and simple. As sure as you and I are both in this room, there is a straightforward explanation for what you saw.”

Thanks be to God for her sensible nature. It drew me back from the brink of panic. I took a breath, another, and nodded.

“You are right, of course. I am forgetting, Rome is a warren of underground passages. He must have used one of them.”

Sofia nodded. “I will send for David. He will know what to do.”

I was sipping tea that Sofia had brewed for me when the young Jewish leader arrived a short time later. He did not come alone. A fresh-faced boy with a mischievous grin scampered at his side. I had not seen him in several months and was struck by how much he had grown, though his chin still looked soft as a baby’s bottom.

“Benjamin,” I said with unfeigned pleasure. We had become acquainted the previous year when he had tried to pick my pocket on my first visit to the ghetto. Since then, we had become fast friends. “Attending to your studies, I hope?”

“Whenever I can get him to sit still long enough,” Sofia said with a smile. She riffled his dark hair. “At least he claims to have given up his former trade, isn’t that so, Binyamin?”

Her insistence on using the Hebraic pronunciation of his name wrung a groan from the boy but it vanished as quickly as it had come. “I make more money carrying messages and running errands anyway.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. With a glance at David, I said softly, “We need to talk.”

He nodded and laid a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder. “Do us the courtesy of pretending that you don’t hear what we have to say, all right?”

The boy shook his head at the folly of adults but went over to the side of the room and slid down against a wall. He drew a cat’s cradle from his pocket and made a show of occupying himself with the string.

After I had described my brief encounter with Morozzi in considerably calmer terms than I had managed with Sofia, I said, “Clearly, he is using underground passages to come and go as he pleases. If I could get a better idea of where they lie—”

“They are everywhere,” David said. “Rome is crisscrossed with catacombs, buried streets, tunnels, sewers, everything imaginable. No one knows the full extent of them.”

“But Morozzi must have some considerable knowledge,” I persisted. “Otherwise, he would not be relying on them. If he knows that much, someone else must as well.”

“We can make inquiries,” Sofia offered.

“Please do so quickly. We have little time. An envoy is coming from the Spanish monarchs to tell Borgia that in return for their support he must withdraw his from you.”