The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (30 page)

“If he does, he seems unprepared to admit it. Juan frequents certain taverns in Trastevere. Last night, before all the trouble started, he was heard declaiming that his father is in thrall to a witch. There can be no doubt who he means.”

“He called me that—a witch?” It seemed to be the fashion. Morozzi had called me the same.

Vittoro nodded. “
Strega
. He said that you will burn.”

My throat clenched so tightly that I could not breathe. I looked away, hoping that Vittoro would not see the depth of my fear. It raged through me, a fire unto itself that could not be quenched.

I gasped, dragged in air, and forced myself to remember who—and what—I was. “He is a fool.”

“Fools are dangerous.” Vittoro paused, looked at me, and said, “He must be stopped.”

“I cannot kill Borgia’s son.” The very idea was outrageous. Vittoro had to know that. He had to realize that were I to lift a hand against Juan, Borgia would lop it off, then remove the rest of me at his leisure. Mine would not be an easy death.

“I am not suggesting that you kill him.”

Then what was the purpose of him telling me—? Too quickly, I realized what he intended. I could confide my troubles to my lover and let him deal with them. And why not? Cesare truly did want the life Borgia planned for Juan, and if anyone had a chance of surviving Il Papa’s wrath, it was the son he wanted to follow him onto Peter’s Throne.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

Ever practical, Vittoro replied, “Because you had to survive Borgia first. Now you have to find a way to survive the next threat.”

“And the next and the next and the next. There will never be an end.” I was only just beginning to understand that; it terrified me but it also filled me with more sadness than I could bear.

Vittoro sighed, as though called upon to instruct a pupil who had not quite grasped the lesson, yet who still showed promise.

“That is the nature of the lives we have chosen.”

“I did not choose! It was not my choice that my father be murdered. Nor my choice that I should be the only person concerned with finding justice for him.”

I was outraged that Vittoro should think otherwise. Surely any person who knew me understood that I had no choice in what I did?

“We all make choices, Francesca. You are no different from anyone else in that regard. If you truly think otherwise, you are deluding yourself.”

I could not remember Vittoro ever speaking to me so directly or so harshly. He seemed intent on sparing me nothing. For a moment, I could think only to walk away before I said something irreparable. The look on my old friend’s face stopped me.

“You think the danger is that great, that you must strip away my pretenses and force me to confront it?”

He looked so uncomfortable that I thought he would not answer, but finally he said, “I had a dream last night.”

Vittoro, that man of straightforward action and no nonsense. The man who believed in nothing he could not see, touch, and kill.

“A dream?”

“A very unpleasant dream. Felicia insisted that I tell you of it.”

“What was its nature?” I was not entirely certain that I wanted to know, the matter of dreams touching too closely on the nightmare lurking always just on the edge of my awareness. In the light of day, I did not wish to think of such things, but under the circumstances, I would be the fool if I ignored whatever it was that troubled Vittoro so.

He looked away, embarrassed.

“I was standing in front of a great pile of faggots set around a stake in a square somewhere I did not recognize. The fire was already lit, smoke rose from it and flames licked deep within. Ravens circled in the sky, cawing to each other. A man—I suppose he was a monk because he wore a habit with a hood pulled down, obscuring his face—held out his arm, pointing. I looked where he was looking and saw you coming out of a church. You were distracted by something in the other direction and were unaware of the danger.”

“What happened next?”

“I tried to call to you but you couldn’t hear me. Then I woke up.”

“That was all, the monk was just pointing?”

“I know it doesn’t sound like very much but the effect—”

He had been terrified for me. That good, brave man had awakened so worried about my welfare that he had confided in his wife and steeled himself to warn me.

“You really are concerned about Juan.”

“My concerns go far beyond him. If Borgia falls—”

He did not have to explain what the consequences of that would be. If Borgia fell, his enemies would not stop until they had destroyed everyone close to him. Vittoro, Felicia, their daughters and grandchildren, all would be lucky to escape with their lives. So would I. It is the way in Rome, where the rise and fall of great men has meant blood in the streets since time immemorial. I had accepted that risk when I entered Borgia’s service, seeking the power I needed to avenge my father’s death. But now Vittoro forced me to consider that although I was without family, I was not without friends, and they, too, would be in danger. Rocco, even little Nando, could be hunted down and put to the sword. As for Sofia and David, and the Jews in general, suffice to say that they might well be doomed.

“Borgia will not fall,” I said. “He is the wiliest, most ruthless, and most determined man of our time. Moreover, he has us to help him. It is his enemies who should wake in dread in the night.”

“That is very loyal but—”

“Loyalty has nothing to do with this.” Borgia was a means to an end for me. I fulfilled my duties to him diligently but only for my own purposes.

But Cesare was a different matter; I truly did not want to see him come to harm. That being the case, I could not think of encouraging him to commit fratricide. Juan was a problem beyond my ability to solve. I would have to hope that his father succeeded in negotiating a grand marriage that would send him far from Rome.

Only later, after I had parted from Vittoro with assurances that I would take his warning seriously, did I remember what he had said about my looking in the wrong direction. I turned the notion over in my mind, trying to understand why I could not let it go. Had I truly overlooked some possibility in searching for Morozzi? Was he hiding someplace that I had not thought of? Luigi and his army of
portatori
had discovered nothing. Alfonso and the smugglers had caught only his trail, not his lair. Similarly, David, Sofia, and Benjamin had found no sign of him, even though he seemed able to move at will throughout the city and even into the precincts of the Vatican itself. Guillaume had not been heard from since sending word of divisions within the Dominicans. Most puzzling yet, even Borgia’s “eyes” seemed blinded.

How could a man render himself invisible in a city where the best of friends spy on each other and gossip runs as lifeblood?

For just a moment, the fear that Morozzi was something other than strictly human stirred in me. I had known that fear before and had successfully defeated it, or so I had thought. Yet there it was again, tormenting me.

That was nonsense. Morozzi was a man, nothing more or less. As Borgia said, he had to eat, sleep, piss, and perhaps even fulfill other needs.

Crossing the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I resolved to redouble my efforts to find the mad priest. Every tunnel and passage, every church and brothel, anywhere and everywhere he might hide had to be surveilled, but quietly so as not to alert him. At the same time, I could not simply sit back and wait for the results. I had to find a way to draw Morozzi out even if that meant I put my life once again within his reach.

25

I did not look forward to telling Cesare what I intended. Fortunately, Portia offered me a small reprieve. Seeing me come in through the loggia, she waved me over to where she stood on her stool, keeping an eye on all the comings and goings through the open half door. Her arm was out of the sling and she appeared fully recovered from the attack the previous month, for which I was grateful.

“He’s upstairs,” she said without preamble. “Arrived a few minutes ago.”

I nodded, having seen Cesare’s men-at-arms on duty in the street. Without doubt, they all knew who I was, but none had dared to so much as glance in my direction. I wondered what they made of their master’s dealings with a woman of my dire repute.

“Servants carried up baskets of provisions, then left,” Portia added. “I smelled chicken.”

So did I; the aroma of it along with traces of rosemary and olive oil lingered in the loggia. Chicken prepared that way was one of my favorite dishes, as Cesare well knew. I wondered what else he had planned to distract me from asking what business had taken him off for so many hours.

I thanked Portia for the report but she was not done yet.

“About that matter you mentioned—”

I needed a moment to remember that I had asked her to find out whatever she could about Carlotta d’Agnelli. Embarrassed that I had done so, I tried to brush aside my interest but she went on all the same.

“She’s a paragon, so it seems. Golden hair, skin like cream, a very nice figure. And she’s the soul of virtue, devoted to her family, not a whiff of a rumor of a hint of scandal to her name. She goes to Mass daily, gives alms to the poor, is kind to her servants, and has the voice of an angel.”

“She sings?” I seized on that particular detail rather than acknowledge the ache exploding in my chest. Rocco’s wife-to-be was lovely, trustworthy, honorable—exactly the sort of woman he would fall in love with. And everything I was not.

“Exquisitely, so everyone says. Her neighbors try to be at home when she is most likely to sing so as not to miss it.”

“Such a great talent must have made her vain,” I suggested in desperation.

Portia sighed and shook her head. “Apparently not. She is unfailingly modest in both dress and manner.” The
portatore
leaned a little closer, her brow wrinkling. “Which raises the question why a man like that”—she cast her eyes toward the floor above—“would be interested in her.”

I could hardly blame Portia for misinterpreting the reason behind my curiosity about Carlotta d’Agnelli. She might know that I was acquainted with Rocco but she had no way of suspecting my true feelings for him. I kept those too well hidden, even from myself.

“Yes, well … there’s no accounting for taste, is there? At any rate, thank you. I’ll just—” I gestured vaguely in the direction of my apartment.

“Make him forget she exists,” Portia advised. “Leave him so wrung out he’ll barely remember his own name, much less hers.”

I assured her that I would show no mercy and backed out into the loggia. From there, I quickly took the steps to my apartment. Cesare was stretched out on one of my Roman couches with Minerva perched on his chest. He had removed his boots and wore only breeches and a loose shirt. The ease with which he was making himself at home in my home took me aback even as I could not muster the will to object.

“I’d begun to wonder where you were,” he said as I entered.

“I came as quickly as I could.” Rather than give him a chance to ask what had kept me occupied, I went on quickly. “Portia said she smelled chicken.”

He grinned, bounded to his feet, and with Minerva still tucked under one arm, took mine and maneuvered me toward the pantry.

“I’m thinking of asking her to come work for me.”

“Are you? Why?” It actually wasn’t a bad idea for Cesare to begin acquiring an intelligence corps of his own rather than rely on his father’s, but I doubted that Portia would be interested. By all evidence, she liked working for Luigi d’Amico, who valued her skills and paid her correspondingly well.

“She’s sharp-eyed, has all her wits, and she’s a good judge of character.”

“You only say all that because she has a soft spot for you. Have you ever met a woman who didn’t?”

He caught my gaze and smiled, a little ruefully. “Perhaps one.”

Before I could reply, Cesare tucked Minerva into my arms and turned his attention to the chicken. The vast staff of servants who tended to his every whim would have been surprised to know that he could carve quite credibly. He even went so far as to drop a pretty garnish of parsley on each of our plates.

We ate at the pedestal table, seated in the curved chairs, and washed the chicken down with a rich Tuscan red very lightly chilled in a stone ewer filled with ice water. Minerva nibbled delicately on morsels we fed to her, then fell asleep nearby.

We were licking our fingers when I said, “Do you want to tell me what you did this afternoon?”

Cesare was no more inclined to do so than was I. Later, perhaps, I would tell him what Morozzi had done, but just then I did not want to undermine his confidence in Vittoro or, for that matter, remind him of anything to do with Rocco.

“Not yet and perhaps not ever,” he said. “But if you’re worried, I didn’t go after Morozzi, not directly anyway. We need a plan.”

I already had one. When I told him of it, he scowled. “I don’t like the idea. It’s all well and good to want to flush him out, but he could take you unawares again.”

“No,” I insisted, “he could not. Besides, you will be there … or at least somewhere nearby.”

That was the compromise I was willing to offer, that Cesare be on hand with however many men he thought necessary but that I still have the opportunity to kill Morozzi myself. I thought it both fair and sensible.

Cesare was of a different mind. “All this rests on getting a message to Morozzi telling him that you want to parlay. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether he will believe you and allow himself to be drawn out, how do you intend to contact him?”

“I don’t know … yet. But my guess is that your father has a spy in Il Frateschi, someone not deep enough in to have knowledge of Morozzi’s whereabouts himself but still able to get information passed along. That’s the likeliest explanation for how Morozzi learned that I would be at the villa.”

“Wouldn’t Papa have told us already if there was such a person?”

How to put my answer in a way that would give the least offense? “Your father keeps a tighter hold on what he knows than Saint Agnes of Rome kept on her virginity.”