The Malice of Fortune (17 page)

“Again you make an incorrect assumption. We have yet to recover anything from the other three locations. The duke’s soldiers are guarding them until we can conduct our
esperienza
in a suitable light.”

However hasty my assumption, I had little doubt that the remaining quarters of that poor woman would be found buried in crude crypts. “Maestro, this murderer is using your
mappa
,” I said sharply. “He has traced his own
disegno
from it, as your drawing here demonstrates. Who would have had an opportunity to examine your map at such length?”

His lips moved silently and I thought he would merely address the
ether. “I am a military engineer,” he said at last. “The defense of this city requires an exacting set of measurements.”

“Then I presume that the duke’s officers and intimates were familiar with your map.” As I had observed to Messer Niccolò, the duke’s engineer general had no doubt worked with the duke’s
condottieri
before their recent defection. And as Leonardo had not contested my previous assumption, I leapt at once to another, hoping to take him by surprise: “Maestro, did you have an association with Signor Oliverotto da Fermo?”

The tarantula legs returned to Leonardo’s apron, as if his hand wished to burrow into his breast. “Only inasmuch as he was attached to Vitellozzo Vitelli.”

So he knew both of them, evidently being more familiar with Vitellozzo Vitelli—who among all the
condottieri
had the most to gain by sending his emissary to Imola with instructions to secretly and most deviously impede the peace negotiations. But the maestro had confirmed my suspicion of Signor Oliverotto only because he had not expected such a direct inquiry; he would not answer me so readily again. Thus I simply said, “
Mille grazie
, Maestro. Now will you allow me to exit through your door?”

Leonardo silently led me down a creaking wooden staircase to the entrance vestibule. When he paused at the great oak portal, his eyes transited carefully over my features, as if examining the tissues beneath my skin. At last he stooped to unlock the smaller pedestrian door.

“Maestro,” I said, “someone has taken considerable care to cut two unfortunate women into pieces and place them in conformity with your
mappa
. Is it incorrect to assume that whoever has done this might take similar care to see that someone else is blamed for his crime?” By this I implied that Vitellozzo Vitelli, once he had succeeded in gaining the upper hand in the negotiations, might find it useful to provide a scapegoat for the very crimes that had postponed the agreement—a fate the duke’s engineer general and I might well share.

His eyes still on me, Leonardo pushed open the door. “Whenever good Fortune enters a house, Envy lays siege to the place.” He blinked, with that expression one has when remembering. “And Envy’s chief weapon is false accusation.”

As soon as the door closed behind me, I scurried through the alley to the back of that great house. Messer Niccolò remained faithfully beside the ladder, a dusting of snow on his head and shoulders. Startled to see me come around the corner, he began to push the ladder over before he recognized my face; in my costume I might well have been the maestro’s servant or
bravo
. I took his hand and led him at a trot into the street, not slowing until we were back on the Via Appia.

“What happened?” he said. “I saw the light. Did you rouse the entire house?”

I let go his hand and told him everything I had seen in Maestro Leonardo’s study. We were halfway down the Via Emilia before I concluded my recitation: “This butcher has made a square within the circle of Leonardo’s compass rose and another square outside it, all fitted as tightly as an egg in its shell. The maestro believes that whoever has done this will endeavor to accuse him, out of some envy or rivalry.” I recalled how Valentino had extolled Leonardo’s plans for the Romagna; perhaps the
condottieri
, men who had mastered only the arts of destruction, both feared and envied an engineer general who threatened to build new cities where all men could share peace and prosperity. “That would explain why this murderer has followed so faithfully the maestro’s
mappa
.”

I waited a dozen steps, the thick snow flying furiously into our faces, before Niccolò offered his commentary. “Yes. This man has a great deal of interest in Leonardo,” he said in his musing fashion. “Envy? Possibly. But I lean toward a different opinion. The murderer is most concerned with his own amusement—an amusement principally derived from confounding all of us. Each time we look at this
disegno
he has created, we find it more difficult to see what he is getting at.” He shook the snow from his salad-head. “No. He does not wish to bury the maestro with false indictments. He wishes to engage him in a dreadful game.”

I could hardly listen to this. “Now you imagine that”—my pitch rose sharply—“that this butcher and the maestro will sit together and play
triche-tach
?”

Niccolò gave me a cautious glance. “You recall Maestro Leonardo telling us he was informed by peasants as to the location of the remains we found today. Yet from what you just told me, Leonardo has deduced the whereabouts of the other three quarters solely from his measurements regarding the first.”

“Having one point of the square,” I said impatiently, dodging a hole filled with slush, “he could easily measure the other three, knowing their position on the wind rose.”

“Yes. Just so. The remains of the first victim were placed on the corners of the winds. The murderer paid peasants to report their locations but not to disturb them, so that they would be found precisely in that pattern—and Maestro Leonardo would be certain to recognize it. Peasants likewise informed Valentino’s people regarding the crypt we opened today. But the murderer did not pay peasants to report scavengers at the locations where he buried the remaining three quarters. Instead he challenged Leonardo to discover his new figure of geometry.” Here we turned onto the street that ends at the Rocca, though the fortress itself was no longer visible through the veil of snow. “Do you see? With the first victim he established the rules of his game. With the second, he invited Leonardo to play against him. That is why he buried the quarters of the second victim—so that they would not be disturbed before Leonardo was able to make his measurements, discover this new square with his own circle or wind rose within it, and find his way to them.”

I had it at the tip of my tongue to tell him about the Duke of Gandia’s amulet, thus establishing beyond question that the object of this otherwise meaningless “game” was to provoke rage in the Vatican—and, it seemed, cast false suspicion on Valentino’s engineer general. But instead I merely remarked on Messer Niccolò’s dubious method, in the hope I would no longer have to hear his theories: “As Lucretius says, ‘We draw large deductions from small indications, and so bring ourselves to deception and delusion.’ ”

I was not entirely surprised that he laughed, even if he was the joke.

When we reached our building, we entered the stables through the pedestrian door, finding the animals inside huddled together against
the cold. As we entered the courtyard, I looked up to our shutters. They were closed, but the light from Camilla’s lamp glimmered reassuringly through the cracks.

Almost directly above our shuttered windows, a motion caught my eye. Through the falling snow I saw what appeared to be the ghostly, pale face of a great barn owl, perched upon the spine of the roof. Almost at once this enormous bird vanished into the gray sky.

“Did you see it?” I said, turning to Niccolò.

Niccolò bolted into my stairwell and I could only watch in utter confusion as he leapt up the stairs and disappeared onto the landing.

For some reason I looked at my feet. Two sets of footprints led to my stairwell, the second having just been made by Niccolò himself.

I flew up after him, unable to feel my feet touch the steps. The door was wide open and I could see straight into the bedroom. The candle still burned on the little table beneath the window. All at once Niccolò appeared at the bedroom threshold, his face as white as the owl I had just seen.

I ran toward him. “Tell me she is still here!” I screamed.

Niccolò pushed me back as if I were an intruder, his hand at the back of my head, burying my face in his cape. I could see nothing but the abandoned farmhouse where two women had already been butchered.

“She is still here,” he said. In Rome, Camilla and I had once climbed the Esquiline hill to visit the ancient ruins of Nero’s Golden Palace and had called to each other from within those vast, echoing chambers; Niccolò’s voice was hollow and distant like that. “And you must not go in there.”

XII

I would not have survived that darkest of nights, or the next days, without Messer Niccolò. First he kept me from my bedroom, though he nearly had to suffocate me to do so; afterward, as I fell into a black stupor of grief, Niccolò also made those arrangements the living must make for the dead. I slept upon the servant’s cot in his rooms because I could not bear to cross my own threshold, relying instead on Niccolò to bring me my clothing and other necessities.

I began to climb from the abyss on the second day, when Niccolò compelled me to bathe. He transported the copper bathtub from my rooms and had the hot water brought up by the watchman, then left me while he attended to his mule. I fitted myself into the little tub that Camilla had polished for me; as grateful as I was for this last token of her unceasing industry on my behalf, I became as angry as Electra that I had only this metal shell to wrap me, and not my angel’s loving arms. Even after the water had turned cold I continued to sit in the tub as if it were armor, guarding me from a grief I could not otherwise defeat.

I might have stayed there forever, if Niccolò had not discovered me, still curled up like a fetus in the womb. “
Cacasangue
,” he said. I had some vague notion of him bustling about, draping me with towels. “You must dress yourself.”

I rose, unconcerned to cover myself, but Niccolò had already withdrawn to the bedroom. I scarcely toweled at all and pulled my shift over wet skin. My feet were still in the tub when Niccolò looked in and came to me at once, snatching up several of the towels that had
tumbled to the floor. He turned my back to him and began to dry my hair, much as Camilla had always done.

“You handle a woman well, Messer Niccolò.” It was as if someone else were saying this. Yet I knew it was true; most men wish to put their hands on a woman, but few know how to truly handle her, although all the men in your family are among the latter. No doubt this gift is also your patrimony.

“You know women, don’t you, Niccolò? And not just wives and sisters.” In my brief interludes of reason during our mourners’ vigil, I had learned a few things about him. He had a young bride, who had come to him from a wealthy family but with scant dowry; one could see why this spoiled girl and the secretary in threadbare clothes did not enjoy an epic love. Indeed his wife, Marietta, refused to write to him here in Imola, although they already shared a little daughter, who was not a year old.

Yet Niccolò had a comfort with women that did not come from bedding a scarcely pubescent bride. “You know us,” I went on in my oracle’s voice. “You watch us, circling like a hawk. Waiting for the moment …”

I faced him. I might have torn open the wounds of my soul, bleeding not only grief and anger but also a desire I had not obeyed since the last day of your father’s life.

Casting my eyes down—a demure invitation that came to me by habit—I observed that the hem of my shift trailed into the bathwater. I gathered it into a ball and wrung it out, the water dripping from between my legs.

When I looked up at Niccolò, I expected a carnal variation of his blade-thin smile. But only his eyes flickered with temptation. In my former life I had always found these subtle expressions of desire the most welcome affirmation of my vanity—and all the more so in this instance because of Niccolò’s previous indifference. His flesh had only to make an equally subtle gesture and I would devour it like a bacchante.