The Malice of Fortune (21 page)

I shook my head in perplexity. I couldn’t imagine the meaning of the second list, but the first suggested Niccolò intended to find this murderer among the principal villains of history—men long dead having somehow returned to butcher witches in the Romagna. I determined that the time had come to awaken him, in more than one sense.

“Niccolò!”

He did not jump up, but his limbs did arrange themselves helter-skelter into a seated posture. He put his hand to the back of his neck as he tried to turn to me.

“Put on your jacket.” He had slept in his shirt and hose. “We are going to my rooms. I have a great deal to discuss with you.”

After firing my charcoal with a taper I had lit in Niccolò’s brazier, I took him onto my mattress and sat him up against the pillows, before covering us both with my
cioppa
and wool cape. I did not imagine that either of us gave much thought to the intimacies I had so recently invited, when deranged with grief.

“You have been so good to me, Niccolò. Better than this sinner deserves. So I must tell you something you deserve to know.” I waited until I had his eye. “My boy Giovanni, who waits for me in Rome, is the Duke of Gandia’s son.”

Niccolò’s eyes did not betray surprise. But I felt his body startle, like one of those little spasms before sleep.

“There is more, Niccolò. His Holiness believes that I was complicit in the murder of my son’s father. As I told you, His Holiness
has made my precious little boy his hostage, and I cannot hope to have him back until I can prove that the
condottieri
murdered Juan. I do not tell you this to seek your sympathy and beg your further assistance. I tell you as a warning, so that you will know what the stakes are for me and what I am prepared to risk. And then to ask you, Niccolò, what you would risk for this republic of yours, which has thrown you into the lion’s den without a care for you or your little girl. It is a disgrace that they have not sent an ambassador in all this time, nor paid your expenses.”

He heaved a bit with the mirth a man can enjoy only when he knows the worst is true. “My appropriation is always promised with the next messenger—as a city of merchants and bankers, promises are our method of accounting. They hope I will be dead before my appropriation actually passes.”

“Niccolò, would to God I had taken the counsel you offered me in that olive grove. But now let me return it to you. Leave Imola. Leave today. If it is a matter of money, I can give you whatever you require. No one with a fair bone in his body would accuse you of abandoning a mission that can only end in a terrible calamity for all Florentines. Go home. Your little daughter needs you, regardless of your wife’s affections.”

“I have only one wish for my Primerana.” Niccolò’s voice might have been played on the raw strings of my own grief. “The same dream my poor dear mother and father had for me. That she grow up in a free Florence.”

I resisted the temptation to put my arms around him. “Niccolò,” I whispered, “the woman who carried Juan’s amulet in her charm bag was Vitellozzo Vitelli’s whore.”

“How did you learn this? Leonardo?” But he did not sound incredulous.

Previously I would have allowed Niccolò’s own speculation to obscure the truth. Now I said, “Duke Valentino told me.” I did not, however, reveal the circumstances of that meeting. “He believes she worked in that brothel near the Franciscans. Perhaps the second woman worked there as well. Evidently they belonged to the same
gioca
of witches.”

“Yes. That would be a reasonable connection.”

“There is more, Niccolò. Have you heard of the goat ride?”

He nodded. “My father owned a little farm near Florence. As a boy I’d listen to our tenants talk about how the
streghe
could fly at night to Diana’s games. On the backs of goats.”

“It is a trance of some sort. Valentino says they grease their bodies with a narcotic unguent. That is what you found when you searched the farmhouse. And what you smelled on those women’s bodies. The duke believes this narcotic aided in their abduction.”

Niccolò turned to me and I knew the question in his eyes:
Why did Duke Valentino wait until now to tell you this
? But he was a sufficiently skilled diplomat that he remained silent; often the unasked question receives the best answer. And perhaps he had already answered for himself:
Valentino does not trust his father—and is uncertain about the reliability of his father’s emissary
.

I went on. “Niccolò, I should beg your pardon, because Duke Valentino also believes as you do, that this murderer has employed an apprentice. Oliverotto da Fermo was not present in Imola when the first murder occurred, so I presume he dispatched his plan rolled up on a sheet of paper like a painter’s cartoon, and relied on his assistant to color it in, so to speak.”

“So the duke believes as you do,” Niccolò said, “that Oliverotto da Fermo is the maestro of the shop?”

“Duke Valentino did not offer his opinion.”

Niccolò’s chest rose and fell several times before he said, “You and I must be entirely certain as to who did this. If we say it is Oliverotto da Fermo, and if instead the maestro of the shop is Vitellozzo Vitelli, then the
condottieri
will do far worse than simply make fools of us. We are dealing with Italy’s most powerful and vicious men—and most practiced liars. If we can be proved wrong in any accusation, any particular, they can turn all of this against us. We will be squashed like bugs. Even the duke will not be able to avoid harm.”

I drew my wraps to my chin. “You are correct, Niccolò. Until I have proof, the murderer has no name. But you must likewise put aside
this business of inhabiting a murderer’s mind—or searching for him in your histories. I saw your notes. What do Alexander of Pherae and Nero have to do with this, other than encouraging us to reflect on the evil nature of men?”

I was almost heartened to see the wry flicker of a smile. “To truly understand the nature of men,” he said, “you must learn what is common to all men, in all places, at all times.”

“Ah. So you do have your own
scienza
.” I said this in a fashion neither credulous nor skeptical. “Should I presume that you are looking for principles that govern the nature of men, just as the mathematician seeks principles common to the cone and the circle?”

“Why would I not? The times change. But the nature of men does not change.”

I began to see the slender thread of his logic. “So you believe that if you examine the evil deeds of a Nero or a Caligula, you can understand the nature of this murderer.”

“With careful study, one can make useful comparisons. Just as Plutarch did in his
Parallel Lives
.”

“I give you that Plutarch shows us how one man’s character can determine the fortunes of a state or even an empire. But Niccolò, I wonder if your Titus Livy, or Plutarch or Suetonius, truly tell us what was in the minds of such men, or merely what was in the minds of Titus Livy, Plutarch, or Suetonius?”

He extracted an arm from beneath our covers and drew his hand over his unkempt hair, as if trying to flatten it. “The astute historian can weigh a man’s actions against the circumstances that compelled him, and arrive at an assessment of his character.”

“Even so, you are merely relying on the ancients to judge these men.”

“No.” Niccolò sat almost straight. “I look beyond the judgment of historians. I must fish deeper, as they say.”

“Ah. So now you must cast a net into the Abyss—and hope to pull something up.”

He grinned as if his appropriation had arrived. “Let me haul up an example: Hannibal. If I truly wish to understand Hannibal, I must
turn to him as if he is standing beside me, as real to me as you are at this moment. And I say to him, After Cannae, your wisest men advised you to be content with your victory and use it to win a peace with Rome on terms favorable to Carthage. But others in your senate believed that there were yet greater victories ahead, that Rome itself could be conquered. Why did you choose the course that led to your nation’s ruin?’ And if I have studied the matter carefully enough, I can transport myself entirely inside Hannibal’s mind.” He touched a finger to his forehead. “That is where Hannibal will answer me.”

“Yes, you have found something in your net,” I said, “though I cannot say if it is fish or fowl.” Indeed I understood Niccolò’s reasoning, though many would regard his conversation with Hannibal as madness, if not a peculiar form of necromancy. “You believe you can in similar fashion ask this murderer why he has done these terrible things. But I would think it far more difficult to speak to this butcher than to Hannibal, the latter having been described in so many histories, and whose words and deeds are known to every schoolboy. Yet you are the first to insist that we cannot even presume to know this murderer’s name. And all he has written for us is ‘the corners of the winds’ and ‘the circle within the square.’ ”

“That is my difficulty at present.” Judging from his untroubled tone, Niccolò was little concerned about this deficiency of his method. “But I have faith that this man will begin to answer me. And soon enough I will recognize his face.”

I found his hand and clutched it tightly. Perhaps Messer Niccolò Machiavelli’s strange
scienza
of men would someday prove its merit; more likely it was a folly even he would quickly forget. But he was a good and courageous man, and if he wished to escape this vale of tears into his histories and conversations with ancient generals, it was not my place to judge him.

“My dearest Niccolò,” I said, “if any of the dead women’s
gioca
are still alive, it is possible they are still in that brothel. I intend to go there tonight.” I had taken Valentino’s ambivalence—or confusion—regarding this matter as permission enough. “But once again, I will require your help.”

I had the sharp fear he would refuse me. And I could scarcely fault his prudence.

His “
Sì
” was a sigh. “I will do whatever must be done.”

“If Fortune gives us anything at all,” I said with renascent hope, “by tomorrow morning, you may well be able to add this murderer’s name to your litany of history’s monsters.”

XV

What Valentino had referred to as the “Franciscan establishment” was a massive old cloister of this order, the brick gray with age, joined to the even older church. When Niccolò and I arrived that evening, the street was crowded with candle-sellers, these ladies having opened shop, so to speak, for all the sturdy artisans and workmen who had just closed their shops. There were also many other peddlers displaying all sorts of goods, from mirrors and matches to soap and biscuits. Their torches traced through a dusk descending quickly into darkness.

Our destination was a brick building of even greater antiquity than the church and cloister. It had probably been a bishop’s palace at one time—the Church finds no sin in leasing to brothels while anathematizing the sin from which it obtains this profit. A lone
bravo
stood guard at the massive oak door, his stiletto in his belt. He was a sour-looking young man attired in a shirt sliced open at the sleeves like a courtesan’s and a little jerkin that did not come within a palm of his ass, the better to display a codpiece as big as half a melon.

I took Niccolò aside. “I need you to stay at the door,” I instructed. I had learned a great deal more about this sort of establishment than I had ever wished to in the Trastevere, where I had sheltered some runaways from such places. “If I find the right woman, it is likely she will run as far from me as possible, given the danger she is in. So you must prevent her escape. The
bravo
will no doubt assist you, as he will want half of whatever he believes she has stolen from the pimp.”

The shallow stone steps of that aged building were so worn by
countless visitors that they appeared to sag in the middle. Yet as I contemplated my ascent, I swear by the seven churches that those few steps appeared to rise up before me like the Mountain of Purgatory.

My darling, if you hope at all to understand the profound fear that whorehouse occasioned in my breast, you will have to put away any childish sentiments that might still linger in yours, and at last see me face-to-face, as the Apostle of our Lord would say. And this will require that I tell you a bit more about your own mama than perhaps you would like to know. Now, if Fortune has determined to keep you in the house of Borgia, then no doubt your family has already told you what I was. In this the Borgia were always republicans rather than monarchists: all their children were begotten equals, whether they entered the world from the
potta
of a
puttana
or the perfumed snatch of a duchess. So do not apologize to your cousins who were squeezed out of the latter; your house is full of uncles and cousins who, like you, were born of the former.