The Malice of Fortune (23 page)

“Stop him!” I shouted.

The pimp turned to the girl, who had risen from the altar, so to speak. “Did he pay?”

I could see she had bleached her long tresses during the summer, because a palm’s width of dark hair, like a helmet of sorts, had grown out since then. Her face was a mask of ceruse, her mouth a pink scar far less brilliant than the spots of rouge, as big and round as French tennis balls, on her cheeks. Her dark eyes darted from side to side. She nodded at the pimp.

The pimp cocked his head in a shrugging gesture. With this, the girl flew past both of us. I had not seen a woman in her underclothes move so swiftly since Gambiera, my mentor in theft, ran across the Ponte Sant’Angelo with the Venetian ambassador two steps behind. And you have not seen a woman in mourning clothes run as fast as I did in pursuit.

The front door was absent its guardian and I entertained the hope that the
bravo
had chased after the runaway whore. But it seemed he had instead gone to break up a fight or some such thing, because when I reached the steps I saw Niccolò at the bottom, the girl clawing at his face like a virago and the lamprey making his way up behind him. But as the lamprey had no visible weapon and I had my knife out of my sleeve, I held it over my head and called out to him, “You! When I tell my
bravo
to release your girl and turn his attention to you, we will both hold you down and make certain that you savor the same meat she was trying to swallow! Will that be to your pleasure?”

Men always fear a lady with a knife more than a similarly equipped man, because they do not believe we are subject to reason. Whatever interest the lamprey had in securing his lady’s freedom vanished as quickly as he disappeared into the crowd. And no doubt we already had in our net a bird more inclined to sing.

I yanked this screeching songbird’s two-color hair so vigorously that she stopped screaming at Niccolò and threw up her talons in hopes of keeping her scalp in place. Having gotten her attention, I showed her the knife that had so effectively routed her companion. “Now, if you shut up and talk to us,” I said through clenched teeth, “this night will end for you much more profitably than it began. If not”—I held the knife to her cheek—“there will be less of you than there is now.”

The fight went out of her, if only to await a better opportunity to escape.

On our way out of that street, I made several purchases: some rope and a torch from the sundries peddler, a cloak from the secondhand dealer, and a nice roast pheasant from one of the charcoal grills. Having no intention of parading this poor girl through the city, where she might draw unwanted attention to all of us, I determined we should do our business in a nearby alley. This we found behind an enormous palazzo just across the street, a modern building that had recently been the home of one of the local despots whom Valentino had banished. Because there were no staircases or balconies for loiterers, we were quite alone.

Niccolò held our captive while I tied her ankles together and bound her hands behind her. Once she had been secured I thrust the sputtering torch close enough to her face that I could see her clearly. Beneath the mask of ceruse was a girl not even twenty; her narrow eyes glittered with frightening malice. I asked her, “Who was the man with his works down your throat? He thought you were worth rescuing, until he was asked to risk his own cock.”

“
Carogna
,” she spat back.

“She’s calling you a carcass,” Niccolò said to me, having been in the Romagna sufficiently long to know such things. Then he stated flatly to the girl, “Your friend is a meg.” He looked at me and translated: “Mago.” Meaning a wizard, a man who would most likely come to the
gioca
to provide protection for the
streghe
—and if he was fortunate, to play the Devil to the Devil’s whores when their rituals became a bacchanal. “I think the men who came to the farmhouse that day were all magi,” Niccolò added.

The girl began to murmur “
Sant Antoni mi benefator
,” at the same time struggling to get her arms loose. It seemed she wanted to cross herself, or perhaps make the
corne
—the sign of the horns—against the evil eye.

I said to her, “If you speak Tuscan, we can help you. I know why your friend ran. He knew I had seen him before. But you could have been any whore to me. Why did
you
run?”

Her entire jaw quivered. “We all going to die.” Her Tuscan was good enough, though with the buzzing local inflection. “Who is going to die?”

“Me. Them. You.”

“How will we die?”

“Goat ride.”

“Did your friends take the goat ride?” She knew what I meant, but she blinked defiantly. So I added, “The two girls in your
gioca
, who are now dead. They took the goat ride. You know someone is looking for you, don’t you? Do you think I came to that whorehouse to take you on the goat ride?”

Here she spit at her feet and began to chant again and again: “
Sant Antoni mi benefator
.”

It was only then that I observed the red string around her neck. I pulled the
bollettino
from beneath her shift. Her refrain had been written on the little card:
Sant Antoni mi benefator
. The appeal to Saint Anthony. I turned it over, to find another such invocation:
Angelo bianc, per vostr santite
. This was close enough to Tuscan: White Angel, by Your holiness. The White Angel was another name for Lucifer.

But beneath the invocation of Hell’s angel another name had been scrawled:
Zeja Caterina
. I looked up at the girl. “
Zeja
?”

“
Zia
,” she said, eager to make a fool of me.

“Ah, an aunt,” I said to Niccolò, who was nearly squinting at the girl. “No doubt the sort of auntie who will tie a man’s handkerchief into knots to make him fall in love with you—or dig up a mandrake root watered with a hanged man’s piss to forever protect you from curses. Every whore in Rome has a
zia
like this. And everybody else calls this
zia
a
strega
.” I returned to the girl. “Are you this Auntie Caterina?”

She curled her lip and snorted with contempt. “You won’t find her. Not here. Not there.”

“Truly?” But rather than ask her directly why Auntie Caterina was so concerned to make herself scarce, I approached the matter by way of Calabria, so to speak. “How long have you worked in that whorehouse?”

“Ten
mes
.”

Ten months; she had been in that whorehouse while the conspiracy of the
condottieri
was still incubating. “Do you know a girl who did business with a soldier? A very important soldier. A
condottiero
.”

Her eyes became slits, like Judas in a painting.

“Was his name Vitellozzo Vitelli?”

“
Vitello
,” she said, using the Tuscan word for “calf,” from which the name was indeed derived. But then she shook her head as if I had described someone half beast, half man, like a Minotaur. “No
Vitello
.”

“Oliverotto da Fermo?”

Now she shook her head rapidly yet wearily, as if she were listening to some
pazzarone
recite nonsense names.

I took her chin in my hand. “Have you ever seen an amulet no bigger than the end of your thumb, shaped like a bull’s head? A very ancient amulet.”

She almost sneered at this, as if I had invented it entirely. Niccolò put his hand on my arm, cautioning me that I was going nowhere.

I might have been entirely frustrated had Valentino not confided to me his belief that the murders involved more than Juan’s amulet. “Your friends who took the goat ride and did not return,” I said. “They knew something, didn’t they? A secret this soldier told them.”

“
Secrét
,” she said in a hissing fashion; this was the Romagnolo word, rather than the Tuscan
segreto
. She frowned as if I had made some sense, but not entirely.

“What is the secret?” I said gently. “Does it regard a man who was murdered?”

The Judas eyes widened and she drew back her head, as if it were I who had revealed this secret to her.

All at once Niccolò reached out as if he were about to grab the girl by her throat, but he only put his fingers on her
bollettino
. She did not regard this interest as benign, however. The serpent’s malice in her eyes came spitting back.

“
Zeja
Caterina knows this secret,” Niccolò said, having no doubt deduced for himself that
Zeja
Caterina had good reason to hide. “How do we find
Zeja
Caterina?”

“
Caz
,” she barked. Prick.

Niccolò glanced at me. “
Zeja
Caterina is at the center of this.”
When I had nodded my agreement, he added, “If we hope to find her, we are going to require sterner measures.”

Indeed, I had prepared for such measures, with the hope they would not be needed. I snatched up the secondhand cloak I had laid on the ground and the roast pheasant I had placed on top of it, ostentatiously taking a bite of the latter. “No doubt this tastes better than that sausage you had earlier,” I said. “I can wrap you in this cloak and send you off with the rest of the bird. Or I can keep my cloak, eat my pheasant, and send you off in your shift. And to remember you fondly, I’ll keep your nose.”

I might have plunged my threatening knife into my own belly when I saw how defiant she remained. “We want to speak with
Zeja
Caterina,” I said in desperation. “Nothing more. We can help her. The men who are looking for her will take more from her than a nose.”

“
Angelo bianc per vostr santite! Angelo bianc per vostr santite! Angelo bianc per vostr santite!
”

Pushing her against the brick wall of the palazzo, I shouted, “Now the saints of Heaven aren’t strong enough, are they? Now the
Gevol
is your
benefator
, isn’t he?” I stuck the tip of my knife between her nose and eye, drawing blood. “But neither Heaven nor Hell is going to save your face.”

Knowing what I had at risk—and had already lost—I had set my own soul to cutting her when Niccolò caught my wrist. “Wait.” He drew back my arm, pried the knife from my stiff hand, and took it in his. I hadn’t decided whether I should damn him or thank him when he shot the point of my knife straight at the girl’s neck. She screamed at the same moment I did.

In a single motion Niccolò cut the string of her
bollettino
and plucked it from her breast.

“
Angelo bianc per vostr santite! Sant Antoni mi benefator!
” The poor girl refrained her invocation of both Heaven and Hell until tears cut tracks in her ceruse.

She was still heaving when Niccolò quietly said, “You will have your
bollettino
back when you take us to
Zeja
Caterina.”

At last she shuddered violently and nearly belched up the words: “You come to fawn stone.
Dmanansera
.”

“What is this ‘fawn stone’?” Niccolò asked.

“To Bologna, three miles. To the fawn stone. You see it. Big stone. Fawn on it.”

“Go on the Via Emilia toward Bologna for three miles,” Niccolò said. “And she will meet us at the fawn stone? Tomorrow evening?”

“
Sì
.
Dmanansera
. They will come.”

Niccolò’s thin lips were nearly bloodless. “I hope
Zeja
Caterina won’t disappoint us. I intend to leave your
bollettino
with her. Otherwise I will use it to make a
maleficia
.” A curse.

She swallowed and nodded.

“We should untie this woman,” Niccolò said. “And pay her what she is due.”

As soon as the girl had wrapped herself in the cape and snatched up the pheasant, she fled like a shadow into the street beyond us.

I was suddenly so weary, sad, and frightened that I could not keep from saying aloud what my soul already knew. “Niccolò, I don’t like the turn this has taken. We are going to die out there.”

“Yes. I think it most likely that someone will try to kill us.” Niccolò was almost mumbling like Leonardo. “And I would very much like to know who.”

XVII

Niccolò took me home and sat on the bed beside me for a time, though we did not exchange a word. I believe he knew, as do I, that if this is to be the last night of our lives, our thoughts belong with those for whom we have lived and will soon die. Yet even as we sat silently side by side, I had the most peculiar and profound sense that in some fashion our souls had met long before this, perhaps in that Elysium where Plato says we determine our next lives. And there our souls had conspired to meet again here in Imola, to share the same fate.

After perhaps a quarter hour, Niccolò offered that he had dispatches to write before we departed the next day, and left me with instruction to bar my door.