The Malice of Fortune (37 page)

“Ramiro da Lorca is a guest at his own inn.” My respondent nodded toward the
rochetta
tower. “The duke is now jailing his own household.”

Damiata tightened her grip on my arm.

I asked, “Is Oliverotto da Fermo also a guest at that inn?”

One of the men shrugged. “I would think not. Signor Oliverotto and His Excellency appeared more than companionable last night.”

As we moved on, I said, “You didn’t know about Ramiro?”

She shook her head. This news boded even more poorly for her than for me, because it meant that Valentino had put further distance between himself and his father. For my part, I had considered Ramiro
under arrest when Valentino dispatched him into the tower; perhaps what he had been forced to reveal later that night had resulted in a formal charge of treason. But we were hearing only rumors.

“I was there when Valentino decided to confine Ramiro,” I confessed as vaguely as I could. “Oliverotto was also present. A complicated tale. I’m still not certain what I saw. Or what it means.”

Damiata didn’t press me for particulars. Instead she said, “I should have been honest with you. About Valentino. He told you, then, that I betrayed Juan on the last day of his life.”

“He says that was the second occasion you and he … were lovers.” I was surprised at my difficulty in simply saying this. “He insists that he told you Juan’s itinerary for the evening, which he fears you revealed to his brother’s assassins. Presumably the Vitelli.”

She bit her lip. “But Niccolò, on that last afternoon it was I who told Cesare …” I could feel her shrug. “I won’t argue with Valentino over who told whom Juan’s expected route that evening. But I am sorry he doubts me for the same reasons I could doubt him.”

We entered a busy street that flowed into the piazza from the south; Damiata stopped and faced me amid the jostling passersby. “I swear to you by the Holy Virgin’s veil and the Cross of God that Valentino is mistaken about me. Just as his own father is mistaken about him.” Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Perhaps you don’t know, Niccolò, but the pope suspects that Valentino himself was involved in Juan’s murder.”

Even at dusk, Damiata’s coloring, her eyes and carmine lips, did not seem real; it was as if a single ray of empyrean light had shot down like an arrow from the highest Heaven to illuminate only her face. Yet her expressions remained as unfathomable to me as the mystery behind Valentino’s jade-hard eyes. In short, I did not believe I could ever read the truth of that lovely face, unless she wished me to. And even then, how could I be certain she was not merely showing me a single truth, in order to disguise a host of lies?

“Then I think you should go to the duke,” I said, “and allay his suspicions. While the guilty are gathering strength, we cannot afford to have the innocent divided by mutual distrust.” I had to wonder if I could ever fully accept Damiata’s innocence, unless Valentino also endorsed it.

Damiata pressed herself to me, her breast pillowing my arm, as
again we crunched across the icy, crusted pavement. “No. Valentino can harbor his suspicions a bit longer. As yet I have no proof to offer the pope and ransom my little boy. And I have no assurance that Valentino would not use my information to acquire the book and then bury it, if only to secure his treaty.”

“I think he would use the evidence provided by that book against the
condottieri
,” I said. “He has intimated as much to me.”

“And you believe him?”

Because Papa had been a lawyer, I had known even as a boy how words could be sharpened or shaded—an education that had been much advanced by my service in the chancellery and my diplomatic missions. Nevertheless, I required Damiata’s prompting to see that Valentino had sworn nothing to me, nor had he even stated his aims in firm and undeniable terms. He was a man of honor, I was certain, but his intentions toward the
condottieri
had been merely—and carefully—“intimated,” to cite my own usage.

Damiata listened to my silence. “For the time being, Niccolò, I think I am better off dead to the pope and his duke.” She tugged her hood closer around her face, pulling me to her as well, as if she could hide behind my arm. “To fully establish my innocence I need the book. Just as you need it to preserve your republic.”

“But where is it now?” As easily as Damiata had resumed her seduction of my will and reason, I still had to suspect she knew the answer.

“I would believe Ramiro’s account,” she said. “Someone found that man and his dog before Ramiro’s spy did. And you saw for yourself that Oliverotto da Fermo was following me on the street.”

“You believe he also followed us into the
pianura
.” I was hardly inclined to sound a skeptical note, having suggested this theory to Valentino the previous night. “But if Oliverotto had already obtained the book, then why was I spared? I had no use except to lead him to it.”

“Perhaps he knew he would require you as a witness.”

This took me entirely by surprise. “To what?”

“Perhaps to testify to the book’s authenticity. To say you observed these witches employ it for a divination.”

I was still attempting to peer into a dark glass. “Let us presume
that Oliverotto obtained the
Elements
that night,” I said. “His name is in it, along with that of Vitellozzo Vitelli, his mentor and patron. Certainly he would have burned it before the sun rose.”

“There is another name in it.”

“You mean another
condott—
” I stopped both my words and my steps. “Are you saying …”

The reluctance in her eyes spoke more convincingly than any furious accusation. “Valentino himself attended one of these
Gevol int la carafa
,” she said in little more than a whisper. “His name also appears in the witch’s book.”

“Yes, he already knew about the
Elements
and the
gioca
when I told him.” And now I could see why Valentino had been compelled, as Ramiro had told me, to “protect” Oliverotto da Fermo. “Valentino believes that his own familiarity with that
gioca
could be used to inflame his father’s suspicions of him. Valentino, Vitellozzo, Oliverotto … they are all damned by the same connection to Juan’s amulet. Any one of them could have butchered the first
strega
and stuck the amulet in her charm bag, certain that it would eventually be delivered to the pope. But only one of them conceived this dreadful game …” I trailed off, for a moment struck dumb by my worst fear, before I could give voice to it. “And now it is all the more likely that this game will end with Florence in ashes. If the
condottieri
have the
Elements
, they will not even require superiority of arms to coerce Valentino’s cooperation. God’s
cazzo
 …”

Damiata offered nothing in response, as if only her silence could comfort me. Instead she took my arm again and led me along the street for a short while, before stopping beside a palazzo in the Venetian style, the stonework light and lacelike.

“I have a little room here,” she said. A faint, sad smile flickered at the sharp corners of her mouth. “And a little bit to share for supper.”

I stood there in the icy street, thinking of something Boccaccio wrote:
It is better to do and repent, than to forbear and repent
.

We entered through the pedestrian door to find a
ballo
under way in the central court. Hardly as decorous as the dance I had attended
the previous evening, this more resembled a
calcio
game played by a dozen teams at once. Woodwinds shrilled and a
trombone
blared over the shouts of men and squeals of women. You could not distinguish the whores from the good wives of the town, except that the latter had the better jewels and more lascivious disguises. Although Epiphany was still nearly two weeks away, half these people were masked, not a few of them with that great long nose intended to resemble Priapus’s half-erect
cazzo
. Others wore the same white skull—the face of Death—I believed Giacomo and I had seen on the street.

The palazzo had been divided into apartments. We ascended the stairs to the third, uppermost floor, wandering through rooms stripped of everything save the most ponderous old cupboards. When it seemed we would run out of house we stopped at a final door. Damiata produced a key and unlocked it, saying to me, “Wait.” I watched from the doorway as she lit several candles, placing them in ceramic lamps.

She beckoned from a small bedroom—or a large closet—that in comparison with my own lodging appeared to be a little Paradise: a large bed with an Oriental carpet hanging behind it and a cassone at the foot, painted with a scene from
Orlando Innamorato
—the lovers in the forest, drinking their potions of love and hate from Merlin’s Well and the Stream of Eros. The lamps had been set on a small table, along with a knife, some Parma cheese, a salami, and a bottle of wine.

Gesturing that I should sit on the bed, Damiata stirred the brazier. She removed her
cioppa
and laid it beside me, revealing her gown of gray-green satin, her bared neck and shoulders nearly as white as the thin band of chemise that framed the top of her bodice. She poured us each a cup of good Sangiovese, cut some pieces of salami, then sat beside me. “I cautioned you that it was a little bit,” she said.

“It would not be the first time you have cautioned me.” I was not thinking of her confession after she had offered herself to me, half mad; instead I recalled our night on the
pianura
, when to my mind she had warned me of her desire, should we survive. But now I was less certain of what she had meant—and less so that she even remembered.

Damiata nibbled on the salami like a careless little mouse. But then she said, “I know what I said.” Finishing her bite, she cradled her
cup in her lap. “Niccolò. Do you truly believe that I would use the life of your little girl to redeem my own son?”

She did not look at me as she asked this—and I looked away from her. Nevertheless I saw her more clearly than ever.

“No. I do not believe you would,” I said. “You would not want your son to live with the shade of another child.”

She sighed as if my answer had eased a great pain. “When I warned you …” The wine in her cup rippled from the slight tremor of her hands. “I warned you because I wanted you to love me. Not with some brief act but entirely … But that is the most cruel love, isn’t it? Condemned like poor Psyche to endlessly suffer Aphrodite’s unbearable burdens.”

“How did Petrarch describe love?” I said. “ ‘A death having the appearance of life.’ ”

“ ‘A Hell of which fools make their Heaven.’ ” I could feel her looking at me. “I think we already love one another, Niccolò. As friends who have seen and suffered the most dreadful things together. And who are so much alike. We both love reading the ancients, we are both little people who have spent our time among great men—and know as few do that they are merely ordinary men. You have your science of men’s natures, and I suppose I had my own, at one time, though I did not find it in Titus Livy or Tacitus. But as I told you, there is something more. Something that draws us … Perhaps if you believe Plato …” Now I could feel her shrug. “Niccolò, we should go down there and dance.”

No longer concerned that I had been bewitched, I could scarcely contain the sense of longing and regret I had previously felt only in Damiata’s absence. When I left this room, ending this moment of intimacy, perhaps I would escape Aphrodite’s torments. But I feared I would leave my very soul behind.

Damiata got to her feet, taking my hand so that I could do nothing but stand alongside her, although I might have been putting my own head in a noose. Yet I knew that in condemning me in this manner, she believed she was granting me clemency.

She slipped her arms around my back, as though we would dance in her room, and placed her burning cheek against mine.

“Niccolò … Will we even be alive a week from now? Will we ever hold our children again?”

I could only say, “I have hope.”

“You know what Petrarch says about hope.”

I had to laugh a bit. We were similar in this respect as well; we could smile at one another even as we stood on the gallows. “ ‘Truly all hope is false.’ ”

Her laughter echoed mine, but with a sound like little bells. She nuzzled me with her cheek and nose, before her lips wandered over my face and found my mouth. This kiss deepened in a way even the first had not, our teeth lightly touching, the merest hint of tongue.

“Did I melt your limbs?” she whispered, mocking her own charms.

In truth she had made my legs weak.

She breathed these words against my ear: “
I
feel it, my darling. Deep down there. In waters deeper than you or I can fish. Something more than Fortune’s design or Aphrodite’s desire. A secret our souls share.”

“Perhaps it is just as Plato says,” I whispered, completing the thought she had begun moments before. “I began this life with a choice. Yet only at the end of it did I discover I had chosen you.”