“But you never loved the duke?” Lorenzo said. “And that’s why you tried to kill him?”
“I didn’t try to kill him. I said I poisoned him. That’s different. But no, I never loved him.”
“Go on.”
“How could I love him? He didn’t speak Italian and made no effort to learn. His Latin was weak, and he could barely read. How could I love someone who couldn’t read Petrarch or Dante? Who didn’t know Homer from Hippocrates?”
Lorenzo smiled. “I would quote my favorite Latin verse to try to impress you, but I’m sure you would correct my delivery.”
“Oh, hardly.” She put a hand on his arm. “I don’t have to tell you. We are Italians. We love food and art. Music, poetry.”
“Not like these northern barbarians, is that it?”
“That’s right,” she said, smiling. “They are little better than Huns and Visigoths up here.”
“So naturally, you could never love Rigord.”
Lucrezia sighed. “He was proud of his ignorance. One of the most powerful men in France—could you believe that?”
“And what did he look like? A bloated old ogre?”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “He was handsome.”
Lorenzo struggled from the bed with a grunt and made his way to the fire. He fed it another log, then poured himself more of the watered-down wine. Lucrezia watched him carefully, concerned. He was wobbly, but perhaps a little stronger.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Get to the point where you poisoned him. I think I’ll like that better.”
Lucrezia helped him back into bed, then went to the flagons and poured herself a glass of the stronger, fortified wine. She took a long drink before she continued.
“Rigord had strange friends. Several men would come and go, but a few I remember in particular. One man Rigord called his brother, though the others called him Bayezid and his complexion was dark, like an Egyptian’s. And a second man, rough and hairy, like a woodsman. His French was good, but with a slight Occitanian accent. From the Pyrenees, I think. Not a wealthy man, I think. His name was Courtaud.”
“What did you say he was called?” Lorenzo asked with a frown.
“Courtaud.”
His frown deepened. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Really? Where?”
Lorenzo looked as if he almost had it, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. I can’t remember now.”
“There was a woman, too, with fair skin and dark hair and eyes. A striking combination. Like the women you see sometimes from Brittany or Wales, who they say are descended from the ancient druids.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“These people always arrived late at night, when no good folk are abroad. From my window I could sometimes see them crossing the bridge when it should have been closed. When they arrived, Rigord always sent me to my chambers and told me to lock my doors and go to sleep.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“In retrospect, yes. At the time I thought he was eccentric. They were dabbling in something—I heard whispers from the servants who cleaned up in the mornings after the guests had left. Glasses of a green wine. Powders and tinctures. And one time, they said, there was blood. A lot of it, staining the flagstones and carpets. They cleaned it up, but I could see the stains in the weaving when I entered the library.
“I began to suspect that he was involved carnally with this woman. I’m the daughter of a Luccan merchant and have traveled abroad with men. I have brothers. I understand how the world works. A girl who is overstimulated gets sent to a convent. Her brothers joyfully scatter their seed in whatever fertile field they can find.”
Lucrezia looked at Lorenzo, who was blushing.
“I don’t blame men,” she continued. “They have urges. Nature tells a man to satisfy these urges, and though God wishes that he would remain celibate, it’s difficult to refrain. When a man travels, when he is in a foreign city, he sometimes finds himself in the arms of a strange woman.”
“I try not to do those things,” Lorenzo said.
“Try?”
“I’m a young man and unmarried. When I falter, I always go to confession.”
“As you should. And if I thought my husband was confessing, or even
trying
to resist, I’d have continued in ignorance. Locked my doors when they came and tried not to dwell on Rigord’s actions.”
“Then what happened?”
“One summer night, when I’d had too much wine at dinner, and Rigord let slip that his visitors were expected, I asked him candidly why these people were coming. Discussing esoteric knowledge, he said. Esoteric knowledge, how? I asked him. Like Epicurus? Because I love to consider the old pagan philosophies. They don’t frighten me, even when I reject their reliance on natural philosophy over the mysteries of God. And there’s another woman there—so might not I join in too?”
“What did he say to that?”
Lucrezia shook her head. “Rigord didn’t know who Epicurus was. No, he said, not that kind of knowledge. From the east. Ruthenia, Rumania, Moldova, Egypt, Persia. Not Christian. Not even pagan. I pressed, but he wouldn’t say any more.
“That night, after he sent me up, I turned away the maid when she wanted to dress me for bed. Instead, I put on my finest houppelande, lined with velvet and fur, a jeweled coronet, and my most expensive jewelry. Then I opened the shutters to watch for their arrival. Courtaud came first, together with two younger men, crossing the Seine by boat. Nobody challenged them from the walls, and they gained the Cité via a staircase used in the day by fishermen. Bayezid crossed the bridge alone and by foot. The portcullis raised and let him in. The others came from elsewhere, perhaps from the island of the Cité, but the front doors opened and closed several times.
“About an hour after the last of the visitors arrived, when I was sure they’d begun, I stepped quietly down the hallway in the darkness. Then I descended to the ground floor, lit by torches in the hallway, continued past the tapestries, and into the library. I meant to introduce myself. To insert myself into their company and if they really were engaged in discussions of esoterica, to join them. But what I saw horrified me.”
Lorenzo stared, eyes wide, his hands twisting at the blankets. He still didn’t look altogether well, and some of that pasty look had returned to his cheeks. She should give him another tincture of poppy to help him sleep. Take another look at that scratch, to make sure it was still healing properly. But now that she was telling her story, it was difficult to stop.
Three years now since that night, and she’d never told a soul. How could she? She couldn’t trust anyone; if people knew how far she’d fallen into her husband’s unholy madness, they’d condemn her as a witch. And how would Lorenzo react when he heard? Badly?
“They had laid out a pentagram on the stone floor—an inverted star within a hoop—and lit it with candles. A dozen men circled the pentagram, chanting in a verse again and again. Twice—first in a barbarian tongue—guttural, full of harsh consonants. Like English, but even uglier. And second, in an archaic, vulgar form of the Latin tongue. Badly pronounced, to my ear. The men were naked, but with wolf pelts over their shoulders, including the wolf heads, which rested on their scalps. They passed around a pewter chalice filled with what looked like wine, but I later found out was their own blood.”
“My God.”
“The dark-haired woman was in the center of the pentagram, nude. Her body glistened with oil in the candlelight and she writhed and danced to the chant. The voices changed and one of the men in wolf pelts entered the center of the pentagram. And then . . . ”
Lucrezia broke off, ashamed to say it aloud. Telling it was awful, like she’d returned to that night. She could hear the chants, smell the expensive, perfumed candles. See the lust in Rigord’s eyes as he entered the pentagram.
“Tell me,” Lorenzo said, his voice low.
“When the man entered, the woman dropped to all fours, like an animal. And the man in the pelt came up behind her, like a dog on the street.”
“Or a wolf,” Lorenzo said.
“They took her, one after another. For some time I stood watching. I felt like I was caught in a horrible dream, dragged off by mad horses. When it came to be my husband’s turn, he came upon her, hard and furious. She arched her back and moaned, and he let out an awful howl. I fled. When I got to my rooms, I drew the bolt and pushed chairs in front of my door. I took out my dagger and put it beneath my pillow. I didn’t sleep that night.
“Something was wrong in my head that evening,” she continued. “It’s foolish in retrospect, but I blamed the woman. One woman, surrounded by men. Taken like an animal. But she was the one I was convinced was at fault. A witch. A temptress. Perhaps even a succubus, a demon sent from hell to seduce and degrade men. Take their seed and plant it in her womb. A demon child would be the result. Why else would the men behave in such a barbaric manner?”
“That sounds like a village priest,” Lorenzo said, “who fines a man all of three deniers when he catches him in the arms of a harlot, but shaves the woman’s head and gives her fifty lashes.”
“Yes, I know. I am ashamed to say, but I wrote a letter to the bishop of Notre Dame, telling him about the succubus that had taken my husband, and asking for his Excellency’s help. Martin, bless his wise heart, balked when I tried to send him with the letter. I had time to reconsider. I decided to confront the woman myself. Put her to the question, as Montguillon might say. I needed to be certain.”
Lucrezia shook her head and licked her lips. She didn’t want to go on, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
“Better that I had forgotten what I’d seen,” she said. “No, better that I had fled France for home. This woman, this beautiful Welsh woman with the luxurious black hair and eyes, the fair skin. Young, like a girl almost, certainly no older than twenty. Or so I thought. This woman was not a succubus at all. She was Rigord’s first wife.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“The mother of five children,” she insisted. “Two dead of the pox, three others fully grown. She must have been at least forty years old. Lost her bloom, they said, which was why he’d paid an enormous sum of money to gain an annulment. She’d retired to a convent to live the remainder of her days in contemplation. A lie!” Lucrezia’s voice rose. “The things they did to her. The unholy, awful things.”
Lorenzo stiffened. She thought it was something she’d said. Maybe he didn’t believe her. She’d lost her mind—how could it be otherwise, when she told such an impossible tale?
“Someone is coming,” he said.
Then she heard footsteps in the hallway. The fire guttered in the hearth, as a draft blew down the chimney. Lucrezia, heart pounding already from the story, leaped for her dagger, which she’d left in its sheath on the chair by the hearth. The door opened as she drew the blade.
It was only Marco. He stared at her, wide-eyed. His own hand went to the sword at his waist, but then it stopped as she lowered the dagger.
“By the Virgin, what are you doing?” he said. “I could have killed you.”
Lorenzo lifted himself in the bed and threw back the covers. “You mean she could have killed
you.
What do you want?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My emotions were up. I was thinking about the wolves and you caught me unaware.”
Marco looked back and forth between Lorenzo and Lucrezia with a deepening scowl. That suspicious look raised her ire.
“You didn’t answer my question? What are you doing?’
“I was nursing his wounds,” she said. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Don’t blame her,” Lorenzo said. “It’s not like my own brother could be bothered to look in on me when I was feverish.”
“What do you think I’m doing now?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not looking after my welfare, or you wouldn’t have burst in like that. What is it?”
“It’s the prior. He’s not in his right mind.”
“It’s his own blasted fault,” Lorenzo said. “He should have taken Lucrezia’s tincture—it broke my fever already.” He turned to Lucrezia. “Is there still time to save him? Or is he too weak already.”
Marco said, “Oh, he’s fine. Up and around and strong as ever. Physically, that is. Raving like a lunatic, of course. They hunted down our man Giuseppe in the dungeon. Would you believe that bastard Montguillon has him on the rack and is putting him to the question?”
“My God, he is?” Lorenzo said. “We have to stop him.”
“That’s not the half of it. Do you know what he wants Giuseppe to confess? That’s he’s a servant of the devil, under control of a witch. If only Giuseppe admits it, the pain will end. The witch, Montguillon insists, is Lucrezia d’Lisle.”
Lucrezia’s knees wobbled. The strength had gone out of her legs. She grabbed for the mantle to keep from falling. All she could think about was the fire, burning Lord d’Lisle’s first wife. Gwynneth of Cymru had gone to the stake with her head held high, but with terror in her eyes. The fire—oh, saints preserve her, the awful fire. Gwynneth’s screams.
“But I’m not—” she said. “I mean, I don’t know Giuseppe, I couldn’t possibly . . . ”
Marco nodded grimly. “And what is worse, I think Giuseppe is on the verge of confessing it.”
Chapter Thirteen
While Lorenzo dressed in gray leggings and a green-and-red tunic, Marco escorted Lucrezia to her room. When he returned, he said Martin had taken her to a safe place within the castle, together with the big mastiff, Tullia. They would guard her with their lives.
“I wish we still had Luc Fournier,” Marco said. “Why did he have to fall behind? Those damned wolves—”
Lorenzo didn’t want to think about Fournier, his throat torn out. Wolves with bloody muzzles, ripping off chunks of his flesh while he was still alive.
“What about Lord Nemours’s men?” he asked as he pulled on his boots. “Can’t we trust them to guard her? He’s the king’s provost, and Lucrezia’s husband was the king’s cousin.”
“Nemours isn’t here, and we can’t trust his men-at-arms, not if the prior orders them to seize her. They might turn on us. Our only hope is to stop Montguillon before he extracts that confession.”
“I’ll kill him before I see him lay a hand on her,” Lorenzo said.