The Wolves of St. Peter's (5 page)

“She didn't have a family,” Marcus said quietly. “Well, not in Rome. She had a mother and a sister in Sicily.”

Imperia had come to her senses and was now sitting up with Chigi's help. He called for wine, and it was brought. As he gently updated her, it almost seemed she would faint again. “I'll collect the body,” she said finally. “I thought of her as a sweet younger cousin, and I will say as much. I'll take my father with me. With his connections at the papal court, we'll be safe.” Imperia's father was a favored singer with the Sistine Chapel's choir.

“I will pay any fee they ask,” Chigi offered, “and for her burial as well.”

Imperia thanked him and then asked the question Francesco had expected from Marcus. “Was she still wearing her new ring?”

Francesco shook his head, glancing reflexively at Raphael for help.

“Damn that ring!” Marcus said bitterly. “That's what this is about. She started acting strangely the moment she got it. Who gave it to her? Was it The Turk?” he demanded of Imperia. Francesco could see he wanted to know now more than ever.

“She refused to say. But she was very proud of it. She would not take it off. How sad that maybe she died for it.”

“Someone here has to know who gave her that ring!” Marcus insisted. “She must have told someone!” He glared at the spectators gathered in the doorway, and collectively they shrank back. Francesco
saw that Asino, di Grassi, and Bastiano were no longer among them.

“Calm yourself, man!” Raphael commanded. It wasn't often that Raphael raised his voice, and Marcus obeyed, stepping back and sinking onto the settee next to Imperia, looking utterly defeated.

So far they'd avoided revealing that the finger was missing along with the ring. Francesco thought this fortunate. It could be a wise idea to hold something back, something only the murderer would know. Still, he should prepare Imperia and spare her the shock of discovery. He would tell her to keep it in confidence.

It was almost an hour before he was able to talk to Imperia alone, an hour in which Colombo, tears running down his cheeks, sang new songs to Calendula's beauty. These were not at all unlike the others he'd sung, only this time in the past tense. Her hair
was
as golden as the sun, her voice
was
as melodious as a lark, and on it went. Marcus slouched on the settee, Sodoma fanned himself, and Dante stayed wrapped in his cloak, though he emerged long enough to eat some roast chicken. Francesco ate hungrily too, grateful now that he wouldn't have to spend his coin on a sausage, and if the evening didn't take on the usual gaiety, at least a measure of normality returned. One of the girls recited a sad poem about a medieval knight who'd lost his love in a raging storm. They listened and then clapped, though not too hard, and Marcus looked like a grieving man should: utterly bereft.

Though Francesco watched for him, there was no further sign of Bastiano. It bothered him that Bastiano had turned away when he tried to catch his eye. He should have been forming an alliance with Francesco.
I won't tell if you don't.
And what was he doing here with Cardinal Asino and Paride di Grassi? He couldn't help but think Bastiano was up to no good.

When he finally found his opportunity to speak with Imperia,
she took the news of the missing finger calmly and swore not to tell anyone. She gave him a torch when he left, and he used it to light his way between the large, stately square that was Raphael's world and the small, squalid one that had become his own. It was well after midnight, and the relentless drizzle spluttered in the torch's flame. He checked to make sure his dagger was still at his side and walked as quickly as the choked streets would allow, suppressing the urge to cast glances behind him, knowing that with every backward glance he would grow more suspicious.

It didn't help that he could hear what sounded like wolves in the distance, a yipping and howling that seemed to come from the hills beyond Trastevere. Could they even be inside the walls? He had never known a wolf to carry off anything other than a sheep, but he was sure the local wolves, like everything here, would be bigger and meaner. He imagined them with ribs protruding under matted coats, blood and saliva dripping from gleaming white fangs as they slunk along in the rain. It was, as Raphael had said, a cursed city.
Violence finds people here so easily and for so little reason,
he'd said. People were murdered here every day. Men drew their daggers without provocation. The smallest slight or affront to honor, whether real or imagined, could mean death, and an amethyst ring was as good an excuse for murder as any. Everyone in Rome was a Guido del Mare.

He heard what sounded like footsteps behind him and, pulling out his dagger, reeled around. He swung his torch from side to side, showering the alley with sparks, but saw nothing more than a cat. It dashed in front of him and disappeared over a wall.
A black cat,
he thought, his heart pounding, and chided himself for this lapse into superstition. All cats looked black in the night, and even if it were truly black, it foretold no ill will. Still, he held his torch high, willing himself to see into dark doorways. But nothing else moved, and so
he resumed walking, turning into the alley behind Michelangelo's house and disturbing a rat as he carefully navigated the rubble.

From somewhere close by came a dog's anxious bark, followed by the muted wail of a baby. He paused at the gate, looking longingly at the path that would take him to Susanna's bed. He now regretted being harsh with her. It would do him good to stretch out beside her and sleep well into the morning. He couldn't remember ever feeling this tired before, not even that night only a brief two months ago when he had fought Guido del Mare. But that night, his heightened passions and fears had kept him going, and tonight there was nothing but sadness and unease.

Torch still in hand, he could hear Michelangelo's snores even before he pushed open the door. The room was deathly cold and damp. The hearth had not seen a fire for another night, and the cabbage soup pot was now collecting drips from the leaky ceiling. The candle on the table was burned down to a stub, and Francesco could see that Michelangelo had been sketching out a new version of
The Flood.

In the drawing, naked figures huddled together on a rock, clutching each other as they waited for the rising waters to carry them away. In the middle of the picture, more naked figures clambered toward a capsizing boat, while in the bottom left-hand corner, more heavily muscled people struggled up a mountainside, bringing with them their babies, their elderly, their household belongings. But they wouldn't be safe there, either. They had not been admitted to Noah's ark, and they would soon all die as the waters engulfed them and filled their lungs. The ultimate price for incurring God's wrath. Whatever Michelangelo's reasons for tearing out his original fresco of the scene, this sketch showed that what was to replace it would be infinitely better.

Francesco lifted up the drawing and found another beneath it showing a bearded man straining under the weight of a seemingly lifeless younger man. He traced the outline of the muscled thighs, erotic, beautiful, and frightening in their power. It was as if Michelangelo had taken all the desire he was too prudish to fulfill in life, dipped his brush in it, and spread it across the canvas.

Michelangelo snorted in his sleep. Francesco looked up from the drawings and, raising the torch, saw him lying on his back, hands under his head, with his elbows jutting out. The chicken roosting on the headboard over Francesco's side of the bed appeared to be asleep too, if not snoring. It listed to one side, the unused leg sticking out into the air on the other. Michelangelo rolled over, and Francesco feared the light from the torch might be waking him. But he was soon snoring again, and the chicken did its little hop, changed legs, listed to the opposite side, and shat on Francesco's pillow.

Cursing under his breath, Francesco went back outside and, standing beneath the eaves, where there was some cover from the rain, planted the torch beside him. Above him, the sky was black and heavy, with only the slightest smudge of gray indicating where the full moon was hiding. No light was visible at Susanna's. No light was visible anywhere but for his torch, which fizzled every time a drop of water circumvented the eaves' dubious protection. He wondered what would happen if he knocked on her door. Would he be greeted with kisses or curses? Probably the latter. Maybe he'd just stand here all night in the rain, listening to the wolves howling as if their hearts had been rent in two. Perhaps he could join them, adding his cries to theirs until Heaven took heed of their demands. Wind caught at the rain and whipped it under the eaves and into his eyes. Shivering, he peeled a wet leaf from his cheek and pulled his cloak tighter.

One clear night only a few weeks ago, he'd stood out here with Susanna. A little drunk with the wine he'd bought, he'd placed his arm around her shoulders and pointed out the autumn constellations, the same stars that shone in the Tuscan sky: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Lyra, Cygnus, Pegasus, Hercules. For a few moments, he'd almost believed it was Juliet beside him. He had looked down, expecting to see starlight in her blue eyes, disappointed to see Susanna's dark eyes looking back at him. But that had been then. He wouldn't be disappointed to see Susanna now.

Scarcely had he thought this when he heard the scrape of a door and footsteps in the yard. She came up beside him, only the leaning fence between them. She was wearing her cloak pulled over her head, one rough hand at her throat, holding it tight. In the feeble light of the torch, he could barely make out her face, with its gypsy eyes.

“Do you hear the wolves?” she asked, ever so timidly for Susanna.

It was a test, he knew, to see if he would speak to her again after their fight this afternoon. Either he would answer her or else she would go back inside and he and his foolish pride would perish in the rain. “So it is wolves,” he said. “I thought it must be, but they sound so close to the city.”

“Not just close,” she said with a relief that obviously had nothing to do with wolves. “They're right inside the city walls.” She rested her free hand on the fence close to his side. “His Holiness's armies camp in the hills outside the city. They hunt game there, but they're under orders from His Holiness not to kill the wolves. So now there's no game for the wolves to eat, and they come here and steal livestock.”

“Why would the Pope tell the soldiers not to kill wolves?”

“It would be bad luck for Rome.”

“
His Holiness
said it would be bad luck? Is it not sinful for a pope to believe in such superstition?”

It may only have been an effect of the flickering torchlight, but he could have sworn Susanna looked frightened. “His Holiness does not sin,” she said in a whisper.

He was about to add that this was maybe proof he did, then decided against it. He didn't want a repeat of this afternoon. “You're right,” he said in his most contrite tone. “It's me who's sinned. Tell me, though, why it would be bad luck to kill wolves.”

“Because the she-wolf is the mother of Rome, of course,” she said, as if it were perfectly logical for the descendant of St. Peter and head of the Christian world to worry about appeasing the gods of ancient Rome.

“I see,” he said carefully. “Still, superstition aside, isn't it a problem that the wolves steal the livestock? Why not close the city gates?”

She laughed a little as if it were a foolish question. “The walls leak worse than these roofs. There are plenty of holes for wolves to get through. They come inside the sheds and drag the sheep right out from under the farmers' noses. At first, the farmers chased them away with their torches. But the wolves are so hungry they always come back, so now the farmers leave offerings for them. Old sheep and cows and chickens. They tether them to stakes away from their sheds. Then the wolves are happy, and there's no harm to Rome.”

Attendite a falsis prophetis, qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium, intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces … Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but are inside ravenous wolves.
Francesco turned this over in his mind, thinking how a smart enemy of Rome needed no such disguise. Wolves were safe here.

There was a sudden volley of yelps and then complete silence. Francesco suppressed a shudder as he imagined a wolf running back up into the hills, bloodied pieces of sheep hanging from its jaws, a gore-stained piece of hemp rope the only evidence of the sacrifice that had just taken place.

“One night last week, a wolf stole a farmer's baby right out of its cradle.” Susanna spoke now in hushed tones.

“I suspect the cradle was conveniently situated,” Francesco said, realizing now why the outhouses along the lane had been quiet of late.

“No, it was truly stolen,” Susanna whispered earnestly. “And they say that the leader of the wolves is pure white.”

Francesco laughed, shaking off his gruesome imaginings. “Is that all? Are you sure they're not werewolves too? There's a full moon under all that cloud.”

“Don't make fun of me or I won't let you in.”

“Then I won't make fun of you anymore,” he said with a sincerity that became truly heartfelt when she opened the gate. “How do you know all this?” he asked, extinguishing the torch in a puddle and following her inside the house.

“They talk of it in the market.” She drew off her cloak and, taking his, hung them both over a chair in front of the fire, filling the air with the smell of wet sheep. Two candles burned on the mantle, and although the room was hazy with smoke, it was warm. “If you listen in the market very carefully, you can learn things.”

He paused for a moment but decided it was worth the risk. She wouldn't throw him out now. If she did, he would drown in the rain and let the wolves devour his body—anything but go back inside with that man and that chicken. “Is that how you knew Calendula was wearing a new ring? You heard it in the market?” he asked carefully.