The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  “ ‘And Praxiteles created it, but no man looked upon it and no man looked away, such was its power. Wars were fought over it. Wars were won and lost because of it. Praxiteles begged for it to be hidden away. He died knowing it was.’ ”

  Frado finished reading, voice fading, excitement draining away, lost on the forceful tide of the words. The three men barely breathed in the wake.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Ascanio croaked, two hands rifling in his wavy brown hair, their confounded stares the only reply.

  Battista turned away, from the question and all it implied. He fell back into the wing chair, its wooden clawed feet creaking with the sudden weight.

  Frado stood before him. “I have a very bad feeling about this, Battista.” He rubbed circles around the globe of belly hanging in perfect roundness over his leather belt.

  “You ate too much.” Battista tried to joke his trepidation away, but it was a sorry attempt at best. “You know of the absurd superstitions of the pagans as well as I, so much based in the fanciful. I am sure this is but another example.”

  “You are sure, are you?” Frado used his sarcasm with a heavy hand, hammering home the one thing they could be sure of ... that they could be sure of nothing.

  “We must continue our investigation.” Battista’s eyes scurried from the scathing implication and he reached for another giant tome. “Of that I am sure.”

  They set back to their reading, not a one of them sleepy any longer, not a one ready to entertain the thought of sleep, leery of things that walked in the night.

  “Phryne,” Frado mumbled, head still bent over his book.

  “Scusi?” Battista asked.

  “He loved a woman named Phryne, a courtesan it seems, but one renowned not only for incredible beauty but for her daring and intelligence as well.” Frado barked a laugh, one filled with respect. “It seems her magnificence inspired Praxiteles so, he is celebrated as the first to sculpt a life-sized nude female form.” Frado’s jowls quivered as he shook his head with lusty reverence. “That must have been some heavenly body indeed.”

  Battista snickered silently, glad Frado had found something to inspire him, and they settled back to silent study. But it was not long until Ascanio, this time, once more broke their reverie.

  “Do either of you recognize the name of di Bone?”

  “Giotto.” Battista and Frado said the word together, an assured chorus.

  “Ah, of course.” Ascanio flipped a page backward, then forward again. Not a word more required to explain the identity belonging to the nickname.

  Giotto di Bondone was most often called simply Giotto, though a few, very few, referred to him by the intimate moniker of di Bone. Many credited the Florentine painter and architect with the renewed vigor for the arts that had captured the entire peninsula in its fervor. The Florentines considered him one of the land’s most cherished sons.

  “What of Giotto? What have you found?” Battista put a hand to his chin, pulling on the small tuft of hair growing from the upward curve in the middle of his full bottom lip. Frado closed the book in front of him with a snap.

  Without raising his eyes, Ascanio paraphrased the text before him. “This passage talks of a painting by Giotto, a triptych in fact. And in the same portion, both the names are mentioned.” Ascanio held the book aloft before his handsome face. “ ‘Praxiteles created it, Pliny warned of it, and Giotto’s Legatus Praxiteles Canonicus pieces will show the way to it.’ ” Ascanio looked up, mind working furiously on the Latin phraseology behind an unfocused gaze. “The Legend of Praxiteles’s Legacy.”

  “Dio mio!” Frado slapped his forehead with his hand and threw himself back in the chair. “We do not have to find one piece! We have to find three pieces to find the one piece! Bafa—”

  “Wait, wait, there’s more!” Ascanio yelped over Frado’s cursing, holding up a halting hand as he read aloud again.

  “ ‘With Dante’s words to lead across the land and Giotto’s images to guide through the cities, only the truly selfless may find the glory.’ ”

  “Dante and Giotto, Dio mio, sì.” Battista covered his face with his hands, pulling them away, tugging at the skin as he dropped them to his lap. “If it is a triptych by Giotto, the words must be those of Dante’s Commedia. Threes,” he mumbled to himself, but neither of his companions refuted the obvious conclusion.

  Try as he might, Battista could avoid Frado’s piercing stare no longer, nor deny the consternation of it. But neither would Battista back down from his appointed task. He slipped forward on his chair, perched on its edge, elbows on knees, hands clamped together.

  “We have been preparing for this all our lives, amico mio. Do you not feel it?”

  Frado shook his head back and forth, as if to deny it, but not a word against it did he speak. Ascanio’s gaze volleyed between them, the air thick and heavy with the harbingers unearthed.

  “Across the lands, through the cities,” Frado intoned, repeating the words with a grisly condemnation. “How far will this take us, Battista?”

  It seemed a simple question, yet both knew it spoke not just to geography.

  “From city to city, from state to state, until we find it.” Battista sat back, crossing his thick arms over his chest with determined finality, daring either to contradict him.

  Frado threw his hands up into the air, beseeching the heavens, face comically twisted with sarcastic amusement. He surrendered, but it would not be categorical.

  “From city to city, from state to state ... would that include those at war?”

  Five

  This miserable state is borne

  by the wretched souls of those

  who lived without disgrace and without praise.

  —Inferno

  The pink blush of the setting sun dappled her skin as she strolled through the tunnel of tall cypress trees. In the near distance, the statue awaited her, the three women so finely wrought, their faces so similar, their hands posed in the exact same position. Within the circle marking the end of the path, their long arms crossed before their bodies at the wrists, slender fingers delicately positioned, creating a cage or a basket around which something invisible rested between their arms and their breasts, something captured and protected.

  Aurelia refuted them. Turning sharply to the left, she chose a different path through the ornamental garden of the palazzo, making for the isolation of the mock grotto full of dangling mosses and the calm tinkling of its fountain.

  She entered the secluded space, a raised hand forbidding her two maids—her constant shadows and companions—to follow. It was not the first time she had halted them thus, and they stopped at the edge of the stone path, turning their backs and closing the circle around her.

  Blocking out their presence in her mind, Aurelia sat on the stone bench with her back to them, closed eyes facing the furry green wall. She drew in her breath, and released. With each pass through her lungs, it slowed. She heard nothing but its soft, rhythmic shush, and she sunk into the space it created. Time ceased, as did her physicality, and her essence moved free.

  But not for long.

  “Monna Aurelia?”

  The niggling call pulled at her.

  “Per favore, my lady?”

  Aurelia opened her eyes to narrow slits. This was not Teofila’s first attempt to pry Aurelia back to earth; she saw it in the tight lines about her maid’s pink mouth.

  “It is time?” Aurelia asked dourly.

  Teofila nodded, daring to step into the grotto as Aurelia stood.

  With a critical eye, the maid scanned her mistress’s appearance. With gentle hands, Teofila brushed the back of the full pleated skirt of gray damask and gave a small tug on the wide belt of matching fabric trimmed with garnet jewels. She scrutinized the position of the almost-off-the-shoulder neckline, which revealed, as did the slashings of the puffed sleeves, the maroon lace camicia beneath. The straight line of the damask rose high on Aurelia’s chest; Federico would not allow her to lower
it as fashion prescribed.

  Teofila tucked an errant chestnut curl into the dark red net scuf-fia that held Aurelia’s abundance of hair, the heavy, loose bunch resting upon the back of Aurelia’s neck.

  “We will need to pluck you soon,” Teofila murmured, and Aurelia huffed, forever annoyed at the painful custom that raised a woman’s hairline high upon her head.

  She had had enough of her maid’s nitpicking. With an impatient gesture, Aurelia stepped around Teofila. “Let us away. The sooner the evening begins, the sooner it will end.”

  Aurelia stepped into the glowing dining room, surprised at the long line of people perched on each side of the endless banquet; faces sparkled in the trio of multibranched candelabra posted at even intervals along the table’s length. Beneath their glow, sterling and gold platters covered every inch of the thick gold cloth, filled with a wide array of offerings ... salted trout, roast capon, sweet rice cooked in milk of almonds ... game, meat, fruits, salads ... it was all there, more than even this horde could consume.

  She took a step forward, spying the young women and men with whom she most often sat, and faltered. No empty chair awaited her among them. She beckoned to them with a quizzical stare, but their sheepish and puzzled glances skipped away like stones thrown along a pond’s smooth surface.

  “Come, my lady.” Federico appeared at her side and she turned, silent and skeptical, placing her hand upon the embroidered arm he offered.

  Passing her companions, she spared them no glance, fearing it would reveal their concern and intensify her own. The marquess brought her closer and closer to the far right corner of the table, and Aurelia’s free hand fisted, nails digging crescents into her palm.

  The empty chair sat in the middle of the most revered women among the company ... the grandmothers, the widows ... the oldest. She took her seat, looking slight amidst their buxom fullness, tall to their stooped, bright amidst their gray.

  “Signore, buonaserra, come stai?” Aurelia greeted the women on each side of her, plastered smile set as firm upon her face as able. “Good evening, ladies. How are you?”

  They twittered at her, clearly delighted to have her among them, blind to any truth behind her darkened eyes.

  She nodded, offering polite responses without thought. But as if of its own volition, her piercing glare found Federico and stabbed him, jaw jumping as she bit back the harsh reproof with which she longed to whip him.

  The nobleman, perched at the head of the table, had the decency to look contrite, gaze skittering to the man on his left, blatting a laugh, holding up the forced jocularity as a shield against her.

  Aurelia twigged his game. She had never underestimated his intelligence or his intuition. The festive lives of the younger courtiers goaded her, true, inciting her to badger him for more of her own freedom, but to remove her from their company ...

  “My physician assures me the swelling will abate soon.” The warble came from her left and the shrunken woman beside her. The elderly ladies about them all leaned forward as the woman opened her mouth, revealing a wide gap on the bottom of her mouth, a swollen, red gum filling the hole.

  The sight served as a catalyst, the conversation erupted, and every woman among them launched into a detailed account of her latest illnesses and miseries.

  Aurelia dropped her knife onto her plate and it clanged angrily, an earsplitting echo of her emotion.

  I must be appeased. Aurelia’s thoughts rooted in her mind. If he will not do it, I will do it myself.

  Six

  Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind,

  Which now comes this way and now comes that,

  And changes name because it changes quarter.

  —Purgatorio

  He stared out the four storied windows, small in the grasp of the domineering architecture of the Apostolic Palace. The pope’s gaze wandered over the manicured gardens spreading out on the ground below, a profusion of the pale greens, yellows, and pinks of spring in bloom, yet all he saw were the blemishes of his own bad decisions, counted them as if they were nothing more than barren and scarred patches of earth amidst the splendor.

  In his moments of human weakness, he indulged in delusion, convinced himself that what he had done, he had done for the benefit of the papacy, for the strength of the Catholic Church. With the benevolent eye God had bestowed upon him, he saw the truth even as it taunted him; more than a small measure of his efforts were for his own glory, and that of the Medici. And now ... now righteous punishment beckoned.

  Clement heard the remote clip of slipper heels upon the marble, the distant ticking of a condemning clock. The sound grew louder, more insistent and urgent, as it neared, but the pope did not turn to it, keeping his deeply lined face upon the leaded glass and the vista beyond.

  “Do you truly believe in redemption, Marcello, no matter what the sin?”

  The clipping skidded to a halt with a jagged screech. The pope’s young secretary froze, hand bearing a sealed parchment outstretched to the air, mouth working soundlessly.

  “It is a question you, above all, need never ask.” The young man found his tongue and bowed to the pontiff, though the man still did not see him. A fellow Florentine, a devoted subject, the young man rose, eyes wide with fervent adoration. “You spoke as God wished. There is naught in that to be redeemed.”

  Clement sniffed a sardonic chuckle at the young man’s reverence; he had once been like him, once believed he could do no wrong as long as he invoked God’s name in the doing.

  Pope Clement turned deep-set eyes upon his faithful servant, long wiry beard—long turned gray in a life stretching across half a century—hanging low upon his barrel chest.

  “I am more confused than ever, my friend.” He sat then, and the mammoth walnut desk dwarfed him as few things could. He slumped over its carved polished edge and hung his head in his hands, the top of his scarlet cap pointing out to the room. “When François defeated Charles at Pavia, I saw my path so clearly. To give France my support served the Church best. I knew it to be true.”

  “Certamente, Your Holiness.” Marcello inched slowly forward.

  “The Spanish ruler cannot regain his power. His grasp would exceed his reach. We all worried upon it. But it has all turned sour.”

  Clement spoke of the other Italian princes, those of Venice, Milan, and of course Florence, who had joined him, the king of France, and the king of England in the formation of the League of Cognac. The official act had turned a cold, harsh papal shoulder to the king of Spain.

  “You could not foresee the acts of the barons,” Marcello offered hopefully.

  “No!” Clement slapped the hard surface before him. “But should I have turned so quickly back to Spain? Could I not have trusted François a little longer? I would not then have to turn back.”

  The memories ravaged the man’s lined face, casting dark shadows in its many crevices. Not a month after he tossed his support to the French, Spain countered and regained the upper hand, taking Milan. As the Italian barons turned on Clement with dissatisfaction, he had had no choice but to turn to Spain for mediation. But it was not a sincere coupling, and the instant Charles released François from his prison the pope had realigned himself once more with his French ally.

  “He called me a wolf then, Charles did,” Clement mumbled. “No longer the shepherd he had once followed.”

  “He is not a man of his word, Holy Father. He is intent upon power, naught else.”

  The pope looked up then, to the righteous young man before him. The urge to tell Marcello to run almost overwhelmed him. Instead, Clement crooked his finger at his secretary, who leaned forward with blatant vacillation.

  “Days of hard reckoning are upon us, the Church and I. France and Spain are once again at war. And we are harassed more every day by the heretics screaming at us from the north.”

  Marcello crossed himself at the vague mention of the German princes who allied themselves with Luther and the thousands of Catholics there and in Holl
and who abandoned their faith, more with each passing day that Clement refused to consider any of Luther’s ninety-five theses of reform.

  Clement saw the revulsion upon his servant’s features and it brought him up sharply.

  “I am sorry, Marcello.” The pope rubbed his long face, washing himself clean of his own angst. “You have brought me a message and I have long delayed you from your duty.”

  Marcello’s brows knit and he did nothing to deliver the folded parchment into his master’s hands.

  Clement swallowed; he recognized that face, the long moodiness of it forewarned dire news.

  He reached forward and snatched at the missive, damning his own hands that shook the rattling paper.

  Without looking up, he read the succinct yet stunning communication: “ ‘Charles and his troops have taken Piacenza.’ ”

  He discharged the paper to the desk as if it burned him to touch it, and though he glared at it—willed it away—it would not depart.

  Clement stood slowly, pain evident in the sluggish unbending of the long body, and turned back to the wall of glass, mumbling to it as if to find wisdom in its transparency. “Sì, the day of reckoning. When you are trapped in the middle, either way may lead to peril.” Without turning, he gave his decree. “It is time we send a letter, Marcello.”

  “Yes, Holy Father.” Marcello fairly ran to the diminutive desk in the corner, to draw out parchment, quill, and ink pot. Dipping the quill in the tiny glass vial, tinking it against the rim, he poised it over the paper. “To Spain, Your Holiness?”

  With a grimace of fatality, Pope Clement shook his head. “No, Marcello, to France.”

  Seven

  In that book which is my memory,

  On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,

  Appear the words, “Here beginneth a new life.”