The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  “I cannot live without her!” He threw the tin cup across the room. With a fracturing crash, it collided with two wine bottles, shattering them into pieces matching those of his heart.

  “Oh, but you can.” The force of Michelangelo’s decree startled them. “You can and you must. You may no longer have Ornella, but you have the greatest gift she could give.”

  The artist stepped to the grief-stricken man, squatting beside him with the baby still in his arms. The child sucked upon his own fist, the slurping a precursor to his need for nourishment that must come soon. Jacopo looked upon his child and through his grief his smile was born, marking the moment the rest of his life began.

  “He needs milk,” Jacopo muttered.

  Michelangelo closed his eyes for a brief moment, a quick sigh of relief. “He does indeed. We will find him a wet nurse, yes. But for now we can make do with some goat’s milk and cheesecloth if you have it?”

  Jacopo raised his brows and swayed to his feet. Taking the baby in his arms, he made for the kitchen. “Come, my son, your father will feed you.”

  Michelangelo jumped to Jacopo’s side, turning back with a smile, one fading at a glimpse at Aurelia.

  No longer passive in her chair, she’d jumped up and paced a tight circle in the far corner of the room, detaching herself from Jacopo and his grief, having no right to disrespect it with her presence.

  “Come sit, Aurelia.” Battista beckoned, pouring her another cupful of the powerful brandy.

  But she would not be coaxed. She walked about the chamber, head shaking, mumbling incoherently, thoughts and emotions tangling within her, clogging on her tongue. As she came to his side, she thrust her hands out at Battista. Dark and dirty with dried blood, the red now ugly brown.

  “I have ... I have killed a man.”

  Before Battista’s grasp reached her, she set foot upon stone once more, circling again and again, motion perpetual in the madness.

  He was ready when next she passed; his hands flicked out and captured hers, his strength overpowering her mania. She allowed him to pull her down, capitulating with fatigue, slumping in the chair as he ran once more to the kitchen, returning with a bucket of water, a clump of hard soap, and a cloth.

  She stared at his face as he knelt before her. Would she return all she had found by his side and his arms if it gave Ornella back her life? Aurelia thought she would, she believed she could, and prayed for it.

  Aurelia closed her eyes to the succor of his ministrations and the warm slippery feeling of soapy cloth and hands upon her own.

  “I can’t believe you killed him... .”

  She stiffened as the words slipped from Battista’s tongue. Aurelia pulled on her limbs, trying to wrench them from his grasp. “But he—”

  Battista held her, dropping the cloth to caress her wet skin with his own. “No, you misunderstand. He deserved death, and more.” Battista leaned toward her as he took her shoulders in his hands. “May he burn in the fires of Hell for eternity, for he has earned that as well. It’s just ... it’s only that you ... you’re so ... untrained, so completely female. I could not believe the mastery with which you plied the dagger.”

  Aurelia scoffed at him with a curled lip. “Why? Because I have no member twixt my legs? I cannot long for vengeance, cannot be consumed by bloodlust? You believe one not taught to fight cannot brandish a blade and kill?”

  She rose, looking down at him with frightening magnificence. “A woman can kill as well as a man, or better. What we feel, we feel through every fiber of our being. Bloodthirsty anger does not belong to the male species alone.”

  “I ... I’m sorry, Aurelia, I did not mean ... ,” Battista sputtered, reaching to capture her hands with his once more, but she pushed him away. “Believe me, I know how strong—”

  “And because my breasts are meant to feed a babe, I suppose I cannot lust like a man?”

  Reaching down, she grabbed him by the sides of his head, pulling on his silken black hair, pulling his face up as she leaned down.

  Her lips were hard and cruel on his, as if she discharged the emotion ripping her in half by tearing at him. Her tongue assaulted his mouth, her teeth nipping at his lips, the madness on fire within her combusting.

  “Aurelia!” Battista wrenched his mouth from hers, pushing at her shoulders with all the force of his arms.

  With the craze burning bright in her eyes, her gaze froze upon the small drop of blood trickling from his lip ... another’s blood she had drawn ... and she could bear it no more.

  Collapsing in a ball, knees buckling as she folded at the waist, she crashed to the floor, sobs of guilt and fear and revulsion convulsing her body.

  As Jacopo rocked his motherless son in the next room, Battista pulled Aurelia onto his lap, rocking her as if she were a child in her father’s arms, until—like the babe—Aurelia’s sobs subsided to hitching breaths, to the deep draughts of exhausted slumber.

  Twenty-eight

  For he who sees a need

  but waits to be asked

  is already set on cruel refusal.

  —Purgatorio

  Like two flowers in a row, they sat side by side in the garden. Their bodies drooped, petals hanging low, burdened by their wounds, a pain that bound them.

  From the moment they had returned to Florence, as soon as Battista entered his home and found Lucagnolo asleep on his couch, he knew. Battista had no need to ask if or when the man’s wife had died, the truth of it lay in the hollows of his face and the emptiness in his eye. Battista said not a word, wrapping the young man in his arms, begging God to relieve Lucagnolo’s burden and lay it upon his own strong arms as the bereft man sobbed in them.

  Aurelia found a kindred spirit in the young widower, a spirit smothered—at least for the moment—by the darkness of grief. It drew them together, cocooning them in the healing powers of passing time.

  Battista stepped out into the tiny courtyard and the heat of the day, a heat of high summer though it was only the first days of May. The plates and bottles upon the metal salver bounced as he walked, though he trod slow and cautiously, yet the pair remained ignorant to his presence, unmindful of the tinkling and clicking, their hushed conversation unheeded in the shelter of the solitude.

  “Do you believe it, Monna Aurelia?” Lucagnolo turned sunken eyes to the woman sitting beside him, their chairs facing the large cherry tree—fluffy and pink in full blossom—prominent at the apex of the garden’s back stone wall.

  “I do, Luca, most assuredly.”

  She turned, and in her profile Battista thought he saw a smidgen of healing; in giving of herself as a healer of another’s grief, she’d found the path to overcome her own. No longer did her freckles stand out in stark relief against white skin; no longer did sooty circles rim her changeable eyes. She was not the vivacious woman who had saved his life or led him through the darkness of Purgatory, but she was there, waiting to return.

  “Death is hardest on those left behind.” Aurelia took Lucagnolo’s hand, the breeze tossing their hair, sprinkling them with wispy and pale cherry blossom petals. “Those who do not realize their loved ones are still with them.”

  Battista stopped a few steps behind them, unwilling to break the bond, unwilling to dispel the healing hovering betwixt them.

  Lucagnolo closed his eyes, a low hum of a sigh settling in his chest. “I feel her beside me,” he whispered, as if to speak too loudly might dispel his wife’s presence. “It is the loveliest of feelings. I sense her often.”

  Aurelia tipped her head upward, face offered to the sky above. “And you always shall. Those who touch our soul in this life will be with us forever. The soul lives on. The spirit—the essence of being—is never ending.”

  As if she felt him—spoke of him—Aurelia sat up, turned, and smiled at Battista; he could not breathe for the beauty of her.

  Needing no further encouragement, Battista stepped to them, placing the small bowl of fresh grapes and figs on the table between them, handing both
a cup of clear vernaccia. Taking his own serving of the pale Tuscan wine, he sat in a chair across from them, long legs sticking out, spanning the distance with large, booted feet.

  “You look lovely today, cara mia.” He raised his cup in salute.

  “Grazie, Battista,” Lucagnolo said, humor crisply dry.

  Battista laughed, merry that his grieving friend attempted humor, let alone succeeded at it. “You are as ugly as ever, amico, yet I love you more.”

  The small mouth on the narrow face twitched; Lucagnolo sniffed a wee laugh.

  “Have you seen them together?”

  The question would be nonsensical, were it not for all these three had experienced over the past weeks, if it were not for the two canvases lying upon the large table just inside the door.

  Lucagnolo nodded. “I have. They are truly remarkable, as if Giotto copied the women with incredible precision, or the other half of the women.” He hitched in his chair, sitting forward with enthusiasm. “And yet the background is so conspicuously dissimilar. I am anxious to see how he ties it together in the center piece. It will be masterful, I have no doubt.”

  “No doubt,” Battista mumbled into his cup. The cost of this mission had been far greater than any other he had undertaken in his entire life. In his darkest thoughts, he railed against François for forcing this path upon him. In his strength, he prayed for success, for a prize worthy of the price. “Have you heard of the Castello della Dragonara?”

  “Most certainly,” Lucagnolo replied, popping a fig into his mouth, tucking it into one cheek like a squirrel with a nut.

  “What do you know of it?”

  “I know it was built of a mammoth rock bulging out of the earth on the shoreline of Camogli,” Lucagnolo said with a shrug, looking off as he gathered his thoughts. “Legend claims God carved the castle from the rock, for no one knows exactly when it was built.”

  Battista heaved a sigh through a crinkling nose; he had lost all taste for the mysterious.

  “The myths allege it is haunted as well, for it has served not only as a defensive fortress, but as a prison.” Lucagnolo turned to Aurelia. “Souls that live forever.”

  Aurelia answered with a fey grin, sipping from the cup she held with both hands, the left once more bandaged, her injury revisited after the struggle at the inn.

  Battista laid his attention upon her. “You should go no further on this ... this mystical journey. It is a journey into madness.” He drank deep of his wine, ready for the debate to begin. “I would be the worst sort of cad were I to allow you to continue.”

  Aurelia’s gaze pierced him from the tops of her eyes. “Allow me? You think you—”

  Lucagnolo jumped to his feet. “I should go.”

  “No, stay, Luca.” Battista held up a hand. “There are no secrets here.”

  He spoke the truth; all his men had gleaned the change in his relationship with Aurelia, all claimed to have known it would happen long before Battista himself.

  “Have no fear, Battista.” Lucagnolo tipped his head in leave-taking. “I really should visit Bettaccia’s family. It has been a few days and it does them much good to see me.”

  The loss of their only child had left Bettaccia’s parents floundering, no other offspring to fill the hole in their hearts. Lucagnolo had promised his dying wife he would remain their family; it was a promise he would forever keep.

  He waved to them as he passed into the dim recess of the house, as Aurelia hissed at Battista, “You would deny me Paradise after climbing out of Hell and Purgatory?”

  Her words caught him up quick. Battista had not thought of her plight in such terms; he felt a twinge of shame for his selfishness. Until his gaze fell upon her bandaged limb, rising to the fading marks upon her fair face. He knew of the concealed wounds, perhaps better than she did herself, the scars left by the death of Ornella and the killing of Baldassare. The constable of Poggibonsi had cleared Aurelia of any wrongdoing, Jacopo’s parents had returned to care for him and the baby, and yet she would carry those dark moments forever, for they had changed the very essence of her.

  “But this is my challenge, my commission, not yours,” Battista argued. Dark gaze wandered away with worrisome contemplation as he fiddled with the tuft of hair beneath his lip and shook with a contrary jog of his head. “I have received an urgent message from the king of France. The pope plies great pressure upon him and yet François will not commit his troops until he possesses the relic.”

  Aurelia gave a cold eye and pursed her lips at Battista. “Any who need rely on another’s strength have no belief in their own.”

  Battista raised his brows at her. “I cannot argue, but I cannot wonder if it is not true, the myth of this piece. I have never known such challenges in a search, never encountered the like. Surely the struggle is equal to its power.” He sat back, hands racking through his dark hair. “It is my chore for a reason.”

  She waggled her head, lips moving as if she could not find the correct words. “It ... it has become my task. I assure you.”

  Pushing against the arms of her wooden chair with both hands, showing no sign of the pain it must have caused, she stood and towered over him, an eagle perched on a cliff side.

  “You cannot, you must not, complete this alone.” Terse and tense, jaw flinching with a hard edge, she would brook no argument. “I must finish this.”

  The fervent Aurelia returned, she so full of life it buzzed from her like the drone of an angry bee. He longed to take her then, or be taken by her, warmed by her concern, set afire by her passion.

  He rose slowly, body inches from hers, her musky sweet scent filling his head. “Then we will finish it.” With gentle fingers, Battista lifted a strand of her chestnut hair and tucked it behind her ear, blowing gently to loosen the blossoms frosting her hair. “We will finish it together.”

  Battista saw the relief in her gaze gone soft and golden and he could bear it no longer. Taking her by the hand, he led her into the house, safe and secure in her care.

  The rattle of the soldier’s armor clanged discordantly in the quiet of the marble halls, his heavy hobnailed calige clanking on the stone floor as he marched toward the chamber.

  Without a word, the Swiss Guard parted from the opened doorway and the warrior bounded in with the force of a plundering army.

  Pope Clement raised sunken eyes as the man approached, saying not a word as the warrior strode through the rows of cardinals, toward the pope’s raised dais between. The soldier’s presence stilled every tongue, captured every gaze as he removed the steel-etched galea with gold gilt highlights from his head, revealing the tight black curls beneath and the black gaze filled with angry concern.

  “Di Ceri,” the pope acknowledged with nothing resembling politeness. He had no quarrel with the man charged with leadership of the papal militia, but he had had enough bad news already this day.

  “Holy Father.” Renzo di Ceri bowed his large form over the pope’s proffered hand and brushed his lips across the ring. Straightening, he tucked his helmet beneath his arm, wide shoulders thrown back, spine stiff and straight like the trunk of a massive tree, one that had withstood thousands of years of nature’s brutality.

  One of Italy’s most decorated condottieri, a professional soldier who had fought against the Borgias, fought for Venice, for Spain, and now for the Medici, di Ceri had not always reigned triumphant, but he had always survived.

  “What brings you here, di Ceri?” Clement rested against the high back of the red and gold chair of St. Peter. His pointed glare ignored the rows of cardinals flanking the room, perched in the square, high-backed chairs of carved wood, bright yet somber in their bloodred cassocks and mitres, birds in rows upon the rooftops, looking down at him as if he were the day’s first worm. In his pure white vestments, the pope stood out, the white-hot center of flame amidst the red cardinals surrounding him. A few young, most old, there were few he called friends in these dark days.

  “My scouts have just returned,” di Ceri
said flatly; he would yield his report though the Council of Cardinals clearly needed no more kindling heaped on their fire. “The emperor has taken Arezzo, and the duke of Bourbon marches on Acquapendente.”

  The gasps of horror and anger circled the room like a cyclone.

  “The wolves are at the door.”

  The pope sneered at the quivering pudgy coward sitting in the front row. Cristoforo Numai played with the guise of power and might, his red tent a curtain over his yellow skin.

  Clement turned from the sickening sight. One elbow perched on the arm of his chair, the pope braced his bearded chin in his hand, speaking through his white-knuckled fingers.

  “How many swords at the ready, di Ceri?”

  Renzo’s expression was as implacable as if he wore his helmet still. “There are no more than five thousand militia, and the almost two hundred Swiss Guards.”

  “And what of Bourbon’s forces, the imperial forces he commands?”

  For the first time in their long acquaintance, Clement saw the shadow of concern cross the mighty warrior’s coarse features.

  “The word is they have not been paid for a fortnight and are ill fed.”

  The pope’s eyes narrowed. There was nothing more dangerous than an unhappy soldier, except perhaps thousands of them.

  “How many?” The demand slipped from between Clement’s clenched teeth.

  Di Ceri flinched on a telltale blink and turned his soldier’s gaze forward with a clip of his head. “Close to thirty thousand, Holy Father. Maybe more.”

  The stench of abject fear burst in the room in a timeless moment of silence. As if in the wake of a rushing tide, cries filled it, four of the many in the chamber took to their feet and, without pause for dismissal, quit the room.

  Clement saw the truth in the faces remaining, which others would be gone before nightfall, which ones would leave him and the Holy City in order to save their own skins.

  “What of your François? What of his forces?” The impertinence in Cardinal Colonna’s voice was undeniable; the man who would be pope if not for the Medici took malicious delight in Clement’s impending doom.