The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  “You are a lucky lady.” He bussed her clean skin as he removed the thick leather jacket, dropping his favorite garment to the ground with a sorrowful expression. “Lead on, cara.”

  Though the crisscrossing beam of light illumined the floor and the square holes spattered throughout, they made their way with slow caution. At the verge of the arch, Battista stepped ahead.

  “Let me b—”

  His words shriveled on his tongue and he stared at her bug eyed, mouth agape.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” She grabbed onto his arm, fingers digging crescents in the skin so little protected through the thin, light linen of his flounced sleeve.

  But he ignored her fright, covering her hand with his, face softening with lucid rapture.

  “I have never seen you more beautiful,” he proclaimed, though somehow sounding strangely unconvinced. “From the moment I saw you, I thought you the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, but now ...”

  He shook his head, his expression one of such worship it pained her to see it.

  Aurelia smiled tenderly. “It is just the light.”

  “Perhaps.” He took her hand in both of his. “But you are far brighter than I. It looks as if the light comes from you. From here.”

  He placed one hand on her stomach, and she trembled, at the touch and the intuitive notion.

  She lifted his hand, urging him forward with unfeigned curiosity. “Look ahead, Battista. What lies there?”

  Just beyond the portal more light glowed, but of a far more tangible form.

  They stepped across the threshold and onto a square landing that creaked at the intrusion of their weight. Instantly the light—perfect globes of it—encircled them in two rows, each moving in opposite directions.

  Aurelia stood with her back to Battista, their eyes swirling in their heads as they struggled to focus on the spheres hovering around them at waist height.

  “I think there are twelve of them!” she cried, raising her voice over the harsh whoosh, for each sphere sizzled with vibrant energy.

  “Sì. Torches come up from the floor. I can just barely make out the bases and their tracks.” Battista twirled round, as if he danced with the lights, all focus intent on first one and then another down the rows. “But there is room for thirteen. There is an empty space in each row. Watch.”

  Aurelia did, turning as he did, her movement allowing her eyes to focus better. At one position, one of thirteen, as the line of lights twisted about, the two spaces created an opening, aligning to provide a gap large enough for them to pass through, were they ready. There it was and there it went, the instant of escape coming and going before their reaction.

  As if to taunt them, as the space revealed itself, it quickly vanished and the movement hurried—the torches spinning more and more rapidly. Aurelia shut her eyes, rubbing against them with the heels of her hands, feeling dizzy and nauseous with the effort to focus on them.

  “We have to jump through!” Battista cried.

  Facing the far side of the room, no more than inches away from the radiant orbs, he pulled her before him, his hands poised at the small of her back. Hot air buffeted them, a blistering breeze forcing their eyes to close in defense, sending their hair flying back away from their faces.

  “Wait for it!” Battista cried, his voice harsh in her ear, hands tensing against her. Aurelia’s eyes crossed as she watched the two openings draw together.

  “Almost ... almost ... now!”

  Her body lurched; he shoved her forward from a half step behind. Aurelia’s body moved faster than her feet and they tangled in her skirt, fabric tearing with a rasping rip, pulling her down, and Battista with her. She cried out in pain as he landed on top of her, her healing left arm crushed beneath.

  Battista rolled off, but she could not rise, could only curl into a ball as she tucked the throbbing limb to her.

  “Dio mio,” Battista cursed, “I am sorry, so very sorry.”

  Aurelia shook her head, biting back the sob of pain clamoring for release. “It is not your fault, Battista, but mine.” She turned round and sat, still clutching her arm in her lap. “Or rather these damned skirts.”

  Battista’s mouth formed a perfect O. “I have never heard you curse, Monna Aurelia,” he teased her with a smirk.

  She managed a pale imitation of it, no more.

  “Give me those damn skirts.” He reached beneath the top layer of muslin and grabbed onto her chemise, the torn opaque fabric hanging offensively. With one hard tug, he finished detaching what had already unraveled with the fall. With his teeth and his hands, he created wide strips of cloth and proceeded to wrap one piece around her wrist; tying the other into a loop, he reached out to sling it about her shoulders.

  “No.” She held him with her good hand. “I cannot continue so encumbered. The wrapping will have to do.”

  Battista eyed her skeptically. “Very well,” he acquiesced, tucking the remainder of the fabric into the satchel slung upon his back.

  Sitting back on his knees, he studied her. “For all your pain, my lady, you truly grow more splendid with every step we take.”

  Aurelia tipped her head at him. “There is no nee—”

  “No.” He stopped her with a raised hand and a puzzled look. “I do not mean it as cajolery. You’re changing, I vow. You are becoming more ethereal with every step we take.”

  Aurelia bit her lip and swallowed hard, forcing a smile. “You grow more tired and fearful,” she quipped with forced gaiety. “It is naught but the extreme circumstances of our situation.”

  “No,” he said again. “I would swe—”

  But Aurelia allowed him no further discourse, struggling to gain her feet, knowing he would stop to help her. Together they stood, clothing drenched, pupils reduced to pinpoints in the brightness, and surveyed their surroundings.

  Beyond the swirling lights, the room opened to another flight of stairs. Aurelia rushed to and onto them, leaving behind the penetrating discussion.

  With each step, the blazing light grew brighter, scorching a harsh, painful glare upon their eyes. Battista rummaged in his rucksack, pulling out more of her chemise, tearing it once more into strips. Holding her with a hand, he wrapped one thin layer around her eyes, the other about his own, creating a thin buffer between their eyes and the glare, without diminishing their vision. Sight protected, they continued on, rounding the spiral staircase, reaching another landing.

  “Not again,” Battista grumbled, shoulders slumping, as they examined their environment.

  They stood in yet another room without an egress, a small chamber of nothing more than two short walls on the sides and one wide wall at the back, another puzzle to solve.

  But even as he moaned against it, his mind chewed upon it. As they inched forward and removed the cloths from their eyes, the details upon the huge back wall revealed themselves.

  Separated into four distinct panels, each panel bore the likeness of the same man, that of Jesus Christ or, at least, what the world accepted as his likeness. A penetrating blue gaze stared at them from a serene and bearded face, smooth and wavy hair curtained the almost-delicate features.

  A decorated tile lay centered on the floor in front of each panel, one all too familiarly etched with the cross and the coil.

  Battista turned to Aurelia, her tanned skin shimmering with the rich amber of a topaz, eyes bright as a fresh meadow, her face set in a bitterly amused mien, a mirror of his own deliberation.

  “A choice must be made,” he said needlessly.

  “It is more than a choice,” she agreed. “It is a test.”

  “A test?”

  “Sì.” She inched closer to the etchings and he followed. “A test of faith.”

  Larger than life, the figure at the forefront of the pictures towered above them; they bent their necks to look up at the identical faces. But the setting of each differed greatly.

  “It is your test,” Aurelia whispered, the hushed words full of demand. “It is not for
me to decide.”

  He scrunched his face at her. “Why not?”

  She placed a hand on his shoulder and the warmth and vitality of it reached deep to his core.

  “This is, ultimately, your journey. It did not begin with me as a part of it. Life puts before each human the tests belonging to each life. Here is one of yours.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but not a sufficient word came forth. She spoke the truth, though how she came by it he could not surmise. Why he believed her he could not understand. It was a spiritual test, and yet he felt as if she tested him as well. Battista stared at Aurelia for a long heartrending moment, astounded and confused by the unfathomable beauty of her, turning away, for she made him long to sob.

  Battista stood before the son of God, all of them, feeling as torn by the visages as by Aurelia. His life had always been a battle between his faith and his fortune, between patriotism and prize. This moment was no different.

  He flitted a glance at Aurelia over his shoulder. He took a step closer to the tiles.

  “Choose not in haste.” Aurelia’s words nipped at his back.

  Battista studied each panel, an eye to every detail. In the first, Jesus wore the best of robes, the fabric thick and heavy with embroidery. Jewels glittered from his fingers and around his neck. Battista walked away from the inaccurate depiction.

  In the next, Jesus was not quite so ostentatiously attired, but behind him stood a thick crowd of men and women, nobles and courtiers without a doubt, their faces hungry and greedy. Battista shook his head at them. Those who stood, literally and metaphorically, behind the prophet were as charitable as he. Never would they wear such avaricious expressions.

  Battista stood before the last two, indecision plaguing both his heart and his mind. In each, Jesus wore simple attire, no jewels adorned his limbs, no finery lay upon his body, the differences arose in the background alone. In one, men draped in the robes of priests, cardinals, bishops, and popes surrounded him. In the other, Jesus stood alone.

  The earthly truth—that which Battista had been taught by the nuns and his parents since he could first remember—placed Jesus as the leader of the Church, of the Catholic faith. But Dante’s words echoed to Battista, those nearly memorized during the days and nights spent poring over the Commedia, leaving him confused and irresolute at the depth of meaning behind the words. Dante’s Paradise overflowed with admonishments heaped upon the clergy, damning them for the deterioration of the Church, condemning them for their greed and avarice, a scathing commentary renouncing monasteries as “dens of thieves.”

  Battista looked back at Aurelia, and though he saw confidence in her soft expression, he found no help. Turning forward, giving the two last panels one more quick glance, Battista closed his eyes and listened to his heart.

  It came to him, the truth of all mankind, no more readily apparent as when Jesus hung on the cross. Battista moved before the solitary image and stepped on the tile.

  With a shudder and a crack, the wall fell away, behind it another staircase heading upward, leading to the heights of Paradise.

  Battista heaved a thankful sigh as he reached back for Aurelia, as her slim hand slipped into his.

  Aurelia pulled him back, just long enough to bend him toward her, rise up on her toes, and kiss his soft cheek. His skin felt warm beneath her lips and she carried it with her as they ascended the first step.

  The stairway was narrow, squishing them together, their outer shoulders brushing the smooth stone as they passed. Their arms swept away the stone dust, sending motes swirling in the luster. The universe revealed itself, freed from its mantle of dirt, the planets etched and stained upon the smooth stone walls.

  As Dante foretold, they climbed through the planets, first the pale moon, then an umber Mercury, and a sapphire Venus. The Sun stood out, bright and golden, followed by a vermillion Mars and a russet-striped Jupiter.

  The stairs narrowed and Battista wiggled in front of Aurelia, stepping onto the first rung of a golden ladder scaling upward as the stairs ended. Aurelia followed, her legs quivering as she scaled each rung, moist hands slipping on the rails as she pulled herself aloft.

  “Are you all right?”

  Above her, Battista held upon a rung, one crooked elbow holding him on to a rail as he leaned backward, looking down at her.

  Grateful for even a moment’s pause, Aurelia pushed back the thick strands of russet hair plastered to her head, drenched with sweat. Her forehead crinkled in exertion. “I am doing the bes—”

  Mouth agape, eyes big and white, his sudden expression of shock and wonder nipped off her words.

  “Aurelia, look!” He raised a finger to the passage left behind. “It’s ...”

  She turned in the silence of his unfinished articulation.

  Images of the planets they’d passed now hovered in the narrow stair passage, their forms somehow projected in the air by the light. In the dimensional illusion, the images circled one another in the air, creating a universe in the space where the stairs had been, as if their own passage—the addition of human energy—had brought the images to life.

  “Benedicimi,” Aurelia breathed as she turned.

  Battista could not speak, could not tell her that he, too, felt blessed. He dared not speak or move, for fear the apparition would dissipate. He unfurled his arm, leaned farther back, longing to draw as close to it as he could, to a beauty of such consequence he could hurl himself into it, live forever among it.

  “We must continue, Battista,” Aurelia urged.

  In her voice he heard his own longing to linger, but recognized the imperative as truth.

  With far more than a twinge of regret, Battista turned back to the ladder, placed his hands upon the rail, and began the climb again.

  They had but a little farther to go, their panting breath loud and harsh, their movements slowing with each tread. Ahead of her, Battista hurtled over the last rung, turned, and reached out a hand to pull her up and beside him, holding her there for a moment, resting in her arms.

  Aurelia fell into him—as she would plunge into warm, buoyant water—but for no more than an instant. She looked up at him with a mixture of yearning and vigilance.

  “We have reached the end, Battista,” she said, eyes skidded from his.

  They were indeed at the top; no roof hovered above their heads, only an infinite sky ablaze with stars. No walls rose up to enclose them, only a low parapet, distant corner turrets, hemmed them in.

  Unlike the floors below, evening’s darkness shrouded this rooftop. Two lit torches flanked their point of egress, and Battista pulled one from its wall mount and held it before them as they looked around. A dazzling glimmer at their feet drew Battista’s gaze away.

  “It cannot be,” he mumbled as he first bent, then squatted, closer to the floor.

  It began as only a trickle, a tiny thread running from their feet and away, the squiggle of it expanding as it went. Their gaze followed it, wide eyes growing wider as the stream stretched away, as it ended in a pool. No more than three feet above the pool, a painting rested on a tall, wood easel.

  “Is it ... ?” Aurelia croaked.

  “I cannot tell.” Battista squinted.

  It was a painting, indeed, and the rectangular shape was the same size and formation as the other two. She could make out no more than the silhouette of a lone figure upon the canvas, the shape curvaceous, with long flowing hair. Any more she could not perceive, but she did not need to.

  It was the last piece of the triptych, indisputably, and yet the full force of Battista’s attention lingered on the stream of light at his feet.

  “Gold. It looks like a river of gold,” he whispered as he bent farther still. “ ‘He triumphs in his victory; he who is the keeper of gold.’ ”

  Aurelia heard Battista mumble the words of Dante—with the voice that had become their driving force—once more in the air.

  Circling round, positioning himself between the inception of the stream and the painting, B
attista dropped to one knee, bent at the waist, and reached out the torch closer to the glistening trickle, eyes squinting with the effort to see it better.

  Aurelia’s fingers dug in his shoulder. “Stop, Battista! Do not—”

  Too late. His cuffed hand moved, tipping the torch over and down, the flame no more than inches from the stream ... one lick dripping out ... and lapping at it.

  Thirty

  The night that hides things from us

  —Paradiso

  The river exploded, the fire stampeding along the course of gold.

  The whoosh of scalding air pummeled them, heat displacing it in crashing waves, knocking them onto their backs. Battista’s skin burned with pinpricks of pain. The ferocious propulsion set him flying backward, head bouncing on the hard stone. His vision popped with black spots and, in between, Aurelia’s face, two of them.

  He shook his head to clear it even as the force continued to propel him backward, skittering across smooth stone. But his vision did not clear; the mirage of the two Aurelias did not dissolve.

  The fire hissed as it snacked along the room, crossing the passage, careening toward the pool at the foot of the painting.

  “No!” Battista shouted, wobbling to his feet, stumbling toward the flames. The fire could not reach the canvas, could not set it ablaze. He would throw himself upon it if he must. But equilibrium eluded him; he staggered about like a drunkard.

  “Aurelia?” he cried out, but no more than the wisp of his name did he hear in return, the sound diluted beneath the plangent rustle of the fire, so faint it may have existed only in his mind.

  The flame was no more than an inch from the puddle, and he lunged forward, reaching out, as did the fire.

  The pool of gold burst, as if the heavens themselves exploded.