The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  Aurelia surrendered to the warmth of the sun as it crested the horizon, born of another day; she capitulated her being to the chirping birds, the gurgle of the small fountain, the air replete with all that was earthy and blooming, fresh and redolent. Droning insects buzzed near and past her, caressing wind flowed over her, and she became of her surroundings, no longer merely in them.

  “Why do you cry, Aurelia?”

  Battista’s soft hush pulled her back to the physical world.

  Aurelia blinked, returning to the earth, standing in the center of the small courtyard of Battista’s home.

  She raised a hand to her cheek, slim brows rising upon her freckled forehead as it came away moist.

  “I did not know I did,” she replied.

  He stepped closer and she drank of his face: the small but full curled mouth, the narrow but angled soft eyes, the sharp planes of a face both hard and tender. Would she see it again, after today? She loathed not having the answer.

  Battista stepped one foot on each side of hers, lowered his long body, and slithered it against her as he wrapped his arms across the small of her back, the graceful move of a sensual lover. Her body weakened against the force of it and she dropped her forehead onto his chest, the linen soft and the flesh firm.

  “Why do you cry?” he asked again.

  Aurelia shook her head against him but could not speak; to say the words would make them real.

  Battista heaved a sigh; his chest rose beneath her, the air, so harshly exhaled, fluttered against her head.

  “The time has come for you to leave.”

  Half a question, half a denouncement; she denied neither.

  “Yes.” She lifted her gaze to his face. “In a few hours, perhaps less.”

  Battista frowned, puzzled, but shook it away. “You could stay here, Aurelia.”

  “Battista, do no—”

  “You could stay here and still serve your duty.” He rushed out his plea, allowing no argument, pulling her closer, crushing the air from her lungs with insistence. “You could stay, here with me. I know we may never marry. I know we could not bear children. But I would gladly sacrifice all to keep you with me.”

  He leaned down, tipping his head to the right, right beside hers. Another piece of Aurelia’s heart cracked at the look upon features grown so dear, where despair and hope mingled tenderly. Aurelia reached out to stroke his tawny skin; she meant to placate and he continued to refute it.

  “I could protect you. I could ensure your safety and help you, as surely as the Mantuan does.”

  There it was, the name rose up from out of the ground, a thick vine to separate them.

  Aurelia closed her eyes, tenebrous brown with sadness. “The guardians must live a sequestered life. If any learned who they were, who they loved, it would be used against—”

  “I would not tell a soul.” Battista flapped his hand at the opened door at his back and the men who had gathered in his home, drawn there once more, as their days and their lives returned to something resembling normalcy.

  The men had offered little in the way of recriminations, though she and Battista had fully expected it, fully anticipated them to grouse and question the losses, not only of any hope of finding the relic, but all three pieces of the triptych as well. Battista had blamed destruction by fire, a truth maligned by his failure to include their part in it. Only the loss of Ercole tainted the mission as a true forfeit, his life taken for the sake of an unsuccessful quest. But loss was inevitable, no matter the course of life, as the passing of Lucagnolo’s wife showed them. These men had learned much through these hard days.

  Aurelia smiled as the sounds of their antics flowed out into the courtyard—the shuffle of cards, the affectionate chiding between men who cared for one another.

  And yet she could not accept Battista’s offer. “I believe you, Battista. And I believe in you. But we can never know who may come into our lives. We could never know how to trust those who learn of my truth.” She splayed her hands upon his chest with a slow to-and-fro of her head, heavy with the profundity of her existence. “The kind of power I guard is poisonous. It creates monsters out of the most commendable of souls. It is a virulent disease. Even your men could be weak to it.”

  Battista pushed her away, face cross and shadowed, as he stepped back toward the house. “No, you know not of what you speak. These men are pure of spirit. I know it. I know it as surely as I know how desperately I love you.”

  He turned back, his own fruitless argument slumping his shoulders, dropping his chin upon his chest.

  Aurelia rushed to his side, taking his hands and holding them against her chest. She longed to fly away if she could, end this parting and spare him the pain of it. “They are all good men, Battista, I do know. As good and true as you.”

  As if the men heard her commendation, a great ruckus arose, voices lifted in what seemed tomfoolery, but the tattered croak of fear and alarm named its truth.

  Battista’s eyes narrowed, his head perking at the sound. Aurelia heard it for the warning it was.

  “Battista! Make haste!” more than one man cried out.

  Battista and Aurelia turned together, rushing forward and into the house.

  The front door and windows stood open, shutters thrown wide. Men jostled one another to glimpse whatever took place beyond.

  Frado scurried away from the door, rushing across the room at them, round cheeks splotched red, bald pate gleaming with a sheen of sweat.

  “Florence is under siege!” he cried.

  “No!” Ascanio and Lucagnolo refuted together.

  As Ascanio stepped from the door, the parade of the armed rushed by. But not a soldier marched among them. Instead, the streets overflowed with their neighbors, Mario of the haberdashery, Lucrezia from the flower shop, and more, hundreds of them.

  Like a rushing river tumultuous with fish, the crowd swept past them, anger and determination upon their brows, chants of revolt upon their tongues.

  “To arms! To arms!” they cried, fisted hands pumping the air above their heads.

  Men and women of all ages brandished weapons: swords, daggers, and bows, even a few of the costly archibugi, the deadly muzzles stabbing the sky.

  “Guns! Guns to the people!” Voices rose up in adjuration. “Florence belongs to the people!”

  “They’re headed for the Palazzo Vecchio!” Barnabeo cried, so fierce in the throes of revolt his squeaking voice became shrill. “Get to your weapons!” He pulled his own sword, forever by his side, from its scabbard and entered the fray.

  “Wait for us!” Lucagnolo cried as he and Frado flew up the stairs, returning in seconds, Frado with a crossbow, Lucagnolo with a sword.

  “We will go first to your home,” Lucagnolo proclaimed to Ascanio with incitement, then pointed to Pompeo. “And then to yours.”

  The four men rushed to the door. Last in line, foot upon the threshold, Ascanio came up short and quick, head spinning round. Handsome face aflame, his eyes jumped from Battista to Aurelia, no words upon his tongue, naught more than a fearful expression upon his noble features.

  “Go along, Ascanio,” Aurelia urged him on, holding on tightly to composure in the face of this moment as best she could. “Battista will find you in time.”

  “What?” Ascanio asked with an awkward tilt of his head, a puckered, perplexed brow.

  Her self-possession broke and she rushed across the room, throwing her arms around the man’s neck as he looked over her head at Battista in confusion.

  “Tell the others to be safe. Tell them ... tell them I will never forget them, not a one.”

  “Come on, Ascanio!”

  The cry reached them from the street, and Ascanio’s arms answered her embrace. She pushed him away and out the door, slamming it closed behind him.

  “I need only a moment, Battista.” Aurelia rushed past him and up the stairs.

  In Battista’s room—for she had made it her own since their return—she stood in the center, pulled in al
l directions. There were so many memories, so many things that held them; she knew not what to take and what to leave.

  In the end, she grabbed only one gown, the same she had worn the first night they had made love, in the small room over Michelangelo’s study. Rolling it into a ball, she pushed it into her small rucksack and, with it, a golden stone she had picked up in the caves, a seagull feather from the shore, and the small dagger, the one Battista had insisted she keep. They were naught but silliness, but they were her most cherished possessions.

  Flinging the bag over her shoulder, she ran down the stairs, back into the room where Battista awaited.

  He had armed himself in her absence; a long, fine sword now hung by his side.

  “I am ready, Battista.” She took his hand, rising on toes to sweep his cheek with a quick kiss, and pulled him toward the door.

  But he would not be pulled; he jerked her back with his immobility alone.

  “You must tell me all you know.” It was a demand, and one he had every right to, but she could not appease him.

  Aurelia turned, cleansing her face of all emotion, for it was no longer a time when their cares, wants, and desires had any precedence.

  “You must get me back to Mantua.” An emotionless, strident declaration. “Get me back to Mantua, then return here to your duties. It is time.”

  Battista winced, eyes rolling, hands fisting, shoulders creeping up. She pushed his patience with her baffling nature, perhaps one too many times. But it could not be otherwise.

  “We must go, Battista!” she demanded of him harshly, though the taste of it was putrid upon her tongue.

  He gave way then, looking none too pleased, and followed her out into the streets. The wide avenue continued to boil with those who would take it back from the Medici. It took many minutes to calm her and Battista’s skittish horses, to pacify them enough to mount. Battista pulled on his reins, pointed his mount to the north.

  “To Michelangelo’s first,” Aurelia said, heading in the opposite direction. “We must warn him.”

  With a hard click of his tongue and a squeeze of his heels, Battista followed.

  “You must tell me, Aurelia,” he called out as he pulled alongside, staring at her with feverish eyes, leaning out of his saddle toward her. “You must tell me what I am to do.”

  She heard his doubt then. He would answer the call to duty, as he always had, but for once fearful that he would not do the right thing.

  Aurelia smiled at him, the best she could muster on the eve of their parting. “You will do what you are meant to do. Have no fear, amore mio.”

  Battista heaved a sigh of surrender, but not without his own smile. Moving in the opposite direction of the crowds, they galloped quickly to the shadow of the imposing San Lorenzo and to Michelangelo’s house beside it.

  “Michelangelo!”

  Aurelia jumped from her horse as Battista called his friend’s name and tied both horses to the bollard near the door. She entered without a knock, rushing up the stairs to the studio above.

  “What madness prevails?”

  The spare man looked ever more thin and fragile as he stood in the window, the sun’s bright light devouring him, diminishing him still further.

  “It is the madness we have hoped for, amico mio.” Battista strode to his side, scanning the view as Michelangelo did, from the gabled windows.

  They could not see the Piazza della Signoria from this vantage point, but they could see smoke, tendrils of it rising black and accusatory into the bright blue sky. They could see people rushing from the homes and shops of the neighborhood, all converging toward the same apex. Michelangelo pushed at the sash and the righteous, determined sounds of a people united rose up in a chorus, a loud prayer to the heavens, one screaming for justice and fairness, for the people and the Republic.

  The clang of the bell called them out, deep and dark, La Vacca, the cow. It sang only in times of great trouble; it called the people to its tower in the piazza and they rushed to it.

  “La Vacca mugghia!” they cried to each other, the warning inherent in the seemingly innocuous expression. “The cow lows!”

  “You must—,” Battista began.

  “You must make your way to the piazza, Michelangelo,” Aurelia commanded.

  “What? No!” Battista turned, angry at the dangerous suggestion.

  She laid a hand on his arm. “He will be all right, Battista. I swear to you.” Aurelia turned back to the artist standing between them, turmoil cutting a deep swath in his wrinkled forehead. “There is much to protect in the piazza, much that you care about.”

  Michelangelo’s eyes protruded.

  “My Giant,” he breathed.

  The door below crashed open.

  “Michelangelo!” the beckoning cry rose up.

  The older man smiled through his fear. “It is Granacci. I will be safe with Granacci, amico karissimo.”

  Battista’s worried gaze lingered upon the man, but for only a moment. If Michelangelo’s oldest friend did not keep him well, then no one could. Battista gave Michelangelo a nod, pulling him back, devouring him in a bear hug, before letting him go once more.

  The artist rushed off, almost passed her by, almost. Michelangelo pulled himself up short, turning with the saddest smile Aurelia had ever glimpsed. Her breath hitched in her chest.

  “I will not see you again, will I?” The thought dawned fretfully upon him.

  She shook her head, trying so very hard to smile, not daring to speak.

  Michelangelo crushed her to him. His arms quivered as they held her. The muscles, so very sinewy from years of plying hammer and chisel, latched about her body.

  Aurelia grabbed onto him as if she held on to life itself.

  “You were with me on that scaffold, donna mia,” his harsh voice slipped in as a whisper in her ear, words spoken for her and her alone, words of adoration and devotion. “You will be with me forever.”

  “Of all that is wrong in what I have done”—her voice cracked upon the words, at the emotions so potently close to the surface—“I would do it all again to have met you.”

  They separated, not either happily, and she found her own bitter sweetness there upon his face. With a shoo of her hands, she impelled him, “Hurry now, Michelangelo.”

  With one last look at her, a quick smile for Battista, the artist ran from the room, down the stairs, and into the street, taking up the cry of his friends and his heart.

  “Popolo, libertà! The people, liberty!”

  The afternoon waned as they galloped through the countryside, the hard, quick thudding of the hooves like the beats of their hearts. They found but a little ease from the heat as they crossed through the forest leading to the edge of Mantua. They took not a moment’s respite; too much urgency hung thick in the air.

  As they crested the last rise, Aurelia pulled hard on her horse. “Stop here, Battista.”

  He reeled as he pulled back and around, his horse bucking at the harsh command. His dark eyes frowned at her as she leaped from her horse, ran to his, and pulled on the bridle.

  “You cannot be captured, Battista. It is imperative you return to Florence.” Looking up, Aurelia thought he would argue, but she saw only jaundiced acceptance.

  Without a word, he jumped from his saddle, dropped the reins from his hands, and yanked her into his arms. Battista hurt her with his embrace, but only with loving intent. Aurelia wrapped her arms about his back, fingers digging into his shoulders.

  Their love was a brutal thing, painful by its very nature, and yet more beautiful than anything they had ever known.

  Aurelia leaned back; she would have one last look at him, one last moment to memorize his dearness.

  Battista smiled at her in understanding; he lowered his mouth and for a stolen moment, as birds twittered around them, as wind soughed through the leaves above them, he paid homage to her with his lips.

  With a grunt, or was it a sob, from deep in his throat, he pulled away, setting her at arm’s
length.

  “I will be back,” he said, and jumped upon his horse, setting it to motion with a harsh “heeya.”

  Aurelia waved, even as she lost sight of him in the sea of trees.

  Thirty-five

  The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

  —Paradiso

  The maid hovered and twirled about her mistress, a lovely lark flitting about the resplendent flower, finishing the last touches of the intricate plaits, wrapping the copper tresses about the head and pinning them in place. The young girl, her own hair hidden beneath her starched white wimple, smiled with self-satisfied pleasure at her own artistry. As Teofila placed the jeweled net gingerly upon Aurelia’s coiffure, clipping it together at the nape of her mistress’s neck, she beamed.

  “There.” Teofila clucked, stepping back to admire her work from a distance. “You look quite lovely, Donna Aurelia. Your gown is perfect, your hair just so. Even those indecent freckles have all faded away. Your skin is as perfectly pale as when you left.”

  Her maid’s words brought her round, brought Aurelia from passive tolerance to troubled awareness. She sat upon the embroidered cushion surrounded by all the elegance of her life, the opulence of the Mantua palazzo, feeling no less than a foreigner arrived upon a strange land.

  Aurelia raised her hands to her face, fingers brushing her skin as if to see it with her touch. She was once again fair of face and the fact brought her nothing but sadness. Aurelia released her head into the basket of her hands and squeezed her eyes closed, pinching out a lone soundless tear to slip down her cheek.

  “My lady, mi dispiace molto,” Teofila gasped in horror, never having seen her mistress shed a single tear in all the years she had served her. “I am so very sorry. If I have ... What have I ...”

  Aurelia forced a smile and quickly dashed the offending droplet from her face with the back of her hand. “Nothing, Teofila, you have done nothing to offend. Do not worry yourself. It is but my own silliness, naught more.”