by Kate Quinn
“I changed the menu,” he said. “The stew will hold for tomorrow. Tonight we’re to serve salted ox tongue, a fish pie flavored with oranges, nutmeg, and dates—what are you scowling for, signorina?” He took the time to rap out a series of orders to the undercooks, letting me see how they hopped to his words like frogs, and then looked down at me with guileless innocence. “You left me in charge of the kitchens. How was I to know you didn’t want me changing the menu?”
“If you think for one moment I will allow an apprentice to change a menu without consultation—”
Yes, definitely enough pensive maundering for one day. My father was dead, and whether I could manage to grieve for him or not, I’d say prayers for his soul and more prayers for the fact that I was now likely safe—safe from discovery, safe from everything. But prayers could wait. For now, I had an apprentice to murder.
Leonello
Bloodshed made beautiful—I could think of no other words for it as I watched Cesare Borgia bring his sword down in one massive hewing sweep and lop a bull’s head half off its body. I had never cared for bullfighting, nor for cockfights, dogfights, or the baiting of bears, but the Pope’s son made this hideous dance of death into a thing of marvelous grace.
He hewed the bull’s head off in two more strokes. The beast continued to stumble toward him for an instant , as though determined to catch the young Cardinal even as its head tumbled onto the stones. Then the massive body crashed in a spray of bright blood, and Cesare put a boot to the great horned head with its glazing eyes and raised his sword for applause. His eyes glittered, his impassive mask cracked into a grin, and as applause roared around the piazza, he swept a cocky bow. Burly servants in the Borgia mulberry and yellow rushed out to drag the fallen bull away on hooks, and Cesare Borgia tossed his bloodied sword aside in a careless rattle and vaulted in one lithe motion up to the temporary dais where his sister and the other ladies sat in a flutter of veils and velvets. I had a place there too, though no one would notice my small dark figure amid all the radiance that was the Pope’s concubine, daughter, and daughter-in-law.
“Another bull!” Cardinal Borgia called, and Lucrezia struck him on the arm with her fan.
“You’ll be gored, Cesare. Two bulls aren’t enough for you?”
“Nothing is enough for your brother,” Sancha purred, arching her throat.
“At least you make it quick for the poor bulls,” Giulia said, and the ladies all made room as Cesare flung himself down in a chair among them, calling for wine. Christmas and all its festivities had passed and the year turned; the sky was steel-gray above and breath puffed white on the air, but Cesare Borgia had declared himself in need of celebration and announced a bullfight. Bullfights were not such a common thing in Rome—“More Spanish oddities!”—but that did not stop the city’s idlers from packing into the Piazza San Pietro to watch.
“Why not the Colosseum instead?” I’d suggested. “We could kill prisoners instead of bulls; hark back to Imperial Rome instead of Spain. Far more civilized!” But the ancient Colosseum was a wreck of crumbling stone, and so the Piazza San Pietro was fitted with temporary wooden seats and a chute and transformed into an arena.
“A bullfight in honor of Our son-in-law,” the Pope had said expansively, clapping the new-returned Lord Sforza on the shoulder. “To celebrate his return to Us from his soldiers.”
“If he thinks we missed him,” Cesare said indifferently, not bothering to whisper, and the Count of Pesaro swelled in outrage before his little wife whispered quick assurances in his ear. Lucrezia had smiled at her brother behind her husband’s back, though, and even now Lord Sforza sat swamped in all the feminine flurry, bad-tempered and flushed and overlooked. Lucrezia’s husband was guest of honor, but no one had eyes for anyone but Cesare, who had stripped out of his doublet after the very first fight and taken on the next bull himself.
“A splendid fight,” I said as the young Cardinal tossed down a cup of wine. “To kill a bull with a sword and on foot—tricky.” The flamboyant rejonear had killed the first bull from the safety of horseback, pricking it to death with the long lance, but that was too dull and safe for Cesare, who had thrown himself against the huge snorting beasts on foot, and with nothing but a sword. “And only three strokes to sever the neck. I congratulate you.”
“To sever a man’s neck is near as hard.” The January day was cold, but Cesare seemed oblivious, lounging back in his half-unlaced shirt with his dark auburn hair tumbled about the faint dent of a tonsure, and his breath puffing white on the air. “I think because men struggle harder than bulls when it comes to dying.”
“And women?” I asked. “How do they struggle?”
He grinned. “Just like they struggle beneath you in a bed.”
The bloody stones were swept below for the next match. Giulia sat wrapped in a sable cloak, her bright hair shining above the dark fur like a gold coin, while Lucrezia had tucked a dutiful hand through her husband’s arm but leaned close to Sancha on her other side, whispering. Sancha was ignoring Joffre and casting her eyes at Cesare, but her gaze flickered briefly to me, and I made sure to blow her a kiss. She hissed at me and flounced her attention in the other direction, slapping Joffre’s hand away as he tried to catch her eyes.
Cesare noted her glance at me. “Don’t tell me my brother’s wife has granted you her favors, dwarf?”
Favors? Not really. Sancha of Aragon had greedily run her hands over my body for a little while, savoring its oddities, and had allowed me a little exploration of her luscious one—and then she’d laughed her nasty laugh and shoved me away, just as I’d thought she might. She then got quite peevish when I didn’t curse or groan or grovel for her favors, but merely straightened my doublet, swept her an elaborate bow, and strolled away whistling. What an array of gutter curses to fall from the lips of a king’s daughter! “The Princess of Squillace enjoys variety,” I said blandly.
“She does,” Cesare agreed, unoffended. He did not seem to care one whit that he had shared Sancha with half of Rome including both of his own brothers, but then, he didn’t seem to care one whit about any woman at all except perhaps his sister. Sancha was pouting her lips at him, but he dismissed her from his notice as though she’d been a lapdog wiggling for his attention.
“Your Eminence appears cheerful,” I observed as he stretched in his chair like a lithe-bodied cat. Usually his moods rose no further than a studied neutrality. “What might the cause be? Have the French captured our good Duke of Gandia?”
“That would be cause for a ball, not a bullfight,” Cesare said. “I’ve had word, however, that he has been wounded at Soriano. A very slight wound, but to the face.”
“Tragic when a young man must lose his beauty,” I intoned.
Cesare’s eyes gleamed. “Tragic.”
“And after Bracciano . . .” The Duke of Gandia had enjoyed a few easy victories late in the year, but the fortress of Bracciano had proved a harder nut for his forces. Cesare Borgia’s control over his expressions was normally perfect, but I’d seen him turn abruptly to the wall to hide his dancing eyes from the Holy Father when news came that the defenders at Bracciano had returned Juan’s offer of peace by way of a mule with a placard about its neck jeering I am the ambassador of the Duke of Gandia, and a very rude letter indeed stuffed under its tail. I wished I’d been there to see young Juan’s face.
“Nevertheless,” I continued, propping my boots on the same table with Cesare’s, “I hear the Duke is to take his forces to march against the French in Ostia next.”
Cesare’s smile disappeared. “He is.”
“I hear Your Eminence begged the Holy Father for that command instead.”
“A caesar does not beg,” Cesare Borgia said, “nor do I.”
“I hear otherwise.” The fight between His Holiness and His Holiness’s most unholy of sons had gone on behind closed doors, but both men had emerged with white furious faces. Perhaps that was why the Holy Father had declined to join us for this afternoon�
�s bullfights.
“It’s a slight against me,” the Count of Pesaro had said tightly at the Pope’s absence.
“Really, husband,” Lucrezia had said in a tart voice. “Not everything is aimed at you. Slights or honors.”
“I’m glad you’re not taking the army to Ostia.” Sancha had aimed her hot whisper into Cesare’s ear. “I’d rather you were in my bed.”
“Oh Holy Virgin,” Giulia groaned to me privately. “Listen to them all!”
“I try not to.”
A roar from the crowd around the improvised ranks of stands, and I looked up to see that another bull had been released into the piazza. The creature tossed its great horns, snorting and raking its hooves, and I saw Lucrezia cast a sidelong glance at her husband. “Do you want to face this one, my lord?” she said, wide-eyed. “Bulls are no match for the men in my family. Why do you think we have one as our emblem?”
I wondered if anyone else thought it odd that Cesare Borgia should slaughter bulls with such gusto when his own father was both a Borgia bull and (in Giulia’s fond little blasphemy) a papal bull . . .
“I am a Sforza,” the Count of Pesaro said stiffly. “A serpent is our emblem.”
“Then we’ll find you a serpent to fight.” Cesare flicked his wine cup aside, rising. “A little grass snake, perhaps. That shouldn’t offer too much of a challenge for you.”
Lord Sforza reddened, opening his mouth and then shutting it again. His eyes flicked at the bull, now raking savagely at the stones with huge hooves, and he sank a little deeper into his chair.
“I don’t mind taking on another,” Cesare shrugged. “A good kill clears the head, and my head needs clearing.”
“You should stick to killing whores, Your Eminence,” I said in a low, clear voice. “Less dangerous than bulls, surely.”
Lord Sforza was hissing at his wife and Sancha was eavesdropping on them without shame; Giulia was trying her futile best to smooth things over, and the crowds were roaring at the sight of their Pope’s son on his feet again. Only Cesare had heard my words, and he looked down at me without speaking.
I don’t know why I said it. Cesare Borgia and I had been dancing about my private obsession for years—and in latter months, when I’d believed I must be wrong about him, I’d nearly dropped it altogether. Why challenge him now?
Perhaps because Sancha told me another woman had died, another victim after all this time, and I would rather end this game of cat and mouse than wait for even one more death to provide me clues. Perhaps because the young Cardinal seemed in an expansive mood for once, expansive enough to be loose-lipped. Perhaps because I was tired of the game, and after so many hours of wondering I just wanted to know who had killed my friend Anna.
Or perhaps because I simply preferred the baiting of murderers to the baiting of bulls.
But for whatever reason the words were out. Cesare Borgia looked down at me, and I gazed levelly back at him.
“Are you hinting at something, little lion man?” His voice was mild.
“Why, yes. I am.” If today was to be the day, so be it. I’d lay my cards on the table, and I’d either get the truth or get a knife in my throat. One or the other, I felt certain—because I did not think Cesare Borgia would lie to me.
“Out with it, dwarf,” he said to me. “Whatever it is you’re thinking. I don’t like hints.”
“A woman named Anna died in this city some four years ago,” I stated. “Her hands knifed to a table, her throat opened by a masked man from the Borgia household. That I know, because I killed the men who helped him. But he went on alone after that, and killed five more women over the years, one of them with a dagger identified as yours. That one you’re wearing now, with the sapphire in the hilt.” I took a breath. “I think if I ever saw the murderer of those women take his mask off, I would see Your Eminence’s face.”
I thought my hands would be trembling if I ever said those words. I thought my heart would be racing, my palms sweating and my words cracking from a dry throat. But I felt nothing, sitting there with my boots propped on a table and my head tilted back to look Cesare Borgia in the eye—nothing, that is, but excitement.
“The odd thing is,” I added, “I don’t know how you did it. At least one of those deaths happened when you were occupied at the Vatican, soothing your Holy Father over La Bella’s abduction. I don’t know how you managed that one. But you did. Maybe you succeeded in being in two places at once. Maybe you really are the Devil, Eminence.”
“You think the Devil would bother killing common whores?” Cesare seemed more amused than angry. “Why would a cardinal bother, for that matter?”
“I think you have dark moods, Your Eminence, that only blood satisfies.”
“Do you not have such moods yourself?”
“I do. But I don’t kill women to purge them.”
Giulia was looking over her shoulder at me now. I saw her frown from the corner of my vision, but I could not look at her. I could not look at anything but those bottomless Borgia eyes.
“Follow me,” said Cesare, “and I will give you your answer.”
His boots made a crunch as he jumped down from the makeshift dais into the arena. I rose to follow him, and Giulia Farnese gasped, leaning forward to seize my arm. “Leonello, what are you—”
I planted a great loud smack of a kiss right at the corner of her mouth, giving a grin as her hand released my sleeve. “If a man’s about to die, he should get to kiss a beautiful woman first,” I said with a comic waggle of my eyebrows. “Even a dwarf!” I dashed a salute off to the whole company at large, and a heartbeat later my boots crunched as I swung myself over the railing and strode into the arena after Cesare Borgia.
The crowd must have roared again, but I did not hear it. I only heard the steady thumping of my own heart as I stood at Cesare Borgia’s side. He retrieved the bloodied sword from his expressionless man-at-arms Michelotto, as I reached for my own weapons. I had a full set of ten throwing knives: finest Toledo steel with intricate damascened hilts, ranging from the long dagger at my waist to the little inch-long blades that could be tucked inside a wrist cuff. Presented to me as a gift from Cesare Borgia, when he first hired me as bodyguard to his father’s mistress. I reached for the pair of blades tucked in my boots, and I had six inches of gleaming Spanish steel in each hand. My wounds from the French had left me with more lingering aches and pains than I used to endure, but my feet were still fleet—and my four-fingered hand could throw knives as fast as ever.
Across the arena, the bull raised its huge baleful head at us.
“Bulls are quicker than they look,” said Cesare, conversationally, as though we sat idling over a chessboard. “Don’t retreat backward when he comes at you. Dodge sideways instead.”
“Noted,” I said, and we split away, one to each side, as the bull came for us in a rush of hooves. It turned for Cesare, a storm of death behind two vast horns, and as the Pope’s son melted to one side like a lithe shadow, I gave a shout and sent one of my blades winging into the bull’s rippling slab of a shoulder.
Surely only a pinprick to a maddened beast, but a pinprick it felt. The bull whirled, quicker than a cat as it thundered toward me, and distantly I could hear the crowd screaming at me to run, run, but I did not want to run. I wanted to fight. I bounced on my toes, feeling the blood rush in my ears, and perhaps I was a liar all those years when I said I didn’t tumble, because I dived to one side as neatly as though I’d been tumbling all my life. I felt a reminiscent ache from the wound a French pike-man had given my shoulder, but the pain seemed very distant.
Among the roaring of the crowd I heard a woman’s cry from the dais as the bull missed me by inches, one massive hoof clipping down beside my shoulder. Perhaps Giulia; she was surely the only one watching who cared even remotely if a bull trampled me to death. She’d tasted like sweet honey and cool water; not a bad taste at all to die on. From everyone else in the stands around her, I heard roars of laughter. A dwarf taking on a bull; wh
at could be funnier than that?
I’d already taken on a bull, though, with the words I’d thrown down on the dais. And of the two bulls, the one without horns was the one to fear.
“Did those girls die hard?” I called out to Cesare Borgia as he whipped in shadow-quick to open a slash across the bull’s haunch with his sword. “I know the first girl fought; I found blood under her nails.” The bull turned on Cesare, roaring as blood sprayed from its haunch, and now it was my turn to distract it as Cesare dodged sideways. “Was it your blood?” I sent another finger knife whipping through the winter light into the bull’s shoulder.
“No.” Cesare rolled, came to his feet with auburn hair flying, swept in again with his sword as the bull turned between us, maddened. “No woman’s ever scratched me except in passion.”
“Was it about passion?” I waited this time until the bull was nearly on me before I flung myself to the side. There was a rhythm to this, a rhythm I felt in my thumping blood. “Did you take them first willing, then kill them for pleasure?”
“My pleasure in women ends when the seed spills.” Cesare Borgia opened the bull’s other flank that time, with a casual sweep of his arm. “That’s all they’re good for.”
I thought of Giulia Farnese’s myriad kindnesses; of the sweetness Anna had showed me when she smiled. “You are wrong.”
“Am I?”
My next knife missed, but the bull turned toward me with a roar anyway. “Why leave your dagger with the fourth victim, Eminence? Carelessness?” Not that, I already knew. Cesare Borgia was never careless. “Amusement?” A very black amusement indeed, to challenge all Rome to attach such deeds to his name. “Arrogance?” I dropped into another neat tumble almost under the bull’s hooves, and it occurred to me that I was the arrogant one here. All Cesare Borgia had to do to kill me, and my theories with me, was stand back and let the bull trample me to death.
