by Kate Quinn
But it wasn’t midnight now, it was bright afternoon and I was elbow deep in almond paste making little biscotti for the choir nuns who were ensconced in the visiting parlors with their noble mothers or sisters or aunts who came to visit, and who of course would expect sweetmeats to be passed through the grilles along with the gossip. Almond paste. I never wanted to see an almond again, and I blew a short curl of hair out of my face with a vicious muttered oath as Suora Teresa came bouncing into the kitchens and told me my cousin had arrived.
“Cousin, eh?” She winked as my skin crawled. “Come all the way from Venice, he says, and he’s a handsome one. Doesn’t look like you, not with that hair, but I won’t tell if he’s not really your cousin. Not if you sneak me some of those biscotti before you take the plate up—”
“As many as you want.” The frightened squeeze of my heart as I thought of bloodied Marco coming to accuse me had eased, only to squeeze up again in an entirely different way. I stripped off my apron and crammed a few frizzy tendrils of hair back under my wimple, emptying half the plate of biscotti into Suora Teresa’s greedy hands and flying up the worn stone steps into the parlor.
A convent parlor is something to make most men profoundly disappointed. Devout men want to see a convent’s nuns praying through the grilles with worldly folk who have come to be enlightened by the balm of holy conversation. Perhaps kneeling in prayer with some courtesan in silk who has come to repent of her sinful life. Or the more worldly men have some vision of nuns meeting lovers through the grilles, passing love notes and locked in salacious embrace. Just how salacious anyone can get with a stout metal grille between them is something that particular fantasy never bothers to explain. In truth, a convent’s parlor looks no different (bars aside) from any cozy gathering of women in an ordinary sala: nobly coiffed and silk-gowned wives with babies on their laps and little girls in tow, bending heads close to their daughters and sisters and aunts who took a holy husband instead of a mortal one, all of them gossiping their heads off. Convent parlors even see a few men: stern fathers like mine who come to make sure rebellious daughters are settling into their vows, young brothers come to tease a favored sister, or even a few of the swaggering monachini: those flashy and bored young gallants who think it great fun to pay court to a pretty nun through the grille. Not that such men ever get very far, at least not in the Convent of San Sisto, where the parlor was presided over by iron-eyed Suora Ursula. Named for a bear and had the temper of one too, and the Bear was casting a great many suspicious glances already at my tall cousin from Venice as he leaned against the grille with his corded arms folded across his chest and a lock of hair falling into his eyes.
“Cousin,” I said, dry-mouthed as I approached the bars.
“Suora Serafina,” Bartolomeo returned gravely, all formality, but his eyes raked me and I had a flush of humiliation. I had not seen him in almost a year. My shins showed below the too-short habit and my hands stuck out bony and chapped from the sleeves. I knew the stark black made me look ugly and sour, and my skin was sun-darkened and wind-hardened after all my hours this winter and spring spading at the stony convent gardens. I felt worn, tired, ill-used and repulsive, at least twice as old as my twenty-six years, and after all his letters I’d wanted him to come, but now I just wished he’d go away again.
“How did you know to ask for me?” I said instead, resisting the urge to tug at the wimple, which squeezed my chin.
“My last two letters addressed to you came back,” he returned. “They said there was no one of your name inside these walls anymore. But if you’d left with Madonna Lucrezia, you’d have come to see me. So, I thought of asking here again, but for your nun’s name.”
“I only told you that name once.”
“I remembered it.”
“I’m not supposed to have any visitors—”
He laughed, drawing glances. “Do you have any idea what the sisters here will do for good food? I brought a hamper—”
I felt a smile tugging at my lips. “You and your hampers.”
“Yes, me and my hampers. Cheese tourtes, apple biscotti, a crostata of fresh summer blackberries, candied walnuts—they fell on everything like wolves on a lamb. Nothing left but crumbs.” He stretched his fingers through the grille toward me, but I withdrew, tucking my own hands into my sleeves.
“You’re angry with me,” he said, and blew out a breath as he pulled his hand back. “Well, you have a right to be. Your cousin, Marco Santini—”
“What? No, I’m not angry, Bartolomeo. I’m just being careful.” I flicked my gaze at the wrinkle-faced choir nun staring daggers at us. “Suora Ursula,” I whispered. “We don’t want to catch her eye, and believe me, she’s always got an eye fixed on any of the young men who come into this parlor.”
“But I do want to explain about your cousin.” Bartolomeo met my gaze squarely. “I wouldn’t blame you if you still blamed me, Carmelina. I didn’t mean him to die, but he did. And I had a role in that.”
“My cousin was a greedy fool. That was what killed him, not you.” I felt a knot in my stomach easing. Maybe I couldn’t give my former apprentice much, but he’d at least have peace of mind in this one thing. “If Marco hadn’t given me to Juan Borgia just to get a debt repaid, he’d still be alive today. So don’t trouble your conscience on it any longer, Bartolomeo.” I wished I could take his hand.
“Thank you.” Bartolomeo curled his fingers around the grille bars instead. “I thought, maybe that was why you hadn’t answered my letters.”
“No. Not that, not at all.” I could have laughed, or maybe wept.
“Then what’s happened? Why are you here”—his eyes flickered over my wimple and veil again—“like that?”
I hesitated, because Cesare Borgia had killed everyone else who knew it. “I know something, about the Pope’s daughter. This is how they silenced me.”
“What do you know?”
“Better if you don’t. Pantisilea did, and Perotto the papal envoy too, and they’re both dead now.” I crossed myself. “Cardinal Borgia’s men flung them both into the river, God rest their souls.”
“Then you’re lucky,” Bartolomeo said, low-voiced. “They could have killed you, too.”
I hesitated before speaking. “I think I’m going mad here.”
His fingers tightened a little around the bar of the grille, but his voice was still conversational. “You need macaroni.”
“What?” My eyes stung.
“Macaroni,” he said. “Layered in a dish with slabs of provatura cheese and lumps of butter, cooked slowly until it all melts together.”
My mouth watered. “I didn’t teach you that.”
“Certainly not; it’s my own recipe and its going into my compendium, too. It’s just what you need right now. Pasta with a great deal of butter and cheese,” he said seriously, “cures all.”
I snorted laughter and stifled it behind my hand. Suora Ursula was still eyeing Bartolomeo, looking suspicious despite the crucifix about his neck and the pious little bow he aimed in her direction. A few of the visiting matrons in their rich gowns were eyeing him too, for different reasons.
He turned back to me, and his smile dropped away. “I will get you out of here.”
“It’s a great sin,” I whispered. That meant very little to me, with my tattered conscience and list of offenses against God, but for a bright soul like my apprentice’s . . . “Understand what it means, Bartolomeo. Stealing a nun from her convent? It’s like stealing a man’s wife away, only it’s worse because it’s a wife to God Himself. Adultery and desecration combined—”
And I couldn’t help but remember my private, terrified thought after Marco died: Is God so jealous of His brides that I’m a curse to any man who lays hands on me?
“I don’t care what kind of sin it is.” Bartolomeo’s voice was steady. “I’ll think about that later. After I get you out.”
“If I leave these walls, Cesare Borgia will see me dead. He’s killed everyone else who knew
—”
“I’ve an idea or two. Just be patient a little longer. I swear, I’ll have you out soon.”
A young cook against a Borgia prince? Those were odds too long for any gambler. But Bartolomeo’s eyes burned into mine, that familiar bright cinnamon, and I felt warm for the first time in a year. Warm and safe and full, as though I’d eaten a whole platter of his buttered macaroni.
A young lay sister came flying in on noiseless feet and went straight to Suora Ursula. She looked at me as she began to whisper something.
“Maybe I’ll get out of here,” I whispered, fumbling in my pouch. “Maybe not. If I don’t—”
“Carmelina—”
“If I don’t, take this.” I pushed the little bundle of Santa Marta’s hand into his hand through the grille. “Careful, she’s very brittle at her age. If you snap her fingers off, I shall lay a curse on you and you’ll never cook macaroni again without burning it up!”
“I can’t take her. She’s your saint.”
“She’s yours too.” I saw Suora Ursula clumping toward me on her great bearlike paws. “I’m no cook anymore, Bartolomeo. Not here. And she belongs with a cook.”
One side of his mouth flicked down, wry. “I offer to marry you. I offer to commit desecration and adultery for you. I offer to make you pasta. And you offer me a dead severed hand?”
“You ass, it’s all I have! So take it or leave it!”
He took it. “I’ll give her back to you soon, I promise.” He reached through the bars and gripped my hand hard and fierce, strong fingers lacing through mine, his thumb skimming along my knuckles. “When I take you home. Nothing’s the same without you—even that old tomcat prowls around looking for you and moping—”
“That useless one-eared cat from the Palazzo Santa Maria?” I couldn’t help asking.
“I took him with me when I left.” Bartolomeo traced the livid mark left by Juan Borgia’s knife, and the scar burned all over again. “I’ve got a soft spot for him. We both mope and sulk without you—”
“Suora Serafina!” Suora Ursula had a roar that would have made any bear proud. “I have checked with our prioress, and she informs me you are not to receive any visitors at all. Apologies to your cousin”—eyes sweeping Bartolomeo with mistrust—“but he will have to leave at once.”
Bartolomeo didn’t let my hand go. Not till Suora Ursula yanked me away from the grille and began marching me out of the parlor like a heifer being led off to the kitchens for slaughter. “Rest assured you have earned a suitable penance for this,” she said in her vicious whisper. “And Suora Teresa as well, for allowing you into the parlor without first seeking permission!”
“Flay me bloody if you like, you hairy hag,” I said loud and clear, loud enough for Bartolomeo to hear where he stood up against the grille. And I slid out from under her claws and stalked out with as much of my old swagger as I could muster, because I didn’t think I’d ever see Bartolomeo again and he might as well see me leave his life as Carmelina. Not as scared Suora Serafina, who I was destined to remain for the rest of my days.
It wasn’t until Bartolomeo was out of sight that I burst into tears. Not for my red-haired and handsome young man—not for Santa Marta’s hand—not even for my own fate. Bartolomeo’s last words were still ringing in my ears: Even that old tomcat prowls around looking for you and moping . . . we both mope and sulk without you. Suddenly I was crying, and I didn’t know why. Everything that had happened within these walls, and I dissolved in tears over a useless, foul-tempered cat who should long ago have been made into a sausage.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.
—TORQUATO TASSO
Giulia
Well?” Lucrezia Borgia twirled before me, flaring her skirts. “How do I look?”
Her ladies squealed and burst into applause for the Pope’s daughter, the former Countess of Pesaro arrayed in her bridal gown of gold French brocade worked all over with black silk embroidery and tucked scarlet velvet. Her waist circled by its girdle of grape-sized pearls might never have borne a child at all, and her sun-bleached hair flowed loose like any virgin bride’s under a little jeweled cap, which she tilted at a rakish angle. A girl of eighteen with bright eyes and rouged cheeks and powdered bosom, and for a moment I remembered her as she’d looked at her wedding to Lord Sforza five years ago. A tremulous little swan in jeweled chains, with all the world before her.
“You are beautiful,” I said, and managed a smile.
“I know,” Lucrezia giggled, and her ladies descended on her for one last tweak of the sleeves or dab of scent. I just sat with my hands in my lap on the wall bench: my old chamber in the Palazzo Santa Maria where I’d tried on gown after gown before Lucrezia’s first wedding, trying to find something that would make me pale and plain since no one should ever outshine the bride. But this was Lucrezia’s chamber now, and Lucrezia’s palazzo where she and her entire household of ladies and maids had come to wait for Alfonso of Aragon to arrive in Rome.
“I do wish you wouldn’t wear black, Giulia,” Lucrezia scolded me, peering into a hand mirror to arrange her little cap at a more dashing angle. “So gloomy! Even your complexion can’t carry off all that unrelieved black, you know.”
Caterina Gonzaga made sure to smile pityingly. She was piqued at me all over again because she had not been allowed to escort the Pope’s daughter in her wedding vows as I had escorted Lucrezia to the Count of Pesaro. Lucrezia’s vows with Alfonso of Aragon yesterday had been a mere formality, a private exchange of rings and a few words as confirmation to the proxy wedding that had already taken place in Naples. The real festivities would take place today with the wedding banquets, the feasts and gifts, and then the bedding of the bridal couple. But as the current papal mistress, Caterina clearly felt she had been slighted. It was the only highlight of my day so far.
“My pink silk,” Lucrezia was enthusing at me. “I’m sure we can lace it to fit you in a trice, if you will lay off that dreary black velvet—”
“I am still in mourning,” I said quietly. “It has been only three months, you know.”
Lucrezia’s little face creased in sympathy at once, and she dropped down beside me on the wall bench in a sigh of French brocade. “I’m sorry,” she said remorsefully, and waved off her ladies. “I know you’re still sad, poor Giulia. I shouldn’t have insisted you come to my wedding banquet today—you haven’t been out to so much as a masque in months—but I couldn’t be married again without you. I just couldn’t.”
She flung her arms about me in a hug. I gave a brief squeeze and then eased her back. “Careful. You’ll crush your embroideries.”
“Straighten me, will you? I mustn’t go to Alfonso all rumpled. It’s his job to rumple me, but not until later.” She giggled again. “Such a handsome man, Giulia, you can’t imagine! My heart stopped when we exchanged rings; he has the biggest brown eyes, just like velvet—”
“My heart stopped too,” I said. “When I exchanged the rings with Orsino.”
“Of course you’re thinking of him today.” Lucrezia patted my cheek. “But you mustn’t grieve! When my Alfonso and I set up a household of our own, you’ll come as one of my ladies and I’ll find you a new husband. These Neapolitan lords are very handsome, though of course none are as handsome as my Alfonso.”
She looked pure, glowing, incandescent with love. Exactly as she’d looked as she gazed at Giovanni Sforza.
“Thank you,” I said in the remote voice I couldn’t seem to inflect with any feeling at all these past months. “But after the wedding I intend to return home to my daughter.”
Laura. My sweet Laura, all I had left.
“Of course you miss her.” Lucrezia lowered her voice, mindful of her ladies. “I miss my baby so much, you know. Such a dear little thing with those plump cheeks!”
I wondered how she even remembered the plump cheeks. To my knowledge Lucrezia had had only a day or two with her chi
ld before it was packed off to a discreet household in the country—a household staffed with servants and wet nurses well paid to keep quiet. The Pope’s daughter had spent far more hours squealing over her own restored slimness than squealing over her child.
“Cesare says maybe I can have my baby back in a few years, when rumors die down. We can tell everyone it’s Cesare’s bastard, or maybe Father’s.” A vague wave of her hand, and I noted how careful she was not to mention whether her child was a boy or a girl. More Borgia secrets, and my privilege to hear them had been revoked. I didn’t ask about the child’s sex, lest my curiosity be taken for a sign that I might wish to raise it after all.
I’d left my own daughter in Carbognano with Adriana da Mila, after returning there with Orsino’s crushed body for burial. “We must arrange the funeral rites together, Giulia.” My mother-in-law had greeted me with a brave face, but her eyes were deep red wells and she peered out of them like a bewildered animal hiding in the underbrush.
“Of course.” Orsino would have wanted me there: his little rose weeping behind black veils at his graveside. It was the last duty I owed him. But I let Adriana da Mila take chief place among the mourners, regardless of what her son would have wanted. He was dead, and his mother and I were alive, and of the two of us I knew who had loved him best. It was only after the last clod of earth had fallen that Adriana asked the question I dreaded. “Giulia, you never said—the accident . . .”
“A tragic accident.” I cut her off firmly. “Rain had weakened the ceiling. Poor Vittorio Capece is beside himself with guilt over it all. Orsino was lingering beneath the archway when it fell—he would have known nothing.”
Her eyes puddled with relief, and as I put my consoling arms around her, I bit down on the memory of Orsino’s lean body crumpled among the fallen plasterwork. His blue eyes had been knocked clear out of his crushed skull—I’d seen that very clearly, before Vittorio led me away. Did a few falling stones from a collapsing archway really crush a skull like that? I thought not. His head had been beaten in by a sword hilt, I guessed, or a cudgel. Easy enough to smash loose the plasterwork above afterward, to make it all look an accident. Hadn’t Leonello said something about that, a long time ago? Ways to murder without really murdering.
