by Kate Quinn
“You really wish to leave?” Cesare said at last, clapping his red hat onto his head. “Pity. I could have used you in Romagna.”
I took a deep breath, feeling oddly serene. If Cesare twitched a finger and Michelotto came through the door to cut my throat, well, at least I had won Giulia Farnese’s love first. Poets had died for less, and my lady had succeeded in making a poet of me.
Just hopefully not a dead poet.
“Will I still be leaving Rome by way of the river?” I asked Cesare Borgia. “Face down?”
“You were right about one thing, Leonello.” Cesare turned to face me: a cardinal one last time in all his scarlet finery. “I do rather like you. How do I look?”
“About as clerical as a bull in a red hat, Your Eminence.”
With a great sweep of his arms Cesare shed the cloak and the hat all at once. The scarlet cloth billowed away in a flutter like a dying bird’s wings. He wore stark black velvet beneath, and the long sword of the future Gonfalonier of the papal forces at his lean hip. “My new sword,” he said, and unsheathed it for my eyes. I read the motto inscribed along the gleaming blade.
“Aut Caesar, aut nihil.”
“Either Caesar”—he grinned—“or nothing.”
“You be Caesar, then.” I took out my Toledo blades for the last time, the ones he had given me years ago when he first offered to make me his family’s hired killer, and laid them out before him one by one. “And I’ll be nothing.” Of the two of us, I thought I’d be the happier. Even if no one remembered my name in a century, as they probably would Cesare Borgia’s.
Cesare tilted his head at my array of blades, all ten of them. “You don’t wish to keep them? The world is a dangerous place for dwarves, little lion man.”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.” I’d always have knives—I’d protect Giulia and Laura till their lives ended, or mine did—but I’d have new blades; ones that weren’t marked by torture or vengeance or the stain of Juan Borgia’s tainted blood. And maybe I didn’t need ten anymore. The most threatening I anticipated having to do in the future would be when it came time for Laura to marry; when I would take her suitors aside one by one and gently, benignly explain their duties as a prospective husband as I did a little target practice with my blades into the wall behind their heads. Yes, just two or three knives would do for that.
Cesare’s servants flooded back in then, the squires and pages and little Burchard wringing his hands over his usual pile of lists. “Your Eminence, Gott im Himmel, you will be late—” I slipped away, and no one gave me a second glance in all the storm of activity. I saw Cesare Borgia half concealed behind a cluster of pages as he conferred with Burchard, swamped in the bustle, and I never saw him again. But the last view I really had was of a pope’s son like a worm wrapped in a scarlet cocoon, tossing away the tangling folds of silk to emerge with sword drawn: a dark moth unleashed upon the world.
The image blotted my eyes as I made my last, swift retreat from the Vatican, back to my Giulia, who had gone to pack her belongings, and who surely had the whole household in an uproar by now. The woman couldn’t go to Mass without packing for an army. I was already smiling, lining up jokes to tease her with, when I ran into a tall figure in the palazzo’s anteroom.
“Messer Leonello,” Bartolomeo said, raking at his red hair. “I need your help.”
Carmelina
Three eggs, whisked together with a mixture three parts sugar to two parts strawberry honey,” I recited aloud as I swept the convent courtyard. “Add two cheeses; a soft sheep’s milk cheese and a very fresh pecorino cheese from Pienza, and then a double handful finely chopped walnuts . . .”
The lay sisters were supposed to recite their prayers as they went about their work—a rosary, or perhaps an Act of Contrition if one were feeling guilty about anything. I recited recipes. Curiously I couldn’t seem to remember many of my father’s recipes, the ones I’d had at my fingertips for so many years. The convent’s walls had a way of leaching memories away, at least the memories that came from your life before the grilles closed behind you with a clang. Part of that soft, relentless process that turned girls of all shapes and sizes, all tempers and dispositions, into faceless identical sisters in their identical black and white. I didn’t have my father’s recipe book anymore, so I couldn’t always remind myself how his recipes went—but I still had Bartolomeo’s letters hidden away in the pouch that no longer held my patron saint’s hand, and he’d written me so many recipes over the months before the letters had been stopped. I knew every one of his new dishes by heart, and it comforted me to recite them out loud. Some nuns told the decades of the rosary as they worked. I told the ingredients of a toasted walnut and pecorino cheese tourte.
“Beat with twelve egg whites and turn out into buttered tourte pan . . .” The broom in my hands went swish swish swish. A warm purple twilight, and soon we’d be called in for Vespers. Hardly anyone would bother praying of course—all the younger nuns could speak of was Madonna Lucrezia Borgia’s wedding a few days ago. They were whispering away even now, three of them as we swept the convent courtyard together.
“They say she has forty thousand ducats for a dowry this time, and the jewels on her gown cost at least that much!”
“They say Alfonso of Aragon is as handsome as a dream . . .”
“They say the Count of Pesaro has taken his own life out of grief, to see his wife wed another . . .”
“No, it was Perotto who took his life, out of love for Madonna Lucrezia . . .”
“I don’t believe she really did break her arm when she was here. Did you hear her scream? I had six brothers born after me, and I know what a birth sounds like!”
“You served Madonna Lucrezia, Suora Serafina. Did she really . . .”
“Serve tourte warm with soft sugar and whole shelled walnuts,” I told them, and they didn’t bother talking to me after that. Most of the lay sisters thought I was slightly mad, and I couldn’t say they were wrong. Who knew? Maybe in a year or two I would be completely mad, fit for nothing except stirring the kitchen pot. At least I’d do it more contentedly than I did now. Even now, when I was starting to float through most of my days in that fog of bemused detachment that Old Bear Ursula liked to call a state of grace, the smell of convent gruel without garlic or cinnamon or even, Santa Marta forbid, pepper, had the power to rouse me to rage.
The rumble of carriage wheels halted at the gates outside, but I paid no attention. Wedding guests had been making their way out of Rome for days now, and every night we’d had at least one illustrious noble lady beg shelter in the gatehouse accommodations because her carriage horses had gone lame, or because she didn’t feel like continuing on for the night. More fodder for gossip, the lay sisters already clustering by the gate for any look at the visitor and what she might be wearing. “A fresh crostata of Tiber eels,” I recited instead, sweeping absently over the same patch of ground and smiling. Be proud of me, Bartolomeo had written me after that particular recipe. You know how I hate eels. I’ve finally managed to skin one without pinching my nose shut. Remember that summer in Capodimonte with Madonna Giulia, when I screamed like a weasel just because I saw a water snake?
I did remember that. I remembered it very well, the way the summer light made his freckles glow gold, the way he’d leaped to the top of the trestle table with all the hair on his head nearly standing on end. I dwelled on it, every detail, because you have to work very hard at remembering things behind convent walls. Or else you wake up for Matins one day and everything else besides the prayers is gone.
“Her gown,” one of the lay sisters was squealing. “And that pearl—”
“It’s the Bride of Christ! Don’t let Mother Prioress hear you call her that, but everyone knows the Pope’s mistress—”
“Former mistress, I heard . . .”
“Well, former or current, it’s certainly La Bella. Just look at the hair—”
My head jerked up and I saw her striding through the gates into th
e courtyard: Madonna Giulia Farnese in a sweeping sable-lined traveling cloak thrown back to show her high-piled hair and the great pearl at her throat. She was tugging off her embroidered leather gloves finger by finger, frowning, and she snapped over her shoulder to the small figure in black trotting behind. “See my horses stabled at once. We shall leave in the morning as soon as I’ve rested.”
“Yes, madonna,” Leonello said with a bow, doubling back, and my heart caught in my throat. The broom clattered out of my hand, and before I knew what I was doing I gathered my habit skirts up and raced toward them. “Leonello,” I called, suddenly feeling the breeze in the warm summer twilight, the hovering drone of the flies, the flap of my veil against my back—feeling something again, rather than the drugged bemusement of that old bitch Suora Ursula’s state of grace. “Leonello,” I called again, pulse hammering in my throat. “Madonna Giulia!”
Giulia Farnese looked at me with a faint frown. “Yes?” she said without much interest, and moved on without waiting for an answer. “Have a foot-bath drawn for me at once, Leonello, my feet ache so abominably—”
“Yes, madonna,” he said, and scuttled past me without a second glance.
I stared after them. Was I invisible? Had I died and become a ghost, and never noticed? Perhaps I had already gone mad.
Or perhaps the memories of Carmelina Mangano had faded away outside these walls as fast as they were fading inside. Maybe there really was only Suora Serafina left in this world.
* * *
Nuns aren’t supposed to go roaming about at night, but they do. There are no bolts on any nun’s private cell; the authorities are far too afraid of what will happen inside those cells if we can lock ourselves inside with utter privacy. We were required to sleep with a candle burning and the door ajar, so the appointed night sister could check throughout the night that we were all safely tucked up in godly sleep. But no night sister ever gave more than a cursory yawning glance before going back to her own bed, and most of the time they didn’t even do that. As soon as the night bells rang, there was always quite a busy creaking of cell doors opening and shutting as the younger nuns visited each other to gossip and braid hair, the older nuns visited each other to gossip and drink wine from someone’s private stores, and the occasional pious nun actually felt moved to go to the chapel in the dead of night and pray. And yes, a few daring sisters did manage to visit a lover in some remote part of the convent, bribing the portress to allow a man inside for an hour or supply him with a rope to scale the walls. It happened, though it didn’t happen as often as men liked to think it did.
As for me, I went to the kitchens. It was warmer there than in my cell, and in the face of Leonello’s rejection I felt particularly cold tonight.
Madonna Giulia—well, she had always been kind to me but she was a woman of noble birth, a respectable one now, even, and she couldn’t be gossiping with cooks the way she used to when she had no one else to talk to. Leonello, though . . . after the whole black business of Juan Borgia, I’d begun to think that Leonello and I were friends, funny sharp-tongued little man that he was. And he hadn’t even had a glance for me.
The kitchens were usually dark, the fires thriftily banked, and I was already thinking of making myself a little stewed nettle tea, nasty stuff. But I saw lights flickering as I pushed the door open, and I looked around to see candles lit everywhere. “That’s a week’s supply of tapers,” I said indignantly as I pushed my way in, fully expecting to find Suora Crestina raiding the sugar supply again, the greedy bitch. But behind me I heard an odd sound like a whoop of joy quickly stifled, and felt a man’s arms seize me about the waist instead.
“Told you I’d come for you,” Bartolomeo whispered in my ear. And then he kissed me.
Of course I smacked him. With my hand, not the ladle, because he grabbed the ladle away the moment I seized it up from the table, and he held it up far over my head with an infuriating grin.
“Wretch!” I pummeled his shoulder instead. “Not one word to me for weeks and weeks—”
“You think I was going to spoil all my plans by putting them into a message?” He was still grinning. “A message that could be intercepted?”
I stopped hitting him long enough to drag a trestle table in front of the kitchen doors. All we needed was Suora Crestina coming along now to raid my sugar, or some other sharp-eyed choir nun with her high-bred nose sniffing out scandal. “So Madonna Giulia—and Leonello—”
“Leonello owed me a favor—owed me quite a favor, in fact—and he recruited Madonna Giulia. D’you think he’s in love with her? I’ve always wondered.” Bartolomeo put the ladle up on the tallest shelf where I wouldn’t be able to reach it without dragging a stool over. “Officially speaking, I’ve left Signore Capece’s household for Madonna Giulia’s. She’s busy setting the stage for us now, throwing tantrums and keeping everyone busy. For someone so obliging, she’s terribly good at being a nuisance, isn’t she? Do you thinks she models it more on Madonna Lucrezia or the Tart of Aragon?”
“Bartolomeo!” Even staring right at him, I could hardly believe he was here. He was a vision I hadn’t dared allow myself to dream of because it hurt too much: tall, ruddy-haired, taking up half the kitchen as he strode up and down gesturing and waving his hands, and I couldn’t stop drinking in the sight of him. His eyes sparkled as he looked back at me, and my mouth still felt bruised from his kiss. “Will you get to the point?” I demanded, a trifle unsteadily.
“So, I’m supposed to be fixing Madonna Giulia some warm honeyed wine right now—”
“Keep your voice down!”
“—she made a huge fuss and refused to sleep without it. Wouldn’t let anyone but me prepare it either. Your poor portress, the one who’s supposed to be looking after honored guests, well, she wasn’t supposed to let a man into the kitchens under any circumstances, but she’s so worn out running Madonna Giulia’s errands by now, she’d do anything for a little sleep. So, with the solemn promise that I wouldn’t venture outside the kitchens, not to mention the bribe of a flagon of good wine . . .” Bartolomeo made an elaborate bow. “Here I am.”
My heart thudded. “Do we escape now? Over the wall, or—”
“No, no. You’ll see. Better if you look surprised tomorrow.” He took me around the waist again. “Trust me.”
Guilt stabbed through me like a kitchen spit. “Do you realize the trouble you’ll make for yourself? If anyone discovers you helped a nun escape her vows—”
“I find that doesn’t trouble my conscience in the slightest.” Bartolomeo looked very serious. “Maybe Leonello’s rubbed off on me. Tragic, isn’t it? A black-hearted assassin corrupting a pure young lad like me—”
I saw the hilarity dancing in his eyes, and I smacked him again. “How did you know I’d be here? Here in the kitchen, I mean.”
“Don’t know,” he shrugged. “I just had a notion I’d find you here. Leonello said you looked so stricken when Madonna Giulia stalked by. And when you’re stricken, you always go to the kitchens.”
“Well, don’t you know everything.” Self-consciousness made my voice waspish. I felt ugly all over again—a wimple was bad enough, but without it my short curls were undoubtedly springing out in all directions like a nest of bracken, and I had a flea bite on my chin from the old straw in my pallet, and—and Bartolomeo looked so . . .
“What?” He looked at me.
“I hate my hair,” I burst out, running a hand over my cap of frizz.
“I’ll wager it smells the same, even if it’s shorter.” He leaned close, burying his nose in the hair by my cheek. “Cinnamon,” he confirmed. “Still cinnamon.”
“You smell like marjoram.” I let my own nose rest in the dent of his collarbone. “And mint.” I remembered that very clearly, from the time we’d spent on his lumpy apprentice’s pallet.
“Nutmeg,” he continued, inhaling his way down the side of my throat. One hand stroked the length of my back, and the roughness of his jaw brushed my skin. “And pepper.
Plenty of pepper—so that’s where you get the temper . . .”
“Wild thyme,” I said, putting my nose against the center of his wide chest this time. “No wonder you’re so insolent.”
He set his lips in the base of my throat, tasting me. “Salt.”
“Salt,” I agreed, tasting the outer edge of his ear. Even his earlobes were freckled. “All cooks taste like salt.”
He laced a hand through my hair and bent his mouth to mine. The first time he’d kissed me had been all eager boyish hunger, but some woman must have taught him patience as well as passion. Perhaps it had been me, whacking him on the shoulder and telling him to wait, that zuppa wasn’t ready yet, don’t be so impatient, Bartolomeo! He kissed now without haste, not impatient at all, taking the time to taste me. “Honey,” he said, murmuring against my lips. “Salty without, sweet within.”
“Flatterer,” I told him, and dragged his head back down. But he stopped suddenly, looking at me with a scowl.
“This is all wrong,” he said.
“Why?” I pulled away, hand flying to my head. “You do hate the hair, don’t you?”
“I was supposed to cook for you,” he complained. “I had it all planned! I’d find you in the kitchens somehow—I wasn’t sure how I’d manage that part, but I thought it could be done. And then I’d finally get to cook for you. I even knew what I was going to cook: tortellini with a basil and parsley filling, and a sauce of French wine and cream—”
“You’re not supposed to serve tortellini in a sauce,” I started to say.
“I know, and that was the point. You’d eat my recipe, mine, and you’d tell me it was good, and maybe we’d finally get over this whole apprentice business.” He glowered, but with a hint of a smile. “And now I’m here, and I did find you, so that part went according to plan, but this pathetic excuse for a kitchen doesn’t have any of the ingredients I was counting on. Not one! I brought my own olive oil—” Helpfully he produced a little vial. “Because a good cook always supplies his own good-quality oil, you taught me that. Actually, I brought a hamper—”
