Secrets of the Eternal Rose 02: Belladonna

by Fiona Paul

  And she was. Feliciana’s eyes got wider and wider as Cass spoke. “Luca da Peraga? A heretic? It’s laughable.” She ran a hand over the fuzz of blonde hair on her scalp. “Next they’ll be saying he’s the one who killed Sophia.”

  Cass couldn’t help but notice how when Feliciana spoke Luca’s name, it felt completely different from when Siena did. She wondered whether Feliciana knew of her sister’s feelings for Cass’s fiancé. “Actually, a Signor Carmino has been found guilty of Sophia’s murder. Dubois took great pleasure in informing me of his execution.”

  “What?” Feliciana practically screeched. “Signor Carmino may have been a flirt, but he was no murderer.”

  Cass put a finger to her lips. “I know he didn’t do it. It was Dubois and his henchmen. And Dubois is also the reason Luca ended up in prison.”

  Feliciana’s eyes narrowed. “How does your fiancé even know Joseph? Hasn’t Luca been living abroad for years?”

  “He’s met with Dubois several times since he returned to town,” Cass said. “Including the day before he was arrested.”

  “But why?” Feliciana asked. “Why would Luca meet with him? What aren’t you telling me?” She patted the crate next to her.

  Cass lowered herself to the blanket-covered wood, wincing slightly. She hated the thought that Feliciana was forced to sleep on the rough crate, but she supposed it was better than directly on the damp floor, as nuns often did.

  “It’s a long story.” Cass took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “A few weeks ago, my friend Liviana passed away. Do you remember her?”

  Feliciana nodded. “She was always such a frail girl.”

  “She was interred in the graveyard right outside the villa,” Cass continued. “When I went to visit her tomb, I noticed the door was open. I went inside and saw that the cover to her coffin was askew.” Cass looked down at her hands. She could feel her throat constricting, her voice tightening as she thought about Mariabella. “As I struggled to replace the lid, I couldn’t keep from glancing down at the body. It wasn’t Livi. It was a girl I’d never seen before, a girl with an X carved over her heart.” Slowly, the rest of the story spilled out. Cass running into Falco in the graveyard. Their murder investigation. How it led them to Angelo de Gradi’s workshop full of body parts in neatly arranged tin basins and Sophia’s body floating in the Grand Canal.

  Cass’s throat grew dry as she spoke. “Falco and I, we—” She blushed.

  Feliciana’s eyebrows shot up. “Signorina Cassandra! You’re telling me…” She trailed off, but the implication was obvious.

  “No,” Cass said quickly. “But we kissed, and sometimes I think… I think I love him. Loved him,” she corrected. She continued her story before Feliciana could press for the intimate details. “At Madalena’s wedding I was lured into the wine room by a friend of Signor Rambaldo’s. His name is Cristian, and I believe he is the same Frenchman you saw at Palazzo Dubois. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’s actually Luca’s half brother. He tried to—” Cass swallowed hard. “I think he meant to kill me.” She finished by telling Feliciana about the deal Luca had struck with Dubois.

  “The Order of the Eternal Rose. I may have heard that name mentioned by visitors to Palazzo Dubois.” Feliciana frowned. “How much does your aunt know?”

  “Very little.”

  Feliciana arched an eyebrow.

  “Almost nothing,” Cass admitted. “She knows I was attacked at Madalena’s wedding, but she believes it was by a random thief. She knows nothing of the Order or Dubois’s involvement in the murders.”

  “It’s quite a sordid tale.” Feliciana struggled to conceal a yawn.

  “You’re tired,” Cass said, straightening up. Her knees ached, and her hands were covered with dust. “I should let you rest.” It was getting to be late enough that she could safely sneak outside. She could no longer put off venturing out into the graveyard in search of the sheaf of papers.

  “I am tired,” Feliciana said. She blinked hard. After a moment she added, “Thank you for saving me. You and my sister. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “We’re glad you’re here.” Grabbing her lantern, Cass slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  Cass passed back through the portego, noting with satisfaction that Narissa had retired for the night. The crypt key hung around Cass’s neck, cold against her flushed skin. All she needed was her cloak, she decided, heading for her bedroom. That and a little courage.

  Just as she slipped back into her chamber, something slammed against the glass of her window. Cass’s heart leapt into her throat. Was someone prowling the grounds of the villa? Falco had thrown rocks at her window once, but the pebbles had sounded like fingers snapping, rattling the panes ever so slightly. This was more like someone pounding on the glass with a fist.

  Cass approached the window from an angle, as if she thought something might reach straight through it and grab her. She squinted at the grainy glass. Could a bird have flown straight into the windowpane? Or a bat?

  She could just barely make out the fence of the graveyard and the rows of crypts behind. A chill crept up her spine. She hadn’t been to the graveyard since before Madalena’s wedding. Just the thought of the mist-shrouded air, the looming crypts, filled her head with horrible images. Cristian and the dead Mariabella sharing a deep kiss beneath the sliver of moon while Cass watched, terrified, unable to look away.

  She wrapped her hand around the key, feeling its edges dig into her skin. She had to try. For Luca.

  Throwing her cloak around her shoulders, Cass made her way downstairs, grabbed a lantern from the kitchen, and headed for the front door. Outside, a steady stream of mist was blowing in from the Adriatic. The sharp, salty air bit into her skin, stinging her eyes and stealing her breath away.

  The moon hung low and heavy in the sky. It peeked through the fog, bathing the estate in muted yellow light. Tufts of damp grass snatched at her ankles. Cass swore she saw bats winging their way through the haze. She kept her fingers tight around the handle of the door for a moment, reluctant to give herself up to the night, to the horrors it might be hiding.

  Each step she took toward the graveyard was another weight crushing her chest. She struggled to breathe. No matter how tightly she hugged the cloak to her, she couldn’t get warm. Twice she stopped, certain that if she moved forward, she would faint onto the damp grass.

  The gate clanked in the breeze. Cass watched the kiss of metal on metal, and then finally, feeling as though her feet were turning to stone, she threw herself beyond the threshold—straight into the graveyard.

  She craned her neck in all directions and then let out a long sigh. She had made it past the gate, and nothing bad had happened. She could do this. Luca needed her to do this. He trusted that she was strong enough.

  And she was.

  She headed for the northeast corner, to the small plot of overgrown land where the Caravello family tomb had sat, undisturbed, for years.

  The grass rustled sharply and Cass almost dropped her lantern. She whirled around, her eyes combing the outlines of the nearby headstones and shrubbery. Nothing. Overhead a bat soared, a sharp black shadow across the hazy moon. Something tickled her ankle. Cass gripped the lantern tightly and stepped back instinctively.

  A ghost-white cat yowled as her foot landed on its tail.

  “Sorry,” she said, expecting the cat to scoot off into the bushes. Instead, it looked up at her, its yellow eyes bright with hope. She ducked down with her lantern. She could see each individual bump on the animal’s spine. Reaching out, she stroked the cat’s back gently. It nuzzled its forehead against her leg.

  “I have no food,” Cass whispered regretfully. The cat lay down on its side, rolling in the dirt.

  Cass was sorry when it didn’t follow her. Even the company of an animal was infinitely preferable to being out here alone. Maybe she’d ask the cook if he needed another mouser for the kitchen. It did seem to be a friendly sort of
cat.

  Holding her breath, Cass approached the door of the Caravello tomb. Even back when she had wandered the graveyard day and night, she had not come to this corner in years—not since she found Slipper sleeping just outside her family crypt. With the kitten’s arrival, her mother’s spirit had gone elsewhere, or at least that was how Cass felt. What had once welcomed her began to repel her. Warmth faded. Vines overtook the tomb, obscuring the engraved lion crest and the name Caravello.

  Cass pushed the prickly vines away from the padlock, hand trembling. She stared at the lock for a moment. Would it open? She pulled the chain with the key over her head and slid the key into the lock.

  It fit, but it didn’t turn. She felt both relieved and disappointed. Perhaps Luca had been confused about the location of the mysterious papers. Then the key shifted slightly. Cass pushed harder and the metal groaned. The lock was rusted inside too, perhaps full of debris.

  But the key was turning.

  “The Ancients believed in the existence of a fifth humor within the body, a mystical substance of uncharted power.”

  —THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

  eight

  Cass felt as though she were moving underwater, simultaneously weightless and weighted down. The lock clicked open. She removed the key and slipped it back around her neck as the door leaned inward. Holding her lantern high, she stepped forward.

  The thick, musty odor of the crypt nearly made her gag. She leaned back, waving a hand in front of her face to dissipate the smell and dislodge the glimmering silver threads of a giant spiderweb.

  Slowly, her eyes began to adjust to the dark. The Caravello tomb was smaller than Liviana’s, with four shelves on each side and just enough space in between for Cass to stand. She edged farther inside, bringing the hem of her cloak to her mouth, breathing through it.

  The dead bodies of her ancestors crowded around her. Cass noted with relief that all of the stone coffin lids were secured in place. But beneath the lids…

  She knew it was irrational, but she was gripped by the idea that her relatives had been taken, like Liviana. What if all the coffins were empty, or worse, filled with bodies that did not belong there?

  The thought possessed her, consumed her; she had to check. She set down the lantern and tugged on the nearest stone lid with both hands, pulling back with all her strength. The cover slid back to reveal a slender bundle wrapped in white shrouds. Cass pushed apart the gauzy layers to reveal a grinning skull. Shuddering, she dragged the stone lid back in place.

  That was enough of that. Time to stop being foolish and find the papers. She wished Luca had been more specific. Were the pages tucked inside one of the heavy stone sarcophagi? It took all of Cass’s strength just to pull back each lid and peek inside. More corpses. No papers. She examined the floor of the tomb and the dusty rafters above her head. Nothing. Stretching up onto her tiptoes, she reached a hand between the highest coffin and the wall of the tomb. Her bare fingers grazed soft fabric. No, leather. She pulled out a rectangular bundle, wrapped in well-worn suede. Undoing the cord and folding back one of the corners, Cass saw a thick sheaf of parchment tucked inside.

  Suddenly the night, the dead bodies, all of her fear melted away.

  She held the lantern close to the papers and saw that they were bound together with crude twine. She wanted to read them right away, but there was no place for her to rest the pages except for the damp floor of the crypt, and she wasn’t going to risk getting the papers wet or damaged.

  Rewrapping the leather around the parchment, Cass tucked the bundle under one arm. She ducked out of the crypt, sucking in deep breaths of fresh air as she relocked the door. Then she hurried back through the graveyard, crossing the estate’s side lawn and heading back to the front of the villa. Slowly opening the door, she peeked inside to make sure no one was up waiting for her.

  Hurrying up the stairs, she tossed her cloak over the back of her dressing table chair. She sat down at the table and eagerly unwrapped the pages.

  Her stomach lurched. She recognized some of the writing: it was her mother’s long flowy script. She skimmed the lines.

  We have learned that the head of the Florentine chapter is attempting to isolate the fifth humor solely from blood. We plan to travel to Florence to observe his methods, and to adjust our own process accordingly…

  Cass frowned. She knew all about humors from her father, and she had heard stories of physicians who claimed they were selling healing tonics full of fifth humor. But everyone knew they were charlatans. There were only four main humors within the body—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Physicians believed that an imbalance of these humors caused various infirmities. Only by bleeding certain vessels that connected to certain organs could the balance be restored.

  Perhaps her parents had been trying to create a medicine? Her mother described, in the next passage, that her attempts to make an elixir had been unsuccessful. But why did she speak of the fifth humor as if it were real?

  Next there were some notations in someone else’s handwriting. Cass flipped through snippets of notes from what seemed to be a scientist’s journal. Subjects. Trial numbers. She didn’t understand a lot of it, didn’t even know what some of the hastily drawn symbols meant. Most of the entries were dated 1594, just one year before her parents had passed away. There were repeated references to Florence and to the Order of the Eternal Rose.

  Cass carefully turned another page. At the top of a yellowed and crumbling piece of parchment, someone had scrawled a six-petaled flower inside of a circle. It was the symbol from Angelo de Gradi’s workshop, the symbol Donna Domacetti wore on her ring. The flower inside the circle must be the symbol for the Order of the Eternal Rose.

  But what were her mother’s notes doing mixed in with papers pertaining to some mysterious society? It was inconceivable that her parents would have been involved in grave robbing and sacrilege.

  Cass felt her throat closing up. She continued turning pages, this time frantically, searching for some explanation. On the next page, a list of names and cities was scrawled in different handwritings beneath yet another symbol of the Order. Cass guessed it was some kind of attendance list.

  She traced one trembling finger down the first column. Her parents’ names were on the list, midway down the page, and below theirs was the name Joseph Dubois.

  She quickly scanned the other names. Luca’s father was on the list. Also Angelo de Gradi and Don Zanotta, husband of Hortensa Zanotta, who had accused Luca. Cristian’s name was not on the list. Most names Cass didn’t recognize at all—the vast majority of the signatures were listed as being from Florence. The name at the very top of the list was written larger than most of the others, but at some point the parchment had gotten wet and the letters had faded into a smear of black across the page. Cass could read the city on the right, though: Florence.

  If all of these papers mentioned Florence, surely Luca was right and the book was there. As well as Hortensa Zanotta. Cass had never been to Florence, but suddenly the city was calling to her.

  “Living burial usually results in death caused by suffocation or sheer terror.”

  —THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

  nine

  Cass had the nightmare about Cristian again—only this time, when his hands started to tear away the fabric of her gown, the scene began to ripple and distort. When the wavering stopped, Cass realized she wasn’t in the wine room anymore. She was somewhere else dark and damp. And she wasn’t alone.

  “Hello,” she said, but the word came out muffled. Her mouth filled with something wet. Mud. She spat fiercely, trying to clear out the muck, but it was raining down on her now, a storm of moist dirt falling from above. She was in an open grave. Someone was burying her alive.

  Cass screamed, and her mouth began to fill again. She coughed, writhing in the mud, trying to stand. She couldn’t. Two other bodies were packed in next to her—one on each side. They were just fragmented skeletons, pieces of charred black bone,
but somehow Cass knew they were her parents. She was horrified to see that her own arms and legs were bound to the skeletons. She turned to the remains she knew belonged to her mother. The skeleton was wearing a pendant—a flower inscribed in a circle: the symbol of the Order of the Eternal Rose.

  Cass tried to rip the pendant from her mother’s neck, but the metal was so hot, it seared a six-petaled insignia into Cass’s palm. She screamed again.

  “Help me!” she cried.

  Her father’s skull seemed to move. Cass thought it was going to speak to her, but when the jaws creaked open, a thick cloud of spiders crawled out. Ripping herself loose from her bonds, she wrestled her way onto her knees, digging her fingernails into the damp side of the pit.

  As she struggled to her feet, something heavy fell from above—a body wrapped in white burial shrouds, a shock of blonde hair protruding from within the folds. Liviana’s half-decomposed face grinned at her through the thin fabric. “Where’s my necklace?” the corpse hissed.

  Another body fell, slamming hard into Cass, stealing the breath from her chest and driving her back to her hands and knees. Cass didn’t want to peer beneath the shrouds, but she did.

  Luca looked back at her. “Why did you forsake me?” he asked. His eyes glimmered, but when he started to cry, it was blood, not tears, that flowed down his cheeks.

  Cass awoke with his name on her lips.

  Luca.

  He would die if she couldn’t free him, and the only way to do that was to find the Book of the Eternal Rose.

  But how was she supposed to get to Florence? Aunt Agnese would never let her go on a trip by herself. Cass wasn’t even sure how to get there. Madalena’s father, Signor Rambaldo, made frequent visits to Florence for work. Maybe there was a chance Cass could tag along with him if he was going soon.