Secrets of the Eternal Rose 02: Belladonna

by Fiona Paul

  Cass downed three goblets before her throat started to feel normal again. The pain in her arm had faded to a dull ache. She lay back on the pillow and tried to rest, but sleep didn’t come. She wondered whether Mada and Siena were panicking. She wondered whether Falco knew she was there, an invalid, Belladonna’s unwilling prisoner.

  Cass had a feeling Belladonna hadn’t told him. If she had, surely he would have come to look in on her. And what about the lady of the villa herself? Shouldn’t Bella at least pretend to be concerned about a young noblewoman who was injured at her birthday party? Then again, Cass wasn’t really in a hurry to see her. Shockingly, her room had four full walls and none of them was draped with a painting or tapestry of Belladonna’s face. Perhaps that was why Falco had been hired. He did say she had hired him to paint something for every room of her villa.

  Cass flung her covers back with her good arm. The room was bigger than her room at Palazzo Alioni, but the air was warm and thick and the gloom was suffocating. As soon as she twisted her body so that her feet touched the floor, she was overwhelmed with lightheadedness. She sat back down on the bed until the fog cleared from her head. Slowly, with her uninjured arm out for balance, she made her way over to the window and peeked through the heavy drapery.

  She was in a bedroom at the back of the villa, overlooking the garden. She was delighted to see Falco and his easel below her. He appeared to be painting a picture of Belladonna’s roses.

  Cass fumbled her way to the dressing table and consulted her reflection in the mirror. It was a lower-quality mirror than what she was accustomed to in Venice, distorting her image slightly. But not distorting it enough, Cass thought. She was a disaster. Someone had dressed her in a pale blue chemise made of fabric so thin, she could clearly see the outline of her breasts. Had it been Piero who had removed her soiled gown and washed her body? Had he chosen the revealing garment for her? Cass cringed as her freckled cheeks went pink in the mirror. Best not to think about it too much.

  She turned away, using her good hand to push a tangled clump of partially braided hair back under her sleeping cap. Then she searched through the armoire next to the table until she found a thick velvet dressing gown. Returning to the bed, she struggled to wrap the gown around her as best she could, leaving her injured arm dangling inside the robe. She worked the belt into a loose knot, using her mouth and free hand to cinch it tight.

  She peeked out into the hallway. A pair of girls in blue and red were dusting a large painting of Belladonna riding a dapple-gray horse. They gave Cass a curious look as she edged into the hall, but didn’t say anything. Cass nodded as she headed past them.

  She descended the stairs toward the garden where she had seen Falco. She just wanted to talk to him, tell him what had happened, ask him about de Gradi. She knew his mere presence would comfort her.

  The bright flowers swam before Cass’s eyes, a sea of color that beckoned to her. It was madness, but she swore the roses turned ever so slightly in her direction as she descended the stairs. She had to go slowly and periodically lean against the banister to fight attacks of dizziness. By the time she emerged into the garden, Falco and his easel were gone. A group of boys in plain beige gardening uniforms squatted on their hands and knees, trimming the grass with large shears.

  “Excuse me,” Cass said. The boys all looked up at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. One of them gaped at her bizarre appearance. Cass ignored them. “I’m looking for Signor da Padova, the artist,” she said.

  “He’s gone,” the tallest of the boys said. “The mistress called him away to do some work inside.”

  Of course. Cass imagined Falco and his patroness holed up in her bedchamber working on something even more scandalous than a painting depicting Belladonna as a half-naked Roman goddess. She pushed the thought out of her mind, thanked the tall boy, and turned back toward the villa, feeling unaccountably frustrated.

  Piero’s medicine had soothed her slightly, but now that she was up and moving, her arm was tingling and burning. Again, Cass was dying to see what was beneath the bandages. But she was too afraid to look. She realized that she might have died if Piero hadn’t helped her.

  She realized, too, that she had neglected to thank him for saving her life.

  She turned back to the boys, who were clipping small tufts of grass to an even height with an almost mathematical precision. “I’m sorry to bother you again,” she said. “But do you know where I might find Piero Basso, the house physician?”

  “His lodgings are on the first floor.” Once again, it was the tallest boy who responded. “Next to the butler’s office.”

  There was no entrance to the first floor from the back of the villa, so Cass would have to ascend the stone stairs leading away from the garden and travel through the house to the main spiral staircase. She paused at the top of the back stairs for a moment, watching as a bank of clouds rolled in from the west. The air felt cooler. A storm was coming. She ducked back into the villa and made her way to the main stairs.

  Cass paused for a moment at the bottom of the staircase and reached out for the banister to steady herself. It looked as if the walls were moving. Not spinning or running away from her, but pulsing, almost as if the villa itself were breathing.

  She closed her eyes and opened them again. The walls went still. She stood between the rectangles of sunlight that filtered through the front window for a moment, getting her bearings.

  The main hallway ended in a T. There were arched doors on both sides of her. Tiny gargoyles were carved into the stone above them. She knocked gently on the door to her right. No one answered. She tried the knob. Locked. She repeated her soft knock on the door to her left. Again, no response. She placed her hand on the doorknob, expecting that this, too, would prove locked.

  But the door swung open, and Cass peeked into the room. A small bed was nestled against the far wall, its covers disturbed, as if someone had risen from it quickly. Next to the bed was a teetering stack of leather-bound books. A candle burned on the washing table just inside the door; Piero, if indeed he was the one who lived here, would be back soon. Still, Cass crept forward into the chamber.

  “Dottor Basso?” She cleared her throat. “Piero? It’s Cass.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. She didn’t really think the physician was hiding in the rumpled coverlet or behind the stack of books. Still, it didn’t seem right to creep into someone’s chambers unannounced.

  She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her eyes gravitated to the stack of books. She didn’t think the Book of the Eternal Rose would be lurking in a lowly physician’s room, even if he did wear the ring of the Order, but it wouldn’t hurt to give them a quick look.

  Tiptoeing over to the bed, she knelt down to examine the leather-bound volumes. Gingerly, she lifted the top one from the stack. There was no name or title embossed into the deep brown cover. She peeked at the second volume. Also blank. A rustling sound from the shelf near her head made her jump, and the whole tower of books spilled onto the floor.

  Accidempoli. It had probably just been a mouse scurrying inside the wall. Wincing in pain, Cass hurriedly tried with her good arm to restack the books as they had been. A page pulled loose from one of the bindings, a diagram that caught her eye. It was a crude sketch of a person, with wide vacant eyes and a shock of long hair framing her cheekbones. She was mounted on a table, her hands and feet splayed out and bound, a Y incision carved into her midsection. Cass shuddered. The drawing reminded her of the dissected dog she and Falco had found in the workshop on the Rialto.

  Except this wasn’t a dog. It was a girl, just like her.

  Cass turned to the front of the book. Was Piero doing the same sort of research as Angelo de Gradi? She tried to remember if she had seen his name among those listed on the parchment she had found in her parents’ tomb. De Gradi, Dubois, da Peraga. She saw these names as if they were inked in blood. But Basso? She wasn’t sure. Falco had said most of the Order members were wealthy. Perhaps
the tradesmen and physicians were engaging in experiments that the wealthier Order members were funding.

  But to what end?

  The first page was dominated by a drawing of a skeleton, whose bones were identified in the margin. The next page was just a leg, its three bones enlarged to show detail. Cass flipped again and again. She paused at the drawing of an arm. According to the sketch, there were three bones in the arm. Cass was lucky the dogs’ powerful jaws had not snapped them all like twigs.

  Cass kept flipping pages. Interspersed among the diagrams were pages of foreign symbols and notations about illness and vitality.

  She knew she should stop reading, that she shouldn’t be snooping through someone’s private notes. She knew how furious she would be if she caught anyone reading her journal. Her stomach clenched. Somewhere, Cristian still possessed a volume of her most personal thoughts. Cass slammed the book shut and reordered the crooked stack as she had found it.

  She turned to a set of shelves next to the bed. Maybe she would find the ring he had worn to the Palazzo della Notte. Then she would know for certain he was a member of the Order. Among a jumble of medical equipment were a hairbrush, a vial of perfume, and a syringe. Cass eyed the silver syringe and attached long steel needle with curiosity. What sort of injection required a needle so thick?

  The shelf below that one held a single sheet of lush vellum, with withered rose petals pinned to the page. There were scrawled notes next to some of them—strings of letters and numbers that Cass didn’t understand.

  She turned to go back to the stack of journals when she heard the rustling sound again. At the back of the shelf, almost totally concealed beneath a silk pillow slip, was a rectangular container made of glass. Cass folded back the fabric and shrieked, stumbling back from the shelves and sending the stacks of journals tumbling to the floor again. She had uncovered a cage.

  A cage filled with spiders.

  “Careful, Signorina. I wouldn’t want you to faint right onto my bed. It would look bad for us both.”

  Cass whirled around. Piero was standing in the doorway. How long had he been watching her? “I—I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I didn’t mean to disturb—I came looking for you.”

  “You came looking for me? I like that.” Piero crossed the room in a few strides, his thick-soled boots as quiet as slippers on the stone floor. “No need to be scared.” He draped the pillowcase back over the top of the cage. “Spiders are not nearly so frightening as the reputation that precedes them.” His dark eyes lingered on her.

  “But why do you keep them?” She bit her lip. “Are they poisonous?”

  “All spiders are venomous,” he said. “In most cases, however, their venom is weak, so it doesn’t make people ill. My colleagues and I have found it to be just the opposite, in fact. We believe spider venom may contain medicinal properties.”

  “Really?” Cass couldn’t imagine anything good coming from the hairy-legged little beasts.

  He nodded. “Many medicines come from plants. Is it so hard to believe they might also come from animals or insects?”

  “And your… books?” She stopped herself at the last second from saying journals. “Are they for studying? I was looking for something to read.”

  “Believe me, don’t concern yourself with my books,” he said. “They don’t make good bedtime stories. Full of foul humors.”

  “I know about humors,” Cass said, raising her chin. “My father studied medicine. But the texts he studied were very different.”

  “If I’d known you were going to spend such a long time in my chambers, I would have been there to entertain you.” Piero smiled, but there was nothing amusing about the way he looked at her—as though he wanted to devour her.

  Cass found his gaze too intense; she had to look away. Thunder boomed outside the window, and she flinched.

  “Are you all right?” Piero asked, his hand coming to rest gently on her forearm.

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Just in pain.”

  Softly, he touched her face. “You have a fever,” he murmured. “Let me help you back to bed and then I’ll prepare your medicines.”

  Before Cass could protest, Piero bent down and scooped her into his arms. He headed for the hallway.

  “You don’t need to carry me.” Cass was blushing furiously. “I’m not an invalid.”

  “I believe you said something to that effect last night as well.” Even though she refused to look at him, Cass could hear the smile in his voice. “And then you fainted.”

  She gave up and let Piero carry her through the first floor and up the winding staircase to her room, praying that they wouldn’t accidentally bump into Falco. She did feel a little unsteady. She didn’t know if it was her condition or seeing the spiders that had caused it.

  In her room, he set her down gently on her bed and started to remove her dressing gown.

  “No,” Cass said quickly, willing herself not to start blushing again. “I’d like to keep it on. I’m a little chilled.”

  Piero looked concerned but nodded. He tucked her beneath the covers, adjusting the pillows behind her. A piece of Cass’s hair fell in front of her eye. She and Piero reached for it at the same time, and their fingers brushed. Cass felt a spark move through her. She dropped her hand awkwardly into her lap. Piero tucked the shock of hair back into her cap, his fingers lingering on her jawbone for a second.

  Cass thought back to the party she had crashed at Palazzo della Notte, at the way Piero had pursued her as if she were prey. She remembered the way Hortensa had willingly given herself to the masked stranger, the alleged vampire. But Piero was no vampire. He had saved her.

  “Rest, Signorina Cassandra. The butler sent word to your friend and handmaid, and they will come tomorrow for a visit.” He blew out the candle that sat on her washing table. “I’ll be back much sooner, with more medicine to ease your pain.” He smiled at her again.

  After he had gone, Cass lay beneath the sheets, listening to the rain on the rooftop, trembling in a way that had nothing to do with her fever. Piero was part of the mystery, she could feel it. He wrote of experiments and spoke of humors. He owned a ring engraved with the six-petaled flower. Cass had to get close to him, even though he scared her. One way or another, he was involved with the Order of the Eternal Rose, and she would do whatever it took to get him to tell his secrets.

  “Mandrake was used frequently by the Ancients, as both an analgesic and a sedative. In large doses it has been known to cause delirium.”

  —THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

  twenty

  Cass woke from a dream, disoriented by the darkness. Her chest went tight for a moment until she remembered she was at Belladonna’s villa. There was a faint padding noise, and she saw a flash of movement as the blackness distorted around her. Someone else was in the room.

  “Piero?” she croaked out. “Is that you?”

  A candle flame sparked to life. “Sorry to disappoint.” Falco’s teasing grin materialized in the soft yellow glow.

  Cass smiled and then immediately winced. Why was it that she couldn’t do anything except lie like a block of marble without her arm starting to throb? She adjusted the pillow behind her back. Mannaggia. She felt as broken-down as her aunt Agnese.

  “Should I send for Dottor Basso?” Falco asked, sounding as if it were the last thing he wanted to do. He knelt down with the candle so their faces were just inches apart. “You were thrashing about in your sleep. Is it the pain?”

  Cass shook her head. For once she couldn’t remember her dream, which was undoubtedly a blessing. “I’m fine.” Her arm was aching, but she didn’t want Piero. She didn’t want anything to steal away these precious moments with Falco.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. Falco set the candle on the table next to the bed. He traced the hollows under her eyes, skimming a finger across the bridge of her nose. “You look so pale,” he said. “Like a ghost. I can’t believe I could have lost you. What were you doing all alo
ne in the woods?”

  Cass told him about de Gradi accosting her in the library, how she’d panicked and fled the villa. “Did you know that he was here?” she asked.

  Falco wrapped the fingers of her right hand in his. He sat next to her on the bed. “He’s heard about the trials, about the people drowned and then dumped in graves outside the city.” His mouth tightened into a hard line. “Easy pickings. He’s been… encouraging me to go back into my former line of work.” Falco added quickly, “I said no, of course.”

  Cass felt her stomach seize. Thinking of what he had done in Venice for money still made her queasy. “How many bodies can de Gradi possibly need? Surely Venice has its fair share of the dead.”

  “I suspect there are other reasons for his presence in Florence,” Falco said. “He’s the one who told me about the showing at Don Loredan’s. Maybe he knew Belladonna would be there; he seems to be quite enamored with her.”

  “She seems to be quite enamored with you.” Cass did her best to keep her voice light.

  She was hoping Falco would deny it, but he merely shrugged. “As you’ve probably noticed, she’s quite fond of most pretty things. She seemed quite taken with you at her birthday dinner.”

  “True, but she’s not posing nude for hours in my company.”

  Falco laughed. “She might if you asked nicely. She’s not particular when it comes to her admirers.” He reached out and ran the back of his hand down the side of Cass’s face. His voice lowered. “She’s nothing compared with you.”

  Warmth bloomed in Cass’s chest. Falco’s gentle touch never failed to melt her. Did he really find her more beautiful than his stunning patroness?

  Falco lifted her chin and leaned forward. His lips grazed her cheek. “There’s something hard about her, like she’s part sculpture. Unreal,” he murmured. “You are all softness, and all real. You are ten times as beautiful as she is.”