The Serpent and the Pearl

by Kate Quinn

  “I am not his concubine.”

  “Juan Borgia says—I met him on the way to the palazzo here, he wouldn’t stop twitting me—”

  “That lecherous little nit couldn’t be trusted if he told you the sun would rise tomorrow morning,” I snapped. “I am not his father’s mistress, or concubine, or whatever other choice word he or you have for it!”

  “The Cardinal gave you that mare, didn’t he?” Orsino nodded bitterly at my new horse where she stood lipping hay in her new stall. “Pearls and jewels too, Juan told me.”

  “I’ve not given him anything in return.” I met my husband’s eyes as squarely as I could. “I will swear by any saint you like, Orsino. I swear by the Virgin—which I still am.”

  He averted his eyes, scuffing his feet a little as he shuffled out of the gelding’s stall.

  “You want proof?” Outrage seized me in a red rush. I’d never touched my husband before, except the gliding of our palms in the grave measures of the basse-danse at our wedding, but now I took him by the sleeve and dragged him away from the row of stalls, back to a darker alcove out of sight of all but an inquisitive old mare at the end of the row. I could still feel the tingle along my fingers where Cardinal Borgia had stroked them, and I scrubbed my hand along my skirt to banish it. I was Orsino’s wife, and I had no business thinking of such things. I faced my husband resolutely, taking a deep breath as I took his hand and hooked it through the laces of my bodice. “I am as much a virgin now as I was on our wedding night,” I said. “And if you like, I will prove it to you.”

  His head jerked up, and that blue gaze held mine. “Prove—”

  “You’re my husband,” I said. “Even if you haven’t taken me yet, you have the right. I’m yours. Or at least, I’m supposed to be.”

  Hesitantly his fingers touched my bodice ribbons. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed. “I couldn’t believe my eyes, looking at you across that banquet table—”

  It took a real effort to leach the exasperation thoroughly from my voice. “Then do something about it! Be my husband, in more than just name!”

  “You want me?” His eyes pleaded with me. “You really do?”

  No, I thought. Not at all. But what did wanting matter, or love either? Girls like me took the husbands chosen for us; we went to their beds and bore their children and managed their households and did it with good cheer, too. It was what I’d been taught all my life; what I’d been bred and raised for. What did it matter if the wedding vows had been a lie from the start? I’d said them in good faith; made a vow to God as well as Orsino, and wasn’t that more important than what I wanted?

  I looked at Orsino’s narrow, handsome face, his blue eyes and his fair hair still speckled with dust, and I felt no desire at all. But I did feel sorry for him, sorry and guilt-sick that I’d even been tempted to throw my holy vows aside all because a man with a voice like a roll of thunder told me he wanted me naked in the grass.

  Besides, another voice whispered in my mind, give yourself to Orsino, and Cardinal Borgia won’t want you anymore. And that would be one way to solve this whole guilt-laced mess. “You’re my husband,” I repeated firmly, making myself put my arms around Orsino’s neck. “And I keep my vows.”

  Oh, Holy Virgin, surely it wasn’t supposed to be this awkward! I stepped out of my tall stilt clogs, but the difference in our heights proved too unwieldy, so I stepped back into them and stood there tottering while Orsino murmured into my neck and tried to unlace my bodice. I tightened my arms around him, tried to tug him down into the straw, but he gasped something about the stable boys catching us. We stood pressed together against the wall of the stable, grappling not at each other but at the layers of clothing between us. He couldn’t get my bodice ribbons unknotted, and I hardly had better luck with the ties of his hose. It seemed an age before we finally fit ourselves together. He was so hesitant he hardly hurt me at all, but my wince at the brief stab of pain nearly paralyzed him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, no!” I had to put my arms around his neck again, smile reassuringly as he began to move in such anxious little jerks that I could hardly feel him at all through the grappling of limbs around my tangled skirts and his bunched hose. He covered my mouth with his, less a kiss than a place to muffle his groans, and I couldn’t help opening my eyes to stare past his cheekbone at the old mare gazing mournfully at me over her stall door.

  Is it like this for you? I thought. Surely not. I’ve seen horses mate. And from what I now knew about how people mated, I thought the horses had the better idea.

  It seemed an endless agony of awkwardness, but it was all over in the time it took to say an Act of Contrition.

  “Giulia,” Orsino gasped again into my neck. “Giulia—”

  “Shh.” I smiled, stroking his cheek. At least there hadn’t been much pain to speak of—one heard such horror stories from nurses and maidservants. Generally the more elderly and devout the source, the more ghoulish the story.

  “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” Orsino looked down, fumbling us apart again. I hadn’t bled very much, but it was there, a spot or two on his hose. “I should have known you wouldn’t lie.”

  “Now you know.” He’d addressed me by name, at least—surely it was a start? And it would be better next time, in a proper bed like our wedding night was supposed to be. I settled my skirts, reached down into the straw, and found his cap for him as he did up his hose.

  “I’m not supposed to leave Carbognano.” He fidgeted with the cap. “But I could come back to Rome in secret now and then, if we planned it right. Or you could come to me; tell Mother and the Cardinal you were off to visit your sister . . .”

  He trailed off as I looked at him. “I thought I’d be coming to Carbognano with you,” I said at last. Pretty Carbognano, Madonna Adriana had called it. Pretty and prosperous. I had imagined a place for gardens and outdoor fetes; for hunting and riding and learning to love the husband I’d been given, and not having to think anymore about deep Spanish voices that had no business reverberating around in my stomach the way they did. A place for raising that golden-haired little girl I’d set my heart on. “I think Cardinal Borgia would let me go,” I continued when Orsino didn’t answer. “He doesn’t want me unwilling, you see. And now that you and I . . .” Men prized virginity so highly—surely the Cardinal would want nothing more to do with me now. I had a pang at that thought, and swiftly banished it. Orsino was looking at me guiltily, and dread clenched in my chest. “Why won’t you be taking me to Carbognano, Orsino?”

  “I don’t dare risk it.” My husband’s voice was miserable. “The Cardinal gave me Carbognano. If I took you away he’d want it back, and my mother—”

  “So what do I do now?” I tidied my bodice ribbons, tugging the trailing ends until they were exactly, perfectly even. “What do you want me to do, husband? Live with Cardinal Borgia like he’s my husband, and visit my real husband behind his back?”

  “We could manage that,” my husband said eagerly. “If we were careful . . .”

  “You know, it’s odd.” I tucked a stray lock of hair back into its net. “All these weeks, Cardinal Borgia has been offering to make me his whore. And the only time I’ve felt like a whore is here and now.”

  “Giulia—”

  “Don’t touch me.” I recoiled from his hand as though it were a viper and glided away with all the icy grace I could summon.

  Hard to summon any kind of grace with a trickle of blood running down my thighs. Along with what remained of my pride, and my dignity, and my hopes.

  “Madonna Giulia!” Little Lucrezia flew to greet me as I reentered from the stable yard. “Did you see the mare? My father chose her just for you, even though he’s been so busy with the College of Cardinals this week. Can I see her, now that I’m done with my French lesson? Please say I can ride her someday—”

  “Ride her whenever you like.” I kissed the top of Lucrezia’s blond head and moved past her to the stairs before she could see
my haze of tears.

  Carmelina

  G athering herbs is generally work for menials or for apprentices who need punishing. Up at dawn to fill a basket in the garden, then the washing, the chopping, the drying. No one wants to do it, so I bought myself a little goodwill among the still-sulky apprentices by volunteering for the task. I liked gathering herbs. Moving through the pots and plants with my skirt hem slapping against my ankles all damp from the dew, sniffing the sharp clean scent of fresh rosemary and mint and thyme, savoring the moist cool part of the morning before the summer heat set in. At that hour just after dawn, I could see the day spread out in front of me smooth and perfect as a just-risen pan of cream: no stews spilled yet, no pots dropped, no burns on fingertips from too-hot skillets or rude scullions to be put in their place. Cool, herb-scented, solitary perfection.

  Except this morning I had company among the hedges of rosemary. “Madonna Giulia?” I said in astonishment.

  My mistress turned, still wrapped in an embroidered robe over her night shift, the pink dawn light gleaming off her hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you behind those hedges.”

  I rarely saw her before noon, and hardly at all in the past week. Madonna Giulia’s husband had come to the palazzo; the whole household was talking of it, and he hadn’t been supposed to see his bride at all, but the grooms were full of highly embroidered stories of the things husband and wife had supposedly been shouting at each other in the stable yard. I didn’t put much faith in gossip, but Madonna Giulia had stayed largely in her chamber ever since. When she did appear, her face was somber, even when she was tucking into a plate of my honeyed baked pears or strumming discordantly on a lute so Lucrezia could practice her dancing with earnest little Joffre for a partner.

  Though Madonna Giulia had had enough energy to tell Juan Borgia to “go sit on a pin, you despicable little boy” when he came wheedling through her door. The maids all enjoyed quite a giggle over that, especially when we saw him stamp off red-faced and muttering curses.

  My mistress looked grave now, though, running her fingertips over the waving spears of fresh chives. “May I assist you, Madonna Giulia?” I ventured. “I can make you a posset if you want something to help you sleep . . .”

  “Possets won’t help. I haven’t slept all week.” Hollow blue-smudged eyes looked far better on her than they did on most women. “I was looking for gillyflowers, gillyflowers and honeysuckle? My mother used to make a perfume out of the flowers for me, back in Capodimonte. Now I’ve got all these expensive scents tied up in ribbons next to my cosmetics, but I just want to smell like honeysuckle and gillyflowers again.”

  She looked sad, and it didn’t suit her. Her small face was meant for laughing, that cherry mouth for smiling and those dark eyes for sparkling. Standing among the chives and wild mint, with her eyes lowered and her bare golden head tilted to one side, she looked as small and firm-fleshed and perfect as a capon, all ready to be sautéed in white wine and garlic and coriander (or at least that was how I liked to sauté a capon, though my father had some interesting ideas involving cinnamon and must syrup; page 187, Chapter: Game). Madonna Giulia had the kind of beauty to make most girls scratch and spit, but I just found myself admiring it. I’d always been plain as a kitchen ladle, and it was no use envying those born luckier. Besides, I wasn’t sure I’d trade my cook’s nose or the skill in my hands for any amount of golden hair. A talent for sauces and pastry lasted longer than any youthful bloom of skin or perfect white bosom—and it didn’t come with the attentions of powerful, middle-aged, morally dubious churchmen.

  “You’ll find gillyflowers in that small garden by the south loggia, Madonna Giulia,” I said, taking pity on her. “This is the kitchen garden, so it’s mostly herbs. But there’s a honeysuckle vine here—” and I cut a branch for her with the small kitchen knife I took out every morning with my basket.

  She brightened as though I’d offered her pearls, taking a deep sniff of the blossoms. “Smells like Capodimonte,” she said, and, plucking a blossom, she sucked the nectar out of the base. “Would you like one?” She offered me a flower with as much graceful courtesy as though it were a cup of fine wine.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Not after making sweets every day, Madonna.”

  “You’re the one who makes them? Those heavenly strawberry things and the marzipan tourtes, and the little sugared fruits?” Her eyebrows were darker than her hair; they flew away at a wide angle of surprise, and she smiled. “You’ve got a gift! I’ve never tasted anything better.”

  “The marzipan, the sugared fruits, or the strawberry crostate?” I couldn’t help asking. “Or the honeysuckle?”

  “All of them. What’s your name?”

  “Carmelina Mangano, madonna. I’m cousin to Maestro Marco Santini in the kitchens—I just arrived from Venice in May.” I wondered if I had to stand still while she spoke to me, out of respect, or if she’d mind if I kept on with my work. Madonna Adriana liked all activity to halt the moment she addressed a servant, but Madonna Giulia looked a deal more informal. Or maybe lonely was the better word. There was no one of her own age in the palazzo besides the maids, after all. Perhaps even my conversation was better than Madonna Adriana’s coin counting or little Lucrezia’s prattle.

  “I eat far too many of your tourtes, you know,” she was confiding now. “But I’m sad, and I always eat when I’m sad.” She looked about her for a seat, but this was no pleasure garden with benches and fountains; just a businesslike square of well-ordered shrubs and hedges and pots sheltered from the winds by high stone walls, so with a little shrug my mistress sat herself down on the grass between the sage and the chervil.

  “Madonna Giulia, your robe—” I began to say, looking at all those delicate embroidered hems, but she waved a hand in unconcern.

  “Bother the robe. My mother used to have me on my knees in the kitchen garden every week, picking feverfew for headache remedies and valerian for sleep draughts. Of course I was more interested in how to make skin creams and scent”—sniffing at the branch of honeysuckle in her lap again—“but I never minded the dirt much. What brings you all the way from Venice, Carmelina?”

  I shifted my basket to the other arm, pinching a sprig of rosemary between my fingers to get the scent. Perfect for the roast shoulder of pork we’d be putting on the spit for pranzo in a few hours—I began clipping sprigs as I gave her the short, careful, mostly fictitious account of how and why I’d left Venice. She listened with apparently rapt attention, fingers knitted beneath her perfect chin. “Are you truly interested, madonna?” I couldn’t help but ask. “It’s not an interesting story.” Not with all the shocking bits like theft and altar desecration left out. And besides, well-born girls like her did not find anything about girls like me interesting. We existed only to serve girls like her: serve them, groom them, and feed them, not talk to them.

  She must be lonelier than anyone thought, if she was so pleased at the conversation of someone like me.

  “It’s all interesting.” She smiled up at me, and a dimple appeared in her rosy cheek. “I’ve never worn a mask for Carnival, after all, or ridden in a gondola, or traveled outside Capodimonte. Well, except when I came to Rome, of course. Are you sorry to leave Venice?”

  I suppressed a shudder. “No, Madonna Giulia.”

  “Oh, don’t bother calling me Madonna anything. I keep looking about for my mother when I hear that.”

  “Begging your pardon, but I can’t.” Firmly. “Madonna Adriana would have the skin off my back.”

  “I suppose she would, wouldn’t she?” A snort. “Is she a good mistress to serve?”

  I stripped a cluster of roses, tossing the petals into my basket for jellies. “She is a great lady of admirable thriftiness.”

  “Yes, isn’t she dreadful? She’s an old pander, and she’s cheaper than a vendor hawking secondhand clothes.” Sigh. “If you’re hoping to find a husband here in Rome, Carmelina, my advice is to find one without a mother.”

  “I won’t
be looking for a husband, Madonna Giulia.” I moved on from the rosemary to the sweet marjoram, clipping a handful. Excellent for flavoring pork liver tommacelle. “I’ve no dowry for marrying.”

  “You’ve got a dowry in those hands.” Giulia sucked the nectar out of another honeysuckle blossom. “Any man would count himself lucky to get a wife who could cook like you.”

  “That’s not how it works,” I found myself telling her as I pinched a few brown-edged leaves off the marjoram sprigs. Apprentices always skimped on this part, but I wanted only the best and freshest leaves for my dishes. “It takes money to marry, especially if you haven’t got family or at least a beautiful face. My father could only afford to get one of his daughters married properly. My younger sister was the pretty one”—not to mention the one who had kept her virtue instead of surrendering it to a good-looking apprentice—“so she got the dowry.”

  Maddalena had a baby now. I’d found that out just a week ago. After much wrestling with myself, I’d sent a short letter to my sister in Venice, asking after the family. Sent more than a month back, by way of Bologna so they’d never know I was hiding in Rome . . . she’d finally scribbled a few lines back, begging me not to write again. Father is still so furious I didn’t dare tell him about your letter, Maddalena had written, with that pious little sniff of hers I could almost hear on the page. He’ll never forgive you, you know, and I don’t see why he should!

  But she had told me about the baby. A boy. You’ll never have any of your own, so pray for mine.

  Madonna Giulia was looking at me with a penitent expression, as though my lack of husband and dowry were her fault. “Did you ever want to marry?”

  “Most girls dream of marriage,” I shrugged. “But I’ve seen enough of the world to know it’s not like the songs and poems, even for the pretty girls with bags of ducats to bring their husbands. I reckon kitchen work suits me better than a husband and children.”

  “My brothers scraped together three thousand florins for my dowry,” Madonna Giulia said. “Sandro said being pretty would count for something, too—like your sister. But it didn’t, not really. None of it mattered. I still didn’t end up with much of a husband.”