Belladonna (9 page)

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. 

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.

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.

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.

It was a long shot, but it was the only shot Cass had. She summoned Siena to assist her in dressing. She planned to go to Madalena’s palazzo immediately.

Mada’s new home with Marco was just a few blocks from her father’s palazzo, down one of the main side canals. The cream-colored building had red clay roof tiles and thick glass windows outlined in gold leaf.

Giuseppe anchored the gondola and helped Cass and Siena alight from the boat. He then settled back on the baseboards, covering his face with his wide-brimmed gardening hat. Apparently, he was planning on a nap.

Siena held a parasol above Cass’s head in one hand while she rapped the ring-shaped bronze doorknocker with her other. Cass waved her fan in front of her face as she watched a flat-bottomed
peàta
loaded down with sacks of fruits and vegetables float by.

The butler opened the door and ushered the girls inside. Madalena floated into view at the top of the stairs. She wore her favorite crimson bodice, which was fitted with a pair of long gossamer sleeves that hung down past the end of her fingertips. Her entire ensemble was blood-red—the skirts, the sleeves, even the high satin collar. It must have taken hundreds of kermes beetles to dye so much lush fabric. But that didn’t matter; Mada had been spoiled by her father, and now she would be spoiled by her doting husband. It was only fair. She had lost her mother and her younger brother years ago. She deserved her happiness.