The Scarlet Contessa (20 page)

My eyes must have widened at her cold, calculating heart; she let go a little grunt and waved her hand in frustration.

“I don’t care about such things! Just tell him whatever sounds best, whatever will make him want me,” she said irritably. “Pretend for once that you are not shy, and are writing a love letter to your husband. And don’t forget to put it in cipher. I have enough of a headache now without Girolamo or anyone else finding out about this.”

And with that, sitting in the sunlight listening to the songs of birds and drone of bees in the garden, I remembered where I had first seen Girolamo’s secret scribe: riding across the Lombard Plain, with Matteo’s limp body slung over his saddle.

Chapter Fourteen

That day, while Caterina lingered on the balcony nursing her headache, I went to the walk-in closet where Caterina’s vast assortment of gowns, headdresses, and trunks of jewelry were kept. The closet also held the single trunk I had brought from Pavia. I dug beneath the carefully folded sleeves, bodices, and overskirts, drew out the papers Matteo had left behind, and riffled through them for the encryption key. The rest I returned to their hiding place beneath my clothes.

I took the document, paper, and quill with me to Caterina’s office and locked the door. It took me far longer to write a convincing love letter than to encrypt it; using Matteo’s cipher as a guide, I created my own by making a few changes.

It was an easy business, really—or perhaps, like my brother, I was talented at espionage. Once I created my new key, I translated my original love letter to Monsieur de Montagne into cipher, and wrote out a second copy of the key. I folded both the second key and the encrypted love letter into thirds and sealed them with wax. I fed the original love letter to the candle flame, letting the curling, blackening remnants drop into the empty hearth.

I returned to the closet and hid my encryption key in my trunk, then went to the stables. A lone groom was mucking out one of the stalls, a young boy with a silky shock of carrot-colored hair and a face so smudged with grime that the whites of his blue eyes stood out alarmingly. I offered him two denarii to deliver a message “from the master to the French ambassador, but it must be done discreetly, for it contains a secret.” I told him that he should take the letter to the aide, Gerard de Montagne, personally, and explain that he should show it to no one, but wait for a second letter to arrive. And if the first were delivered safely, I would give the boy two more silver coins, and a second letter the next day to take to Monsieur de Montagne.

Intrigued by the thought of danger, he agreed eagerly. “I’ll be free at noon, to go to mass,” he said, “but the stablemaster need not know I’ve gone elsewhere. No one shall know, I swear it.”

I gave him the encryption key with a reminder that we would meet again the following day at the same hour and place. I dared not send the key and letter together, lest they be intercepted.

I went back to Caterina’s chamber to report my accomplishment only to discover that she had returned to bed and was dozing. I went out onto the balcony to sit in the shade of the awning, and thought about Matteo’s death, and the rider who had brought him home.

I knew nothing about the late Duke Galeazzo’s reasons for sending Matteo to Rome. Clearly, he had been on a sensitive mission, one that involved Lorenzo de’ Medici; why else would Lorenzo have come secretly to visit the duke? Why else would Lorenzo have hoped to speak to Matteo in private immediately upon his return? Before his imminent death required his swift return home, Matteo had been escorting papal legates back from Rome to meet with the duke. Try as I might, I could remember nothing of the cardinals who had come to see Galeazzo; the days immediately following Matteo’s death were a blur. I remembered only the black-haired rider.

A rider who served Count Girolamo as a scribe, one who sat alone in a tiny room hidden from view, encrypting secret messages. One who had traveled to Pavia alongside Matteo and the papal legates sent from His Holiness and Girolamo.

On his journey, had he discovered that my brother had been the Medici’s spy?

A wave of grief and rage swept over me; I steepled my hands and pressed the tips of my fingers to my lips, but I could no longer pray. Instead I spoke to the angel.

“Come to me,” I whispered. “Show me the truth. If he killed Matteo, give me proof.”

As if in reply, the angel’s words surfaced in my memory, blotting out all other thoughts.

I am already here. But your darkness shackles my tongue. . . .

Vow to obey me unto death, and I will reveal all.

I closed my eyes and saw the Nine of Swords: four swords crossed over four others, with a ninth sword thrust, tip pointing heavenward, through the center of the others . . . and all of them weeping blood.

“I will obey,” I whispered, “if you will only show me who killed my brother. . . .”

In my heart, in my mind, only silence answered. Silence, and gnawing, bitter pain.

I slept poorly that night, and in the hour before dawn, surrendered to wakefulness and slipped on an overdress to cover my thin linen chemise. As it was still dark, I took a lamp and stole down the stairs to the second floor, and the east wing, Girolamo’s province. I was surprised to find the sconces there already lit, though the corridor was silent.

I headed to the far end of the hall and the little room where I had found paper and ink. It was a purely irrational act; the door was no doubt locked, and I had no plan, only an urgent need to discover whatever I could about the scribe.

The sconce mounted on the wall near the supply chamber door was lit, and the door stood ajar. Holding my breath, I stepped up toward the threshold and peered inside.

In a neat row against the eastern wall stood tall wooden shelves, upon which were stacked various items: reams of paper, scrolls of clean parchment, ink vials, inkwells, blotters, ledgers, boxes, awls, magnifying lenses, rules, penknives, pumice stones, ribbons, portable writing desks, wool dusters, and a fresh new pile of untrimmed quills.

At the far end of the room, near the closed door to the scribe’s tiny chamber, a woman with a black scarf wrapped about her head was stooped over, reaching for one of the portable writing desks on the lowest shelf; beside her was a broom and dustbin. Her cheeks were weathered and sunken, her eyes almost hidden by heavy folds; she was broad of shoulder and hip, and dressed in a black, uncorseted peasant’s kirtle and white apron, and a leather thong round her neck, from which hung half a dozen or so keys. These clanked together as she sank, groaning, to her knees, then lifted the corner of one of the slanted lap desks with a gnarled hand; with the other, she reached beneath the desk and brought forth yet another key.

She set down the desk and, with one hand pressed hard against the adjacent wall for support, rose with a groan. I watched as she unlocked the door to the scribe’s office with the key, and took her dustbin and broom into the scribe’s office.

When she was done sweeping, she locked the door and replaced the key beneath the lap desk; I darted into the nearest open doorway on the opposite side of the corridor and remained pressed against the wall as she moved out into the hall—not without first locking the door to the supply chamber as well, then rising onto her toes to set this second key flat against the arm of the nearby wall sconce.

She moved on to the adjacent chamber, a library. I scurried across the corridor, took the key hidden on the wall sconce, unlocked the door to the supply chamber, and slipped inside.

I closed the door behind me, and set my lamp down upon the shelf as I retrieved the second key hidden beneath the little writing desk.

Within seconds, I stood inside the scribe’s tiny quarters, lamp in hand. There was no sign of any letters, in cipher or regular text. I tried the desk drawers, but both were locked. Stymied, I lifted my lamp high and turned in a slow circle about the room, looking for a likely hiding place for another key.

Just before I gave up, I noticed that the right rear leg of the desk was darker than the rest. I crouched down beneath the desk and turned the lamp on it. In the gloom, it had seemed merely dirty; now I saw the imprint of hundreds of inky fingerprints at the base, where the foot of the leg rested against the unfinished stone floor.

Girolamo’s scribe was not only slovenly, but also careless.

I set my lamp far to one side and with both hands, lifted the right desk leg a finger’s breadth off the ground. There, gratifyingly, lay the key.

The leftmost top drawer held two documents: the abbreviated letter and half-page of cipher I had seen the day before. Our scribe had made little progress.

There, in the little closet of an office, I sat upon the scribe’s stool and, with the lamp perched beside me on the desk, read the abbreviated letter. It had apparently been dictated, as the scribe had written in haste.

YGrace, mst highly est. Montefeltro etc.

We r now fully committed to removing 1
st
citizen fm pwr, yr assistance crucial to our success, need u to gathr min 600 trps outside Flor’s walls, our agents will tk care of both bros, when they r dd, Cow will ring as signal, then yr troops storm walls, go to P. d. Signoria, join Pazzi in denounce Lor. & fam. Must destroy opposition. HH promises u not only handsm purse we discussd, bt also favrs & land. Reply swiftly to signal yr agreemt—plan will be enacted shrtly. Will give u notice of day, hr.

W grtest esteem, etc.,

I let go a gasp that would have been audible to anyone passing by in the hall, and clamped my hand over my mouth. I knew where
Flor
was and who
both bros
were, for I had stayed at their palazzo after Matteo’s funeral. I knew the
1
st
citizen
,
Lor.
I even knew that the
Cow
was the low, “mooing” bell that summoned all citizens of Florence to the city square, the Piazza della Signoria. And I understood all too well what
dd
meant.

Girolamo Riario and
HH
, His Holiness, were plotting to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother.

I do not remember replacing the letter or locking the doors and returning the three keys to their places, though I surely did. I only vaguely remember returning to Caterina’s chamber and dressing silently as she snored, then taking the encrypted letter for Caterina’s admirer, Gerard de Montagne, to the stalls. I paid the little red-haired groom his two silver coins, and hinted that, once his mission was accomplished, he might get a third.

All of this I did in the cold grip of fear. Girolamo was a murderer, and Lorenzo de’ Medici and his younger brother, Giuliano, were in terrible danger. It was my duty to warn them quickly.

Caterina was still sleeping when I returned to her chamber. I fetched a copy of the cipher I had created for her correspondence with de Montagne and went down the hall to her study and bolted the door. Making good use of the quill, ink, and paper I had recently obtained from the supply room, I made a second copy of the cipher and wrote a very brief letter.

Ser Lorenzo,

It is I, Dea, Matteo’s sister. I now reside in Girolamo Riario’s household and I have learned that he and the Pope are plotting to murder you and Giuliano. Beware: Girolamo has asked the Duke of Montefeltro to wait outside Florence’s walls with an army of 600 men, and intends to give him a signal to storm the city once you and your brother have been eliminated. Take great care; Girolamo plans to strike soon.

I encrypted the letter carefully. When I was done, I fed the letter in plain text to the lamp’s flame; it caught and quickly blackened and curled. I let it finish burning in the cold hearth while I folded the cipher key and the encrypted letter, and sealed them both before placing them snugly in the pocket hidden in the folds of my skirt.

I returned to my lady’s bedchamber to fetch another silver coin for my little messenger; unfortunately, Caterina had awakened by then, and was in a surly mood upon hearing that her would-be lover would probably not reply to her that day, as he would not receive the encrypted letter until after midday.

I was desperate to take Lorenzo’s letters to my little groom that morning, so that they would be delivered that day to the Florentine ambassador; instead, I spent the morning tending to Caterina’s whims.

The two letters hidden in my skirt pocket weighed heavily on me; unfortunately, Caterina was demanding, and engaged me in a dozen other tasks. At several points, Caterina interrupted me to complain:

“What is
wrong
with you, Dea? Your mind is elsewhere today!”

For her own safety, I could not confide in her, so I murmured vague excuses and apologies. Time passed swiftly and I was startled when I heard a sudden cascade of midday church bells. I made up a hasty lie, telling Caterina that I had forgotten to pay my messenger, and had to do so immediately. I then ran as fast as my skirts would allow to the stables, to no avail. My little groom had already left on his mission.

Crushed, I headed back to the contessa.

Late in the afternoon, I finally escaped Caterina and went down to sit in the large kitchen garden off the servants’ ground-floor dining hall in the far western wing. When the cook finally emerged to ring the supper bell, the outdoor workers—gardeners, stonemasons, artisans, and the stableworkers, who crossed over the gravel courtyard separating the stables from the estate proper—made their way wearily toward the hall.

I spotted my little messenger; as he neared, I called softly. Clearly, his mission had been successful, for he grinned broadly at me, revealing a newly missing front tooth.

“Madonna!” he exclaimed happily.

I shushed him and led him away from the gathering diners, back toward the gardens behind the palazzo’s central wing. We stopped in an alcove beside a softly burbling fountain, the whole sheltered from view by an ancient rose thicket, loaded with fragrant blooms.

“Your letters are delivered, Madonna,” the boy whispered, beaming. “The French aide, the one whose name sounds like a mountain, he came himself for the second one, and tipped me!”

“You’ve done an excellent job,” I answered softly. “But now I have a far more important, and even more secret, task for you.”

He squared his thin shoulders proudly. “I can do it!”

“Is there a chance that you could go into the city tonight?”

“Tonight?” He grimaced, and I felt a strong pang of guilt.

“It’s all right,” I said abruptly, deciding that I would have to figure out a way to go myself. “It’s wrong of me to ask you to do something so dangerous.”

“It’s safer for a boy to go out than a woman,” he said wisely. “Besides, Madonna, I just thought of a way to do it. Where is it that you want me to go?”