The Scarlet Contessa (45 page)

The fourth day was Epiphany and we rested. From the battlements, Caterina watched the pageant and procession staged by the French army chaplains. The weather was brutally cold; the streets of Forlì soon cleared, and so did the parapets of Ravaldino. After attending a mass in the military chapel, Caterina retired early to da Cremona’s quarters to sleep. I worried that she might waken again after sunset, but dusk came and went and she never once stirred.

I watched her sleep for a time, wishing that I could say a proper farewell to her; instead, I silently put my mother’s triumph cards into my pocket and slipped out to the small sitting room to retrieve the written rituals from inside the desk. As I lifted the desktop, I paused, and took not only the rituals but also a single piece of paper. On it, I wrote:

Do not look for me. Just know that I am happy.

I left the note upon the desk and, with the sheaf of papers tucked beneath one arm, took the lamp and headed for Paradise.

Ser Giovanni’s former apartment was dark, forlorn, and cold—the shutters were all closed, and no one had lit a fire in the hearth since the siege had begun. The light from my lamp swept ghoulishly over the bare floors and walls as I made my way to the closet.

I set the lamp down, filling the closet with light; nearby rested the stack of masculine clothing. I would do my work here rather than risk one of the soldiers noticing the light coming through the cracks in the shutters of the long-dark chamber. Hurriedly, I undressed and pulled on Ser Giovanni’s too-long leggings and tunic, then held both in place by strapping on the belt with the stiletto and pulling on my boots. I hung the wool scarf around my neck and threw on the cloak and hat.

I placed the deck of cards in the center of the closet, brought out the worn piece of vellum containing the invocation ritual, and faced east, toward Forlì. Recalling the solemn reverence of Matteo and Luca’s gestures in the dark of night, I sanctified the space with the ritual of the five-pointed star first, and then that of the hexagram. Afterward I realized I had forgotten to take some of the dried brownish powder in the pouch. Without it, the angel would not appear—and I was not ready to risk my adventure without divine aid.

Half a small teaspoon,
Ficino had said, would suffice. Remembering my previous encounter with the magical powder, I opened the little black pouch beside my abandoned gown and carefully measured out the proper amount. But if I were to succeed, I needed to overcome the languor and disorientation the drug produced.

I looked at the powder in my palm, thought of the long climb down the shaft, and flicked a third of the drug onto the floor. The rest I licked off my palm, and spent a miserable moment gagging it down.

Only then did I recite the ritual of the barbarous names. The nonsensical syllables took on poignant, urgent meaning: this was my last opportunity to contact the angel before I died, and I was determined to understand my life and my brother’s death.

The recitation lasted several minutes. At the end, I bowed my head and whispered, “Please guide me. I want to understand, and I won’t be able to ask again.”

I stood waiting for the walls to disappear and the angel to appear as it had so long ago. Instead, there was only the silent flickering of the lamp, and my gown, discarded like the past, and my mother’s cards, resting at my feet.

A phrase surfaced in my mind:
The key to your past is also the key to your future.
These had been the words of the angel to me two decades ago.

Take up the cards.
Were these the words of the angel, or my own?

I picked up the triumph deck. With my eyes closed, I shuffled the cards, kissing each one with a fingertip until I sensed the one that waited for me. I pulled it out and, opening my eyes, set the others back down on the floor.

The card that remained was the Nine of Swords. As I stared at it, I remembered how the card had looked to me when I was under the powder’s sway: each sword’s golden tip had wept copious scarlet tears.

I stared at the swords now and could almost see the dripping blood as the angel’s past warning replayed silently in my head.

This is the key to your past and future: cruelty and self-cruelty; pain to the point of madness. It gnaws at you; if you do not expel it, it will devour you.

“I will expel it, then,” I said aloud. “I will kill Cesare Borgia. You must go with me and help.”

There came a pause so long that I despaired. In a voice raw with grief, I asked, “Will you not come with me? Will you not show yourself? I am frightened and need comfort.”

At last there came a faint, faint answer, as if the angel had distanced itself from me.
I am always with you. I will never desert you.

I sighed as my belief faltered; my previous vision had no doubt been prompted by the powder, not any magical operation, and my thoughts had just told me what I most wanted to hear. But the reality of saving Caterina’s life and avenging Matteo’s death still remained.

I closed the circle for superstition’s sake, and instead invoked the bravery of Caterina Sforza. She would not have shirked from my dangerous venture; with shrewd daring, she would have found her way to Cesare Borgia and killed him. As I put the Nine of Swords in my cloak pocket, where the gloves and key waited, I thought of my lady as my talisman and smiled.

Ser Giovanni’s apartment was adjacent to Caterina’s former rooms in Paradise, where Captain da Cremona now dwelled. Fortunately, he was in the dining chamber with his fellow
condottieri
, drinking wine and discussing the next day’s plan; I slipped through the door connecting Caterina’s old bedchamber to Giovanni’s without a sound.

The lamp on the night table was lit. I darted through the bedchamber into the narrow corridor leading back to the water closet; halfway, I crouched down and held the lamp to the dark wainscoting until I found the tiny keyhole.

I unlocked it and began to reach for the top rung inside the shaft when I realized I did not want to leave the lamp behind, as it would announce both my escape and the presence of the tunnel. I threaded my belt through the lamp’s handle and, praying I did not set myself ablaze, grasped the top rung and climbed into the shaft.

Closing the wall panel behind me was unnerving; I was forced to hold on with one hand while I pulled the panel shut. It didn’t help matters that the globe of the lamp was painfully hot and scalded my hip and thigh as it bounced off them each time I moved down a rung. I had made it only a quarter of the way down before the lamp swung so hard that it went out, and the globe nearly slipped off.

Somehow I kept my balance and prevented the heated glass from falling and shattering down below me in the darkness. The shaft and the rungs were both freezing, and my scalded leg and aching hands kept me alert. I kept thinking of Caterina, who would scoff at such minor inconveniences.

The moment came when I reached down with my boot and could not find the next rung. I lowered myself as far as I could. I had a sense, even in the profound darkness, that there was ground not far beneath me, but sensing was far less reassuring than seeing.

Let go,
I imagined Caterina saying.
I’m right behind you.

I let go and immediately landed on solid earth. I remembered to turn sharply left and take two paces; the sole of my boot scraped against rough wood. I opened the door to the tunnel and, fumbling, managed to remove the useless lantern from my belt before continuing.

Without light, I had no way of knowing what awaited me. I pawed the frigid earth beneath my feet, finally found a stone half the size of my fist, and dropped it into the tunnel opening, perhaps twice as wide as my shoulders. It struck the soft bottom with a muted sound that indicated I would fall too far should I jump in; I sat on the edge of the opening and dangled my legs over, searching with the tips of my boot for purchase. They revealed a clumsy staircase of wood and piled earth leading downward. Drawing a deep breath, I stumbled down the makeshift steps and, proceeding by touch alone, came to an opening the height of my shoulders.

This was the tunnel proper—freezing airless gloom that stank of the nearby latrine and the piss of rodents. I crouched down as I entered; even then, my hat and the shoulders of my cloak scraped the dirt ceiling.

As I forged ahead, my hands stretched out in front of me, I felt my fingers tear through the webs of spiders and heard the nearby squeak of rats. My hat fell off, and I was obliged to reach down and feel about for it; just as my one hand found the brim, my other found tiny crawling legs in the dirt. I straightened quickly, hitting my head against the ceiling.

In the impenetrable gloom, I brushed off my hat and set it back on my head.
A true Sforza would never fear a rat or a spider,
I imagined Caterina saying.

I lumbered on; soon I began to wonder whether there were holes in the tunnel, for in the distance I saw what looked like infinitesimal colored glass balls in the air, or translucent glittering atoms alight with shifting colors, one blending into the next like cangiante silk. I blinked, and when I looked again, I saw that they were suffused with thin, silvery rays of moonlight—though there was no moon that night.

I felt a sudden exhilaration and laughed softly. “Angel, angel,” I whispered giddily. “I grow drunk; now you must come to me.”

My eyes were dazzled by a flash, like lightning; I shielded my face with an arm, and when my eyes cleared again, I saw a shape in the distance beyond. It might have been the outline of the angel, glittering darkly, but when I focused directly on it, it shifted to the periphery of my vision.

“Angel, lead me out of here,” I said. There was no response, in my own mind or outside of it, but I followed the glittering, shifting blackness ahead of me, and the swimming colored atoms. As I did, my legs grew heavier and my balance uncertain; I stumbled upon a split log half-buried in the dirt, and fell against the third step of a steep staircase leading upward.

I half crawled up the uneven dirt stairs, and hit a wooden hatch with the covered crown of my head. No light came from above, and the hatch was so reluctant to open that I had to push my entire weight against it before it finally gave way.

It did so with a groan and the snap of twigs; sand spilled through the opening and would have blinded me had it not been for the brim of my hat. I emerged from the earth spitting out sand to discover that I had displaced a withered bush. Above me were the limbs of olive trees, and beyond those, a hundred thousand twinkling stars in an indigo sky, a sight so dazzling that I opened my arms as if to embrace it. This caused me to notice my bare, freezing hands, and I put on my gloves—not only for the cold, but to avoid poisoning myself with the
cantarella
. I remembered, too, the black scarf around my neck, and wrapped it around my face, covering all but my eyes.

Although my mission was a gruesome one, I felt a pervasive euphoria that left me grinning like a madwoman. The lights of Ravaldino were behind me, and the city gates to my right. I completed the walk through the gates with only minor difficulty, but it was enough for the pair of shivering guards inside the gatehouse to interrupt their game of dice to call out: “You there! Are you drunk?”

I dared not answer in a woman’s voice, and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I kept my gaze on the glittering blackness that kept slipping in and out of the corner of my eye, and shook my head. The act caused me to have to shift my feet to keep from falling over.

“He
is
drunk,” the other guard sneered, and leaned out the open window. “I’ve a mind to arrest you! You know very well that Captain Borgia would hang you for wandering outside the city gates—not to mention the fact that no one is to be on the street after Vespers.”

I bowed in apology and, when I tried to straighten, staggered a few paces to my right.

“Go home, drunkard!” the first soldier shouted. “Go on, before I come out!”

I steepled my hands together in an expression of gratitude, and made my unsteady way down the road that Cesare Borgia had traveled as Forlì’s conqueror. I stumbled down the near-deserted streets, grateful that there was no moon, grateful that I had dressed in black, grateful that the few lights still burning in the houses of Forlì sparkled like pretty yellow diamonds. I did not follow the road to its end, where hundreds of French, Swiss, and Italian soldiers had encamped, and where a few horsemen were patrolling; instead, I turned onto the main road leading to the town square.

There, torches burned on sconces hung on the front walls of the distant Duomo. I walked past a row of empty shops with broken shutters and doors torn from their hinges; these gave way to public gardens, now denuded by winter and trampled by soldiers and their horses. I crossed to the other side of the street before passing the Duomo, lest the torches reveal me, but I paused a moment to lose myself in the flames, which appeared as long, jagged bolts of shifting colors: red, green, blue, yellow.

Past the shops and Duomo, the trees grew more numerous, providing privacy in summer for the homes of the wealthy. The leaves were all gone now, and the bare, skeletal branches served as reminders of winter’s bleakness.

Luffo Numai’s house was the second grand palace in the neighborhood, buffered from the street by a large island of trees—some evergreens—and a now-dead flower garden. Between the house and trees was a broad, curving driveway covered with cobblestones, and a tiny plaza.

I stole up to an evergreen in the island and stood in its shadow to assess what lay before me. A campfire had been lit in the driveway, not far from the main entry, and four soldiers huddled around it as they passed around a jug of wine. Like me, they wore drab wool cloaks and scarves over their mouths and noses, but their brows were colored sunset by the blaze, which seemed far more alive and beautiful.

Just beneath my euphoria lay panic. I had thought of some clever tactic to distract the guards, so that I could speak to Ser Luffo alone—and now, I had abruptly forgotten it. I had to make a decision, and quickly, but I was beginning to lose my bearings to the drug.