The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (6 page)

“Just take me in.” A little meekness wouldn’t go amiss, I judged, and though my father had been fond of pointing out that I didn’t have a meek bone in my body, I knew well enough how to fake it. “A place to sleep, Marco. My meals. That’s all.”

“That’s
all
? I’m off to the cells if anyone finds out I helped you. Or worse.” He bolted another mouthful of his wine. “Why can’t you just go home, little cousin? Your father, he might shout and roar, but surely he wouldn’t—”

“He’ll never take me back now, not the way I’ve disgraced the family.” I gave a chop of my hand, cutting off that line of action like a cleaver. My family in Venice—my father, my mother, my younger sister—they might as well be dead to me now, because I was certainly dead to them. “You see, there’s this.”

I reached under my apron and tossed the folded packet of pages across the table at Marco.

He knew that packet almost as well as I did. “Where did you—” He lunged for it, thumbing rapidly through the pages, pausing at the stain at the corner of page 112 where a thumbprint of egg white and nutmeg showed in a familiar yellow smear. “Your father’s
original
recipes?”

“Every last one he’s ever collected over forty years of cooking.”

Marco’s face had lit up, but now it fell again. “But they’re in code—they always were, he never taught anyone the code—”

“I know it. I can teach you. Then you’ll have all his recipes.” Except for the one ingredient or two that my father always left out of the written recipe and left to memory, just in case someone stole his code. May God forgive me for saying my father was a suspicious bastard, but most cooks are. Of course, I knew all the omitted ingredients, too.

Marco’s dark eyes lifted, regarding me keenly across the table. “How did you get your hands on this? He’s always kept them closer than a church keeps its relics.”

I couldn’t help but wince at the word
relic
. Yes, good thing I hadn’t brought up the mummified hand. No need for my skittish cousin to find out he was sheltering a thief of far worse things than recipes. “He sometimes takes his recipes to show prospective customers,” I said instead. “It impresses them—the codes, the secrecy. He’d angle visitors anywhere he could find them; get them talking about the wedding feast they were planning for their niece or the farewell
cena
they were hosting when their son left for university. Then he’d whip out his recipes and show how he could do it better than whoever they’d hired. He got quite a number of new patrons that way.” My father would be angling for clients at my funeral Mass, of that I had no doubt. “The last time he visited me, I—well, I waited till his back was turned, just before he left, and snatched them out of his pack.” I’d already had the half-formed plan of fleeing. Once I had that packet of recipes in my hand, the plan had crystallized from yearning into action. That was when the fear had started, too—what my father would do to me if I was caught, what the laws of Venice would do to me—but it hadn’t been enough to stop me.

“Your father will kill you,” Marco groaned. “He’ll kill
me
, if he catches us—”

Probably.
“Marco, do you really have nothing but ricotta between the ears?” I put just a hint of tartness into my voice, like the last squeeze of lemon juice going into a sweet sauce to give it bite. “Forget my father and look at what I’m giving you. Your post with Madonna Adriana, safe and sound—and with my father’s recipes you can be the best cook in Rome just as he’s the best cook in Venice. In return, all I ask is shelter. A place in the world for your newly orphaned cousin Carmelina, come to live with her cousin and of course devote her labors to his kitchens.”

He chewed his lip.

“Madonna Adriana won’t fuss,” I wheedled. “Not when I work free. And her new daughter-in-law can’t stop raving about my marzipan
tourtes
.”

Marco looked at me, then down at his wine. I drained mine, not taking my eyes off him though I heard movement in the next room. The Cardinal’s household, stirring at last. Servants would be bustling into the kitchens at any moment.

“So—” I raised my eyebrows. “Do we have a bargain?”

Giulia

A
good dose of sugar does wonders for one’s state of mind. After devouring all the marzipan and half the baked apples at the crack of dawn (I always eat when I’m upset), I had a cautious flash of insight: Maybe my husband hadn’t come to my bed last night because he was drunk and felt he might prove incapable? Even virgin girls like me knew what could happen to a man after too much wine. Perhaps he’d had one cup too many last night, so his mother scolded him and told him to wait until he was sober. Could that be why he’d said he wasn’t
allowed
?

Surely Orsino would come to me today. Perhaps even this morning: a passionate young man kicking down my door, impatient to possess his beloved. It was just like the fantasies I’d dreamed up as I read Petrarch’s sonnets, imagining what would happen if Petrarch had ever summoned the courage to simply sweep golden-haired Laura into his arms rather than moon about kissing her discarded gloves and writing her some admittedly excellent poetry. Surely Orsino had more courage than Petrarch—at least I was his wife, unlike Laura, who had been somebody else’s wife—and Orsino had a perfect right to sweep into my chamber if he liked. So I stuffed the crumb-scattered plates under the cushions on the wall chests, rinsed my mouth with rosewater from the ewer until my breath was sweet, pinched my cheeks to make them glow, and crawled right back into bed with my hair freshly combed about my shoulders. And once again, waited.

But the only person to come through my door without a knock was my mother-in-law, which was not what I had in mind at all.

“Ah, you’re awake,” she said, with no surprise on her face at all to find me alone. “I’d thought to let you sleep, after such a long night.”

Did she know exactly how I’d spent that night? I looked at Madonna Adriana da Mila, square as the bed in a gown of violet velvet with embroidered golden-brown sleeves, her face placid under the fringe of darkened curls escaping her matron’s headdress.

“Up, up, now,” she said with a brisk clap of her hands. “We must get you dressed at once. There is someone who wishes to speak with you.”

“Orsino?” I tossed the sheet aside. Oh, did I have questions for my new husband, and whether or not a wife was supposed to present herself in modesty and silence, I intended to ask them.

“No, my son left early this morning. We have an estate at Bassanello, you know—his attentions were urgently required.”

“So soon?” All my sugar-induced hopefulness drained away. “I assume I will be traveling to join him.”

“Perhaps,” she said brightly, and patted my cheek. “Now, I think the white and gold brocade—I saw it in your wedding chest yesterday, it will be just the thing with all that splendid hair of yours.”

Maids came bustling in then, giggling and whispering and whisking me out of bed before I could protest any further. I was briskly laced into the white and gold brocade dress, and Madonna Adriana herself spent a great deal of time pulling puffs of gold-embroidered shift through the slashes of my sleeves. “Spanish brocade, so expensive, but
what
quality. Your brothers certainly spoil you!” A skinny cheerful-looking girl introduced as Pantisilea—“your personal maid from now on, my dear”—looped my hair in a lot of elaborate coils on the back of my head and covered it with a filmy veil, and I stood in the middle of all the bustle and wondered what in the name of the Holy Virgin was happening. I wanted my own chamber back, even if it was half the size of this one and not nearly as luxurious; I wanted sour Gerolama with her suspicious eyes ferreting everything out in a heartbeat; most of all I wanted Sandro, who might have a theatrical streak to suit a traveling player, but who for all his jokes and japes wouldn’t let anything happen to his
sorellina
. But I wasn’t under Sandro’s protection anymore, or my family’s. Just my young husband, who suddenly wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“My, aren’t you a vision,” Madonna Adriana beamed. “No necklace, dear, you’ll soon see why—yes, I think you can go. Down to the courtyard, now, and don’t dawdle.”

I looked at her bland broad face again for a moment. “Very well.”

If you don’t know what lies ahead, make a good dramatic entrance and hope for the best. I swept down a series of steps with my chin high, through one vaulted chamber and then another, into the framing arches of the loggia lining the courtyard. I stopped there for a moment, blinded by the sudden glare of sunlight from the open sky above after the dimness of the
palazzo
, and when I blinked and shaded my eyes, I saw before me a man’s hand.

“Come,” said a man’s deep voice.

I’d prepared a pretty little speech of inquiry on my way down the stairs, meaning to ferret out my husband’s absence at once, but instead I found my hand resting on the broad ringed one before me. The hand of Madonna Adriana’s august cousin the Cardinal, who had so generously hosted my wedding feast. What was his name? I’d been introduced to him half a dozen times, but all cardinals looked alike to me: just a flock of unctuous scarlet bats.

“Your Eminence,” I managed, and sank into a curtsy on the marble step.

“No, no.” He raised me up. “Age must bow before beauty, and I see here a man thoroughly old and a girl thoroughly beautiful.”

He made a graceful bow, more suited to a man in doublet and hose than one in clerical robes. When he straightened I saw he was taller than I, even though I stood two steps above him. To match that majestic height he was built like the bull on the emblem above his door, a bull with an eagle’s nose and dark eyes that gleamed with some inward amusement. His words had a Spanish burr.

“Come,” he said again, and drew me down into the mossy space of garden. “I suppose you wonder why Madonna Adriana sent you to me?”

“To thank you for hosting my wedding feast,” I hazarded. He was leading me on a deliberate promenade, through banks of May-blooming flowers and marble statues in niches twined with vines. A fountain splashed in the garden’s center, a stone nymph pirouetting through the splash of water. “It was a beautiful banquet, Your Eminence,” I said truthfully enough. It was only what came after that had been so utterly unsatisfactory. Orsino and I should have been parading around this fountain right now, laughing a little, and I would have plucked one of the spicy gillyflowers growing from that marble urn and tucked it behind his ear, and if he’d had a drop of gallantry in his soul he’d have kissed it and given it back to me . . .

“I am glad you enjoyed yourself.” The Cardinal’s voice was deep, sonorous, made to reverberate around dimly lit cathedral vaults. No wonder he had gone into the Church. “I confess I had another motive for hosting your wedding banquet.”

“Do you know why my husband is gone so suddenly?” I couldn’t help asking.

“To that I also confess.”

“What?” I stopped, hand still resting on his. “
You
sent him away?”

“I did,” the Cardinal said frankly.

I opened my mouth to say—well, Holy Virgin knew what. But—

“Is this her?” a boy’s voice said behind me. I turned to see a tall auburn-haired youth only a year or two younger than me, his loose shirt and hose wrinkled as if he’d slept in them. One of my younger guests last night, I vaguely remembered, though I hadn’t been paying attention to callow boys now that I had a husband of my own.

“Juan,” the Cardinal said mildly. “Go away.”

“What? I just wanted to see the new concubine.” Juan looked me up and down with a leer fit for a lecher of fifty. “You can come whore for me if you don’t want His Eminence my father,” he told me with another smirk.

“Juan,” the Cardinal said much less mildly, and the boy straightened.

“Just wanted a look! I could have a concubine too, you know. I’m old enough!”

“You are sixteen, and a nuisance. Leave us.” The Cardinal turned back to me, nonchalant, as the boy mumbled something that might have been an apology and beat a hasty retreat. “I hope you will pardon my son,
madonna
. He is young, and inclined to be rude in the face of beauty. A form of awe you must be well acquainted with.”

I barely heard him—the bottom had just dropped out of my stomach. “Forgive my slowness, Eminence,” I said at last. “I’m just a stupid girl, so I didn’t realize—you sent my husband away so you could have me yourself.”

“Yes,” the Cardinal said cheerfully.

The bottom fell out of my stomach, and a great tremble went through me. Astonishment, disbelief—but mostly rage, and without stopping to think, I slapped him. A good hard slap, too—I could snap a man’s head around like a whip with one of those.

The Cardinal was rocked clear back onto his heels. He looked at me, lifting a hand to his face—I saw just how dark and glittering his eyes were, and all my rage turned to horror. Oh, Holy Virgin, I’d just struck a man of God—a
cardinal,
no less—

Then he threw his head back and laughed.

“Stop laughing!” I stamped my foot on the garden path, and then wished I hadn’t because I felt like a child. “Nobody should be laughing after I hit them! I have three brothers and a sister who hates me; I
know
how to slap!” A red mark was already rising very nicely on his cheek.

“Indeed you do,” the Cardinal choked, still laughing. “But dear God in heaven, I haven’t been slapped by a pretty girl in decades, and I didn’t realize how I’d missed it. Almost enough to make me feel young again. I’m sixty-one,” he added, “if you’re wondering.”

“I’m not wondering anything except how to get out of this—this den of vice!” I was trembling head to toe, under my heavy white and gold skirts. “Did my husband know about this arrangement, or did you cook up some crisis to take him away?”

“Of course he knew. He was well paid, too. Though he probably regretted the bargain, once he saw what he was giving up.”

“Bargain—when did you
make
this bargain? I’ve only met you yesterday!”

“On the contrary; we’ve met half a dozen times. Clerics all look the same to girls with their eyes on the young gallants.” He ran a hand over his dark hair with its bare dent of a tonsure, rueful. “You came to Rome last winter, when your brother Angelo was looking for a wife. Probably he was hoping to show you off as well; get the bidding started. I saw you at Mass, oh, at least a dozen times. Shall we say that you stood out? I once lost an entire sermon contemplating your profile.”