Back in my little chamber I wondered, as I packed my few clothes and linens and Santa Marta in her box, if I’d ever cook marzipan tourtes or strawberry crostate for my mistress again. I wouldn’t stay in the Convent of San Sisto forever, of course—“You stay in hiding there until Lucrezia leaves,” Madonna Giulia had declared, “and by then I’ll have found you a post somewhere outside Rome. My brother in Capodimonte would hire you in a moment, if you can stand the country—” But somehow I couldn’t see anything past the convent.
Well, the convent and the cena I’d have to prepare this evening. My last one, and I should have been aching to use my kitchens this final time. In truth I’d have gladly taken a knife through my other hand just for the privilege of lying down on my bed with the door bolted against the world.
My apprentices and undercooks and scullions were all waiting for me when I appeared in the kitchens. They stared at me, and I saw two pot-boys whisper to each other behind their hands. Of course every servant in the house knew by now that the Duke of Gandia had tried to force me. Juan’s guardsmen had probably talked, and anyway, news like that never stayed secret in a household this size. One or two of the maids said they’d been forced by him too. “You shouldn’t have struggled, Carmelina. I just lay still and gave him a giggle or two, and it was over in a heartbeat! No bruises either. Next time just don’t fight it.”
“And end up pregnant or poxed?” I’d retorted. Or dead.
I couldn’t help another shiver.
“Signorina?” one of the stewards ventured, and I realized I’d been staring at them all in silence.
“For cena—” I cleared my throat and realized I’d planned nothing at all for the evening meal. I didn’t even remember if we had hens or geese or lamb ready on the hooks, or if anyone had gone to the fish market this morning to see what was fresh from the docks.
I cleared my throat again. “Ugo,” I said, and jerked my chin at the most senior of my undercooks. A young man of twenty-two, short and shiny-faced, who had already been told he would be taking over the kitchens in the interim before another cook was hired to replace me. He looked entirely too pleased about it. “Ugo, a menu, if you please. You will be doing this alone by tomorrow night, so you might as well begin now.”
He began reeling off dishes, too many of them and too fancy. It was just a simple summer cena, and with Madonna Lucrezia still keeping the house in a frenzy deciding if she wanted one more chest of gowns or three, no one would notice what they were eating tonight. Bread and fruits and a few cold meats would have been sufficient, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, but then closed it again. This wasn’t my domain, not anymore.
“I want to see mouths shut and hands moving,” Ugo concluded, alight with his own importance, and I just winced.
The sizzling sound of butter hitting a skillet; the rapid whack-whack-whack of knives against trestle blocks; the glug of olive oil being poured. The sound of a kitchen coming to life, and a spit-boy looked at me strangely because I was standing in the middle of the growing bustle, standing still as a statue, and I made myself move. I reached automatically for my apron, but just tying the knot at my back sent a jolt of pain through my palm. Don’t ever give me the stigmata, I thought to Santa Marta. If it hurts like this, I don’t see why saints pray for it.
I settled everyone at their tasks and looked about me for something to do. I couldn’t hoist a heavy saucepan with this hand, but there were herbs waiting to be chopped for the stew. An apprentice’s task, but the herbal tang in my nose was green and comforting. Rosemary, sweetly medicinal; garlic with its crisp sting; mint to flavor the refreshing ices that would come to the table after the food was done. But I couldn’t press the heel of my hand on the knife, and I had to chop one-handed. I made such a mess of it. I hadn’t chopped a sprig of rosemary so clumsily since I was five years old. “You finish this,” I told one of the apprentices brusquely, shoving the knife at him, and as I turned away I realized I was crying. All day that had been happening, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. I’d be cataloguing spices on the racks one moment, and then realize my eyes were leaking again.
“Not enough sugar,” I called out to one of the apprentices, dashing at my eyes as he stirred a simmering kettle of pomegranate wine sauce. “Six parts sugar per every unit of wine, and don’t forget to skim the top. Here—” I reached out with the skimmer; surely I could do that with a bandaged palm? But my hands were shaking, and I just thrust the skimmer at the apprentice and turned away before he could notice. Shaking hands, leaking eyes—when had I turned into this whimpering quivering ninny? So a brute had knocked me about and tried to pry my legs apart—that wasn’t so uncommon in this world. Plenty of women had brutes like that for husbands. You’re lucky, I reminded myself, you’re very lucky. You didn’t even get raped; Leonello stopped that from happening!
But I was finding it very hard to feel lucky.
“Wine,” Ugo was calling out importantly. “Only the finest Magnaguerra will serve for this royal sauce.”
“The Lagrima will do,” I snapped, finding a stew I could stir one-handed. “That Magnaguerra is far too expensive for ordinary occasions.”
Ugo gave a great sigh to show me how he suffered. I was already regretting leaving him in charge, but who else did I have? “The Lagrima, then,” he allowed. “A small cask from the wine cellar.”
My throat closed up at the mention of the wine cellar. I fumbled with the ladle in my hand, nearly dropping it into the stew, and the bandage about my palm must have come loose because one end trailed in the simmering mix of chard and borage and thick fragrant chicken broth. “Santa Marta,” I swore, and then I did drop the ladle because I could see that my hand was bleeding through its bandage again, and all I could hear was the steady drip-drip-drip of blood through my fingers onto the cellar floor as I waited to see if Juan Borgia would kill me.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, gesturing an apprentice at the stew, which looked about to boil over. “I’ll just tend this—can’t go about bleeding into the food!” And I stretched a rictus grin over my face as I marched out of the kitchens, past the cold rooms and storerooms, tripping over the cat to get to the courtyard outside.
A lovely summer sunset painted the sky over Rome, laying an orange glow on the kitchen courtyard with its wheel ruts and straw-scattered stones, but all I could see was a blur. At dawn this courtyard was all abustle: carts arriving every other instant with my daily deliveries of salt pork or baskets of fruit or dew-wet herbs; harassed-looking apprentices carrying crates of hissing geese that poked their long necks through their cage slats; the occasional death squeal as a pig’s throat was briskly slashed and the carcass hauled into the kitchen for the spit. I could wring a chicken’s neck or slaughter a lamb without one drop of Madonna Giulia’s sentimentality, but now I found myself averting my eyes from the stream of dried blood between the stones where a ewe’s throat had been cut this morning for mutton chops.
I sank down on the upturned barrel beside the cistern and unwrapped the bandage, running my bleeding hand under the flow of water. Such good water they had here at the Palazzo Santa Maria, deep wells with water clean as any spring that ever welled up in Eden itself. Another reason I had so loved working here, because I didn’t have to worry about whether my water was good enough for mixing with the wine. Convents never had such good wells. I’d miss the water. Wine too—dear God, but I wanted some wine. Maybe then my hands would stop shaking. Leonello had poured half a jug of wine into me last night, and it was the only way I’d gotten to sleep.
“Carmelina?”
I started violently, erupting from my hunched seat on the barrel and whipping out the knife I’d been carrying under my apron all day. So stupid because how was I supposed to use a knife with this hand? But I still couldn’t put it down.
“I’m sorry.” Bartolomeo held out his big freckled hands, placating. “I never meant to startle you.”
“Well, you did!” I couldn’t quite put my knife down, even seeing the
familiar red hair and wide shoulders of someone who was decidedly not Juan Borgia. “What are you doing here, Bartolomeo? You quit, and that was a good while ago!”
“I’ve found work. A new position.” He indicated his neat new doublet and the bundle of a fresh apron under one arm. His sleeve was marked with a badge that seemed familiar. “Or rather, Madonna Giulia found me a new position. She heard I was departing, and she said she always loved my fried lake smelt, so she’d be happy to recommend me for a new post. I’ve been hired today, undercook in the household of that Neapolitan lord, Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto.” Bartolomeo’s eyes as they looked on me had none of the sullen anger he’d shown since the night we shared a bed. “I thought I’d come back to give my thanks to Madonna Giulia.”
“I see.” I should have been happy for him, should have congratulated him. All I could think was that it was my fault he’d left the Palazzo Santa Maria in the first place. I averted my eyes from his gaze, feeling a flush mount up from my neck.
“Also,” he said candidly, “I came back so I could lord it over you. ‘Call me a boy now, signorina’—that sort of thing. But Maria the laundry maid’s already told me that you’re to leave with Madonna Lucrezia tomorrow.”
“Yes.” I looked down at my still-bleeding hand, the bandage that trailed over one shoe like a dead snake, and found that at least I was able to lower my knife.
His voice was very neutral. “I know why you’re going.”
“Maria the laundry maid tell you that too?” I managed a bare modicum of tartness, if not quite enough to cover my pride, as I began washing out my bandage under the cistern.
Bartolomeo’s face had no expression at all as his eyes fastened on my bruised mouth, then flicked to my hand. “How badly did he hurt you?”
“Not near as badly as he wanted to. Leonello came along.” I wrung out the bandage and began wrapping it around my palm. The bleeding looked to have stopped. Sweet Santa Marta, Bartolomeo, just go away.
“I never liked Leonello. He was always eyeing you. And he’s got charm, you know, for all he’s a dwarf, so I was afraid you’d start eyeing him back.” Bartolomeo hunkered down on his heels beside me, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. “Then again, I didn’t like anyone who gave you the eye besides me.”
“Well, most of the time I just thought Leonello was horrible, so nothing to fear there.” I struggled with the wet bandage. “But there’s no denying those knives of his can be very useful.”
“I’ll have to thank him, then.” Another pause. “Maria said it was your cousin Marco who was to thank for it. Something about a letter he wrote—”
“Leave it, Bartolomeo!” I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t even want to think about Marco. Just the sound of his name made me sick. I didn’t know why he’d helped lure me for the Duke of Gandia, but I had a fair idea money was involved. I didn’t care if I ever saw my cousin again in this world.
Bartolomeo reached for my injured hand as I fumbled to knot the bandage. “Here, let me—”
I flinched back.
“Or not,” he said, and stood up again. I clumsily tied off my hand, and he stood looking at me in the fading orange sunset with his arms folded across his chest. Please not another proposal of marriage, I thought, but his gaze was thoughtful rather than moony. “You should be resting, you know.”
“I’ve cena to finish.” My hands were shaking again, and I felt a childish urge to hide them under my apron. “I can’t leave them all unfed, I—”
“You’re a wreck, Carmelina.” Bartolomeo’s voice was mild. “You’re trembling, you’re white as rice broth, and I doubt you can chop so much as an onion with that hand. Lie down in your chamber, drink a great deal of wine, and try to sleep.”
“But I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” Somehow Bartolomeo steered me back into the scullery without touching me. He rummaged behind a door and took down a spare apron. “I’ll take charge of cena tonight.”
“You don’t work here anymore,” I protested. “And even if you did, you’re still junior to Ugo and all the undercooks. They’ll never listen to you—”
“They will. Because I’m a better cook than any of them, and they all know it.” His voice was calm and confident. A man’s voice, not a boy’s, and his touch on my shoulder was a man’s too, brooking no argument as he steered me back to the chamber he knew was mine. “Take that knife inside with you, and bolt the door if it makes you feel better. I’ll knock twice after cena, bring you some wine and some hot sops. I doubt you feel like eating anything, but try for me.”
“Bartolomeo—” I felt a wave of such weariness, leaning against my chamber door. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to cry. My erstwhile apprentice just looked at me, his eyes warm as cinnamon and his body even warmer as we stood in the close shadows beside my door. He wanted to kiss me so badly, I could see it in his eyes, and my stomach gave a viscid roll because I thought I would shriek and shriek and shriek if I ever felt any man’s hand on me again.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I blurted. “Stop it, you hear me? Because I’m a nun, Bartolomeo, I’m a nun. I was called Suora Serafina and I hated her, but just because I ran away from my convent doesn’t mean I ever stopped being her. Suora Serafina can’t marry you, because you’d lose your life for violating a Bride of Christ, and that’s why I kicked you out of your own bed like a stray dog after we—I had to; I had to, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. So will you stop looking at me like that and just—just go find someone else to moon over? Someone good, like you. Someone who deserves you. Please just go away.”
My eyes had blurred all over again, so I couldn’t see what expression was on his face. Surely revulsion. A boy with not a stain on his soul, not a sin on his conscience that couldn’t be confessed to his priest, and I’d made him a despoiler, an adulterer against God Himself. Surely he had to be thinking that.
But Bartolomeo just picked up my hand, the wounded one, and his kitchen-rough fingers brushed very lightly over the bandage. “Go lie down,” he said. “I’ll finish cena. Then I’ll make you a hamper to take to the convent.”
And as I shot the bolt on my door and toppled trembling into bed, I could hear a man’s authoritative voice in the kitchens, calling out, “Dear God, Ugo, venison in royal sauce and stuffed fingers of veal and gilded capirotata? Who do you think you’re feeding, the King of France?”
Strangely comforting, that voice. I fell asleep to the sound of it, and I did not dream of Juan Borgia.
Leonello
I will kill you.
Words most of us have spoken at one point or another in our lives. Usually in the heat of a quarrel. Few of us mean it. What happens when you do mean it?
A question I’d gone to the roof of the palazzo to ponder, throwing my knives over and over the length of the loggia as the sun sank in the sky beside me. Below I heard the rumble of cart wheels in the streets, the clop of hooves, the shouts of vendors packing their wares for the night, shopkeepers shuttering windows and latching doors. The smells of night soil, mud, horse manure, the stink of the river in summer’s heat rising even as high as my loggia. I will kill you. I’d seen those words in Juan Borgia’s eyes when he last looked at me, and now I said them to him, silently, as I threw my blades into the makeshift target where I still performed my daily hour of practice.
Killing a man is easy enough, if one has the will. But killing a pope’s son? That is a different question altogether. And a question I must answer, because as surely as Juan Borgia would come for Carmelina because she dared to escape him, he would come for me because I had dared to humiliate him.
How fortunate, then, that I could think of nothing more pleasant than coming for him first.
If I could puzzle out how. Because as much as I wanted to conclude this deadly business with Anna’s long-sought killer, I had no desire to pay for it stretched on a rack or dangling from a rope.
“Will.” I sent a blade winging the length of the empty loggia. The sun was a fiery ball at my ri
ght, sinking into a mass of charcoal cloud. Yes, I had the will. Perhaps it was a great sin, but murder had never troubled my conscience as long as I could justify it, and the Gonfalonier’s worthless soul would not be missed by any but his blind and doting father. No, I’d not blink an eyelash at the thought of removing Juan Borgia from the world. Finding the opportunity would prove more difficult. For that I would need—
“A site.” I sent the dagger at my belt whipping at the target. The killing ground would have to be chosen in advance. Somewhere secluded enough for the asking of questions, for the telling of answers, because killing the man who’d killed Anna was not enough for me. I wanted him to look me in the face and admit he’d done it; I wanted him to explain how his brother’s dagger had turned up on one of the bodies; I wanted to know how the one girl had died when Juan had still been far away in Spain. And I would therefore require a site far away from the palazzo, to lead suspicion from the household here and anyone in it. That was why I hadn’t killed Juan on the spot in the wine cellar, though the thought had flashed briefly through my mind. If he died in the palazzo, everyone in the household would become suspect. And I fully intended to walk from this without a shadow of suspicion attached to me.
“A lure.” I winged the knife from my boot top after my waist dagger. Juan Borgia would not be easily drawn to remote killing grounds. He had enemies aplenty: the Orsini whose castles he had attacked last fall; the husbands and fathers of the women he had despoiled—even his own brothers. Cesare, who wanted his position, and little Joffre, who looked at him with helpless hate for bedding Sancha and soiling her reputation all over Rome. The young Gonfalonier went nowhere in Rome without his armor, his retinue, and his guards. A lure would be needed; something to get him alone and helpless.