The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  “You have the way of it there. The answer lies in these words. I’m sure of it.”

  Beside each other on the warm leather sofa, they reread the lyrical words of the Commedia’s first canticle. Aurelia kept her focus on the first passage, on Dante’s journey through Hell, as she had for many a day, ever since discerning the first clues, since knowing the location of their first destination. But it was much harder to concentrate on the poem thick and rich with allegory and symbolism in a palace filled with practicing hedonists, sitting beside a man who grew more familiar with each passing day.

  For all her years, she had rarely been in the company of a man on such an intimate level. Her glance slipped sideways; Battista’s dark, thick lashes almost rested on the high bones of his cheeks, gaze riveted on the book in his hands. He pulled on the tuft of hair growing beneath his curved bottom lip as he so often did when deep in thought.

  What a curious species men were, she mused, feeling both drawn to and repulsed by the man beside her. His allure drew her and yet frightened her; would it cause her to reveal too much of herself, would she make herself vulnerable where she had no business to be?

  The feisty spirit within her longing for adventure argued back, Are not men part of the human experience? ... And if what she overheard beyond their door offered any substantiation, did not men tender a great deal of life’s “amusements”?... Was not frivolity a master she hoped to serve herself? She had lived every day of her life as a devout woman, as faithful to her purpose as any who took a vow. But these moments existed to offer her more; she believed it.

  With a sudden surge of audacity, Aurelia shimmied closer to Battista, offering him what she hoped was a flirtatious smile.

  “Dante believed Hell was found below.” She could have bit her tongue. Having no clue how to start an intimate conversation—ignorant of what a vamp might choose to say—she had latched onto the only topic they had in common, but there was nothing beguiling about it.

  Battista quirked his brows quizzically. “Hell is below,” he stated matter-of-factly, turning back to his book, jerking back up at her skeptical expression. “You don’t believe in Hell?”

  “I don’t believe it is below.” She laughed lightly, though with stoic assurance. “But Dante did, and therefore, I suppose, below we should go.”

  He looked relieved and there she found hope. Gathering herself, she put her hand on the small space between them, leaned ever so slightly, and—

  Battista stood, crossed to the door, and put his ear to the crack. Aurelia sagged back in her seat; she was the most feeble seductress who ever lived.

  He tossed her the most devilish smile over his shoulder. “It’s time.”

  Fourteen

  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

  —Inferno

  They sidled down the empty corridor, mindful of every creaking board beneath their feet, chary to the stillness now enveloping the palazzo in its embrace. At any moment, Battista expected a door to fly open, then another, releasing the slumbering sybarites caged within. Or worse, to turn a corner and encounter an armed, questioning guard. Battista knew what he would do—what he must do—but he had no wish to abuse Aurelia to nurture their charade.

  Once more on the ground floor, having safely descended the stairs without incident, they turned to each other with the same indecision.

  “Did you notice any other stairs?” Battista asked with an urgent whisper.

  Aurelia shrugged, tiptoeing toward the wide, resplendent hall leading to the dining chamber.

  “The food came to the table from a back door. We can suppose it would lead to the kitchen on a lower level. It is the same in Mantua. It is a place to start, sì? ”

  Battista stepped to her with a nod, pleased by her analytical thinking.

  The pendant lamps above their heads had gone dark and nothing more than nebulous, shifting light found its way into the corridor, slithering out of the rooms along its breadth. The moonlight cast a gray glow through the windows to their right, while the pale orange of fires dying in their marble hearths slipped out of the rooms on the left.

  Battista shifted in front of Aurelia, taking the lead, stepping behind each bronze statue to hide beneath their legs, peering round their curvaceous bodies to see what awaited them in the next section of passageway. With each jerky progression, they made their way to the last chamber, and slipped in, closing the beveled and gilded double doors behind them.

  “What in God’s name ... ,” Battista hissed, stricken by the sight before them.

  The signs of carnage lay everywhere ... broken dishes still moist with uneaten food, overturned bottles, and broken crystal strewn across the floor. Upturned chairs dotted the landscape, scree at the base of a mountain. Shreds of clothing, ripped and tattered, draped the ruins—the top layer of riotous devastation. The revelers had taken their mania to the point of destruction, sparing nothing in their degenerate quest for satisfaction.

  Aurelia shivered and he put an arm around her, pulling her close.

  “I have never seen such a human wasteland.” Anger darkened her voice far more than fear, and he was pleased to hear it.

  “This is the work of evil, nothing less.”

  They shared a glance, one of sureness in the face of depravity.

  “Look there.” Aurelia pointed to the far northeast corner of the room, the narrow aperture almost unnoticeable in the once magnificent hall.

  Picking their way carefully among the wreckage, they rushed to it and any semblance of normality that may exist on the other side.

  Battista pushed at the door and faltered, finding it locked from the other side; it was a galvanizing statement, one revealing the servants’ fear of their own masters. Pulling a long dagger from the three holstered along the back of his leather belt, Battista slipped the blade into the crack between door and frame, raising it slowly upward until he heard the click of metal. With one last flick of his wrist, he forced the blade higher, lifting the latch and releasing the door.

  A dark, narrow hallway awaited them on the other side, warmth and the remnants of epicurean aromas wafting through it.

  Latching the door behind them, they rushed through the darkness and into the cavernous kitchen of the wealthy palazzo. Heavy copper pots hung from ceiling hooks like huddles of sleeping cave bats, racks and racks of wooden shelves held jar upon jar of ingredients, and inverted bunches of drying herbs hung upon the walls. Just beyond the archway, they held. Battista pointed to a scullion asleep by the house fire, no more than a boy, no one to fear even if he awoke.

  “What do we look for now?” Aurelia asked; she had led them here without thought to the next step.

  “I know not.” He pulled his mouth into a grim line. “But I think we shall know it when we see it.”

  Together they stepped farther into the stone chamber, as quiet as the rats scurrying across the floor in search of crumbs and scraps of food. They stepped lightly, unsure of what—or who—might lie just beyond the next set of shelves, in the density of the next pocket of shadows.

  “Battista!” the rasping whisper screeched out at them.

  Battista gasped, squeezing the dagger hilt. Aurelia jumped behind the protection of the blade. Both almost fell in relief at the sight of Frado sitting on the other side of the mammoth center grate.

  Battista rushed to his friend, enfolding him in a chest-thumping embrace, in shared relief at their survival.

  “Where have you been?” Frado pushed him roughly away, affection forgotten as impatience returned. “I have been waiting for hours.”

  “As have we,” Battista assured him. “These ... people ... continued all night. There was no other opportunity to pass through them undetected.”

  Frado put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, halting his contrition. “Yes, yes, never mind. If half of what these petrified servants have told me is true ...” Words failed him; he shuddered with revulsion at the demented rituals taking place within these unhallowed halls.

  D
ipping his head to Aurelia, equally pleased and relieved to see her, he crooked a finger at her with what appeared as a content, if tentative, grin. “Come this way.”

  Without disturbing the slumbering boy, now almost completely forgotten beside the distant recessed hearth, Battista and Aurelia followed Frado to a small, doorless pantry carved out of the interior wall. As they passed a butcher’s bloodstained counter, Battista grabbed a crude lantern and lit it from a nearby candle before entering the cubby. More cluttered shelving covered the walls; only a small portion of the back rough-hewn gray stone remained visible.

  Frado inched closer to this very space, and though his feet moved forward, his upper body arched back, as if he feared whatever lay in front of him. “Here. Listen here.”

  They scuttled to him. An odor reached Battista before any sound, a noxious fume of decay dripping down the back of his throat. As Aurelia did, he tipped his head to the side and leaned his ear forward.

  Faint but unmistakable, what could be human groans slithered out of the cracks in the stone. No moans of pleasure these; heartbreak and gut-wrenching pain vibrated in every disquieting resonance.

  “There is some ... thing behind there, I am sure of it.” Frado had backed up to the pantry’s edge. “I have listened to it all night. I could not sleep for the fright of what lay behind there. It is the sounds of—”

  “Hell.” Aurelia finished his thought.

  Handing the lantern to Aurelia, Battista shimmied into the slim space, as much as his bulk allowed. Gripping the back edge of the wooden shelving, he planted his feet and pulled.

  Wood screeched across stone in protest and the case moved away from the wall. Battista snuck in behind it as soon as the opening allowed, and pushed, pressing the set of shelves to the right and against the opposite wall.

  Aurelia pressed up against him, peering round him to see what lay behind.

  The stone wall gaped open with the shape of a jagged arch, but one no taller than waist high. A gust of air, fetid with humid rot, rose up and Battista slapped his hand to his face to staunch the foul air from entering his body. Louder than ever, the groaning from below seared the brain with dreadful anguish.

  “It leads downward,” Aurelia mumbled from behind her own hand.

  Battista laughed, a nasty twitter. “Of course it does.”

  He turned to Frado. “You must wait for us once more, my friend.”

  If he expected Frado to argue, he was wrong.

  “Are you sure of this, Battista? Are you sure you must go ... in there?” Taking the satchels holding their finer clothes, he backed farther away from the pantry and its ravenous hole.

  Battista lowered his hand, growing accustomed to the smell, if not at peace with it.

  “Believe it or not, I am curious now,” he snorted, half-amused by his illogical notion, feeling less unhinged when Aurelia waggled her head in agreement.

  “I have always thought you deranged.” Frado shook his head with a grin fading as quickly as it came. “Be safe, amico mio.”

  Battista smiled and held out his hand to Aurelia. The feel of her warm skin against his bolstered his wavering fortitude.

  Ducking down, they passed through the low opening and found not stairs, but a smooth stone ramp leading downward. Taking the lantern, Battista held the light out, a faint circle of illumination spreading no more than a few feet in front of them. The unknown of the darkness slowed their pace, but they did not stop, even as the walls began to seep with a thick, yellow liquid.

  Their breathing entered the song of the groaning, growing heavier as they descended into the dank air, as the keening grew louder, and they reached a doorless archway. There was nowhere else to go but into it.

  Battista stopped and, with an ungentle yank, ripped the fake beard from his chin.

  “Whatever we face, I must face it as myself,” he said with watering eyes.

  Aurelia nodded, plying tender fingers to remove a thatch of gummy residue from his smooth jaw.

  Battista took Aurelia’s hand, gave it a squeeze, and stepped forward.

  Beyond the egress, the groans became screams as air rushed at them, hitting them square in the face, pulling the snood from Aurelia’s head, lifting her skirts and Battista’s hair. Aurelia raised her arms as if to block out the sound ... defend against the onslaught of wind. Battista squinted to see what lay before them. The walls of the chamber opened up, becoming a long rectangular room with what appeared to be no more than a black abyss awaiting them at the end.

  Taking a few more tentative steps forward, Battista raised the lantern.

  That’s when they saw them.

  On each side of the room, statues stood guard alongside the walls, tall, pitiable giants. Of dark gray stone stained blacker with mold, their gnarled, open mouths cried out their pain. Whether men or women it was hard to tell beneath the hooded robes shrouding their faces ... in the hopeless, helpless expressions they all wore. As the air pummeling them rushed through the statues’ mouths, it scraped against their jagged teeth, the contorted lips, filling the space with the sound of anguish itself.

  Battista turned his face away, desolated by the statues’ song, the misery invading him body and soul. Upon Aurelia’s face, now wet with tears, he saw his own heartbreak.

  “The sorrow of it.” She hung her head, now curtained by hair unbridled with the force of the wind.

  “Don’t weep,” Battista begged of her, for he could not manage her sorrow as well. “It is not—”

  She grabbed his hand, eyes bulging out at him.

  “Weep. Weep,” she repeated with bizarre elation. “The Commedia. Your copy. Give it to me,” she demanded. Her own leather-bound volume, that given to her by Giovanni, she had left in her large bag with Frado.

  Battista pulled the book from his pouch and gave it to her, watching her as she urgently turned pages, bracing her back to the rushing air, preventing it from sweeping the light tome out of her hands.

  Her page flapping held; her intense gaze rose to his face. “We are in Hell.”

  Battista longed to laugh at the irony of it.

  “ ‘Here sighs, complaints, and deep groans sounded through the starless air, so that it made me weep at first. I will be your guide and lead you through an eternal space where you will hear the desperate shouts, will see the ancient spirits in pain, so that each one cries out for a second death ...’ ”

  She read to him, though there was no need; they had come to the right place, as much as he might wish to deny it. But the first piece of the triptych would not be in this room; it would be folly indeed to think they could overcome this challenge easily.

  He took her free hand as she tucked the book to her chest with the other, and led them forward once more.

  The contingent of screaming statues led them onward, the expanding sound gaining momentum, an audible, devouring torture. Battista hunched his shoulders against the onslaught of sound and air, scrunching his face and eyes.

  “Close your mind!” Aurelia yelled over the cacophony, repeating herself at his puzzled glance. “Close your mind to it. Put yourself. . . your being ... in another, better place. You can do it, I know you can.”

  She waggled the hand he held in his in encouragement and pulled him to a stop. In their stillness, he contemplated her words. Such a strange suggestion and yet he found his spirit taking flight, returning to his mother’s home, at the table with her and his sister, laughing so riotously as to bring tears to the eyes. He opened his eyes, thanking Aurelia with a smile, wondering yet again of her truth—and stepped forward.

  Passing three screaming specters on each side, they came at last to another archway and quickly—gratefully—moved through it. In the next chamber, the sound did not disappear completely, but diminished enough to release them from its wretched grip.

  Beyond the pillar, they found another room, smaller, still of stone, but circular. Here flaming torches hung upon the walls, three of them, enough to show them all they needed to see, and Battista set hi
s lantern upon the floor. Once again, a statue stood within the room’s confines, but only one.

  The effigy rose up from a small circular dais at the back of the room, a semi-circle etched into the floor around it. A man, not a woman, and though he appeared to be smiling, on closer inspection it was most certainly a grimace. He stood very straight, legs together, one arm stiffly by his side. Bent at the elbow, the other arm stuck outward, parallel to the floor, a cupped, empty palm reaching into space.

  “He wants something,” Aurelia said, no longer needing to scream to be heard.

  “Agreed,” Battista replied. “But what?”

  They separated, as if in a dance, circling the room in opposite directions, scanning the walls and floors for something to give to the sculpture to elicit his secret. They met in the middle of the slim alley behind the statue. But they found nothing; not a pebble disturbed the smoothness of the floor, not a scratch marred the walls.

  “There is no door,” Battista said flatly.

  Aurelia turned back to the man in the middle of the room. “He is our way out. I feel it.”

  She hovered around the base of the behemoth, face scrunched tight in perplexity. With a sly move, Battista slipped the book out of her clutching fingers, eyes roving over the pages.

  He laughed silently when he found it. Stepping to the front of the statue, stepping up on the small platform, he gave her back the book with one hand as he reached out with the other, aiming for the man’s waiting limb.

  “Wait—” she started, but Battista held back her protest, pointing to a particular passage upon the page.

  And when, with gladness in his face, he placed his hand upon my own, to comfort me, he drew me in among the hidden things.

  At the last minute, Battista’s hand faltered; he urged it on with a grit of his teeth.

  The stone felt cold and hard in his grasp, but with one squeeze of the granite hand the arm fell away to the statue’s side, and, with a grating of stone upon stone, the wall behind him slipped away and the dais began to spin, aimed for the cavern opening in the wall.