The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  “Aurelia!” Battista cried her name as he lunged for her, yanking her onto the platform just as it disappeared completely into the next room.

  In each other’s embrace they held, knowing they had avoided separation by only a second’s worth of time. Battista looked down at her, her fair skin wan yet endearingly familiar in the shared air of survival. With palpable vacillation, they stepped apart.

  They found themselves in another circular room, but in its center a spiral staircase awaited to take them yet farther downward; there was nowhere else to go but down.

  “The circles of Hell,” Aurelia whispered as she followed his lead once more.

  Though he was taller than she by a good head, the steep decline allowed her to rest a hand upon his shoulder without bending over, allowing her to descend with stability on her low-heeled riding boots and to gather the full skirts in her other hand.

  After the second time round, a clanking reached their ears; after the third it became a crashing, rhythmic smash of something hard against something equally solid, but still there was nowhere to go but down. Sweat slithered along the edges of Battista’s face, dripping from his nose, and he wiped it with the back of his arm, loosening the ties of his jerkin, grateful for the slight coolness the act afforded.

  Finally, at the end of the fourth circle of stairs, they reached a floor and, to the left, a low archway.

  Another rectangular room awaited them just beyond, another two rows of statues along each wall, six on each side. But this time they were reliefs, not freestanding statues, built into the wall. These sentries did not scream out their pain, instead they released it from their bodies.

  At varying instants, huge, perfectly round boulders hurtled out from the folds of six of the sculptures’ robes, three on each side. As those boulders crashed, bounced, and returned, the remaining six launched their projectiles, creating a hectic but somehow symbiotic pattern as they went. Just beyond the lines worn into the floor, crevices indicative of years of wear, lay another archway, Battista and Aurelia’s next goal.

  “I believe there is just enough time between them to pass through,” Battista raised his voice above the crashing.

  Aurelia shook her head. “I can’t see it. Can you?”

  Battista longed to tell her—to assure her—that he could, but it would have been a lie and he had not the stomach for deceit in this place. He shook his head in truthful denial.

  She sucked in a deep breath, he heard it whistle through her nose, and he watched as she closed her eyes, as repose smoothed the creases of worry on her face. He lost her then, somehow, though she stood beside him still, and he turned back his gaze to the barrier before them. He would guess for them both.

  Grabbing her arm, he leaned forward. “Now!” he cried, but she yanked him back.

  “No, wait! Do not let your fear bother you.” She held him with Dante’s own words.

  Aurelia closed her eyes once more. As fragments of seconds ticked by, her grip upon his arm tightened.

  Without a word, she dug her clipped nails into his arm, urging them into frantic flight.

  The boulders rolled. They ran forward, the first set of boulders crashing in front of them. They dashed quicker. The boulders began to retreat as they headed straight for them.

  Aurelia slipped through just ahead of Battista.

  He grimaced in pain as the last boulder clipped his heel, barely making it past the crashing. He stumbled but stayed on his feet, stayed no more than a half step behind her. The second set of boulders aimed for them, moving faster than the first, Battista would swear to it.

  They ran as if the devil himself gave chase, lunging out of the way, to the other side of the room, just as the next riotous smash rumbled behind them.

  As they stepped through the archway, the stone portal gave way—triggered somehow by their passage—closing with a scream of dropping stone and billowing dust. The time to turn back had long since passed.

  Heaving for air, they found themselves in yet another circular room, but above another center spiral staircase, an overhead oculus cut through the layers and layers of earth above them.

  Battista rushed to it, turning his face upward to the sky, breathing deep the fresh air. Moving beyond the pleasure of it, he took in the vista; the stars began to fade in the first glimpses of dawn.

  “We haven’t much time.” Aurelia stood beside him, drinking in the snippets of healthy air trading places with the heat and smoke.

  “Then we’d best continue,” Battista grunted, taking her hand and placing it on his shoulder as they entered the next stairwell.

  Like the first, this one circled round and round, but here the torch-lit walls boasted pictures, crude black line drawings depicting the worst of human sins ... murder, theft, orgies of gluttony and sexual perversion.

  “Look no more,” he whispered as the glyphs continued after their third go-round, but he need not have bothered; she had already turned away from the bleakness.

  From the depths below the mephitis rose up to greet them. Descending the last few steps, they entered a long, cavernous space, moist with a trickle of liquid running through the center, the small dribble barely visible in the reflection of distant torch flame.

  “A sewer?” Aurelia asked, face scrunched in disgust.

  Battista shook his head. “I don’t think so, though I do believe I hear the scurry of rats.”

  Most women would raise their skirts and squeal in fright, but he dismissed the thought quickly; he knew her far better by now.

  They set off along the path cut by the stream, keeping tight to the wall on the right, keeping their feet as far from the repugnant liquid as possible. The trail ran straight and offered no impediments; Battista breathed a sigh of relief at the ease of the passage ... until they came to the end.

  The floor beneath their feet plunged straight down; nothing but a jagged cliff connected their spot with the next. Hands clasped once more, this time for stability, they leaned together to peer over the edge and down.

  “You’ll never make it in those skirts,” he remarked.

  Aurelia’s mouth stretched across her dirt-streaked face in a grim line. “Cut them.”

  “Scusi?” His head snapped up.

  “With a dagger. Cut them high enough to allow my legs better movement.”

  Battista slipped a short, serrated blade from its holster and bent before her, muttering, “As you wish, my lady.”

  He made quick work of the cambric overskirt and the first layer of chemise beneath. Only when he reached the last, thinnest sheaf did his hands hesitate; this cut would reveal her legs.

  “I wish it,” was all she said, but it was enough.

  The last layer slashed away and discarded, Aurelia reached down to the material remaining, gathering a bunch around each thigh and tying each side, reincarnating her skirts into a makeshift pair of pumpkin breeches.

  Try though he might, Battista could not keep his gaze from the sculpted form of her legs.

  “I walk and ride a great deal.” She gave the explanation though he had not asked for one, as if she glimpsed the thoughts behind his impolite leer. “It is all I am allowed.”

  He heard her dissatisfaction at life in every word’s intonation. Pulling away his gaze, he offered an encouraging smirk. “You will have no trouble.”

  Stepping back to the edge, he sat and dangled his legs over, one foot reaching out to find a hold. His search successful, he stepped out and turned round, fingers clasping the ground now in front of him, fingers stinging with the heat of the stone. A perfect round lip seemed to wait for his hand a few feet below, but as he reached for it, as he brought the force of his weight upon it, it fell away with an almost clicklike sound, the piece vertically hanging loose and useless. Battista reached out for another jutting edge; this one held.

  “Follow close,” he said before disappearing completely over the lip.

  It was a slow, arduous descent, but short. In minutes, they found themselves once more followin
g a thin stream of liquid, the dark red of it clear in the bright glow reaching out from a distant source.

  They rushed forward, neither speaking of the liquid at their feet, refusing to acknowledge the slop and squelch of it echoing against the hard stone with every step, neither daring to touch the fluid and confirm it as blood, both preferring to deny it as a mirage.

  “Quickly, Battista,” Aurelia urged him.

  “I know,” he grunted. “We must be running out of time. Frado mig—”

  “No!” she denied him, voice harsh and guttural, hair dark with dampness and sticking to her sweat-covered face. “It knows we’re here. We’ve angered it.”

  He wanted to stop and ask her to explain; he wanted to cover his ears and beg her never to speak of it again. Battista grabbed her hand and ran.

  As in the stairwell, pictures covered the walls of this passage, more scathing commentaries on the depth of man’s depravity. Try though Battista might to keep his gaze focused forward, the glimpse of familiar faces demanded his attention. Many a great citizen of Florence, many a noble patriarch, lived in these etchings, held forever in the eternal damnation of Hell, their rank testified to by the scepters in their hands, but their sins had scarred them, and their heads sat backward upon their stooped shoulders.

  “What is that noise?” Aurelia’s hissed query snatched him from his study.

  From somewhere behind them, where quiet had been, came sounds of movement ... a liquid moil, a slapping, and a creaking. Battista turned but saw nothing, and told her so with a silent shrug. They ran ever faster, rounding a bend, and the sounds clamored louder. He turned back once more.

  The frozen gape upon his face said more than any words, and she grabbed his hand as she turned. Yanking on her arm, he jerked her head round.

  “Don’t look,” he begged her between gasping breaths.

  But his directive only made her greed to see stronger, and she swiveled round, running backward. She saw, then, what he had.

  The trickle of blood had become a river, a rapid sloshing upon the pictures on the wall, tainting the fiends depicted with red ooze. As it hurtled toward them, its volume rose, a bloody hand growing larger as it reached out to capture them. But that was not the worst of it.

  Now great blazing torches stood in recessed alcoves, their light directed in odd angles by their position, the anomalous light cast peculiar shadows upon the etched walls. In the eerie illumination, the specters drawn upon the stone seemed to move; evil men, now monsters ... chased after them ... and yet never reached them. It was an illusion, it had to be, one of such genius it created guards that would never die, but of such real horror it hoped to drive the intruder mad ... and away.

  Aurelia whirled back, threw off his hand, and pumped her arms; they ran for their lives.

  His barely healed calf wound began to throb and his running grew labored with a limp; he kept up with her, though just.

  The orange glow ahead became brighter and they squinted in the profound glare, the heat quavering the air before them.

  “They’re stopping!” Battista yelled, sparing a quick glance behind them, and the notion sent them running toward the light all the faster, ducking at the last moment to pass through a low arch.

  Bounding through, Battista jumped to the side, pulling Aurelia with him, throwing their backs to the wall as their chests heaved, gasping for air.

  “O Dio mio!” He could say naught else as he took in the room.

  Bent at the waist, hands upon her knees as she struggled to breathe, Aurelia looked up.

  “From out of the flames and into the fire itself.”

  The room with no exit had six sides; the one at their back held the entrance. From four of the walls—two on each side—streams of flames burst out at them in discordant intervals, creating a barrier of fire in the middle of the room. Where the flames receded, men stood, or rather detailed portrayals of men. And each time the flames withdrew, they pummeled the man trapped forever in its path.

  The last section, the one directly opposite, receded into an alcove. Upon the alcove’s back wall, a picture hung.

  “We found it, Battista. We actually found it.” Aurelia laughed, a deep, throaty guffaw of triumph and delight.

  Battista shared her sense of victory as he stared at the suffering apparitions set about the room. With each glimpse, their features, their actions, and the settings became clearer, and he could not stop himself from looking upon their pain with a pleased regard.

  Judas held the first place on the left, with Brutus just beside him. On the other side of the room, on the panel closest to them, stood Cassius. And the last man—

  “No!” Battista screamed, lunging forward, pulled out of the grasp of flame as Aurelia yanked on the edge of his doublet, the material ripping with the force she used to keep him out of the fire.

  Roughly he tugged free, but gave off his charge, dropping to his knees as near to the fourth specter as possible, yet remaining just beyond the grasp of the flame. As he squeezed his eyes closed to the sight, a great sob convulsed through him.

  She knelt down beside him; he sensed the quiet of her presence, felt her hand as it rubbed across his heaving shoulders. “Who is it?” she hissed.

  Battista shook his head, as if he would not—could not—answer. “My ... my uncle,” the confession rushed from his lips, but did little to appease. “His was the sin of greed and it destroyed his love for my father ... destroyed them both in the end.”

  A tempered answer, but all he could bear. He saw her look of sympathy, as one would look at Goliath once David had finished with him, and he could not tolerate it. He hung his head into his hand, his face to the floor, and allowed his tears to flow unfettered, those dammed up over the years since his father’s passing.

  “He passed, my uncle died ... ,” Battista muttered to the hard stones below as if they were priests to hear his confession, “... before we ... before I could tell him of my forgiveness, of my love.”

  Aurelia took his face in her hands, one on each tear-sodden cheek, and moved to tilt his head up.

  “You’ve do—”

  He lost her words in the loud hissing suddenly filling the room. Aurelia shook him, almost knocking him over, leaning toward him until her soft breath nibbled on his ear.

  “You have done it, Battista. Look.”

  He opened his swollen eyes, swallowing hard. Tears fell still, dripping onto the floor, falling through the flame no more than inches away. It hissed in fury at him. One more tear and the flame shuddered, receded, never to come at them again.

  “Your love for him has doused his flame. You were the only one who could.”

  He looked up and at her in disbelief, blessed by the radiance of her smile.

  “And his pain, I have no doubt.”

  It was a thought too beautiful to bear and he shook his head, afraid of it and its promise of hope.

  “There is space, Battista.” She shook him again, hard, his teeth clattering in his mouth. “We can make it through now. There’s enough room. Hurry.”

  Aurelia’s fingers dug into his arm as she pulled him up and yanked him across the room.

  As the flames from the men who suffered still snatched at them, they zigzagged across the chamber, into the alcove, to stop just inches from the painting, from their prize.

  It was the hand of Giotto, irrefutably. His technique was apparent in the brightness of the colors and lightness of the strokes. From the right-hand edge and into the center of the painting, the partial forms of two women possessed the canvas, standing one behind the other, placed before a welcoming village, a pellucid and brilliant blue sky above. Each woman wore the same deep forest green gown, and though more showed of the woman in the back, the dark, reddish-brown hair of the one in the foreground hid her face, and her image was faintly translucent, as if she faded away.

  Battista shook himself and reached out for the painting.

  “We have no more time for this.”

  He grabbed the fram
e from the wall and tipped it over.

  “Look!” Aurelia cried.

  The hook, now bereft of its burden, shimmied upward and pulled itself into the wall, drawn away by an unseen hand. As Battista’s knowing touch pried the frame off the canvas and the canvas from its wooden slats, the hook disappeared completely into the wall with a metallic click.

  They held their breath in that moment of nothing. Battista saw her fear, knew it for his own; would another monster leap out to devour them, must they surmount yet another challenge neither had any strength remaining to endure?

  The wall trembled, tossing stone dust into the air, and, with one last grating scream, sunk into a crevice in the floor.

  “Oh!” Aurelia cried, and her squawk turned to laughter, Battista’s joining in at the sight of stairs before them ... one long, narrow set of steps ... leading up.

  “Frado,” Battista called as loud as he dared. “Wake up, Frado.”

  “Huh? What?” Frado jumped up from his tipped-back chair, befuddled gaze flicking from the alcove where he had last seen them to his right, to the small, opened door tucked into a corner all the way to his left.

  Battista held the rolled painting in the air, shook it with loud silent triumph, and beckoned Frado to them.

  In the last vestiges of night, the three escaped together from the clutches of Hell.

  Fifteen

  If the present world go astray,

  The cause is in you,

  In you it is to be sought.

  —Purgatorio

  The flames licked at her back as she ran from it, the heat scorching her, the fear rising in her gullet like acidic bile. The golden light just ahead brightened, his face barely discernible in its brilliance. If she could only reach it, if she could ... just ...

  Aurelia woke with a gasp, flinging herself up upon the sweat-soaked sheets. Knuckling her forehead with fisted hands, she brought herself back to reality, out of the nightmare reliving the last day ... back to the bed in the small gabled room of Battista’s home.