The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  She rose on unsteady legs and stepped to the window; a flush pink dusk spread across the sky, bathing the intimate and lush garden with its rosy glow. She had slept the day away, not surprisingly. Aurelia shimmied onto the wide sill and pushed aside the shutters, the air cool and soothing on her moist skin. She felt very grateful to be here, and safe, and though she chided herself for her foolhardiness, the intoxication of this adventure gave her all she longed for, and more.

  Cupping her face in her hands, shoulders high at her ears, Aurelia relived the challenges of Hell with a child’s wonder and delight, a wide smile growing apples on her cheeks, the surge of excitement rushing through her veins once more. So much she didn’t understand. She had done things she never thought herself capable of—and done them well. She had seen things, evil things, things she had always known existed, but their substantive reality had left its indelible mark upon her.

  The voices of duty and conscience berated her; Aurelia flung back her head at them as she pushed the damp curls off her skin. She refused to listen; for once she would hear her own voice and no other.

  Other voices came to her, from the floor below, from out of the kitchen windows, and up to her perch. One Battista’s, another Frado’s, and suddenly the voices condemned her with guilt. Did she risk their lives to satisfy her own pursuits? True, if pressed, she could justify her acts, wave off any doubt with the flag of ultimate service. But did she put these men where they had no place to be? Could she stop them?

  Aurelia heard the name of Giotto; the men below discussed the painting. Jumping up, she grabbed one of the two simple gowns from the wardrobe and threw the butternut dress on over her chemise. She had to get down there, had to see the painting. Perhaps if she deciphered its message first, all her problems would be solved.

  “There you are, Aurelia.” Battista’s cheerful call announced her arrival. He stood to greet her, reaching out with an intimacy born of shared survival, a bond knit by the extreme circumstances they’d endured together, blind to the appraising, curious stares of the men around them. He put his arms tenderly around her for a moment, only to pull away, hands rubbing the tops of her arms as the dark warmth of his eyes studied her. “We thought you would sleep forever. Are you well?”

  “Well enough, if a bit sore,” she replied honestly with a sniff of laughter, pleased to see him recovering, pleased to be again in his company. What they had experienced had changed their relationship irrevocably, and care must be taken; she could not allow such affinity to make her vulnerable. “I feel as if I could have slept for days and days, but my gurgling stomach said otherwise.”

  The congregation laughed, men who knew the impetus of hunger. The entire cortege had gathered, Lucagnolo included, though his sallow skin and sunken eyes bespoke of worry unabated. As always, the men huddled around the mammoth table, but no cards or dice or silver coin did it hold, only the painting.

  Barnabeo pulled Battista back down into the seat beside him, their chairs turned to face each other as Barnabeo attended to Battista’s hands.

  “What about you, missy?” The gruff bald man half-turned as he smeared a malodorous salve onto one of Battista’s palms with a gentle touch, its sharp, bitter scent filling the room, having already bandaged the other appendage. “Are your hands as bad as these?”

  Aurelia held up her hands, turning them over as if she revealed a hidden treasure, surprised to see small blisters bubbled here and there on the pads of her palms. But they were small and pained her not at all. Looking down at Battista’s inflamed hand—blisters broken, the skin beneath flaming and raw—she saw he had not fared as well as she, and the taunting voice of guilt nipped at her once more.

  “Keep to Battista,” she told Barnabeo. “I need no treatment.” Turning to the other men, accepting their greetings and offers of respectful welcome, she looked to the painting unfurled before them.

  Small weights held down each end, an empty tankard at one, a thick book at another. These men, these art thieves, knew of the damage human hands, and their dirt, could do to oil paintings, and they took great care to avoid it.

  “We cannot decide if it is two different women or the same,” Lucagnolo disclosed their debate. “If they are not the same, they could be related, such is their similarity.”

  Aurelia understood; the curve of the women’s cheeks, the color of their hair, it was identical. But without seeing the face, no one could be sure. She reached up unconsciously, tucking loose strands of her own hair back into the plaits wrapped round her head.

  “Nor can we comprehend if it is the women of greatest magnitude, or where they are,” Ascanio told her, rising to give her his chair. “If this is indeed intended as some sort of map, I believe the location is the true import.”

  “I do not find it hard to reconcile di Bone’s involvement in this,” Battista, Barnabeo’s ministrations complete, joined the deliberations. “Here is a man who lived three hundred years ago, a poor shepherd boy, until his talents were discovered by Cimabue, and yet his work was so far ahead of his time. There were messages in his work, there can be no doubt. But this one eludes me.”

  “His pieces reeked with humanity. It is what drew Dante to him. It made the poet include the painter in the Commedia,” Lucagnolo explained. “It makes me think the women are the key.”

  “May I have some of the trebbiano? ” Aurelia leaned across the table, but the bottle of white wine sat just out of her reach.

  Pompeo filled a small tankard and brought it round to her with a basket of bread. “I do not think she is real.”

  Aurelia looked up at him, brows high in question, taking the fruity beverage with a nod of thanks.

  “What do you mean, she’s not real?” Battista asked.

  The young man raised his shoulders in a confounded shrug. “Look how pale ... how translucent she is. It is as if she is an intangible being, not of flesh and blood and bone.”

  Aurelia coughed, almost swallowed whole the pasmata in her mouth, tossing back a large draught of wine to soften the chunk of baked roll in her throat.

  Ascanio thumped her on the back. “Perhaps she is caught between worlds, as if in the act of disappearing.”

  “The images work in concert. It cannot be just one or the other,” Battista mumbled, head oscillating slowly. “More than ever I wonder on this relic we must find. What about it has brought Giotto, Dante, and Mainardi into collusion?”

  “It is not just them. I have found some vague references to a society of men.” Lucagnolo sat, bony slim hands clasped upon the tabletop, sad eyes rising to the faces around him. “They were called La Confraternita dei Guardiani.”

  “The Brotherhood of the Guardians,” Frado repeated the moniker with a befuddled mumble. “I have never heard of them.”

  Lucagnolo shook his head. “Nor have I, but it included some astounding members, Dante and Giotto, sì, but Mainardi, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Baldo d’Aguglione, Can Francesco della Scalla, and others. More than I can remember.”

  Ercole whistled through his teeth. “Poets, artists, lawyers, soldiers. . . it is a ménage of power.”

  Aurelia found Battista’s startled gaze locked upon her face from across the room.

  “What would bring such men together?” He shook his head. “I confess to you all that though I would do as the king bid me, I did so with the indulgence of a parent to a child, with no belief in his claims. But now ... with all I have seen, all we hear of these men and this society of theirs. What else but a powerful object would require such protection?”

  Not a one of them could or would answer him. Aurelia searched the somber faces, seeing nothing but more confusion. As Nuntio and a helpful maid served their supper—the painting set aside upon the desk in the book-lined cubby—their debate became inconsequential, for there simply wasn’t enough knowledge to do more than conjecture.

  “When you are finished, Pompeo, will you fetch Maso Guffati?” Pompeo bobbed his head, left cheek bulging with a mouthful of veal and piselli. “You wan
t him to make a copy?” He chucked his chin toward the Giotto as he filled his plate with another serving of the meat and peas simmering in red gravy from the pot in the center of the table.

  “Sì.” Battista dropped his spoon and knife and leaned back in his chair, worry creasing his smooth brow. “And then I will ask some of you to put the forgery in the original’s place.”

  “Sei pazzo.” Frado’s scathing denunciation shattered the stunned silence.

  Battista gave a raucous snort and turned to his lifelong friend. “You know, Frado, in the last few days you have called me first a degenerate and now a crazy man. I am neither ... and both.”

  “Why?” Frado asked, slapping his palms upon the table, ignoring Battista’s frolicsome banter. “Why would we do such a thing?”

  Pushing his tin plate away, Battista leaned his elbows on the wood, head forward, gaze touching them all as it circled around. “This antiquity, this relic, it is more than any of us can comprehend. Why else would these great men use such drastic measures to keep its location so well hidden?”

  It was a declaration to which there was no debate.

  “If, for whatever reason, someone found the painting gone, it would be more devastating than any challenges we have overcome to retrieve it. Clearly, there are mechanisms in place for someone to verify its safety or to retrieve it. It may mean La Confraternita dei Guardiani exists still, protects it still.” Battista’s ruddy face darkened. “If somehow its disappearance is traced to us, it might well mean our lives.”

  This man seldom spoke of fear, or bowed to it, and this rarity made his warning all the more potent.

  “Do you think a group of ... common men ... could gain entry to the palazzo?” Aurelia broached the question, making no effort to hide her misgivings. In all her wildest imaginings, she never thought or intended for others to be put in such jeopardy.

  “If they arrive bearing a delivery of food and wine and dressed as merchants, they will,” Battista answered with a well-pleased smirk. It drooped then, as he raked back his black hair from his face. “But I cannot ask any of you to take this task on. Those people, those heathens, are evil’s guardians. They are in that position for a reason, and what I propose is an arduous chore, to be sure. It is an undertaking that must be accepted, not given.”

  His weary gaze turned to Aurelia, and once more the cloak of survival wrapped them together. “We have not told you all we encountered. . . all we have seen.”

  Aurelia watched as the bulging cords of his throat throbbed with a tight swallow. Will we ever be able to speak of it? she wondered. Were there words to convey it into reality?

  “It is not a mission to be undertaken lightly.” Battista grappled for words that fell short.

  “I will go,” Ercole blustered, folding his thick arms across his chest. “If Aurelia can survive, I am certain I can.”

  “Be certain of nothing!” Battista commanded, voice aquiver with naked consternation. “What this woman endured—”

  “We endured.” Aurelia reached out, taking one linen-wrapped hand in hers, all caution cast aside in the poignancy of recollection.

  One corner of Battista’s mouth curled. “What we endured few could survive. It is a test both physical and mental.”

  Ercole’s arms flopped to his lap. “I will do my best,” he said, humbled.

  “As will I,” Pompeo chimed in with a clasp upon Ercole’s shoulder and an almost-convincing smile for the group.

  “Sì, the youngest and the oldest. You will make a good combination,” Battista pronounced with assurance, though his quick sidelong glance told Aurelia something else entirely, something she heard in her own troublesome thoughts.

  The forgery took Guffati but a few days to complete as they prepared Pompeo and Ercole for the journey through Hell. More than once during the telling, one or the other had balked, refusing to believe the tale. Only with repetition did they come to accept it as truth, only with a realization that turned their knuckles white.

  The men had left that morning, and in a rare occurrence the casa that rang always with the voices and laughter of men simmered in somber quiet, empty save for Battista, Frado, and Aurelia. The others had taken to their own homes, unease over their friends’ safety magnifying the innate need for the warmth of the family hearth.

  “What bothers me most”—Battista rested his head onto the hand propped up on the arm of his chair—“is that we have no clue where to find the next piece of the triptych.”

  “Purgatory,” Aurelia offered uselessly from the couch. An unhelpful answer, though answer it may be. Clearly, they were to endure all three of the Commedia’s levels. Where Purgatory lay, none could surmise.

  “We know from the Mainardi and from Dante’s words that it is to be found in or near a mountain.” Battista tapped his copy of the book upon his head as he spoke of the first maplike painting, as if the repetitive motion could batter an idea into his mind.

  “Agreed.” Aurelia held Giovanni’s copy in her lap. She had tried to return it, but he had insisted she keep it, insisting with a laugh that she needed it far more than he did.

  Slapping the book closed, she jumped up. “I am for my bed,” she told them, stepping around the jumble of furniture and heading for the stairs.

  Battista raised his brows at her. “Already?” He glanced out the back doors, open in the warmth of the night, the sky still peachy with the glow of a setting sun.

  “My head pains me,” Aurelia answered over her shoulder.

  He stood and stepped toward her, reaching her with his long strides just as she took one step up. “Are you all right?”

  She turned back, and he found consternation in the furrow between her brows, in the darkness of her changeable eyes. “Sì, I just need some sleep, Battista. No need for worry.”

  He smiled, relieved, if not completely. “Then I will keep this loudmouth quiet and allow you some rest.” He dipped his head in Frado’s direction as Aurelia continued her climb.

  “I am for the tavern.” Frado rose, and, with a flapping, dismissive wave, took himself up and out.

  “All the better,” Battista called to Aurelia’s retreating form. “I will make for the garden. The weeds have been calling my name for days.”

  His companions gone, now alone in the large room, his tumble of thoughts crept back in the unguarded silence. As promised, Battista took himself out the open double doors and stood with hands on hips as he surveyed the chaos of his small garden. His men often laughed at him, teasing him that the growing of herbs and flowers was a pastime for women, but he had helped his mother tend the family garden since he was a small boy; returning to the work brought him back to those untroubled times.

  Tossing aside his doublet, lighting two pedestal torches on each side of the cozy, flora-filled niche, he rolled up the sleeves of his simple linen shirt and knelt in the dirt. Carefully he moved about the tender imperati, the early flowers already in full bloom—their short purple-striped petals bright even in the diffusing light—and the white clusters of marginata opening atop the black stems. He snapped the offensive scraggly weeds from between these beauties, as if each one represented the puzzles in his head. If not for the jangle of the front door latch, he would have stayed there till full dark drove him from his work.

  “Who is there?” he called, calm though curious. His companions came and went without notice or pause, but he did not expect any of them on this night.

  No answering reply came and he looked up, eyes squinting into the shadow-infested interior. The open room was empty, not even the specters of concern remained as the evening breeze wafted through, but he had not imagined the sound. A knot of fear bit into his head; he and Aurelia were alone in the house.

  Pushing against his knees, he rose to his feet and crossed back into the house, heedless of the dirt prints his boots left on the polished cherrywood.

  Aiming for the stairs, fearful for his guest, he changed course with a huff of air. The shadow passed by the smoky-glassed window
, but he knew it as certainly as he would know his own face in the mirror. Running back to the garden, he grabbed his doublet, throwing it on as he made for the front door, opening it a crack, and peering out.

  The fleeting impression confirmed his conjecture. There, just turning the corner, he spied Aurelia, her lace net and veil firmly in place.

  Why he followed, why he did not make his presence known, he could not say for certain. Perhaps the nasty voice of suspicion—one he had heard speak her name in the past—kept him to the shadows behind her as she followed the ever-narrowing backstreets to a modest but simple area on the west side of the vast city.

  Her unhesitant stride added to the insidious thoughts, for she had often said that she had never been to Florence. And yet she trod about with assurance and determination in her quick step.

  Following her around the corner of a yellow stone house with green shutters—children playing in front of the door as two elderly men, their straw chairs tipped back to lean against the front of the building, looked on—Battista jumped back again.

  Leaning no more than inches around the rough corner, he watched as Aurelia approached the third house on the left and the woman who sat at a table, a small tin cup in her hand. In the light of the street torches, he watched as the woman offered Aurelia a warm smile, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the round wood bench and the half-full carafe upon it. But Aurelia would have none of it; she shook her head and gestured, almost impatiently, to the door and the house beyond.

  The woman must have been far more elderly than Battista first thought, for Aurelia helped her to her feet, the woman leaning on Aurelia’s arm as she hobbled into the house.

  Quick as able, Battista turned the corner, ran to the house, and flung himself into the chair just emptied. It sat below and to the right of the front, double-shuttered window. He sucked in his breath, shoving his body back against the bricks as an arm reached out to clasp the shutters, closing them with a waggle of a fleshy wing.