The King's Agent

by Donna Russo Morin

  Hands—fisted now—shook at his sides; he raised them up, saw her cringe at the threat, and lowered them. They hung there together, she and he—at the top of the castle, at the threshold to Paradise, if that was where they were—suspended in the zenith of this penultimate decision.

  Battista gnashed his teeth together, turned, and ran, the painting barely visible as he entered the engulfing haze; in seconds he would lose sight of it ... lose it altogether. Tilting on his tiptoes, reaching out, reaching into the vapor, he grabbed it.

  He crumpled it with his fists, as if to release all his rage upon it, snapping the slats of wood upon which it was mounted. Marching back toward Aurelia, he inched his other hand behind his back.

  Battista saw her eyes follow his hand, watched her frown, knowing her thoughts were of the remaining daggers at his back.

  But she cowered not an inch as he approached her, nor did she recoil as he stepped past her. Behind his back, his hand scurried, not for a dagger but for the other paintings, pulling them roughly— caring not a whit for their preservation any longer—out of his satchel.

  Battista stopped before the smoldering splat of fire still burning upon the floor. He looked up at her, all the reward he needed in the beauty of her simple smile. With a grin, he held out the three canvases in his hand and dipped their edges in the flames, sighing as the fire first licked and then devoured them.

  Thirty-three

  And in His will is our peace.

  —Paradiso

  He left her, though not without great remorse.

  As Battista tucked the bed linens close about Aurelia’s curled form, her body hardly stirred, her exhaustion—like his—too pervasive. They had traveled through the night, traveled together on Battista’s horse, Aurelia’s tethered and following close behind. Battista had kept her as close as he could, insisting she ride on the saddle in front of him, his arms wrapped protectively about her.

  They had arrived in Florence in the darkest hours of the morning, slumped in their saddle, dirt smudged, soot ridden, and exhausted. Rousing the household—Frado and Nuntio, and Lucagnolo, now a permanent resident of the household it seemed—they had spared no time on explanations, offering only quick assurances of well-being, and then had fallen into bed, and blissful slumber, together.

  But now Battista could sleep no more, though it was still early morning. The heat clung to the earth like a greedy lover. Insects buzzed a complaint as chirping birds hunted them down for their morning feeding. He leaned over, plying a gentle touch to push back the hair sticking to her moist flesh.

  Beneath the plaits of chestnut hair, Aurelia’s skin bore the scars of their tribulations; on one cheek a slim white line, on the other an angry blister. Her injured hand, already purple with fresh bruising, lay tucked between her breasts, creamy skin and pale pink areola visible through her thin chemise.

  His heart pained him as he looked upon her with eyes unclouded by misconception, his chest heaving with the physical realization of it. Battista could not imagine what she and those like her had endured through the centuries in the service of their duty. Battista understood devotion to duty above all else; he had lived much of his life with such a master. And yet the heavy weight of sympathy for her and those like her, and a greater desire to protect her from the torment of more danger, impelled him. If he could relieve her—them—from their duty, he would.

  It was, ultimately, why he had destroyed the paintings; Battista could not bear for Aurelia to suffer for his decisions. Razor-sharp imaginings had shredded his thoughts, images of what she might endure had he discovered the location of the relic, retrieved it, and placed it in the hands of King François.

  Battista’s faith and his religion had been a constant in his life, but, like Michelangelo, his Catholic upbringing had been tempered with the teachings of the pagans. That an object such as a one Aurelia described existed—one others had been all too willing to kill for—he did not doubt for a moment. There were more things in and of this world that could not be logically explained; only man’s fear, intolerance, and ignorance allowed them to deny it. Battista could not count the number of artifacts and relics he had unearthed that pulsated with preternatural energy.

  He looked down at her face, serene in slumber, all the words left unsaid between them parching his tongue.

  Battista laughed softly as he straightened; he had never cared to speak of futures with any woman, and now he had chosen the one woman for whom the future could never be spoken of.

  He moved away from the bed and shimmied silently into a pair of brache and a thin shirt, already clothed in his certainty. He had done the right thing; only the smallest voice chivied him, one nagging about his failed duty to the king and what it might mean for Florence.

  Battista slipped down the stairs on bare feet, long legs achy but cool in the short drawers, and made his way downstairs.

  No one stirred in the common rooms of his home, and for a poignant moment he stood at the bottom of the steps, simply grateful for the sight of it—the crate-cluttered sitting room, the book-clogged study, the cozy kitchen. The events of the last few weeks had tempered his wanderlust. He would continue his work, for he must, but he would find far less joy in the doing.

  In the smudgy light of dawn, he poured himself a full and hefty mug of mulled cider and rummaged about the cupboard until he found some biscuits, no worse for their lack of freshness. Placing them upon the table, he pulled out a chair.

  The soft knock upon the door came before he could sit, and with a brow furrowed with curiosity, he stepped to the door and opened it.

  The small man hurled himself across the threshold, wrapping spindly, muscular arms tightly about him.

  Battista laughed as they stumbled back, answering Michelangelo’s embrace as he recovered from his surprise.

  “It is well to see you, too, Michelagnolo.” He chuckled. The warm concern of this man, who had become like a father, was a gift untold and Battista immersed himself in it.

  Pulling away, holding Battista at arm’s length, Michelangelo frowned at him. Battista had not taken the time to check his reflection, but he imagined the picture he presented, eyebrows singed, skin red, almost raw, as if he had been laid out to dry too long in the sun.

  “Are you all right?” Michelangelo hissed with impassioned concern.

  “I am fine, dear friend,” Battista assured him. “It must look much worse than it feels.”

  He stepped away, back toward the table.

  “Some cider and biscuits?”

  “Just cider, per favore.” The older man nodded as he shuffled along behind, and they sat companionably, sipping their cider, Battista munching his biscuit.

  “How did you know I had returned?”

  “I just saw Nuntio in the market,” Michelangelo replied. “He prepares a splendid meal to celebrate your ... success?”

  The artist’s voice inched upward, the intrusive question resounded loudly in the polite inquiry.

  Battista stared down into his cup as if a better answer lay in the floating pulp of the cider.

  “I do not have the last canvas. In fact, I no longer have any of them. They have been destroyed.”

  Battista curled his shoulders in defense, as if he expected a scolding, or at the least a barrage of questions. But not a word did Michelangelo speak, and in the silence Battista found the acceptance to continue.

  “Do you remember once, after you had finished the chapel”—Battista’s gaze flicked up shyly—“you tried to tell me of what came upon you as you worked your brush? A possession, if you will, of something or someone not of this earth?”

  Michelangelo sat back in his chair, wood creaking below him, face placid.

  Battista thought the artist would deny it, for he had been a bit inebriated at the time, if Battista remembered correctly. Or perhaps Michelangelo would scoff at the notion and the discussion. Battista looked up, surprised to find his friend with a silly smirk upon his bearded face.

  “Is something
funny?” Battista asked with an edge of annoyance.

  “Funny? No. Wonderful? Sì.” Michelangelo leaned toward him, one hand reaching out for his. “You have learned the truth.”

  Battista shot him a befuddled look. “Truth?”

  “Sì, the truth. Aurelia’s truth. The truth of the relic.”

  Battista fell back from the table, mouth working silently on words he could not grasp.

  “It is all right, amico karissimo,” Michelangelo assured him with the same half smile. “It is a secret I already guard.”

  “How d-did you ... when d-did you ...” Battista stammered, shoulders up to his ears, hands splayed in the air.

  Michelangelo tutted as he stood and refilled Battista’s cup, this time with yellow wine.

  “In truth? Not until I saw the lady in the Sistine.” He sat back down beside his friend, amber eyes glowing with his tale. “It is not that I had forgotten what I experienced as I painted that ceiling, the moments of being out of myself over the course of those arduous years. I believe I simply had put it in a cupboard of my mind, knowing there was naught to be done about it, that naught needed to be done.”

  Battista nodded, gulping on the fruity beverage, gaze never leaving his friend’s face.

  “But when I saw her there, her own visage rendered by my hand, though I had never set eyes upon her ... well ... I remembered. . . I knew ...” Michelangelo’s voice faded away into wonder. “I had heard of the guardians, in those days as an apprentice, though it took me a while to remember. Word of them came along with those of Giotto, Dante, and others still. Many thought them part of a pagan society and the guardians as part of their sect. I never learned of their true purpose. But I understood when you told me of your assignment, when I saw her face upon my ceiling.”

  They sat in it together, their unbreakable bond ever stronger, now with a union far beyond the imaginable. Battista could have wept the gratitude of it; he would not have to live the rest of his life as the sole keeper of this secret. It was a burden he had not wished for, nor cared to carry.

  “Your face, my friend.” Michelangelo finally asked with a painful expression, “Was the challenge grueling?”

  Battista laughed, then drank the rest of his wine. “It was a heaven filled with the pain of Hell.”

  “Love and hate walk a similar path,” Michelangelo mused.

  The slanted rays of sunlight chased away the morning gloom as Battista told his mentor all they had experienced in the castle. Though there were earthly explanations for all they had seen and done, the words—when articulated between these two—hummed with spiritual reality and otherworldly forces.

  His tale complete, Battista sat back in his chair, hands rustling through his hair. “I will go to my grave not knowing the true nature of all I have seen and can only hope God will tell me the truth of it when I look upon Him.”

  “You mean if you look upon Him,” Michelangelo said, one bushy brow raised impishly.

  Battista cuffed him on the shoulder with a hearty laugh, his first in a very long time.

  “May I know of the jest?”

  The men jumped at Aurelia’s voice and turned their startled gaze to the bottom stair upon which she stood.

  Clothed still in her chemise, a full-skirted cream dressing gown wrapped and tied about her, she looked an angel with her russet hair atangle upon her head, her face smooth and swollen with sleep. Battista’s heart swelled at the sight of her.

  With a drowsy smile, Aurelia descended the last step and crossed to them.

  The two men stood as she neared, as they always had, but this time they tendered a bow.

  “Please don’t,” she asked with gentle insistence. She rushed around the table to buss Michelangelo on both his cheeks. “You are my dear friend.”

  She turned to Battista, rising up on tiptoes to brush his mouth with hers. “And you are my love.”

  It was a provocative statement, but one she seemed eager to make.

  “I would have you treat me as nothing more.”

  “I will treat you like the lady you are.” Battista pulled out a chair between them. “And nothing less.”

  She smiled as she sat, gaze volleying from one to the other.

  “He has told you, I see,” she said to Michelangelo, who had the good grace to simply shrug and nod.

  “You are at peace, madonna?” he asked.

  “As much as I can be,” Aurelia replied. “I have served my duty, and served it well, and have not suffered too deep a wound.”

  She turned her gaze to Battista. “Except, perhaps, one of the heart.”

  Battista took up her hand and brushed the back of it with his lips.

  Her eyes closed at the touch. “I do not know how I will return to the life I lived before, but return to it I must.”

  “Not until you are much recovered,” Battista insisted with a low rumble. “You are exhausted and thin. I would see you rested and well fed before I return you. If return you I must.”

  Aurelia smiled but did not naysay him, be it his hope or hers.

  Beside them Michelangelo’s foot tapped an arrhythmic beat upon his chair rung.

  “What is it, Michelangelo? I have told you all and yet I feel as if you have something to tell me.”

  Michelangelo nodded, bushy salt-and-pepper brows rising precipitously upon his forehead. “Indeed, I do. I fear you read my face too well.”

  “Do you not wish to tell me?” Aurelia asked. “I will leave if you have need of privacy.”

  “Oh no, my lady.” Michelangelo reached out to tap her arm with assurance. “I fear only that it is disturbing news and am not sure if this is the proper time.”

  Battista rose, gathering another cup, the wine, and more biscuits from the cupboard. “There’s nothing for it now, amico. We are forewarned. You must fess up.”

  Michelangelo stood as Battista sat and walked to the other side of the table, better able to see them both.

  “Rome has fallen.”

  Battista choked on the mouthful of wine, spewing and sputtering the pale brew over his chin and the table before him.

  “The deuce you say!” he swore as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Beside him, Aurelia sat speechless, stiff as a board.

  “When ... how?” Battista demanded.

  “But a few days ago.” Michelangelo sat with a thump. “Word arrived only yesterday, while you were gone. It is all Florence can speak of.”

  “Tell me all you know,” Battista implored. “Was it the emperor?”

  “Yes and no,” Michelangelo began. “It was his forces, that much is certain. But word is they acted alone, those under the command of Bourbon.”

  “François’s betrayer,” Battista hissed.

  “Indeed,” Michelangelo agreed. “But it was not done at the duke’s command, but over him. It seems the men lost faith in their commanders. No food or pay made them angry, and angry men do barbarous things. For his own good, Bourbon took part in the invasion. Ironically, he became one of the first to fall.”

  “Dead?”

  “Very. And any military constraint remaining evaporated with his last breath. Those few who made it out of the city say the pillaging and destruction continues. Hundreds, mayhap thousands are dead. No one knows for sure. No one can get into the city. They’ve closed the gates and guard them well.” The artist hung his head, heels of his hands pushing at his wrinkled forehead. “I fear greatly for my work ... my pietà ... the chapel.”

  Aurelia reached out and pulled his hands away. “You must have faith.”

  Battista cocked an eye at her, something in her words disturbed him, but he could not name it, too eager to learn more of Rome.

  “And the pope? What has become of Clement?”

  Michelangelo’s golden eyes rolled heavenward. “Held captive, in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Almost all the guards, nearly two hundred, died seeing him safely there. There remain not enough alive to get him out.”

  Battista jumped to
his feet, chair scraping against the floor with a screech of protest. He paced about, a crazed animal locked in a cage, his heart torn as assuredly as the city. He had no care for the Medici pope, but he bristled with consuming anger against foreign soldiers plundering Rome.

  His hands gripped the back of his chair, his knuckles white and hard as sun-bleached stones.

  “What from Ippolito and the cardinal?” Battista asked of Florence’s rulers. “What is the word on the street?”

  “No one knows. The speculations swing, as does the pendulum. Half fear the marauders will make for Florence next. The other half believe the time has come to take back the Republic, in the wake of the Medici fall.” The sorrowful man hung his head. “But how many more must die?”

  The question hung in the still air like a noxious odor.

  Michelangelo looked up at his friend looming above him, great swollen tears in his eyes.

  Aurelia squeezed the older man’s hand in hers. “You must not—”

  “You knew!” Battista raged, turning on her, all his anger, fear, and revulsion divested upon her head as the revelation came to him. “You knew, and you could have stopped it.”

  The accusation was harsh and loathsome. Aurelia did nothing to deny it.

  Releasing her hold upon Michelangelo’s hand, she reached for Battista’s. With a glimmer of repulsion, he pulled away.

  But she followed, jumping up, barreling toward him, meeting his gaze without shame or weakness.

  “I did not stop it, for it was not meant to be stopped.”

  Thirty-four

  There is no greater sorrow

  Than to be mindful of the happy time

  In misery

  —Inferno

  She closed her eyes, arms held away from her body, palms forward, posed in a posture of acceptance and abandon. Few medicinals had healed her as well as this place; in its embrace her wounds mended, her strength returned, and her body once more boasted the curves of a vigorous woman. Her paradox branded her healing as the illness that would take her away.