3 - Cruel Music

by Beverle Graves Myers

  A pair of maids sweeping the parquet floor at the other end of the salon paused when Gemma trotted through a side doorway. I was too far away to hear, but the girl’s gestures were unmistakable. She was searching for the marchesa—an urgent matter if Gemma’s flushed face and strained expression were any indication. Trading sneers, the pair bent to their brooms and turned their backs on Gemma without a word. Their gestures were also eloquent: We’ll do your job when you start doing ours.

  Gemma looked as if she might argue the point, but then Guido came in and spoke a few words. She cocked her head and regarded him with a doubtful expression.

  He nodded impatiently. Gemma shook her head. I fancied she mouthed the words, not now.

  Guido moved closer, smiling seductively. The footman wanted something—that much was evident. But I doubted it had anything to do with romance. The maid arranged herself so their bodies wouldn’t touch as he whispered in her ear.

  Something he said managed to turn the tide. After a brief moment, Gemma pivoted on her heel, and they left together.

  Feeling a bit lost, I made my way to the main hall, where I found Abate Lenci trying to look as if he had a reason to be dawdling there. He greeted me with a touch of irritation. “Signor Amato,” he whispered, “Fabiani’s gone to his library to take brandy with Orsini and several others. How can you take the measure of his political designs if you’re not with them?”

  I sighed. “I can’t follow Fabiani around like a spaniel. I have to wait until I’m called to his presence. Your uncles don’t realize what a task they’ve handed me.”

  The arrival of Rossobelli prevented any response that Lenci might have made. When the secretary pointed out that Cardinal Montorio’s carriage was waiting, Lenci scampered for the door. Rossobelli had a few words for me as well: Cardinal Fabiani appreciated my performance at the conversazioni but would not be needing me again tonight. Not sure whether to be relieved or concerned, I went to my room, changed to a dressing gown, and sent Benito to the kitchens to arrange a supper tray.

  ***

  I was writing a letter to Gussie when Benito and Guido wheeled in a cart of covered dishes wreathed in mouth-watering aromas. Having a manservant who was well liked in the kitchen was proving to be a distinct advantage. I wasted no time in settling myself at a table before the sitting room fire and uncovering the largest platter. A trout grilled to perfection nestled atop a bed of saffron rice; its mottled skin glistened with lemon butter. Just as the first forkful touched my lips, Guido gave Benito a departing caress that he obviously intended to escape my notice. My attendant responded with a coquettish smile and a few whispered words.

  Flooded by a sudden rush of sadness, I abandoned my fork and sank back to stare into the flames dancing in the fireplace. How was it that my manservant fell into these easy romances while my love affairs were continually fraught with difficulty? Back in Venice, I’d gradually resigned myself to a future without Liya. I’d put my dreams aside and concentrated on my music, taking occasional solace in the arms of one of the numerous ladies who haunted my dressing room door. Now, after one brief touch, one hurried exchange, my thoughts were again obsessed by the beautiful Jewess—for such I would always think of her, even if she had rejected her heritage. I finished my meal in a somber frame of mind, perhaps allowing Benito to fill my wineglass with rich Montepulciano a few too many times.

  After I pushed away from the table and carried my coffee to the sofa, Benito cleared the dishes and wheeled the cart into the hall. Then he flung himself onto a footstool before me. He had read my sadness like a book.

  “Master,” he said, leaning forward and placing his hands under his chin in a prayerful position. “Back in Venice, when Signorina Liya ran away, you told me she was seeking a safe haven.”

  “That’s right. Liya’s mother vowed to reject the child she was carrying. Her lover was a Christian, and a deliberate scoundrel besides.”

  “But Luca was no worse than Liya’s own cousin. Those two were up to their elbows in schemes.”

  My coffee spoon tinkled against the delicate porcelain as I reflected on the events that had resulted in the disastrous ghetto fire. “I know, but people don’t like to blame their own. Luca was the outsider, so the Jews cast him as the villain. Liya’s mother demanded that she make plans to send Luca’s child to a Christian orphanage—a most unusual stance, I’m told. Liya’s father tried to bridge the gap and make peace between them, but the two strong women snapped him like a dried chicken bone. Soon, the whole family was threatening to disown Liya. She was at her wit’s end.”

  “You never told anyone where she was headed.”

  I sipped at the smooth brew. At the time, the Jewess’ choice had astonished me. Perhaps it still did. Sharing her secret for the first time, I spoke slowly, reluctantly. “Liya fled to a wise woman who lives on one of the deserted islands out in the lagoon.”

  “A woman who doles out potions and philters?”

  I nodded. “This woman arranged for Liya to travel to a village high in the mountains of the mainland. A village where they don’t care who is Christian or Jew.”

  “Does such a place exist?”

  “Apparently, yes. The people of such villages keep to themselves and follow la vecchia religione.”

  “My grandmother used to tell stories about peasants who keep to the old religion and still worship Diana as the queen of the moon and the forests. She warned us to avoid them like the plague.” Benito glanced around with a shiver. I remembered how superstitious my manservant could be: salt over the shoulder, dire predictions over a broken mirror, firm reminders about tempting fortune if I happened to whistle in the theater. “Diana’s followers have the power of the evil eye,” he said, lowering his voice a notch. “They’re streghe. Witches.”

  “I suppose,” I answered, staring into my coffee, finding it difficult to imagine the sensible, clever seamstress I’d known dancing around a bubbling cauldron, invoking whatever deities such simple, unlettered people believed in. For the thousandth time, I wondered if Liya had found what she sought and if she ever spared a thought for me.

  “Then tell me this.” Benito raised an eyebrow. “If Signorina Liya follows the old religion, what is she doing in Rome, the center of Christian power? Surely Rome deals with heathens even more harshly than Venice.”

  Not having the answer to that question, I sent Benito to fetch another bottle of Montepulciano and directed him to fill a glass for both of us. Under the wine’s beneficent influence, we talked of nothing but happier days until the flaming logs collapsed into glowing embers.

  Later, as I tottered to bed and pulled the coverlet up to my chin, I realized I’d let Liya’s baffling appearance chase the real reason for my visit to Rome from my mind. I admonished myself with stern resolve: freeing Alessandro was the important thing, not rekindling a romance that had been impossible from the start. My head sank into the pillow and my eyelids eased shut. I couldn’t have slept more than a few minutes until the bell above my bed leapt to life with a clanging vengeance, jerking me upright and hurling my heart against my ribs.

  Cardinal Fabiani wanted me.

  Still muzzy from consuming an unaccustomed amount of the grape, I fumbled for my underclothes and stockings. By the time I had them on, Benito had arrived with a clean shirt and some soft wool breeches. He reached for my formal wig, but I shook my head. I’d give this midnight concert with my own hair loose on my shoulders.

  The broad corridor was deserted except for my own intersecting shadows cast by the flickering wall lamps. Reaching the cardinal’s door, I swayed a bit as I straightened my clumsily assembled attire. The door opened on Rossobelli, pink-rimmed eyes bulging in agitation.

  “Quick,” he whispered on a sharp breath. “There’s no time to lose.”

  I stepped inside. Metal rasped on metal as Rossobelli shot the bolt home. The sitting room was da
rker than the hallway. I formed a fleeting impression of heavy tables and overstuffed sofas as the abate hustled me through to the bed chamber. There I approached a canopied bed twice the size of mine and was surprised to find it empty, its pillows and bedclothes in perfect array.

  In a corner, Rossobelli was fidgeting with a bookcase that rose up from behind the cardinal’s priedieu.

  “Where is His Eminence?” I asked.

  “I’ll take you to him. This way, if you please.”

  The bookcase creaked, then swung outward. A gust of cool air met my cheeks. Rossobelli lit a hand-held lantern from a little candle illuminating a statue of the Virgin and motioned me toward a gaping dark rectangle that had appeared in the plastered wall. “Come…he’s waiting.”

  I hesitated. It had penetrated my addled brain that there was more here than a sleepless cardinal. Rossobelli was frightened—frightened enough to have totally dropped his habitual fawning persona.

  “Where does that lead?” I asked.

  “To the pavilion in the garden. Follow me. The cardinal needs you.”

  The passage that swallowed my reluctant steps descended in a series of enclosed, sharply angled staircases: no dusty cobwebs or skeletons hanging in irons, simply a hidden access designed to ensure privacy. It was at the bottom that my real qualms began. Several windowless corridors branched off into the ground floor of the house, but Rossobelli dove to the left, into a mouth of stone that reeked of stagnation and mold.

  “What is this place?” I asked, stooping to follow his crabbed form.

  “An old aqueduct. The Romans built it as a conduit for water to drive grain mills on the Janiculum. It runs above ground outside the city, then dips underground at the Aurelian wall.”

  I froze. We were traversing a centuries-old tunnel? With how many tons of dirt over our heads? A cold clamminess raced down my spine. Involuntarily, my feet shuffled backward.

  The lantern swung around. Rossobelli’s long fingers encircled my wrist. His nails dug into my flesh. “Don’t be a fool. It’s perfectly safe. I’ve been through here more times than I can count. Look—” He swept the lamp in an arc, illuminating neatly reticulated blocks. “The Romans knew how to build. The only bits that are impassable are where they intentionally collapsed the walls so the Goths couldn’t sneak through in the Siege of 537.”

  Nodding, I remembered that I’d been impressed by a triumph of Roman engineering just that day. Both the Pantheon and this aqueduct would probably survive until my nephew’s grandchildren had grandchildren of their own. I moved forward gingerly and was soon scuttling beneath the garden like a creature of the dirt. I almost crashed into Rossobelli when he stopped at a staircase of roughhewn rock that intersected the tunnel. The aqueduct continued downward, in the direction of the Tiber, I surmised. I wasn’t sorry that we climbed the stairs.

  A vertical slit of light descended to meet the glow from our lamp. Rossobelli seized my shoulder. “I trust you aren’t squeamish.”

  “Not particularly,” I answered, attempting to suppress a hiccup.

  “Good. The last thing His Eminence needs is a fancy boy with a weak stomach.”

  Rossobelli widened the crack of light by opening a door that formed part of the thick garden wall. We entered the pavilion that I had seen from my balcony. It was an artfully rusticated retreat, rather like a tiny hunting lodge built of pale stucco and floored with a mosaic of black and white pebbles. The night air circulated through the garden entrance and the lattices covering the unglazed windows. Empty pots awaiting spring planting were stacked in a terra cotta pyramid beside a trio of low ironwork benches.

  The effect was charming—except that the nearest bench held one very dead girl. She was curled on her side with her face to the wall and one pale arm flung back at an odd angle. Loose dark hair obscured her features, but her mode of death was obvious. She’d been strangled from behind. A long white scarf bit into the soft flesh of her neck; its free ends trailed limply on the pebbled floor.

  Cardinal Fabiani towered above the corpse, standing as still as a marble statue. Praying? Without wig or cap, his bowed head was bald as an egg. His chin was buried in the fur-lined collar of his dressing gown and his hands wrapped in a cloak of rough, brown wool that he clutched to his chest. At Rossobelli’s quiet cough, he roused and sent me a look that bore right through the remnants of my wine-induced haze.

  Part Two

  “A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.”

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  Chapter Eight

  “Gemma Farussi,” Fabiani said offhandedly, as if introducing a tiresome courtier, “my mother’s maid.”

  “Yes, I recognize her gown.” The calmness of my tone astonished me. Inside, my heart was hammering on my ribs.

  Fabiani’s pointed nose twitched in surprise.

  “We met before the concert last night. The marchesa had wandered into the music room…” I paused to drum up a bit of courage. “What happened here?”

  “We don’t know. Rossobelli found her, just like this.” The cardinal shook his head and resumed his silent contemplation.

  As slender as she was, Gemma’s corpse seemed to take up a great deal of space. After a moment, Cardinal Fabiani knelt and gently unwound the fatal length of silk from her neck. He examined it closely before directing his next remark to Rossobelli. “Did you find my mother?”

  The abate answered with a brisk nod. “She’d hidden herself in the larder off the kitchens. If the fringe of her shawl hadn’t caught in the door, I’d be looking still.”

  “Anyone about?”

  “Only the footman at the front entrance. He didn’t seem to realize that anything was amiss.”

  “And Matilda?”

  “When I returned Marchesa Fabiani to her bed chamber, Matilda was sleeping in her chair by the fire.”

  Still kneeling, Fabiani crumpled the scarf into a ball, molding the delicate fabric in his restless grasp. “You didn’t wake her, did you?”

  “No. The marchesa sought her bed without a whimper, so I left Matilda as I found her.”

  “Good man. With God’s favor, my plan may just work.”

  Fabiani shot me a keen glance. “You seek to worm your way into my most intimate circle, Signor Amato. I cannot think of a better place for you to begin.”

  “Your Eminence,” I stuttered. “I was sent to entertain, not—”

  He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Time is too short to fence with words. It is already well past midnight. I know why Antonio Montorio made me a present of you, and I know all about your brother’s arrest.” He sighed. “Perhaps your depth of family feeling will give you some sympathy for my position.”

  Rising, he unfurled the cloak, laid the length of coarse wool beside the bench, and rolled poor Gemma onto her back. “Help me, Rossobelli. She’s so small, her cloak will cover her form.”

  The abate averted his face. “Hideous,” he whispered. “She was so young, so lovely.”

  “I’ll grant you she was beautiful.” Fabiani stroked Gemma’s chin with his thumb and gazed at her contorted face for a long moment. “But she’s also dead, and we have work to do. Grab her feet, man.”

  As Rossobelli moved to do as he was told, the cardinal addressed me. “Tito, I want you to run down the lane to the Via della Lungara. Do you know the Porta Settimiana?” He referred to the gateway to the Trastevere that Benito and I had passed through that morning.

  I nodded.

  “Right before the Settimiana, on the left side of the Lungara, you will find Atto Benelli’s hut. He’s an old woodsman who fishes the Tiber and tends a market garden by the river’s edge. Wake him. Tell him you are from the villa and need him to bring his boat round to the mouth of the old aqueduct. Tell him to bring some chains. Heavy ones.”

  I didn
’t answer. Gemma’s death mask had robbed me of speech.

  “Well?” Cardinal Fabiani scowled. “Do you need an encore?”

  I shook my head miserably. “No, I understand.”

  “Go on, then. Down the first garden path to your left and straight out to the lane. Get back here as quickly as you can. You won’t have any trouble. Benelli will follow orders…I own the land where he grows his cabbages.”

  I did as I was told. The night air was brisk and I had no cloak, but I don’t think I would have felt the cold, even if I had not been running. I might have been moving through a nightmare. I heard my steps pound the graveled lane as if from a great distance—likewise my ragged breathing—but my body was numb. The little maid who had seemed so full of pluck and vigor lay dead, strangled by another’s hand. Fabiani should have roused the household, summoned a magistrate, sent a messenger to Gemma’s family. Instead, he had hastened to conceal the crime and had drafted Rossobelli and me to help him. The reason was obvious: he believed the old marchesa had done the deed and wanted to protect her.

  Protecting family I could understand. The face that floated before me, all through my headlong flight to Benelli’s hut, was Alessandro as I’d last seen him—my brave brother bruised and beaten to further the Montorio cause. Would cooperating with Fabiani help me gain Alessandro’s freedom? I wasn’t sure, but I did judge it certain that failing Fabiani would mean the end of my usefulness to Antonio Montorio. In that eventuality, Alessandro would be tried and executed as a smuggler before the month was out.

  The old woodsman’s hut was easy to find, waking its owner more difficult. I pounded as hard as I dared, hoping the good people of the Lungara were all fast asleep. When Benelli finally opened the door, the odor of cheap wine and old sweat clung to his nightshirt. His rheumy eyes opened wider at each repetition of my request, and he muttered excuses about a pain in his shoulder and a leaky boat. It required the invocation of Cardinal Fabiani’s name to turn the tide and secure his promise that a serviceable boat would be waiting.