3 - Cruel Music

by Beverle Graves Myers

  I shifted my weight to a more comfortable position and cast my mind back to several conversations with Rossobelli. Yes! The broom and pan fell from my hands. I remembered who had spilled flour—and where.

  I sprang up to rush to the kitchens but stopped myself at the door. Pressing my forehead and splayed palms against the cool wood, I willed myself to take a few deep breaths. It was not yet time.

  ***

  At half past ten, I was hovering in a back corridor on the first floor of the villa. The light was dim, barely illuminating the landing where the kitchen stairs turned a corner. I strained my ears and listened for any signs of activity. All was quiet.

  Treading lightly, I scurried down to the landing and, after a pause, to the kitchen level. A wide, red-tiled corridor stretched before me. The servants’ dining hall lay on the left. Its entrance was dark. The cook’s parlor was on the right, almost to the archway that led into the first kitchen. The parlor doorway cast a thin wedge of light across the tiles.

  Hugging the wall, I drew equal to the door, which was open only a few inches. I heard the cook’s curt alto melding with another, softer voice. Someone counted in an undertone and made an exclamation of disgust, then the alto cackled and said, “I told you. I took that last trick, so I win.”

  “So you did, but I’ll have my revenge. Deal another hand.” Now I recognized the soft voice. The cook and the housekeeper were playing two-hand Tarocchino.

  I held my breath, waiting for the unmistakable sound of the shuffle. The cook’s gaze would be trained on the cards riffling through her fingers, and the housekeeper’s too, making sure her friend kept all the cards on the table. There!

  I sprinted for the kitchen on tiptoe and recited a silent prayer of thanks when no cries erupted from the cook’s parlor. Most of the vast, low-ceiled kitchen lay in shadow. Beneath an overhanging mantel, the main fireplace was a seething bank of orange pierced with pinpoints of yellow flame and ringed by a moat of gray ashes. Huge copper pans and basins that hung from ceiling hooks reflected the mellow glow. I started when a movement to one side of the fire caught the corner of my eye.

  It was one of the kitchen boys, turning over on his pallet, kicking a blanket away. His regular breathing told me he slept like a typical twelve-year-old who had carried fuel and hefted pots all day. A brass band couldn’t have awakened him.

  From my earlier searches, I knew where the baking supplies were kept. My target was the capacious flour barrel that supplied the raw material for the villa’s bread and pastries. When I had questioned Rossobelli about how he found the marchesa on the night of Gemma’s murder, the abate said that he had chanced to notice her shawl caught in the larder door and discovered the poor lady in a mess of spilled flour. I only wished that I had remembered the detail of the flour before now.

  The larder door wasn’t locked, but the dim light from the banked fire didn’t penetrate its planks. A handy shelf outside the door supplied a lamp. I considered it a sign of good fortune when I managed to light it on the first try. I set my little flame on a marble slab among some cold tarts and tilted the flour barrel’s lid. Using the wooden scoop chained to the rim, I dug down into the cool, soft billows.

  Nothing.

  I’d have to go deeper, of course. Flour was scooped out many times a day. If the marchesa had buried her treasure near the top, it would have been found already. I noticed several plump sacks piled nearby. The barrel was probably replenished whenever the level sank low enough to accommodate a full sack, thus ensuring that the flour near the bottom had been undisturbed for a long time.

  I threw off my coat and pushed up my sleeves and soon discovered that flour is worse than sand for staying where you want it to. Stretching over the rim, barely keeping my nose out of the smooth drifts, I tunneled my fingers along the inside of the oaken staves. Sometimes having a eunuch’s long limbs is an advantage. I found what I sought at about the level of my knees: something flat and solid that had no business in a barrel of flour.

  A wooden rectangle anchored the stretched canvas. There was no exterior frame. The painting itself was small: about the width of my arm from wrist to elbow and a bit less in height. I tapped it on the side of the barrel to release the clinging flour and cleaned it further with the cuff of my sleeve.

  You could call the thing a portrait, I suppose, but its subject was a horse. A magnificent bay stallion with a pulled mane and bobbed tail. The man who clutched the reins seemed to have found his way onto the canvas only to form a pleasing composition.

  Holding the painting as close to the lamp as I dared, I examined the man more closely. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and attired as a groom. Dark brown locks escaped his brimmed cap. Just as in the lover’s eye hidden in the marchesa’s ring, his eyes and prominent brows were also brown. Beneath a pointed nose, his wide mouth appeared about to break into a smile. If I covered the top half of his face with my forefinger, I was staring at Cardinal Fabiani’s nose and mouth.

  I turned the canvas over and studied the back side. Here the marchesa had noted names and dates so that she would never forget the love of her life. The groom’s name was Desio Caporale, but his son, Lorenzo, carried the name of Fabiani. Beneath the genealogy, the marchesa had signed her full name with many loops and flourishes. She had added a date, June 21 of last year.

  Another line of writing was squeezed in above the junction of the canvas and the stretcher board. I tilted the painting in the feeble light. This writing was in a different hand than the marchesa’s. I squinted and the disconnected block letters suddenly became readable: On this day, I witnessth—Gemma Farussi.

  I exhaled deeply. This was it. Proof that went far beyond a senile woman’s ramblings. Lorenzo Fabiani was the son of a common groom and Gemma Farussi knew it. A word in the right quarter, backed up by the evidence in my hands, and the cardinal would be the laughingstock of Rome. Rude jokes would spring up immediately; dirty songs about him and his mother would circulate round the taverns; journalists would pen bravura essays on the pernicious lies of the Cardinal Padrone; the Fabiani carriage wouldn’t be able to navigate the streets without being pelted by rotten fruit. Like a dish of gelato left in the summer sun, the proud cardinal’s power would melt away to nothing.

  I had known Gemma for a short two days before she was killed. Like Gussie at his sketching, I had formed only a bare impression of her character. Her strength and ambition stood out in bold relief, but it was my conversations with Abate Lenci and Lady Mary that added hues and shadings. The maid had been desperately in love with Lenci and determined to wed him. Lacking rank, she needed a great sum of money to tempt him to turn his back on his uncles—much more money than could be gained by serving as Fabiani’s eyes and ears in the Pompetti camp.

  I had no doubt that Gemma had turned to extortion to raise her dowry. But threatening Lorenzo Fabiani had proved to be a very bad idea.

  Clutching the painting, I imagined the cardinal weighing his prospects. The amount of money that would seem like a fortune to Gemma would barely leave a dent in his purse, but allowing an ambitious, determined young woman to walk away with his secret carried a dangerous risk that would follow him forever. What had the cardinal called Gemma: a person of no significance in society or government? I sighed as I stared at the untutored letters of her signature. Cardinal Fabiani had strangled Gemma with no more compunction than swatting a mosquito.

  Now what? I intended to use the painting as leverage to induce Cardinal Fabiani to transfer his support from Di Noce to Stefano Montorio, but if I weren’t careful, I could end up as dead as Gemma. One thing was certain, it would be folly to confront him with the evidence in hand. I needed to find my own place of concealment, but where? I spent several minutes in furious concentration. My room? The garden pavilion? One of the passages behind the tapestries?

  “Idiot!” I gave myself a sharp knock on the forehead. The marchesa had handed me the
best hiding place of all. The flour barrel had sheltered the painting for several weeks, at least. Who knows how many times Gemma and the old lady played their desperate game of hide and seek with the painting? But Gemma was gone, and the marchesa’s memory no longer extended beyond her childhood. I was the only one who knew.

  I must hurry. Digging like a dog burying a bone, I returned the painting to its floury cache. The dusting of white I’d created on the red floor tiles and marble shelves also had to be dealt with. I didn’t dare leave any trace of unwarranted interest in the villa’s flour stock. By the time I’d cleaned every surface and stowed my rag and broom, it must have been almost midnight.

  The cook’s parlor door was shut and the servant’s staircase deserted. I took those stairs two at a time, intending to wait up for the cardinal and confront him as soon as he came in. When I reached the second floor, I stepped into blackness. The small lamps that usually illuminated the night hallways had been extinguished.

  Pausing to let my eyes adjust, I palmed the hilt of my dagger. A stealthy click met my ears. I could just make out a dark figure letting himself out of my room. It wasn’t Guido. The footman was much stockier and had no reason to skulk in the shadows.

  The figure scuttled away toward the cardinal’s suite. I could have stayed where I was, but I was sick to death of secrets. I wanted to know who had been in my room. I launched myself down the hall. The collision with the dark figure sent us both staggering. After wrestling the slight man to the carpet, I found myself astraddle a squirming, whimpering bundle of bones.

  “Shut up!” With my left hand, I pinned his jaw askance. With my right, I positioned the blade of my dagger behind his ear. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “Tito! It’s me—Rossobelli.” The abate made a pitiful squeak. “Thank the good Lord, I’ve found you in time.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “You must flee! Now!” Rossobelli whispered frantically as I pushed him into my room and shut the door. “Take what money you’ll need to get out of Rome and go. Just go, for God’s sake.”

  I lit a candle and located a decanter of brandy. The abate needed a glass badly. He was trembling, near hysteria.

  “Here, calm yourself.” I handed him a glass. “Take your—”

  “You don’t understand,” he cried, knocking my hand away, splashing brandy onto my waistcoat. “Sertori is at the front entrance. He’s brought constables, Tito. He means to arrest you for Gemma’s murder.”

  I let the brandy soak into my waistcoat unchecked. “He found the body?”

  “They brought her up just before the light failed, and he had a warrant drawn up this evening.”

  “Has Cardinal Fabiani returned?”

  “No. He’s meeting with the Montorios tonight.”

  “At the Palazzo Venezia?”

  The abate gave a quick nod. “Yes. But…Tito…I don’t think you can count on him for help. If it comes down to a choice of giving up you or the marchesa…”

  Or himself, I thought, as I swiveled my head at the sound of distant commotion.

  Rossobelli stepped to the door and opened it a fraction. “They’re inside the villa. I told Guido to make them wait outside, but the constables must have pushed through.” He spied my cloak thrown over a chair, grabbed it, and shoved it into my hands. “Come. His Eminence’s suite is empty. I’ll send you out his private entrance. Do you remember the way through the aqueduct passage?”

  I nodded, suppressing a shiver. How could I ever forget?

  Darting glances over my shoulder, I followed the abate down the corridor and into the cardinal’s bed chamber. With a grunt, he shifted the priedieu with the flickering candles that were kept continuously lit. As he illuminated a lantern from one of their flames, a question rose to my lips.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?” he asked with a gulp.

  “Helping me escape Sertori. I always thought that you considered me more enemy than friend.”

  Rossobelli clenched his jaw. Fine beads of sweat had formed on his sharp, red cheekbones. He had the look of a man who might be sick at any moment. He handed me the lantern and unhinged the bookcase that concealed the stairway.

  “Just go,” he said.

  “Not until you have told me why.”

  “Ancona,” he answered in a faraway tone, “my boyhood home. The prettiest town on the Adriatic seacoast. My father should be supervising a harbor full of ships, and Ancona’s people should be well-fed and comfortable.”

  “You’re warning me away because of the Ancona project?”

  “No.” He hung his head. “It’s because of Ancona that Magistrate Sertori is here. I suggested that he question old Benelli about dumping Gemma’s body.”

  “I see. You’re the one who sent the anonymous note.”

  He writhed miserably. “It was wrong, I admit it. It’s just that His Eminence is so taken with you. Before you came to the villa, I felt sure that Di Noce would carry the day and shepherd the Ancona project to conclusion—Prince Pompetti and His Eminence seemed in such perfect sympathy. But then, with a Montorio supporter practically living in the cardinal’s pocket…”

  “It’s the music I make that he admires, not my clumsy attempts at politicking.”

  “Perhaps, but I was determined to make the most of every opportunity that might benefit Ancona.”

  “Including my arrest for a murder I didn’t commit?”

  “It must have been the Devil himself who tempted me. I was weak…and too quick to sin. Can’t you see that I’m trying to make reparation?” He opened the bookcase a little wider. “Please, Tito, get out of Rome before Sertori finds you. Once you cross the boundary of the Papal States, you’ll be safe. Otherwise…I won’t be able to live with myself.”

  I entered the dark passage, lantern in hand, but paused on the top step. “Did the Devil also give you the idea of sending some ruffians to run Benito down? Was that your first attempt to get me out of the villa?”

  Rossobelli’s jaw dropped. He appeared horrified. “No, nothing of the sort. Benito met with a tragic accident…did he not?”

  “There was a witness who saw the cart run him down deliberately, and you seemed most interested in his condition.”

  “I was, but only because I felt sorry for the little man. I would never—” Drawing a quick breath, the abate looked over his shoulder. “They’re in the corridor. Run, Tito. Godspeed.”

  The bookcase clicked shut.

  I am as fond of my skin as the next man. I cannot claim that I gave no thought to hurrying straight to the kitchens, digging the painting out of the flour, and presenting it to Sertori with my theory about why Fabiani strangled Gemma. But I couldn’t desert Alessandro in that cowardly fashion. If our places were reversed, I knew that he would move heaven and earth to save me. Besides, I tended to agree with Liya that Sertori would prefer the quick arrest of a powerless singer to a pitched battle with a prince of the Church.

  The aqueduct at the bottom of the stairs was just as narrow, still, and damp as I remembered, but I scuttled through the first section clinging to one firm goal: find Fabiani. At the stone steps that led up to the pavilion, I paused and gathered my cloak tight. It wasn’t the chill, but the act of passing over the very route that Rossobelli and I had traversed with Gemma’s lifeless body. I pushed forward. The tunnel seemed to stretch for miles. Finally, a draft of fresh air touched my cheeks. Mindful of the bats I had encountered before, I covered the remaining yards to the mouth of the aqueduct in a stumbling crouch.

  A rumble of thunder greeted my clumsy exit. Lightning flashed above the hills to the east, its jagged silver threads providing a glimpse of angry clouds swirling against the dark sky. At least the rain had held off. With the help of my lantern, I located the twisting path through the bushes whose tops were whip
ping to and fro in the wind. Pulling the hood of my cloak well forward, I began the long walk to the Palazzo Venezia.

  ***

  It was late, I wasn’t expected, and my muddy boots and stained waistcoat failed to impress. I had to produce my card and shuffle my feet in the drafty entryway while a footman sailed off with my bit of pasteboard on a silver salver. He soon returned in a dignified version of a trot.

  “This way, Signor Amato.”

  I followed him with my heart in my throat and was announced at the door of the study where Senator Montorio had delivered his ultimatum. I found both Montorio brothers and Cardinal Fabiani seated before a dwindling fire with all indications of having a companionable chat. A tray of fruit and cheese had been set out, along with a decanter of amber liqueur. The globe of the world had been removed to one corner, and the wide writing table was piled with papers.

  Antonio Montorio greeted me with a smile. He stepped forward and, for one dizzying moment, I thought he meant to embrace me. “Ah, the wind has blown our nightingale to us,” he said. “This is a surprise, Tito, but a welcome one. Cardinal Fabiani has been singing your praises.”

  Stefano Montorio did not rise. His armchair was slightly removed from the group, and he stared into the fire with shoulders slumped and chin resting heavily on one hand. I knew that pose. I used it whenever I had to play the role of a general whose army had just been decimated.

  Across from him, Cardinal Fabiani sat ramrod straight, eyes brilliant and pointed nose twitching in outright curiosity.

  The senator continued in an ebullient vein. “The weather is fierce tonight. You must be chilled. Won’t you join us in a glass?”

  I almost refused, wary of disordering my senses with drink when I had not dined or supped. But I needed a restorative; the fine French Cognac proved to be the very thing. The warmth that spread over my chest emboldened me to ask to speak to Cardinal Fabiani alone.