Sertori sent the constable away with a stern shake of his head, then came to stand before me. “Tito Amato, we know you murdered Gemma Farussi. Did your confederates assist you or were they merely conspiring to help you escape?”
His penetrating gaze slid down the bench. Liya gave a startled gasp and sent me a wide-eyed look. Gussie set his chin defiantly.
“I didn’t kill Gemma,” I said. “The man who strangled the life out of her is sitting right behind you.”
I listed to one side and flung my words at the footman. “Guido killed her and was about to get rid of me, as well.”
“He’s lying!” The footman erupted in fury. “We had him all trussed up for you, Magistrate. You know me, I let you in the door at the villa last night. I saw Tito on the Ripetta this morning. You can thank me and my cousin for blocking his escape.”
“And the crate?” Alessandro sneered. “I suppose you stuffed Tito in there to—” My brother broke off as a regal figure appeared at the end of the corridor.
“I believe I can be of some help in this interrogation, Magistrate.” Cardinal Fabiani approached with the air of an avenging angel clad in scarlet and lace. His voice was dangerously smooth. “Surely your man must have misunderstood when he said you wished me to wait outside in my carriage.”
Sertori drew himself up in a defiant column. “Your Eminence must have many spiritual duties to attend to. There’s no need for you to waste your time here. Leave this to me—it is a matter of law, after all.”
Fabiani floated to a halt an arm’s length from Sertori. “Do you forget, Magistrate? I’m the Cardinal Padrone. Until a new pope is elected, I am the law.”
Sertori ground his jaw back and forth. The power of the constabulary and the power of the Church faced each other in an unequal duel. Very slowly, never breaking the magistrate’s gaze, Cardinal Fabiani extended his hand. Even in the dim corridor, his ring of office seemed to concentrate all the available light. It twinkled on his forefinger like a miniature star.
Sertori was beaten. In the seconds it took for him to bow and kiss Fabiani’s ring, the man changed from a rod of granite to a piece of half-boiled spaghetti.
“Now, Tito,” Fabiani said after Sertori had released his hand, “explain yourself. How did you manage to get boxed up on the Ripetta?”
I told my story, beginning with Gussie’s watercolor sketch of the cart that had ambushed Benito. I admit to being intentionally vague about how Gemma expected to obtain the money that Guido claimed as his right, but it wasn’t my evasion that drew yells of protest from the footman. Guido strongly denied he had ever stolen anything from the villa.
“Prove it,” he demanded, jumping up from the bench, only to be shoved back down by a constable.
I remembered the footman’s guilty glance when I had inquired where his gang stashed their ill-gotten baubles. “Eminence, send someone to check the casks in the little storeroom at the warehouse. They should fetch us the ones that clank when they’re shaken.”
Within an hour, the casks had been broken open to reveal a treasure trove of rings, bracelets, watches, gold tableware, small carvings made of ivory or precious stone, silk garments, even several unmated dueling pistols. Some the cardinal was able to identify; he sent for his housekeeper to look through the rest. Once the proof of their thievery lay before us, Guido and his cousin shut their mouths as tight as clams. They were jailed in Magistrate Sertori’s lock-up to await further questioning.
There still remained the matter of my role in disposing of Gemma’s corpse. Magistrate Sertori could have chosen to have me locked up as well, but he wisely decided not to press the issue. I foresaw a time when the statutes of a state might overrule the Church, but that time was not now, and I fancied that neither I nor Magistrate Sertori would live to see it.
The sun rode high in the sky when we left the magistrate’s court. While my loved ones clustered around me, cheerfully arguing over the quickest route back to Venice, Cardinal Fabiani laid a light hand on my shoulder. “Tito, I hold you under no obligation, but I wonder if you would consider a request.”
“What is that, Your Eminence?”
“No other singer’s songs have eased my wakeful nights as completely as yours. Is there any chance that you would stay on in Rome? Make no mistake, you would be well paid for your serenades.”
His request required little thought. I shook my head firmly. The cardinal’s nightingale had burst through the bars of his cage, never to return.
***
My bride wore a green satin gown of her own design. In the mellow summer twilight, in a garden of flowers and pomegranate trees, Liya and I pressed forearms together and a wise woman bound them with a silver cord. Thus we were “twined as the vine as long as love shall last.” What matter if the Christian world that surrounded us would never acknowledge our marriage? Liya and I had found true happiness that could not be extinguished by doctrine or convention.
I admit to first petitioning the new pope for dispensation to marry in the traditional manner—lifelong ways of thinking die hard. I was summarily refused, and not really surprised. Though Pope Benedict was an amiable man and a tolerant pope, he was known for his bookish theology and had no love for opera or eunuchs. My petition might have stood a better chance with either Montorio or Di Noce, but the man who took the name of Benedict the Fourteenth was neither of these.
The Sacred College had gone into conclave with fifty-four cardinals split into several parties. I had released Fabiani from his promise, but for reasons of his own, he remained in support of Cardinal Montorio. The opposing Di Noce contingent was strong enough to force weeks of tedious debate and corridor intrigue. As spring turned into one of the hottest summers Rome had ever seen, a completed election seemed no nearer than it had in February.
The cardinals, many among them elderly and stricken with gout, suffered in the oppressive heat. Fever-filled air crept up the slopes of the Vatican and entered the palace, sending cardinal after cardinal to their sick beds. Cardinal Di Noce distinguished himself by ministering to their needs as diligently as any nursing sister—until the malarial fever extinguished his genial spirit forever.
With the saintly Di Noce out of the running and the Roman cabal in disarray, Fabiani should have attained an easy victory.
It was Stefano Montorio who orchestrated his own defeat. He took his revenge on his brother Antonio by giving the speech of his life—in support of Prospero Lambertini, a pious nonentity who had never been considered papal material. Zio Stefano had judged his moment well. The cardinals were eager to divine the Will of God and go home. In the next round of voting, Lambertini easily carried the necessary two-thirds majority.
As for my brother, he had been hiding a secret. Yusuf Ali Muhammad was Alessandro’s business partner in Constantinople, a highborn merchant with ties to the Ottoman court. He was a man of sixty who embodied the wisdom of thought and purity of philosophy that our father had never aspired to. This worthy Turk had taken Alessandro under his wing and tutored him in the essence of Islam along with good, hard business principles. Yusuf Ali also had a perfect beauty of a daughter named Zuhal. Alessandro had changed his religion and married her two years ago.
On receipt of Alessandro’s letter, Yusuf Ali had raced to Venice. Packing letters and promises from the Grand Turk himself, he arranged a meeting with the doge and several influential senators who were not in thrall to the Montorios. A generous inducement of cash, along with a favorable contract for the purchase of Venetian salt, secured Alessandro’s release and complete vindication. To my brother’s mixed relief and disgust, the doge sent one of his most courteous noblemen to unlock the door of Alessandro’s cell and fill the noxious prison air with cloying regrets and apologies.
The release had taken place right before Antonio Montorio set out on his swift journey to Rome. When the senator had waved his key in my face, he was mer
ely playing the odds. He knew that Alessandro could show up in Rome any day, but was hoping I would snare Cardinal Fabiani for Venice before I learned that my brother was at liberty to go where he pleased.
I was in Alessandro’s debt for much more than helping Gussie break open the crate and expose Guido as a thief and a murderer. My brother had done me a tremendous favor by embracing Turkish ways and customs. Annetta was so aghast at those developments that she barely blinked an eyelid at my unconventional marriage to an apostate Jewess.
“There’s just one thing,” Liya said, as Gussie and Alessandro lit torches around the perimeter of the fragrant garden.
“What is that, my love?” I raised her hand and bestowed a kiss on her delicate fingers.
“Not everyone we love is here to share in our wedding feast.”
I tore my satisfied gaze away from my bride. Little Tito was tumbling on the soft grass with my niece and nephew. An obviously pregnant Annetta was in earnest conversation with Maddelena and the wise woman who had performed our handfasting. And Benito was hobbling around on a cane supervising supper preparations.
“I know. Pincas and the rest of your family are missing.”
She nodded wistfully. “At least I’ll be living back in Venice. I don’t think they’ll be able to ignore me forever. Mama maybe, but not Papa.” She squeezed my hand. “But there is someone else.”
“Who?”
“Your other sister—Grisella. Don’t you ever wonder what has become of her? She must be over twenty, quite old enough to have a husband and family of her own. Now that Alessandro has so many contacts in Constantinople, I think you two should track her down.”
I raised a bemused eyebrow. Another adventure, for another time.
Author’s Note
Readers of the first two Baroque Mysteries will notice that Cruel Music takes more liberties with recorded history than Tito’s previous adventures. Clement XII was indeed Lorenzo Corsini of Florence, a blind, chronically ill pope who sat on St. Peter’s throne from July 12, 1730, to February 6, 1740. And his successor was Prospero Lambertini, a bookish cardinal who was amazed to be elected. However, Cardinal Fabiani, his scheming mother, and the political tangle that Tito faced are pure fiction.
The notion of a pagan infiltrating the ranks of the Catholic Church is not as strange as it might appear on first glance. There are many indications that the Old Religion survived in Italy into the eighteenth century and beyond. Those interested may consult The Rebirth of Witchcraft by Doreen Valiente (1989); Aradia, The Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland (1899); and Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition, also by Leland (1892). One inspiration for Prince Pompetti’s Academy of Italia was the Academy of Rome, an earlier confraternity that espoused a return to the ideals of the pagan world and earned its followers a nasty reprisal from the Church.
Tito’s enforced stint as a baroque music therapist also has its roots in historical fact. Farinelli, the most acclaimed castrato of the eighteenth century, gave up his stage career to serenade King Philip V of Spain. The king often suffered from bouts of depression and madness that prevented him from leaving his bed chamber. His queen, Elizabeth Farnese, employed Farinelli to soothe her husband with song. Thanks to the singer’s nightly visits, King Philip recovered his taste for life and was able to reign more or less appropriately until his death in 1746.
A few other matters that may be of interest: Pope Clement’s port project was completed, and Ancona remains a busy seaport today. Liquore Strega is still produced in Benevento and is known as one of Italy’s most distinctive liqueurs. It can be found in well-stocked stores in the United States. It was not until 1870, during the foundation of the modern Italian state, that the temporal dominion of the pope was restricted to the Vatican. The Quirinal Palace eventually became the residence of Italy’s president.
I wish to express my gratitude to everyone who provided assistance in bringing this novel to completion, particularly my family, the late Father Lee Trimbur, the staff at the Louisville Free Public Library, the staff at the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library, Kit Ehrman, Joanne Dobson, and my editor at Poisoned Pen Press, Barbara Peters. Thanks also to Jeanne M. Jacobson for calling my attention to the Benjamin Britten quote that lends this novel its title.
Special words regarding the late Dan Hooker are in order. Dan was a creative, caring, eminently dependable agent who gave me consistently good advice. He will be sorely missed.
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