The Wolves of St. Peter's

by Gina Buonaguro

  She hadn’t answered his question, That’s not sin? But he almost forgot he’d asked it. Sin didn’t come close to describing what had transpired in that room. But he also knew her tormentor had made her think she was the sinner, such was his power. “You’re not afraid anymore, are you?” he asked quietly.

  “Not anymore,” she said, pouring wine for them both, smiling bravely. “È la vita, che ci vuoi fare? That’s life, what can you do about it?”

  He started to object, but she told him to hush and handed him a plate with a generous chunk of cheese and a fat slice of bread. There were some olives as well, black and shiny with oil. He shouldn’t be hearing these things and enjoying food at the same time. It felt wrong.

  “And anyway,” Susanna said firmly, “His Holiness’s boy didn’t come from Asino and di Grassi. He came from Imperia’s.”

  “From Imperia’s?” Francesco was astounded.

  “Everybody knows that. That’s why His Holiness lets her have her brothel. Because she gave him the boy.”

  “Why did you never tell me this?”

  “You never asked me.”

  “But it could be …” He was going to say important, only as he didn’t know whether it was, how could he expect her to know? He popped an olive in his mouth and chewed off the meat before spitting the pit out onto the plate. To a point, the boy’s story did corroborate Susanna’s. He did say his mother was a whore. But then he also said she was in Hell and that she was the Virgin Mary. “Well, who is the boy’s mother? Imperia?”

  “I don’t think so. Just some whore’s. There are enough of them.” She said this last part with the usual haughtiness she employed when speaking of anyone connected with Imperia.

  Francesco took a bite of cheese. Maybe Susanna should visit her father more often. She handed him his wine, and he was about to dip in his bread when he almost dropped it, cup and all. “Of course!” he exclaimed. How could he have missed it? The golden hair, the blue eyes. His Holiness says she is in Hell because she was a whore. “Calendula! It has to be Calendula.”

  “Why?” asked Susanna, seemingly unimpressed.

  “Well, the blond hair and blue eyes, for a start. And Agnello told me: My mother was the Virgin Mary, sir. She was in the painting with me. Before she went to Hell.”

  “But Calendula didn’t have any children.”

  Francesco swore. “You’re right. Imperia told me her husband had thrown her out because of her barrenness. Or at least I think that’s what she said. Do you know how long Calendula was at Imperia’s? Could she have had a child after her arrival? There are enough children in the house.”

  Susanna shrugged. “I don’t know, but Imperia has only been there for two years, so Calendula could only have been there that long. How old is the boy?”

  “Six,” he said. “So if the boy was Calendula’s, he would have been four when she came to Imperia’s.”

  Susanna counted the years on her fingers. Or at least made a display of doing so, mouthing random numbers as she pointed at the fingers of one hand with those on the other. Francesco felt embarrassed for her. How did she not get cheated at the market? He was going to have to teach her to count, as well as read. She would never save for a dowry this way. “Yes!” she said quite triumphantly, as if she were Euclid and had just discovered geometry. “He couldn’t have been born two years ago, because then he’d be two, not six.” She picked up her cup of wine. “Sometimes I’m smarter than you.”

  “Sometimes it’s not difficult,” he said. “Still, I think I’ll go and talk to Imperia.” Obviously Imperia hadn’t told him the whole story. For one, she hadn’t told him she’d given the boy to Julius. Neither had she admitted, at first, to ordering Calendula from the house nor fighting with her over the ring. Perhaps there was even more she’d omitted.

  “Not tonight, I hope. I want you to come with me later.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s to be a necromancer in the Colosseum. They say he can raise all kinds of spirits. Evil and good. I’ll show you. I’m going there tonight. He wears a black hood like the hangman and speaks with the Devil’s tongue.”

  “Who told you this nonsense?”

  “It isn’t nonsense, and I’m not lying. The messenger told me.”

  Francesco sighed. “I know you’re not lying. You’re silly enough to believe such things, but the messenger who told you this is lying.”

  “Well,” she said defiantly, “I’m going even if you don’t come.”

  “You are not to go. It’s not safe for a man to go to that part of the city at night, let alone a woman.” Although, after what she’d just told him, he supposed there were very few safe places for a woman. He put down the plate and pulled her onto the bed next to him. “Come here, and if you really want to go, I’ll take you and you can see for yourself it’s all tricks.”

  She laid her head on his shoulder. “When Benvenuto was home the other night, I put herbs in his wine so he would sleep and leave me alone.”

  “Is that why it was so quiet?”

  She nodded.

  “You lied. You told me the next morning you were all worn out!”

  “That was just to make you jealous so you wouldn’t think of that other woman. You’re not thinking of her now, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” Her freshly washed hair smelled of rain and rosemary. He kissed it and undressed her with more tenderness than he’d ever felt before, telling her about the hot spring near his house in the hills above Florence, how it had once been a Roman bath, and how it bubbled out of the ground, warmer and softer than any queen’s bath, and how if she lived there, she could wash her hair every day.

  È la vita, she’d said. It shouldn’t be like this, with her afraid of predatory priests, of Hell, of demons, scrounging for a dowry to avoid a life of drudgery, and it shouldn’t be about little boys caught between toiling in the mines and being slaves of lecherous old men.

  He searched for the scar, and in the dim light he found it, high inside her thigh, a long, pink, smooth mark. How it must have hurt, bubbling up into a terrible blister she had to hide from her mother. Even if Susanna had confessed it all, her mother would likely have called her a witch for blaming the priest. Francesco knew that the bastard had burned her as close to that place as he’d dared, the place the priest wanted and feared and hated. He’d threatened her with Hell, and she had failed to see how, in that room, she already was in Hell. How long had it gone on? Weeks, months, years? I’ll find the priest and kill him, he thought as he kissed the rise of her belly.

  He would find Guido too and appease him if it took everything he had. It was over between him and Juliet, he realized now, and maybe there had never been much to it at all. And while only days ago that knowledge would have torn out his heart, the memory of their affair was already becoming as illusory as the white wolf on the steps of St. Peter’s. He drifted off to sleep, his cheek against Susanna’s breast, and dreamed they were already home. He would finally read the new book by Erasmus, and she would make them sweet cakes with honey and almonds, and Raphael would come to visit, and they would talk into the night while breezes of a Florentine evening perfumed with flowers from his mother’s garden wafted through the open windows.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FRANCESCO WOKE TO BELLS STRIKING THE HOUR. HIS SLEEP HAD been sound, and so he was surprised to see light still struggling through the room’s only window. Susanna lay beside him on her back, lips parted, snoring softly.

  He had plenty of time before he had to take Susanna to see the necromancer, so he rolled over in an attempt to go back to sleep. But he found himself instead staring up into the smoke-blackened beams, going over the day’s events. There must be some link between Calendula and the Pope’s boy that only Imperia could shed light on. And the sooner he went to see her, the sooner he would know that connection. If he learned something that could free the boy, all the better.

  He gave Susanna a gentle shake, and she mumbled to leave her be. “I’m going to I
mperia’s,” he said, flicking a flea from her cheek, “but I promise to be back by the time the bells ring for vespers, to take you to the Colosseum. Don’t leave without me.” Retrieving his hose from the foot of the bed, he slid out from under the covers.

  IT wasn’t one of the bear-wrestling giants who opened the door for Francesco but instead a houseboy.

  “Imperia’s in her room, resting.”

  “Tell her it is Francesco. She’ll see me.”

  The boy nodded and was about to go when, on a whim, Francesco called him back. “Who’s your mother, boy?”

  The boy looked at him as if he’d been asked if he were the queen of France. “Don’t have one,” was his answer in the end.

  “So your mother doesn’t live here with you?”

  “Don’t know. Just don’t have one.”

  Not knowing how to respond, Francesco waved him on his way and went into the salon, where he found Sodoma sleeping in a chair by the fire, a cup of wine held loosely in one hand, threatening at any moment to spill onto the carpet. Francesco took the cup gently from him, though not quite gently enough. Sodoma woke with a start and leaped to his feet, his hand flying to the dagger sheathed in the folds of his turquoise dress. “State your business, man!”

  Francesco jumped back, careening into the bookcase. “Calm yourself,” he said with a laugh, not quite able to call Sodoma “man” in return. “It’s only me. I was just trying to save Imperia’s carpet from your wine.”

  Sodoma, now properly awake, laughed and dropped back into his chair, tossing his dagger onto the table. He plunged his hand back into the folds of his dress, this time pulling out a delicate fan. “Sorry, Francesco,” he said, flipping it open and fanning himself daintily. “But you should be careful waking a dreaming man. I might have taken you for a murderous heathen.”

  “I think you did,” Francesco said, handing him back his wine. “Speaking of murderous heathens, have you seen The Turk today?”

  Sodoma shook his head. “I’ve only been here a couple of hours. Just me and the old man there.” He nodded his head in the direction of the window, where the old man in question sat very still, his hands resting on the arms of the chair. He had long white hair and a wisp of white beard. His eyes were white too, the milky color of someone long blind. “No point asking him anything,” Sodoma asked. “He just arrived this morning. He’s Venetian and blind as my boots.”

  “Ah, but my boots see very well,” said the old man in a strong, steady voice. “They saw me all the way from Venice to Rome.”

  “Nothing wrong with your ears, either,” said Sodoma. “What are you doing here in Rome?”

  “I’ve come to see His Holiness in the interest of peace between Venice and Rome.”

  “Peace between Venice and Rome? You waste your time. His Holiness will not be deprived of a chance to ride into battle on his favorite horse and have your whole city excommunicated. Just how old are you, old man?”

  “I was born the same day Constantinople fell to the Venetians.”

  Francesco laughed. “That would make you about three hundred years old.”

  “Whatever you say, boy. Never did learn to count.”

  “If you live in Venice, how do you keep from falling into the canals, Old Venetian Blind Man?” Sodoma asked.

  Old Venetian Blind Man took a draught of wine that Francesco offered him. “I didn’t tell you the whole story. My boots don’t just see well. With them, I can walk on water.”

  “I must get myself some boots like yours,” Sodoma said. “I’ll put wings on them, and then I’ll be able to fly too.” He looked to Francesco and mouthed the word “crazy” over his fan.

  Francesco thought it more likely the old man was simply having a bit of fun. He would have liked to hear more, but the houseboy returned and told him Imperia would see him, so he followed the boy up the stairs and through the halls, remembering as he did to not look in any rooms, lest he receive a tempting invitation. This, of course, made him think of Susanna, probably still asleep, the memory of their lovemaking coming back to him in a flash vivid enough to make his breath catch in his chest.

  The boy knocked at Imperia’s door. When she called Francesco in, she was sitting on her settee, wearing a new dress of pale blue silk. Her dark hair, still crimped from having been recently released from a braid, fell loose around her shoulders. Her composure suddenly angered him and, skipping all greetings and inquiries about her health, he commenced immediately with the reason for his visit.

  “Imperia, what do you know about the Pope’s boy, Agnello?”

  He could see he had taken her by surprise, and it was a moment before she could answer. “What do you mean?” she asked, as if already knowing she could not plead ignorance.

  “The boy, Agnello. You gave him to the Pope, did you not?”

  “Why you are asking me this?”

  “Because you’ve been keeping some things to yourself. Is the boy Calendula’s?”

  Imperia shook her head slowly.

  “Then who is his mother?”

  Without answering, Imperia rose from the settee and went over to stand before the window, the pale blue dress replacing the darkening November sky with a cloudless June one. When she moved, the dress shimmered and the folds became waves on a tranquil sea, making him forget for a moment his anger and the reason for being there. His mind momentarily drifted to the shores of the Adriatic, where he’d once watched silver dolphins play.

  Church bells tolling the hour returned him to the present. The next time they rang, it would be vespers, the promised time of his return to Susanna. How often had he heard his father recite vespers? Oh God, come to my assistance. Oh Lord, make haste to help me. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto …

  “Agnello’s mother,” Imperia said finally as the bells died away, “was a young woman who lived here only briefly. She brought him with her but died soon after from fever. His Holiness took a fancy to him, and so Agnello went to live at the Vatican.”

  “And in exchange, Julius sanctioned your brothel,” Francesco said bluntly.

  Imperia nodded slowly. She didn’t sit down but rested her hands on the back of the settee, fussing with a loose thread in the silk upholstery. Behind her, the pewter sky had deepened to slate.

  “You know what he does to that boy?” Francesco could barely contain his anger.

  She didn’t look at him. “His Holiness desired the boy, and what His Holiness desires, he takes. My choice was to give Agnello to him willingly in exchange for His Holiness’s protection, or resist and earn his wrath.” She met his eyes now. “You cannot imagine what he is capable of. So what was I to do? Either way, His Holiness would still have the boy. We all do what it takes to survive, you know that as well as anyone. Besides, Francesco, it was a better fate than befalls most orphans of prostitutes.”

  Francesco didn’t answer. As much as he despised the fact of her complicity, she was right. What the Pope wanted, he indeed took. When in Rome … It was a reference to following local church customs, but Francesco didn’t think St. Ambrose had the customs of Rome under Pope Julius II in mind when he wrote it.

  Francesco went to the table and poured two cups of wine. He handed one to Imperia, and they both drank deeply. “I apologize,” he said, sitting on the ottoman next to her. “Last night, a torch was thrown into the lean-to that adjoined our house and very nearly burned it to the ground. I am told the torch was thrown by a well-dressed man on a horse, and I’ve come to believe he was after me. And so I wonder if there could be any link between Agnello, Julius, and Calendula’s murderer. This could be a matter of life and death, not just for me but for anyone who knows me.”

  “I don’t follow you, Francesco.”

  “Julius told Agnello his mother was a whore who lived in Hell. Julius could have been referring to his real mother, who was a dead whore, but he also could have been referring to Calendula, who was, of course, the Virgin Mary in the painting. The boy’s exact words were, My mother was the Virgi
n Mary, sir. She was in the painting with me. Before she went to Hell. So could Julius be involved in all this somehow?”

  Imperia sighed. “What a cruel thing to say,” she said, crossing herself. “Imagine telling a young boy his mother’s in Hell. Please believe me that I want to know the answers too, that I meant everything I said about my love for Calendula.” Leaning over, she took his hands in hers. “Tell me you believe me.”

  “I do,” he said with a little more sincerity than he felt, but he’d been wrong to let his emotions get the better of him.

  “I did not lie to you the other day, Francesco. Time after time, Calendula was with child, and time after time, she lost them. About five years ago, I stayed with her all one spring when she was with child. This particular time, she had carried the child for almost six months and was hopeful it would live, that she would finally give her husband the heir he wanted so desperately. But it was not to be, and she lost this child too. It was the night of the summer solstice. The smallest little boy. He came so quickly, there was no time to summon the midwife. He was no bigger than a newborn kitten and lived but a few hours, but I’ll never forget his cry. So faint and unhappy, his tiny hands reaching out … And Calendula …” Imperia met Francesco’s eyes briefly. “How she wept!”

  Imperia was quiet for a moment, and when she continued, her voice was composed. “A few weeks later, my mother died and I returned to Rome. This very house had been my mother’s, though everything else had been lost long before. My father was a chorister with a meager salary, and the house had fallen into disrepair. I won’t tell you how it all came about, but I had my beauty and I found a way to keep us. One by one, they came to me, unwanted daughters and disgraced wives of poor nobles, and soon this house became what it is.”

  “And Calendula was one of them.”

  “Two years ago, she was abandoned by her husband after yet another stillbirth, and so she came to me. While she knew of Agnello, she’d never laid eyes on him. His Holiness doesn’t come here, and she’d never been to the Vatican. It wasn’t until Marcus completed The Marigold Madonna that she saw him, or at least his likeness. I curse the day Marcus decided to paint it.”