Midnight Fire (A Jagiellon Mystery Book 2)

by P K Adams

  Nascimbene pulled out a starched handkerchief from his bag. Slowly, he bent forward again, and this time the chamberlain stepped forward, took the cloth from his hand, and scooped the ruff up deftly, without touching it. The ruff ended up in a sort of sack, which he tied into a double knot, then placed on the dressing table.

  “Have it burned outside to avoid inhaling noxious vapors,” Nascimbene told Siemaszko.

  “Can you tell what type of poison was used, dottore?” Zygmunt asked.

  Nascimbene spread his arms. “I can only guess, Your Grace, but I think I know what killed your kitchen maid.”

  The chamber fell silent, and the air in my lungs thickened as a voice inside me whispered that I was not going to like what I heard next. The duke motioned the doctor to continue.

  “St. Nicholas powder.”

  My hand flew to my mouth. Zygmunt gasped. But he did not lose his presence of mind; instead, he ordered Siemaszko to dispose of the poisoned ruff according to Nascimbene’s instructions. The steward looked unhappy—most likely, he would have preferred to hand off the task to an underling—but he had no choice. The first question after the door closed behind him came from Opaliński, the only one among the remaining four of us without any Italian blood. “What’s St. Nicholas powder?”

  “A mixture of arsenic, lead, the root and fruit of belladonna, and the extract of cymbalaria, also known as toadflax,” Nascimbene explained. I squirmed. Just the sound of those ingredients was unpleasant. “It has no scent and a taste that’s easily masked by more pungent food or drink, and it’s very deadly. A pinch—or a few drops, if it’s liquified—are enough to kill a grown man. It’s a popular poison in Italy”—he glanced anxiously at the duke, which showed how astute the old man still was, despite his frail appearance—“because belladonna and toadflax grow there commonly.”

  Nascimbene was right to fear the duke’s reaction. Anyone with any connection to Italy had not only heard of St. Nicholas powder but knew that the poison was invented in Bari. Most Italians associated it with that place. And Bona Sforza grew up in Bari as the heiress to the duchy.

  “Are you sure, dottore?” the duke asked, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

  “As much as I can be, Your Grace,” he replied. “I examined Milda’s body again on Thursday morning in the mortuary chapel, after I asked the priest and his assistant to move her to a slab near a window. There was still some foam inside her mouth, and in the daylight I saw that it had a bluish tinge to it. The priest is much younger than me and has better eyes, so I asked him to confirm it, and he did. One doesn’t often see that kind of discoloration with poisoning, and it gave me pause. I spent the last two days consulting my books, and this morning I finally found what I was looking for—the confirmation that St. Nicholas powder is a poison that produces blue-tinged foam in the victim’s mouth.”

  I tried to take a calm stock of this information, but I already felt a tide of bitterness swelling in my chest. The clues increasingly pointed to Bona. The deaths of these innocents were bad enough, but I also had to consider the possibility that she had used me, sent me on a mission while plotting to have Barbara murdered should I fail. What if suspicion had fallen on me, as it surely would have if I had done what she sent me to do? Instead of walking around the gardens with the duke, I would now be chained in a jail, separated from my son, awaiting trial and execution. Could she really be so callous?

  I tried to keep my emotions at bay. I could not risk anyone, least of all Zygmunt, noticing any change in me that might give him pause. “Do you think the same person killed both girls?” I asked.

  “That’s what it looks like to me,” Doctor Nascimbene said.

  Opaliński nodded agreement. The duke did not answer, but his face told me he, too, believed that.

  But did the Habsburgs plan the crime—or Bona? I was not longer sure.

  * * *

  Zygmunt announced he would stay with Barbara’s family, leaving the doctor, the chamberlain, and myself to return to the palace by ourselves.

  When we stepped onto the terrace of the Radziwiłł palace once more, the clouds from earlier in the day had dispersed and the sun returned. But it gave out less warmth at this afternoon hour, and the wind still whipped around us. Like this rapid and unpredictable chain of events, slipping out of everyone’s control—perhaps even the killer’s. And who was the culprit? After two deaths, we had yet to come close to identifying him. No matter who issued the orders, the murderer could be anybody callous and greedy enough to accept the assignment. There were many such men in this country, indeed throughout Europe.

  As we made our way toward the back of the garden, I heard myself speak, and the words came out before I could stop them. “The duke blames Queen Bona for these murders.” Perhaps it was a measure of my own growing anger, but I found relief in saying this. I knew that I would not shock these two inveterate courtiers. “At first I found it hard to believe, but now I’m forced to accept that it may, in fact, be true. And if so, God help us all. The damage to the monarchy will take years to repair.”

  Nascimbene sighed. “I can’t deny the strength of the evidence, but”—he paused in thought—“Her Majesty is too clever not to predict that she would become the prime suspect in a poisoning. If she wanted to remove Barbara from the duke’s life … in this manner, she would have used a method less likely to attract suspicion.”

  A vague notion rattled in the back of my mind, and then I grasped it. “Like a riding accident.” The two men gave me a curious look. “It’s happened before.”

  I told them that when I first moved to Kraków with the queen in 1518, the court was reveling in a scandal involving one of the king’s men. I could not recall his name, but he had been accused of killing his wife by tampering with her riding saddle to pave the way for marrying his mistress. Barbara and Zygmunt shared a love of horses, and they often hunted together. If a killer slipped something into her horse’s oats or water trough to make the animal nervous and more easily spooked, most people would write off the death as an unfortunate accident.

  The doctor and the chamberlain admitted that such a scheme would indeed make more sense than poison, leaving me to wonder how I got into the strange position of imagining more “logical” ways of killing someone.

  After we passed through the door, Opaliński locked it behind us. As on the way over, he struggled with the lock, which must have become rusty with disuse since Barbara had moved into Zygmunt’s palace. But after two or three tries requiring a knuckle-whitening force, I heard a click, and the key turned.

  “The duke has his own,” Opaliński explained as we moved away from the door. “By the way, Caterina, it looks like you were right: our man is still here—if not in the palace, then certainly in Vilnius, trying to complete his mission.”

  For a moment, I blinked at the non sequitur. Then I remembered suggesting last night that the assassin might have stayed around to see whether Barbara succumbed to the poison. And Opaliński warned me that if so, the killer might go after her again. But it never occurred to us that he would attack someone else. Did he have others on his list? Instinctively, I glanced around, as if he might be lurking behind one of the sculpted boxwoods, ready to strike at us, his hapless pursuers.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” I admitted. “He may have hired someone to deliver that package”—I pointed a thumb behind me—“to the Radziwiłł palace, or he may have sneaked it in himself under cover of darkness, as he did before. He could have left the city by the time Jovita put that ruff around her neck, or he could still be here.” I threw my head back in hopelessness and frustration. “There is no way to know.”

  “But why her mother?” Opaliński voiced the question that had been vexing me for the past four hours.

  Again I tried to figure out why Barbara Radziwiłł’s family would also be targeted. Again no clear answer presented itself.

  “You assume that it’s about the duke’s affair, but is there any proof of that?” Doctor Nasci
mbene’s words broke through my thoughts. He slowed his steps. “It looks personal to me. Have you thought about that?”

  We arrived at the syrena fountain and stopped to let the old man rest. “What do you mean?” I asked. “What could be more personal than a love affair?”

  Opaliński, familiar with court intrigue, was quicker than I. “The doctor has a point! The Radziwiłłs aren’t popular among the Lithuanian nobility. Much of it is envy, I suppose: they rose swiftly over the last two years. Mikołaj Rudy recognized immediately what was at stake when the old king proposed to elevate his son to the duchy, and the Radziwiłłs didn’t hesitate to back his claim. The move paid off handsomely—the duke has gifted him four hundred złotys this year alone, and he won’t do anything without consulting Rudy. And there is an even greater reward still to come—”

  He left the implication unspoken, but I knew he referred to the marriage. I wanted to say that still left the affair as a motive, but Nascimbene, who kept nodding throughout the chamberlain’s explanation, got in first. “That might be reason enough to try to bring them down,” he said, “but there is one other thing that’s worth considering—the Radziwiłłs are Calvinists.”

  I did not know that. Calvinists were the strongest Protestant strain in Poland, but there were few adherents to Reform in Lithuania—its Christian population consisted mainly of Catholics and Orthodox, putting Barbara’s family in a significant minority. Could religious hatred lie behind these crimes?

  Opaliński’s theory about resentment of the Radziwiłł family’s success struck me as a more likely motive for murder than the religious difference. I had seen plenty of smirks and headshakes when Barbara arrived in the banqueting hall on my first night in Vilnius. And I recalled what Zaremba had told me when we were watching the pagan rite at Gornitsa—that Zygmunt August promoted an atmosphere of toleration in Lithuania and, just as in Poland, religious tensions here were insignificant.

  I glanced at Opaliński and saw him open his mouth to reply, only to close it when the sound of footsteps alerted us to the approach of a palace guardsman. He walked toward us with his soldierly gait, and his face betrayed nothing of the news he carried. Yet his purposeful manner convinced me that we were about to have another crisis on our hands.

  “My lord chamberlain.” The guard came to a stop. “The captain has sent me to find you. It’s urgent. It’s about the boy Jurgis.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Saturday, September 12th, 1545

  It was almost supper time, but instead of rejoining my son as I had promised, I again found myself in the captain’s office on the ground floor of the palace.

  The captain looked grim. He stood next to a stout man with the flushed, shining face of one who enjoys food and drink. He had made an effort to improve his appearance by slicking back his unruly, greasy mane with water, which still glistened in his hair. He wore a leather jerkin too small for his frame, and his stomach—covered in a stained apron—protruded between its unbuttoned flaps. His size gave the impression of physical slowness as he bowed in response to our entrance, but his small dark eyes were animated, the eyes of someone used to counting coin and looking for opportunities to profit. A female version of himself stood next to him—a few inches shorter, but equally chubby and florid-faced. She had at least changed into a clean apron.

  I guessed their profession even before the captain introduced him as Ostafi, the owner of the Under the White Swan inn, accompanied by his good wife. The bad feeling I got when I had first seen the guard returned.

  “Master Ostafi has come to inform us that the boy we brought here yesterday for questioning was found dead earlier today,” the captain explained.

  My mind reeled. Opaliński brought his hand slowly up to his forehead in a gesture signifying both disbelief and a sense that we were now dealing with a true catastrophe. For, whether he really cared about young Jurgis’s life or not, this new development upended all of our theories. Unlike Barbara and her mother, the boy was poor, his life had no political consequence, and neither did his death. Nothing connected him to the Radziwiłłs.

  Except his murdered cousin who had served the duke’s mistress.

  “When did he die?” Opaliński asked the innkeeper, his voice barely above a whisper.

  The man shrugged. “It’s hard to say exactly, m’lord. I remember seeing ’im return from the palace round about ten o’clock las’ night, and I can’t say I saw ’im again after that. I went to ’is room just after two this aft’noon to give ’im ’is daily bill and see if ’e wanted to rent for another night.” He inhaled, the memory of the scene clearly upsetting him. “That’s when I found ’im on the bed, already cold and mighty stiff with purple bruises on ’is neck.” He drew his hand across his throat, and I could see beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “If his body was stiff at two, that indicates he was killed during the night, perhaps even late yesterday evening,” Doctor Nascimbene said from behind us.

  The provision of those firm details by the innkeeper and the doctor’s inference helped to anchor my scattered thoughts. “Did you hear any noises or commotion in his room last night?” I asked, assuming the investigator’s mantle again.

  The couple exchanged a glance, then the innkeeper said, “My wife ’ere told me a man ’ad come searching for a blond boy around midnight.”

  At first, I did not understand what he meant. “A blond boy?”

  The innkeeper cleared his throat. “We get those types sometimes. Often they’re just passing through the town, but some of ’em are from ’ere”—a nudge from his wife curtailed the digression before he said too much. “They come in,” he went on, “and there’s usually a boy or two can be found in the crowd as would be willing to … entertain for a few coins. We don’t force anyone, of course”—he raised two greasy palms in an adamant gesture—“but if they’s willing …” He left the rest unsaid.

  In the silence that followed as we absorbed this, the wife looked away, at least having the grace to look ashamed.

  I swallowed a queasy feeling. “And what made you think Jurgis was willing?”

  The woman shrugged, still not looking anyone in the eye. “I didn’t know what to think. He looked like he needed money, and since he ’ad paid for ’is room ’imself, I assumed that’s how he’d come by it.”

  “So you sent that man to his room?”

  “I says to ’im there’s a blond lad in that there room, I says go and ask if he’s willing—”

  She went quiet, the stubborn silence of a stunted conscience that believed it had nothing to reproach itself for. It was all I could do not to shake her. Instead I asked, mustering my remaining patience, “Can you describe this man?”

  When I first heard that she had seen him, I tried not to get excited. This killer was too clever to simply walk in and start asking questions that might attract attention. Either he sent someone else to do it, or he disguised his appearance. My caution turned out to be justified.

  “I didn’t see ’is face weel,” she said. “’is hood was pulled down over ’is eyes. They all do that.”

  I fought to keep my disappointment at bay, when she added with a touch of triumph, “But I seen ’is eyes for just a moment as he was walking away. They was blue—and very cold.” She puffed out her already large bosom, proud of her perceptiveness.

  “Did he have a beard?”

  She shook her head, and my heart sank. It meant that the man from the market and Jurgis’s killer were not the same person. It was the first indication that we might be up against a team of assassins, and it made everything much more complicated. I glanced at Opaliński, who reciprocated with a dismayed look, leaving me wondering if he had come to the same conclusion.

  “Anything that you remember about his attire?” I asked. “Did he wear a doublet or a Lithuanian robe?”

  “Can’t say, because he wore a cape. It looked funny, though.” She screwed up her face. “I haven’t seen one like that before. It was brown-like, but not really. It was
”—she frowned even more, the effort of thinking obvious for all to see—“marrone!”

  She looked very satisfied with herself. There were lots of Italians in Vilnius in those days, the duke himself was half-Italian, and no doubt the two innkeepers thought themselves very worldly for knowing a few words of our tongue. I was appalled by her smugness and lack of remorse for her inadvertent role in Jurgis’s death.

  I glanced at Opaliński, who shook his head to indicate that he had no questions.

  “I sent two of my men with a wagon to bring the body here in case you wished to examine it,” the captain said.

  But it was another hour before they returned and carried Jurgis to the chapel. The priest said a prayer over him, then we waited in the sacristy while rain lashed at the windowpanes and the doctor worked. When he rejoined us, it was to confirm that Jurgis had been strangled and that there were no other signs of violence, or of a carnal act, on him.

  In that moment I realized that a small part of me had hoped that perhaps the innkeeper’s assumption was correct and the death the result of an illicit encounter in which the boy had agreed to participate. But Nascimbene’s verdict stripped me of that illusion. Milda’s cousin died because he knew of her meeting with the mysterious man at the market.

  But how did the killer know about it? Judging by how terrified Jurgis had been during our interrogation, and how much it had taken for us to get information out of him, Friday must have been the first time he had ever told anyone. If so, there were only two people who were familiar with Jurgis’s story—Opaliński and me.

  My insides were gripped by an icy chill. Was it possible the chamberlain was in cahoots with the assassins? I could not bring myself to look his way, worried that he would read my suspicion.

  “Thank you, dottore,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I think that’s all I need to know.” I was not quite sure what I meant by that, for Nascimbene’s examination shed little light on the case. I think I just wanted to excuse myself from the company without making it obvious.