His eyes slid over her. His jaws opened once then closed, the teeth audibly clicking together. “I appreciate your honesty. You are nearly as lovely as your mother.”
“You were in love with her.” She stated this as a fact.
“Wasn’t everyone?”
“Not everyone,” she observed.
His eyes dropped to the floor. After a moment he asked, “Do you fear me?”
“You did try to kill me.”
“You were waving a pistol at me. I left you alive.”
He was right; she had chased him with the pistol. After the run in with Mancini, she reached for that pistol too readily. “I don’t fear you any more than anyone else. I don’t know who to trust right now.”
“Believe in God alone and distrust His children on Earth.” Pietro made a sign of the cross. “For we are all deceitful creatures.”
“I guess you’re going to ask me to trust you all the same.”
He looked askance at her. It was difficult to read his expression, distorted as his face was. “I was your mother’s friend. I was unable to help her in life. Doing what I can for you is all that I can do to make amends for failing her.”
“You can start by giving me the key to the Savrano palazzo.”
Pietro’s forehead creased with lines. Long fingers reached into a coat pocket and pulled forth an iron key, which he deposited in Diana’s outstretched hand.
“My mother gave you the key?”
“She did.”
She paused for a moment. The question on her mind was a difficult one in multiple ways. Physically, she couldn’t imagine her mother and Pietro together, but she had obviously seen something in the man that bonded her to him. It was even more difficult for her to accept the possibility her mother had deceived her father. Then again, her mother had clearly hid much from her family. There was no point in letting the question fester in her mind as it surely would over time. “Were you and my mother lovers?”
His eyes went wide and after a deep breath he began to chuckle. The sound was harsh, rasping, naked of true joy. After a moment he caught himself. “Even your mother was not devoid of sight. I will not deny that my own thoughts of her went beyond those of spiritual and personal communion. I saw no indication that she returned such thoughts.”
Diana felt mildly humiliated, being laughed at. Still, the answer was a relief.
Pietro kept his voice down as he spoke, “Let me tell you some things, Diana Savrano, and hopefully you will understand. When I was but a little boy, I suppose I was as perfect an image of God’s own form as any child may expect to be. I was perhaps four or five when I first caught the malady that has so chastened me. How it came to be, I don’t know, whether a malady of the air, or an imbalance in the humors, the disease caused horrible sores of the mouth with agonizing pain and festering of the tissue. While the affliction eventually went away, it left me a fiend. When my teeth later came in, they were those of a beast. As you yourself said, it felt as if God himself had shown me great disfavor, a thought I have lived with each day of my life. With my disfigurement there was no question of camaraderie with other children or, as I grew, marriage. I became a prisoner of my parents’ home, my shame keeping me shut away from the city.
“At nights I would hear my mother and father speaking. My mother would ask what she had done wrong to have seen me transfigured into such a horrid ogre. My father consoled her as best he could, although I believe her death was, as much as anything, the result of a broken heart. My very existence was a burden for them both, and I continue to be a burden for my poor father. Naturally I understood that if my deformity was not punishment for my mother’s sins, than it must be punishment for my own. I could never understand what such a young child might have done to deserve such divine disregard.
“The Church speaks much about suffering on Earth as cleansing for the afterlife. It is, in a sense, a message I am prepared to accept. But if it is true, then I don’t understand how God’s agents in this world can surround themselves so with servants, and fine clothes and pampered lives. If suffering is the key to holiness, should not God’s ministers ravage their own flesh, and tear at their own lives? Instead the Bishop of Roma, who some call the Borgia Pope, presides over unholy orgies, sanctions murder, and is rumored to lie with his own daughter. The prelates of the church are carried forth by slaves in litters, dressed in fine silks and perfumed like Persians.”
Diana kept her voice low, “You come close to speaking heresy.” It was not a new complaint though. Indeed the Mad Friar Savonarola himself had raised such accusations. His bombast increasingly put him at odds with the Pope, a dangerous situation for him and all of Firenze.
“Let them burn me,” he whispered. “Your mother, though perfect in form, and privileged in origin, had come to a similar place in her life. She needed a deeper understanding of the mysteries of life.”
“Was she so unhappy?”
“I think her spirit was in need of nurturance.”
Diana felt a tug in her chest. “Was it me? Was she disappointed in me? Did I not do enough to please her?”
Pietro put one hand up. “No, that is not what I meant to imply. She spoke of nothing but love for you.”
Diana looked down, unconvinced. “What of my father?”
Pietro looked away. “In truth, we did not speak often of him. In my own conceit, I preferred to think of Isabella as my own in whatever limited ways that she would allow. I did not like to think upon how she belonged to another.”
Diana stared at her hands, remaining silent.
“We met here one day, your mother and I. In the cold weather I can use a scarf to mask my features. She left the church as I came in. When I slid on a patch of ice, she reached out to help me, and did not pull away even when the scarf came loose and revealed my features. She showed me great kindness. This was a year ago, perhaps. A year as her friend has brought some meaning to my barren existence. Even then she was with the Council. The Council’s views on the Church and how far it has strayed from the light of goodness were much like my own, and had influenced Isabella’s thoughts greatly. After we spoke on such matters, Isabella invited me to join the Council as my beliefs were already in line with their own.”
“You’re anti-papists, then?” Diana realized with disbelief. “You want to assassinate the Pope and overthrow the Holy See?” There were many who found the Pope in Roma to be distasteful. Many of these groups of anti-papists were radical and brutal, however, given to the same violent excesses as the Pope or worse. Religion in Italia had become a confusing and disagreeable thing.
Pietro nodded. “There was talk along such lines.”
Diana put a hand to her forehead. One of her headaches threatened. Dear God, what had her mother gotten herself involved in? She had been courting death as a heretic with such a group. Criticisms of the Church were certainly not unknown and at times, Diana quietly agreed with many of them. Yet vocal opposition to the Papacy was often a sure invitation to finding oneself tied to the stake with flames licking at one’s heels.
“We met in secret,” Pietro told her, “in the room you saw downstairs. The priests here are lazy and unwatchful and do not disturb us. It proved a reliable meeting ground and one tinged with an element of irony. When we would meet, we wore masks. Given the delicacy of our mission, it seemed imperative to function in secrecy from even each other, lest anyone of us have the power to destroy the rest.”
Diana rolled her eyes. “Sounds lovely. Doesn’t anyone meet for dice games anymore?” She shook her head. “In my mother’s note to you, she mentioned that something happened to change her mind about the Council. Can you tell me what happened?”
Pietro coughed and looked away for a moment. “Despite our use of masks, our system of anonymity remained imperfect. I knew your mother, of course, and she knew the person who recruited her. A determined effort could conceivably lead quickly up the chain. Rumors began to spread between us that the Republic had a spy amongst us.”
&nbs
p; “I don’t understand. Savonarola is a fervent anti-papist. Why would he work against other anti-papists?” Since taking control of the Republic of Firenze Savonarola, despite being a Catholic friar, more and more criticized the Pope in Roma. Increasingly this seemed to put Firenze on a collision course with the Holy See.
Pietro shrugged. “The Council is outside his control, presumably. That might be enough. There may be forces within the Republic working against Savonarola. I’m not sure, honestly. I wasn’t nearly far enough along in initiation with the group to be privy to such information. To continue however, on the night in question, we met at an old graveyard on the far side of the river. One young man by the name of Troilo Ricci was brought forcibly before us and unmasked. The High Apostle declared the man a traitor and spy for the Republic. A death sentence was pronounced upon him. The man swore his innocence. He was held firm, while the High Apostle drew forth a dagger and pressed it to the man’s neck.
“Our meetings had been in the main like philosophical discussions before that. Certainly we understood what we discussed was dangerous and heretical in the eyes of the Papacy, but for all our talk of revolution it never went much beyond talk. To see the life of a man, one of our own no less, threatened before us shocked your mother and I, and likely others in the gathering. Before he could be killed however, Republic gendarmes appeared, weapons drawn. They shouted for us to surrender, but we fled instead. A few men might have drawn weapons on the gendarmes, but most scattered like mice. Your mother and I made it into the woods, then back to the city where we discarded our Council robes, of course. The next morning the body of Troilo Ricci was found hanging over the river from the Ponte Vecchio. His stomach had been cut open and his entrails disgorged into the waters below. I do not know if it was the Republic or the Council who killed him.”
Diana absorbed what he told her. It was difficult to imagine her mother involved in such matters. She could see why her mother had become horrified. “When you met with her later, what did my mother tell you?”
Pietro’s eyes watered. “Regrettably, she did not make our appointment. I waited for her here alone for some time. I found out she had already taken ill. Soon after, she died.”
“Did you think she wanted to leave the Council?”
“It has been my guess this was her intention.”
“Would she have been allowed to leave?”
Pietro shrugged again. “She knew details of our discussions and plans. She would have known at least a few members’ names.” No more needed to be said.
Diana sighed. “So either the Council killed her for trying to leave, or the Republic killed her as a member of a secret society, or the Papacy killed for heresy, depending on who discovered her identity and intensions.” She looked up at Pietro. “Whoever did kill her…they may try to kill you as well.”
His mouth twisted in an odd facsimile of a smile. “The thought had occurred to me. Won’t be much of a loss to anyone, will it?”
Diana stared at him, not sure what to say.
“I don’t know the names of the other Council members,” Pietro added, softly. “I only knew your mother and one other. A man of little significance whom I recruited in turn. Everyone else wore masks. I was still only a novice.”
“How did the nun get half of the letter from my mother to you?”
“That I don’t know. It must have been stolen off my person on the night I waited for her. I thought I had lost it, but clearly I did not if it has come into your possession.”
Diana wrinkled her nose. She had trouble imagining how the note made its way from Pietro to the nun. The sister had never gotten the chance to explain it herself. Diana wondered if whoever had gotten it from Pietro had used it to learn of her mother’s involvement with the Council. Or had inferred her intention to leave? “What will you do now, Pietro? Surely they’ll come to kill you. You could make your way to Venezia.”
He shrugged again, as if it were little matter. “There will be no more love for the Boar in Venezia than he has found in Firenze. Whether it is the Council or the Papists or the Republic who wishes me dead, I shall make it as difficult for them as I can for as long as I can. In doing so, perhaps I will distract them for a time from your own efforts.”
“Here,” Diana reached for her purse and pulled out a few florins, “take these. At least you’ll be able to keep warm and get some food.”
He stared at the coins for a moment, then gently took them from her palm. “Thank you, lady. You have your mother’s kindness.”
She blushed, feeling she didn’t deserve the compliment. “You are mistaken. I am prepared to do things my mother never would to bring her justice.”
Pietro smiled. “Then perhaps you will succeed where she could not.” He took her hand in his own, the flesh of his hand soft and warm. She watched as he pressed her hand to the ragged remains of his lips. His large teeth felt like cold tusks against her skin. She showed no emotion and when he finished the chaste kiss, she allowed his hand a squeeze. “Keep yourself well, lady,” he said, then stood and drew his cape around him. Without looking back he moved quickly from the church.
Diana looked down, thinking. She still wasn’t sure how far she could trust Pietro and the story that he told her. Her mother had trusted him that far she believed, but who was to say he hadn’t betrayed that trust. Perhaps instead of the note being stolen from him, he had passed it on willingly? Perhaps they had met and he had even slipped her some poison himself? On the other hand, if he told her the truth, at least she understood how her mother had gotten herself in trouble. She still couldn’t be sure who was responsible for her mother’s death. The Council seemed the most likely culprit, although she didn’t know their identities. On the other hand, it could have been the Papacy or even the Republic. A spark lit in her mind. Oh dear God, she thought, if it were the Republic, she’d led them right to Pietro. They could be following her even now. And Niccolo…she had begun to trust him. But could he be responsible for her mother’s death?
Chapter Eight
The Two Princes
Dizzying thoughts coursed through Diana’s mind as she quickly skirted from the church to the Tornabuoni palazzo. Most of all she was stunned to find that her mother had this whole secret life that she’d known nothing about. She felt a little sense of betrayal her mother had kept such important events from her. She believed herself to be a horrible daughter given she hadn’t at all sensed that things had been different in her mother’s life.
She glanced around in the piazza outside of the church, one hand kept constantly on the grip of her pistol. Coming to meet with Pietro had been a big risk. Now she had to get back to the dinner with the Tornabuoni family or her father would be angry. She guessed her timing was pretty good and she would only arrive a little late. She’d miss some initial posturing and bragging about whose son had done what, who would receive a Cardinal’s hat, who was on a mission to France. Whatever. None of it interested her very much. Her father had little to discuss in those initial stages of a banquet. As a daughter, Diana was not allowed to accomplish much of significance aside from marriage, and that peculiar institution didn’t interest her very much. She was just as happy to skip standing around feeling like a disappointment.
Coat pulled tight, Diana moved off, keeping to the shadows. There were a fair number of others in the streets, enough that a public assassination would be unlikely. After a few blocks however, she sensed someone following. She glanced behind. There…a young man, slender and not too tall, long black cape tied round his shoulders. She’d seen him on the way to the church, and here he was once again. His pace matched hers exactly, constantly keeping one block behind, attempting to blend into the other pedestrians.
Diana’s heart raced. Could this be a minion of Mancini, waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip a dagger between her ribs? She was not about to have any of that. Still, if she picked up the pace she might lose him, but the gain would only be temporary. Likely as not he knew her destination, and certa
inly he knew where she lived. He’d only wait for a future opportunity.
No, if she was going to survive this she was going to have to face threats head on. Her grasp tightened on the pistol. Of course she could hardly shoot him in the middle of the street. An alleyway though, dangerous, no doubt about that. All manner of trouble waited down dark alleys. Nonetheless, if she was going to confront him, that was how it would have to be.
She knew this area of town well. After a little thought, she knew where to go. A few turns, and she skirted down a dark and ignored lane. A stack of empty crates provided a perfect point from which to launch an ambush. There, in the darkness, she pulled out her pistol and waited.
She was not left waiting for long. A few minutes after she laid her trap, it was sprung. The young man with the cape rounded the corner. No reason he’d come along this way other than to follow Diana. He looked around the alley, apparently confused as to why she’d come down this way. Before he could realize he was in trouble, Diana leapt out of the shadows and held the gun to his face. “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.” Her arms shook from excitement and cold, and a part of her brain told her to just do it. Shoot him before he could draw his dagger and strike.
The young man’s arms flew above his head, eyes white and wide even in the dark passage. “Lady Savrano,” he croaked, his voice higher pitched than she’d imagined.
No chance of pretense now, he knew her name.
“Do you have a weapon on you?” she barked.
With his elbow he moved aside his cape until she could see the pommel of a rapier, flecks of reflected light glinting off the metal.
“And a knife in your boot, I’d imagine,” she challenged.
Visibly swallowing, he nodded. “Please, mistress, let me explain.”
Diana felt that uneasy burning in her brain, the impulse to pull the trigger and be done with it before he could trick her. She suppressed it. Aside from the glancing wound to Mancini, she’d never done anyone harm before. The other day she’d tried to shoot Pietro when it seemed he might be her enemy, but she’d been wrong about that. At very least she needed to hear this man out, lest there indeed be a good explanation. “I think you’d better explain, and fast.”
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