Suicide Kings

by Christopher J. Ferguson

  “No doubt the wine you buy with those spoils will satisfy you more than the Holy Spirit,” Agon growled. “Now stand aside!”

  “Gentlemen, I hope you could trust that our mission is a righteous one, for we are intent on saving the life of a holy sister. No good is served by bloodshed tonight. When did Christ ever compel his disciples to lift a sword for him?” As she spoke, she noted that the three Swiss had moved to form a protective semicircle around her, with a building wall forming the rear boundary. To her surprise, Siobhan joined them as the fourth member of the semicircle, stiletto drawn. The Swiss didn’t seem to think it odd a young girl would be left to guard their flanks. Diana thought her handmaid should be cowering inside the circle with her.

  Sadly the youth all had weapons drawn and moved in on their little group. She drew her pistol with sadness in her heart. “Siobhan,” Diana implored, “step back where it is safe. There are too many of them.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, Lady,” Siobhan responded, never looking back. “My da showed me a thing or two with the blade, he did. Each of us here is paid to see you home safely and that’s the end of it.”

  No time to puzzle that over more. Confident fools, the youth moved in like jackals on an easy kill. Their hoots and laughter would haunt Diana’s dreams for nights to come. Instead of effortless prey, the youths were met by a barrier of steel. Blades swirled in the night, glinting echoes of the distant bonfire catching on the steel. Laughter turned to screams. Blood sprayed in wide arcs and slicked the street. Seconds passed like hours. At the center of it all, Diana could barely keep track of all that happened. For a moment she could not tell if her guards were being overwhelmed, or if they held their line.

  At one moment Agon drove his sword into the stomach of the tall, wiry lad who had done most of the speaking for the ruffians. Another scoundrel leapt in, intent on driving a blade into the back of Agon’s neck while he looked away. Diana raised her pistol and, for the third time in only a short while, discharged it with the intent on taking a life. The thunderous noise, the blast of fire and smoke. Over it all, a man yelped and fell. Agon, startled, looked back at her and gave her a smile like she had swatted a mosquito off his arm.

  To her right, Siobhan stepped in front of another youth, ducked a club as if doing so were the most natural thing, and drove her stiletto into the man’s pubis. Not even stopping to see the harm she had done, she moved past the squealing villain, rolled back under another club, and drove the stiletto deep into the eye socket of a second rogue.

  Only seconds had passed. Three Swiss mercenaries and an Irishwoman stood, all unscathed, over seven dead or dying Italians, while three others made haste in all directions. Diana felt like a stallion trapped in a burning barn. How could these four be so cool in the midst of such violence? How could Siobhan in particular?

  Diana stepped to the youth she had shot. A gaping hole in his neck discharged fluid like a fountain. He yet lived, eyes rolling madly, each desperate breath sucking its way past his own leaking essences. He looked up at her, wordlessly pleading for her to somehow fix the damage she’d done. It was the smaller youth. As she watched, his life slipped away and his hopeless struggle finally ended in silence.

  “Lady,” Agon said. “I did not know you were armed.”

  Taking a deep breath, she nodded, not trusting her voice to remain steady just yet.

  “You did well.” He nodded in appreciation. “I owe you my life. I suggest we continue moving lest the few escapees return with more of their sort. I don’t want to have to fight off waves of these idiots all across Firenze.”

  Diana blinked and breathed deeply again. She’d killed a second man. The first had been a hardened criminal. The second, little more than a misguided boy. True, it would have been worse to let Agon die. Her life increasingly became one of such difficult options.

  Siobhan slipped her hand in Diana’s. “We are ready to move on.”

  “Excellent,” Agon answered and, with his compatriots, moved off to the South. They left behind them the few pitiful pleas of the young men not yet dead.

  Siobhan pulled her after the Swiss, orienting her.

  Finally getting her wits together, Diana asked, “You fought like one of the Swiss. How did you manage that?”

  Siobhan gave her a funny look. “I told you that I learned much from my father. What did you expect? It’s what your father hired me for after all, to keep you safe.”

  “What? My father hired you as a handmaid!”

  “Well, yes, that. I am your handmaid, and always at your service. But my specialty is a peculiar one. That was the service that I performed for the Orsini, mainly serving as protection for the Signorina Zaira Orsini before she married. Did your father not tell you?”

  “No, he managed to forget that detail.” A lot of pieces certainly fit into place regarding the Irish girl. No wonder she’d been so willing to follow her around the city, putting herself in danger right along with Diana. For her, it was second nature. Diana felt humbled. “Forgive me, Siobhan, I’ve underestimated you many times.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. From the first you have made me feel as a friend. We can discuss this in detail later. For now we must make haste for the sake of another friend!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nightshade

  Across the Arno, Diana returned to the Convent at Saint Cecilia for the second time that night. Before she had come invited in the company of a friend. Now she invaded the convent in the company of soldiers.

  Agon rapped the pommel of his sword against the sturdy wooden door. Minutes passed before a fat young novitiate answered. She glared at them with a slack jaw.

  “Stand aside for Lady Savrano!” he commanded.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” she managed to stammer, sounding more dazed than defiant. “What business do you have with us?”

  “Move or I will move you,” he answered and she stepped aside.

  They filed past her, the Swiss first, then Diana with Siobhan taking up the vanguard. Diana couldn’t help but stare at the novitiate. Could this seemingly innocent girl have been the one to slip the poison to Francesca? More and more it seemed as if enemies were everywhere in Firenze. No way to tell friend from foe, innocent from guilty. No one could be trusted.

  A hall to the left led to the main chapel, where Francesca awaited burial. A few candles on the altar held a lonely rear-guard action against the frost. No fire here, the only heat radiating in from the rest of the building. Winter held the room firmly in its grasp. Even without being buried, Francesca might have frozen to death overnight.

  The coffin, lid placed over the body, rose above the shadows on a small table before the altar. Around it the sculpted figures of Saints leered down, as if mocking the poor girl. Diana thought it amazing how easily the beauty of a chapel could change to a flickering doorway to Hell in the abyssal light of a few candles.

  She stood beside the coffin, her breath forming clouds in the air. Now she experienced a moment of dread. If she were wrong… With both hands she pushed the lid off the coffin. Not being nailed down yet, it fell away with ease, clattering to the floor with a great bang. Within Francesca lay much as before, rosary in one hand, crucifix in the other crossed hand, eyes closed, expression tranquil. The beautiful dead, maybe not quite so dead.

  She reached out her hand, caressed Francesca’s cheek. “Dear Francesca, forgive me. This is not the world we prayed for, but come back to it for my sake.” She looked up. The others watched her. The Swiss impassive, leaning against the wall, Siobhan expectant, hoping against all hope. “I need more light,” she told them. “I can’t see to do what I need to do.”

  “They must have a lantern here somewhere,” Agon said. “Go, fetch what you can find.” The other two Swiss left them. Soon the unmistakable sounds of an aggressive search put Diana’s nerves on further edge.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” a woman’s voice cried. A dark form slid into the room like a ghost. Moving into th
e feeble candlelight, Sister Ophelia’s features became visible. Behind her, another ghost, the young novitiate. “You are intruders here! Would you defile our sanctuary?”

  Diana looked down sadly at Francesca’s face. “Whatever you have here, I would defile it to save a life.”

  “Lady Savrano? I would have expected better from Isabella’s daughter. Who do you mean to save? Surely you see Sister Francesca is as dead as a sinner’s soul. Do you fancy yourself a necromancer? Or do you think Christ has given you the power to steal back souls from Heaven as he did with Lazarus?”

  Diana looked up at her, squinting in the dark. Just then, the two Swiss returned with several lanterns. These they quickly filled with oil and lit, hoisting them up to hooks hanging down from the ceiling on chains.

  Sister Ophelia pointed her finger at the men. “Why do you help her? Each of you will be damned for what you do here tonight.”

  Agon looked askance at her. “Sister, after all else we three have done, I think God will forgive us for stirring old women from their snug beds. Now shut it or I may become tempted to do something that will be worth damnation.”

  Sister Ophelia took two steps back at that. She turned to the novitiate. “Fetch the gendarmes!”

  Agon snorted and turned his back on her.

  “Help me get her out of the coffin,” Diana commanded.

  The two younger Swiss sheathed their swords. One took Francesca’s shoulders, the other her feet. Diana cradled Francesca’s head as they lifted the body from the coffin, and placed it gently on the ground beside the table. Then they took two steps back.

  Agathi appeared then, mercifully. Diana thanked God the woman had made it through on the chaotic streets. “Blessed Jesus, Agathi, I feared you would not get here.”

  “I am sorry, lady.” Agathi bowed her head. “The streets were filled with violence. I would have been here sooner, but I kept to the shadows and took a safer route.”

  “Do you have what I asked for?”

  “I do, lady. I got exactly what you requested.” The woman handed over a vial sealed with wax and two small pipettes. In this darkest moment Diana felt a little thrill. This must be the delight a gambler felt on rolling the dice, the rake on bedding another man’s wife. She might tonight take back Francesca from God’s embrace. She hoped he might forgive her for snatching a soul from heaven.

  Diana knelt beside Francesca’s motionless form. Above them the lanterns burned, giving her the best lighting she could hope for. She leaned over, her hair forming a protective curtain around Francesca’s face. She put her hand against Francesca’s cheek. Cold. She sighed.

  No one spoke, not even Sister Ophelia.

  With a trembling hand she parted Francesca’s black robes, exposing her sternum. Diana pressed her ear against Francesca’s cold chest. Nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath and listened…and listened… There! The slightest murmur, fluttering like a bat trapped in a sealed cave. Could it be her imagination? Her own heartbeat pulsing through the flesh of her ear?

  Diana ran her tongue along her lips. She pressed them to the stone floor, so cold it hurt. She licked them again, this time pressing them against Francesca’s forehead. The flesh felt warmer, much warmer than the stone. Colder than a healthy person, no mistake, but warmer than should be a corpse dead now nearly twenty-four hours and stored in this coldest of rooms. The body generated heat as only living bodies did. Probably she’d been saved being placed in that sealed coffin, her own body heat keeping herself warm enough to survive.

  Diana sat back. “I think she’s alive,” she whispered.

  No one replied. She stared at them, five statues in the dark.

  “She’s alive!” Diana pronounced with certainty.

  Siobhan rushed forward, the first of them to move. “What must we do?” she asked, nearly breathless.

  “It’s impossible!” Ophelia hissed. “She’s dead, I checked her myself.”

  “Silence, woman,” Agon growled.

  “She is in a deathlike stupor brought on by poisoning. It would have been easy to miss unless you knew to be suspicious.”

  “Poison?” Ophelia repeated, jaw slack.

  Diana ignored the nun. She held the calabar bean serum vial up to the light of a lantern. “Siobhan, you must help me. I cannot do this alone.”

  “What must I do, Lady?”

  Diana took the larger of the pipettes. With two fingers she snapped off the very end, leaving a jagged edge. This she inserted down through the wax sealing the serum vial like a needle through cloth. As the tip pushed down through the fluid within, the pipette filled with the solution. “Bring me some wax, still warm and malleable, from one of those candles.” She pointed toward the altar.

  Siobhan did as beckoned and returned quickly. Diana used a small amount to seal the end of the larger pipette jutting out of the vial. Then she handed the smaller pipette to Siobhan. “Hold this in the flame until both ends are sealed shut.”

  Once again, Siobhan went to the candles and returned with a finished product. The heat had melted the glass until now it resembled a simple thin glass rod.

  Diana didn’t take it yet. Holding the vial back up to the lantern light, she held her breath. She hoped this would work the way she thought it should. Slowly, she pulled the larger pipette out of the vial. As she anticipated, the pipette remained filled with serum, despite being open at the bottom, jagged end. The wax seal on the back end prevented the liquid from draining back out of the pipette’s tip as she extruded it.

  “Let me see the smaller pipette.”

  Siobhan handed it over.

  Diana took a deep breath. “Extend Francesca’s arm for me. Hold it steady.”

  Siobhan pulled Francesca’s arm over into a pool of lantern light. Diana examined its underside. According to the medical books she’d read, a vein should run through the crook of the elbow, but in such poor illumination, Diana could not find it. A pulse of desperation surged through her. She’d be damned if she found Francesca alive, only to be helpless to save her. She turned the limb over. Here on the back of the hand, vessels ran over the wrist and back, toward the fingers. “Hold her hand very still.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Diana didn’t answer her, and no one else spoke. She bent over, careful not to spoil what lighting she had. She rubbed the jagged edge of the larger pipette against the flesh covering the largest of those vessels. Holding her breath once again, she gently pierced the tissue with the point, slowly driving the tip of the pipette into the back of Francesca’s hand. Holding it in place, where she thought the tip ought to be in the middle of the vein, she took the smaller, sealed pipette and eased it through the wax covering on the back of the larger pipette. The fit between the two pipettes was not ideal, the smaller one being too small, really. Better that than too large to fit, though. As she eased the smaller pipette down into the larger one it forced most of the fluid within the larger pipette out and into the vein.

  The deed done, she pulled the contraption free of Francesca’s arm. A moment passed. Nothing.

  “Did we use enough?” Siobhan whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we try more?”

  “If we give her too much it will kill her as certainly as the nightshade would. If I even am right about this being nightshade.”

  “How did you know to use the pipettes like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure it worked right?”

  “Damn you, Siobhan, do you plan to spend the entire night asking questions I cannot answer?”

  “I don’t know,” Siobhan replied. A moment later she whispered, “What if it’s not nightshade?”

  Diana could only glare at her.

  Seconds later, Francesca coughed. The sound of it made Diana’s heart stop cold. Francesca lurched suddenly, her back arching violently before she turned to the side and vomited up her guts in a thin violent stream. Diana held Francesca’s head, keeping it from s
lamming against the stone, and holding her hair back from the foul smelling mass. Francesca curled in a fetal position, never opening her eyes but beginning to shiver violently.

  Behind them whispers. One of the Swiss said, “It’s a miracle!”

  “Is she dying?” Siobhan asked.

  Diana shook her head. “Shivering means her muscles are functioning once more. She’s weak though. We’ll need to return her to warmth. She’ll need fluids too once her stomach settles down. You there!” She pointed to the largest of the Swiss. “Can you carry her all the way back to the palazzo?”

  The man responded with a curt nod.

  Sister Ophelia stepped forward, her face twisted. “Francesca is a sister of our order. You can’t remove her from our care!”

  Diana turned on the nun. “Someone within these walls tried to kill her. I won’t abandon her again. The only place I know that she’ll be safe is at my palazzo.”

  “How can you know that?” Ophelia insisted.

  “Because I’m not dead yet.”

  The biggest Swiss hefted Francesca in his arms. Instinctively she turned in toward the warmth of his body. Agon pulled the coverlet from the altar and wrapped Francesca in it like a blanket. An act of sacrilege, but not even Ophelia complained. The older nun stood, open mouthed and watched.

  Finally Ophelia managed a protest. “Cardinal Lajolo will hear of this, I promise you.”

  Diana stared at her as her entourage filed back out into the cold. “So be it.”

  ****

  Wrapped in the thick blankets of Diana’s own bed, Francesca settled down to continuous but mild tremors. Several times her eyes opened and she looked around dully. Never did they register recognition, and she didn’t speak. Time, Diana hoped. A little more time would see her made right. Agathi got the fireplace going in the room. Siobhan managed to get Francesca to take a little broth. Promising signs.