Betrayed by His Kiss

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘Orlando,’ she whispered, her whole body aching as if she would break. She had come to Florence so full of ridiculous hopes, so sure that here, amid the art and beauty of this city, she would find herself. But she had only lost everything. Her art. Her heart. Her soul, if she did now what she knew she had to do.

  Isabella could have wept, wailed. Too late, too late. Any fire she had ever possessed, any passion, was gone. She folded her hands tightly at her waist to still their shaking, to hold back the hot, salty flood of tears. She had no time to cry now. The time for tears, like the time for love, was long past.

  * * *

  Orlando drew in his horse at the crest of the tallest hill outside Florence and glanced back at the city, even though he knew he should not. The domes and towers of the city rose into the dusky sky, golden and rosy, like a distant dream. He felt such a deep compulsion to grab that image, that last impression of his home to take with him in his memory, even though he knew time was slipping away from him. If he was found, he would surely die. He had to find a haven.

  But there, in the Florence he was leaving behind, was her. Isabella.

  Night was falling fast, a blanket of purplish light drifting down that slowly concealed the town. From here, all looked quiet, serene. But there were orange-red flickers from the bonfires lit to celebrate the demise of the Pazzi conspirators, the revenge of the Medici on the family who would have destroyed them.

  The flames suddenly shot up likes beacons in the blackness, sparks of brilliant red and rosy-gold, exploding, bringing to mind horrible images of burning bodies.

  Orlando rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw. He’d waited so very long to take his own revenge, had planned for it, craved it. Matteo Strozzi deserved his death and innocents were safer with him gone from the world. And yet...

  Yet when the moment of his revenge came, it wasn’t at all what he had so long envisioned. It did not erase the wrongs of the past. It only increased them a hundredfold.

  An explosion shot over the tiled rooftops of the city, a burst of sparkling light and noise. Where was Isabella now? Locked in her family’s house, mourning, in fear? Afraid of him?

  Or was her secret heart even now filling with the hate that infected the whole city?

  Orlando thought of Isabella as he had first seen her, in Signor Botticelli’s studio. Her shining eyes as she gazed at the art around her, the bright openness of her smile. The smile she gave him, as if they shared a rare, wonderful secret. If he had robbed her of that smile...

  ‘Maledizione,’ he cursed. He’d had to confront Matteo Strozzi there in the chaos of the cathedral. His family’s honour, the memory of Maria Lorenza, demanded it and he was not a man to turn away from his duty, no matter that his family thought him only a wastrel.

  But his heart now felt—blackened. Twisted out of human recognition when he remembered Isabella and the few, fleeting, precious moments they shared.

  Isabella. He would return for her. He would make her see the truth. If it was the very last thing he could ever do.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘In a short time passes every great rain; and the warmth makes disappear the snows and ice that make the rivers look so proud...’

  Caterina’s bedchamber was dark and shadowy, the shutters drawn against the brightness of the day, the air stuffy and filled with the heavy scents of undrunk wine and uneaten food. Caterina lay still under the embroidered counterpane of her bed, her eyes staring unseeing at the canopy above her. She didn’t seem to hear Isabella reading, or the servants tiptoeing around, yet still Isabella read on from her chair by the bed.

  She didn’t know what else to do. Whenever she ceased speaking, her thoughts washed over her again. Terrible, terrible images of blood and screams. That dagger in Orlando’s hand. Matteo dead on the cathedral floor.

  Nay, if she thought of it she feared she would start screaming and would never cease. So she read on, until her voice was hoarse and she could barely see straight.

  At last, as the sun began to turn golden-rosy at the edges of the windows, Caterina stirred. She rolled on to her side, her tangled golden hair weaving around her like a drowning mermaid.

  ‘No love poetry, Isabella, I beg you,’ she whispered.

  ‘You are awake!’ Isabella cried in relief. She had so feared to lose both her cousins in these long, lonely hours. She tossed aside the book and reached for Caterina’s hand. It was pale and ice-cold. ‘We have been so very worried. Let me call the doctor back...’

  ‘Nay, no more doctors,’ Caterina said. She curled her fingers around Isabella’s, her grasp surprisingly strong. Desperate. ‘They cannot help me now.’

  ‘But you haven’t stirred in days,’ Isabella argued. ‘At least take a little wine.’

  Caterina nodded and let Isabella help her sip from the goblet. When she was done, she fell back to the pillows, her face as white as the linens. Over her laboured breath, they could hear the shouts that still rang out from the streets below. The toll of the church bells. The death still went on.

  But Isabella could not think of that now. Could not think of how they were trapped in this house, how beautiful, elegant Florence had become a battleground in only a moment. She had to think of Caterina. Caterina had lost her brother and her suitor Giuliano.

  And Isabella had dared to cherish tender feelings for the very man who had killed Matteo. It froze her to think of it now, to know how blind and dangerously foolish she had been. How could she not have seen the truth of it in his eyes? Feel it in his kiss?

  Yet all she had seen was his beauty. All she had felt was her own happiness when he held her in his arms.

  Now she paid the price for that foolishness.

  She tucked the bedclothes around Caterina. ‘What can I bring you, Caterina? If you will not see the doctor...’

  ‘He can do nothing for me,’ Caterina said. She closed her eyes again. ‘We cannot stay here, Isabella. We must leave Florence as soon as the streets are safe.’

  Isabella nodded. She, too, wanted to see the last of this city. Its art and beauty had turned to ashes in her mouth. ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘You must return to your father. I was selfish to ever take you from him. And I will go to the convent of St Ursula, in the hills. I have a friend who is abbess there. She will make a place for me. Perhaps I can find rest there one day.’ A spasm of pain crossed Caterina’s face.

  ‘Shall I not go there with you?’

  Caterina shook her head. Her hand tightened on Isabella’s. ‘You can go with me to make sure all is well, but then I must beg you to do something for me before you go home.’

  ‘Of course,’ Isabella said. ‘I will do anything I can to help you, Cousin.’

  ‘I am too weak to do the proper duty to my brother,’ Caterina whispered. ‘So I must beg you to do it for me, for our family honour.’

  Family honour? Was that not what had begun this whole nightmare in the first place? Yet Isabella could not refuse her cousin, who looked so ill, so grief-stricken. She had to do her duty now, as she had so neglected it in her own romantic dream. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You must find out who did this to Matteo and see that he pays his blood debt.’

  Isabella froze. How could she possibly tell Caterina she knew who did it?

  Yet how could she refuse her? As Caterina said, this was their family. Orlando had to pay for what he had done, according to the code of their world. No matter why he did it, what his thoughts were now.

  ‘I—I will try,’ she told Caterina.

  Caterina nodded and turned her head away. ‘I wish to see Matteo once more, before he is buried.’

  ‘You are too tired,’ Isabella said. ‘Just sleep now. Tomorrow we will leave for St Ursula’s, if you are strong enough.’

  Caterina could only squeeze Isabella’s hand weakly one
more time. The herbs mixed in the wine were doing their task and soon she would be asleep.

  But as Isabella turned away to draw off her black veil, she feared she herself would not sleep again for a very long while.

  * * *

  ‘You must leave Florence.’

  Orlando stared out of the window of Botticelli’s studio, barely hearing the artist’s words. He saw a group of boys parade past, a head on a pike, as gleeful as at a holy day parade. The whole city had descended into just such carnage after the cathedral. And he had been a part of it. Helped tear apart the fabric of the beautiful city with his own hands.

  Yet he felt so removed. So numb. All he could think of was what he was leaving behind. What he had lost before he barely even found it.

  Isabella. His one moment of transcendence. She was gone from him. He had gained his long-sought revenge. Maria Lorenza could rest at last. Yet it was hollow and cold.

  ‘Aye, I must go,’ he said. He glanced back at his friend.

  Botticelli nodded, calmly cleaning his brushes as if the carnage outside his window didn’t exist. ‘Yet there is no hue and cry for your death. No riders out hunting for you.’

  ‘What I did had nothing to do with Pazzis and Medici.’

  ‘Nay. You did what you thought you had to do. Now you can go on with your life.’

  Orlando gave a bitter laugh. His life for so long had been about revenge. Now—there was nothing there. He had only glimpsed the life he might have had, the dream of it, for a few moments with Isabella.

  ‘I can do that away from Florence,’ he said.

  Botticelli looked doubtful. ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘To my kinsman, the lord of the town of Fiencosole, at first. There is something important I must do there. Then I will seek a place in a foreign army. My sword arm must be worth something.’ After he saw little Maria safe, he had nothing else left to lose.

  ‘A mercenary?’

  ‘Aye, why not?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’ Botticelli said musingly. He laid aside his brushes. ‘I will help you in any way I can, my friend. If you are determined to toss away your life, then you must do it. But remember—fate always has a way of surprising us.’

  Orlando laughed. Fate had not been his friend thus far. He imagined that wouldn’t change. ‘I hope fate may at least leave me alone now. I have had quite enough of her whims.’

  Botticelli just smiled. ‘Oh, no, Orlando. You will see...’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Isabella stared up at the painting on Botticelli’s studio wall. Springtime—the same glorious, beautiful rebirth that held her entranced the first day she came there with Caterina. The goddess in her flower-strewn gown, her acolytes dancing around her in the warmth of the dappled sunlight. Once it had made her feel as if all things were possible, as if life was opening up before her in all its infinite possibilities.

  Now when she looked at it she felt only numb. Cold.

  The studio was echoingly silent, empty. All the apprentices were gone, their work scattered over the tables and easels. Only the servant who let her in, the one who promised to go find Botticelli for her, was a sign of life.

  From beyond the windows, Isabella could still hear the shouts of ‘Palle! Palle!’ that had followed her when she left Matteo’s bier at the cathedral. There were crashes, the diamond-sharp rattle of broken glass, screams. But in the studio everything was eerily still.

  Isabella stared up at the face of the goddess, her serenity, her small, secret smile. Once she had worn just such a smile, thinking of Orlando. Of how he made her feel.

  You are my family now, Caterina had sobbed. And family avenged each other.

  ‘Signorina Isabella,’ Botticelli said behind her. ‘I did not think to see anyone today.’

  ‘I went to the cathedral to see Matteo earlier,’ Isabella said shortly.

  ‘Of course.’ Botticelli came to her side and studied her carefully, his handsome face expressionless. ‘And how does Signorina Caterina today?’

  ‘She keeps to her bed. She says she will retreat to a convent soon.’

  ‘Perhaps the peace of a cloister would help her find rest,’ Botticelli said. ‘Giuliano cared for her more than she would acknowledge, I fear. She thought him only a rogue, but he thought she was—different. Above everyone else.’

  As Isabella had once thought Orlando? She cringed now to remember the naive joy his kiss had awakened in her. What a fool she had been! She had thought him different, as well, but he was only a part of the violent ugliness Florence hid beneath the marble towers and bright frescoes.

  He was truly the god of the Underworld, but not in the brooding, romantically longing way she had imagined. He was the god of bloodshed and death.

  Isabella bit her lip to hold back a scream as she remembered that flashing dagger in his hand, the blood splashed lurid red on the pale marble floor. It was an image that would surely haunt her every time she dared close her eyes.

  Her heart felt heavy and hard in her chest, as if she, too, had turned to stone.

  ‘Signor Botticelli,’ she said. ‘You know a man called Orlando. I have seen him here at your studio.’

  His expression did not change, but she thought she saw something flicker in his eyes. He crossed his arms across his broad chest. ‘You look for him?’

  ‘I am sure he has fled Florence by now,’ she said. ‘After what happened in the cathedral...’

  ‘And what happened there, Signorina Isabella?’

  Isabella felt a surge of anger. ‘He killed my cousin in the riot. I saw him.’

  Botticelli shook his head and Isabella was surprised to see that he looked suddenly sad. ‘Are you certain of what you saw? There was much confusion there. So many people certain that marauders had desecrated our fair city.’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Matteo was my family.’

  ‘Of course he was and his sister is my friend. Yet think, signorina—what did you truly know of Matteo Strozzi? Of his past deeds, his character? You are an artist, a sensitive soul. You can see deeper than most.’

  ‘I know what I saw!’ Isabella cried. ‘What do you mean about my cousin’s past deeds? What can they have been to cause his murder?’

  Botticelli opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he closed it and shook his head again. His broad forehead creased in a frown. ‘’Tis not my tale to tell, I fear. Just remember what I said. Trust only your own instincts. Do nothing in the heat of temper. That is what leads so many here in Florence into sin and trouble.’

  Isabella looked up at the painting once more. She saw hope there again and she feared she would never feel that again. ‘Do you know where Orlando is?’ she said. That was why she had come to the studio from the cathedral. Botticelli was Orlando’s friend and as an artist he had contacts in many places. He would know things others would not.

  Botticelli was silent for a long moment. ‘Perhaps, like your cousin Caterina, you would care for a time of reflection.’

  Isabella gave a harsh laugh. ‘I have not the spirit for a convent.’

  ‘Nay, not you. But there are many kinds of reflection. I have always found painting to be the best.’ He went to a table in the corner, heaped with parchments and half-finished sketches, and reached for a quill pen and pot of ink. ‘I have a friend who works for the lord of a town called Fiencosole. He was once an apprentice of mine. He has a fine way with the drape of cloth in a painting. He would be happy to instruct you.’

  ‘Fiencosole?’ Isabella said, confused. She did know of the place, it was not far from her father’s home and had a beautiful fresco cycle in its old cathedral. But she had never been there.

  He shrugged. ‘’Tis not a grand place like Florence, but the lord is an artistic and learned man. His court is one of grea
t refinement. You would like it there.’

  ‘I have no time for art now,’ she argued.

  ‘There is always time for art.’ He came to her and held out the hastily written missive, which she saw was a letter of introduction. ‘And I am sure you will find what you seek in Fiencosole, Isabella, if you will only look for it.’

  Isabella studied his face carefully, hoping to read his true meaning there, but it was blank. Finally she nodded and took the letter from his hand. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I will go there, and see what I find.’

  * * *

  ‘She is doing very well today, signor,’ the abbess of the convent of St Clare said as she led Orlando down the stone corridor, towards the light of the gardens.

  ‘No more nightmares?’ Orlando said. His booted footsteps sounded loud on the flagstone floor. He always felt like a large, hard intruder in the hush of the cloister, where only whispers and the rustle of woollen habits broke the sacred, flower-scented silence. But little Maria needed him.

  ‘None at all,’ the abbess said. ‘She will be happy to see you. She asks after you so often.’

  ‘I am sorry I have been kept away too long,’ he answered.

  ‘You take such good care of her, signor.’

  At the arched doorway to the garden, Orlando paused to watch the lovely scene in front of him. Maria dashed through the bright green and tumbled white flowers of the herbal plots, laughing as two sisters playfully chased her in their black-and-white habits. Her childish giggles floated to him, lighter than the sunlit air.

  Her laughter seemed to wash over him, carrying away some of the blood and ugliness that had marred his soul since the violence in the cathedral. He had done the greatest sin in a sacred place, all for his vow to avenge the wrongs of the past. Yet the past seemed closer than ever. Matteo Strozzi was gone, but his deeds remained. Now Orlando had added to the terror of it all.

  He thought again of Isabella, his beautiful angel, his saint, the woman whose innocence gave him back a part of his blackened soul—only for him to lose it again. The priests were right. Evil only begat evil, in perpetuity, and he hadn’t ended it when he fought with Strozzi.