3 - Cruel Music (21 page)

I nodded. Gussie brought up a good point. Why hadn’t I been keeping an eye out for casks being unloaded at the kitchen entrance?

“That brings us back to Rossobelli,” he said. “In keeping Fabiani’s affairs in order, he must come in contact with many tradesmen.”

I took a long draft of wine and allowed fragments of past conversations and fugitive sensations to form into one definitive thought. “Or Cardinal Fabiani himself,” I said, focusing my gaze on the basking lizard. “That’s who Lady Mary blames.”

“Fabiani? Why?” Gussie ran a hand over his face and shook his head as he continued, “It all grows more and more twisted—worse than the plots of your operas where a
god descending from the heavens is the only way to cut through the complications.”

“It makes a certain sense. Just listen.” I planted my elbows on the table. “Fabiani sent Gemma to spy out the palazzo in the first place—I can just imagine the look of relish on his face when she told him that Di Noce presided over streghe cavorting in Pompetti’s ballroom as naked as the day they were born.”

Gussie rolled his eyes and looked as if he had heard quite enough.

“No, hear me out. You might expect Fabiani to use Di Noce’s secret to run him out of Rome in disgrace, but our clever cardinal is much more devious than that. Fabiani apparently intends to hold Gemma’s information over Di Noce’s head—he is willing to see the secret pagan voted in as pope as long as Di Noce allows him to continue in the role of Cardinal Padrone.”

“You know I’m a come-lately Catholic—I left the religion of my birth for Annetta’s sake only. But even for me, this is almost unthinkable. A high-ranking cardinal condoning such a sacrilege? I can’t even find the words. What kind of holy man would behave in this fashion?”

“There’s no holiness about Fabiani. I’ve watched him for some time now and concluded that the only code he lives by is his own exquisite taste. Music is his overriding passion, but he also enjoys being the center of fashionable society and never refuses fine food or drink. For him, the Church has been nothing more than a means to an end.”

“More dilettante than priest, eh?”

“Exactly.”

“But why would he kill Gemma?” Gussie pushed his wineglass aside in frustration. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to keep her in reserve? As a spur to ensure that Di Noce made good on his promises? Gemma was an eyewitness to the pagan revels.”

“I see what you mean. Still, he wouldn’t have wanted her to fall into others’ hands, and he wouldn’t need her if she had supplied other evidence.”

“What? Like an affidavit or something of the sort?”

“Perhaps. But I believe Fabiani had another reason for wanting Gemma dead—it’s that other secret Lady Mary alluded to. Gemma told her and Prince Pompetti something about Fabiani that he definitely wouldn’t want known.”

“Did Lady Mary give you any hint as to what that secret might be?”

“No, but I’ve come up with my own idea, and I mean to test it out as soon as I can wangle my way into the Quirinal.”

The English have a reputation for reticence, but after knowing Gussie as a friend and living with him as my sister’s husband, I knew how those banked embers could blaze into a firestorm under the proper provocation. My statement provided the critical spark.

Gussie popped to his feet and slammed both hands on the table. “Alessandro said play for time, not run all over Rome collecting a score of powerful men who want your head.”

“Gussie, simmer down.” I glanced around. All over the terrace, heads had turned our way. “And sit down. I can assure you…this won’t be dangerous…”

Gussie didn’t sit, but he did lower his voice. “Last night wasn’t supposed to be dangerous either, but the prince and his lady saw right through you.”

“That was my fault.” I sighed. “I think I caught their attention by dancing a bit too sprightly for an old lady. I’ll be much more careful from now on—”

“So you mean to pursue this wild goose chase?” Gussie broke in. “No matter what I advise?”

“I must. Don’t you see?”

Shaking his head, Gussie muttered something about pigheaded singers and threw down some coins. He wound his way through the tables and ducked into the dim tavern interior.

“Just listen, Gussie,” I continued as I scurried after him. “This part will be easy…and no disguise will be needed…all I have to do is discover the color of Pope Clement’s eyes.”

But Gussie didn’t hear; his angry strides had already taken him outside to the little piazza.

Chapter Twenty-one

Cardinal Fabiani fell in with my plan as easily as one might wish. That evening, after I had entertained a small supper party with a few songs delivered at half strength, I asked if it would be possible for me to serenade Pope Clement at the Quirinal.

“He’s very ill, Tito,” Fabiani replied at first.

I persisted. “Just as music eases Your Eminence to sleep, its charms can lighten almost any burden or suffering. I would consider it the crowning jewel in my career to know that I brought some measure of solace to the Vicar of Christ in his final days.
”

Fabiani fingered the cleft in his chin. “It’s difficult to know what brings His Holiness solace these days—but yes, your singing does move swiftly from ear to heart. I see no reason why you shouldn’t serenade him. When will your voice be back to full strength?”

I thought quickly. Time was of the essence, but it wouldn’t do to appear overeager. I suggested two days hence, and after a hurried consultation with Abate Rossobelli, the cardinal agreed.

The time passed slowly. The marchesa descended more deeply into her elderly childhood and didn’t even dress to leave her room. Both days I presented myself to ask if I could be of service, but Matilda sent me away with a tense shake of her head and an invitation to try again tomorrow.

With more free time at my command, I strolled the garden as often as I dared. From behind the hedges, I kept watch on the back of the villa, but no carts driven by men with blue caps or prominent chins dropped off goods. The deliveries seemed to take place during the morning hours, so I visited the hospital in the afternoons, once in Liya’s company. Unfortunately, we saw no change in Benito’s condition. I fretted anxiously, wondering how long my manservant could survive in this state.

I also attempted to make amends with Gussie. My brother-in-law proved to be a hard man to catch up with. His landlady told me he’d gone off to paint the Ponte Rotto, a forlorn ruined arch in the middle of the Tiber that was the only standing remnant of the river’s first stone span. I followed her directions, but when I reached the broken bridge, Gussie was nowhere to be found.

Wandering the tangle of streets near the river, I finally stumbled onto the latest scene that had caught his fancy. On some granite stairs, Gussie had set up an outdoor studio, box of colors and water jar at his side and block of grainy paper on his lap. Oblivious of the racket in the street, he was sizing up a black cat with a red leather collar who perched atop a disused crate like a specimen of feline royalty.

I squatted beside him, but Gussie didn’t acknowledge me. I watched as he swabbed a water-filled brush over the paper and built up the color in rapid, sweeping strokes.

I finally asked, “Since it’s a black cat, why don’t you use black paint?”

He grunted. “Black makes the painting look flat. For dark colors, it’s better to layer the washes—start with raw umber, then go to green, and its complement red. Let the white paper furnish the highlights. See?” His hand never stopped moving, and in the space of a few moments, his two-dimensional cat had taken lifelike shape. A slash of scarlet for the collar was the finishing touch.

“Is this how you’ve been spending your time?”

“It suits me most admirably—considerably less trying than watching you march straight into trouble.”

“I’m doing what I must to get Alessandro out from under that ridiculous smuggling charge.”

“Alessandro said—”

“I know what Alessandro said, but how can he judge what I should do? He’s locked away. He has no idea what we’re up against here.”

“We?” Gussie used a charcoal pencil to make a notation in the sketch’s upper left-hand corner. He tore the damp page from the block and waved it through the air to dry.

“Are you removing yourself from this enterprise, then?”

“No, merely inquiring who you are including in the
we
.”

I resisted a sudden impulse to send his paints flying. “I see what this argument is really about. Why don’t you just come out with it—you don’t want me involved with Liya.”

At my angry tone, the cat made a leap and stalked away with its tale held in a rigid shepherd’s crook. Gussie watched it disappear between the legs of passers-by, then began to gather his supplies.

He said, “Your love for her was difficult enough when she lived in the ghetto. A Christian and a Jew—you told me yourself that such unions always end in tragedy. Now she’s fled the support of her father and has a bastard child—and taken up pagan ways. How can you countenance that?”

“I hardly know what I believe anymore, Gussie. I’m certainly in no position to criticize Liya’s philosophy.”

“That’s too dignified a word for it. This so-called Academy of Italia or Liya’s band of wise women, can’t you see that they are nothing more than revolutionaries in disguise? All they want is to upset the existing order of things for their own ends, whatever those might be.” He raised his chin and regarded me with unconcealed anguish. “Tito, what can you be thinking?”

I stared at my feet for a moment, then handed him a brush that had rolled down the stairsteps. “I once knew a young Englishman who enraged his very proper family by interrupting his Grand Tour to marry a Venetian girl they were certain would lead him to ruin.”

“My situation was quite different.”

“How? Your mother and your brother and sisters have no more regard for Annetta than you do for Liya. They have never been to Italy to visit and rarely write.”

He shook his head. “It’s not the same. You and Liya have problems on both sides.”

“Why do you say that? Because I’m a castrato? I thought you’d known me long enough to realize that doesn’t mean I’m completely dead below the waist.” In the silence that followed I became aware that housewives and loiterers were observing us with interest. Gussie had finished packing his satchel, so I towed him out of earshot and kept walking.

He answered in a low, intense tone. “I have no doubt that you and Liya could arrange that side of things to your mutual satisfaction, but how can you live with any degree of comfort in society? The Church will not allow you to wed. The most Liya can ever be is your acknowledged mistress, gossiped about by every matron from the Piazza San Marco to the Campo dei Polli and not welcome in any decent household.”

“There’s one possible solution.”

“What’s that?”

“In the past, several castrati have petitioned the pope for special dispensation to marry.”

“Has it been granted?”

“No. In the last case I heard of, the pope sent a courier back advising the poor fellow to have the surgeon finish the job he’d obviously botched.”

Gussie’s thick eyebrows drew together. After we had walked in silence for a moment, he asked, “So, where’s the solution in that?”

“As we’re painfully aware, we’ll soon have a new pope, one who might take a more sympathetic view.”

“I’ll accept that possibility, but there’s something else that worries me. Liya sent you away before, and I watched you nurse a broken heart for years. How can you be sure she won’t do so again?”

“It’s different this time—for both of us. I’ve been convinced of that ever since I laid eyes on her in the market near the Pantheon.”

“Are you positive that you’re not simply wishing it were so? You overcalculated the depth of her affection before. And have you considered the possibility that you’re using romance as a balm to counter the difficult circumstances you face here in Rome?
”

“I’m not the callow youth I was when I knew Liya in Venice. I’ve learned a bit more about women, and I know my own feelings, Gussie.”

“Are you willing to put that to the test?”

I nodded, puzzled. What was he talking about?

“We’ve come to the right place, then.”

We had wandered into a busy, asymmetrical square with a hayloft and watering trough, not far from the ruins of the old Forum where market-bound cattle were pastured. Gussie approached an austere medieval church dominated by a square bell tower. A priest sat on a three-legged stool before the portico; which was gated with iron bars. Gussie handed him a few coins.

The priest opened the middle gate with a sly smile. “Watch yourselves, Signori—not many visitors today—he may be getting hungry.”

We passed into a deep portico that was paved in stones the color of aged salami. As I waited for my eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior, I asked, “Who’s getting hungry?”

My question sounded hollow in the eerie quiet. The lowing of the cattle and the whistles of the drovers on the square had faded. The portico had a dank chill about it, like a rocky overhang rarely touched by sunlight.

Gussie touched my shoulder and jerked his chin toward a low plinth that held an odd sculpture. It was a worn and weathered face of a man chiseled onto a large stone disk. A tangled mane of hair and beard surrounded a countenance frozen at the beginning of a scream. The eyes, widened by fright or astonishment, sported hollowed-out pupils that I could have poked a finger through. The mouth was another dark hole, just the width of a man’s palm.

“
La Bocca della Verita
—the Mouth of Truth,” Gussie said. “If you tell a lie while your hand is in his mouth, he’ll bite it off.”

“What a preposterous notion!”

“Is it? Suspicious wives have been bringing their husbands here for hundreds of years.” He nodded to the gaping mouth. “Will you humor me?”

“Gussie, you amaze me. I thought you considered yourself the levelheaded one.”

He gave a broad-shouldered shrug and again gestured toward the black slit.

More tentatively than I liked to admit, I flattened my hand and inched it over the polished stone until the unyielding lips enveloped my wrist. My fingers disappeared into a cool void, and I shivered, suddenly gripped by irrational doubt and dread.

“Do you love Liya, forever and always?” Gussie’s solemn baritone bounced off the walls and ceiling.

My fingers tingled as if I gripped a handful of Alpine snow: forever was a long time. I squeezed my eyelids shut and pictured Liya’s exotic beauty, her graceful demeanor, her lively intelligence leavened by tenderness and love. I steeled myself against the judgment of La Bocca. But I knew the truth; I should be able to speak fearlessly.

“Yes,” I proclaimed, “no matter what hurdles we may face, a future without Liya would be unlivable.” Warmth flooded back into my hand, and no sharp teeth pierced my skin. I jerked away from the stone disk, feeling like an ancient gladiator who had survived the Coliseum.

Gussie shook his head as though despite himself, but he threw his arm around my shoulder and agreed to speak no more against my love. It was as much as I could hope for. My brother-in-law and I left the strange church in an uneasy truce.

***

The Vatican Hill was the traditional site of the Holy See, but by the sixteenth century, a nearby swamp had given it a reputation for malaria during the warm months. The air of the taller Quirinal Hill in central Rome was deemed more salubrious, and a splendid palace was built there as the pope’s summer residence. Given that its spacious corridors and gilded apartments contrasted so favorably with the dark labyrinth of the Vatican, it took little time for the papal court to take up permanent residence. Cardinal Fabiani conducted me there on a chilly afternoon in early February.

My guide traversed the Quirinal Palace as if it were his personal preserve. In the grand reception hall, a mass of prelates and courtiers had gathered to wait for news of the pope’s condition. The mirrored walls amplified their number from hundreds to thousands. To a man, they all suspended their conversations and bowed to Fabiani as we passed. Scanning their faces, I saw craft and guile peeking through masks of respect and concern. Were they calculating how rapidly Fabiani would fall from power once his patron had succumbed to his physical ailments?

At the far end of the hall, a canopied throne exuded a lonely air of disuse. Fabiani paused. “Our pontiff started his reign right here, Tito. On a tide of goodwill. He was expected to govern with caution and good sense, and to restore the pomp and magnificence of the court that his austere Dominican predecessor had all but abolished.”

“Did he?” I asked. “Before he became ill?”

“Very much so. Pope Clement’s taste has always been of the highest order. He hired the most talented craftsmen to effect repairs both here and at the Vatican. But he didn’t stop at artistic beauty. His personal library is one of the finest in Europe—he donated many volumes to the papal library and encouraged the study of literature in the academies and universities.”

“Did he also receive top marks for governing?”

Fabiani seemed to squirm beneath his scarlet cassock. “He instituted some very good works.”

“Like the Ancona project?”

“That, and others. He widened the Corso and commissioned the construction of the Trevi Fountain that is sure to become one of our city’s noted ornaments. He also showed remarkable proficiency at stamping out banditry in the wilder areas of the realm.”

Summoning an innocent smile to my mouth and eyes, I asked a question whose answer was known to all of Italy. “Wasn’t there some difficulty with the Spanish, though?”

“Pope Clement weathered that little contretemps.”

“By making one of the young Spanish princes a cardinal at age seven?” I continued, watching Fabiani’s pointed nose sniff the air as if we stood over the royal sewer. “I wonder if his mama will allow the little cardinal to leave his nursery and attend the conclave?”

Fabiani fingered the cross on his chest. His deep-set eyes were not amused. “I thought you came with me to honor His Holiness in song.”

I inclined my head. “Your servant, Eminence.”

Fabiani escorted me around the back of the throne and down a short hallway. We stopped at a door flanked by Swiss Guards bearing crossed halberds tipped with steel spikes. At a sign from Fabiani, the soldiers rapped their halberds on the floor in perfect unison, then stepped aside with a double-quick march.

A major-domo wearing a white ruff and red uniform conducted us to the bed chamber, announced our names, and immediately withdrew. It was clearly the nuns who ruled here, and by my guess, there wasn’t one a year under seventy. Their severe gray habits provided a stark contrast to the magnificence of the surroundings. Precious materials, the heritage of centuries of pious tithes and devotions, shone from every surface and corner. The bed hangings were spun of gold and silver threads. Golden caskets and book covers blinked with a rainbow of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Huge, age-darkened paintings of the Crucifixion and the Ascension were framed in gilt inlaid with jet and ivory. But all this I noticed from the corner of my eye. My chief concern was the old man half hidden behind the partially drawn bed curtains.