The King's Agent (10 page)

“There’s nothing for it,” she hissed. “They will figure it out quickly enough when greeted by the emptiness of the room.”

Battista nodded grudgingly at her astute reflection and turned to follow. Instead of finding another chamber as he expected, he found himself standing close beside her in a narrow, almost pitch-dark stairwell, the steps heading in a straight line downward.

With each bend of his leg, the wound in his calf throbbed, alleviated only by the knowledge that at last he headed in the right direction.

Light shone in a rectangle around the cracks of a closed door at the bottom of the stairs. His guide pushed at it and it gave way with ease. Battista lunged behind her ... and stopped.

The sight he beheld was no less brilliant than the one he imagined awaited him in Heaven, if, by some miracle, he should earn his way there.

A masterpiece covered every inch of the walls and ceilings ... the room was the painting ... the room was the art. He had heard of this chamber, as so many had, as any lover of Italian artistry must, and had been saddened his mission would not allow him to see it.

The Camera degli Sposi
,
the famous Bridal Chamber. So I am able to see it after all, distressing though the visitation may be
.

He permitted his gaze to take in every inch of the frescoed room. Crafted by the brush of the genius Andrea Mantegna, it was the definitive example of illusionist painting, a technique allowing the art to share space and physicality with the people viewing it. To his right, a life-sized lord sat within a lush portico surrounded by a simpering court. A great meeting took place before him on the north wall, one filled with many and varied noblemen—one no doubt a prestigious Gonzaga family member—greeting one another with amiability. He raised his besotted gaze upward to the oculus that offered the illusion of blue sky and his breath caught, as if he did, in fact, glimpse Heaven.

“You really are a fool,” the woman railed at him, pulling him toward the north wall, reaching out as if to shake the hand of a nobleman upon it. She pushed and a rectangle of partition gave way, Battista stumbling behind.

The rush of cold air sobered him, bringing clarity to his pain-muddled mind. With a great gasp, he filled his lungs with the pure air and the taste of freedom.

He bent over, bracing his arms upon his thighs as he caught his breath, as he willed the throbbing in his leg to subside. They stood in a small, intimate courtyard circled with a white-filigreed wooden wall overgrown with vines, an enclosure not unlike the one depicted upon the wall of the Camera degli Sposi. His breathing returned to something resembling normal; he straightened and stepped toward her.

Lifting her hand to his lips, he brushed his mouth across the smooth flesh, a dashing countenance attempting to shine beyond the sheen of pain-induced sweat upon his brow.

“I can never thank you enough,
monna cara,
you have saved my life.” With the gallant gesture and obsequious salutation, he stepped away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” her sharp tongue snapped at his back.

Battista did not slow his already-lethargic stagger, one noticeably off-kilter were he to stop and make an assessment, but pointed to the elaborate gate at the far end of the courtyard.

“That is the way out, is it not?”

“Well, yes.” Her words sounded very far away now, long sounds slithering at him, and Battista wanted to congratulate himself on a quick and painless parting. He turned to look at her, and found her only two steps away. Confusion possessed him; his head began to hum, stars burst in his eyes, and the ground rose up to meet him.

Eight

To run over better waters
the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails,
as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.

—Purgatorio

A
urelia stared at the man lying prostrate on the checkered gray and beige stone of the courtyard. What had impelled her to assist this thief she could not say. She had watched him in the ballroom, his beauty catching her eye, the gleaming black hair, the soft though nearly black brown eyes. But she had seen beautiful men before, many in fact.

His manner had enticed her. Try though he might, there was something suspicious in his movement, to her eye at least. A devilish charm, an edgy allure of danger, accompanied his suave flippancy, and it beguiled her.

Thankfully, the marquess’s speech had been short, and while the words still echoed on the roll of applause she had rushed from the room to find this man. Her curiosity—as forewarned through the ages—had brought her to this fine mess.

Aurelia took a few steps forward and stood over the man. He breathed still, his chest rose and fell, but the puddle of blood below his left leg spread with a dastardly ooze, staining the stone beneath. The loss of more blood may soon prove fatal.

She pulled at the short cloak bunched beneath him and, one end in each hand, she braced her arms across her chest, ripped the gold ribbing along the edge, tearing away a swath of fabric with it. With an economy of movement, she wrapped the cloth around his injured limb, the sinew hard beneath her hands. Within seconds, the material darkened with the tarnish of blood, but it did not flood through and quickly slowed.

“Well, that’s that at least,” Aurelia said to the night, for it was her only alert companion. The implied silent question followed the words:
What next?

She straightened her legs, gaze reaching out to the horizon beyond the palace confines, heart trembling at the panorama, at the infinite, unknown vista stretching out before her. With a peek at the man at her feet, her glance turned to the building at her back, traveling all the way up the cold stone walls, walls that had forever hemmed her in. She bit her heavy upper lip, but it did little to stem the salacious grin spreading her mouth wide.

Aurelia curtsied, to the palace and the unseen lord within. “May strength, faith, and wisdom be my companions.”

Stepping to the man’s head, she lifted it, bracing it against her now-bent knees, decision defined and accepted, her swift actions reflected her resolve.

“Wake up. You must wake now.” She slapped his cheek gently, then again with more tenacity, his sharp cheekbones pronounced beneath her palm. She was a strong woman, vigorous from hours and hours of riding and walking the palazzo grounds, but he was a large man, tall and dense with muscle. Aurelia did not think she could drag him to safety. She leaned over, her lips so close to his ear she could smell the tang of male sweat and fire in his hair, and closed her eyes.

“Now is the time.” She hissed a ferocious whisper from between the tips of her teeth.

His eyes fluttered. His lips parted in a moan. It was enough.

Aurelia pushed against his shoulders, bracing her unfurling legs, their bodies forming an inverted V as she used the leverage to raise them both to their feet. Further roused, the man’s head lifted from his chest and his blinking eyes took in his surroundings.

“Still here?” he spat incredulously at the discovery of his lot.

“Not for long.” As the sounds of armored guards clanged just beyond the palace door, Aurelia stepped to his left, his injured side, and threw his arm over her shoulder, shoving her body in the crook of his arm and hefting as much of his weight onto her back as she could abide.

“No,” the man grumbled. “Stay. I ... can ... go on alone.”

He took a step and faltered, dumping more of himself upon her.

“You will get nowhere without me,” she hissed.

Aurelia half-carried the stumbling man, turning them right with a lumbering though spritely step.

“The gate,” he muttered, dimpled chin jutting toward the double-doored exit they left behind.

“The guards are upon us in an instant. They will know a stranger would use that exit.”

After but a few gangly paces, she brought them to a much smaller gate, no wider than a single person, tucked away in the vines in the east wall, near the palazzo itself.

“A servant’s door,” she told him, but only out of a need to flaunt her own knowledge. “As I said, you need me.”

Slipping them sideways through the narrow egress, she took a quick moment to shut the gate behind them and, with his body relying on hers more with every step, rushed them across the meadow abutting the village and into the forest just beyond.

Aurelia saw little in the glow of the half-moon hanging in the western sky; the troupe of tree trunks above blocked out even that meager light, allowing no more than inky blotches to gleam through. She brought them but a few paces into the foliage and smuggled them into a tight brace of evergreens, thick enough to keep them hidden, not so far as to lose their way.

Battista slipped out of her embrace the instant she loosened it, slumping to the forest floor, leaves and twigs crackling beneath the burden of his weight. She arched her back, stretching against the feel of the burden relieved.

Leaning his back against the bole of an evergreen, he reached down and patted his cloth-wrapped leg, hand coming away with no more than a few dabs of blood.

“I am in your debt, Signora ... ?”

“Aurelia,” she responded, prying her gaze from its study of the palazzo, scanning the space between for any guards who may have picked up their trail. But the small expanse of farmland was empty of all save the budding shoots of spring growth and the packs of scavenging guards headed out along the roads, not into this forest that would lead a stranger to naught but a cliff and a fatal drop to the river below.

His thick brows rose on his smooth forehead. “Aurelia? It is just ... Aurelia?”

“The Lady Aurelia.” She sat down beside him, offering as skeptical a glance as she received. “It is enough.”

He laughed then, a low, sultry purring. “Very well then, Madonna Aurelia. I am Battista della Palla, and I owe you my life.”

Battista lifted her hand off her lap and brushed his lips across it. She smiled at him as she would at a mischievous yet indulged child.

“Yes, you do.” Aurelia longed to laugh as well, at him and his devilish charm, at what she had done, at the thrill of the unknown stretching before her. Her wishes had come true and she would suffuse herself in every serving of it like a fat man at a feast.

With keen observation, she took in their position, the activity visible at the palazzo, and the condition of the man beside her.

“Where is your horse? Where are your men? You have not come to this errand alone?” She frowned at him, at such a ridiculous notion.

Battista stared up at the sky above and smacked his lips. “No, I did not come on this journey alone. But my companion, with my horse, is long gone by now, I presume. Or he had better be.”

It was her turn to raise a skeptical brow and he capitulated beneath it.

“I’m not sure if the agreed-to time has passed, or if he heard the alarm.” He shrugged as if his situation were of no great consequence. “In either case, he would have taken himself away, saved himself as it were. It has been our agreement for the whole of our lives.”

“Oh, I see,” Aurelia stated with biting succinctness. “Then you are a habitual thief?”

“How dare you, woman!” Battista blustered with outrage, but one only slightly sincere. She saw his amusement in the smile that narrowed his eyes. He tipped his body closer to hers, slipping sideways along the trunk holding their backs. “I am an art dealer, and a highly res ... ected one at that.”

She smiled at his slurred protest. His handsome face, now no more than inches from hers, revealed his fatigue and weakness and her amusement faded.

“If I am forced ... into thievery ...”—his head slumped farther still, until it came to rest upon her shoulder, his words slithering through lips no longer moving—“... then I do ... whatever ... God will forgive me.”

His last argument—prayer—uttered, Battista lost consciousness, full weight once more falling upon her.

Aurelia shook her head in wonder. A penitent thief, a religious rogue ... of all the men to encounter, of all the creatures on the earth to indulge her capricious desire, she had to choose such an ir-resoluble person.

With a gentle touch, she lifted his head, shimmied out from under him, and laid him down upon the soft pine needles, bunching his cape beneath his head. She scurried on her knees to his legs, squinting in the dimness at his wound. The dark stain of the makeshift bandage had become moist; the wound still bled and required another wrapping. Her appraising gaze latched onto his satchel, and she snatched at it, sitting back off her knees as she pulled it onto her lap.

Aurelia’s groping hand found smooth metal first, and she pulled out an engraved, finely wrought flask. She shook it and received the heavy gurgle of a full flagon. She pulled out the cork with a pop and touched the opening to her lips, nose curling, shivering at the strength of the libations dripping down her throat. She put the stopper back in the container, but kept it out of the sack; she would use more to clean his wound.

A bundle of rope, a pouch of metal rods—tools of some sort—and two pieces of well-worn flint; the man was indeed prepared for anything. His vigilance served him well. In the meager light, Aurelia unwrapped Battista’s wounded leg and dribbled some of the powerful liquid onto the raw, bloody slash about two inches in length. The man flinched and thrashed a bit, but didn’t regain consciousness and Aurelia rewrapped the leg with a linen also found in the sack, its unknown dried meat removed and set aside. The ministrations had an instant effect; Battista calmed, breath growing deeper as he lapsed into a heavier rest.

Aurelia sat back down, resting once more against the curved trunk. In the distance, she heard the refrains of orchestral music; the party carried on, as she knew it would. The marquess’s guards would have done their jobs well, containing the alarm, dousing the fire, secreting the search so as not to disturb or inform his guests. Only the nobleman would know of the intrusion. The pine needles beneath her pricked her skin as did her guilt for the worry she caused.