The King's Agent (11 page)

The man beside her snuffled in his sleep and Aurelia smiled at the silliness of it, the expression feeling peculiar but pleasing.

They dare not dally too much longer, for night would soon make its way to day. But if he didn’t rest a bit, he might not make the journey to ... wherever they might be bound. The thought of sleep impossible, every nerve in her body tingled with heightened alert; she hummed with the adventure in her grasp, unable to temper the mix of joy and fear thrumming through her.

Reaching out, Aurelia pulled his satchel close once more. True, she had found all she needed, but perhaps there were other items of value, or so she told herself, arguing against her own chiding conscience.

Her fingers curled around a parchment and she pulled it out. Aurelia could see the slanted lines and twirls inscribed on it, but not the words themselves. Her head tilted as she studied it, at the oddly familiar curve of the letters. She had seen this hand before.

Aurelia held the parchment out, then up, searching for a patch of unfiltered moonlight. She stood, saw the beam of illumination wafting upon the patch of forest a few steps to the left, and with another tinge of guilt untied the bow as she made quickly for it.

In the pale gray light, the unfurled parchment revealed its secrets.

Aurelia wanted nothing as much as to deny them with a scream. She read the words, now convinced of which hand had wrought them, and read them again. Not one to welter in anger for all she may be constantly piqued at the marquess, but in this she found a wealth of the disturbing emotion. How could he not have told her that this revelation, and what it led to, still existed? How could no one have told her? How could nothing have been done?

Aurelia’s hand, and the parchment in it, fell to her side.

Battista groaned in his sleep, her head snapped toward the forgotten man. Who was he and what was he doing with this? She wavered between the thought that the parchment changed everything and her much-believed conviction that nothing happened without a reason. She could destroy the parchment, but it would only be an impermanent repair.

No, she shook her head, vehemence tossing her now-scattered chestnut curls further asunder. No, she had arrived at this moment for a purpose; the fates had brought her exactly where she needed to be. How many wars were won by those who kept their enemies close?

Aurelia returned to the man’s side, rewound the scroll, tucked it into her palm, and sat down to wait.

He awoke of his own accord, though just moments before she meant to wake him. Pink dawn light hugged the horizon beyond the woods; it would only be a matter of an hour or so before it touched them.

Palm heels to swollen eyes, Battista rubbed at them as he sat up slowly, flexing and unflexing his left foot, testing the strength of his injured calf, satisfied, if not elated, at the results. Battista looked at her sheepishly.

“Aurelia, is it?”

She smiled slightly, not blaming him for the pain and loss of blood that rendered his recollection fuzzy.

“Indeed.” She nodded. “I am Aurelia. You are Battista della Palla. And this ...”—with a flourish she revealed the scroll hidden in her hand—“... is what you were after.”

Battista’s dark glare jumped from her, to the parchment, and back. He opened his mouth, said nothing, and closed it again. He pushed against the ground, as if to stand, but had not the strength for it. He could deny her question no longer.

“
Sì,
it is,” he grumbled with more than a tinge of exasperation. “Well, actually it isn’t. I thought I would ... acquire a ... a sculpture, yes, a sculpture. But—”

“You mean a triptych,
sì?
”

The man’s square jaw sagged an inch, though he tried his best not to allow it, and she kept him pinned to the moment with a narrowed stare.

“A triptych, yes.” He shrugged, throwing up a hand toward her and the parchment, upper lip curled with dissatisfaction. “But all I found for my troubles was this parchment, though the label implies it may be of value yet.”

So he hadn’t read the parchment, she thought, all the better. “I know much of this piece, of Giotto himself, for I am a student of art and have been for a long while.” She inched closer, tapping the air between them with the parchment to drive home each contention.

Battista tried to snatch it, but his reactions were too slow and with a flick of her wrist she denied him the prize.

“He painted it for Scrovegni, you know, or at least that is the most prevalent theory. It is because of their mutual admiration for il Poeta.”

The names she tossed so casually at him—that of Giotto’s last and perhaps greatest benefactor, the moniker by which so many Italians referred to Dante—had the hoped-for effect. Battista looked at her greedily, as if she were the next masterpiece he must filch.

“I know more, much more,” she assured him with a cock of her head. “And I will share all I know ... if you take me with you.”

Battista’s hopeful, wide-eyed expression closed like a slammed shutter.

“What a ridiculous notion.” He shook his head and winced with pain, continuing to argue as he rubbed between his eyes. “You are a member of the marquess’s household, the same I have just pillaged.”

“Pillaged?” she scoffed at him with a tilt of her head, brows rising high upon her smooth forehead. “Truly? If that sorry escapade is what you call pillaging—”

He waved her impudence away with a long-fingered hand. “I have made off with an obviously invaluable item. Why would I take you with me?”

She rose and his gaze rose with her.

“Because you are intrigued by my knowledge and want more of it. Because you are seriously injured and weak, and won’t make it ten feet from here without my help. And because ...”—she held out the parchment before his face, taunting him with it—“... because I have already read this, could just as easily destroy it, and never reveal its message to you.”

Battista smiled and in it she glimpsed one of his most powerful weapons, his malignant magnetism. She tried not to quiver as his gaze combed over her. “You are correct, my lady, those are all good reasons for taking you, but how do I know I can trust you?”

Aurelia chewed on her lip; a sign of her veracity would seal their bargain, her lust for adventure indulged, her purpose respected.

Without another word, she held out the scroll and released it into his hesitant grasp without vacillation. Aurelia watched him as he read it, observed the curtain of curiosity—one she had worn since her first reading—muddy his assured gaze. Aurelia squatted down beside him, perusing the words yet again.

They bent together over the parchment, able to read it in the growing light, their heads brushing up against each other. He finished a second reading before she did, and she felt his stare upon her face.

“It is clear and yet it isn’t, though I have read it more than a few times.” She stepped away but not without a twitch to throw off the shiver upon her shoulders. “It is apparent the pieces of the triptych are no longer together.”

“Agreed.” Battista nodded. “But there is nothing said of where they are.”

“Only the reference to the one painting and Dante’s words—”

“Which I knew,” Battista rushed to reveal, not to be outdone by her knowledge.

“—that will show us the way. But to which painting?”

Battista shook his head, eyes rolling heavenward. “One painting to find three, to find—” He broke off his thought with a forced laugh. “Frado will wail with the angst of it.”

But Aurelia had stopped her musings, head tilted to the sky.

“The morning birds are beginning to call. We must away.”

Battista pushed against the ground, fighting against the weakness, and she jumped to his side, helping him up. But once on his feet, he swayed before taking a step, and she quickly helped him back down.

“You cannot travel on foot,” she mumbled, gaze jumping from him to the palazzo and back again. “Wait here,” she ordered, and set off along the faint deer path pointing toward the palace.

Battista chuckled, tossing his hands weakly upward in helpless surrender. “How and where would I go?”

She spared him not a response as she ran through the field, running with her back bent, hidden in the tall grass until she reached the stables. The young groomsmen were still asleep, thank the fates, and the horses left behind by the frenzied guards knew her scent, did not rankle at her appearance. She often indulged in an early morning ride, and the beasts knew her well. She saddled a great white charger—the perfect pale beast to balance the dark man waiting for her in the woods—along with her favorite stallion, the steed’s black, moist nose nuzzling her neck with familiar affection, as doubts crowded and nudged against Aurelia, but she refused to give them sway. She kept her mind on only what she need do in that moment, all else be damned.

But as Aurelia scurried the outfitted horses out the rear door of the stable, as she grabbed a satchel and filled it with feed, as she rushed through the meadow with them, praying not to be seen, one thought etched itself in her thoughts and she greeted it with a mixture of pain and fiendish delight.

Now I am the thief
.

Nine

The more perfect a thing is,
the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.

—Inferno

H
e recognized the slant of nebulous light through the translucent wood-framed oilcloths. Battista blinked against it, eyes adjusting with prickly slowness. He lay in his room, he distinguished it without another glance, but how could it be possible?... He was in the woods. Yes, in the woods in the early morning, with a woman, a very beautiful woman, and they were looking at ...

Battista flung himself up, linens falling away to expose his unclothed body, skin warm as a balmy afternoon breeze fluttered upon it.

Where was the woman and, more important, where was the parchment? He raked back the waves of dark hair from his face and closed his eyes, willing himself to remember. With painstaking deliberation, the images revealed themselves.

Aurelia had returned with two horses and somehow he had gotten himself upon one. Though he did seem to remember her pushing at his behind with a strength and a curse he had not expected from one so seemingly dainty and demure. He remembered musing on her depths, far more than a lovely face and a curvaceous figure. She had led them away, along the edge of the forest and away from the palazzo. He had told her to head south for Florence, told her the name of the street this house sat upon.

But there were no memories beyond that moment, and what could have taken place between then and now frightened him.

Battista clamped a hand over his mouth, squeezing his face as he tried—to no avail—to remember more. He crawled sheepishly from his skin and studied the events earlier in the night through an outsider’s critical eye. To launch such an attempt alone was arrogance of grotesque proportion. Were his father alive he would cuff Battista sharply on the back of his head, and all too well deserved it would be, too. He could not confuse his success with who he was, but keep it only as what he had achieved. Battista flinched these thoughts away with painful aversion.

A puzzled frown creased his face as he allowed his fingers to investigate his skin; the thick growth of hair upon his cheeks told yet another discouraging tale, one he had no desire to hear. At least two days had passed since his last memory, an abundance of time for mischief to run amok.

Tossing back the bed sheet with an impatient hand, Battista surveyed his leg. The dull throb radiating from his calf reacquainted him with his wound, but upon inspection he found but a small wrapping. Peeling it away gently, he revealed more crude stitches than he dared to count, but no spreading redness, no oozing pus, to indicate infection. His leg and the binding reeked of earthy odors; he scrunched his nose at the malodorous mixture of sharp mint, dirt, and lavender. A physician had attended him; the chopped herbs speckling both his leg and the bandage testified to it.

Battista replaced the dressing and swung his legs out of bed, steeling himself at the true test of his health.

With a deferential hesitance, he planted his bare feet on the smooth, dark wood and eased his weight onto his legs. He stood unaided without overwhelming pain, but he could not step fully upon his left foot without the deep throb of discomfort, a soreness testifying to muscle trauma, not of raw, tearing flesh. Encouraged, Battista took a few steps. He could not walk without favoring the leg with a heavy limp.

He grabbed at his satchel hanging on one of the tall carved posts of his bed. Rifling through it, tossing aside the items intrinsic to his trade, his frantic search was futile. No parchment lay within its confines.

“Merda!”
Battista flung the bag away, cursing at the parchment’s absence, for he held clearly the memory of their returning it to the satchel; he had put it back in there himself, along with Aurelia’s heavy veil that she had tossed off her head, as well as the half-full flask of brandy she had used to treat his wound. The parchment’s disappearance incited his fear to panic.

Unconscious of his nakedness, he shuffled to the door as fast as he could and threw it open.

From below, the sounds that were the chorus of his life rose up: male voices, raucous laughter, coins clattering upon tabletops, men chewing and slurping with little heed of good table manners.

Many, if not all, of the men he considered family were below. He prayed Aurelia was among them and that she still had the parchment.

She wished she could wash away her wide-eyed expression, the smile of childish delight, but it was a fruitless struggle. Aurelia had never walked alone—anywhere—she had never seen a city as magnificent as Florence, and her solitary experience of it produced an almost-unconscionable thrill.

It had taken two days to convince Battista’s man to allow her the expedition. The man who called himself Frado had been so grateful to her for returning Battista to them—his relief no doubt a direct equal to his guilt for leaving him in the first place—his caution gave way to his gratitude.