The King's Agent (14 page)

Thrusting a finger at her own chest, she almost laughed at their ill-informed estimations. “You imagine
I
would do it?”

“Well, you are the only woman here,” Ercole groused, saying what they all thought.

Aurelia raised a derisive glance heavenward, shaking her head and the mass of unkempt chestnut waves upon it. “And I have been waited on all my life. I know nothing of cleaning or cooking. Look at me.” She flung her hands up into the air, performing an ungainly pirouette, displaying her disheveled and wrinkled appearance without shame. “I know not even how to care for myself.”

Her confession hung bitterly in the air. Would they think ill of her for flaunting her station? But with a scathing flash of insight she realized such preeminence would be the least of her words’ offense.

“Were you the marquess’s mistress?” Battista ventured the question, the same she saw in each of their intrusive stares.

She could have bitten off her tongue with her teeth and spat it out for its crime. Her own words had brought her to this moment, one she had been avoiding for days. Aurelia thought Battista would have asked her to explain herself far sooner than this and she had been formulating the story for some days. But she had underestimated the power of gratitude.

With a sigh of capitulation, she plunked herself down upon the couch beside Pompeo. Perhaps it was better to tell them all at once; it would eliminate the need for duplicating the tale with each telling.

“No, I was never the marquess’s mistress.” She shook her head, clasping her hands primly upon her lap. “I have been the ward of the lord of Mantua since just after my birth.”

They had gathered around her, slowly, as if afraid to spook a fretful bird.

“Are your parents ... dead?” Battista asked, wedging himself into the small space on the cushion to her left.

Touched by the gentle sympathy in his voice, Aurelia still could not allow it to hinder her response. “I never knew my parents.” She offered the rehearsed answer, took a deep breath, and continued. “My life has been a very privileged one, it is true, but by its very nature, it has been overly sheltered and sequestered. There were directives left, by those who created me, putting stern prohibitions on my activities. It was always meant for me to live a very pious, devoted life, though without the need for vows.”

It was a story so very close to the facts and yet so vacant of any meaningful truth, but she gleaned, by the sympathetic faces gathering around her, that it was enough.

Not a word did the gathering offer to such a tale, for what could they say? Battista patted the ball of her hands and Aurelia had to fight the urge to fling off the embrace. She had no need for sympathy. Understanding, yes ... a relief from the mundane existence, most definitely. But pity without action was useless to the extreme.

“Come, Monna Aurelia, your supper awaits,” Nuntio offered from his perch behind the settee, and she turned a grateful smile to the supplicating man.

“Wonderful idea, Nuntio,” Battista praised him. “And on the morrow you will make for the lower village, near the Ponte Vecchio, use whatever funds you need to hire a maid, or perhaps two,” he continued with a shamefaced smile and a wary glance about the house. “Your dedication should not be a burden, my friend.”

Nuntio gave a gratified bob of his head and led them to the kitchen.

Aurelia had not seen day turn to night, had forgotten her hunger in the anxiety of the last few moments, but the mention of food brought the basic instinct rushing back.

As the men gathered about the table and the steaming platters of food Nuntio had set upon it, the conversation turned back to their search.

“Did I show you the work by da Panicale?” Ascanio asked of Battista, who nodded. “Frightening, is it not?”

They all nodded in agreement, including Aurelia. She had not known such works existed and their very reality frightened her. Those who guarded her life had taken great pains to guard her education as well, from her.

Da Panicale’s was a crude rendering to be sure, wrought sometime early in the fifteenth century, but the anomaly of the picture could not be denied. Akin to the piece by Crivelli, the circular object dominated da Panicale’s painting, but in this work there were hundreds of them, arranged in almost precise rows, as if they were lines of an attacking army.

“A Florentine, da Panicale,” Giovanni said, as if the fact made the reality of the image that much harder to bear.

“Lucagnolo was correct,” Battista murmured. “There are many paintings with such ... things ... in them.”

The thought set more than one man pushing his plate away, sending a few back to the search, but whether to resolve the issue or to avoid it, Aurelia could not tell.

Before very long, only Battista and Aurelia remained at the table, each batting the last forgotten morsel of food around on their plates, but neither taking another bite. Try as she might, her gaze returned to him again and again; for all equal efforts, she could not deny the beauty of the rugged face. Yet it was not the splendor of the man enthralling her, but his reality.

He looked up at her then, as if the inquisition of her gaze poked at him, and smiled in question, rich brown eyes, so deep they reflected points of light with equal brilliance, crinkling up at the corners.

“Why you?” She placed her knife on the table and leaned forward, hands splayed in front of her hunched shoulders.

He wrinkled his brow at her.
“Scusi?”

“Why have you chosen this as your path? Why do you trade your morality for the sake of Florence?” She understood the depth of what she asked him, cudgeled her brain to make the query simpler, but she could not, she could but repeat the first question, “Why you?”

He laughed then, leaning back, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair, and tipped his head upon his hand. “Why do any of us do what we do?”

It was an evasive answer and she would not let it serve. She kept the question upon him with a piercing stare.

Battista smiled with a capitulating shake of his head. “I could tell you how my father was killed when I was still young, also in defense of Firenze. Or I could tell you of King François’s kindness and charity to me and my family, for that would indeed explain a great deal as well.” He leaned forward then, and their faces were no more than inches from each other; she could smell the wine’s nuttiness upon his breath. “But they are all merely pieces of the puzzle. Who knows why we do the things we do. Do you?”

He turned the tables on her, sultry stare studying every inch of her face. Aurelia backed away, from him and his probing, uncertain how to deal with either.

They sat bound in the expectant silence and she struggled for a way out of it, only too thankful when the distraction came.

“I have it! Sweet holy Mother of God, I have it!”

They all began to talk and yelp at once, turning to Giovanni as he jumped from his chair, holding a slim volume high over his head as he pranced about in victory, yellow curls falling in his crinkled, pale eyes.

“The painting? You found it?” Battista wheeled round.

“Give it here.” Ascanio tried to pluck the book from Giovanni’s hands.

“Show me,” Frado barked.

But Giovanni would not have the moment—or the book—snatched from his grasp. He rushed to the table and shoved the book upon it, resting it between Battista and Aurelia, the other men tumbling over one another to get a look.

It was round in shape, the painting was, a unique characteristic alone, but at first glance there appeared to be nothing else unusual about the work. Perched over a haloed cherubic St. John, the baby Jesus in his loving embrace, the Virgin’s large prayerful presence dominated the center of the piece. Over her right shoulder, the majority of the background depicted a shoreline and rolling hills on the opposite side. But the small portion of setting behind her left shoulder had them all straining for a better view.

Beyond the trees, just behind Mary, were more gently sloping hilltops. Upon the highest one, a man stood, gaze raised to the sky, hand shading his eyes as if he struggled to see. At the apex of the man’s gaze, the undeniable object hovered, for it satisfied even Frado’s conception of a ship, with a pointed prow and rounded bottom. And yet it hung in the sky as if it flew like a bird.

“An air ship,” Ercole whispered, and each one of them heard the quiver in his voice.

“But ... it doesn’t point to anything,” Ascanio spat a frustrated sputter.

Giovanni answered with a smirk, “It points to nothing in the painting, but who knows what it points to on the wall upon which it sits. Look.” With a tick of his chin, he redirected their attention to the words beneath the etching.

They had all been so preoccupied with the rendering itself, they had not bothered to read the caption accompanying it. The work was attributed to the great Florentine painter Sebastiano Mainardi and its current locale was no more than a few paces from this very house.

“
Dio mio,
it hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio.” Pompeo’s voice cracked, a telltale sign of a puberty not long discharged.

As if goaded into action by a cattle prod, more than one man rushed for the door, corralled back by Battista’s loud call.

“Where are you going? Have you forgotten the time?”

Giovanni, Pompeo, and Ercole came up sharply, laughing with embarrassment; they had lost track of the hour—of the day—truth be told.

“We will all go,” Battista promised them, “first thing on the morrow. For now, make to your beds. We have all earned a good night’s rest.”

They bid one another good night, those who lived elsewhere at last taking their leave of the
casa,
every face set in the same mask of turbidity, the same fear of the unknown and the ship that flew in the sky.

Eleven

Do not rest in so profound a doubt except she tell it thee,
who shall be a light between truth and intellect.

—Purgatorio

“
Y
ou are quite anxious to be off,” Battista greeted Aurelia as he entered the room, amused by her fidgety waiting.

As she hovered impatiently by the door, stepping toward it and away as if in a dance, Aurelia’s fingers fluttered on the sides of her gown, her gaze plied upon the portal as if she might open it with her will. She had taken great pains to improve her appearance—the simple daffodil gown she’d worn since arriving was far less wrinkled than it had been yesterday and her hair was pinned up in a simple, if neat and flattering, coif.

She answered him with a wide smile irradiating her beauty from within and it took him aback; despite all the thoughts he chewed upon concerning her during the last few days—and there were indeed many—he continually tried to ignore her comely countenance. Green eyes glowing, full lips moist, porcelain cheeks flushed with excitement ... features too striking for any to disregard.

“Very anxious,
sì,
” Aurelia tittered. “I am most impressed by your beautiful city, at least what I have seen of it, and long to see more.”

Battista enjoyed this side of her immensely, had always seen it lying just beneath her stoic surface. By her own description, she had led a serious life, one bereft of many joys; it explained why she had helped him with so little consideration, had left Mantua with him so quickly. And though she tried perpetually to don the grave mien that was most probably her usual aspect, a feisty spirit longing to be unleashed lay just below, a spunky sprite hiding in the foliage of a magical garden, waiting to spring loose upon the world. He glimpsed the nymph now and again, though she tried to keep her impish smile a secret. If walking the streets of Florence appeased such mettle, Battista was only too pleased to be her guide.

“Have you broken your fast?” he asked, making for the kitchen and whatever fresh bread and jam might be available.

But she shook her head, pacing between the door and the window once more, peering out. “No, I haven’t. I’m not hungry just now.”

Battista laughed and changed direction; he would not allow his own peevishness to delay her one moment more. “We will have something to eat along the way, yes?”

“Oh yes. That would be wonderful.”

Before he could say another word, she tossed up the latch and pulled open the door, stepping out into the bright spring morning, thrusting herself into the stream of activity flowing just outside. Dawn’s rain had hurried away, leaving only small puddles in the ruts of the hard-packed dirt street, tiny blotches of water that caught the sun and sent it sparkling back upward.

“We’re leaving, Frado,” Battista called out over his shoulder, joining Aurelia on the busy street. Frado bounded gracelessly down the stairs, pulling up fast on their heels.

They had traversed barely a few paces when Battista’s men caught them up, Lucagnolo among the group, but not Pompeo, who saw to other work for Battista, an errand of little importance in comparison, but one needing doing no matter. Every face wore the same almost-childish zeal—albeit one tempered with trepidation—as that shared by Aurelia and, were he to be honest, Battista himself. Even Barnabeo’s boulderlike bald head and scarred face could not disguise his cautious curiosity.

The troupe turned left from Battista’s house and then quickly left again, away from the grand palazzo. They took up almost the entire width of the avenue, forcing others upon the fairway to step aside and make way; their legion could not have been more ostentatious were they to blare trumpets as they marched in military formation.

“This will not do.” Battista stopped, as did the group around him, now a clogging cluster of confusion.

“If we enter the Palazzo Vecchio all together, the soldiers will be upon us in an instant. We must go separately or at least in smaller groups.”

They met his pronouncement with relenting grunts of agreement, yet not a one of them volunteered to let others go first.