The King's Agent (16 page)

The touch added, the study fell silent and intent, so engrossed not a one looked up as Pompeo entered the house and joined the group hovering around the drawing, wedging himself between Aurelia and Battista.

“We are discussing Dante?”

Aurelia grabbed him by the arm, fingers digging into his muscular forearm.

“Dante!” Battista and Ascanio barked in harsh unison.

The youngster flinched back, soft brown eyes bulging.

“Have I offended?”

“No, no, of course not, Pompeo.” Battista reached over to give the young man a consoling squeeze of the shoulder. “We were just taken aback, no more. The name of the great poet has come up before in this quandary, but we did not think to put it in connection with this painting.” He calmed as he questioned, pulling the recently arrived youngster back into the group. “Why do you?”

Pompeo stepped close to the table once more, visibly relieved. “Is this the painting from the palace?” He leaned over to get a closer look as they confirmed his query. “I know this work; it is by Duccio,
sì?
”

Lucagnolo nodded; though he had not copied the artist’s signature upon his simple copy, it had been on the painting. Duccio di Buoninsegna had been one of the most influential Italian artists of Dante’s era. That Pompeo knew the work, and the artist, gave credence to his mastery of the topic.

“The three paths are said to symbolize the three phases in the
Commedia
.” Pompeo took up his lesson with more confidence. “Here the first leads to a great palazzo, but beneath its beauty lie all the ravages of Hell. In the center is the mountain, the hurdle of Purgatory to lead to Heaven if one can survive. And the last, the castle, it is the heights of Heaven ... of Paradise ... itself.”

His tutorial brought the rendering to life, a simple statement of a complex subject and yet it gave the work all its meaning.

“But where are we to go?” Battista voiced the question all pondered. “I do not recognize any of these places, though we cannot doubt—by their construction, by the landscape and the architecture—that they are all somewhere in the vast Republic of Italy.”

“Of this we can be sure,” Ascanio offered. “The first stop is a palazzo, a very large and opulent palazzo, the next a mountain, and the last a castle.”

“It is so very literal.” Giovanni looked unconvinced, smooth forehead crinkled with doubt. “The
Commedia
was a masterful allegory, a scathing statement against all the evil in the human spirit. Dante strove to reveal the nightmare of consequences caused by avarice and pride and greed. It was a condemnation.”

“Allegory, yes.” Barnabeo sat, pulling a basket-encased bottle toward him, filling the closest cup with the white, lemony-scented liquid. “But of a soul’s journey to God. We are all born with sin staining our souls. It is how we live that we wash ourselves of it.”

Aurelia stared down at the man; she never imagined such depth lay beneath the gruff exterior.

Ascanio shook his head. “Dante offered us a lesson, one of the world’s order and man’s place in it.”

Aurelia tipped her head in agreement; she had always seen the work in such a light herself. But being among these men, she realized she had learned little of humankind at the Mantua court. A statement on world order could never have explained how such men as these—thieves, hedonists, and artists among them—could possess such complexities that most hid beneath her sight.

“I think Dante intended all this and more.” Battista took the chair beside Barnabeo. “He represents the epitome of all that is knowledgeable and superb of Florence.”

Dante was indeed a son of Florence. Many considered the poet, born the son of a lawyer, one of the greatest philosophers of his age, a master of the literary as had rarely been found on the peninsula. The language he had used to create the
Commedia,
a marriage of Latin and the Tuscan dialect, had quickly become the unofficial official language of the Republic.

“I can tell you what it is not.” Ercole’s ever-pessimistic demeanor entered the debate. “It is not a map. It is symbolic, not literal.”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” Battista countered. “But perhaps if we take it in conjunction with this painting, the symbols with his text, we could see it as a set of instructions. Hand me my copy, would you, Pompeo?” Battista held out his hand toward the cluster of wing chairs, couches, and tables. “It should be just there, on the small table behind you.”

“I shall get mine as well,” Frado said, setting off to his room.

“I have mine here.” Giovanni pulled a small, leather-bound volume from the inside of his doublet, a tassel-ended ribbon marking his spot somewhere in the middle, somewhere in
Purgatory
.

“You carry it with you?” Aurelia asked him. She sat then herself, drank as well as she appraised the company in which she found herself.

He smiled down at her almost bashfully. “Always.” He sat beside her and opened the thin-leafed volume. “I will gladly share with you.”

These men had welcomed her into their coven without question, with a kindness and a chivalry reaching far beyond honor among thieves. Their intelligence and breadth of knowledge astounded her as much as their methods alarmed, and yet she felt an alliance with them, one she had never experienced before. She tucked her face into her cup, hiding her smile behind its rim.

Hours passed as pages turned in silence, a crinkle here and there to mark one or another’s progress through the piece. Written in the first person, it told of Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead.

“Ah, to have loved with such all-consuming passion,” Pompeo sighed, looking at the very round form of the day maid’s backside as she helped Nuntio to place a late supper upon their table. The plain though pretty girl giggled at his words and probing gaze, smiling back at Pompeo.

Throughout the epic poem, Dante’s love of Beatrice rose thick and sweet. Legend held that he had met the love of his life at the tender age of nine and though he spoke to her but a few times his passion for her—the sweet innocence of courtly love—had never wavered. He had never stopped loving her, not when she died at the young age of twenty-four, not when he took another woman as wife. Beatrice breathed in every whisper purling amidst Dante’s works; never once had he written of Gemma, his wife.

Aurelia laughed; she had seen many enactments of love at the sophisticated court of Mantua, seen them and through them. “Men speak highly of love when it causes them no trouble.”

“Such skepticism. Perhaps our guest has been burnt by love,” Battista scoffed, though not unkindly.

“No. I have not,” Aurelia responded without guile. “But one need not taste a lemon to know it is bitter.”

He laughed with her then, as did some others, and she lowered her gaze back to the poem yet did not read the words.

Had she known love in her life? She had known attraction, the kisses of flirtation, even infatuation. But love? She could not answer the question with any certainty and her ambiguity formed a sad commentary in and of itself. Would she wish to know the joys and anguish of love? That she could answer, though she cared for the response not a bit.

Battista slammed his book closed with a thwack and the gathering jumped and flinched.

“I am convinced. The painting, the poem, the triptych ... it is all very clear. We must make to a palazzo that is a living hell, a mountain that will be as hard to overcome as Purgatory, and to a castle that reaches up to the heavens.”

Aurelia had come to the same conclusion more than an hour ago, when one passage in particular—no more than a few choice words—had resounded with familiarity, words the marquess of Mantua had spoken to her when they had made a journey together. In the minutes since, her decision had been whether to tell, a puzzle for which there was perhaps more than one solution.

“Then it is to Hell, to Purgatory, and to Heaven we must go.” With a heavy sigh, Battista raised his dark eyes to Aurelia, and she met his look, matched it with equal parts of determination and apprehension.

“I am not sure if you should continue, Aurelia,” he muttered, anticipating the argument before she gave it her voice.

She shook her head, mouth set firm with indomitable conviction and the hint of a smile. “You have brought me for a reason. We cannot deny what the fates intend.”

“You believe in the fates, do you?” He hitched himself forward in his chair, drawing closer, leering at her, so near she spied the pinpoint reflection of light in his coal-like eyes. “And what do those fates have in store for us? You believe in that as well? That we cannot fight against it?”

“I believe in predestination, yes.” Aurelia’s smirk did not falter beneath his scrutiny, but instead grew wider. “Not that we
cannot
fight it, but that we shouldn’t.”

His stare he did not surrender, but a smile touched him, crinkling the corners of his eyes. Battista shook his head in denial or bemusement, either would suffice. “There is more danger here, Aurelia. I cannot expose you to it, not as an honorable man.”

His chivalry once more surprised her, as he wore it as easily as the cloak of a scallywag.

“You allowed me to bring you home, to return you safely to Florence. Why is this any different?” She admired him, true, though if he intended to leave her behind he was a fool.

Battista tossed back the waves of dark hair from his face as he laughed. “I had no choice, we both know it.”

“Do not delude yourself, or me. You brought me to Florence because you were convinced I could help you. And I can.” Aurelia stood, the undeniable regally straight posture now a testimony to her conviction. She leaned over the table and stabbed one finger into the pictured palazzo they agreed was Hell. “I know where this is.”

Twelve

The path to Paradise begins in Hell.

—Inferno

H
e didn’t move, nor speak a word. Battista’s smile faded from his face, a star snuffed out by a dawn sky. If he stared at her long enough, he wondered, could he reveal the truth, if she had known all along the location of their first destination? But there was nothing of it in her face, her beauty as ever in the forefront, her determination a hard, implacable stone wall just behind.

“Where is it, Aurelia?” he asked with a ruthless whisper, and not a man in the room stirred as they awaited her answer.

“It is the Palazzo Prato. No more than a half day’s journey from here.”

There was not the slightest hint of hesitation in her answer, nor had he expected there to be.

“How can you be so convinced?” Battista interrogated her as the barrister, the men gathered among them her judges.

“I have been there,” she stated flatly. “When put in the context of Dante’s words and the setting of this painting, I recognize it easily.”

Battista allowed not a quiver of expression, not the belief in her decisive statement, nor the fear that she duped them all. He sat back slowly, probing gaze riveted upon her face, his silence demanding she offer more evidence of her contention, and she complied.

Aurelia rose and pulled Lucagnolo’s sketch closer. “Here? See this cliff-sided pass? I have seen it through the curtains of my carriage. And this small golden dome? It is the chapel of the compound. This palazzo was one of the few places where my guardian allowed me to travel, in his company, of course. It is more heavily guarded than the Palazzo del Te.”

She sat back down, brows knit, puzzled gaze staring off into the distance of her life. “I have often wondered why the marquess brought me there. He said many times that the barone di Prato and his wife are the very worst sort of people, as if they were the devil’s own children.”

“Devil’s children?” Ercole repeated the phrase with a sharp edge of disgust. “Why?”

Aurelia crinkled her long, slim nose. “They are hedonists, unabashed and unashamed of it as well. They live for pleasure, of every type. The marquess allowed me only to sit at table and then insisted I retire, locking myself and my ladies in when I went.” Her slim shoulders shook as if she threw off a chill. “The sounds I heard continued all through the night. I often thought they were the sounds one might hear in Hell.”

Not a one of them missed the portent of her words. Frado caught Battista’s gaze over the woman’s russet head; in his friend’s countenance Battista saw the same thoughts: Aurelia’s pronouncements were difficult not to believe, nor did they have anywhere else to begin, and a quest must begin somewhere.

“You say you know these people? They will recognize you?” Battista turned back to Aurelia.

“
Sì,
they know me. And I them. I know just which names to mention to gain us not only access but a warm welcome as well.” Aurelia pinned him to the floor with her sharp stare. “And I will speak those names for you, at their door, if you promise to bring me. If you swear, on your honor, that you will allow me to participate in every juncture of this journey.”

Battista snorted derisively; she had invoked honor to elicit his cooperation. He added cunning to his growing list of her surprising characteristics.

“It is, as you say, your fate to do with as you please. If it is your choice to risk your life, then it is mine to allow it.”

Aurelia tipped her head, clearly pleased, a strange little smile playing at the corners of her lips. “I will have to disguise myself. As will you.”

Battista balked. “Me? Why me?”

“My guardian is no doubt convinced you have kidnapped me. If you remember, his guards saw you pull me through the hall, from one room to another. He would never believe it was anything but abduction.”

With a respectful grunt-like scoff, Battista raised his eyes heavenward, remembering clearly the moment she forced him to clasp onto her arm. This woman was indeed crafty, far too crafty.

“You must alter your appearance should any of the marquess’s men be in attendance at the palazzo when we arrive. I imagine he looks for us both and has from the moment we left. Any search order would contain a description of you, the best they could compile from others who took note of your presence, as did I.”