The King's Agent (23 page)

The forgery took Guffati but a few days to complete as they prepared Pompeo and Ercole for the journey through Hell. More than once during the telling, one or the other had balked, refusing to believe the tale. Only with repetition did they come to accept it as truth, only with a realization that turned their knuckles white.

The men had left that morning, and in a rare occurrence the
casa
that rang always with the voices and laughter of men simmered in somber quiet, empty save for Battista, Frado, and Aurelia. The others had taken to their own homes, unease over their friends’ safety magnifying the innate need for the warmth of the family hearth.

“What bothers me most”—Battista rested his head onto the hand propped up on the arm of his chair—“is that we have no clue where to find the next piece of the triptych.”

“Purgatory,” Aurelia offered uselessly from the couch. An unhelpful answer, though answer it may be. Clearly, they were to endure all three of the
Commedia’
s levels. Where Purgatory lay, none could surmise.

“We know from the Mainardi and from Dante’s words that it is to be found in or near a mountain.” Battista tapped his copy of the book upon his head as he spoke of the first maplike painting, as if the repetitive motion could batter an idea into his mind.

“Agreed.” Aurelia held Giovanni’s copy in her lap. She had tried to return it, but he had insisted she keep it, insisting with a laugh that she needed it far more than he did.

Slapping the book closed, she jumped up. “I am for my bed,” she told them, stepping around the jumble of furniture and heading for the stairs.

Battista raised his brows at her. “Already?” He glanced out the back doors, open in the warmth of the night, the sky still peachy with the glow of a setting sun.

“My head pains me,” Aurelia answered over her shoulder.

He stood and stepped toward her, reaching her with his long strides just as she took one step up. “Are you all right?”

She turned back, and he found consternation in the furrow between her brows, in the darkness of her changeable eyes. “
Sì,
I just need some sleep, Battista. No need for worry.”

He smiled, relieved, if not completely. “Then I will keep this loudmouth quiet and allow you some rest.” He dipped his head in Frado’s direction as Aurelia continued her climb.

“I am for the tavern.” Frado rose, and, with a flapping, dismissive wave, took himself up and out.

“All the better,” Battista called to Aurelia’s retreating form. “I will make for the garden. The weeds have been calling my name for days.”

His companions gone, now alone in the large room, his tumble of thoughts crept back in the unguarded silence. As promised, Battista took himself out the open double doors and stood with hands on hips as he surveyed the chaos of his small garden. His men often laughed at him, teasing him that the growing of herbs and flowers was a pastime for women, but he had helped his mother tend the family garden since he was a small boy; returning to the work brought him back to those untroubled times.

Tossing aside his doublet, lighting two pedestal torches on each side of the cozy, flora-filled niche, he rolled up the sleeves of his simple linen shirt and knelt in the dirt. Carefully he moved about the tender
imperati,
the early flowers already in full bloom—their short purple-striped petals bright even in the diffusing light—and the white clusters of
marginata
opening atop the black stems. He snapped the offensive scraggly weeds from between these beauties, as if each one represented the puzzles in his head. If not for the jangle of the front door latch, he would have stayed there till full dark drove him from his work.

“Who is there?” he called, calm though curious. His companions came and went without notice or pause, but he did not expect any of them on this night.

No answering reply came and he looked up, eyes squinting into the shadow-infested interior. The open room was empty, not even the specters of concern remained as the evening breeze wafted through, but he had not imagined the sound. A knot of fear bit into his head; he and Aurelia were alone in the house.

Pushing against his knees, he rose to his feet and crossed back into the house, heedless of the dirt prints his boots left on the polished cherrywood.

Aiming for the stairs, fearful for his guest, he changed course with a huff of air. The shadow passed by the smoky-glassed window, but he knew it as certainly as he would know his own face in the mirror. Running back to the garden, he grabbed his doublet, throwing it on as he made for the front door, opening it a crack, and peering out.

The fleeting impression confirmed his conjecture. There, just turning the corner, he spied Aurelia, her lace net and veil firmly in place.

Why he followed, why he did not make his presence known, he could not say for certain. Perhaps the nasty voice of suspicion—one he had heard speak her name in the past—kept him to the shadows behind her as she followed the ever-narrowing backstreets to a modest but simple area on the west side of the vast city.

Her unhesitant stride added to the insidious thoughts, for she had often said that she had never been to Florence. And yet she trod about with assurance and determination in her quick step.

Following her around the corner of a yellow stone house with green shutters—children playing in front of the door as two elderly men, their straw chairs tipped back to lean against the front of the building, looked on—Battista jumped back again.

Leaning no more than inches around the rough corner, he watched as Aurelia approached the third house on the left and the woman who sat at a table, a small tin cup in her hand. In the light of the street torches, he watched as the woman offered Aurelia a warm smile, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the round wood bench and the half-full carafe upon it. But Aurelia would have none of it; she shook her head and gestured, almost impatiently, to the door and the house beyond.

The woman must have been far more elderly than Battista first thought, for Aurelia helped her to her feet, the woman leaning on Aurelia’s arm as she hobbled into the house.

Quick as able, Battista turned the corner, ran to the house, and flung himself into the chair just emptied. It sat below and to the right of the front, double-shuttered window. He sucked in his breath, shoving his body back against the bricks as an arm reached out to clasp the shutters, closing them with a waggle of a fleshy wing.

But the aperture boasted no glass, and the shutters did little to suppress the voices.

“I am surprised to see you again so soon,
donna mia,
” the aged voice warbled with respect.

“
My lady,
” Battista ruminated,
she called Aurelia my lady; she must know the truth of Aurelia’s identity, at the least that she is a noblewoman
. In this notion he found yet another unpleasant surprise.

But he allowed none of his misgivings to show on his face or in his posture. As if he belonged to the house, he availed himself of the wine left behind, raising his cup with a smile to any who passed him by, to the revelers beginning to fill the street in the summerlike heat of this night. The passage would fill soon, leading as it did to more than one of the large piazzas that would host a myriad of entertainments on an evening such as this.

His smiles disguised a gruesome grimace as the merrymaking plugged the air, and he struggled to hear the conversation within.

“I could not wait ... needed ... ,” Aurelia said, impatience clear in her clipped diction.

The woman responded, but only a smattering of words reached his ears. “... I am doing my best, I promise you. But the painting you ...”

Battista longed to scream with frustration as he lost the older woman’s voice behind a bout of boisterous laughter, the hilarity of a group of young men passing along the street, full of themselves and their amusement. But what he had heard ... His jaw hurt as he bit down upon his anger. Aurelia spoke to this woman about a painting, but which—the Duccio or the Giotto—he could not tell, but it did not matter. Her complicity with this woman could only be a disloyalty to him, and it stabbed him with its vile purpose.

The women’s voices reached him again, words of thanks from Aurelia, imbued now with gratitude replacing irritation.

“I understand, Signora Alberini, really I do, but ...” Aurelia breathed deep on the proclamation and he heard a tone of deference, and yet she clearly urged the woman to give her more ... but more what he didn’t hear.

Battista threw back a full mouth swallow of wine, poured another dose, and tossed that down his gullet as well. He supposed she could be trying to help their cause, one respecting his goal. But if that were the case, why would she not have shared her efforts with him?

From the very start, Battista had often wondered if Aurelia’s actions were in the service of her guardian; the marquess of Mantua was a well-known art collector. Her devotion to him, her gratitude for her care and sustenance, might easily induce her to such a challenge, to obtain not only the triptych but also the antiquity, for the Mantuan collection. Battista’s first fear returned to haunt him once more, laying waste to all the trust his and Aurelia’s collective experience had built between them.

“Then if I am still here, Signora Alberini, I will return in a week.”

He heard Aurelia’s words clearly, realizing with a start that she stood at the door, that the portal inched open.

Clasping onto the name she tossed out so casually, a revelation that would allow him further inquiry into this incident, Battista jumped to his feet, almost crashing the chair to the street, dashing off in the opposite direction than that from which they had arrived.

Hidden well within a gaggle of people—a family of both young and old—Battista dared to look back at her. As he surmised, Aurelia lowered her veil before her face, dipped a shallow curtsy in parting, and headed back toward his house. He glared at her back, at the retreating figure of a woman who had become, once more, a stranger.

The dead of night stretched out long and hollow; in its dimness he found no ease, thoughts tangled on Aurelia and her nocturnal encounter. Like specters—one by the name of anxiety, the other agitation—two women, though they were one and the same, stood in his mind. The stranger thrust into his life by necessity, the friend who helped him survive and triumph. What he felt for each was equally as powerful, two encompassing emotions that tipped each end of a broad spectrum.

More than once, he had made for the steps, lifting one leg to make the climb, to barge into her room and demand an explanation. But each time, the face of the woman who had pulled him from the grip of fire rose up before him, holding him in place, preventing him from destroying what lay between them.

And yet if allegiance was their truth, why did she not come to him of her own accord?

“Damn it,” he swore under his breath, the same thought pelting him like hard nuggets of hail. He had to end the torment, had to ask her. He jumped up again, jumped to the stairs, and—

The front door banged open, the blood-covered face in its threshold the countenance of the devil himself.

“Battista!” the apparition cried out, one trembling hand raised, reaching out.

The specter knew his name. Battista drew his daggers, held them before him in defense. Until he rushed forward, until he saw the black hair and round dark eyes beneath the dirt, the blood, and the tears.

“Pompeo!” Battista yelled, shoving the blades back into their scabbards, thundering across the room, jumping the furniture to get to the man before he fell to the floor.

Just as he dropped, Battista reached him, catching him in his embrace, controlling the descent as they both lowered to the polished wooden planks.

Battista pushed the sweat- and dirt-crusted hair from the young man’s face. “Are you injured? Is this your blood?”

He searched Pompeo’s skin, his hands, his doublet, but found no wound, nothing to cause such a stain.

Pompeo opened his mouth to answer, but naught more than a sob came from his throat. As the tears dribbled off his chin, he shook his head.

Footfalls thundered on the stairs, first one and then another, lighter.

“Ercole? Where is Ercole?” The words scratched Battista’s throat as they squelched out, for he needed nothing more than this solitary ravaged form to answer the question.

Battista panted, he couldn’t find enough air; his heart pumped, though he would stop it, unable to believe his life continued if one of his men’s had ended.

Pompeo squeezed his eyes shut tight, great dollops of tears forced through the crinkled lids, as he whispered the harsh declarative, “Dead.”

Frado wailed as if struck, staggering away from the men on the floor.

Battista kissed the boy’s head, holding the young man close, rocking Pompeo as he offered up a silent prayer for this boy’s safekeeping and the care for the immortal soul of his lost comrade.

Over the top of Pompeo’s head, Battista’s gaze found Aurelia, stabbing her, as if she alone had killed Ercole.

Sixteen

To doubt is not less grateful than to know.

—Inferno

T
he darkest days of death do not occur as the loved one is laid in the ground, but rise up as life continues, their absence keen amidst the forever-changed normality.

Aurelia saw the descending of such grief upon Battista in the days following Ercole’s funeral; she saw the dashing of his hopes each time the door opened and the roly-poly man did not stand in the threshold, imparting good news in the dour manner so particular to his contrary demeanor.

Aurelia did her best to distract him, to keep his thoughts on the next piece of triptych, to the puzzle of where their Purgatory awaited them. But the days of frustrated study—hours spent over the paintings and the poem—only served to exacerbate his misery. He had found Purgatory in the passing of his dear friend.