The King's Agent (41 page)

Battista lifted the edge. “I will turn it back no more than I have to, I promise. And Aurelia will lift your gown,
sì?
”

They did not wait for an answer; the pain possessed the girl wholly as they revealed the pale protrusion of her belly, her navel completely distended and flat, no more than a dimple on her smooth stretched skin.

Ornella grunted, gritting and grinding her teeth. It took all the control Battista had not to allow his jaw to drop and the dread to slip from his tongue. He dared a glance at Aurelia; she saw what he did. As the woman’s body clenched with labor, tightened to the hardness of steel, the baby beneath the skin gyrated, one lump undulating out on Aurelia’s side, the other toward Battista.

The baby lay crosswise in the mother’s womb.

The girl’s cries rose.

Do you know what to do?
Aurelia mouthed the words at him.

Battista licked his lips, wiping his mouth and pulling on the tuft of hair below his lip.

“Maybe,” he said, scuttling a bit closer to Ornella again. He took her hand as the pain crested, as Aurelia rubbed her shoulders, lifted all the way off the bed. He leaned toward her as she collapsed. “We need to rock you, Ornella, from side to side. Your baby may not be in the right position. We need to give it but a little help.”

Ornella shook her head, tangled hair scratching on the linens. “No. No, I cannot ... the pain ... I am too ... tired.”

Aurelia went to her knees, leaned on the bed with her elbows, her face no more than inches from Ornella’s. “You can and you must. This child longs to meet its mother.”

Ornella quivered with refusal, eyes squeezed shut, but Aurelia would not be denied. She stroked Ornella’s forehead, pushing back the burgundy strands stuck to the skin. “Listen to me. Ornella, listen.”

Her petition verged on the severe and the tired woman opened her eyes at it.

Aurelia’s face softened with a smile, as did her voice. “Do you see that corner of your room, just there?” She looked over her shoulder at the corner above the two windows where wall and ceiling met, her shadow long upon it in the glow of the single candle burning by the bedside. “We shall go there, you and me, and watch.”

Every gaze in the room fell upon Aurelia, each person dumbstruck at the sound of such strangeness.

Aurelia placed one hand on Ornella’s chest. “The you in there, and in here.” She moved her hand to the woman’s head. “That part of you. Send it out of your body and you won’t feel as much pain. I promise you.”

“How ... how do I do it?” Ornella’s eyes narrowed to a dubious stare, but in the very question, she revealed her hope.

Aurelia smiled. “We will close our eyes, breathe very slowly and very deeply, and we will picture ourselves there.
Imagine
yourself up there looking down.”

Ornella said not a word, but with no more than a smidgen of hesitance closed her eyes, forcing her breath to slow, chest rising with expansion. Aurelia looked to Battista.

“Wait only a few minutes,” she said, and closed her eyes, too, breath humming to match Ornella’s.

The men became captives to the moment, Jacopo and Battista from the bedside, Michelangelo from the door. A lively wind wafted in the portal, as if tossed in by the burgeoning stars, and a serenity settled upon them. Battista had never known the like and he shivered at it. He remembered then, remembered his own mind’s journey—at Aurelia’s insistence—when the fear of Hell threatened to overcome him.

The two women now bore the same expression, almost vacant, yet purposefully so and with a beauty that snatched his breath away. He jarred himself to action; the moment arrived.

“Jacopo, help me,” he hissed.

The young husband stepped to his wife, putting his hands on the side of her belly, opposite Battista’s. Gently they began to rock her, rolling her slowly from side to side, the arch of her body growing.

The baby twitched beneath his hands and Battista almost crowed with the delight of it; he had never felt a life before it was born. Ornella’s brow furrowed and he feared her pain would dislodge her concentration. The baby kicked again, a hard thrust against his hands, and he pushed timidly back. With a jerk and a roll of flesh, it slipped away, the large belly buckling with the movement, and suddenly the entire protrusion flopped beneath the skin, expanding along the length of Ornella’s body as if the baby lay with her, rather than against her.

Ornella’s eyes popped open, a glimmer of a stunned delight in their paleness.

“The baby ...” She slapped Aurelia’s arm, bringing her back from the perch they had shared. “The baby comes.”

Aurelia dipped her head, eyes slowly opening, her smile wide upon her face. “Then let us greet him, shall we?

“Leave us.” Aurelia stood up and hefted Ornella into a sitting position. Moving to the foot of the bed, she pushed gently at Jacopo. “Have no fear. All will be well, Jacopo. Battista?”

Battista pulled his astounded gape from the bed to Aurelia, allowing his feet to move. He took Jacopo’s arm, partners in disbelief, and headed for the door. At the threshold, Battista stopped and turned back. With unearthly calm, Aurelia helped Ornella to bend her knees and brace her feet upon the bed.

Aurelia’s eyes, vivid green and bright, found his, and she tossed him a smile to send him on his way.

Her hushed voice reached him as he stood just beyond the door, in a language he did not know, had never heard, but a prayer it was, there could be no denying it. One of such intimacy, it sounded as if she conversed with her deity. He knew not what god or gods she prayed to, knew only that he would say a prayer of his own, a prayer of thanks.

Twenty-six

Oh human race,
born to fly upward,
wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

—Purgatorio

T
he rumble of voices, pleasant and deep, reached up through the floor, penetrating her slumber and scattering it away. Aurelia lifted her head off the edge of the bed, back popping as she straightened, one hand rubbing the tight, sore muscles of her neck, stiff from a few hours of sleep curled in half.

Her heart thumped at the first sight of this new day, at the baby curled in the crux of his mother’s arms—cheeks rosy, eyes little slits with a feather of golden-red lashes. He possessed his mother’s coloring, this special child, Battista Michelangelo di Petra by name. Aurelia laid a gentle hand upon Ornella’s brow, sighing with relief at the coolness of the skin.

Falling back in her chair, Aurelia turned her gaze to the windows and the pale yellow glow of dawn just beyond, her thoughts bursting with the memories of the deepest hours of the night.

The birth had been so easy once the baby moved into position, once he had seen the light awaiting him and rushed for it eagerly. When he slithered into her hands, covered with the blood and the fluid of his mother’s care, Aurelia trembled with the wonder of it. Praying then, as she did now, not only for his safe delivery but also at the blessing of her own part in his birth, minor though it may be. She had longed for adventure and amusement, to feel an active participant in the condition called life, but she never imagined what awaited her when she had left her home with the dark, mysterious stranger. What she and Battista had encountered in the caves and beneath the palace paled in comparison to the ecstasy of helping a life enter the world, to be present when a soul and a physical form united.

Aurelia shivered, not with a chill, for already the cicadas buzzed at the warmth, but with the thrill, one that would live in her blood until it ceased to pump through her veins.

The male voices percolated once more beneath the floorboards; she recognized Battista’s as well as the young father’s. Other voices joined theirs, a man’s and a woman’s, and Aurelia heard enough to fathom the polite refusal of service from Jacopo and the trill of congratulations from the would-be patrons.

“Good morning,
donna mia
.”

Michelangelo peeped hesitantly around the threshold, respect holding him unhappily at the door, longing inching him forward.

“
Buongiorno,
Michelangelo,” Aurelia whispered.

“May I come in?”

Aurelia nodded with a cautioning finger pressed against pursed lips.

Michelangelo tiptoed in, shoulders crunching up as wood creaked beneath his weight. Ornella moved not an inch, her slumber deep and all encompassing. The baby Battista twitched, but only slightly, a tight-fisted hand—one no larger than a grape—escaped from his bundling, flapping haphazardly in the air, rubbing against his face with no more control than an instinctual one. The child’s bud mouth opened, stretching in a perfect circle, nose crinkling as he yawned.

Aurelia put a hand to her mouth, stifling the delighted giggle. Michelangelo heaved a quivering breath, surprising Aurelia with the bright tears shimmering in his eyes.

“This is the true masterpiece. God’s greatest creation. I am nothing but a rank imitator.”

Aurelia stood and crossed to his side, taking his hand as they stood over mother and child.

“Perhaps.” She surprised him. “But his life, all human life, is made rich by art, and yours is the greatest of our age. Civilizations are remembered not for the mundane, but for the breathtaking.”

Michelangelo breathed deep, a sigh of acceptance, and squeezed her hand.

From beyond the windows Battista’s voice came in on the breeze, teasing Jacopo affectionately, as men were wont to do, his deep baritone at odds with the chirping starlings.

Aurelia stepped to the window. On the cobbles below, the men walked together, each with a bucket in his hands, heading for the cistern in the middle of the courtyard. The inn shared the cozy space with three other buildings of a similar construction of wood-trimmed brick. Chairs dotted the circumference, snug groupings tucked into arbors and vine-heavy lattices, cool cubbies where neighbors socialized and guests took the air.

From below came the sound of the front door creaking open, heavy footfalls, and a rumble of deep voices.

“It must be others looking to break their fast,” Aurelia remarked.

“There is no one below,” Michelangelo whispered. “Frado has gone to fetch us some pastries and cider.”

“I will go tell them the inn is closed.” Aurelia headed for the door.

“B-but ... b-but ... ,” Michelangelo stammered, hands gesturing to mother and child, shoulders creeping up to his ears.

Aurelia laughed, took him by the arms, and sat him in the bedside chair. “You need only stay by their side. I will be back in a moment.”

Michelangelo perched himself on the edge of the seat, back straight, hands held tight in his lap. His gaze locked upon the woman and the baby, an expression of attentive joy upon his craggy face.

“You know you long to be here and nowhere else,” Aurelia teased him as she slipped from the room, pleased to see a twitch of a smile play at the corner of his lips.

The bliss of these moments wrapped her in a tight embrace, cheeks swollen with smile-born apples, bouncing as she skipped down the stairs.

Two men stood just inside the door, turning away from the emptiness of the inn, to make their way back out to the street.

“I am sorry, signori, I am afraid—”

Aurelia’s heart slammed against her chest, blood boomed in her ears.

Like terrifying specters come to life, Baldassare del Milanese and a savage, brutal-looking man stood in the common room of the inn.

For a suspended moment, Battista’s nemesis blanched in shock—in that instant, Aurelia ran.

Croaking with fear and exertion, she bunched her skirts in her fists, groaning in pain as her slippered toes skimmed off a step, calf bone crashing against a hard wood edge. She whimpered as she found her feet and hurried upward, words and warnings screaming in her head, berating herself for bounding up, where no escape lay ahead, rather than out the back door, where Battista, Jacopo, and their safety awaited.

But her thoughts were of the mother and child and aught else.

“Stop there, missy.” It was a growl of anger, a threatening command.

The thudding of Baldassare’s footsteps rang in her ears, as loud as her heartbeat. She longed to turn, to see how close he came, but she dared not spare a second.

Dropping her skirts, she used her hands to propel herself onto the second-story ledge, rushing into the first doorway toward the back of the house. Dashing to the window, she crashed the shutters open against the outer wall with a shove.

“Battista!” she cried, the fear-saturated scream caroming off the walls of the courtyard.

Battista spun, as did Jacopo, finding her face in the upper window. Dropping his full bucket, water splashing on the cobbles, Battista ran.

“Milanese!” The word flew out of her mouth as she turned round.

Booted feet trampled heavily on the floor just beyond the door.

Aurelia jumped to the wall beside it.

Baldassare passed the room by, blind to her flattened form against the wall.

Aurelia pushed off and away, searching the confines of the room for anything she could use as weapon. She stood amidst a simple guest room ... a bed, a chest, a table with ewer and basin, and nothing more. She jumped to the table, grabbing the pitcher. But it was no more than a lightweight, cheap ceramic piece; she didn’t believe for a second it could cause much harm, even if smashed upon someone’s head.

“What have we here?” Baldassare’s coarse voice snickered.

He had come upon Michelangelo ... Ornella and the baby.

The growl rumbled deep in Aurelia’s throat and chest; she heard it as if it came from someone or something else. She looked at the pitcher in her hand. Without thought, she turned her face and smashed the pitcher against the wall, a sneer spreading upon her lips at the pointed, jagged piece remaining in her fisted hand.

With it held before her like a talisman, she ran from the room.

One step into the hall and a black-gloved hand reached out at her, grabbing her skirts around her ankles. Baldassare’s companion—poised still a few steps down on the stairs—tore the fabric of her gown as Aurelia leaped away. She kicked out, struggling to get free.