3 - Cruel Music Read online

  I was turning to go when a movement at the misted window caught my eye. A vertical line appeared on one of the lower panes and was decisively crossed at its topmost point: a T etched by someone inside. Was this a message? My curiosity grew as another line, topped by a dot, appeared to the left. When the pink fingertip pressed the window again, I squatted low and joined it with my own. Together, we traced the last two letters of my name, fingers separated by only a thin pane of glass.

  I’d barely straightened up when the door to the cookshop banged open and a small boy ran out. From inside, a feminine voice yelled, “Don’t go far. And mind the door, diavoletto, you’ll freeze us all.” The boy turned back to pull the door closed, then greeted me with a shy grin.

  “How do you know my name?” he asked, with eyes as big and round as dark moons.

  I squatted again, so we could talk man to man. “Your name? But that is my name you were drawing.”

  The toe of his laced boot dug at the paving stones. He crossed his arms over his short jacket. “Tito is my name,” he asserted.

  “And mine, too.”

  He ducked his chin and eyed me from under a fringe of lashes that any woman would covet.

  “Look, I’ll prove it.” I pulled out my watch, which was attached to a ribbon fob that Annetta had embroidered as a present for my last name day. Spreading the ribbon on my knee, I asked, “Can you read the letters?”

  “Of course, I’m not a baby. It says Tito. Is that really your name?”

  “That’s my watch ribbon, made by my sister, so it must be my name.”

  He gazed at me solemnly and whispered, “Do you want to know a secret?”

  I nodded.

  “I know where a big spider lives.”

  “Show me,” I grunted, rising to my feet.

  Little Tito grabbed my hand and pulled me to the crevice that separated the cookshop from the next building. A large black spider had built its web across the narrow opening. The remains of several spider dinners clung to the wispy strands. I picked Tito up so he could have a better look.

  “He’s been here for three days,” the boy observed, throwing his arms around my neck. “I keep telling him to move.”

  “Why?”

  “If Nonna Maddelena finds him, she’ll knock him down with her broom.”

  “Who is Nonna Maddelena?”

  “She takes care of me when Mama goes to work. She’s not my real grandmother, but I call her Nonna because Mama told me to.”

  “Is she nice?”

  “Yes…to everybody except spiders.”

  We’d just reached the point of bestowing the hairy spider with the aptly descriptive name of Arruffato when Tito squealed and wriggled to the ground. Liya was coming down the alleyway, her wet shawl dragging her shoulders low. Her expression was as dark as the sky that peeked through the crowded, rain-soaked buildings of the Trastevere. She brightened when she caught sight of her son running to meet her and positively glowed when her eyes met mine. “I’ve been looking for you,” she cried over the boy’s bobbing head.

  I smiled, remembering how I used to dawdle at the Teatro San Marco for hours, waiting to catch a word with Liya, pining for a glance from her flashing dark eyes. She had fascinated me then: her musky scent, the soft roundness of her shoulders and breasts, the curving line from slender ankle to muscular calf that lost itself in the skirts shielding her most intimate mysteries. She fascinated me still. I took a hard gulp. All at once, it didn’t matter if Liya conjured up Satan himself. My doubts floated down the gutter with the chill Roman rain, and love flooded over me.

  ***

  “Your handsome abate murdered Gemma!” said Liya, once I’d revealed the unhappy details of my last few days in Rome.

  “Lenci?” I asked.

  “He must have. He lied about the scratches on his hands, didn’t he? And how clever, using the old woman’s scarf. Gemma must have told him plenty of stories about the marchesa’s tantrums, so he knew that Cardinal Fabiani would assume his mother strangled the girl and rush to cover it up.”

  I moved my damp feet closer to the scaldino that occupied the space between our two stools. We had settled in Liya’s attic quarters after filling our stomachs with bread smothered in spicy meat sauce and consigning little Tito to the care of Nonna Maddelena, a pleasant, gray-haired woman of wide hips and meaty forearms. No stove or fire graced this room, so we warmed ourselves at the ceramic pot filled with smoldering charcoal that kept the chill away from many a poor household.

  “I don’t know, Liya. I find it difficult to imagine Lenci driven to such violence. He talked about the girl in a callous vein, but I put that down to immature boasting. I’ve seen the way he looked at her. Underneath the arrogant posturing, I think Lenci truly cared for Gemma. Cares, I should say. If he didn’t murder her, the boy doesn’t even know she’s dead. He thinks she’s serving Lady Mary at the Palazzo Pompetti.”

  “Perhaps Gemma was pushing for more than Lenci wanted to give.”

  “Money? Lenci said that Fabiani was giving her a handsome bonus for gleaning information about Pompetti.”

  “I was thinking of marriage.”

  “How could she expect that? Lenci is a cleric.”

  “These young men in Rome seem to jump in and out of holy orders as easily as a bird hops from branch to branch. The Quirinal and the Vatican abound with opportunities for place and preferment, but the Church is not the only game going. Perhaps Gemma was trying to convince her lover to shed his cassock.”

  I shook my head. “Marrying a girl from the servant’s hall would hardly advance Lenci’s prospects. At present, he has little money of his own, but if he remains loyal to his uncles, he will surely come into his share of the Montorio wealth.”

  “Ah.” Liya sent me a tight grin. “Which uncle? The one intent on snaring a Montorio papacy? Or the one running from that prospect with all his might?”

  I shrugged, unsure. I was still reeling from Stefano Montorio’s startling declaration, and Lenci’s loyalty was yet to be determined. “At any rate,” I responded. “If Gemma’s demands grew too strident, Lenci could have just walked away. It happens every day—a servant romanced, fed on dreams of class-blind love, then left with a broken heart—and not just the women. Why would Lenci stoop to murder?”

  Liya returned my shrug. “If there is an explanation, the Tito I used to know wouldn’t rest until he discovered what it is.”

  “If I were smart, I’d forget the entire sorry affair. Gemma’s murder really has nothing to do with me.”

  “Except that Cardinal Fabiani set you squarely in the middle.” Liya sat forward, hands on her knees. The glow from the pot lit her chin and gently rounded cheeks, casting her eyes into shadow. “Why do you think he had Rossobelli summon you of all people? A loyal footman or stableman would have provided more muscle to carry the body to the river.”

  “Fabiani knew I was a Montorio man from the beginning. He must have been seething, being forced to welcome someone who wasn’t under his absolute authority into his household. He maneuvered me into disposing of Gemma’s corpse to counterbalance Antonio Montorio’s influence. I’ve done Fabiani’s dirty work—now he has a hold on me, too.”

  “Poor Tito, being pulled in two directions. No,” she quickly corrected herself. “Three directions.”

  I glanced uneasily around the angled ceilings and shadowed nooks of Liya’s attic, then at the woman before me. For so many years I’d longed for this easy intimacy with Liya. I’d wanted to share my life with her: the life I’d led before Messer Grande had dragged me from my home, not the life of desperate papal politics. But how was that to be, with so many obstacles blocking our way? I pushed up from my stool and began to pace the open space between Liya’s bed and the low couch that served her son.

  “It’s poor Alessandro, really,” I said. �
��If I can’t resolve this mess, he will be the one to suffer. Except for Cardinal Di Noce, all the churchmen I’ve encountered seem more anxious for pleasure or promotion in this world than salvation in the next. And they aren’t worried about who might get hurt in their drive to realize their ambitions.”

  “What you need is information—something that will tip the scales back in your favor.” Liya stirred the coals in the scaldino with a short iron poker.

  I nodded. We’d been talking a long time. The candles were burning low and the room was beginning to get smoky, making my eyes sting and tear. I pushed the casement window over her bed open a crack. The rain had stopped, giving way to a foggy, early dusk. In a window across the way, someone lit a lamp, a beacon of ocher light shining through the gray mist. I took in a deep breath of fresh air and rested my forehead on the corner of the cool windowsill.

  When I turned back, Liya was opening a battered trunk set in one of the nooks formed by the sloping eaves. She removed a small calfskin pouch. I watched with interest as she moved to stand over the scaldino, took a generous pinch of some powdery substance from the pouch, then let a glittering stream fall from her fingers onto the coals. Flames of blue and silver sprang to meet her hand. No sooner had they been swallowed back into the pot than a pungent, exotic odor invaded my nose and a shudder ran over me.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered, suddenly recalling my visions of winged imps.

  She swept her arm in a beckoning gesture. “Tito, come sit. I think I may have an idea, but I must ponder it in my own way.”

  I slowly returned to my stool, eyes wide and nerves tingling.

  “Do you still have the cimaruta you found outside the pavilion?” Liya asked, settling across from me with her gaze trained on the coals that now glowed in bright shifting hues.

  “Yes,” I answered, digging in my waistcoat. “I thought it would be safer in my pocket than back at the Villa Fabiani.” I gave the amulet and its dangling charms another close look before handing it to Liya. “You said that these branches worked in silver represent a plant sacred to Diana.”

  “Rue, the herb of grace. Besides conferring good fortune and protection, a cimaruta shows the wearer to be a disciple of the good goddess.”

  “The same Diana that the ancient Romans worshipped as the goddess of the moon and the hunt?”

  She nodded, never shifting her gaze from the pot. “Diana is only one of her names. The people of Florence call her Tana. In Naples, she’s known as Jana. By all her names, she’s far older than Rome, as old as Mother Earth herself. The priests of the new religion drove her from her temples and put up new statues of virgins and martyrs, but Diana never forgets her people. Centuries ago, she sent her daughter Aradia to teach us and free us.”

  Realizing I’d been holding my breath, I snatched some air to ask a question, but Liya shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips. “Quiet, I must have quiet.” Cupping the cimaruta in her left palm, she pressed it to her heart and began to rock gently back and forth. I had seen fortune tellers at carnival booths strike a similar pose, but this was different. Liya was not play-acting; she was allowing me a peek at her cherished beliefs.

  When she spoke again, her voice was harsh, panting, as if she had just run a great distance. “I see a woman, tall, blond, with a long chin…she wears classical robes…heavy golden rings hang from her ears.”

  My mouth was dry. “Lady Mary,” I croaked.

  “A man stands behind her with his hand on her shoulder…he’s dressed the same way…” Liya fell silent. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead.

  “What does he look like?”

  “An older man…very upright and proud…black hair threaded with gray. I’ve seen him before, at the theater.”

  “Prince Pompetti!” I peered down into the scaldino. The humble chafing pot held no visions for me, but it was telling Liya quite a tale.

  “They stand before a golden door embossed with crossed keys,” she cried. “The woman smiles and spreads her arms, but the man shakes his head. He’s saying something.”

  “What?”

  Liya swayed on the stool. “Don’t know…it fades.” Her lips went slack, her eyes closed. She slumped with a groan, and I sprang to catch her before she fell to the floor. Her faint was fleeting. As I held her, she burrowed into my chest and reached up to stroke my cheek with her hand. Tightening my arms, I kissed the top of her head.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She raised her chin and smiled. “Perfectly all right. And now I know what you must do.”

  I wondered if the scene Liya had described had come more from her own head than from the pot, but either way, I was interested to hear her advice.

  “Pompetti and his lady are hiding a secret. The keys of St. Peter tell us that it concerns the papal throne. While she was waiting on Lady Mary at the palazzo, Gemma must have uncovered something of great import…”

  “Something worth killing for,” I said, finishing her thought.

  Liya sat up and crossed her legs under her skirt. Her black eyes glittered in the candlelight. “Tito, tell me again exactly when Gemma was killed.”

  “It was late on January eleventh, or perhaps the first minutes of the twelfth.”

  “Around midnight, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “The night of the full moon,” she said thoughtfully.

  “So it was,” I replied, shifting uneasily at the recollection of the silvery light that had bathed the waters of Gemma’s final resting place.

  She bobbed a decisive nod. “You have to follow in Gemma’s footsteps, Tito.”

  “I agree, but how? Fabiani would never give me leave to go snooping at the Palazzo Pompetti.”

  Her fingers tightened around the cimaruta. “Leave it to me, caro. I’ll find a way.”

  Nodding slowly, I pulled her close again. This time it was her mouth that I kissed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The days that followed dragged by at a snail’s pace, each seeming longer than the one before. Never had I felt so much a prisoner of another man’s routine. Singing at supper parties and conversazioni filled my evenings, and I was often summoned to serenade Fabiani throughout the small hours of the night.

  During those intimate concerts, I tarried as long as I dared between songs, speaking of this and that, hoping that Fabiani would start musing about the coming conclave as he had with Tucci. Not surprisingly, the cardinal saw through my stratagem right away. “Let music reign here,” he commanded, deep-set eyes staring from under his scarlet nightcap. “I won’t allow the cares of the day to follow me into my bed chamber. Sing as I bid you, otherwise be silent.”

  The gossip mongers announced that Pope Clement had fallen into a prolonged sleep and was taking no nourishment. Spurred by the approach of the inevitable, Cardinal Montorio pressed me harder than ever. Abate Lenci confirmed that a Montorio cousin was the vice-superintendent of prisons, but whether this man was Zio Stefano’s pawn, I dared not ask. And so I temporized as best I could, following the news from the Quirinal as avidly as the Roman oddsmakers. Day by day we all waited, but the old man must have been made of stern stuff. Unable to discuss my worries with anyone in the villa besides Benito, I plastered a smile on my face and went about my duties.

  During the day, Fabiani spent much of his time at the Quirinal. Still, my time was not my own. Before he left, I was always presented with a list: transpose and copy a bundle of scores, learn the arias from Ricimero and other recent operas which had captured his fancy, entertain the marchesa.

  That last occupied a good bit of my time. Matilda was not as skilled at keeping the old lady out of trouble as Gemma had been. When she was awake, Marchesa Fabiani displayed only two states of being. She either sat in a silent trance with her mouth hanging open or rambled about the villa with a furious ene
rgy fueled by impulses known only to her. The kitchen had lately become one of her favorite haunts. Several times a day, a scullery maid reeking of smoke and grease ran through the villa’s pristine upper hallways, calling for Matilda to come and collect her charge before the cook started throwing pots and pans. When it was discovered that a lively dance tune could keep the marchesa amused, my fate was sealed.

  “Another volta,” she begged one morning after toeing and dipping her way around the music room to a sedate minuet. She had already breakfasted with her son and was feeling especially playful. When the cardinal had gone off to receive his morning callers, the marchesa had demanded music and I was summoned.

  I attacked the harpsichord keys with more vigor, accelerating the tempo. The marchesa whirled and kicked. Her silver hair came loose from its pins, spreading out like a ragged curtain blown by the wind. The sight of her multiple reflections in the wall mirrors delighted her as much as it would a five-year-old. But in a short time, her breathing became harsh and her whirling slowed.

  I patted the space beside me on the bench. “Take a rest, My Lady. I’ll play one of my favorites for you.”

  Hoisting the skirts of her day dress above her knees, Marchesa Fabiani ascended the dais and plopped down on the bench. Her new maid had withdrawn to a distant corner of the salon. Matilda had her head bent to a piece of mending, showing only the crown of her white cap. For the moment I had the cardinal’s mother all to myself.

  “And how are you doing today, My Lady?” My fingers ranged over the keys as I favored Marchesa Fabiani with a smile that had disarmed many a princess and prima donna. She responded with a flirtatious look that took ten years off her age. In her prime, I thought, the old lady must have been quite something.

  “I’m in fine spirits, Signor Amato, thanks to your lovely music.”