The King's Agent Read online

  They crested the long gradient, and a rolling landscape spread out before them, one rich with towering dark green cypress trees and thick with rows of grape- and olive vines. Atop the next hill, the next poggi, the village of Poggibonsi sat like a crown. Once a fortress owned by Bonizzo Segni, the remnants of the multitowered ramparts were still visible at the top, spaced teeth in a smiling mouth.

  With a click of his tongue, Michelangelo bounced in his saddle as he urged his horse into a plopping canter and surged forward.

  “I will lead now,” he called. “I know just which gate to use to bring us straight to the inn.”

  Battista scoffed kindly and shook his head. “I have never seen him this ... this cheerful,” he told Aurelia, surprising himself with the use of the word in context with his moody friend. “This is your influence, donna mia. I have no doubt.”

  Aurelia did nothing to deny it. “Sometimes it takes others to bring out our best.” She smiled at him shyly, but with an edge of potent sensuality, one that found him urging his horse on a bit faster, to the inn and the beds within it.

  As they loped up to the charming building of pale ochre stone, no one came out of the dark wood doors of the same polished and carved walnut as the shutters and window frames. Pots of lush, newly budding flowers overflowed from the flat roof with the promise of a splendid terrace just beyond, but it appeared deserted.

  “How very strange,” Michelangelo said as he allowed Battista to help him from his horse. “The hospitality here is always exemplary. I have never not been greeted within an instant of my arrival.”

  Frado tied the horses to the weather-hewn posts as Michelangelo, with Battista by his side and Aurelia just a step behind, entered the coolness of the common room.

  The room was invitingly outfitted with round wooden tables and wide-based chairs. Wine bottles—those full of a variety of vintages and those covered with doused candles bumpy with dried drippings—circled round it, perched on the surrounding shelf and sharing the space with pots of redolent herbs and bunches of dried flowers. The smell of the morning’s bread and the sweetness of fruit clung to the air, and yet not a patron filled a seat, not a voice could be heard from beyond the other side of the two-sided fireplace.

  “Stranger still,” Michelangelo hissed.

  “There is something amiss here.” Battista reached behind him and drew a dagger from his sheath. He thrust out his other hand as a shield, stepping in front of Michelangelo and Aurelia protectively.

  Booming footfalls thundered down the steps set back in the far right corner of the room. Battista swiveled on his heels, falling into a slight and ready crouch.

  “Is that you, Conchetta?” The urgent call cracked with concern as a young man plunged down the stairs, pinwheeling to a stop at the sight of the four strangers.

  Battista held up his free hand, tucking his dagger-wielding fist behind him. “Have no fear, messere, we are but travelers come for food and lodging.”

  The man shook his head of shaggy golden hair. “I am very sorry, signore, but I am afraid we are closed today.” Though he spoke politely, his soft brown eyes rose up, back up the stairs to whatever concerned him on the upper floors.

  “Jacopo?” Michelangelo stepped around Battista. “Where are your parents?”

  The man, if he was indeed Jacopo, squinted at the newcomers, their faces shadowy with the light of the windows at their backs.

  “It is me, Jacopo, Michelangelo.”

  “Oh, Dio mio, Signore Buonarotti.” The gangly youth rushed forward, taking Michelangelo’s hand, the clinging odor of tension thick on his simple tunic and hose. “I am so sorry. I did not see you.”

  “What is happening, dear boy?” Michelangelo reached up and placed a soothing hand on the bony shoulder. “Are your parents not here?”

  “No, signore, they are traveling. My ... my wife and I have come in from the farm for a few days to watch over the inn. But ... but she is ...” Jacopo inched backward to the foot of the stairs, shoulders turning away. “Ornella labors, badly I fear. I have called for the midwife, but she does not come.”

  Battista’s mouth went dry; so many women were lost in the throes of childbirth, he had heard of it all too often. “Where is this woman, the midwife?” he asked.

  “On the next lane to the right. In the third house on the left.”

  Battista turned to Frado, and without a word the pudgy man set off at a run.

  Battista looked to Aurelia. “Do you know of such things?” he asked softly.

  “Only a little,” she replied with a slight but fearful quaver. “You?”

  “A little.” Battista shrugged. “We will do what we can, sì?”

  “Yes, of course.” Aurelia stepped forward, holding out her hand to the frightened man. “Take us to your wife, Jacopo.”

  The youth’s eyes grew wide with alarm as Battista came up behind her.

  She grabbed onto the man’s forearm, insistent but gentle. “In times of great need, we must accept any and all assistance offered. We cannot be burdened by propriety when lives are at stake.”

  Jacopo looked down at her and Battista watched, fascinated, as the worry lines between the young man’s eyes smoothed away. With a quick nod, Jacopo led them up the stairs that turned right and then right again, stepping out onto a short hallway with two rooms on each side and one at the end.

  As soon as they reached the second floor, low moans thick with pain and anguish reached out to them with unrelenting torment. In the far corner room, dark with closed shutters, fetid with human sweat, the woman lay on her back on the bed, her huge belly protruding from a slight frame, the sheets atangle about legs clenching and flexing as the pain ebbed and flowed through her body. Thick red hair bulged in a snarl from the back of her head, half-drenched with sweat, and her thin hands fisted in the linens.

  They stepped forward just as another pain gripped her. The woman, who looked no more than a child to Battista, curled upward, head rising, eyes pinched, teeth grinding as the pain took hold.

  Aurelia rushed forward, coming round the far side of the bed, laying one hand upon the woman’s arm, the other on the swelled stomach.

  “Easy, cara mia, do not fight it. Allow it with strength.” It was a whisper and yet an assured mandate.

  Ornella’s eyes flashed open, crystal blue eyes, almost white against her face blotched red with effort. They narrowed in fear at the strange faces hovering over her, and she yelped at the sight of the tall Battista in her bedchamber.

  “Have no fear, piccolina.” Jacopo fell to his knees beside his wife’s bed. “You must let them help us. Conchetta does not come.”

  The fear wrenched at the girl, as did the pain, and she growled into it.

  “They are friends of Signore Buonarroti,” Jacopo insisted. “Friends of Maestro Michelangelo.”

  The name worked its magic and the pallor of dread fled features still twisted in pain.

  “How long has she toiled like this?” Battista whispered, as if to speak louder would disturb her.

  Jacopo looked up at him. “Since early this morning, as I was making the bread.”

  Battista caught the flicker of concern in Aurelia’s eye.

  “Open the shutters, Jacopo,” Aurelia told him, doggedly jutting her chin at him. “Yes, do it. The clean air will do her mind good, and the mind must be a partner in this chore.”

  Jacopo did as instructed, allowing Battista to take his place at the bedside, and they all breathed deeply as a waft of fresh twilight air swept through the room.

  “Some cool water and some watered wine,” Battista added. “She will feel so much better for a drink and a wash.”

  “I’ll get it!” The hoarse cry came from the hall, followed by a scurry of feet as Michelangelo set himself to the task gratefully.

  Ornella flung back onto the pillow, panting as the pain subsided.

  “A drink.” She smacked her parched lips at the thought of it, her voice sweet and melodic, if ragged with exhaustion.

>   Battista lowered to his knees near the bottom corner post of the bed, hands clasped on the edge as if in prayer.

  “Buonanotte, signora,” he said softly, keeping his distance, cooing as if to a frightened animal. “My name is Battista, Battista della Palla. And this is the Lady Aurelia.”

  Ornella’s pale eyes switched from one to the other. “B ... buonanotte,” she said finally.

  “I know you suffer, my dear,” he coaxed. “But do you think you might allow Aurelia to look beneath you, to make sure there is no blood,” he rushed on at her uncertain look.

  With cautious agreement, she nodded. Battista whirled away, before she could deny them, and listened to the shuffle of fabric as Aurelia lifted the sheets.

  “That is well, Ornella, very well indeed.”

  Battista heard the smile in Aurelia’s voice and turned back in time to see her lowering the sheets upon Ornella’s thin legs. She looked so fragile, and it frightened him, but he knew the strength of women, one indeterminate by any physical appraisal; theirs came of the spirit and far outshone that of most men. He had learned it from his mother and his sister, watched them recover and soldier on as both lost their husbands. He had seen it by Aurelia’s side, learned of her strength as she glimpsed and survived things he still could not reconcile.

  Jacopo stepped to the threshold at Michelangelo’s call, returning with a small pitcher set in an empty basin and a simple sterling chalice slopping with pale pink liquid. Aurelia took them and set them on the table at the bedside, first giving the woman a few sips, then immersing a cloth in the water to ply it soothingly upon the young woman’s furrowed brow and gritty neck.

  Ornella heaved a sigh as the coolness touched her skin, as the beverage dripped down her throat. Battista inched closer, watching as her face began to harden with another pain.

  “We are going to look at your belly, Ornella.” With methodical slowness, he moved one hand closer to the edge of the sheet as he signalled to Aurelia, instructing her with a pointed glance.

  “What?” Jacopo yelped. “You cann—”

  “We need to.” Battista kept his smiling eyes upon Ornella. “It may tell us why you suffer so.”

  The young girl looked to her husband standing impaled with fear at the end of her bed. With a hard swallow, jaw clenching, head lifting as the pain thrust its way upon her, she gave a curt nod.

  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

  The 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.