The Serpent and the Pearl

“You’re horrid,” I told him, but laughed. “Stand up, Leonello.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m the mistress of the household, and I say so.”

  “I am paid to protect you, not obey you.”

  “I’ll pout,” I warned. “You don’t want to see me pout. I could bring down a city’s gates with my pout, the Holy Father says.”

  “Who am I to contradict the Holy Father?” Leonello rose, and I picked up the measuring cord one of my robe makers had left behind.

  “Arms out,” I ordered, and stretched the cord along the length of his arm.

  “Am I being fitted for a rack?” he inquired as I measured his wrists, the width around his chest, the length of his back. “I assure you, it’s quite unnecessary. If you wish to punish me for my rudeness, you have only to cut off my access to the library.”

  “I promised you a new set of livery,” I retorted. “I know you refused to wear that mulberry and yellow uniform the other guardsmen wear, and I don’t blame you because mulberry does nothing for your coloring. But you’re a disgrace in those disreputable boots and that doublet that doesn’t fit. I cut a very stylish appearance in Rome, and I’ll not be dragged down by a shabby bodyguard.”

  “Dio, no one cares what I wear. My clothes will never be the first thing noticed about me.”

  “Nonsense; you could cut a very fine figure if you tried. Have all the maids swooning.” I thought of Carmelina’s uncomfortably shifting eyes as I pestered her about Leonello. “Perhaps there’s an errand you can run for me when I’m done,” I added innocently. “Go down to the kitchens and talk to Signorina Carmelina?”

  “And just what do you wish me to speak with our ill-tempered cook about?” A flare of interest in his hazel eyes; oh yes—I saw that with great satisfaction. Well, Carmelina was handsome in her lanky way—not pretty, with her long thin face and near-constant scowl, but she had beautiful dark brown eyes that flashed with her every change of expression, and she always trailed some tantalizing whiff of cinnamon or honey or sage in her wake. And the rosemary herbal rinses I’d pressed on her had tamed the wildness of her curly hair. I’d given her an entire vial and made her swear on the soul of blessed Santa Marta to keep using it.

  “You might tell Carmelina to come see me when she’s got a lull between meals,” I remarked, carefully casual as I took the measure of Leonello’s left leg. “Have you seen what she’s done with her hair, by the way? I don’t suppose you noticed; men never do . . . Yes, tell her to come see me for a talk about the Sforza visit.”

  “The menu?” Leonello asked. “He’s a hunting lord of a small provincial town. He’ll eat anything that’s been wounded badly enough not to limp off his plate.”

  “No, Carmelina can take care of the menu as she pleases. She just needs to know that Lord Sforza’s dishes might require an extra spice or two.” I dropped to my knees to get the circumference of Leonello’s ankles. His legs looked twisted even inside their boots, and I wondered just how much it pained him to walk. I never saw him limp or heard him complain, but suddenly I was convinced he hurt a good deal of the time.

  “What extra spice does the Lord of Pesaro need?” My bodyguard sounded amused. “Some salt, perhaps? He seemed a very bland fellow from what little I’ve seen of him. If you told little Lucrezia that her husband is a thoroughgoing bore, perhaps she wouldn’t be so eager to become his bedded bride.”

  “It’s his eagerness I’m worried about, not hers.” I straightened from the last of my measurements. “I’ve already had a letter from His Holiness, you see—he’s told me that if the Count of Pesaro exhibits too much ardor for Lucrezia during his visit, he is to become . . . indisposed.”

  Leonello stared. “The Holy Father wants you to poison his son-in-law?”

  “No! What a mind you have. I’m merely to make sure that Lord Sforza is gripped by watery bowels if he seems in an amorous frame of mind.”

  Leonello threw back his dark head and laughed. “That’s a clever pope we have,” he appreciated. “If there’s anything to keep a man from thoughts of love, it’s a set of griping guts.”

  “Carmelina will know what to use, if it proves necessary.” I stood up, folding the measuring cord away. “Do you still think I was kind to Lucrezia, Leonello? Her father means to keep her away from her husband forever, and I’m helping him do it.”

  My bodyguard’s dark eyes studied me. “You could defy him, you know. He won’t be here, after all, when Lord Sforza comes to call.”

  I thought of all the angry words Rodrigo and I had thrown at each other over Laura and Orsino. I’d cried for a fortnight’s worth of icy silence after that, fearing I’d lost my Pope, and he’d probably consoled himself with some courtesan. “It’s sweetness he wants, my dear, not rebellion,” Madonna Adriana had told me, and I’d felt too low to lash back at her. Things were certainly all sweetness again now . . . but they wouldn’t stay that way if I sided with the Pope’s daughter against her Holy Father.

  “I don’t dare,” I found myself telling Leonello as I put away the measuring cord. “I just don’t. I’m just a silly girl, you see, and I’m not very brave. Now, there are at least eight people waiting in the sala to ask me for favors from His Holiness, and it’s not polite to keep sycophants waiting, is it?”

  Carmelina

  What did you feed them?”

  I glanced down at odious little Leonello on my elbow. I had positioned myself discreetly on a turn of the stairs, half blocked by liveried manservants as I stole a look at the exceedingly giddy party of guests who had just come from eating my dishes at cena. “Just food,” I said vaguely.

  “Did you drug it?” Leonello stood on tiptoe, craning for a look of his own past the manservants. “Dio. Look at them.”

  “They’re enjoying themselves!”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  Madonna Adriana had arranged for a choir of sweet-voiced singers from Ferrara to entertain Lord Sforza and his entourage after their evening meal—but somehow nobody looked interested in music. The party of guests were all too busy laughing, flirting, flitting into the large sala like tipsy butterflies, the ladies in their bright satins giving little impromptu twirls and declaring that they felt like dancing, the men putting hand to heart and vowing eternal devotion to everything female in sight. I saw one lady in pale blue lose a slipper, and as the man on her arm knelt to slide it back over her coyly proffered foot, she twined a finger around his ear and whispered something inaudible. Madonna Giulia had an admirer on each side, both of them reciting verses to her beauty and fighting to be first to pull out her chair. Cesare Borgia had no less than four women tossing their curls and pouting their lips at him as he sat loose and coiled in his unclerical dark velvets. As for Lord Sforza, the guest of honor, Adriana da Mila had positioned the solid bulk of her forest green velvets very squarely between him and his wife, but that did not stop them from stealing glances behind her head. “The singers,” Madonna Adriana was saying loudly over the laughter and the whispered jests, “the singers have for your entertainment a very fine arrangement of love songs!”

  “Bad choice,” Leonello whistled. “Better stick to grim liturgical chants about hellfire.”

  No one was listening anyway, as far as I could tell. The whole party of guests floated on a tide of golden giggles and glances heavy with meaning, extravagant compliments and secret caresses, and Lucrezia and her lord sailed highest of all in a fragile glass bubble as they stared wordlessly at each other over Madonna Adriana’s head. Even Cesare Borgia smiled when he saw the light in his sister’s eyes.

  “And the evening started so badly,” I whispered under the first sweet harmonies of the singers. Like good bread, a good cena needs certain key ingredients if it’s to rise in the oven—a dash of goodwill and a dash of humor, a good sprinkling of laughter and a pinch of romance. And I’d gotten one hurried look at Lord Sforza as he dismounted his horse in the courtyard that afternoon, and hadn’t held out much hope that the evening would be any
kind of success. He’d gone striding into the house with a black scowl, his provincial Pesarese captains flocking after him like unkempt roosters. He’d looked more the unshaven outcast than ever among Madonna Giulia and Madonna Lucrezia and their surrounding peacock pride of well-groomed ladies, and even from down in the kitchens I could hear Lord Sforza complaining in loud tones to Cesare Borgia, slapping his gloves against his hand and demanding to know when the Holy Father would be contracting the Sforza soldiers against the French. He hardly had a word for the bride he wasn’t allowed to touch. I foresaw a sour, awkward evening, with the Count of Pesaro looking irritable and Lucrezia wilting from his lack of attention.

  Instead . . .

  “What did you put in the food?” Leonello asked again.

  “Nothing special!” Just a simple cena, really. I’d gotten a bit creative, of course. Rather than simply flipping to page 11, Chapter: Credenza, I’d whipped up a sideboard arrangement all my own: sugared cedar flowers and candied orange peel instead of the usual cheeses and spiced fruits. Not to mention the roast peacock garnished with sweet candied pine nuts and cinnamon sticks instead of the usual tangy sauce, and swimming on a bed of rose petals . . . the fresh oysters sautéed in butter and arranged back in their shells with a squeeze of orange over top . . . the grilled sea bass with a simmered sauce I had improvised of rosy wine, salmon roe, and truffle shavings . . . “Maestro Santini left the menu to me,” I shrugged. “He often does, these days.”

  “What were you thinking? The idea is to keep Lord Sforza out of his wife’s bed. Those oysters alone would have roused the cock on a statue.” Leonello tilted his oversized head at me. “Perhaps you weren’t thinking of our good Count of Pesaro at all, eh? Can our Signorina Cuoca possibly be mooning for a lover of her own?” Clapping a hand to his heart. “It’s me, isn’t it? Your abiding lust for my small self could no longer be contained, and so it made its way into the food.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I told Leonello. But something had made its way into the food, because I’d seen the excitement rising among the guests with my own eyes when I crept up to the gallery to peep down on the small sala after the laughter began to escalate. The guests had been lolling about the table with its wreaths of ivy and winter lilies, every one of them tipsy and flirtatious among the picked fish bones and oyster shells, barely containing themselves under Madonna Adriana’s censorious gaze. One of the Pesarese captains had an arm around a red-haired beauty as he fed her an oyster, and she closed her eyes and swallowed with something between a moan and a giggle. Cesare Borgia lounged with an eager woman on each side, alternating feeding him candied flowers. Another bearded Pesarese soldier had his arm about the back of Madonna Giulia’s chair, begging to see her hair down. Madonna Adriana called for the steward to stop serving wine, and as soon as her back was turned, Lord Sforza had plucked a garnishing rosebud off the peacock platter and tossed it into Madonna Lucrezia’s lap. And I’d seen her blush and throw him a ripening glance. The Count of Pesaro might have begun the meal full of irritable questions about the French and his papal contract, but he ended it staring at his young wife. He looked and looked again; I’d seen those eyes go soft from clear up in the gallery above, and she had glowed like a saint in a niche: very young and blooming in her dark blue silks.

  And now the entire party had more or less contained itself under the sweet winding melodies from the Ferrarese singers, but I saw hands twining together under cover of skirts, lips whispering in ears, and the earthy musk of the truffles and roe I’d prepared seemed stronger than the sweet sounds of the Latin love songs. Lord Sforza touched Lucrezia’s elbow, drawing her attention as a new song began, and I saw her catch her breath.

  Oh, dear, I thought.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Leonello looked up at me. “Shouldn’t you be scrubbing a pot? Stuffing a chicken? Torturing a scullion?”

  “The steward said they were swilling their way through all the wine, so I brought more,” I said, hefting the flagon I’d brought with me when I mounted the stairs, as an excuse to catch myself another look. “If you’ll excuse me, I forgot something.”

  Oil of dill, to be precise, for Lord Sforza’s cup, because oil of dill would turn any man’s guts inside out. And the only thing that would get the Count of Pesaro’s eyes off his wife, I judged, would be a good long trip to the privy.

  “What?” I put fists on hips, looking down at the withered hand of Santa Marta when I went downstairs and back to my chamber for the vial of dill oil I’d reluctantly set aside on my mistress’s orders. Santa Marta’s gold ring seemed to glint at me disapprovingly, and I could have sworn one of her curled dried fingers had uncurled slightly to point in my direction. “If Madonna Giulia orders me to give a guest a set of griping guts, I have no choice! And she wasn’t pleased about it either, so don’t blame me.”

  Santa Marta continued to disapprove, or at least her hand did. How a severed hand could look disapproving, I did not understand. But I snapped the spice box closed on its shelf with a glower and shoved it back behind my comb and the little vial of hair rinse Madonna Giulia had pressed on me. “I don’t recall asking you for advice,” I told my patron saint, stashing the vial of dill oil in my sleeve. “Or opening your box, for that matter, so just stay out of sight and out of my business!”

  “So, did you get a look at him?” the maids all pestered me as I slipped back into the busy kitchens. “Lord Sforza! Is he handsome up close?”

  “One swaggering provincial lord looks very much like another.” I knotted a fresh apron about my waist with a snap.

  “Signorina Carmelina never looks at men,” one of the older maids laughed. “Don’t you all know that by now? If you can’t cook it in a pot or roast it on a spit, she doesn’t think it exists!”

  They laughed at me good-naturedly as I scowled. Really, that was an excellent reputation to have. Marco had held to his word and kept secret our occasional discreet tumbles after his primiera wins—as far as everyone else was concerned, I was the inviolable Madonna of the Kitchens who could never be distracted by a handsome face or a wheedling smile. Being inviolable and unromantic was a good thing, at least when it came to the hierarchy of the kitchens.

  “Mouths shut, hands moving,” I told them, clapping my own hands, and they scattered obediently. Cena was done, but we still had hours of labor before us: Marco and the undercooks were already busy with the trays of sweet nibbles that would be sent up as a digestive, and the apprentices and pot-boys had dived into the business of mopping, sweeping, cleaning, and scrubbing. I fished a leftover oyster from the dish and tipped it down my throat, watching Bartolomeo stagger past with an armload of dirty bowls, mopping his freckled brow from the heat of the fires. “Fill an earthenware pot with a good dollop of cream, and beat till it peaks,” I said, snagging him by the sleeve as I ate another oyster. I really had surpassed myself on those, if I did say so myself. “We’ll send up a dish of milk-snow to go with the biscotti.”

  “Yes, signorina.”

  “Ottaviano, supervise the pot-boys; I want those skillets clean and dry now. Tommaso, the peacock bones and scraps, get them into the pots and boiling for broth. Bruno, Ugo, the floors—” Scullions dived to and fro under my clapping hands like a general’s aides, and I fell in beside Marco, fingers flying as we put together the plates of sugared biscotti, the candied nuts, the sliced and honeyed fruits.

  “—we all know why the man’s really here!” my cousin was arguing with three of his servers as they brought more majolica plates and cups for the trays. “Lord Sforza hasn’t dropped in just to check on his papal contract; he means to bed his wife! Four to one he slips into her chamber tonight—”

  “I’ll lay down twenty scudi on those odds,” one of the servers replied promptly. “Madonna Adriana’s squatting on the pair of them upstairs like a guardian dragon!”

  “Dragons can be slain.” Marco crushed a handful of candied pine nuts, slapping the fragments into a soft spiced peach. “Love will out, it alwa
ys does. Bid your twenty scudi good-bye.”

  I’d have to drop a word in Marco’s ear later tonight to retract his bet, if I didn’t want to see him even more out of purse than usual. Pazzo, I thought as I popped a slice of sweet peach into my mouth. My cousin is a fool. But I couldn’t help my eyes lingering on his broad shoulders, muscles moving under the shirt as he hoisted the first of the heavy trays. And my maids thought I never looked at men.

  “Signorina?” Bartolomeo called plaintively from the cold room. “Is the cream frothed enough now?” His arm hung dead at his side now, limp as a loose entrail just yanked from a pig.

  “Skim the froth off the top, add more fine sugar and rosewater, and beat for the length of time it takes to say a rosary.” I dipped a finger into the earthenware pot. Sweet, savory, creamy, but not quite light enough yet in the texture. “Then heap on a plate with sprigs of rosemary. Don’t you wilt on me now, boy! You want to be just as strong as Maestro Santini someday?”

  Bartolomeo eyed Marco’s shoulders too, and began beating at that cream like it was his worst enemy on earth. I smiled, though it occurred to me that milk-snow wasn’t such a good idea to serve the guests either. Another dish for lovers—the last time I’d sent milk-snow up to Madonna Giulia and her Pope, most of it had ended up dotted all over the sheets as if the Holy Father had used it to paint his mistress like a canvas. If I saved a bowl, maybe Marco would paint me like a canvas . . .

  Never mind. I knew what I was supposed to do here, and it did not involve idle dreams about bed sport.

  “Where’s Lord Sforza’s cup?” I asked Marco, and gave a last tweak to my arrangement of Corinthian raisins and sweet chestnut frittelle.

  “There.” He nodded to the silver goblet set out for the guest of honor. “Have the singers started yet?”

  “If they can even be heard over all the giggling and flirting. Half the guests are planning trysts and the other half are drunk.”

  “Well, let the apprentices bolt off to hear the singers too,” Marco said tolerantly as the rest of the sweets were carried out. “If they can find a crack in the doors to listen through.”