The Serpent and the Pearl

  Too powerful for a humble notary of twenty-four to challenge, even over such a serious matter as a sister’s virtue.

  “Why the sad face, sorellina?” My brother stopped in the street, his smile disappearing from his lean handsome face. Thanks to the stilt clogs my head reached his shoulder instead of the middle of his chest, and he didn’t have to look down so far. Cardinal Borgia was tall too—I was forever craning my head up at the men in my life. “The Cardinal hasn’t been pressing you in earnest, has he?” Sandro continued. “Flirting is one thing, but if he thinks he can turn one of the Farnese into a common courtesan—” Sandro looked ominous, but he still couldn’t resist striking a pose: the noble Galahad, hand on imaginary sword. “That Borgia bull is a powerful man in Rome, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a rapier to him! Chase him through the streets at swordpoint—”

  “Oh, be sensible!” I snapped. “A notary from the provinces, taking on a cardinal of Rome? He could swat you like a fly.” That now seemed perfectly clear.

  “Maybe.” Sandro dropped his theatrics. “Doesn’t mean a brother isn’t obligated to try, if someone threatens his sister’s honor.”

  That’s what Orsino should have done, I couldn’t help thinking. That’s what husbands always do, brothers and fathers too. I’d grown up listening to wives whisper, complaining of strict husbands and the jealous guard they kept on their wife’s virtue—but how queerly flattening to have a husband who wasn’t jealous at all. Of course Orsino Orsini didn’t love me; I was resigned to that. We didn’t even know each other, after all. But he married me with the intention of giving me to someone else, and that I wasn’t resigned to at all.

  I’d tried sending him a letter, telling him so. Telling him to come for me, telling him what the Cardinal said to me, telling him—oh, Holy Virgin knew what. But my maid Pantisilea said apologetically that she’d just have to hand the letter over to my mother-in-law. “I’m sorry, Madonna Giulia. She’s a right interferer, Madonna Adriana is, but all the servants have got their orders.” I’d yanked my letter back and burned it myself rather than give my mother-in-law the satisfaction.

  “Giulia?”

  “Don’t worry, Sandro.” I aimed my brightest smile up at my brother, who still looked worried. “I shouldn’t have troubled you. It’s just an old man with a wandering eye, after all—you think I can’t defend my own honor against that? In truth I’m flattered! It’s much more entertaining to be a wife than an unmarried girl, I can tell you. Come, we’re almost back to the palazzo, I’ll show you my new quarters. I live better than a princess now—I know you said the Orsini were rich when Orsino began inquiring for me, but you have no idea. Embroidered Spanish velvet for my bed hangings, and such a carpet . . .”

  Carmelina

  T he room I was allotted in the servant quarters of the Palazzo Montegiordano was tiny. Just enough for a pallet and a small chest that doubled as both chair and storage for my clothes. I could touch all four walls without moving from the spot.

  Santa Marta save me, it was paradise.

  Madonna Adriana da Mila had started to fuss when Marco presented his newly orphaned cousin from Venice. “Cousin?” she said dubiously, looking from Marco to me, and I suppose she thought he was just trying to bring his whore into the household for easier access.

  “Cousin,” I said firmly, and cast my eyes down and let Marco do the arguing as a good girl should when accompanied by the man, be he father, husband, brother, or cousin who owns her life.

  Madonna Adriana brightened when Marco mentioned my skills as a cook: “The marzipan tourtes, those were her own contribution to the wedding feast, madonna. I believe the bride spoke highly of them? Carmelina’s skill with sweets is surpassed only by my own—”

  I took a moment to huff quietly through my nostrils at that, but I kept my eyes lowered and let Marco take the credit. Maybe he was getting the credit for my wedding feast, but I was getting something in return, so all in all you couldn’t say I hadn’t been paid a fair wage for my work.

  Madonna Adriana brightened even further when I murmured that of course I would be adding my hands to the kitchen at no extra cost to Marco’s wages. “I can’t give you a room, now,” she warned. “Perhaps a pallet in one of the storerooms . . .”

  In the end I had my little cubby, which had once been a spare storage space for oil jars. I didn’t mind; the whole little space had the tang of good olive oil, and when I stretched out in my little bed at night I breathed it in rapturously as I slid into sleep. The first sleep I’d had in months that hadn’t been broken by fearful dreams.

  Not that there was much time for sleep. Adriana da Mila had a constant stream of guests: innumerable Orsini cousins who expected equally innumerable trays of nibbles and wine; matrons who called to inspect the new golden-haired daughter-in-law; and of course Cardinal Borgia, who everyone said was laying siege to that same golden-haired daughter-in-law. Except for that one surprise visit to the kitchens the morning after her wedding, I still hadn’t seen much of Madonna Giulia except for the occasional glint of bright hair as she drifted past in some distant upstairs loggia, but she did keep a steady stream of servants running upstairs with plates of my baked crostate of quinces and apples, and my white peaches in grappa, and my offelle thick with sweetened French cream. The girl did love her sweets, or rather, she loved my sweets, and if Marco was freshly annoyed every time he saw me and was reminded of how neatly I’d angled my way into his life, well, he did like having an extra pair of hands in his kitchen. Particularly if those hands were mine, and particularly on days like today, when a page boy brought the order down from Madonna Giulia for a plate of stuffed figs with cinnamon, sugar, and chopped almonds, right in the middle of the midday rush.

  “Carmelina!” Marco didn’t even glance at me, his hands flying as he stuffed a roast suckling pig.

  “Yes, maestro.” My own hands were already reaching for the figs, the sugar, the almonds, and a knife to chop them fine. “Piero, the cinnamon.”

  “It’s over there.” He tilted a brusque shoulder in some vague direction.

  “And I want it over here, apprentice.” The steel in my voice got him moving, but he slouched his way across the kitchens with deliberate slowness, took his time selecting among the spices, and tossed it down before me so it spattered my workspace.

  “Now you can get me a cloth to wipe that up,” I ordered, and he looked at me resentfully. Half the apprentices already loathed me, and the maidservants only grudgingly followed my orders. I had saved Madonna Giulia’s wedding banquet, and perhaps their positions along with it, but what did that matter? Kitchens have a hierarchy as rigid as any royal court, after all, and I was an interloper: not quite cook, not quite scullion, not quite servant. Someone Marco had brought in personally but clearly disapproved of; someone who gave orders but took them too; someone trusted with the delicate pastries for the daughter of the house, but who also pitched in with the scouring and cleaning fit only for the lowest pot-boys. I was an unknown quantity, and no kitchen likes an unknown quantity of anything, be it spices or servants. Marco really would have to make my place clear if he wanted peace in his kitchens, but for the time being he preferred not to look at me, and I’d have to carve out whatever authority for myself that I could.

  “Piero?” I said, making my voice a whip. “A cloth.”

  “Yes, signorina,” he said, insolently polite, and took his time with that too.

  “Thank you,” I told him, aware the others were listening, and turned back to my work. Only to see the cat wandering across the table, tracking his paws through my neat spread of flour.

  “Out!” I brandished the cloth at him, but the lazy bastard just hissed at me. As far as I was concerned, a cat who didn’t earn his keep by mousing might as well be drowned under the cistern. “One of these days I will turn you into sausage,” I warned. “With a little garlic and fennel and splodges of pork fat, and then I’ll eat you with a smile, just you wait.”

  The cat miaowed at me
insolently and managed to knock over a jug of cream I was saving for whipping as he jumped to the floor. The cream went all over my skirt, and I could hear the maids giggling as I rushed back into my little chamber for a fresh apron.

  I stopped there, closing the door behind me and folding my floured arms across my breasts. “I thought I’d left you well hidden,” I said finally.

  A withered and mummified hand lay half exposed in the nest of my clothes inside my small chest. I suppose I’d uncovered it in the dawn darkness this morning when I’d been hurriedly rummaging for a clean shift.

  Why did it look different, sitting on a heap of clothes, than it had in the reliquary? I’d seen it so many times when I was a girl: the blessed and sacred hand of Santa Marta, carefully preserved and displayed in the convent of the same name in Venice. Not the largest and most illustrious of Venice’s many convents, not by any means—but one where my father said most of his infrequent prayers. It made sense to a thrifty soul like his that Santa Marta was the one to intercede if you wanted to cook for the Doge at Carnival or were hoping to be hired for the wedding banquet of the latest Foscari heiress. What does the Holy Virgin know about the desperate prayers that come from a kitchen, after all? No one ever saw the Holy Virgin cooking. So when my father felt the need of a little divine assistance in his work he would take us—my mother, my sister, and me—to the Convent of Santa Marta, to pray at the altar of their church. And on that altar you could very clearly see the severed and preserved hand of the patron saint of cooks herself.

  Of course, I never laid much faith that it was the saint’s true hand. There’s nothing more practical than an order of nuns with choir stalls to repair, and with so many convents in Venice competing for well-dowered novices, an abbess needs a little something extra to bring the wealthy families flocking to her doors. San Zaccaria had countless relics; Santa Chiara had one of the nails that had pierced the hands of Christ; and they had rich young girls lining up to join. So, some long-ago abbess of the Convent of Santa Marta might well have shrugged her worldly shoulders and made a discreet perusal among those purveyors of relics who can get you anything from a fragment of the True Cross to a lock of Mary Magdalene’s hair as long as you’re not too fussy. And lo and behold, the Convent of Santa Marta had a relic of its own to display: the hand of its patron saint, which was said to come to life and make the sign of the cross whenever it granted the prayers of the faithful. Not a famous relic; I doubted anyone had heard of it outside Venice. But it brought a cluster of novices with hefty dowries, and the hand soon had a beautiful new reliquary of silver and ivory, studded with garnets and pearls along its sides and set with a rock crystal viewing window through which the worshippers could see the hand itself: a little withered, a little dark and dried, but still boasting a carved gold ring on one small curled-in finger.

  I shivered, looking at the hand now in the heap of my clothes. Maybe it looked different now because I’d stolen it.

  So help me, I didn’t mean to. I only wanted the reliquary. I was desperate to get out of Venice, desperate to get to Rome, but not so desperate that I would have stolen a sacred relic (or even a not-so-sacred one). I’d needed money, and I reckoned the reliquary would be worth a good three hundred ducats after I broke it down to its anonymous components of cabochon jewels and carved silver panels. I should have had three hundred ducats as a dowry from my father—three hundred ducats he’d given to the convent of Santa Marta instead as an offering, once it was clear I’d never marry. That convent owed me. And what with one bit of bad luck after another, it was really the only place I could go for quick money after I’d stolen my father’s recipes and bolted. The only place with anything valuable at all, anything that might stake me enough for my journey south.

  So I took the reliquary, but I’d never have taken the hand. I broke the rock crystal viewing window with the heavy base of an altar candlestick, looking desperately about the empty church as I shook out the shards. I couldn’t bring myself to reach inside and touch the relic itself, so I just muttered an incoherent prayer of “Santa Marta, please forgive me” as I shook her hand out of the reliquary. I meant to wrap it respectfully in the embroidered altar cloth, but I heard a noise from the nave and panicked. I’d managed to distract the nuns, get in alone, but I’d known I’d only have moments, if not seconds. I just snatched the reliquary box and ran.

  The box was empty when I took it. I’d have sworn an oath on that. But the hand’s dried palm must have caught on the broken edges of the viewing window as I bundled everything up, because later I found the dark curled thing tangled in my cloak at the bottom of my pack, after I’d sold the pieces of the reliquary for far less than they were worth. I’d stared at it in horror, but what was I supposed to do then? I’d already taken ship, the cheapest passage I could find from Venice to Ferrara. Even if the boat had turned around on the spot, I couldn’t have taken the relic back—I’d have been arrested for desecration of a church.

  I’d meant what I told Marco that first morning, sitting in those cramped little kitchens. I can’t go back. If I’d just stolen from my father—well, I’d likely be returned for whatever punishment he deemed fit. But a desecrator of church altars wouldn’t be forgiven. I didn’t know what punishment they had in Rome for desecrators, but I’d heard how other thieves of God had been treated. I could be strung upside down from a public gallows, hanging there while the crowds threw rocks and rotten vegetables at me, until the blood burst inside my head.

  And if they found out just who I was—what I had been in Venice—well, I’d be shipped back there, to La Serenissima and the hands of my enemies. And I’d face a far worse punishment than hanging upside-down on a public gallows.

  I shivered at the thought, tasting the sour tang of terror in my mouth again, and crossed myself as I looked at the dark shriveled thing in the nest of clothes. I certainly couldn’t throw it away like trash, but what did I do with it? I’d thought of leaving it at a shrine or an altar somewhere—but relics in the Holy City are a hundred to a scudo; likely the hand would just have been tossed away as rubbish. I couldn’t send it back to the Convent of Santa Marta in Venice, either; not without giving myself away.

  I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with the thing.

  I had to steel myself to touch it with my bare hand. I could cut a lamb’s throat for the kitchen spit as briskly and unsentimentally as any man; I could plunge my hand into a mass of still-steaming pig guts and empty them out for sausage casings; but I flinched as I picked up the withered hand and laid it on my bed. It felt dry and wrinkled to the touch, like a raisin.

  I hesitated, then dropped to my knees beside it. It might not be my patron saint’s true hand, but it had still been sacred to her, a relic of her church. If I gave my prayers to it, she would hear me. Only, what was the proper prayer to a saint whom you have robbed and desecrated?

  “Santa Marta,” I said finally, “don’t be angry with me. You know I couldn’t—you know I had to leave.” I was glad I didn’t have to get into that part of my story—the small matter of who I was. Being sanctified, Santa Marta would just know that without me having to go through all the sordid details. “I’m sorry I had to steal from you, I didn’t mean—”

  I stopped. This wasn’t going well at all.

  “Santa Marta,” I began again. “Help me to stay hidden here, and I dedicate all the dishes these hands of mine will ever make to you. The roasts, the fowl, the sauces, the sweets—all to your name. My hands and all their works, from this day, if you will forgive me my sins against you.”

  I looked down at my hands. Scarred with old knife nicks, the faded burn on my wrist where a too-hot sauce had once splashed, the calluses from wrestling with spits and jerking feathers from dead pheasants. What saint besides the patron of cooks would want hands like that?

  For the first time, I really looked at the curled-up hand now lying on my bed. A small hand like mine; useful for stuffing the cavities of small birds. Narrow fingers, one still wearing a
filigreed gold band, the sort of ring a cook would choose because it wasn’t too elaborate to wear while kneading bread dough. The withered palm was broad—and was that the remnant of a callus at the base of the forefinger, in the same place where I had one after years of pressure from the handle of a knife?

  I smiled for what felt like the first time in months. Maybe this wasn’t the true hand of my patron saint, but it had been the hand of a cook.

  Maybe we still understood each other, Santa Marta and I. Maybe she wasn’t so angry with me after all. She had been at my side for Madonna Giulia’s wedding feast, after all—even if Marco did get the credit for it, the good saint and I both knew who had really pulled it off.

  “It was a good feast, wasn’t it?” I asked the hand, and was rather disappointed when it didn’t move. If it had made the sign of the cross at me, I’d have known my vow had been heard.

  Or maybe I’d have just fainted dead away.

  “Carmelina!” Marco’s bellow from the kitchens. “Why are you dawdling, little cousin? Those figs won’t stuff themselves!”

  “Coming, maestro,” I called, and hastily found my spare apron to replace the soiled one. The hand I carefully wrapped in my finest linen kerchief and stored at the bottom of my chest. “Not as good as a silver and rock crystal reliquary,” I said aloud, rising. “But you’ll never be more needed than you are with me.”

  I made the sign of the cross and whisked out of my little room that smelled like olive oil. I was a thief and a desecrator, and I was probably bound for hell one day, but Marco was right. Madonna Giulia’s figs were not going to stuff themselves.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sword of the Lord will descend swiftly, and soon.

  —FRA SAVONAROLA

  Leonello

  T he Inn of the Fig was a step or two grander than the kind of establishment where I normally made my living. The maidservants wore neat gowns and clean aprons and for the most part looked indignant if you thumped them on the hip after they brought your drinks. The wine was subtler, the tapers beeswax instead of smoky tallow, the trestle tables clean-scrubbed rather than sticky with wine, and the crowd of dusty traveling pilgrims and habitual gamblers had a greater sprinkling of velvet-clad boys escaping their tutors for a little noisy fun among the cards and commoners. Accordingly I bought a new shirt and polished my boots, brought a seldom-worn cap of faded velvet from the chest at the foot of my bed, as well as a few rings for my stubby fingers that weren’t silver but looked real enough, and for three weeks came nightly to the Inn of the Fig to play dice, zara, and all the other games of chance that I normally scorned. I ordered wine that I pretended to drink and ordered rounds that my fellow players drank to the dregs, and through it all I kept my ears open.