The Orphan of Florence

  “Then pray tell, dear Girolamo,” the wealthy Roman countered, “what we must do to make him speak.”

  Stout shrugged. “He ’ad a little boy with ’im. Don’t know as they’re brothers or what, but he begged us not to bring ’im with us. Ready to die for the little one, ’e is, but doesn’t give a worry ’bout his own life.”

  Ser Andrea drew back, aghast. “Then where is he, you imbecile? Why didn’t you bring him?”

  Stout bristled. “I ain’t stupid! I brought ’im. The little bastard escaped. But not to worry, Renato went after ’im. They’ll be here soon enough.”

  “I see,” the Roman said, somewhat mollified. “Is there anything else you have to tell us?”

  “That would be it,” Stout admitted.

  “Well, then,” Ser Andrea said briskly, “As I said, that will be all. We have no need of your wagon. Claudio’s horse will be far faster.” He gestured with his handkerchief at the hairy bodyguard. “Claudio, would you please?”

  Stout turned expectantly toward the bodyguard.

  In a display of fine swordsmanship, Claudio lunged forward on his right leg, his left flexed and ready to power a spring, his left arm out to perfectly counterbalance his forward movement. A long stiletto—of the sort Ser Abramo had once wielded against me—had magically appeared in his hand, and he delivered it emphatically into the center of Stout’s formidable gut. Stout’s little eyes bloomed into great circles, as did his pink lips. His shoulders hunched forward and he gripped the top of the long blade as if to stop it, as if it hadn’t already been piercing his innards. Claudio pulled out his weapon with the same swiftness, with a sucking sound.

  Still looking startled, Stout dropped to his knees and stared down in alarm at the blood darkening his tattered mantello and dripping from his half-severed fingers. He keeled forward like a felled calf.

  I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until I heard a splash and saw the two bodyguards returning from the low wall meant to protect people from falling into the river. Stout was, of course, nowhere to be seen.

  The rich Roman was just closing his purse, presumably after replacing his five gold florins. Without looking up, he said, “So, Claudio, top speed. Advise Lauro and Luca to be armed and on the roof of the Church of San Lorenzo within an hour.”

  The wild-bearded man nodded and disappeared without a word.

  In the interim, Ser Andrea retrieved a pair of spectacles from beneath his mantle and put them on. With extreme distaste, he leaned over the workbench and lifted up one of the pieces of paper by the corner, using only the tips of his gloved forefinger and thumb. He kept his kerchief pressed to his nose as he read silently.

  He finally looked up and noted my amazed expression. “Never trust those easily turned by money,” he said, bemused, the very edges of a smile visible on either side of his kerchief. “I questioned Girolamo’s devotion to His Holiness. At any rate, let him be a cautionary tale for those who speak too freely.” His grin broadened briefly at the irony before he turned back to the paper in his reluctant grasp.

  “We have times and dates here, but no final destinations. And we have a number of magical symbols jotted down on the paper, which appear to be notes.”

  I stared at him and said nothing.

  He spoke as if he were lecturing the guard or a class of assembled students. “These symbols aren’t necessarily devilish. The Hebrews have their own form of sacred magic, which invokes angelic forces rather than demonic. This is the writing of someone very learned, not of a superstitious charlatan. However, as much as the Florentines like to look the other way on these things, in Rome this is heresy, punishable by death.”

  He smiled at me as he set the paper back down on the bloodied workbench. “I suppose you think yourself on the side of the angels?”

  I nodded wearily.

  He snorted softly. “Nothing could be further from the truth. No angel, light or dark, can help you now.”

  He’s wrong, Ser Abramo said. I started. I had forgotten his ghost was still sitting beside me.

  “These dates and times,” Andrea went on, “are written in a different hand. Which did you write: the message, or the magical symbols noted beside them?”

  “The symbols,” I answered dully, and then cursed myself for answering at all. I had intended to remain silent so that my torture and death would proceed swiftly and be done with.

  The Roman raised his eyebrows, faintly impressed, and lowered his kerchief in order to be better understood. “You are perhaps not so foolish as you look. I have no desire to make this unpleasant for you. I see that you were instructed to create four different messages, the first of which was to contain a key. I daresay your departed master was rumored to possess an exceptional intelligence. It’s possible that you know nothing more than precisely what you were instructed to do, but then, you were working in the cellar after his death. From the looks of you, you were working very hard and for a long time without sleep.

  “The instructions here say that you are to create a new key. The key to deciphering a system of code.

  “Clearly, even if one is a magician and the creator of talismans for the elite public—and by coincidence also a cryptographer—one does not use such a dangerous and critical piece of paper for jotting down random notes when creating, say, a love charm for a young lady. Certainly not unrelated random notes. Which means that the numbers you have written here—and the symbols for Venus and Saturn and various Hebrew letters—have nothing to do with the production of a charm, but rather with the requests made in this letter. Some of them, no doubt, used in the creation of the aforementioned key.”

  He paused. “I believe that I have an admirable talent for being able to look into a man’s eyes and see what lies beyond the outer appearance. You, I perceive, have an intelligence equal to that of your master.

  “Girolamo is hardly a convincing proselytizer; hardly the sort of person one would want to confide in. I wonder … With your fine brain, you could be of enormous use to us—not to mention the fact that by working with us, your excommunication would be rescinded and His Holiness Pope Sixtus would grant you a pardon for all of your sins.” He waited a moment for his words to register in my disoriented brain, then delivered what he clearly felt to be the most attractive part of his argument: “We would make you rich. It’s possible you might even be made a cardinal, which would guarantee a life of luxury for you and your friends.”

  I yawned. Poor timing. His chin jerked up and his eyes flashed at me, but they didn’t stay focused on me for long. He turned toward the figure coming out the rear door, who was already being sized up by the hairless man guarding it.

  “Niccolo,” he said, his tone at once welcoming, sly and vaguely threatening. “It’s good that you are here.”

  Seventeen

  There stood Niccolo, dressed in a pleated dark green tunic that hung halfway down his thighs, black leggings, and a scabbard clearly visible beneath his short burgundy mantle. The goatee that had once been a shadow had filled in nicely, complimenting his short black curls. His eyes—those pale celery eyes, ringed with forest green and thick black lashes, the envy and desire of women—his eyes betrayed a flicker of recognition at the sight of me.

  Yes, I was drunk with sleeplessness. Yes, he was beautiful; yes, I wanted him—or would have wanted him, if I hadn’t been in a wildly fluctuating state of fear.

  There was another emotion in Niccolo’s eyes, too, one deep and dark but quickly dismissed in favor of polite attention to Ser Andrea.

  “So I am,” Niccolo said, with a slight bow from the shoulders. “Is this”—he lifted his brows and directed a pointed glance at me, sitting on the cold bricks there beside the poor crucified ewe—“the reason you sent for me?”

  “It is,” the Roman replied, smiling smugly. “I hear that you two know each other. From that fleeting look of interest on your face, I’d guess you know each other quite well. I also thought you were one for the ladies, but this is Florence.”


  Niccolo shrugged, indifferent. “I’ve seen him before,” he admitted, without looking at me. “He worked for Abramo.”

  “Does he have a name?” Ser Andrea pressed.

  “Giuliano,” Niccolo said simply.

  “Giuliano,” Ser Andrea repeated, and showed a row of yellowed tiny teeth at the mention of Lorenzo’s dead brother’s name, as if the assassination had been vaguely amusing and not the tragic spilling of an innocent’s blood in the most sacred of spaces. He looked down at me. “What an unfortunate choice of name for you, but how very indicative of your fate.”

  “What do you mean to do with him?” Niccolo asked, again casually.

  “There are questions to be asked,” Andrea said. “And not just of him. I’ve always wondered what happened to Giuseppe, after he went chasing after the lad when you killed Abramo. Or at least, seemed to kill Abramo; only Giuseppe and this one”—he nodded again at me—“really know exactly how … effective you were. It just seemed to me convenient that Giuseppe disappeared after that, never to be seen again.”

  My mind was so fuzzy I had to work hard to understand every word, but I was able to understand who he was talking about: Red Beard, the man who had run after me. Red Beard, the man that Leo had killed while protecting me.

  I squinted my eyes half shut and remembered Ser Lorenzo next to me in the carriage, saying, You killed one of my men …

  Spies and counterspies. Too bad that Leo hadn’t realized that Red Beard had been on our side.

  Niccolo let go a sound that lay somewhere between a dismissive laugh and an outraged gasp, but he was still smiling. “Ask him!” He pointed at me. “I risk my neck for you by killing Abramo, and all you can do is ask me whether I’m loyal?”

  Ser Andrea wore a taut little grin. “Girolamo said you couldn’t be trusted.”

  Niccolo swung from side to side, searching his surroundings, his tone flatly angry. “Where is he? I’ll have a word!”

  “Indisposed,” the Roman said.

  The hairless bodyguard snickered.

  Ser Andrea grinned at him, enjoying a private joke. “Or should we say disposed, eh, Donato?”

  Niccolo wasn’t laughing. “It’s not funny,” he said. “I killed a man—a man I knew well, who’d never done me harm. The Medici are looking for me. They’ll have my head on a pike the minute they find me. And you doubt my loyalty?”

  “Well, I never thought much of Girolamo’s character,” Ser Andrea allowed. “But it’s clear that you know this one”—again, referring to me—“so I’ll let you do the honors instead of Donato. Here.” He gestured Niccolo toward him and showed him the papers. Niccolo read them, his expression a blank.

  “Rendezvous points,” he said finally. “For couriers, perhaps. These are instructions for a cryptographer.”

  “I think it refers to Lorenzo himself,” Ser Andrea said. “I think he either intends to go begging for help again or to escape like the coward he is. He knows he could end this war at any time by surrendering himself.”

  Niccolo looked wryly at him. “To publicly be drawn and quartered, of course.”

  “Which he deserves, after what he did to His Holiness’s friends,” Ser Andrea countered. “Regardless, Florence is almost in our hands. She has no strong allies, and certainly no time to use traditional diplomacy to make them. But it’s impossible for Lorenzo to head off in all directions. I want to know: Which of these rendezvous points is the right one? What is the ultimate destination? Who is meeting with him, if anyone?

  “I believe young Giuliano here knows the answer to these things, or at least some of them. He has created a new code key so Lorenzo can communicate safely with another party. The question is, have the key and the messages already been sent to the other party?”

  “Yes,” I said abruptly, as Ser Abramo’s ghost, Niccolo, and Ser Andrea turned their heads sharply toward me at my answer. I may have been hallucinating and half mad, but I knew the answer didn’t really matter. Either way, the Romans could figure out how to get what they wanted. At least, by pretending to cooperate, I could play for time, as any good thief and liar would.

  Niccolo’s handsome face revealed no emotion other than vague interest. Ser Andrea looked pleased.

  “Girolamo said you would be difficult to work with, but then, he was deeply stupid and mistaken about a good many things,” he said. “So then you can understand, dear Giuliano, why we need to know both the code and its key, as well as the method of transmission. In other words, what sort of couriers deliver the messages, and whether the messages are hidden on the couriers’ person or incorporated into apparently innocent documents or letters—”

  “I know what transmission means,” I said drowsily. Ser Abramo, sitting beside me in a shimmering aura, his elbows propped upon his knees, as mine were now, whispered, You needn’t be flippant. He could easily decide to kill you.

  “I know,” I said to him, but the others clearly took me to be repeating myself.

  “So then,” the Roman said, turning to face me and smiling down at me with mock benevolence. “Let’s start with the basics: The dates written there.” He nodded at the workbench to his left. “Kindly tell me what the dates and places indicate. Rendezvous points for Lorenzo? An army? A diplomat?”

  A thrill of fear pushed me further toward wakefulness. “I don’t know,” I said, hearing the panicked catch in my own voice. “I’m only a cryptographer. No one tells me anything about Lorenzo’s plans.”

  Ser Andrea nodded at the impressively tall and muscular Donato, who apparently needed no words to understand what his master meant; his eyes, dark gray agates against his lashless lids, sparked with unhealthy anticipation. Donato moved in front of the butcher’s bench and, after a moment of contemplation, picked up one of the larger cleavers.

  “I’ll let you do the honors,” Andrea told Niccolo, “since you’re so very talented at cutting up those you know.”

  Clearly disappointed, Donato handed the cleaver to Niccolo, who moved up to the bench, his expression relaxed but otherwise unreadable.

  “Get up,” Ser Andrea said to me.

  I straightened my bent legs, but after a glance at the freshly sharpened cleaver, didn’t move.

  Another nod from Ser Andrea, and Donato lumbered over to me and yanked me to my feet so hard I stumbled forward and collided with him. It was like striking a stone wall. He led me by my wrist over to the workbench so that I stood beside Niccolo and pressed my right hand down against the wood, flattening it with the heel of his and fanning my fingers out like a starfish.

  Even the crushing pressure he applied couldn’t keep my fingers from trembling while Niccolo eyed them, cleaver in hand.

  “Just one,” Ser Andrea said graciously.

  Niccolo’s gaze flickered at me. We were standing side by side, my right shoulder pressed against his left, both of us facing the workbench. He brushed against me as he turned his upper torso sideways, toward me, so that his right arm could wield the cleaver over my outstretched hand.

  He shifted slightly so that his left thigh pressed against my right; his muscles loosened as his knee bent ever so slightly. I understood that sort of touch. It was a wordless communication between cohorts in crime—just like me wiping my nose to signal to Tommaso that the Game should commence.

  Bend your knees, bend your knees, I heard him say. So your left foot is forward, but now shift the bulk of your weight onto the back foot, your right foot. You see? You have more speed, more power moving forward.

  He raised the cleaver while the Roman watched critically.

  I was confused. Whatever Niccolo was planning to do to the monstrous Donato, I was in the way, and Ser Andrea was standing on Niccolo’s other side. I was weaponless and too clumsy to protect him from either man, which wasn’t good.

  Still, I appreciated the gesture.

  “Wait,” I said to Ser Andrea, before Niccolo could spring. “You want the cipher key—it’s a long document—too long for me to tell you. I have to write it down. I w
on’t remember it all any other way.”

  Andrea raised his eyebrows in bemusement. “You make a good point. Donato, the left hand, please.”

  This was not the response I’d hoped for. Donato released my right hand, which I curled into a fist and shoved protectively beneath my mantle, against my sickened heart. I strained against Donato’s grip on my lower left arm, but it was useless, like resisting a charging bull. He slammed the inside of my wrist down against the wood. I curled my fingers tightly, forcing him to pry them apart, one by one. He put the heel of his massive paw against my pathetic little hand so that I couldn’t move it, couldn’t even wiggle the tip of my pinky.

  The shift required Niccolo to lean further forward, putting us in an even more awkward position than before. I looked up into his eyes, found that little golden fleck floating in that beautiful celery sea, and tried, without giving anything away to either Roman, to summon an expression that would let him know that it was okay, that I knew he had no other choice, that it wasn’t his fault.

  I felt Ser Abramo standing behind me. Trust him.

  But it was a cleaver. And it was my finger.

  “I’ll talk,” I said swiftly. I wouldn’t of course, but I wanted to end the moment of awful anticipation for me, for Niccolo. Perhaps if I distracted them enough with talking, there’d come a better moment for me to get out of the way, for Niccolo to spring.

  Yet at the very instant I said I’d talk, the back door to the butcher shop opened, and Lean stepped in, dragging Tommaso with him. Lean looked exhausted; Tommaso, defiant. He saw Niccolo still holding the huge cleaver over my fingers, saw Donato holding my hand steady, and he let go a piping shout loud enough to raise all the dead sleeping in the Arno, Stout included. He pulled away from his captor and ran toward us.

  “Where’s Girolamo?” Lean asked, clearly glad to be rid of his burden.

  “Headed home. We had no further need of him. Or you, for that matter,” Ser Andrea said pointedly. Lean nodded gratefully and disappeared.