Chapter 1
MADDALENA
Rome, August 1492
The bells of St. Peter’s—indeed, all of Rome—tolled incessantly to announce the death of the pope. Pope Innocent’s death was not unexpected; far from it. The Holy Father had been very ill of late, and the sweltering summer certainly had taken its toll on him—as well as on the people in the crowded streets of Rome, God bless them.
I hadn’t attended to His Holiness directly—not a lowly maid like me—but everyone in the Vatican knew it had been a hard illness of many days, a violent and unrelenting fever. And we knew the rumors, the claims that the Holy Father believed drinking the blood of young boys would restore him to health, and that his physician had procured such for him. No one could say whether the story was true, but His Holiness’s physician had been observed carrying a goblet of something into his master’s bedchamber every night for a week.
Still, guilty of such a ghastly deed or no, he had been the pope, and it wasn’t for me to question the doings of Christ’s vicar on earth. On hearing the bells I went directly into the servants’ chapel to pray for him, that he might be greeted at the pearly gates by his predecessor San Pietro with a welcome worthy of God’s highest servant.
Upon leaving the chapel, I ran into Federico Lucci, the footman whom I counted as my closest friend among the other servants. He was kind to me, helping me learn my duties and my way around the vast palazzo when I first arrived, and told me all the gossip. He thought I didn’t know he made eyes at me when I wasn’t looking, but he had very fine and handsome light brown eyes, so I couldn’t say I minded. “May as well come with me,” he said by way of greeting.
“Oh? To where?” I asked, falling into step beside him.
“The Sistine Chapel. It’s got to be cleaned and made ready for conclave. I’ve been told to round up any servants I see for the task.”
Joy sparked in my heart. I would be in the palace for the next conclave. I would be in the same building when the next pope was chosen. When history was made. And I would be a witness to it. What more could I have hoped for in coming to the Holy City?
My dear uncle Cristiano, God rest his soul, had often told me: God’s will shall always find a way. A priest himself, he would have been proud to see me serving in the Holy Father’s house. I wished I could tell him that I would be present—in a fashion—for the election of the next pope. Perhaps, then, it was God’s will that had brought me to Rome after all, that I might bear witness to His workings through His Church—no matter what my mother had said about my coming here.
Surely a prideful thought, to believe that God himself had brought me to the bosom of His Church. I quickly crossed myself and returned my attention to Federico.
“A large task, then?” I asked. “Readying the chapel?”
Federico whistled through his teeth. “Indeed. All those cardinals will be shut up in there for days, weeks even, though they’ll all likely bring their favorite furniture and trappings and such. All of them sleeping and eating and shitting in the same place until they can agree on a new pope.”
I crossed myself at the blasphemy. “But surely God comes to them, to guide them,” I said as we reached the heavy wooden doors that led to the chapel. “They are not agreeing on a new pope; they are listening and waiting for God to make His will known to them, sì? And the man God chooses is the man they must all cast their votes for.”
As we stepped into chapel, astonishment overtook me. I had never been inside before. Paintings more beautiful and colorful than any I had ever seen lined the walls. They depicted scenes from the Bible, but with people so lifelike I thought they might step right down from the wall and begin to converse with us. The simple village church where I’d attended Mass growing up certainly had nothing like this; and since coming to the Vatican I had not had opportunity to be in any of the truly fine rooms. Even if I had, never would I dare to linger to look at paintings or any of the cardinals’ fine things. Yet now I had a moment I might take advantage of. I stepped as close as I dared to one of the scenes, depicting the temptation of Christ. He stood with the devil atop a temple in the center of the image, looking down at the throngs of people below that he might rule over. I marveled at the way the robes of the people in the crowd appeared to fold and tumble about them like real cloth; at the detail of the gold embroidery on the robes of the priest; at the texture of hair and skin, so real I wanted to touch it to see if it was truly naught but paint; at the lifelike angles of heads and limbs; at the way all the many figures in the painting seemed to be moving, somehow. Looking up, I found the blue ceiling was dotted with painted gold stars, as though to represent the very heavens themselves.
A few paces away, Federico was shaking his head at me, albeit with a smile. “The man God chooses,” he repeated, and I was pulled back to our conversation. “I forgot you haven’t been in Rome very long, mia dolce Maddalena. You’ll learn how the Vatican really works soon enough.”
Chapter 2
CESARE
Rome, September 1492
The archbishop’s purple velvet mantle and robes of purple silk were damnably uncomfortable in the Roman heat. Even sitting in the shade of the loggia in my mother’s lush courtyard, I felt as though I were roasting in hellfire—as well I may, for being as I was and daring to wear an archbishop’s robes anyway. If the Almighty takes issue with me for such, I would beg him to lay the blame at my illustrious father’s door, I thought crossly, pulling the collar irritably away from my neck. He had not wasted much time after his elevation to the throne of St. Peter in bestowing upon me his old archbishopric, and as such I was now the Archbishop of Valencia.
Yet hypocrisy amongst His servants did not seem to bother God in the least, judging by all I had observed in my years in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. Were He to set about smiting them, He would have a very long list to attend to before reaching me.
As my mind ranged over these dark musings, a pair of cool hands covered my eyes. “Lucrezia,” I said, smiling as I heard her telltale giggle. I seized her arm, tugging her around me and into my lap.
“Cesare, germà,” she said in the Catalan we always spoke when we were alone as a family, kissing my cheek. “Perhaps it is just as well that you are not a warrior, for I was able to sneak up behind you quite unnoticed!”
The same words from our brother Juan would have set my fingers itching for my dagger, that I might cut out his tongue, but from my sister they made me laugh. “Ah, but even the greatest of warriors shall always be bested by woman’s wit and cunning,” I said, my tongue sliding into Catalan as well, still familiar after all those years of speaking only Italian and Latin at school.
She giggled again. “I have taken the liberty of sending for some chilled wine, if it pleases Your Excellency,” she said.
I groaned. “None of this ‘Excellency’ business from you of all people, Crezia,” I said. “Though the wine will please me well enough.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Donna Adriana has taken to reminding me of proper addresses and courtesies,” she said. “She says I need them now that Father is the pope.” We both crossed ourselves at this mention of the change in our family’s fortunes. “Summer is the time for making popes, it seems,” she added.
“It seems so, indeed,” I agreed.
One of the servants came bearing a tray with a decanter of wine and two glasses. Lucrezia poured the straw-colored liquid herself, first mine, then hers. I took a grateful sip and closed my eyes, letting the sweet, cool liquid roll over my tongue.
“And so it seems everything Father planned has come to pass,” Lucrezia said, leaning back in her chair with the listless grace of a young girl. “Soon he can make you a cardinal, and he will send me off to marry.”
I remained silent, not sharing the rumor that was making the rounds of Rome: supposedly our father had offered Lucrezia’s hand as a bride to the family of the cardinal who had brought him the most votes in conclave. No one knew for sure which cardinal this was, but the consensus seemed to be that Ascanio Sforza, the younger brother of Ludovico Sforza of Milan, had been the one to tip the scales. Sforza was still rather young for a prince of the Church, and that he had been promoted to the post of Vice-Chancellor of the Curia—my father’s old post, and the most important and lucrative after the throne of St. Peter itself—just after the conclave, over the heads of older and perhaps better qualified candidates—such as Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, my father’s old enemy—spoke volumes.
Technically Lucrezia was betrothed to a Spanish nobleman from Valencia—our family’s place of origin and my new archbishopric—but such a contract could and would be easily set aside. There would be much higher targets, much more prominent and profitable matches, for the daughter of a pope as opposed to the daughter of a cardinal.
The very thought of my dear sister being used as a bargaining chip in the tawdry game of politics was enough to make me want to do my father injury, sin though it was to raise a hand against one’s father. And raising a hand to the Holy Father was a sin that no doubt Lucifer himself would hesitate to contemplate.
“And has His Holiness spoken to you of your marriage yet?” I asked casually.
My sister shook her head, her gold curls tumbling about her shoulders. “No,” she said. “His Holiness has, I believe, had much more pressing matters on his mind. Perhaps soon, once he has become accustomed to his new station.”
Our father had had much to preoccupy him since his ascent, but I knew him better than Lucrezia did if she thought her marriage was not a pressing matter to him.
Copyright © 2020 by Alyssa Palombo
