XXIV
Rachel's body felt cold. She knew the night outside was warm despite the lateness of the hour, and the room was stifling, with all its candles and the heavy silk draperies that held in the heat. But her feet and hands were icy. It was fear that chilled her so as she sat half listening to Tilia. She huddled in a corner of the big bed, her feet tucked under her, her hands clenched in her lap. She wanted to jump out the window.
Only, she was here of her own free will. And anyway the window was barred.
"We will be watching through spy holes in the walls," said Tilia. "There will be at least three of us. If he hurts you in any way, we will be here in a trice to rescue you."
Tilia Caballo had a face like a frog, Rachel thought. The fat old woman was trying to be reassuring, but just now Rachel hated her. She could not believe Tilia would interfere with a wealthy client's pleasure no matter how badly a girl of hers was being hurt.
The skepticism must have shown in her face, because Tilia had said, "I know this man. He has been here five times. He is not the kind that likes to hurt women. I do have patrons of that sort. For them I supply women like Olivia. Sometime when you are not so frightened I may tell you what Olivia likes men to do to her. Of course, she pretends not to like it. Her clients would get no pleasure if they knew Olivia wanted them to do what they do. But no matter how I gain my livelihood, I am still a woman of honor." She glowered fiercely at Rachel, jowls quivering slightly. "I do not allow certain things to take place in my house. I do not allow my women to be mistreated."
"I know," said Rachel. "That is why I have not run away."
"You need not speak of running away," said Tilia loftily. "The door will be open for you whenever you wish to walk through it." Rachel believed that, just as she had believed gruff Lorenzo Celino when he told her she did not have to go to Tilia's house. But she also knew that if she had not come here, or if she chose now to walk out that door, these people would do nothing more for her.
Staying, much as she might hate what would happen to her, was better than wandering alone on the roads of Italy.
She looked up at the canopy over the bed. It was peach-colored, as were the bed curtains. The walls of the small room were hung with yellow silk drapes framing frescoes showing nude, smiling women fleeing from creatures that were half man and half goat, with things that stuck out before them like spears.
"Real men do not have pizzles as big as that," Tilia had said when she first showed Rachel the room, pointing with a grin at a bright red organ. "Although it may look that big to you the first time you see one in all its glory." Tilia had stopped joking then, and had carefully told her exactly what would happen on this night.
I am better prepared, Rachel thought, than many a woman is on her wedding night.
Indeed, her own mother, months before she died, had already explained much of this to Rachel. But the thought of her mother fairly broke her heart now. Her mother would cut her own throat if she could see Rachel in this place, about to let a man do this thing to her for money.
Her body shrank with dread.
She would rather, far rather, be the ignorant bride of a carpenter or a traveling merchant like her poor Angelo, who had been her husband in name only, or even the wife of a butcher, than to lie here in this gorgeously decorated room and give her most precious gift to a stranger who had bought the right to deflower her.
She found herself wishing poor old Angelo had asserted his right as her husband so that she could not now let her virginity be defiled.
Thank God Angelo is not alive to see this! But if he had lived, I would not be doing this.
God will never forgive me.
But if God does not want me to do what I am doing, why did He let this happen to me?
Tilia sat beside the bed in a big chair with a curved bottom. The jeweled cross she wore—which reminded Rachel that she was among Christians here and therefore not safe—rested on her bosom, half covered by the gold lace bordering the neckline of her gown. The cross quivered minutely with Tilia's heartbeat.
"You are probably wondering, child, whether you are doing the right thing."
"Yes." Rachel was so choked with fear that she could only whisper the word.
"Well, I can tell you there are thousands of women who would give anything to be in your place."
"In my place? To become a putana?"
Tilia laughed. "You think most women are contentedly married, with husbands to take care of them, with children who love them and neighbors who respect them—while only a few like me and the women who work for me are putane, whom the rest look down on. Well, listen to me, little one, other women envy us. A married woman sells herself, body and soul, to be some man's slave for life. And she gets damned little in return. We rent out this little part of our anatomy"—she patted her lap—"for a moment, and we keep the profit for ourselves. If we are clever, as I have been, we learn how to keep and increase our money. So when we no longer have youth and beauty to sell, we can take care of ourselves. And I tell you that a woman in her later years is likely to be a better friend to herself than any husband."
She speaks with conviction. But I cannot trust her, either. I have not had a true friend in this world since Angelo was killed.
Rachel sighed. "It is just that after tonight there is no turning back. This is for the rest of my life."
"That is right," said Tilia. "You will give up something that you can lose only once. When you have a commodity as unique as that, my child, you owe it to yourself to get the most you can for it." Her eyes hardened. "Every man wants to be the first to pierce a woman and hear her cry out and make her bleed. But what woman gets anything worth having in return? She gives it away on a dark night to some furfante with a smooth tongue and a handsome leg, or else the tonto she married takes it from her and then tells her to go wash the bed linen." She turned to stare at Rachel. "Do you know what I got for my virginity?" Her cheeks were red with anger.
"What did you get, Signora?" The heat with which Tilia spoke reassured Rachel. This was what the woman really felt. She was not just talking to lead Rachel astray.
"Blows and slavery." Tilia thrust her face close to Rachel's to underline her words. "Blows and slavery. The Genoese, may leprosy devour their limbs and may their prickles fall off in their hands, raided Otranto. They raped me—that was how I lost my virginity. They sold me to the Turks."
"You were a slave to the Turks?" Rachel gasped. "Where?" And how did she escape them and come to Orvieto and grow so rich and fat?
Tilia looked away. "Never mind. It would take too long to tell you." Rachel sensed that there was something here Tilia did not want to talk about. But she resolved to pry the story out of her one day.
Tilia's head swung back to face her. "Have I told you what you are getting this night for giving this man this proud moment of possessing a virgin?"
"I—I do not remember." Tilia had named a figure, but it had been so outrageous and Rachel had been so frightened by the prospect that she had promptly forgotten it.
"By the five wounds of Jesus, you truly are a child, not to remember something so important! Well, fix it in your mind this time, and think of it when you are wondering whether you are doing right. Five hundred golden florins. Five hundred, newly minted in Florence. That is your share. That is half of what he is paying. The other half is mine, as is only just. Think of it. He pays the price of a palazzo for you because you are a very young, beautiful virgin, and that is what he most desperately desires. Compare that with what most women get when they let a man have them for the first time."
That is far more money than Angelo ever saw in his whole life. Who is this man who will pay so much to have me? Rachel supposed Tilia would tell her who the man was if she asked, but she had decided it was better not to know anything about him ahead of time. That way she could imagine that he would be someone kind and gentle.
"I do not know what I will do with all that money," Rachel said softly.
If I lose it, all this will have been for nothing.
Tilia's wide mouth stretched even wider in a grin. "I will show you how to plant it."
"Plant it?"
"Yes, and then watch it grow. There are many, many fields in which to plant money. You can place it with the Templars or certain Lombards or men I know among your own Jews, and they use it, and when they give it back to you there is more. Miracolo! Or you can buy beautiful and valuable things with it, whose worth increases as they get older. Or you can buy shares in a ship of Venice or Pisa, or even"—she spat—"Genoa, or a German caravan, and when the caravan or the ship comes back, if it comes back, you get your money back tenfold. That is risky, but it is the quickest way to great wealth."
Rachel felt a momentary excitement. Then she remembered how she was going to get the money. Her body felt colder than ever, cold as death. This, she thought, must be the way that poor man they killed last week felt when he was waiting for the torturers to come for him. She shuddered and hugged her knees tight against her chest under the gauzy gown Tilia had given her to wear.
Tilia must have seen the sudden darkening of her mood. She moved over to the bed and sat down beside Rachel, making the frame of the bed groan alarmingly. She put a hand lightly on Rachel's arm.
"Listen, Rachel. I was raped. I will not be party to the rape of another. You do not have to do this. Just tell me that you do not want to."
A sudden heat rushed through Rachel's body. She was no longer cold. She burned with anger.
"Stop saying that!" she screamed. "Will you leave me alone?" Being reminded over and over again that she was doing this of her own free will was an even worse torture than imagining what the man would do to her.
Oh, God, I am going to cry and make myself ugly, and he will not want me and I will not get the five hundred florins.
She pressed her hands against her face, trying to stop tears.
"I was asking you to think, not carry on," said Tilia reprovingly. "If you want to walk well in life, you had better learn not to burst into tears when you have an important decision to make."
Rachel took deep breaths to calm herself.
"I decided days ago that I could not do any better for myself than this, Signora Tilia. But I am so afraid. Perhaps the man will not want me when he sees how afraid I am."
Tilia grinned broadly. "Nonsense. The more innocent and timid you appear, the more you will delight him."
Rachel heard a light tapping at the door, and her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst.
Tilia rose, brushing down her green satin gown. "The signal that he has arrived. I thought he would never get here. It's almost morning. I must go down and greet him, child. But remember, I will be watching everything."
I do not really like that.
Tilia winked and pushed on what looked like a plaster panel between two gold-painted beams in the wall. It swung away from her and she squeezed through.
Rachel sat in the bed, drawn up into the corner of it that was farthest from the door, and waited. She played nervously with fingers that felt like icicles.
A short time later she caught a glimpse of Tilia pushing open the door, but her eyes fixed on the man standing in the doorway.
She drew in a deep, gasping breath. She wanted to scream.
The man standing in the doorway was short and broad. He wore a long, brightly colored silk robe. His skin was brown, his eyes little black slits. A white mustache drooped below his flat nose. A thin white beard like a goat's hung from his chin.
She had seen this man once before, when she watched from the window of Sophia's room at Cardinal Ugolini's, the day he arrived in Orvieto in a great procession.
Rachel's breath, so long held, burst out of her in a moan.
The man who had come to take her virginity was a Tartar.
"It was as much by my choice as the cardinal's that I did not attend the contessa's reception," said Friar Mathieu, yawning. "How could a Little Brother of San Francesco stay up till all hours with people stuffing themselves with rich food and drinking wine? And gambling, and kissing each other in dark corners?"
The old Franciscan's eyes were watery with sleepiness, but the corners of his mouth quirked with humor under his white mustache. He sat on the edge of the cot, which, as he had insisted when he moved into the Palazzo Monaldeschi, was the only piece of furniture in the room. Simon paced the floor, unable to stand still.
Simon felt the barb in the mention of kissing, but he did not mind it. When he routed Friar Mathieu out of his narrow bed in a remote corner of the palace, he admitted at once that he had been in the atrium with Ugolini's niece, Sophia, while David of Trebizond was so disastrously baiting the Tartars.
"I was wrong to pay court to the cardinal's niece." He could still feel her lips under his, still taste them, and his body tingled at the remembrance. "I am as much at fault as de Verceuil. But it was he who found that ignorant woman to replace you as interpreter, and then he went off to gamble—with David's servant, of all people—and left the Tartars alone and unprotected."
Friar Mathieu shook his head. "Yes, and drinking that wine of Montefiascone. I wonder why God chose to make those particular grapes so irresistible."
Simon pounded his fist into his palm. "We must confront de Verceuil, Friar Mathieu."
A deep crease appeared between the thick white eyebrows. "At this hour?"
Simon saw the fatigue in Mathieu's wrinkled face and felt guilty. "I am most heartily sorry for awakening you at this ungodly time of night. It was just—"
"Just that you could not sleep yourself." The friar laughed. "But it is a most Godly time of night. The fact is, I would have had to get up soon to say the first part of my office. Were I living with my brother Franciscans—as I wish I were—I would be up chanting lauds with them. But I fear the cardinal will be neither willing nor able to talk to us if we go to him now."
"So much damage has been done, Friar Mathieu. The contessa is furious. I could not begin to reason with her. She went on and on, talking about murderers of babies. I would not be surprised if tomorrow morning she ordered us to leave her palazzo."
The old man raised a hand. "Pope Urban would not let her do that. It would be an insult to the ambassadors."
"Cardinal le Gros told me the pope looked pale and shaken when he left. He might not care whether the ambassadors are insulted. We can have no more of de Verceuil's blundering."
Or mine.
Friar Mathieu shook a finger at him. "What happened tonight is not the cardinal's doing. None of this is accidental. What happened tonight shows that Ugolini will do everything in his power to block this alliance."
"But Ugolini did nothing tonight. It was all that man from Trebizond."
"That is like saying that the axe chops the tree down, and not the woodsman wielding it. Ugolini brought David to the contessa's reception. He brought David's servant, an accomplished gambler as well as a recruiter of brigosi. And he brought his niece, Sophia."
At the mention of Sophia a sharp pain went through Simon's chest.
Sophia cannot be part of it. Not when I have just found her.
Was it possible that the passion she had showed in their time together in the atrium was a sham? That would be too cruel. And yet, how could he prove that she was innocent?
"It is just a coincidence that Sophia is here in Orvieto now," he said. "She is as undecided about this matter of the Tartars as the pope himself is."
But is the pope still undecided, Simon wondered as he spoke.
The wrinkles around Friar Mathieu's faded blue eyes deepened a little. "Well, I would not expect you to say otherwise. A knight does not doubt the honor of a lady he has kissed."
Simon sensed Friar Mathieu's skepticism, but he could not bring himself to believe that Sophia had knowingly been the cardinal's agent. This woman had made Italy a place of enchantment for him.
Friar Mathieu went on. "We both agree, do we not, that the luring of Cardinal de Verceuil by David's man, Giancarlo, was planned by Ugolini?"
Glad to be on safer ground, Simon nodded vigorously. "We agree on that, to be sure."
"But we cannot simply go to de Verceuil, as you proposed, and denounce him for having left the room with Giancarlo. Not when he can at once point out that you also left the room—with Sophia."
Simon turned his back on Friar Mathieu and stared out, almost unseeing, toward the window. It had neither glass nor shutters nor parchment, only a gauze curtain to discourage insects, iron bars to keep out larger intruders. He felt furious with himself.
The mention of Giancarlo reminded him that he had heard nothing from Sordello. By now the old mercenary should have insinuated himself into the band Giancarlo was gathering. Perhaps through Sordello Simon could prove Sophia's innocence.
He noticed now that some light was coming through the curtain, and he thought he heard birds singing. He had been up all night.
"Then you think it pointless for us to confront de Verceuil? I suppose you do not think I should write to Count Charles, either."
"I think it very unlikely that Count Charles would give the cardinal's responsibilities in this to someone else. I think it very likely that Cardinal de Verceuil has his intriguers around the count who would learn of your message and might set themselves to do you harm. No, I do not think we can rid ourselves of the cardinal. But I agree that we should meet with him."
Simon was bewildered. "To do what?"
Friar Mathieu shrugged. "No man is beyond redemption. He must realize that because of his blundering tonight—our blundering—the mission is perilously close to failing. Perhaps we can convince him that in the future we must work together. Otherwise there will be no glory for him to steal from us."
The old friar had been sleeping only in a robe of gray frieze. He pulled a sleeveless brown mantle over his head and tied a white cord around his waist, and he was dressed for the day. Simon envied him the simplicity of his apparel. It took him a good deal longer to dress himself in the morning, and he knew noblemen who spent hours in their wardrobes, with servants to help them, before they felt ready to face the world.
"We will go now, then?" he asked.
"Well, you are up. If the cardinal is as upset about this disaster as you are, he may well have spent a sleepless night, too. Let us go and see."
They walked side by side down dim corridors cluttered with battered old chairs and tables, past walls covered with tattered hangings, dented shields, and rusty coats of mail. The Monaldeschi family, it seemed, never threw away anything. The rooms set aside for the cardinal and his entourage were on the third floor of the palazzo, where the windows were larger and set with white glass. A man wrapped in a blanket lay on a sack of straw outside the door to the cardinal's rooms. The top of his head, shaved in a tonsure, gleamed dully in the light of the one fat candle that illuminated the corridor. A cleric in minor orders, no doubt. Simon shook him.
"No, Your Signory," the cleric said, yawning and stretching as he stood up to bow properly to the count. "The cardinal is not sleeping, but neither is he here. After the contessa's reception he and the Tartars and their guards all went out. His Eminence did not choose to tell me where they were bound."
Simon felt the wind knocked out of him, as if he had been running full tilt and tripped. He looked at Friar Mathieu, who wore a pained, even sad expression.
After everything else that had gone wrong, how could de Verceuil take the Tartars into the streets late at night? They might run afoul of bravos or some of the wild young men of Orvieto's feuding families. Why would de Verceuil take such a risk?
Then Simon understood the reason for Friar Mathieu's look of sadness. Men would leave the Palazzo Monaldeschi at this hour for only one reason—loose women.
Simon had heard that in the darkest hours a corrupt, secret world glowed brightly in Orvieto, hidden behind discreet walls. Rumor told of high-ranking churchmen who ventured behind those walls; indeed, it was said that the secret world existed because of the patronage of such men. Of course de Verceuil would be a patron of that sinful night world. And of course he would draw the Tartars into it. Barbarians that they were, they no doubt expected the attentions of harlots as their due.
That I am surprised only proves, I suppose, what a bumpkin I am, thought Simon, annoyed at himself and disgusted with de Verceuil.
He must pray, he thought with a chill, that the Tartars' guards were well armed and alert.