City of God (7 page)

“Hah!” Juan cried. Nicholas let him go, and the old man pitched himself against the door, barring it with his body. Nicholas dragged a chair and a case over to hold the entrance.

Inside the kitchen, there was a hoarse cry of surprise.

Nicholas and Juan struggled with the weight of the oak table against the wall and hauled it up far enough to stop the edge of the door just as the heavy panel shook under a blow from the far side. The chair blocking it jumped at the impact but the table caught the edge of the door and held it closed. Juan screamed a curse. He and Nicholas heaved again at the table and got it across the doorway. The door shivered again, trembling under several blows, but the table held it firmly in the frame.

Nicholas stepped back. He wondered if Juan had recognized Stefano.

“He won't starve,” he said, and Juan laughed. Nicholas cuffed him.

“I will not have you speaking directly to my guests.”

Juan bowed, awkward, a parody of a courtier. “You are a cowardly man. Someone must protect the house.”

“I am rational, not cowardly.”

The banging on the kitchen door ceased. Nicholas went through the bedroom to the window and looked out.

His friend trotted toward him through the shrubbery. His face was round with pleasure. The dry herb scent he wore could not mask the smell of his sweat. He brandished his sword grandly in one hand.

“I threw the storm shutters up. He won't be out of there for a while. Have you summoned the watch?”

“Wait until morning,” Nicholas said. “If the watch sees you here the gossips will plague you all around Rome.” He did not want to give Stefano Baglione to the watch. Surely an accomplished thief would find his way out by morning.

They went to bed again. Juan slept at the foot of the bed on the floor. In the morning, Stefano was still fast in the kitchen.

“Call the watch,” his friend said. “I'll say I was just passing and happened in.”

“No,” Nicholas said.

“Oh, Nicholas. I helped you catch him—can't I be here for the kill?”

Nicholas coughed into his rounded hand. “Yes, you did catch him. Thank you very much, I had no idea you were so resourceful. But you must consider your family, and your career. The Church frowns on such as we did last night. Trust me now. Go before someone sees you.”

His friend left, disgruntled, holding the scabbard of his sword with one hand to keep it free of his legs. Nicholas had always supposed that he carried the sword for show. It was certainly out of place on a churchman's belt.

Juan was scraping candle wax off the floor in the sitting room. Nicholas went around the outside of the house to the pantry window.

The shutters were heavily barred with stakes from the garden. He pulled them down and lifted the shutters from the hooks above the window, tilting them up against the wall beneath it. Within the window the pantry was dark and quiet.

“Stefano,” Nicholas said.

For a moment there was silence; then footsteps grated on the stone floor. Nicholas backed up, out of reach. Stefano appeared in the window, bare-headed, his coat open down the front. He looked quickly out the window from one side to the other and swung agilely through the narrow opening.

He was bigger than Nicholas remembered. His red-blond hair hung disorderly around his ears and over his shoulders.

“You didn't call the watch,” he said.

Nicholas started off through the garden, going toward the front door. “Get out,” he said, over his shoulder.

“Wait,” Stefano called. “Let me talk to you.”

Nicholas wheeled, angry, his skin prickly and warm inside his clothes. “You did not want to talk to me last night.”

As soon as those words left his mouth he regretted revealing so much interest.

Stefano was standing beside a fat oak tree, the shadows of leaves on his face and shoulders. He said, “You told me that you would come to my place. Was that just to get rid of me?”

Nicholas walked away again, stiff with unreasoning temper. The big man came after him.

“I don't like being played with lightly.”

At that Nicholas laughed, and he stopped and faced Stefano again. “Revenge? Is that why you came to rob me?”

“Yes.”

“I paid you in good coin.”

“There was more to it than that. I'm no whore.”

“Really? You bargain like one.”

“Why didn't you call the watch?”

“It could be embarrassing, if you decided to talk about me—and I was with someone else.”

They were standing at the corner of the house; as Nicholas spoke, the front door opened, and old Juan came out on the walk to shake his broom. He saw Stefano and his jaw dropped. Nicholas turned back to Stefano.

“I've been busy. The times are very difficult.”

“Who was he? The man you were with last night?”

Nicholas shook his head, dismissing the question. Juan was staring at them, the broom cocked back in his hand. With someone watching, the talk between Nicholas and Stefano turned into low comedy; Nicholas pulled on his sleeve, embarrassed and amused. He nodded to Stefano, but he could not meet his eyes.

“Very well. Either you come in the front door or the back, is that it?”

Stefano said nothing, but his weight shifted, and the leaves crunched under his boots; he put out his hand. Nicholas had no idea what this gesture meant. He shook the extended hand and that seemed to serve.

“Tomorrow?” he said.

“Yes.” Stefano smiled at him and walked off through the garden toward the gate.

Juan watched him go. When the gate slammed, the servant hurried over to Nicholas.

“That was—he was here, once.”

Nicholas said, “Hunh.” He started around the corner again, going to the back of the house, to put away the shutters.

“What sort of fellows do you bring into your house?” Juan came after him like a harpy.

“Thieves and rogues.”

He stowed away the shutters in the little shed against the back wall of the house. Juan followed his every step.

“And now you have invited him back again!”

“He amuses me,” Nicholas said. He backed out of the shed, brushing the dirt from his sleeves. “Go in and make me a breakfast.”

The old man scowled at him, turned away, and went around the house to the door, muttering of Nicholas's sins. Nicholas shut the door of the shed and fastened it with a bit of wood.

When he walked into the workroom of the legation, where the scribes were bent over their tables, all work and talk stopped. That warned him; without hanging up his coat he passed through a hush to the corridor leading to his chamber. At top speed he ran down the corridor and threw open his door.

Beyond his desk the young aide Ugo snapped upright, his cheeks ashen. His hands were still in the drawer he was rifling.

“Shall I help you look?” Nicholas said.

“I can explain,” Ugo said, at the same time, so that the words intermingled.

“Explain!” Nicholas started around the desk, and Ugo jumped back, as if Nicholas might attack him. Pressing himself to the wall, he shot forward again like a freed spring, jumped across the desk, and dashed out the door.

Nicholas slammed the open drawers. He pulled on the bottommost of them, which was shut, and found the lock still closed. Relieved, he straightened. Ugo's footsteps reached him from the hall, going fast away. He went at a leisurely pace around the desk and down the corridor after Ugo.

As he walked into the workroom, Ugo was just leaving by the rear stair. Nicholas went onto the landing. Down the flight of narrow steps the top of Ugo's head raced away around the corner.

“I will see you when you return, Messer Ugo,” Nicholas called.

In the workroom the scribes and pages all wore grins like painted puppet faces; they were poised over their work, but no one worked; no one moved. Nicholas looked slowly around the room. They avoided his eyes. The grins were less in his favor than against Ugo, whom everyone hated. Probably they all hated Nicholas as well. He went calmly along behind the stools of the scribes, examining each man's work over his shoulder.

The last of the scribes murmured, “I told him not to do it, Messer Nicholas.”

Nicholas said, “You write an excessively vulgar hand. I suggest you practice from a copybook.”

A page hooted. Nicholas turned on his heel, sweeping his gaze around the room. The four boys stirred and pulled their faces straight. Nicholas began, “Perhaps you young gentlemen have not—”

Bruni walked through the main door, his hat in his hand and his cloak over his arm; he looked sleepy or half-drunk. At the sight of him Nicholas broke off his pompous little speech, the pages came to attention, and the scribes left their stools and stood up straight. Bruni looked around him, his eyebrows lifting. One page came forward to take his cloak.

“Is something wrong?” Bruni asked.

Nicholas said, “Good morning, Excellency. The morning dispatches have not yet arrived, I'm afraid.”

Bruni's eyebrows lowered again. “What is wrong?” He shook his head at Nicholas. “Come into my chamber.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

Bruni walked heavily toward the corridor. Nicholas hurried around ahead of him to hold the door; just as they were going into the corridor there was a shout in the workroom.

“The dispatches!” Ugo burst in from the back stairs. “The courier came—Valentino is retreating! Florence is saved!” Ugo wrung his hands together over his head and danced a jig in the center of the room. “He is leaving Tuscany!”

The scribes and pages screamed, cheering, bouncing off their stools. Bruni's face cracked into a broad smile.

“I knew it. Mars is retrograde at last.”

Nicholas walked away down the corridor.

Pretending to read, Nicholas waited three hours for Stefano Baglione to come. At last, well after the watch had gone by on their ten o'clock round, there was a knock.

Juan opened the door. A low sound escaped him; Nicholas, waiting tensely over his book, shot up onto his feet. Stefano crossed the threshold. His face was swollen out of shape, and mottled with patches of drying blood.

“Good God,” Nicholas said.

“Close the door,” Stefano said.

The old servant shut and latched the door. Without waiting to be told, he went out to the kitchen. Stefano forced his lumpy cheeks into a smile at Nicholas.

“Am I late?”

“Very.” Nicholas sat down.

Stefano took the chair opposite him. He sighed as his weight left his feet. His fingers pressed his side through his gaudy green coat. His hands were bloody.

“I won a lot of money at cards,” he said. He arranged himself gingerly in the chair, his legs stretched out, and his broad shoulders pressed to the chair back. “Those I won it from tried to take it back.”

“Tried,” Nicholas said.

The kitchen door shrilled on its hinges; Juan brought a basin of warm water and vinegar across the room. He set the basin down on the chair beside Stefano and stood back, a piece of clean linen folded over his arm. His face was screwed up in distaste. Stefano picked the basin up and setting it on his knees plunged his hands into it. He groaned with pleasure. Water slopped onto his coat and onto the floor. He splashed handfuls of water over his face. The vinegar penetrated the room with its acid smell. Nicholas laid his book aside. In the big mail's thick damp hair he saw an oozing lump, and his stomach twisted. He looked away, at the walls, at Juan.

“Wine,” he said.

Juan went away on the new errand.

“I did not know you played cards,” Nicholas said.

“Yes. Tarocco.” Stefano blotted his streaming face on his sleeve. “That's my chief work. I only steal when I run short of money to gamble with.” Juan brought him a glass of the strongest wine, and he gulped it, like a horse drinking.

“That's too good a wine to drink so fast,” Nicholas said.

Stefano smiled at him again. There was a kind of triumph in his looks, a buoyant elation, as if the wounds were awards.

“I knew them,” he said. He flicked one bruised hand at Juan. “Give me the towel.” His attention snapped back to Nicholas again. “I knew they would try something, so I was ready. I left a few more lumps with them than they left with me.” Scooping up the vinegary water in his hands, he bathed his face again.

“Don't order my servant about,” Nicholas said. He spoke to Juan in Spanish. “Give him the linen. And see if there is lotion of aloes.” Juan left.

“What tongue is that?” Stefano asked. “You are not Italian, are you?”

Nicholas shook his head. He watched Stefano daub and rub at his battered face and hands; Juan returned and stood there with the towel and the white jar of lotion. The water and the towels were bloody. Nicholas looked away, down, off across the room, turning his mind to other subjects, but his gaze and his mind turned constantly back toward the bloody man before him. The dirt and the blood disgusted him, and yet the sight of the work of violence quickened a hateful interest in him, which he could not restrain or fathom, some lust.

Stefano patted lotion at the deep oozing cut on his head. He winced. Nicholas's face contorted in mimicry. He pulled his cheeks and mouth straight again, forced his eyes away. His was the superior life. He crossed one leg over the other, staring at the wall, his armpits damp with sweat.

With the French king and his army marching south toward Rome on their way to Naples, Valentino withdrew his troops out of Tuscany; as a vassal of the crown of France, he was required to join his suzerain in the war against Naples. The spring's Bullying of Florence had won him little. He had forced a contract of employment for himself and his troops, but the Signory had never paid him any of the money.

Now the attention of everyone who mattered turned toward Naples. The ancient city in the south was the head and heart of a kingdom embracing all southern Italy. The King of France had an old claim to its throne, and once before, in 1494, he had marched through Italy to enforce that claim. In 1494 the French had taken Naples, but as soon as the king went home to France the kingdom fell back into the hands of the Spanish dynasty that had ruled it since the days of the Sicilian Vespers.