One With the Darkness (39 page)

They collapsed onto the linens.

“Gods, Livia,” he muttered. “Why did I not ask you to take my blood before?” He raised himself up on one elbow and felt the two small wounds at his throat. “Is it done?”

Her self-inflicted bite was already healed. “Yes, my love. You can’t go back.”

A sigh of satisfaction from somewhere inside surprised her. Remember to tell Leonardo what you are, and that he builds a time machine to send you back. Tell him time is a vortex….

“Donnatella?” she whispered. But there was no answer. She was fairly certain there would never be an answer again.

“Is she gone?” Jergan asked.

Livia nodded. “She got what she wanted.” Things were changed forever. Livia must hope it turned out for the best.

“I don’t feel different.”

She smiled. “You won’t. Not until after the fever passes. Then you’ll feel incredibly alive. Or so I’m told. I’ve never known anything different. ‘The blood is the life,’ we say.” Doubt assailed her. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

He turned her chin up and he kissed her. “No regrets.”

There was but one thing more. “By the way, I am with child. You will have a son.”

He sucked in a breath. His gaze roved over her face, incredulous and almost tentative—afraid to believe. “Truly?”

She nodded. She must break the news to him. “He will be as I am.”

Jergan took her in his arms, tenderly. His chest swelled against hers. His voice was reverent. “As we are.”

EPILOGUE
Florence, 1821

D
ONNATELLA STOOD AT
the balcony overlooking the Piazza del Signoria as the soft summer twilight of Florence deepened into night. She sighed. It had been a difficult day. Her husband came up and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Brid and Belatucadros, but that Forelli is a megalomaniac,” Giovanni rumbled into her ear. “You were right. He cannot lead the Carbonari. Perhaps I’ll have to take a hand myself.”

Donnatella turned and smiled up into his face. His dark hair was shorter, as was the fashion these days. It curled around the nape of his neck. The light green eyes he shared with her son glowed in the night. No wonder Buonarroti had thought Gian so handsome that he’d carved his statue of David in her son’s image. Gian had his looks from his father, and she had never seen a more handsome man than her husband. In the tightly cut coats of today (his was black across his broad shoulders) and the tight breeches that clearly revealed his muscular thighs, his riding boots and snowy cravat, this man always sent a thrill to the most womanly part of her, whether she called him Giovanni or Jergan or any of the other names they had taken in their many lifetimes together. “You would be a brilliant leader. But that can wait. The time is not yet right for their rise. I can feel it.”

“Then why so sad?”

“There’s just a little feeling of
tristesse
hanging in the room.”

Giovanni gave her a knowing look. They both thought that these feelings that occasionally wafted over her might be the original world of Donnatella still lingering somewhere near. She turned into their study and he followed. Her eyes fell on the matching paintings centered on the wall above the twin desks. The one on the left was Giovanni as Neptune rising from the waves. He had modeled for Botticelli only when she had agreed to reciprocate for the artist’s rendering of Venus. All she had insisted was that the master change the color of her hair and eyes to conceal her identity. The paintings were hung as they were meant to be, so that the subjects gazed upon each other. The images spoke of a lifetime of love. How could one be sad?

“I still think I could lead them….”

“Yes, you could, and no doubt you will be so stubborn about it that you will do what you want in spite of all I can say against it….”

Giovanni laughed and shook his head. “Stubborn? Well, I’ll give you that. It’s my only defense.”

He pulled her past the study they shared and toward the bedroom in the ancient Palazzo Vecchio. She nuzzled at his neck.

They were interrupted by a commotion in the square below. Someone banged on the main doors. The servants made startled inquiry. Boots took the broad stairs up from the audience room three at a time. Giovanni strode to the door and opened it.

Donnatella slid up beside him.

“What is it?” Giovanni barked as the young man tried to catch his breath.

“A ghost … Conte … risen from the crypt … under the Baptistery of … the Duomo.”

“Nonsense,” Donnatella said calmly. “Now tell us what happened.”

“The priests heard screaming … from down below … a crypt that only a few knew existed. … They hauled away the stone … and there was a man dressed in a winding sheet, speaking only Latin. At least I think it was Latin. He didn’t speak it very well….”

“A winding sheet….” Giovanni glanced to Donnatella. “You wouldn’t mean a toga, would you?”

They had been waiting for this moment, not sure just when it would be, or if it ever would. Donnatella had lost all memory of exactly when she had decided to use Leonardo’s machine to change her destiny with Jergan. She did not remember where the time machine was hidden. She no longer knew what had happened in the long life of that other Donnatella, except for wisps of feeling or occasional strange attractions or aversions. But she and Giovanni had dutifully told Leonardo what she was, and that time was a vortex, and … waited.

And now the time had come. The time machine was hidden in the crypts below the Baptistery, and it had disgorged its traveler into 1821.

“I … I don’t know about any toga …” the young man was saying. “The priests have called for you, Conte, as the magistrate.”

Giovanni took Donnatella’s hand and pushed past the messenger. They hurried down the stairs. “Call out the city guard,” Giovanni ordered the young man. “No time to wait for the carriage,” Giovanni apologized as he strode toward the doors that opened onto a carriageway like a courtyard off the piazza. Donnatella hurried behind him.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” she said. Servants opened the door.

“I was thinking more of running.” He looked at the
dainty slippers that peeped from under her red silks. He raised his brows.

She stopped. “Oh, very well.” She removed the offending slippers and tossed them at one of the footmen, who caught them deftly without even a raised eyebrow. He was used to his mistress’s eccentricities. “Now I’ll ruin the hem of my dress.”

“I’ll order you a dozen like it.”

They ran through the narrow streets off the piazza, east toward the Duomo. Pedestrians and horsemen alike parted in front of them, surprised that the Conte and Contessa di Poliziano should be hurrying through the streets of Florence without even a retinue. Into the Duomo by a side door held open by a priest, they ran through the cavernous nave and down to the Baptistery, glowing with candles hastily set upon prayer tables.

Caligula was sitting in the carved seat of the priest who presided over the baptismal font. It looked like a throne. He still seemed a petulant child. Just now he was waving a scepter altarpiece at the ornate carvings and the gold everywhere.

“A perfect palace for a Caesar,” he was telling an audience of priests. “Richly endowed.” He was fortunate that they were perhaps the only listeners with a chance of understanding Latin as it was spoken in ancient Rome, though they would think it strange indeed.

“This is the house of our Lord,” one protested.

“Whoever your lord is, he shall cede it to the emperor of Rome.”

An old, decrepit priest drew himself up. “We serve Jesus Christ.”

“The Christ cult has such palaces?” Caligula asked, astounded. He frowned. Once, that frown had set everyone around him to quaking. “Peasants—mere rabble. Ahhh,
but the witch said they would. My first act as emperor in this time shall be to confiscate this palace and all the gold in it for the Imperial Treasury.”

The priests exchanged looks as though to say, “What can one do with a madman?”

“What year is it?” the young emperor asked eagerly.

“Eighteen twenty-one, good sir,” a young man in the plain cassock of a novitiate said.

“Eighteen hundred and twenty-one years of the rule of Rome?” The eyes of the man who was once Caesar went round. “That is more than a thousand years since I last ruled Rome.”

“No. Since the death of Christ on a Roman cross.” The old priest leaned on his stick.

“You mark all time since an impoverished carpenter was put to death in a minor province in my empire?” His brow darkened. Then he appeared to think better of his fury. He giggled and rubbed his hands. “Oh, this will be a very easy time to rule.”

The old priest seemed to hear Giovanni and Donnatella for the first time as they hurried up the aisle. He turned. Relief shot through his eyes. “Conte, you are most welcome, as are you, Contessa.” He made his painful way toward them. “This creature thinks he is an emperor,” he whispered. “I’m not sure which one. Mad as a hatter.”

Behind him, Caligula stood, blinking at them. “The witch and her slave. What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed and he turned on the gaggle of priests. “Have you lied to me about how much time has passed since your carpenter was executed?”

“The year is as we told you, good sir, 1821, the Year of Our Lord, Jesus Christ,” another priest said, carefully, as one speaks to madmen or children.

“Then how are these two here when they were in
Rome nearly … nearly eighteen hundred years ago?” Caligula’s voice was rising. “Unless …” He glanced toward the stairs behind the baptismal font leading downward. “But you could not have used the bronze waterwheel. I only just left it.”

“We live here,” Giovanni said. “This is Florence, not Rome.”

“It matters not,” Caligula said. “All is part of my empire.”

“You have no empire here, Gaius,” Donnatella said.

Caligula looked smug. “For those born to rule, an empire is inevitable.”

“Not this time,” Giovanni growled. “Because this time you have no army. The Praetorians are long extinct.”

“Do you know this man?” the old priest asked Donnatella and Giovanni.

Donnatella leaned in and whispered into his ear, “Isn’t it obvious? He thinks he’s Caligula. He even looks a bit like the busts I’ve seen.”

Giovanni strode up to Caligula and jerked him to his feet by one arm.

“Unhand me,” Caligula shrieked. “I’ll have you torn apart by wild beasts in the arena.”

“We’re no longer so barbaric as to stage deaths in an arena.” Giovanni dragged Caligula across the mosaic floor of the Baptistery. A clatter was heard in the passage from the Duomo. A troop of about a dozen city guards, some still buttoning on their blue and gold uniform jackets, appeared in the entryway. The one in the lead recognized Giovanni and bowed as crisply as he could. The others settled into some semblance of order behind him.

“Take this man.” Giovanni shoved Caligula toward the troop. Two guards stepped up and took his arms.

“I’ll have you all killed, and your families and your
friends.” Caligula started to sob in real fear as his situation dawned on him.

Giovanni turned back to Donnatella. She could feel his inquiry. Caligula ought to be executed for all the pain he had caused. But he had committed no crime in this time, and one couldn’t just execute a man for seeming mad.

Or for being mad. He
was
insane. Perhaps he had been mad all along.

She turned to the priest. “The Jesuits have an asylum in the mountains above Lake Como, do they not?”

“Why, yes.” The old man nodded. Understanding drifted into his rheumy eyes.

“We will make a fat donation to provide for his care,” Donnatella promised.

“It is an austere place,” the old priest warned.

“He deserves worse.” Giovanni glowered. He was still a warrior at heart.

Donnatella lifted her brows. “Under what Florentine law?”

Giovanni sighed and shook his head, resigned. “I let a woman plead mercy even for a snake. What am I coming to?” He motioned the guard out. “You did the same for his sisters.”

“You’ll be punished horribly for this,” Caligula called back. His voice receded as the guards marched him from the cathedral.

“A few years of prayer may bring back his sanity,” the old priest muttered, and turned to his quarters. Then he stopped. “I wonder how he got down there.” He glanced to the opening of the stairway. “Brother Antonio … go down and see what you can make of it.”

“Don’t bother yourselves,” Donnatella interrupted. “We shall send someone to seal up the crypt until a full investigation can be made. You belong in your beds, not
down in dusty crypts at night with the rats and the spiders.” She saw one priest visibly shudder.

“You are generous, Contessa, as always.” The old priest nodded and limped away.

Giovanni took her arm and steered her out into the passage to the Duomo. They said nothing until they were out into the street.

“We should destroy the machine,” Giovanni said.

“I know, but I can hardly bear to do it.” She sighed. “Still, men weren’t meant to travel in time. Or women.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“What if something bad happens because I challenged time? What if it has already happened?” She grasped his biceps with both hands and leaned against him.

“We’ve been over this before. We cannot know.” He cupped her chin with his other hand and turned her toward him. They stood in the shadows of a building across the street from the cathedral. “Maybe the wrong path was the one where you did not make me vampire.”

“Or maybe there is no true path, only possible paths.” She sighed.

“Perhaps all versions of time exist together. Caligula was meant to be removed from power, whether by death or by Leonardo’s machine. Just as you are both Donnatella and Livia, and I am Giovanni and Jergan. Regardless of our names, we are who we are, and that is right and true.” He bent and kissed her, softly, not caring what revelers still on the streets saw the Conte and the Contessa di Poliziano kissing.

“I asked a moment ago what I was coming to,” he said. His eyes were soft now with an expression she had learned to treasure over the centuries. “I am coming home to the Palazzo Vecchio tonight with my soul mate and we are going to eat together, and drink wine from the grapes I grew
in Montalcino. And then I will take you to bed, my love, and make you scream my name as you find your release.”