The Medusa Amulet (12 page)

“Monsieur Linz has the situation well in hand,” Rigaud replied, as if lecturing a schoolboy.

“I’m sure he does, but I thought—”

“Stop thinking, will you? Monsieur Linz is a Grand Master, and you are playing at tic-tac-toe. Call Gropius.” And then the line went dead.

When the ambassador looked back toward the library, Franco was trudging up the steps like a man with the weight of the world on his
shoulders. What did he know that Schillinger didn’t? There were times, and this was one of them, when Schillinger felt that he was playing for penny antes when great stakes were being wagered all around him. Perhaps if he pursued his own interests a bit more strenuously, he would not only gain in the material sense—and his acquisitive instincts had not lessened with age—but he might find himself in a position to command some respect from that toady Rigaud and his mysterious master.

“Well?” Escher said, eagerly, from the front seat.

“Home,” Schillinger replied, and he could see his driver’s shoulders fall with disappointment. He had so hoped for a confrontation. As Escher pulled the car back into the city traffic, blasting his horn at a slow-moving school bus, the ambassador put in the call to Antwerp.

Chapter 8

The hood was left on his head until the coach had rumbled over the last bridge leading out of Florence and taken to one of the bumpy rural roads. After another hour or so, a pair of rough hands loosened the cord and yanked it off. Cellini gasped for a breath of the fresh country air.

One of his captors leaned back in the opposite seat and surveyed him with a crooked smile. The other two, he presumed, were up on top, driving the horses.

“They said we’d need ten men to subdue you,” the man said, glancing at the ropes binding his prisoner’s hands and feet. “And now look at you, trussed up like a prize pig.”

Though there were black muslin curtains in the open window, the moon was bright, and Cellini was able to see enough of the countryside to know what road they were on and to guess where they must be going.

Rome.

Which meant that these men, prepared to abduct a man of Cellini’s stature—a man in the current employ of the Duke de’Medici, the ruler of Florence—could only be in the service of the Pope himself, Paul III. No one else would have dared.

But for what offense? Cellini had served the Papacy well for years. He had fashioned the elaborate cope, or clasp, for the ermine gown
of the previous Pope, Clement VII, and made a dozen other jeweled ornaments, silver ewers and basins, coins and medals, for the leaders of the Church. And when the Duke of Bourbon, and his army of mercenaries, had invaded and sacked Rome in 1527, who had been its ablest defender? It was Cellini who had manned the gun batteries of the Castel St. Angelo, where Clement had taken refuge for seven long months from the marauding troops—if those savages could be dignified with such a term. Indeed, it was Cellini to whom Clement had turned when all seemed lost and the hoard of papal treasures threatened to fall into enemy hands.

And now this new Pope, Paul III, had sent his ruffians to set fire to his studio and carry him off by force?

“Don’t you want to know who we are?” the man in the carriage said. He was an ugly brute, whose teeth had all grown in sideways so that his words came out with a whistling sound.

“You’re the scum the Pope sends to do his dirty work.”

The man laughed, clearly unoffended. “They said you were smart,” he conceded, digging at something in the corner of his mouth with a long, filthy fingernail. “I see that now. I’m Jacopo.” He flicked the offending particle to the floor.

“But why like this? If the Pope wished to see me, he had only to send a request.”

“We are the request. He requests that you throw yourself at his holy feet and beg him not to hang you from the Torre di Nona.”

“For what?”

Ignoring his question, Jacopo lifted the curtain and stared out at the rolling hills of Tuscany. “It’s nice up here,” he said. “I’ve never been this far from Rome.” He wiped some spittle from his chin with the back of his hand—a gesture Cellini imagined must be routine.

“Well? Are you going to answer me?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, before settling his head against the rocking wall of the cabin and dropping into a deep, snoring sleep.

And there he was right. Most carriages would have put in for the
night, but this one, with lighted lanterns swinging from the four corners of its roof, managed to drive all night, even at the risk of running off the road or injuring the horses. At dawn, they pulled into a post house, and though Cellini was allowed some bread and wine and a chance to put a cold compress on his head, he was bundled back into the carriage as soon as the new horses had been harnessed. Jacopo took the reins, and one of his accomplices—a wiry fellow with a huge, livid bruise on one cheek and a blackened eye—assumed his place inside the cabin.

“What happened to you?” Cellini said, knowing full well. “You look like you got hit with a bucket.”

The man spat in Cellini’s face. “If I wasn’t under orders to deliver you in one piece, I’d break you in two.”

“And if my hands weren’t tied, I’d give you another black eye to match the one you’ve got.”

The carriage rolled on for several days, until Cellini felt that his back would break from the constant jouncing. With his hands and feet tied—these scoundrels must have been expecting a good bounty for his safe delivery—there was little he could do to make himself comfortable, and the prospect of whatever awaited him in Rome was hardly encouraging. As they finally approached the Eternal City, the roads became smoother and better paved, but they also became more crowded, with shepherds bringing their flocks to market, and rickety wagons carrying barrels of wine from Abruzzo, wheels of cheese from the Enza Valley, and loads of the distinctive blue-gray marble from high in the Apennines. Cellini could hear the driver—right then it was Bertoldo, the one with the sword who had first clapped him on the shoulder in Florence—shouting, “Make way! We come on order of His Holiness, Pope Paul! Get out of the way!”

From the oaths and epithets he heard in reply, there were many who didn’t believe him. But the
contadini
were like that, Cellini mused. They worked the farms and fields all day, sometimes not speaking to a soul, and when anyone did speak to them, they were instantly
suspicious of his motives—especially if it was a stranger with a sword, driving a fancy black carriage and ordering them around.

Jacopo, sitting inside again, couldn’t resist parting the curtains and holding his ugly mug in front of the window. Cellini had the impression that he hoped to be spotted traveling in such style by someone—anyone—he knew.

The streets of Rome, unlike Florence, were a mess. In Florence, the streets were narrow and often dark, but the people knew how to behave. They did not throw their offal into the gutter, they did not empty their chamber pots out the front windows, and they did not leave dead dogs or cats or birds to rot in the sun. But these Romans, they lived in a cesspool and didn’t even seem to mind. Every time he had come to Rome, Cellini had marveled at the state of chaos, the teeming confusion all around, where the greatest masterpieces of the ancient world were surrounded by tanning yards and the classical temples overrun by pig markets. As the carriage passed through the Porta del Popolo, the tomb of Nero’s mother appeared on their right, a crowd of beggars littering the steps. The tomb of the Roman emperor Augustus fared no better, pieces of its marble façade having been torn down and burned for the lime they would yield. The Campo Marzio was cluttered with workmen’s shops, some of them tucked into the ruins of once-glorious mansions. The Temple of Pompey had been turned into an unruly hotel, where scores of families had carved out spaces for themselves, with open fires and hanging laundry, beneath the enormous and dilapidated vault. If Florence was an elegant ball, Rome was an untamed circus.

And Cellini feared that he was about to become its main attraction.

Passing through the Borgo, as the bustling area between the banks of the Tiber and the mighty Vatican City was called, Cellini could not help but recall his first trip to Rome, when he was only nineteen. He and another goldsmith’s apprentice, Tasso, had often talked about leaving their hometown of Florence; Rome was the place where fortunes and names were truly to be made. And one day, on a long ramble,
they had found themselves at the San Piero Gattolini Gate. Benvenuto had jokingly said to his friend, “Well, we’re halfway to Rome. Why don’t we keep on going?” Tasso had looked a bit dubious, but Cellini had bucked him up.

Tying their aprons behind their backs, they had set out on foot. In Siena, they had the good fortune to find a horse that needed to be returned to Rome, and so they were able to ride the rest of the way, and once they’d arrived in the city, Cellini had quickly found work at the studio of a successful goldsmith named Firenzuola. He took one look at a design Cellini had executed for an elaborate belt buckle and hired him on the spot to execute a silver vessel for a Cardinal, modeled on an urn from the Rotunda. Tasso was not so lucky, and homesickness got the better of him. He returned to Florence while Cellini stayed on in Rome, changing masters, and making objects, from candlesticks to tiaras, of such great beauty and ingenuity that he had soon become the acknowledged master of his craft.

But the hands that had made rings and miters for popes were now so chafed and numb from the ropes binding them that he could barely move his fingers.

At the main gate of the Vatican, the carriage was stopped by several members of the Swiss Guard, in their green-and-yellow uniforms and plumed helmets. They were young—these days they were always young, as nearly all of their predecessors had been massacred during the sack of the city—and there was some haggling over papers. The leader of the Guard poked his head into the cabin to see who was inside. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, and said, “You’ll want to give this one a wash before taking him to the Holy Father.” The portcullis was lifted and the carriage passed through into the main piazza. Cellini ached to be out of the carriage, even if it was only to mount the steps of the papal palace and face an unknown fate.

Bertoldo appeared to have taken the guardsman’s suggestion to heart, and he stopped at a fountain, where he let Cellini dismount. Unbinding his hands and feet, he allowed him to scoop some of the
cool water with his cupped hands onto his face and neck. The water felt so good that Cellini dropped to his knees and ducked his whole head into the fountain. When he lifted his head back out again, he shook his long black curls like Poseidon rising from the deep. The water coursed across his broad shoulders and chest, and over the
Medusa
that still hung below his shirt. The sun was hot and bright, and he held his face up to it, not knowing how much longer he might be able to enjoy such a simple pleasure. A pair of friars, in long brown cassocks, stopped to watch, muttering behind their hands.

Bertoldo and his confederates hauled Cellini to his feet, bound his wrists again, and with the water still dripping off him, marched him up the steps of the palace and through the smaller throne room, where dozens of men—merchants, aristocrats, city officials—milled about, waiting anxiously for an audience with the Pope. Some clutched papers in their hands, others were carrying gifts (one had a squawking green parrot on his arm), but all of them fell silent when Benvenuto was briskly escorted past them. Clearly, none of them wished themselves in his shoes.

In the greater throne room, another crowd was gathered, but this one was made up of priests and cardinals, ambassadors and their secretaries. The Pope himself, draped in a red velvet cape, sat on a high-backed purple throne, giving orders and directives, and apparently carrying on ten conversations at once. He had a long face with a long nose, and a bushy white beard with a dark streak down its center. As Cellini boldly approached the throne, Bertoldo and his men fell away. Benvenuto recognized many of the courtiers—some were prelates who had begun their rise in Tuscany, and some were foreigners whose kings and princes he had worked for—but there was one he knew well. Signor Pier Luigi had recently been made the Duke of Castro, and if he had to guess why he had been brought here under such duress, he’d guess it had something to do with him.

“And look who it is,” Pope Paul exclaimed. “The wandering artist.” There was no malice in his voice, which temporarily puzzled Cellini.

“I came as quickly as I could, Your Holiness … and would have done so willingly.”

The Pope only now seemed to take notice of his bound hands and gestured at Bertoldo to undo them.

Bowing his head nervously, Bertoldo unknotted the rope and stepped backwards toward the rear of the room. Cellini shook his hands to get the blood moving again and straightened the damp collar of his shirt.

“Forgive me, Your Eminence, but my traveling companions—fine fellows all, but a bit lacking when it came to conversation—failed to tell me the reason for this visit.”

The Pope laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit, Benvenuto.”