3 - Cruel Music Read Online Free PDF Page B

irritated grunts in response. The road flattened the next morning, allowing the coach to fly through the miles. Lenci had procured excellent horses, and we had no difficulties changing teams. At every post station, the young abate produced a document strung with an impressive number of red seals that the stablers honored without question.
    Prudence finally conquered my foul mood and prodded me to fish for information. I knew that Cardinal Fabiani, my future host, was an opera lover, but that could describe almost any inhabitant of Italy. Regions might vary in food and drink, in dialect and ruler, but every Italian from Venice to Palermo loved the opera. It was our home-grown spectacle. I needed to know more about the cardinal’s political dealings. Donning a courtier’s smile, I raised the subject with Abate Lenci.
    “In Rome, Fabiani lives like a prince,” he replied, “a prince of the church surrounded by a priestly retinue. The Cardinal Padrone is only the foremost of his titles. He holds so many offices and benefices it would take several minutes for me to recite them all.
    “But at his ancestral home in Tuscany, his family amounts to very little.” Lenci sniffed as he waved a well-manicured hand. “You must know the sort—minor nobility, barely tolerated at court.”
    I nodded, having encountered many down-at-the-heels aristocrats in my time.
    “For years, the Fabiani nibbled on the Medici largesse like mice on cheese. When the death of the last grand duke made way for the Hapsburg governors, the cardinal’s relatives were tossed out of the Pitti Palace without a crumb. Of course, Lorenzo Fabiani was well established in Rome by that time. I’ll let you guess, Signor Amato. Did the Cardinal Padrone shed any tears over his cousins’ retreat to their hereditary estate in the marshy middle of nowhere? Loosen his purse strings to ease their disgrace?”
    Not knowing the man, I could only shrug.
    “In a word—no. Where his family is concerned, Cardinal Fabiani observes only one rule—loyalty to his mother. It was the Marchesa Fabiani who pushed him into Pope Clement’s sphere of influence and paved the way for his brilliant career. She reaps her reward by living in luxury with an army of servants at her beck and call.”
    I pushed my lap robe aside and leaned forward. “The pope’s family are also from Tuscany, are they not?”
    “The Corsini.” Lenci nodded, a study in wide-eyed innocence.
    “Quite a few rungs above the Fabiani, I believe.”
    “Nearly at the top of the ladder. With a Corsini on his father’s side and a Strozzi on his mother’s, some of the bluest blood of Tuscany flows through the pope’s veins.”
    “Then how…?”
    Lenci interrupted with a schoolboy giggle. “The time-honored way…they say the marchesa was quite a beauty in her youth.”
    “Fabiani is the pope’s bastard son?”
    “So some say.”
    “Do you believe them?”
    He gave a short nod. “It seems the most reasonable explanation for Fabiani’s rapid rise. Connection is everything in Rome.”
    “Pope Clement has reigned only nine years. Cardinal Fabiani would have been born many years before he became pope.”
    “True. Makes you wonder if the old lady simply made a lucky bedding or if she had a soothsayer tucked away on the Fabiani estate. Whatever the source of her good fortune, when the pope’s poor health and lack of Corsini nephews created a crack in the wall of papal power, the marchesa hurried to Rome and plastered her son right in.”
    “And her husband?”
    “Dead. Fell off a horse, I think. Broke his neck.”
    “I see. Is Cardinal Fabiani an able man?”
    “Oh, quite. In every sphere. He seems to handle cardinals and bishops as easily as foreign heads of state and is immensely proud of his exalted position.”
    “Um, that doesn’t bode well,” I muttered more to myself than to Lenci.
    “What doesn’t?” the abate asked.
    “You know what the Bible says—pride goeth before a fall.”
    “A