Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance Read Online Free PDF Page A

teemed with sellers, buyers, gawkers, and the inevitable thieves who vied with the cudgel-waving patrols hired by the merchants to create at least the illusion of security. All this went on over and around piles of garbage, offal, and manure, adding their aromas to the hanging baskets and trailing trellises of flowers that filled even the most modest lane.
    I passed by the streets of the crossbow-makers and coffer-makers, glanced briefly at the offerings of the cloth merchants and goldsmiths, and made my way finally to the Via dei Vertrarari, where the glassmakers clustered.
    I had been there before, many times, but even so I hesitated before turning into the street. In a city that lives for gossip, news of my advancement in Borgia’s household was bound to be in the air. Conscious of the glances following me, I walked quickly past a dozen shops, stopping finally in front of a modest, timbered building half-hidden between its neighbors on either side.
    A young boy of almost six years with a mop of dark hair and thelingering softness of babyhood in his features sat cross-legged on the ground, playing at marbles as he guarded a small selection of glassware. He gaped at me for a moment before jumping up and running full tilt to fling his arms around my waist. I knelt to catch him and found myself smiling.
    “Donna Francesca,” he exclaimed and pulled away a little, the better to look at me. “Are you all right?” Patting my cheek with his grubby little hand, he added, “I am so sorry about your papa. You must be very sad.”
    My throat tightened and for a moment I could not trust myself to speak. I had watched Nando grow from a babe in swaddling clothes, laughing at his antics and cosseting his small hurts and disappointments. If there were ever moments when I yearned for a child of my own, they were in his company.
    “I am sad,” I said, because I would not insult him with dishonesty, “but I am also very glad to be here with you.”
    Satisfied, he let go of me and darted inside. I just had time to rise before a tall, powerfully built man in his late twenties, his bare chest covered by a leather apron, stepped from the shop.
    “Francesca!”
    I mustered a smile that I hoped concealed my unease. Rocco Moroni had appeared in Rome half a dozen years before, bringing with him a rare gift for glassmaking and his motherless son. My father was one of his first customers. I had stolen my share of glances at him during our frequent visits to his shop, for he was by any measure a handsome man. The previous winter, he had approached my father about the possibility of a marriage between us. I could only conclude that in the innocence of his own nature, he had not realized that my interest in my father’s trade went far beyond that of a dutiful daughter, for what man would ever knowingly link himselfto one skilled in such dark arts? Nor could he have sensed anything of the even greater darkness within me, that place where my nightmare lives.
    For a fortnight after Rocco’s proposal, I struggled to convince myself that I could be the woman he and Nando both deserved before conceding defeat with a mixture of relief and grief that haunted me still. Rocco seemed to accept my demurral with good grace, but he had become more watchful in my presence, as though realizing belatedly that I was more complex than he had thought me to be. Now, though, he seemed only kind and welcoming even as he cast a quick look up and down the street before stepping back toward the shelter of the shop.
    “
Venite,
the air has ears. Come inside.”
    I followed him into the cool shadows of the single ground-floor room. He shut the door behind us and looked at me closely, his dark brown eyes alight with sympathy.
    “I am so sorry about your father. We came to the palazzo—” he nodded at Nando, who stood nearby, looking from one to the other of us.
    “We wanted to give you our condolences, but they would not admit us or even acknowledge what had