The Lion and the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

ruin you, too.”
    A gamble. Sweet Santa Marta, it was a gamble, but it was the only one I had.
    “Now you know what I am,” I went on. “And if you turn me in, I’ll tell them you knew from the beginning. Knew that I was a desecrator, knew it for
years
, and didn’t do anything—and that makes you as guilty as me. They’ll chop your hands and nose off, too, and I don’t see you making a living throwing your knives unless you’ve got hands to throw them with.”
    His eyes widened over my hand again. Not quite so calmly this time, I thought. I dropped my voice to a whisper, leaning close to him. “Turn me in, Leonello, and I swear in the name of God and the Holy Virgin that I’ll drag you down with me. I
swear
.” I lifted my hand from his mouth. “So why don’t you keep my secrets?”
    He spat out the mouthful of wine, making a splash on the floor like blood. Never taking his eyes from mine, he reached for a cup beside the branch of candles. Not the cup I’d brought; a mug of chilled lemon water Madonna Giulia must have placed for him. He drank a deliberate mouthful, rinsing it around his mouth, and spat it out in a neat stream, right onto the front of my apron.
    “You know,” he said, “I loathe your mulled wine. You always add too much honey.”
    “Writhe in hell,” I spat.
    He tilted his head, eyes unreadable as he surveyed the cup I had brought. It sat steaming innocently. “Did you truly poison it?”
    “I’ll leave you to wonder,” I said. “You go right on guessing, every time you take a dish from my hands. Because if I even get a
hint
you might be thinking about turning me in for arrest anyway, I won’t wait to find out. I’ll just drop a little hemlock in your broth, next midday meal.”
    He looked at me. “No, you wouldn’t.”
    “I’m a failed nun, Leonello.” I stretched my lips over my teeth, but you couldn’t call it a smile. “I’m a desecrator and a runaway and an adulteress against God, and I’m already bound for hellfire. What’s murder, added on top of all that?”
    He regarded me silently.
    “Think about it.” I turned for the door and added over my shoulder, “Hemlock.”

 

    PART ONE
    August 1496–February 1497

CHAPTER ONE

    You are as wise as you are perfect.
    —RODRIGO BORGIA TO GIULIA FARNESE
    Giulia
    Y ou’d think that the Holy Father would have an all-seeing gaze, wouldn’t you? Being God’s Vicar here on earth, surely he would be granted divine sight into the hearts and souls of men as soon as that silly papal hat everyone insisted on calling a tiara was lowered onto his brow. The truth is, most popes don’t have divine insight into much of anything. If they did, they’d get on with the business of making saints and saving souls rather than pronouncing velvet gowns impious or persecuting the poor Jews. Blasphemy it may be, but most popes have no more insight into the minds of humanity than does any carter or candle maker walking the streets of Rome in wooden clogs.
    And my Pope was no exception. He was the cleverest man I knew in some ways—those dark eyes of his had only to pass benignly over his bowing cardinals to know exactly which ones were scheming against him, and certainly that despicable French King had learned not to cross wits
or
swords with Rodrigo Borgia over the past year and a half since I’d been ransomed. But when it came to his family, His Holiness Pope Alexander VI was as dense as a plank.
    At least at the moment he was a very happy plank.
    “
Mi familia
,” he said thickly, and began to raise his goblet but put it down again to dash a heavy hand at the water standing in his eyes. “My children all together again. Cesare, Lucrezia, Joffre—Juan—”
    The loathsome young Duke of Gandia preened, sitting at his father’s right where Rodrigo could easily reach out to touch his favorite son’s shoulder. Juan Borgia, twenty years old now and returned from his lands in Spain. Although he was a duke, a husband, even a
father
(Holy