The Malice of Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page A

antiquity, fashioned by the ancient race that preceded the Romans and lent its name to Tuscany. I turned it over, requiring only a moment’s scrutiny to find the tiny Latin inscription engraved on the back: Alexander filius . Son of Alexander. On the day Rodrigo Borgia had been crowned Pope Alexander VI, taking the name of a pagan conqueror instead of a saint, he had presented this token of love—and worldly ambition—to his cherished son.
    “Juan …” The pope swallowed as if the wine on his breath had returned to his throat. “He was wearing it that night.”
    “He was never without it.” In a strange fashion, I hoped this would comfort Juan’s father.
    “It was found at Imola,” he said, referring to an inconsiderable city in the Romagna—the Romagna being the northernmost of the Papal States, occupying a vast plain between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic Sea. Or I should say that Imola had been a city of little consequence, until Duke Valentino located his court there early this year. One heard that all the ambassadors, not only those from our many Italian states and the rest of Europe but the Turks as well, had gone there in supplication. Somehow Juan’s amulet had journeyed for five years, hundreds of miles across the length and breadth of Italy, to return to his father’s hands. In such fashion Fortune displays her love of cruel ironies.
    “How—”
    “How indeed.”
    I looked up. “If you have been watching my every breath these five years, then you know I cannot have transported it to Imola, even if it had ever been in my possession. I last saw that amulet a week before Juan was murdered. The last time …” I had to turn away the images that waited for me, floating on a copper-colored river I never againwanted to cross. “I did not see it in that boat, either. Although one of the fishermen might have taken it.”
    The pope glanced at Beheim. “Those fishermen were examined with great care.” Perhaps there was a certain dreadful irony to this “care.” But if so, His Holiness’s face did not convey it. “My boy’s assassins ripped this from his neck.” His Holiness snatched the amulet from me as if I were its thief. “They took it as their trophy.”
    “Surely the woman from whom you obtained this charm bag can tell you who gave it to her.” I was surprised at the desperate pitch of my own voice.
    “She can tell us nothing. The charm bag belonged to a dead woman. It was found in her hand.”
    “I presume someone recognized her … her body.”
    His Holiness’s nostrils pinched, as if he had smelled the putrefying remains. “She inconvenienced us in that regard. Duke Valentino’s soldiers discovered her corpse in a field outside Imola.” I noted the formality with which he now referred to his son Cesare. “Absent her head, which has yet to be retrieved.”
    I crossed myself. “Then the murderers presumed she would be recognized by someone in Duke Valentino’s household, if not by your own people. Did she have scars or birthmarks upon her body?” I wondered if I would be expected to know these, still being familiar with the distinguishing marks of a number of ladies in our business.
    The pope studied me for several heartbeats. “I am sending you to Imola.”
    “To examine what is left of her?”
    His hand flew at me and struck the top of my skull so hard that the stars winked at me; he clutched my hair as though he wanted to rip my scalp away with it, forcing back my head. “You will go to Imola and wait in lodging provided you by the Holy See.” The words seethed through his teeth. “You will wait there until you receive instruction from me.”
    I looked into a satyr’s leering face, so close that our noses briefly touched. I could no longer smell the wine on his breath. Instead this was the foul, earthy stench of a long-buried corpse.
    I thought: Hell smells like this .
    After a moment the pope released me, nodded again at Beheim, then left the room.

    In the