The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hoping for a dancing cardinal.”
    “I don’t understand half the things you say.” Anna tucked a limp strand of hair back behind one ear. “You think she’ll be pretty? The bride, I mean.”
    “It’s some rich boy’s new wife,” the man behind me disagreed before I could reply. “Five
scudi
says she’ll be pockmarked and plain.”
    I wriggled my way past Anna to the front, with half an eye to following the bride and her retinue from her father’s house to her new husband’s. Wealthy brides toss coins into the crowds along the way, if they aren’t too shy, and I wasn’t too proud to pick a coin off the ground. Close to the ground as I was, I could get the lion’s share—a lion’s share for Leonello the little lion.
    Liveried servants were trotting along in columns now, forcing back the crowds on either side of the street as the procession began in earnest. A troop of pages with chests of the bride’s belongings—a critical buzz went up at the sight of the elaborately painted wedding chest, wide as a coffin, elaborately gilded and painted with saints. Yes, this was a wealthy bride. Grinning boys tossed flowers into the streets, musicians thrummed lutes not quite in tune with each other . . .
    “There she is!” Anna breathed. “Blessed Virgin, will you look at that?”
    A white mare wreathed in lilies and roses clopped along impassively under the most glorious of Madonnas.
    “Holy Mother,” a voice behind me whistled to the man who had bet the bride would be plain. “You lost your five
scudi
!”
    A cat may look at a king, they say—and a dwarf may look at a beautiful woman. Most men will be reprimanded for staring at a beauty, warned off by menacing looks from her husband, or a brother’s hand clapped on a dagger, or a cold glance from the beauty herself. A man’s stare means desire, and the good women of Rome must be safeguarded from the desires of men. But dwarves have no desires, not when it comes to beautiful women, so no one minds if a dwarf gawps. Besides, a beautiful woman’s nose rides the air so high she is not likely to look down far enough to see me. Caps were doffed across the street, men bowed outlandishly in hopes of catching the bride’s eye, and I just crossed my short arms across my chest and stared coolly.
    Dio
, but she was a beauty. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, laced into a rosy silk gown draped over her mare’s white flanks in such abundant pleats that I could list at least three broken sumptuary laws. Breasts like white peaches, a pale column of a neck, a little face all rosy with happiness—and hair. Such hair, glinting gold in the sunlight, twined with pearls and tucked with cream-colored roses.
    Most brides look shy, flustered, bemused. Some cry, some titter nervously, some sit stiff as jeweled saints in a niche. This one laughed like a pealing church bell and kissed her hands to the crowds as she bounced in her velvet saddle with sheer pleasure. She was having far too much fun to cast her eyes down in a crowd like a girl of good birth should, too much fun drinking in everything the world had to offer. Perhaps that was why her dark eyes traveled far enough to see me, looking back at her instead of doffing my hat.
    She grinned at me—no other word for it. Grinned and blew me a kiss as if I’d been a tall and handsome man, and then the mare swept her past in a billow of silk and rosewater. I wondered what her new husband was paying for her. Likely he’d decide she was worth it.
    “I wouldn’t be stuck pouring drinks in a tavern if I looked like that,” Anna said wistfully. “I’d be dressed in silk and dining with cardinals, and they’d be pouring drinks for me.”
    “That’s Madonna Giulia Farnese, I heard.” The man who’d lost his bet whistled as the last of the liveried servants hurried past, and the crowd began to disperse back to its usual business of shopping, thieving, and gossiping. “She’s for one of the Orsini. A dowry of three