The Malice of Fortune Read Online Free Page B

accuse me. I had no soldiers for His Holiness to hire.
    “You did not come to me when we found Juan”—your grandfather’s back heaved a bit—“when you might have offered us these theories. Instead you ran like a housebreaker.”
    “ I was there when they found Juan. I waited beside the river …” For a moment I walked into that memory and could hear the shouts of the fishermen. “As soon as I saw him, I knew you would demand my confession. Just as you expect it tonight.” I glanced at the instruments of interrogation in the box beside me. “And I knew even then I had a child in my womb. A child I would have spit in the face of Satan to protect.”
    His Holiness turned, his words hissing more noticeably than before. “Henceforth the boy will enjoy my protection. Here, in the Vatican.”
    I wailed and wailed, bereft of all reason, these words having gutted me more effectively than any instrument Beheim might have chosen.
    Only when I had exhausted myself did merciful God grant me a certain calm—whereupon I found Satan’s eyes so close to my face that I could smell the wine on his breath. “Bene, bene,” your grandfather said. “I have opened a door and shown you my grief. A few moments of the pain that is for me unceasing. A shirt of fire I will never be able to tear from my breast.”
    “I, too, grieve for Juan.”
    He dismissed my grief with a blink. “You call the boy Giovanni.Of course I have also known that, from the day of his birth. But I don’t believe you are certain that my Juan was your Giovanni’s father.”
    “He is the child of my womb and my soul. The Holy Mother and I know the father who put his seed in me.”
    “After the boy has been here awhile, I will know the father,” your grandfather said, with no uncertainty. He nodded at Beheim, who once again displayed his physician’s knife.
    On such an occasion, you are only wondering where the first cut will be. When Beheim sliced through the rope that bound my right arm to the chair, I presumed he intended to extend my limb in such a fashion that my song would begin with sharp, clear notes. Instead he cut the rope that held my left arm.
    “It is in the box, Lorenzo,” your grandfather said. “Give it to her.”
    I closed my eyes and felt Beheim’s hand between my thighs, no doubt in anticipation of pulling up my skirts. Against my will I looked down.
    He had placed in my lap a little pouch that could easily fit in the palm of my hand. Fashioned of soiled red wool, with a long red string, it was the sort of charm bag that half the whores and procuresses in Rome carry about, hoping to obtain good fortune or cast a love spell.
    “Look inside,” His Holiness said.
    My hands trembling, I got in a finger and drew out a dirty paper card no longer than my thumb, also with a red yarn attached. This was a bollettino , which you do not see much in Rome—country people wear these little prayers around their necks. I could still distinguish the inscription, despite the untutored hand and cheap ink, which was not much darker than the stained paper: Sant Antoni mi benefator . Scrawled in some peasant dialect, it was a prayer to Saint Anthony, who guards against demons.
    But when I turned over the little card I found another inscription, this in a practiced hand, in correct Italian and black Chinese ink: Gli angoli dei venti . The corners of the winds.
    I looked at the pope and shook my head.
    “Empty it,” he said.
    The rest of the contents tumbled into my lap. Two fava beans, alittle lump of gray chalk, a quattrino della croce —a coin melted into the shape of a cross; these were the sort of charms that might compel a man to fall in love with their bearer. There was one last item, however, that froze my hands.
    I looked down at the miniature bronze head of a bull, no larger than a small bell, with big eyes, short horns, and a ring that seemed to grow from the top of the tiny skull, so that it could be worn as an amulet. It was an Etruscan