Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

he couldn’t burn out the high regard Florentines have for themselves. And for that he was immolated. What a pure, savage end for him.”
    Don Vicente, who had known something of roasting of conversos by Torquemada in Spain, flinched at the flippancy. But he stood like a Roman legionnaire, his fine shoulders thrown back. “We can discuss things over a libation,” he said soothingly. “Welcome, my lord.” His grip on Cesare’s forearm strengthened—in this case the handshake betraying its Roman origins: to assesswhether a man might have a knife hidden beneath the sleeve of his tunic.
    â€œThere are strategies to consider,” said Cesare, confirming Vicente’s worries, but the famous sister yawned ostentatiously and pulled at her brother’s tunic.
    â€œLater for all that, later,” she said. “I’ve spent a good part of these hours behind curtained views. We’ve been on the road from Rome three days already. I need to stretch and to see something. Don Vicente, let me ask for your arm. I’m faint as a dowager who has taken Madeira at noon.” She looked about as faint as a lightning bolt. “Conduct a tour for me; show me some rural interest. Take me for a stroll. Show me something, anything. The views. The geese. Yes, show me the geese.”
    â€œI can loan you the arm of Fra Ludovico,” said Vicente. Fra Ludovico looked terrified and began to busy himself with his sleeves.
    â€œMy father is the Pope of the universal Church,” said Lucrezia. “I have more spiritual companionship than I can bear. Leave Fra Ludovico to his hours. My brother can spare you for a while, Don Vicente. I insist, Cesare, I will have my exercise.”
    â€œVery well; I’ll stay and pose questions of state to the de Nevada daughter,” said Cesare, pointing at Bianca and making her nervous.
    Vicente had no choice but to be courteous. “A stroll, then,” he said to la Borgia, and to his daughter, “but you, come with me. The Duc de Valentinois has no interest in talking to an infant. He is only being kind.”
    Bianca fled to her father’s side. “Oh, we are to be a walking nursery?” said Lucrezia. “Very well then. I ought to have brought my own babe, Rodrigo. He is four. Beware the cliff edge, my babe; a childish foot can make a misstep and the rocks below—you see them?—look sharp and unwelcoming.”
    Bianca ran ahead of her father and the noblewoman. She was glad to be out of harm’s way, since harm seemed coiled in the military man left behind in the courtyard of Montefiore.
    The path, this side of the bluff, sloped down in a gentle zigzag tosome outbuildings: a croft, a lean-to for the shepherds; the diminished Lago Verde beside a vigorous and well-pruned olive orchard. The walls were littered with the leavings of goats, who liked to leap over any obstacle. And below, the bridge that Bianca was forbidden to cross.
    Though she was prohibited from the world beyond the farm, she loved to hear the noise of village life scraping beyond her confines. As she fell asleep, on nights when the wind was still, she could sometimes hear tenants singing, joking, building their cooking fires and banking their sleeping fires, leaping up at threats real or imagined. They were safety to her, the vinemaster, the gooseboy, the shepherd, the ostler, the hunter, the smith, the girls who did floor washing and laundry, and the lads who organized the haying and cured the hams and pressed the olives and then cleaned the stones and pressed the grapes when they were ripe. Life on a farm was a universe in itself, but, since the cows had long since been moved out of the bier in the ground floor of Montefiore, Bianca felt she had only a distant relationship with the contadini who came and went to work, and who thrived on the farm’s yield.
    â€œThe news from Rome,” said Vicente after a time, to avert attention from the expressive