The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis Read Free Book Online

‘Cena nel Paradiso.’  ”
    Supper in Paradise. I did not know what Valentino meant by those words; they seemed little more than another riddle, much like his father’s. I could not even guess if Valentino had summoned me on the pope’s behalf or for his own reasons. But perhaps he knew that a thousand memories would rise around me regardless, like a field of lavender springing up from bare soil, the perfume almost suffocating. For a moment I felt that I could not breathe.
    When I could speak, I said to Camilla, “We’ll have to wash my hair.”

III
    The brief afternoon was nearing its end when I put on the gown I had kept in my traveling chest, folded beneath a layer of dried rose petals. This was a camora of exquisite loveliness and great value, the cloth a cremisi velluto of the deepest red I have ever seen, brocaded with gold-and-silver threads standing in relief against the sheared velvet. At my throat I wore a very rare Roman cameo—carved in sardonyx, the portrait was a young woman or perhaps the goddess Luna—on a string of Venetian pearls; my hair was braided in back in the coazzone fashion, my hairnet woven of gold threads.
    Camilla had brought along a mirror I obtained in better times, which I now despise, because the quicksilvered glass reveals even the smallest flaw. I swear by the seven churches I had not looked into this glass of truth since the week Juan was murdered, back when my hair was blond. “God’s Cross,” I said, “who is she?” After five years of dyeing I still did not think of myself as sable-haired. And of course I no longer looked anything like a girl, though perhaps neither did I the last time I appraised myself in that mirror. But the shape of my face had not changed: still the pale forehead, too broad, and long nose, which I have always regarded as too humped; the delicate mouth, too small and puckered; and the chin too narrow. “You know what my mentor, Gambiera, told me the first time she dressed me up to do business?” I said to Camilla. “ ‘You look like one of those bird masks ladies wear at Carnival.’ ”
    “I think she also said you were a very gorgeous bird,” Camilla toldme, still fussing with my hairnet. “A ravishing golden songbird. Or so you told me one night when you had too much Vernaccia.”
    I stood up and put my hands to Camilla’s long, grave, ethereal face as if caressing an angel. “You know you are my most precious sister and most beloved amica , forever and always.” And then I let her go, because Fortune knows when you cling too long to someone.

    The Rocca, I remind you, is at the southwest end of Imola, a squat but massive square of gray stone with a stout round tower at each corner, surrounded by a moat full of water that was, by the time I crossed it that evening, already as dark as the oncoming night. As you approach, the walls seem to rise into the sky and when I looked up, the ravens circling over the ramparts appeared little larger than locusts.
    Once inside the walls I announced myself to the guard at the gate, whereupon a soldier in a silver breastplate was attached as my escort. He led me through a procession of vaulted rooms, with pikes, halberds, and cannonballs stacked everywhere. The scent of all the greased metal was so much like dried blood that I almost gagged.
    Having passed through these foreboding warehouses, I was grateful to enter a quiet little courtyard occupied principally by fruit trees, this bounded on the far end by a graceful portico of modest size. My escort led me to a door within this arcade, knocked, looked in, and gestured me on.
    Though the room I entered would have been too small for a grand public event, it was more than sufficient for a private supper; the lofty ceiling allowed the smoke from all the candles to rise into the vaults, permitting an unclouded view of the lavish tapestries on the walls and a long trestle table covered with cloth of gold so gorgeous that it seemed a mortal sin to serve wine