The Lion and the Rose by Kate Quinn

Author:Kate Quinn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

Leonello

Night came swiftly over me in the Piazza degli Ebrei. A night darker than murder, and murder was common here where the streets sloped sharply away from the decent houses toward the foul, narrow quarters that were grudgingly given over to house the Jews. Ill deeds happened every night here, because the darkness pressed the eyes like black velvet and once dawn swept it away and revealed the bodies left behind, well, they could always be blamed on the Jews.

I stood in an inky pool of shadows, looking out over the piazza with a knife in each hand already drawn, to ward away any drunks or footpads who might decide I looked like an easy mark. But the drunks and footpads passed me by, staggering or slinking to their next drink or victim. It would be hours yet before I needed to draw blood. The trap had been laid and baited, and tonight the strings would begin to tug.

Pay attention, now.

Imagine a spacious villa on the Esquiline Hill. One of the fabled seven hills of Rome; Nero built his Golden House here, and another emperor built a bathhouse where the likes of Marcus Aurelius later sat in the steam and quipped in Latin. Today there were churches and shrines instead, and the bathhouses and Roman villas were all in ruins, but the hill was still a pleasant place with enough open spaces to build vineyards and rambling houses for those who didn’t quite wish to leave Rome in order to get a taste of the country. Nothing but the best for Vannozza dei Cattanei, the Pope’s thrifty former mistress, who knew that if she wished to scold her two eldest sons, she must promise to wine and dine them first. One or two other guests came to her pretty little villa near the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, but why bother listing them? They would not be important tonight.

Vannozza’s sons: the swaggering young Duke of Gandia and the even more elegant young Cardinal Borgia, not trading much beyond sharp-edged pleasantries and dark looks, I imagined, but managing enough courtesy to please their mother. Vannozza herself: sleek and self-satisfied, if not as lovely as her successor, and she presided over her guests like one of those Roman matrons must have done in their own villas when Marcus Aurelius ruled this city rather than Rodrigo Borgia. An evening cena eaten outside in the summery green warmth of her little vineyard; elegant low tables and servants with flagons of wine; sweet music and low conversation among the guests; salads of endives and edible flowers, cold ox tongue laid in tissue-thin slices over vine leaves, grapes and melons and ices of the kind Carmelina would describe in loving detail.

Pay attention, now.

A masked man interrupted the evening briefly—a tall figure, broad and silent in black doublet and a cap in the Borgia colors of mulberry and yellow, a black mask below it covering his face. More men in masks; how they had haunted this whole bloody business, but in truth they were not so uncommon in the Holy City.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.