When Baldi did not appear at their appointed place and time, Iacopo knew this last plan too must have gone awry. Accorsi was still alive, and exonerated from the murder charge. Was Baldi dead or captured, and what secrets might leak out of him if he were pressed? Iacopo returned to his chamber in the new inn as the day’s light was fading. This latest failure sat in his belly like a stone.
Iacopo stared at the scarred wood of the desktop, seeing imaginary figures emerge from in the pattern of scratches. He must devise a new plan against Accorsi, and this time, act alone, and quickly. His days were surely numbered, if the Brotherhood now saw fit to dispose of him. I cut down a thousand men with the Mortalità as my blade—surely I can kill one more with my own hands? But when he looked down at those hands now, those smooth untried hands of a nobleman’s son, he wondered.
* * *
Iacopo awoke to a thumping on the door of his room. The light slanting through the camera’s single window told him he had slept long and late. The knocking grew louder, followed by a familiar voice.
“Iacopo, open the door.” Mamma. Iacopo leaped out of bed, looking for another exit, or a place to hide. There was only the door behind which his mother stood.
“Iacopo, I shall not leave without speaking to you.” The handle rattled but the lock stayed firm. Iacopo stood silent, not moving lest the sound alert her to his presence. The noise at the door stopped. Could she have gone? He waited a minute, two, barely breathing. Then he heard the rasp of a key in the lock, and the door swung open, letting his mother in.
He stared at her face, so familiar and yet so unwelcome. He was beyond her comfort or aid now, though he longed for the solace she might once have given him. My heart is an alien thing, barbed against any confidence or warmth.
“How did you find the key?” His voice sounded harsh, like his father’s.
“The innkeeper took pity on me, a mother searching for her son in a foreign place.”
An image of Giovanni’s purpled face in the hours after the hanging filled Iacopo’s head, and a pain stabbed behind his right eye. “I must not be disturbed. You know I am conducting important business that my father entrusted to me.”
“I must speak to you.” She closed the door behind her. There were lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. She is old, he thought, but not too old to interfere. “I know you seek the man who testified against your father,” she said.
Her words made his heart drop in his chest, but he willed his voice not to tremble.
“It is no concern of yours.”
“Iacopo, I fear for your safety in this city that took your father’s life. Come back with me, and let us find a way to heal the wound of your father’s loss without more violence.” He could not allow this conversation to go further, this awful pleading.
Once Immacolata might have reached out to touch her son, but now her hands remained at her sides. “If you will not speak to me, then at least find a confessor to hear your sins. I shall pray for your deliverance from whatever gnaws your soul.”
Deliverance from whatever gnaws my soul. Can I even hope for that? He imagined the words flowing from him and the absolution a priest could provide.
“I shall consider what you have said,” Iacopo said with finality. “But leave me now, for my father’s business demands attention.”
Immacolata looked into her son’s face, searching as if something might be found there. Then, without another word, she left, pulling the door shut behind her.
After she had gone, a memory came to Iacopo unbidden from his boyhood, as real as if he were still crouching unseen against his mother’s bedroom wall. He saw his mother’s arms raised in defense, saw her cringe and plead for mercy as his father’s blows rained down relentless upon her head and limbs and back. Iacopo had longed to help her but instead crept away, afraid to become the subject of that awful wrath. Do I wish to be that father’s son? Whether he wished to or not was of no consequence for it seemed he had no choice.
*
We questioned Baldi until the sun rose, but he didn’t know much, or didn’t reveal it. Baldi didn’t know where Iacopo (he called him “the Medici boy”) was staying—he’d been at Semenzato’s before, but wasn’t any longer. Baldi was to await a letter with their next meeting place after the deed was done. I grimly imagined what Baldi’s success would have meant. Yes, he’d orchestrated the letter denouncing Gabriele, and the scaffolding accident. There was nothing else we could get from him. With a smirk he reminded us of our promise, and we ushered him out the front door. Now we knew what Iacopo had planned, but not where to find him.
Ysabella went upstairs to bed and Bianca put Gabriella in her cradle; after the night’s uproar the child had fallen asleep in our bed, one arm thrown over her head and her long red child’s gown wrapped about her legs.
Gabriele and I sat at the kitchen table. It felt like a year had passed since our wedding—had it really been just the day before?
“Our married life is not as peaceful as I’d imagined,” Gabriele said. He smiled, that sweet smile I’d seen him give only me, and took my hands between his.
“Peace is not very likely when the two of us are involved,” I answered, wryly. “Baldi probably won’t make more trouble, but his boss is at large somewhere.”
“We could search the local inns,” Gabriele said. I nodded, but now I was remembering what I’d learned in my trip back and forth between two centuries. “I think that attack on you is just a tiny piece of a larger plan.” Gabriele raised one eyebrow quizzically. “No offense meant; your life isn’t tiny of course.”
“A single man’s life is an infinitesimally small flicker of a candle in the bright light of the divine presence,” Gabriele replied seriously.
I smiled at my medieval husband. “True, but that’s not what I meant. I should have told you all this before, but it’s been kind of busy around here.” I’d only been able to talk to him twice since I’d returned to this century, and once had been our wedding night. But now there was time to talk, and I did. It reminded me of our night on the ship: the flood of words, the relief of putting my thoughts together and pouring them into the ear of a sympathetic, thoughtful listener. Gabriele listened, his head at that falcon’s angle, all attention.
When I got to the Signoretti-Medici connection, Gabriele suddenly sat up straight, with a sharp intake of breath. “Now I see it,” he said, his voice taut. He took his hands from mine and sat back.