The Pope only now seemed to take notice of his bound hands and gestured at Bertoldo to undo them.
Bowing his head nervously, Bertoldo unknotted the rope and stepped backwards toward the rear of the room. Cellini shook his hands to get the blood moving again and straightened the damp collar of his shirt.
“Forgive me, Your Eminence, but my traveling companions—fine fellows all, but a bit lacking when it came to conversation—failed to tell me the reason for this visit.”
The Pope laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit, Benvenuto.”
“Perhaps it was time he did, Father,” Signor Luigi put in, and Cellini smiled wryly at his form of addressing the Pope. In this case, calling him “Father” was more than symbolic; Luigi was in fact his bastard son—which accounted for the heap of titles and monies bestowed upon him—and Luigi liked to subtly remind people of his paternity. He was a dark, scowling man, with thick black eyebrows, a drooping moustache, and black beard. And now, as always, he wore his armored breastplate. He had enough enemies, Cellini reflected, to make that precaution wise.
“Perhaps Messer Cellini would like to turn into an honest man,” Signor Luigi added.
Cellini felt the blood rise into his face, but he held himself in check, simply saying, “I have never been anything else.”
Signor Luigi strode between the papal throne and where Cellini stood in order to look him in the eye. “Really?” he said scornfully. “Then isn’t there something you’d like to tell us about?” he asked. “Something you’d like to confess in this holy place after so many years of concealment?”
Cellini was as honestly confused as he had ever been in his life. “You will have to enlighten me. As always, when Signor Luigi speaks”—he purposely avoided using any of his grander titles—“there is a lot of noise, but not much music.”
The Pope quietly guffawed, which only made his son angrier.
As if he were speaking in the Colosseum itself, Signor Luigi raised his eyes and his voice and even his arms, as he moved in circles around Cellini to declaim his charges. “Would it surprise you to know that your confidences have been breached? That certain confessions you once made, in your usual boastful manner, have reached the Holy See?”
“Confessions? To whom?” Cellini had not visited a priest for that purpose in years.
“A certain apprentice from the town of Perugia.”
Ah, so that was it. He must have been referring to Girolamo Pascucci, a lazy thief who had broken his contract with Cellini and still owed him money. But a confession? Much less to someone he’d never trusted?
“We know, Messer Cellini—we know—what happened during the attack on Rome, sixteen years ago.”
“Ah, then you know that I commanded the artillery that defended Pope Clement VII when he was under siege in the Castel St. Angelo?”
“We do,” Signor Luigi said sarcastically, annoyed at having his peroration interrupted.
“And that I was the one who kept the three beacons burning every night, to prove that we had not surrendered?”
“But that is not—”
“And that it was a shot from my arquebus that brought down the Duke of Bourbon himself?”
“We know,” Luigi boomed, “that the Pope, in his hour of most desperate need, with the barbarians battering at the very doors of his sanctuary, entrusted you with the jewels belonging to the Holy Apostolic Chamber.”
At last Cellini could see where this was going. “That he did. I would never deny it. Pope Clement, may his soul rest in peace, came to me one night and said, ‘Benvenuto, we must find a way to preserve these treasures. What can we do?’ ”
“So you admit to this concealment?”
It was all Cellini could do not to thump the idiot on his fancy breastplate.
“With the help of the Pope himself, and his servant Cavalierino,” Cellini explained, more to the Pope on his throne than his insulting bastard son, “we removed all the precious stones from his tiaras and miters and crowns and sewed as many of them as we could into the folds of the robes that he and his servant had on. In order to move the gold more easily, we melted it down.” Cellini remembered well the small blast furnace he had hastily built in his quarters. He had tossed the gold into the charcoals and let it drip down into the large tray he had placed beneath the brick.
“And where are those jewels now? Where is that gold?”
“Where it has always been. In the coffers and vaults of the Vatican.”
“All but eighty thousand ducats’ worth!” Signor Luigi trumpeted.
“Is that what you are accusing me of? Stealing the Pope’s jewels?”
Signor Luigi rocked on his heels, his thumbs hooked beneath the corners of his breastplate. “If you didn’t, who did?”