Cellini hardly knew where to start, but he knew that he had to be careful; Signor Luigi was a dangerous enemy. Even if Pope Paul knew him to be a bit slippery, the man was still his son—and blood was thicker than water. Cellini never forgot that.
“First of all, even if I had committed such an unthinkable offense, I would never have confessed it to a man like Pascucci; the city of Perugia never gave birth to a bigger liar and thief. And as for the missing stones, I suggest you consult the account books. Have you done that?”
Signor Luigi didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think so. Everything—every ring, every diamond, every ruby, even every garnet—was recorded in the accounts as soon as the siege was lifted. While Pope Clement was negotiating the settlement, a small diamond ring, worth no more than four thousand scudi, fell from his finger, and when the imperial ambassador bent to pick it up, the Pope told him to keep it. Apart from that, you will see that not a ducat’s worth—much less eighty thousand ducats’ worth—is missing.” Cellini scoffed, to indicate the absurdity of the charge he had just addressed.
And though Pope Paul appeared mollified, Signor Luigi was not. Indeed, his brow was more furrowed than ever, and rather than let it go, he said, “The account books will be looked at.” He snapped his fingers and waggled them at a retainer, who scuttled out of the room to get started. “But that still leaves us with an equally grave charge.”
“Another?” Pope Paul said, sounding a bit put off.
“Yes, Father … a charge of heresy.”
The room fell utterly silent, and the Pope leaned forward on his purple throne, his long white beard brushing his knees.
Signor Luigi, pleased at having recaptured everyone’s attention, said, “In his workshop in Florence, Messer Cellini has experimented with forbidden texts and arcana that are in direct contravention of Church teachings. My sources tell me—”
“What sources?” Cellini broke in. “Pascucci again?”
“No,” Signor Luigi replied dryly, “other apprentices you employed. And they tell me you have employed various grimoires”—the black books of magic banned by the Catholic Church—“to fashion objects of an occult nature. Objects that may give you powers properly reserved for God alone.”
Pope Paul fell back in his chair. A foreign ambassador—French by the look of his finery and lace—gasped and held a handkerchief to his face, as if to avert a contagion. Cellini felt the temperature in the room fall by several degrees.
“I don’t know how to answer such baseless accusations,” Cellini said, “especially as I don’t know who’s making them.”
“That’s for me to know,” Signor Luigi declared.
“Is it true?” Pope Paul asked.
And here Cellini paused. He would have to continue his denial, but lying to the Pope himself was a sin of a magnitude he could hardly contemplate. And Signor Luigi must have noted his hesitation because, before Cellini could think of what to say, he had swooped forward, reached under Cellini’s shirt collar, and lifted the chain out.
The Medusa lay in the palm of his hand, her face glaring up at the throne.
“The proof, Father, the proof! An unholy object, whose true purpose only the Devil can know.”
The Pope indicated that he wanted to see it, and one of his priests came forward and lifted it over Cellini’s head. When it was placed in the Pope’s hand, he studied it closely, then turned it over, rubbing his thumb on the black silk backing.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A looking glass, Your Holiness.”
The Pope twisted the latches and the silk cover slid away. Cellini inadvertently glanced toward the long windows giving onto the Vatican gardens. Blessedly, the sun, and not the moon, hung in the sky above the grove of orange and lemon trees.
“It’s not a very good one,” the Pope said, eyeing the convex, and distorting, glass.
“No, Your Eminence, it did not meet my own expectations, either. It was designed for Eleonora de Toledo, but as it came out imperfectly, I kept it for myself and made another—a perfect copy, with ruby eyes—for the duchess.”
“Rubies from the Vatican’s casks?” Signor Luigi threw in.
Cellini’s fists clenched—he had taken all the insults he could—and Luigi, backing away, ordered Bertoldo and his henchmen to grab him.
“You will have all the time you need to contemplate your imperfect workmanship,” he said, “in your old home—the dungeons of the Castel St. Angelo.”
Cellini started to protest, but the Pope, reluctant to thwart his son any longer, handed the glass to one of his retainers as if it were a piece of spoiled fruit from his garden, and conspicuously turned away.
Chapter 9
“One more time, Uncle David! One more time!”