What he had done, no man could ever know.
If the Holy Roman Church were to learn of it, he would be burned at the stake. If kings and princes knew, he would be captured, imprisoned, and the fruits of his labor stolen. A race of immortal men, no doubt as corrupt and venal as their mortal counterparts, would spring up to overtake the world. No, the only sensible course was to keep La Medusa close and secret, its powers bestowed only on its creator, and on whatever worthy soul that creator chose to favor.
The lantern had sputtered, its last drops of oil consumed, and gone out. The workshop had been bathed in the light of the winter moon, full and white and cold as a glacier.
Cellini had slipped the chain onto the amulet, then looped it around his neck. Tiptoeing past Ascanio and the other apprentices, fast asleep downstairs, he stepped into the silent courtyard behind his house. Walls of stone rose on all sides. But high above, like a gleaming coin, the moon hung in a starry sky. His nervous breath fogged in the air.
Was he prepared to put his work to the ultimate test? Was he ready to accept any outcome, whether it be everlasting life … or sudden death? No grimoire guaranteed its results.
A shiver rippled down his spine, inspired by the chilly air, or the anticipation. With numbed fingers, he lifted La Medusa, the snarling face glaring into his own … and deliberately turned it over. The curvature of the glass twinkled in the moonlight.
His own face—with its prominent, hooked nose, coal-dark eyes, and luxuriant moustache—appeared in the mirror, but there was something strange going on, something that it took him a second to realize. It didn’t feel like his reflection he was seeing … it felt as if he were already inside the mirror, and helplessly staring out.
The amulet itself seemed to come alive, as if the liquid inside had been brought to a sudden boil.
A dog howled from the alleyway and ran for the street.
Cellini could not tear his eyes away. He felt as if he were being drawn down into a whirlpool, around and around, down and down. His scalp prickled, and his skin erupted in a welter of goose bumps. La Medusa seemed to twist in his hand like a frightened bird, and before he could even think to let it go, he had felt his mind grow dim and his knees buckle beneath him. The cobblestones of the courtyard rose up like an engulfing wave.
“Are you done with your bowl?” the jailer asked through the iron grate in the door.
Cellini, still mourning over the poison he had just ingested, looked up from the floor, then nodded.
“Then pass it to me,” the jailer said, and Cellini picked it up and carried it to the door.
“Tell me,” he asked, “did Signor Luigi—forgive me, the Duke of Castro—himself prepare my food tonight?”
“Are you crazy? Of course not.”
“Then who did? Anyone unusual?”
The jailer smiled. “Nothing gets by you, Benvenuto. It was prepared by a friend of the duke’s.”
Cellini waited.
“A man named Landi. He wore one of those loupes around his neck.”
Of course, Cellini thought. Landi was the jeweler who’d tried to foist off the bad pearls on Eleonora in Florence; he had subsequently moved here, to Rome. How pleased he must have been to receive this deadly commission from the duke.
“Why do you ask?”
“You will know soon enough,” Cellini replied, taking one last look into the bottom of the bowl, and noticing yet another minute splinter. He wet the tip of his finger, removed the shard, then passed the bowl sideways through the bars.
When the jailer had gone, he went to the window and placed the tiny fragment on the sill. How strange to be looking at something so small and yet so lethal. How many, he wondered, had he consumed?
But then, in the last light of the summer sun, he noticed something that made his heart spring up in his chest.
The shard had the tiniest hint of a greenish cast … as if it might be beryl, or some other semiprecious stone.
He examined it more closely. The sun had almost set over the Roman hills, but there was just enough light to catch that cast again. His mouth suddenly so dry he could barely breathe, he grabbed his spoon and pressed it down on the shard. There was a pleasing crunch, and when he lifted the spoon, a spot of harmless dust lay on the windowsill.
Cellini crumpled to the floor, knowing that he had been delivered … and by the hand of the unscrupulous jeweler. Landi had, no doubt, been given a diamond to complete the task, but had pocketed it instead, thinking a less-valuable gem would do the job just as well.