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  I did not have to ask who had been killed, although the body had clearly been removed already. Three men worked in those offices: Carmignano was with the queen, and Gamrat was there with us.

  “Don Mantovano,” I whispered.

  The chancellor nodded grimly, and Lucrezia pressed a handkerchief to her mouth to stifle a sob.

  Stempowski turned to her. He was a big man, taller than anyone else in the room, with thick eyebrows, a roundly trimmed graying beard, and a fine-boned, lined face that must have been handsome in his youth. He had a booming voice that enhanced his natural air of authority, and as a result he could be quite intimidating. His young courtiers cowered whenever he so much as glanced at them. “Signorina Alifio discovered him earlier this morning,” he explained.

  “Dio mio.” I walked over to Lucrezia and put a hand on her shoulder, and she clung to me. “Povera ragazza, che tristezza,” I murmured as I smoothed her dark curls, unpinned and disarrayed. I reached for the goblet and gave it to her, and she took a small sip. After a few moments I felt her calming a little.

  “I was just going to interrogate her,” Stempowski said. “If you feel up to it, signorina,” he addressed Lucrezia, surprisingly gently. “Whether now or when you have recovered from your shock, we will have to have a full account of how you came upon the body,” he added.

  I looked down at her. Yes, how had she, of all people, found him?

  She met my gaze, her red-rimmed eyes swimming with tears, then she turned to the chancellor. “I want to tell everything now, and then forget all of it,” she said, drawing a deep breath. Her voice trembled. “I do not want to have to remember it all over again.”

  That was wise, I thought, as Stempowski nodded to one of his courtiers. The man picked up a portable desk from a sideboard, slung the belt around his neck, dipped a quill in the inkpot, and waited with his hand poised over a sheet of paper. He tried to look official, but there was a tension and a pallor in his face that suggested he had little stomach for what he was about to hear.

  “He was right there when I opened the door,” Lucrezia said. “Slumped on that divan. Dead.” She pointed across the chamber without looking in that direction.

  My eyes followed her hand. With a shudder, I noticed that the damask upholstery of the divan that stood against a wall between two windows, a bright pattern of alternating green and yellow stripes, was stained with rust-colored smudges. There were small spots of red on the tiles of the floor beneath it, as well, where some of the blood had dripped and dried.

  “Signorina,” Stempowski said, again gentle. “Let us start from the beginning. What were you doing here in this chamber so early in the morning?”

  I looked at him sharply, a protective instinct rising inside me. What was he was insinuating? But then I remembered that it was Lucrezia, who liked to read Decamerone and the Greek love letters translated by Kopernikus, and who had flirted with Mantovano during the sleigh ride, even though Stempowski could not have known that. I had assumed that flirtation had been for sport, but what if it hadn’t? Dear God.

  I was still absorbing that possibility when Lucrezia sniffled and started her story. “It was still mostly dark when I awoke and felt the need to—to go”—she hesitated, blushing—“to the privy.” I squeezed her shoulder, encouraging her to go on. “I saw the guards, but they were dead to the world on drink. On my way back, I noticed light coming through a crack in the door of Her Majesty’s secretary’s office.” She paused, wiping her eyes with her sleeve like a child.

  “It was such an unusual hour,” she resumed, “that the first thought that came into my head was that Don Mantovano was in the middle of a tryst, and I crept up to see if I could get a glimpse of the woman.” She laughed through her tears, but it was a wistful sort of laugh. “I could already imagine telling the other girls and what merriment we would share at his expense.”

  She started crying again. I gave her the goblet, and she took a long draught this time. When she was able to speak again, she said that the door had been slightly ajar, as if someone had not wanted to close it all the way for fear of making noise. Putting an eye to the crack and not seeing or hearing anything, Lucrezia pushed the door open a bit, and that was when she saw Mantovano sprawled on the divan. One of his hands was pressed to his abdomen, clutching a handkerchief soaked with blood, the other rested limply at this side. His head was thrown back with a mouth agape as if in a final silent scream.

  She ran back to her bedchamber, the sound that Mantovano could no longer utter waking everyone, except for me. I now realized that what I had thought was a dream must have been her screaming.

  A heavy silence filled the chamber when she finished, punctured only by the scribe taking down the last of her words with a frantic scratch. His hand, too, was shaking slightly.

  “Where is Don—the body now?” I asked.

  “It has been taken down to the mortuary crypt.”

  I had a flash of memory from my previous visit there to see another murdered man. I wondered if I would have to make another. “Did Her Majesty see him?”

  The chancellor shook his head. “She was too distraught. She has shut herself in her bedchamber and does not want to see anybody, except for her priest, Don Carmignano, and that doctor.”

  I felt a surge of concern for the queen. I knew she liked Mantovano, but her attachment must have run deeper than I’d thought if she had been unable to look upon his corpse. The extent of her grief must have been large, too, for Baldazzi to have become a needed companion. It was not a good sign.

  “What do you think happened here, my lord?” I asked the chancellor.

  He raised his shoulders in a sign of uncertainty. “At first glance it seems like the work of a thief.”

  “Why is that?”

  “His ruby ring and his chain of office were missing from his body.”

  “Oh.” Once again, just as with Zamborski’s murder, the explanation of a crime committed for profit did not satisfy me. Yet, under the strain of the moment, I could not think why.

  “Thank you, Signorina Alifio.” Stempowski’s tone turned official again. “Perhaps you should rest now. I am sure Contessa Sanseverino will take good care of you,” he added in a way that left no doubt that he was dismissing us.

  I would have wanted to have more time to look around. I had a nagging thought that there was something in that chamber that could disprove the burglary theory. But it was not my place to ask for that, or to argue with the chancellor’s verdicts.

  I helped Lucrezia to her feet, sensing a certain heaviness about her. It was no wonder: she had risen early, suffered a great shock, and the interrogation that followed must have been exhausting. “Let’s go to your bedchamber. The girls must be worried about you.”

  We walked down the gallery in silence. Our steps echoed on the tiled floor, the sound grating on my raw nerves and making my head feel like a busy blacksmith’s workshop. We found the other girls huddled by a blazing hearth, talking in low voices. They were fully dressed but wore no jewelry, and their hair was still undone. They made room for Lucrezia closest to the fire, and we all took comfort from the camaraderie born of a shared sense of impending doom.

  “Is it true?” Magdalena asked in a trembling voice. “Was Don Mantovano murdered right down from our chamber, and so near Her Majesty’s apartments?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Fresh tears sprung from their eyes, and they began peppering me with questions to which I had no answers.

  “Who is doing this?”

  “Why?”

  “When will he be captured?”

  “Are we going to die next?”

  “Of course not,” I said impatiently to cover my own fear. “Stop saying such things. There is a killer on the loose, and he is quite vicious, but he seems to be attacking men,” I added, conscious of how meager a consolation that was.

  “But who would have wanted to kill Don Mantovano?” Portia asked the question that must have been on everyone’s mind. “H
e seemed so”—she searched for the right word, evidently finding it difficult to describe such a bland figure as the queen’s late secretary—“so harmless.”

  That was apt. Not being very sociable, Mantovano did not appear to have had any close friends or allies at the court. But neither had he been the type to attract enemies. Instead, he had been devoted to the queen, hard-working, and—at least as far as I knew—not mean to anyone. He had also seemed quite pious. I had noticed many times how fervently he prayed during mass, intent on every word of Bishop Konarski’s sermons, unlike many of the other courtiers who yawned, fidgeted, or ogled women from their pews. It was a pity, I realized, that he had died so suddenly, without the comfort of the last rites.

  I spread my arms in a gesture of helplessness. “As unlikely as it may sound, he must have earned somebody’s ill will.”

  “It certainly wasn’t a jealous husband,” Magdalena observed sarcastically. I was going to chide her, but it occurred to me that she was right. If Mantovano was known for anything at the court, it was for his ascetic lifestyle. He had a wife who had stayed behind in Naples due to delicate health that made it impossible for her to make the journey north, but to whom, according to the queen, he had been deeply devoted. Prior to our sleigh ride, I do not think I had ever seen him talk to a woman unless it was on the queen’s business, much less flirt with one. It was difficult to imagine someone less prone to be a carouser. Unless he’d had everybody fooled, he was the last man on earth who would have posed a threat to a husband or fiancé.

  “He may not have looked the type, but some men go to great lengths to conceal their secret lives.” Helena’s words rang out with a strange correspondence to my own thoughts.

  I was surprised to hear that from a girl her age, even if I could not dispute its veracity. I studied her, wondering if the lover she had agreed to give up was also a married man. But except for her slightly narrowed eyes, which I noticed were shadowed with dark circles, everything about her was neutral and composed. Unless she chose to share it with me, I would never be able to guess the truth of that affair.

  “Chancellor Stempowski seems to think that someone killed Pan Zamborski for his purse and dagger, and that Don Mantovano was killed for his ring and chain—” I broke off as it dawned on me why, just a short while before, something had not seemed right in the secretary’s chamber. There was a silver tray on the sideboard, an alabaster vase from the queen’s beloved collection, expensive quills, and several golden candlesticks there, none of which the murderer had taken. Instead, he had removed Mantovano’s ring and chain of office, the latter of which was distinctive enough to raise suspicions if he tried to sell it or have it melted down. I took a deep breath. This was not the work of a thief any more than Zamborski’s death had been; whoever had done it wanted it to look like the work of a thief.

  But I did not share any of it with the girls; I did not want to engender more wild speculations. Later, I would seek out Konarski and tell him about it.

  “We must let the investigation run its course and hope that the killer will be brought to justice.” I tried to convey a confidence I did not feel. “It is not for us to speculate on who did it and why. Try to stay calm, stay together, and keep your wits about you.” I rose from my seat and gazed at each of them. “Now do up your hair and put some rouge on your cheeks for when Her Majesty summons you to attend her. She was deeply attached to Don Mantovano, and this will be hard on her. It will be your task to keep her spirits up.”

  They wiped their eyes and began dispersing to their chests and mirrors to finish their toilette. Lucrezia, who I had noticed had grown increasingly heavy-lidded as we talked, went to lie down, and I was glad of it. On a day like this, sleep, if it could be had, was the best—really, the only—remedy.

  I motioned Helena to stay. “How are you feeling?” I asked in a low voice. She was pale again. “Is your stomach still bothering you?” I looked pointedly at her bodice.

  “I am better, signora.”

  “So there is no need for Doctor Baldazzi to examine you?” I pressed. “Because you don’t look so well.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping much lately,” she said. “That first murder must have affected me more than I realized, and now this—” She brought a hand to her throat as if she could not breathe.

  I waited until she was calmer, then asked, “Did you hear anything suspicious in the gallery last night?”

  She shook her head. “Yesterday I asked Doctor Baldazzi for something to help me sleep, and he gave me poppy milk.” She gestured toward the chest by her bed, where, next to a prayer book and a silver comb, there was a small stoppered clay bottle.

  “And you took it last night?”

  “Yes, a quarter measure in a cup of wine, according to his prescription,” she said. “It worked.” She gave me a wan smile.

  I pursed my lips. To me she looked tired and drawn, but maybe it took a few days.

  “You don’t have to attend the queen today, unless she specifically asks for you. Take the day to rest.” I glanced toward Lucrezia’s bed and saw that she was fast asleep already. “These murders are unfortunate, but we must not let them disrupt our lives. Otherwise, we will become victims indirectly.”

  She dropped her eyes in acknowledgment.

  I left her and returned to my chamber. My head was pounding from the wine I’d had the night before and from the morning’s developments. I sat on my bed and took a few deep breaths to fight off a rising sense of panic as I recalled the complete silence in the gallery at three o’clock in the morning. I could not remember whether I had seen any lights coming from Mantovano’s office. Was it after the murder, or was the killer lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting for his prey? What if I had looked in the wrong direction and seen his face? Perhaps my body, too, would have been found that morning.

  I felt suddenly very tired, and my mind scrambled as various scenarios and images pushed to the fore. I rose to double check the lock on my door, then returned to the bed and lay down, intending to rest for just a moment, but I was engulfed almost immediately by a dreamless black void.

  I was awakened some time later by a loud knocking on my door, and when I finally unlocked it, I saw Portia hovering outside. “Her Majesty wishes to see you, signora,” she said. “She is very upset, and Doctor Baldazzi is still with her.”

  Wincing at a dull ache lingering somewhere behind my eyes, I splashed water from the basin on my face, put my headdress back on, and followed her.

  The candles were lit in the queen’s bedchamber, even though it was still afternoon, for the day was overcast and gloomy. Bona was resting in her bed, a large and beautiful piece that had arrived with her from Italy. It was carved out of cedar, gilded, and topped with a white velvet baldachin supported by twisting columns in each of its four corners. She was wearing a satin robe over her nightdress, and a linen compress was pressed to her forehead. On a nearby table, a platter with almond-paste sweets dipped in caramelized honey—which I made sure was placed there fresh every night—stood untouched. It was the surest sign that she was distressed, yet her face was dry. Bona Sforza was not the type to cry.

  “Your Majesty.” I made a deep curtsy. “I am very sorry for your loss. I know how much you valued Don Mantovano’s service and advice. He will be greatly missed.”

  She gestured for me to rise. “Poor Lorenzo,” she sniffed. “Such an honest and pious soul, and so loyal to me. Who would have wanted to harm him?” she asked, though she clearly did not expect me to answer. “Doctor Baldazzi”—she pointed at the physician without looking at him—“tells me that he was stabbed three times in the stomach and must have been alive for some time after the attack, for he was clutching his handkerchief to his wounds to stanch the bleeding.” She heaved a dry sob.

  “Your Majesty must not become too upset—” I started.

  She raised her head and sent me a scorching look. She grabbed the cloth from her brow and flung it away, and it hit the floor tiles with a damp thwack. Befo
re I could realize what she was doing, she pushed back the damask bedcover and was on her feet. Baldazzi and I started toward her, but she held us back with an outstretched arm.

  “This dark, miserable, godforsaken place.” She stalked to the window and gazed over the winter landscape of brownish meadows, the steely river, and a stretch of bare-leafed forest on the opposite bank, all dissolving into the approaching dusk. From where she stood, one could also see the top of Baszta Sandomierska. “This land of cold weather, cold people, of men who fear women who speak their minds, and who would keep them confined to the bedchamber and birthing stool all their lives,” she seethed.

  I exchanged an alarmed glance with Baldazzi.

  “May it please Your Majesty to return to bed, for the safety of the heir—” Baldazzi started, almost bending in half, his arms and head seeming to sway as he did so.

  “My heir will be fine!” the queen declared. “But I will not let whoever murdered my Mantovano get away with it!”

  “His Majesty has already ordered an investigation, and Chancellor Stempowski has interviewed Signorina Alifio. Please, Your Majesty, drink this cup of wine infused with the oil of valerian. It will soothe Your Majesty’s nerves.” He moved to a sideboard and lifted a Venetian goblet which he extended toward the queen, his hand shaking slightly. For the first time I was impressed with Baldazzi. Usually he was eager to please and full of empty platitudes, but now he did exactly what he was supposed to. Most likely, he was worried that he would be blamed should the queen miscarry.

  “Stempowski is an old fool who cannot find his way out of a privy!” Bona exploded as I knew she would the moment Baldazzi had mentioned his name. She ignored the proffered medicine. “I will have my own investigation. We will find the culprit and expose him for the coward and traitor he is!”