Free The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) by Kate Quinn

all my doings, all my secrets. I had no one to trust here at all.
    I upended the table beside the bed, taking a small mean comfort in the crash of a vase, a goblet, and a prayer book. I flung the pearl necklace down on my wedding chest and eyed it as though it were a snake. I would
not
try it on.
    Not for another hour, anyway.
    I held out that long.
    My Cardinal had good taste in jewels, I’d say that for him. I’d still throw his pearls at his feet if he dared call on me again. “Take that, Cardinal Borgia,” I said aloud, tugging the rope of pearls over my head.
    Rodrigo Borgia. I’d finally remembered his name.
    When a man gives you jewels, even if you’re planning to throw them back in his face, you should remember his name.

CHAPTER THREE

    Saturn has impressed the seal of melancholy on me from the beginning.
    —FICINO
    Leonello
    H
ector, son of Priam, fierce as flame.
I declaimed the words silently, reading from the book in my hand as I strolled across the piazza.
Thrice-noble Hector, seizing from behind, sought by the feet to drag away the dead, cheering his friends—
    A properly gloved and veiled housewife on her way back from confession gave me a dubious glance. My lips must be moving along with my thoughts, like a mumbling madman. I made her an impeccable bow and said gravely, “‘
Thrice, clad in warlike might, the two Ajaxes drove him from his prey.
’ Did you know that, good
signora
?” I showed her the book. “Thrice!”
    She crossed herself and hurried away. A blind beggar raised his sham of an eye bandage to give me an incredulous glance before remembering to drool and stare vacantly again.
    Yet, fearless in his strength, now rushing on
—I went back to declaiming in my head, swaggering as much as any mighty Ajax.
    Two butcher boys paused to guffaw at the dwarf striding along with his nose buried in a book and his hand clapped to his dagger hilt as though it were a hero’s sword, but for once their snickers slid off me without pricking. I was a man grown, thirty in a year or two, but the tale of Troy converted me every time back into the giddy schoolboy I’d been when I first read it. And thanks to a lucky
chorus
hand in a game of
primiera
last night, I’d finally had the coin to buy a certain battered book I’d been eyeing for a month—not just the simplified
Ilias Latina
I’d read as a boy, but Homer’s own version, the Greek translated into Italian. Only a woodblock print, to be sure; Priam’s plea to Achilles was lamentably smudged, and water stains all but obscured Hector’s duel with Ajax. But a book nonetheless, a new book for my modest private library.
    Then up rose Achilles, dear to Jove—
I whistled through my teeth, resuming my stroll toward the tavern where Anna worked. I’d need to play a game or two more at the tables if I wanted any food this evening, since I’d spent all the coin I had on the book. Then I could go home, back to my tiny rented room above the print shop in the Borgo, and pass the rest of the evening sprawled on the cot, mug of wine in my hand, reading by the clear light of the beeswax taper I brought from its box only when I had a new book to read . . .
    But when Achilles’ voice of brass they heard, they quailed in spirit . . .
“Anna?” I called as I came into the tavern, tucking the worn volume back into my doublet just before the death of Patroclus. “Anna, my good lady, have you any easy marks for me tonight? Let me—”
    That was when I saw the tables empty of customers; heard the odd and eerie silence, except for the muffled wailing of the tavern maids weeping into each other’s shoulders.
    “What?” I looked at the maidservants, from face to tear-blotched face. “What’s happened? Where is Anna?”
    “In—in there,” one of them quavered. I flung open the door to the kitchen, and my buoyant book-fueled happiness popped like a bubble.
    * * *
    A nna had died fighting. There was that, at least.
    “When did you find her?” I