Free The Borgia Mistress: A Novel by Sara Poole Page A

jongleurs, jesters, and pantomime players. They were a rowdy bunch, their raucous laughter making it unlikely that we could be overheard. A buxom young woman took our orders, not so preoccupied that she didn’t manage an appreciative glance at David. Having removed his hat again and set aside the other accoutrements of his borrowed occupation, he looked like a figure out of a Botticelli painting, all dark liquid eyes and fierce grace. Yet the jester costume remained a brilliant disguise. No one would think to look behind it for a renegade Jew determined to protect his people with guile if he could but with the sword if he must.
    “I’m sorry I had to leave Rome before we could meet,” I said when the barmaid had gone again. In the rush of activity leading up to Il Papa’s departure from the Holy City, there had been no time to seek out David. As glad as I was to see him, his sudden appearance in Viterbo could not be good.
    He inclined his head in understanding. “I, too, was occupied. There is much to speak of. But first, I’ve brought letters.” Sliding them across the table, he added, “One from Sofia, another from Rocco, and a message from a woman named Portia, who won’t tell me how she found me but who wants you to know that your cat is fine. She hopes you are the same.” He looked at me all too perceptively. “You aren’t, are you?”
    I slipped the letters into my pouch. Sofia’s I welcomed. As for Rocco’s … I would not think of that just then.
    “I am well enough.” David and I had braved death together, and only just escaped it, but I was reluctant all the same to burden him with my troubles. We spoke of lighter matters until both of us were satisfied that we were not attracting any undue attention. Only then did I ask why he had come to Viterbo.
    “I wouldn’t have,” he said in answer to my query, “had not His Holiness decided to hie himself here. Not that Rome has much to recommend it these days. The weather is foul, the plague is stirring, and the populace is more than usually disgruntled.”
    “Save for the plague, Viterbo isn’t much better.” I leaned a little closer across the table. “His Holiness’s servants are insulted openly in the marketplace. As for the garrison … let’s just say that at the moment, I would not put money on their loyalty.”
    “That is unfortunate.” David fell silent as our cups of wine arrived, along with a plate of bread and a saucer of pale green oil. We dipped and sipped before he said, “I bring news that I could not entrust to a letter.”
    Sourness stirred in my stomach. I set down the wine. “Tell me.”
    “An assassin is en route to Viterbo, may indeed already be here.”
    I was not about to disregard any threat to Borgia, yet the thought that one more would-be killer was stirring in the weeds hardly shocked me.
    “Yet another?” I said, picking up my cup again. “More seem to sprout with every rain.”
    “Unfortunately, this one may be different. The amount of money involved suggests that whoever has been hired is more dangerous than anyone else you’ve confronted in the past.”
    Just as poisoners vary in their degree of skill and, consequently, their price, assassins do the same. Yet I remained cautious.
    “How do you know this?”
    “You are aware that we still have contacts in Spain?”
    “I had assumed as much.” Tens of thousands of Jews had fled from there the previous year, expelled at the order of Their Most Catholic Majesties. But others, having seen what was coming, had chosen to remain as conversos, converts to Christianity. They lived under constant suspicion, although at least a few were nestled securely within the ranks of Holy Mother Church and the royal court itself.
    “Funds are moving between banks here and in Spain,” David said. “The objective seems to be to obscure their origins as much as to conceal the recipient. Someone is going to great effort to strike at Borgia. With all respect, I fear that this