Free The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis Page A

I knew no better than the charm bag she had carried, yet to whom my fate, and my precious son’s, was now chained.

    Shortly we arrived at the Faenza Gate, one of four entrances that pierce Imola’s massive brick walls. In the little piazza before the portal, Valentino’s soldiers had halted traffic so that the customs collectors could inspect cargoes. But these officers merely nodded at Leonardo and his company, who at once passed beneath the arch.
    The Florentine similarly avoided waiting behind the several merchants and farmers; he presented one of the tax officers a paper, no doubt a safe-conduct pass. As the officer paused to read it, the Florentine stared impatiently after Leonardo, craning his neck.
    It occurred to me that having no pass, I would have to talk my way through the gate, a delay that risked losing sight of my quarry. I scurried to the Florentine’s side, clutched his arm, and gave him a peck upon the cheek, saying, “I have decided to come along anyway, regardless of all the trouble you gave me last night.” Here I offered the customs officer my most persuasive smile and a fetching curtsy. But as I had hardly dressed for this role, the officer’s eyes narrowed.
    “If you must.” The Florentine addressed me with a sour tone and a wry smirk. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
    His safe-conduct pass was returned; the officer motioned his head toward the arch. With neither an attempt to disengage my arm nor a word of protest, the Florentine escorted me into the countryside. There I observed Maestro Leonardo’s party already some one hundred braccia beyond us, making their way over a little plank bridge that crosses the mill canal, which entirely encircles Imola. My new companion and I were not at luxury to stop and converse, and indeed we would have fallen behind Leonardo’s leaping strides if the pretty boy had not been such a laggard, staggering beneath his burden like Christ bearing His Cross whenever Leonardo turned to snap his fingers at him.
    My companion was not any taller than he had appeared in the courtyard—not considerably taller than I. But now, walking at his side, I felt a stature as lithe and sinewy as Mercury. Still clutchinghis arm, I recommended myself. “I am Madonna Damiata. From Rome.”
    “Messer Niccolò, as I’m certain your girl told you. Niccolò Machiavelli, from Florence, secretary to the Ten of War.”
    So his position, it seemed, was a bit more elevated than clerk and mule trainer; he was a secretary in the higher ranks of his government—and perhaps even of some use to them. Yet in my former trade, I had once considered it necessary to hold in memory the names of all the important families in Italy, and I could not recall the Machiavelli anywhere upon that list. “So Messer Niccolò Machiavelli, I must presume that you are attached to the Florentine ambassador.”
    He turned his head and studied me, as I did him. He had a scholar’s pale forehead and a refined nose, though with a sharp, impish tip, almost on fire from the cold. His dark eyes glittered. “If I were presently attached to our ambassador, it would necessarily be a very long leash. He remains in Florence.” He spoke in a rat-tat-tat cadence, lively and careless. I could see at once why Camilla had been charmed.
    “Ah, I see. When I supped with Duke Valentino last night, he told me that Florence had sent him an amusing secretary to delay negotiations on a security agreement. I presume His Excellency was speaking of you.”
    This erased Messer Niccolò’s smirk. He observed me again, now as if weighing my claim to familiarity with Duke Valentino. “It is scarcely a secret,” he said, “that His Excellency is as weary of listening to my government’s circumlocutions as I am of singing him the same cantafavola every time we meet.”
    “No doubt your lordships in Florence will send you a new song,” I said, “if Valentino cannot conclude his treaty with the condottieri .”
    He did not