Free Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance by Sara Poole

you,” he said.
    Vittoro merely grunted but I have a tendency to chatter when I am anxious. “What are they saying?”
    Benjamin took a deep breath, significantly expanding his scrawny chest, and launched into his recitation. “Some think you are a witch, signorina. Others say it is too soon to tell. Some say you are a spy for the Cardinal, and no one really disagrees with that, but there is argument over why so illustrious a personage would feel the need to spy on us. As for you, signore—” He indicated Vittoro. “Some say you are a military man, others believe you are the signorina’s familiar.”
    That got the captain’s attention, but he merely grunted again and kept going. We came at last to the apothecary shop. If anything, the line in front was longer than it had been the previous day. There were also several shrouded bodies lying near the street, waiting for whoever disposed of corpses in the ghetto. In the city beyond, the dead are buried in the churchyards. Except in times of plague, even paupers go to a decent grave. But dead Jews . . . I had no idea what happened to them.
    “We should not tarry,” Vittoro said as Benjamin opened the door and we stepped inside.
    This time, I did not bother to cover my face. While many believe that disease is caused by bad air, I am not convinced, although I gladly would have protected myself from the stench had not hiding behind a scented pomander seemed a poor approach to winning Sofia Montefiore’s trust.
    As it was, she was in no position to give me her attention. A young woman in the throes of childbirth lay in a corner of the roomcrowded with the sick and dying. She was on her back on a thin pallet, her face the pasty gray of approaching death, seemingly slumped in insensibility. Sofia Montefiore knelt between her spread legs. The young man at her side, clutching her hand, was weeping.
    “Push,” Sofia urged. “For love of your child, you must push!”
    I heard her but I could not tell if the young woman did. The pool of blood seeping out from beneath her suggested she was already beyond such cares.
    I stumbled back toward the door and bumped instead into Vittoro. He set down the medicine chest quickly and grabbed hold of me.
    “Donna, are you all right?”
    For pity’s sake, I was the poisoner of no less than Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, one of the most feared men in all of Christendom. I had, only three days before, killed a man to attain that position. I had survived a beating and sworn to avenge my father. I was not and never had been weak.
    But I was terrified. Having lived only with my father—without mother, aunts, sisters, cousins—I was not inured to the reality of childbirth as every young woman is expected to be. On the contrary, I saw the suffering that had killed my own mother as bizarre and hideous.
    I did not answer Vittoro but did manage to recover myself enough to stand on my own. The young man was bent over sobbing. Sofia said something more that I did not hear; it may have been a curse. When he did not respond, she reached around behind her, took hold of a knife she must have hidden there and—
    The young woman screamed. The sound went on and on, seeming to echo off the walls pressing in so close around and set the very air to vibrating. A scream of such anguish that devils in the pits ofHell must have heard it. It took her life’s breath and left her slumped, eyes wide and unseeing, in the young man’s arms.
    Another cry was heard, far more feeble, the whimper of a new life born out of death. I saw the baby stained with his mother’s blood, saw the bloodstained knife Sofia dropped, saw her face, and then I saw nothing but the floor.
    Such humiliation! For a long time afterward, I insisted to myself that I had not fainted at the mere sight of blood. I had merely sat down abruptly, forgetting there was no chair. Vittoro, bless him, never spoke of it. I had the comfort of my lies even as I knew the truth.
    By the time I regained myself, the