Free City of God by Cecelia Holland

legs stretched out, and his broad shoulders pressed to the chair back. “Those I won it from tried to take it back.”
    â€œTried,” Nicholas said.
    The kitchen door shrilled on its hinges; Juan brought a basin of warm water and vinegar across the room. He set the basin down on the chair beside Stefano and stood back, a piece of clean linen folded over his arm. His face was screwed up in distaste. Stefano picked the basin up and setting it on his knees plunged his hands into it. He groaned with pleasure. Water slopped onto his coat and onto the floor. He splashed handfuls of water over his face. The vinegar penetrated the room with its acid smell. Nicholas laid his book aside. In the big mail’s thick damp hair he saw an oozing lump, and his stomach twisted. He looked away, at the walls, at Juan.
    â€œWine,” he said.
    Juan went away on the new errand.
    â€œI did not know you played cards,” Nicholas said.
    â€œYes. Tarocco.” Stefano blotted his streaming face on his sleeve. “That’s my chief work. I only steal when I run short of money to gamble with.” Juan brought him a glass of the strongest wine, and he gulped it, like a horse drinking.
    â€œThat’s too good a wine to drink so fast,” Nicholas said.
    Stefano smiled at him again. There was a kind of triumph in his looks, a buoyant elation, as if the wounds were awards.
    â€œI knew them,” he said. He flicked one bruised hand at Juan. “Give me the towel.” His attention snapped back to Nicholas again. “I knew they would try something, so I was ready. I left a few more lumps with them than they left with me.” Scooping up the vinegary water in his hands, he bathed his face again.
    â€œDon’t order my servant about,” Nicholas said. He spoke to Juan in Spanish. “Give him the linen. And see if there is lotion of aloes.” Juan left.
    â€œWhat tongue is that?” Stefano asked. “You are not Italian, are you?”
    Nicholas shook his head. He watched Stefano daub and rub at his battered face and hands; Juan returned and stood there with the towel and the white jar of lotion. The water and the towels were bloody. Nicholas looked away, down, off across the room, turning his mind to other subjects, but his gaze and his mind turned constantly back toward the bloody man before him. The dirt and the blood disgusted him, and yet the sight of the work of violence quickened a hateful interest in him, which he could not restrain or fathom, some lust.
    Stefano patted lotion at the deep oozing cut on his head. He winced. Nicholas’s face contorted in mimicry. He pulled his cheeks and mouth straight again, forced his eyes away. His was the superior life. He crossed one leg over the other, staring at the wall, his armpits damp with sweat.
    With the French king and his army marching south toward Rome on their way to Naples, Valentino withdrew his troops out of Tuscany; as a vassal of the crown of France, he was required to join his suzerain in the war against Naples. The spring’s Bullying of Florence had won him little. He had forced a contract of employment for himself and his troops, but the Signory had never paid him any of the money.
    Now the attention of everyone who mattered turned toward Naples. The ancient city in the south was the head and heart of a kingdom embracing all southern Italy. The King of France had an old claim to its throne, and once before, in 1494, he had marched through Italy to enforce that claim. In 1494 the French had taken Naples, but as soon as the king went home to France the kingdom fell back into the hands of the Spanish dynasty that had ruled it since the days of the Sicilian Vespers.
    The Borgias had fattened on that campaign, and no one doubted that they would feel their ambitions again in the course of this one. There was also the matter of the King of Spain, who was sending an army under Gonsalvo da Cordoba, his greatest captain, to the