“Commission Reviolldi.” Another of the faceless tyrants. “She can sit in the mornings. It would be my gift to you, Most Holy Father. A treasure to grace the Apostolic Palace walls.”
Under the murmurs and the sounds of a room ignoring my heartsick pleas for my mother, I heard the pope’s rattling breaths. He was muttering again, his fleshy lips no doubt pressed to the lesser priest’s ear.
The priest spoke. “Our Holy Father bids you come to him, child. He would see you comforted.”
Hands hitched under my arms and dragged me bodily from the floor. Rosewater and incense saturated my breaths. Cardinal Beluni… countenance serene, lay me at the feet of the Holy See, yanked my torso upright by a firm grip of my dress laces, and held me in a bow so an ancient hand might once again finger my curls.
I heard my godfather then, that death rattle of a voice crawling over my skin. “A lovely vessel of God’s will.”
The blessing that followed was lengthy, broken up by bouts of phlegmy coughing that left the aging pope breathless. All the while my head hung, tears running down my cheeks until a lifeless sort of apathy bloomed with the aches in my joints. And still Cardinal Beluni bore my weight, like I was some marionette and my laces were my strings.
The hand on my head slipped down the side of my face, caressing wet cheeks until my vision was full of age spots and raised blue veins. The pope’s hand, his sacred ring. I was to take his fingers and kiss it reverently as I had practiced under the watchful eye of the nuns.
Trembling like a newborn goat, my muscles went through rote movements. It was beyond thought, the cold paper of his skin against the sweaty smoothness of my own. I took his hands, my quivering lips pressed to the gems of the papal ring.
This was the moment I had waited my whole life for.
And it was wretched.
My heart gave a lurch when I pressed my mouth all the harder to the Holy See’s signet.
Chapter Four
“Mama!”
I rushed to my mother the instant the apartment doors were opened by the resolute Swiss Guard standing before them. She sat with perfect posture, a vision of elegance—well-dressed, demure, and still lovely. A duchess in every sense of the word.
The rooms offered to house us during our stay at the Vatican were filled with the warm glow of late afternoon light. Beautifully furnished, adorned with more finery than even my father’s grand palace. When we’d first arrived I had marveled.
Now I recognized the guards at the door for what they were. Now I awaited the slap of my mother’s hand when she took in my disheveled appearance and judged me an unclean strumpet.
I wanted her to slap me for the shame that traced down my face in rivulets of warm tears. More, I wanted her to hold me in her arms and whisper that I was safe. That I was loved, no matter what had happened.
To my infinite shock, the latter is exactly what took place.
Gathered in mother’s embrace, she pulled me to her breast and shushed me. She smelled of ambergris and orchids. Of home. “My precious girl. I have never been more proud of you.”
“You will be greatly rewarded, Lady Arermici. Our Holy Father was exceedingly pleased with her.”
I gave a shriek to hear that Cardinal Beluni had followed me into the only slice of sanctuary I had.
The doors closed with a resolute click behind him, and I clung to my mama all the harder begging her to send him off and save me.
Again, my mother patted my curls, picking out the loosened pins as she cooed over me. But her words were for the intruder. “Our families will be united through the wedding to Venice, Cardinal Beluni. But more importantly, our immortal souls will be gathered up and held close by our Most Holy Father in heaven. Did I not promise to deliver virginity in perfection?”
When I felt a male touch settle on my head just where the pope had laid his hideous hand, I lashed out. The cardinal, in his prime and strong, was not to be moved by my panicked strikes.
Instead he was moved by my sorrow, his voice gentle as he stepped away. “You had to resist, child. The existence of your maidenhead was not enough. Only a true virgin of mind and spirit would have fought those who encroached upon it. And now, now you shall receive great reward. Infinite blessing.”
The only blessing I craved was to be far from this horrible place. “Leave me be!”
That earned me the smack I had been expecting upon my arrival. Cheek stinging from the force of her hand, my mother expelled me from her arms. “You shall not address His Eminence thusly! Apologize.”
Could she not see the state I was in? What they had done to me? “But—”
“Peace.” The cardinal lifted his hands as if in benediction, face serene. “You faced a trial before God and were victorious. You cannot understand the glory your piety has earned. If you had not fought so hard, not one of them would have believed of your true innocence. You were perfect, and now shall serve as the chosen vessel of our almighty God.”
It seemed the cardinal attempted to placate, but my noble mother was having none of it. Shoving me to my knees, she took my fallen hair in a tight fist and made me bow. “Apologize at once, Agnese. You insult a man of God with this whining and tears. How dare you sin in this place!”