A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

Hauling the inert figure to the window, Maule pushed it out through the narrow opening, still supporting it in his grip. Then he maneuvered his own arms and shoulders out.

      Joe saw Maule’s body twist, and heard him grunt with a burst of explosive effort. Then he was standing still. Joe, pushing back a drape and looking down, could see nothing but some moving lights of traffic.

      “There,” Maule said. “A neat landing, atop the new construction. Beside his fellow, who went down some time ago, from my own window. On this foggy evening, it appears that no one struggling with the traffic in the streets below, or on the building’s lower floors, has yet noted anything amiss.”

      Joe cleared his throat. “I see,” he said.

      Maule started briskly for the living room once more, this time with Joe right on his heels. They both checked out other rooms on the way. There was no one else in the apartment. When they reached the living room, Joe saw to his relief that the body of the young woman who had fainted was gone, and the front door was standing slightly open.

      “I will not pursue her, Joseph.” Maule was looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement. “My mind is on bigger game.”

Chapter Seventeen

      Around the middle of August, in the year 1503, word reached me at the distance of a few days’ ride from the Eternal City that on the twelfth of that month both Pope Alexander and Cesare had suddenly been stricken desperately ill. There was grave doubt of the father’s survival, and the son was incapacitated, prognosis uncertain.

      The message arrived near midnight. It was in fact my old friend and former lover Constantia, Cesare’s sometime lover (and, I believe, quite possibly Alexander’s too), who brought me this information, at a speed greater than that attainable by any breathing human of the time.

      I was to tell no one, but proceed to Rome as rapidly as possible, dropping at once all other business on which I was engaged. This created some awkwardness, which I dealt with as best I could, leaving a note at midnight for my immediate subordinate and taking wing from the nearest window, in bat-form, very shortly thereafter.

      The news of course perturbed me, but actually almost any interruption would have been welcome at the time. I was still brooding over the sour aftertaste of my revenge, such as it had been, on Bogdan and on his fellow traitors. Why had my efforts been so fundamentally unsuccessful?

      But now, as Cesare’s faithful agent, I had much more pressing matters to consider. On hearing that the Borgias had been simultaneously stricken, the first thought that leaped to my mind—and to the minds of a great many of my contemporaries—was poison. One of their damned plots had somehow backfired on them; or Madonna Lucrezia, driven mad by their continued ill-usage of her as a political pawn, had finally struck back at her father and brother, or some rival faction had suddenly acquired a skill equal to theirs in the formulation and use of deadly potions.

      Constantia on bringing me the news let me know that she favored this last opinion. She also voiced her sadness that her young and powerful lover had been so stricken.

      So concerned was she for her lover’s life, she informed me, that before leaving on her courier’s mission she had once more pressed Cesare, this time urgently, to drink her blood and thereby become a vampire. But in his great stubbornness, his absolute determination to achieve political success, he had still refused.

      That both father and son could have been felled by some ordinary illness was an explanation that no shrewd observer at the time was willing to believe. And yet with the benefit of hindsight such an accident seems the most likely cause. That was a bad summer for disease in Rome, in an era when all Roman summers were unhealthy; and in the perspective afforded by modern science, acute malaria seems the most likely diagnosis.

      Constantia, after delivering her message to me and tarrying for the briefest of conversations, hastened on. There were still others to whom the alarming news must be conveyed.

      Three or four days after the father and son had fallen ill, and while I was still hastening toward Rome, the Pope’s life was already being despaired of. Important folk of every kind, Cardinals in particular, who had received the word as soon as I did or sooner, were rushing to be on hand when the end came, hoping thus to be best able to pursue their own advantage. At the same time others already on the scene, who had become closely associated with Alexander and had made enemies in the process, were moving prudently away from Rome, not liking what they foresaw as the aftermath of his demise.

      Fortunately, once I got under way I was able to move faster than any breathing person, given the general state of transportation at the time. My actual journey to Rome took me less than a day.

      On arriving at the papal palace I found everything in turmoil. Actually that word somewhat understates the degree of political, social, and religious confusion that obtained. At the time of my arrival the Pope was not yet dead, and I was pleased to hear that my employer Cesare still survived as well, though the condition of both men was still very grave. At once I started to make my way up to Cesare’s apartments, which were directly above his father’s.

      But before I had taken half a dozen steps up the broad stairs, I was intercepted by a man I recognized as an agent of Lucrezia. He drew me aside and murmured privately that his mistress wished to see me immediately upon my arrival. The matter, she had said, was urgent.

      I was startled. “Then she is here, in Rome?”

      “Indeed she is, Don Ladislao.” It appeared that Madonna had received the news of her brother’s and father’s sickness even before I did, and in response