Duke Valentino, my informant confided to me, had summoned his sister, the family expert, to Rome because he wanted her to test him and their father for signs of poisoning.
“Aha. And have such signs been found?”
“You will have to speak to my mistress about that.”
“Then conduct me to her instantly.”
My guide led me away at once, out of the palace and into a nearby garden, where an uncomfortable-looking stone bench proved surprisingly movable. Inside the cavity thus disclosed, stairs went steeply down below ground level.
“Where is she hiding, then? In a catacomb?”
“Something very like it, Captain. If you will please follow me.”
We went down, and down, and down again, with intervals of lateral progression through thin tunnels. At one point I believe we were actually in a subbasement of the palace. Some of the stonework around me was indeed as old as the catacombs, but other parts were new. The Vatican, I realized, was changing rapidly, almost before the eyes of one who visited the area as often as I did. Alexander on becoming Pope had hurried into construction of an addition, called the Torre Borgia, to the papal palace. His addition, I thought, must be the part above me now. In succeeding years he had ordered additional remodeling. Probably his experience with the falling roof remained much in his mind.
I had not been entirely serious when I spoke of catacombs, those vaults and passages whose walls were lined with the bones of Christians, the majority of them interred more than a thousand years before my time. But now here we were among them, for a brief distance anyway. Then out again, into a passage of much more recent creation.
The air was close and dank. The way for a long time had been completely dark, at least to breathers’ limited perceptions, except for the torch my guide was carrying.
And now a peculiar smell, even worse and stranger than those to be expected in a cave beneath a city, began to tease my nostrils. I became more and more convinced as we proceeded, that I smelled, of all unlikely things—a bear.
People I knew still spoke of how a whole bear, roasted in its hide, had been among the dishes served at a papal feast once given for the King of Naples. So the thing was not utterly impossible. Still, unwilling to sound foolish if I should be mistaken, I said nothing to my guide.
At last we emerged from the confusing series of tunnels into a surprisingly roomy chamber that I assumed to be our final goal. Sconces mounted high on the curved walls held torches that both stimulated and tested the circulation of the buried air, and gave light enough for even a breather’s eyes to take in a scene of fantasy.
I blinked, and came near rubbing my own eyes. In the middle of the high chamber a large bear, one of the species then much favored by traveling entertainers, hung head down from the ceiling, suspended in an elaborate network of chains and ropes. I could hear the animal’s wheezing, labored breathing. The beast hung almost motionless in its bizarre suspension, too nearly dead to struggle or make any other sound. A dozen feet below it, tubs and basins on the chamber floor caught what liquids dripped or trickled from its shaggy, slowly dying body. Around those receptacles, workers were busy with chemical and alchemical apparatus—in those days the difference was lost on most of us, including me. These toilers looked up at our entrance, then went back to whatever it was that they were doing.
With a total lack of comprehension I studied the animal’s dark fur, the yellow teeth, black open lips still trickling slime. Since my transformation I had gained a certain empathy with the lower orders of creation, and I could share, through channels other than those of the common senses, the sensations of the bear. Dim pain and outrage burned like banked-up fires, but they would not burn much longer.
Letting my gaze drift away from the bear, I surveyed the room in which we stood, which was strange and wonderful enough in itself. Roman portrait murals, their colors faded and encrusted with nitre through the centuries, looked down from the walls. For what purpose this room might have been constructed I had no hope of guessing. Ancient Rome, the city of the imperial Caesars, was of course never far away. On Palatine Hill the ruins of their palaces were grazed by sheep, overgrown with olive trees, and entwined in myrtle and rosemary.
“We wait here for a moment,” said my guide, meaning that I should do so, while he went ahead to report my arrival. Waiting, I called to the technicians to ask them about the bear. One of them explained to me that the object of this exercise was to collect what the bear vomited, or voided by other means, and by judicious mixing, evaporation, and distillation create from those substances the finest poison.
Whilst I was pondering this, Madonna Lucrezia entered the room, beautifully dressed as she almost always was, and greeted me with her sweet smile, though with some restraint because of the others present. “Captain Ladislao, it is very good to see you.”
“And for me to see you, my lady. More than good, it is essential.” I kissed her hand. “I rushed to Rome as quickly as I could when the horrible news reached me. I have not yet seen either His Holiness or your esteemed brother. I trust they are—?”
“Still alive, dear friend. But I fear scarcely more than that.” Lucrezia, looking uncharacteristically worried, gestured at the bear. “We are
