Rome, August 1498
I lay in bed beside Cesare, breathing heavily from our lovemaking. It had been tinged with sadness for me. The next day, he would announce he was leaving the Church, and he would be off to France, to find himself that wealthy and important wife he needed so badly.
And I would be here, in Rome.
He turned toward me, brushing my hair off of my face. “I shall miss you when I am in France,” he said. “I wish you could come with me.” He brought my face toward his and kissed me.
No, you don’t, I thought, even as his tongue tangled with mine, and his hand lazily stroked my breast. For what man wished his lover present while he was attempting to woo a wife?
And where did that leave me?
Perhaps an hour later, we made love again, and I tried to enjoy it as best I could, to revel in it. It might be the last time. I was going to have to live without him. But how would I live? How might I live?
Did it have to be in Rome?
His arm tightened around me. “You will be here when I return from France, won’t you?”
My back was pressed to his chest, and he could not see my face. “Where else would I go?”
He kissed my neck and lightly stroked my hip, my belly, appearing satisfied with my answer. He did not seem to realize that it was not truly an answer at all.
He soon fell asleep, but I found I could not. I slid out from under his arm and sat up, looking down at his face in the flickering light of the single candle beside the bed. He looked so much younger when he slept, like the young man he was instead of a would-be monarch who was trying to put the world on his shoulders. I shivered, for though it was summer, it felt to me like the deepest of winter.
If I were ever going to leave Rome, this was my chance. He would go off to France, claim his new title and new bride, and have no further use for me. He might well gather his armies and ride off to conquer Italy and never think of me again. Yet if he did, he would never find me if I did not want him to. The poor can disappear in ways people like him can never conceive of. It is our curse; it is our blessing.
I could go somewhere else and make a living with my needle. I knew I could. I could live a new life, one where I did not have to carefully parse through every word I spoke to be sure I was not condemning anyone to death. To be sure I was saving the right lives. Though there was a kind of power in that, too.
I could start over, and begin to truly atone for my many, deadly sins.
There are seven deadly sins, Maddalena, but lust is the deadliest.
Or I could stay, and wait for him to come back someday, addicted to the pleasure he could wring from my body, to the look in his eyes when he said my name, to the measure of power I held over him. Because I did have power. Not much, but more than he was aware of. That was the thing with powerful men: they only ever thought about what power they stood to gain, not the power they gave away.
I could stay and test the limits of my power.
Or I could leave, and let him come back someday to find me gone.
I could leave, and save what remained of my soul.