curled cruelly into a smile that was not a smile. “Nothing. Let them blast each other into hellfire—they are all of them murderers, all of them worthless. They are damned and so are we.”
Now this was not helpful. We had switched places, the monk and I—he had given up on the quest and I thirsted for more. I knew that if we knew everything that the painting hid we might just have enough to bargain for our lives.
We were drawing away from the square and the site of that grisly scene—we had to think of something fast, before we were taken all the way out of the city on the fool’s errand to San Miniato. Then I saw the great frontage and round eye of Santa Croce, and Brother Guido’s words from two nights ago echoed in my brain. For matters touching botany, we cannot do better than consult Nicodemus of Padua, the herbalist at Santa Croce. There is no flower in the field, nor herb in the hedgerow, that he does not know by name.
“Might we alight here?” I called, hoping that was the right word for “get down.”
“My lord knows an herbalist within, and we must get a draught for his ague.”
The driver slowed the horses. “Shall I wait, Doña?” he called, in his thick accent. I already had the door open and heaved Brother Guido to the ground, without waiting for the driver or footman to help us.
“No, do not trouble,” I replied breezily. “The good brothers will send a runner for our own carriage to fetch us.”
The driver exchanged a look with the footman, shrugged in his Spanish fashion, and touched his hand to his hat and his whip to his horse. Our last connection to the Neapolitan court drew away in a cloud of dust. And there we stood, Luciana Vetra and Brother Guido della Torre, a calendar month after we had last been here, at the gates of Santa Croce. There slumped the postern monk Brother Malachi, as ever, in his cups and asleep on the wrought-iron gate.
“Why are we here?” He spoke through tight lips; his clenched jaw white with anger, he looked on the place he had once loved, this tranquil holy haven, with hatred.
“To see Brother Nicodemus, the herbalist, as you yourself suggested.” I hoped the flattery would work. It didn’t.
“I will not go in.”
I had expected this. “But this was your home. These men were your brothers.” I indicated Brother Malachi, who damaged my case by farting noisily. “It is the pope that has betrayed you, not the Franciscan order.”
He set his jaw. “If the pope is corrupt, then so is all the church. My life, theirs”—he pointed to the sleeping monk—“and all this”—his sweeping gesture took in the grand edifice of the monastery—“is a lie.”
This was going to be harder than I thought. I remembered wryly how a sennight ago I would have done anything to prise him from the church like a barnacle from a rock. Now I would give the pearl in my belly to get him inside this monastery so we could talk with its herbalist. “All right. Suppose what you say is true. Why don’t you stop him?”
“Who?”
I sighed. “His Holi-arse the Pope. What he’s doing is wrong, er . . . right?”
He did not answer—we both noted it. “It’s not our war, nor our problem. I care not what happens to the Seven.”
I grabbed the front of his surcoat—it was loose and I noticed how much weight he had lost in the last week. “It is our problem, for our lives will be in danger again the moment your true identity is discovered. Which it will be one day. You cannot live as Niccolò forever—nor would you want to, unless you’re planning a lifetime of shafting catamites.” He winced. “But you must run forever once you are discovered, and I must too. And what of the treacherous Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco? He’s plotting against the father of our great city. We could bring him down, cut out the church’s canker, restore some . . . some purity to the church.” I was laying it on thick, but he didn’t seem to notice. I had seen a gleam in his eye for the first time since we left Rome at the prospect of spoiling the pope’s scheme. I followed up my advantage. “Let’s figure this thing out and crack the riddle, then somehow present the whole thing to Lorenzo the Magnifi-cent himself, just as your uncle