chamber of the palace where Cosimo and the French entourage waited. Outrageously, they had been waiting for eight days and had grown fat on a constant diet of excuses about the Pontiff’s “regrettably” busy schedule. Each day their meeting would be planned, delayed and then inevitably postponed. Through the days of monotony, Cosimo seemed to lose a degree of control over his mind, always waiting for the meeting to occur, always on edge.

The pervasive lack of light in the interior Vatican chambers trapped Cosimo in the dank shadows of memory. There, Cosimo spent much time revisiting and lamenting over that which had been stolen from him. He had little doubt that it was then Cardinale Meducci who “disappeared” his cousin and only childhood friend, just as it was the newly ascended Meducci Pope, Leon XI, who had destroyed his beloved paramour.

Despite Cosimo’s desire to ponder more pleasant thoughts, he was unable to meditate on anything but the pending meeting with his cousin and all that this horrible man had stolen from his life. It was a cloudy meditation, one that wavered between vengeance and cowardice, anger and despair, and it culminated as Cosimo turned and caught sight of the flowing bloodred robe and the face that seemed to eat the light around it. Adrenal-laced fear flushed through Cosimo’s veins with such a sudden hotness that he nearly loosed his bowels. It was his cousin.

Pope Leon XI was a fairly tall man marked by a gaunt and severe countenance that sunk his eyes into pools of shadow beneath the quarry of his brow. His nose was long and slender with a flat bridge in the most Roman of ways; it seemed always to cast a mountain of shade upon one pronounced cheekbone or the other. Even his temples, devoid of hair, seemed to fall off into shadow. Cosimo imagined not even Lucifer himself could carry so much darkness upon his face.

Cosimo had not seen his cousin for some time, but he recalled him as a man who seemed to thrive on hate. Hate was the breath and food of his existence and Cosimo could hardly imagine how the prospect of being the first Pope to grant freedom of movement, ownership and commerce to every godless Moro, Greco, Turco, Ebreo, Gipsi, Africano, Indiano and Orientale in Tuscany must have twisted his cousin’s wretched gut. But, alas, as Cosimo knew, even Pope Leon XI had his superiors, and should the Polacks come to dominate Europe, a Franco-Italian Pope would need a legion of food tasters to protect him.

Pope Leon entered the room without looking up to greet his cousin nor any member of the French/Tuscan envoy. Despite his lack of acknowledgment of the guests, all in attendance rose until His Holiness took his official seat at the enormous marble table right alongside Cosimo. It was the closest physical proximity Cosimo had shared with his cousin since he was a child.

Immediately, the Pontiff began to feign perusal of the documents awaiting his signature. He knew full well what he was about to sign, but he continued the charade if not for the appearance of piety then at least to unsettle his cousin. Pope Leon leaned into the document, as if scrutinizing a particular passage, when the oddest thing occurred: sunlight fell upon his profile.

The arrangement of the room was such that the only shaft of direct sunlight came from a slender, western-facing rectangular window located a few feet behind and to the right of where the Pope sat. The window couldn’t have been much larger than a foot in width and three feet in height, but it was just large enough to catch a sliver of the afternoon sun and undo the darkness that Pope Leon seemed to so covet.

Drained of shadow, a new light was cast upon Cosimo’s fear. He had not seen his cousin for years, but in contrast to what Cosimo recalled from his youth, his cousin appeared to have not only aged, but veritably rotted. In the light, Cosimo noticed the age-spotted epidermis of his cousin’s hand and how his skin looked thin as paper. How unsightly tributaries of blue veins spidered across his bald head and ashen complexion. How the white of his eyes appeared jaundiced and bloodshot, and how his once piercing blue irises had faded to gray. In the light, Cosimo could see all the joy this hateful man had taken from him.

As Pope Leon reached for his quill, Cosimo observed a tremor in his cousin’s hand.