"Yarbro,.Chelsea.Quinn.-.St.Germain.02.-.Palace.(V1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

With the tenacity of drunkenness, Gasparo persisted. "The thing is not to be thought of. Now, you go home, you sleep this off. I'll forget you ever spoke to me of this." He finished the last of his wine and put the cup down with exaggerated care.
"Thank you, Gaspar'," Lodovico said, making no attempt to disguise his sneer.
"Well," Gasparo said with a sudden change to the affable, "it's been pleasant. Very pleasant. Good to talk. We don't talk enough, Lodovico. Too much work. We should talk more."
Lodovico removed Gasparo's hand from his shoulder. "Tomorrow, perhaps. But I've got to leave now." It had, he thought, been a most unprofitable evening. But in time he might, turn it to good use. He rose to his feet and shammed confusion. "Which way… ?"
Gasparo clapped an affectionate arm around his shoulder. "Ah, Lodovico, you're a good man. A good man. Now, there's the door. You'll be grateful for the wine when we're out in the night." He reeled toward the door, dragging Lodovico with him.
With a great deal of ingenuity Lodovico disengaged himself from Gaspare's bearlike embrace. "My head… My head…" He leaned against the wall for support. "Go on ahead," he said, waving Gasparo toward the door.
Gasparo laughed good-naturedly, waved vaguely to Lodovico and the landlord, lunged through the door and was gone.
"Another?" the landlord asked Lodovico.
"No. No." He stood in the center of the tavern for some little time, his face closed in thought, his bright eyes calculating. Then, with an unattractive smile, he tossed a coin to the landlord and went out into the bright, cold night.
***
The text of a note from Donna Estasia Catarina di Arrigo della Cittadella da Parma, housekeeper for her cousin, Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, to Francesco Ragoczy da San Germane. Delivered by hand to the house of the alchemist Federigo Cossa on the night of March 21, 1491:
 
Diletto mio,
I pray that this finds you with your host, for my message is urgent. Sandro and Simone will be gone for four days following this Sunday. For those days I will be alone, and anxious for your company. I trust you will be so obliging as to continue our most pleasant diversions of last week.
Should this be satisfactory, send me word, and I will receive you as before, in my apartments. I have put your gift upon the bed and look forward in anticipation to showing you how well it becomes me. Oh, say you will come. I grow mad for lack of your kisses. Do not fail.
Estasia
2
Until she looked up with a start, Demetrice Volandrai did not realize how dark it had become in the Medici library. On the trestle table in front of her three books lay open, their texts indistinct now in the suffused light. She put a hand to her eyes and told herself she had a headache rather than admit that her mind had been wandering. She hesitated briefly before closing the books and setting them aside for tomorrow. Reluctantly she tested the quill that lay beside her notes and was not surprised to find it dried, ink caked on it so thickly that she despaired of being able to trim it properly.
She rose slowly and went to the window. In the last burnished light of sunset her woefully old-fashioned gown of rust velvet seemed more beautiful than it had ever been in better light. Her pale rosy-blond hair framed her face in chaste braids and her simple linen chemise, where it showed above the neck of her gown and puffed around the terribly plain brooches that joined her simple sleeves to her dress, was without stains or grime. If anyone had suggested to her at that moment that she was the most attractive woman in il Palazzo de' Medici, she would have laughed. Her amber-colored eyes were wistful as she watched the light fade.
"Oh, don't move," said a voice behind her as she started at last to turn away from the window.
The familiar sound of Sandro Filipepi brought a rueful smile to Demetrice's firm mouth and she turned to him, her arms extended. "Botticelli, admit it: if you could order the sun to stop in the heavens you would do it, so that you could make a color study."
He shrugged, but did not deny it. "It was color that brought me here this afternoon. That alchemist, Ragoczy, the one who's building the big new palazzo? You know him?" He waited a moment.
"I have met him once or twice." She remembered liking his wit and his gentleness, and the enigmatic expression in his dark eyes. "Was he here, too?"
"Briefly. It seems he has some new formulae for colors. Of course Laurenzo is interested, and he asked me and a few of the others to use the colors and tell him what we think of them." He paused. "I wish I knew what to make of him."
It would not do for Sandro to see her interest, so she smiled and said, "You know alchemists. They are always mysterious. Confess it, amico, you would be disappointed if he were like everyone else."
Sandro nodded. "True. And he is foreign. But his affectations. Always dressed in black, never eating with us, forever curious about metals and earths! Ah, well, he is entertaining, and he does know something about pigments and tinctures. I will give him that."
Demetrice had come around the table and touched cheeks with him. "How generous. Will you try his colors?"
"Of course." He peered around the darkened room. "Cataloging?"
"Yes. Pico is home for a while and Agnolo is in Bologna, so the task falls to me. I am afraid that today I haven't done it very well. These old manuscripts, you know, are very difficult to read."
Sandro's face had clouded at the mention of Agnolo Poliziano. "I don't know why Laurenzo tolerates his impudence." He held up his hand to forestall the answer. "Loyalty is one thing, Donna mia, but this is foolishness. Poliziano trades on Laurenzo's tolerance shamelessly. You know he does."
Demetrice had gone back to the table and busied herself with gathering her papers. "I don't understand it, Sandro. But it is what Laurenzo wants, and I will respect his wishes."
Disbelief filled Sandro's next question. "Do you like Agnolo? How could you like him?"
"No, I don't like him. He's waspish, he's ugly-minded and for all his erudition, he's unpredictable. But he is talented, and truly a scholar." Very gently she said, "I need not tell you, Sandro, that every gift has a price."
"And sometimes more price than gift." He walked across the room and put his long painter's hands on her shoulders. "If there is any justice in this world, Donna mia, you will not have to bear your poverty forever. If your uncle had been a citizen of Fiorenza, Laurenzo would long since have restored your fortunes."
Demetrice felt absurd tears in her eyes and she wiped them away impatiently. "Well, even Laurenzo cannot restore what no longer exists, so perhaps it is as well that Lione lived in Rimini." She tried to smile, but could not. "Laurenzo has been more than generous. He has housed me and fed me and clothed me for almost ten years. That is much more than any of my nearer kinsmen were willing to do." She stopped abruptly and moved away from him. "Pardon me, Sandro. It is not pleasing for me to talk this way of my family."
By now the room was almost dark. Sandro was just an indistinct shape with a voice on the other side of the table. Demetrice thought that the dark must have something to do with it, for she had never spoken to him this way before. She took comfort in his friendship and was grateful for his interest, but she insisted on a reserve between them, and it was as real as the trestle table that stood in front of her.
Sandra tacitly accepted her rebuff, but added one parting shot. "I am twice your age, Donna mia. And I tell you, do not depend on anything or anyone in Fiorenza beyond Laurenzo. Fiorenza is a city of passions, of obsessions, and there is as much dark in it as light."
"This from you, Sandro?" she said, glad to turn this somber warning to banter.
"Especially from me." Then he, too, abandoned the subject. In a different voice he said, "I am going away for a few days. Simone and I have business to attend to."
"I wish you a pleasant and safe journey," Demetrice said automatically. "Do you go far?"
"Only to Pisa. A simple matter. But I would like to ask a favor of you."
"Of course." The words were out before she thought about them, and as soon as she had spoken, she doubted their wisdom. "If Laurenzo does not require my help here," she added prudently.
"It is nothing difficult, I promise you." He stopped as a servant came into the room carrying a taper to light the lanterns that stood at either end of the room and the three candles on the reading desk beside the fireplace.
The strange air of intimacy that had surrounded them disappeared in the light. Demetrice said to the servant, "Will you start the fire, too? The room is really quite chilly."
"Yes, Donna," the servant answered, and bent to her task.
"So it is," Sandro agreed. He rubbed his hands together and adjusted the long folds of his lucco, the standard social dress of most Fiorenzeni. His was of brown wool and lacked the intricate pleating at the neck that more prominent men wore.
"What is the favor, Sandro?" Demetrice had gone nearer the fireplace and was nodding to the servant as the first spurt of flame took hold of the logs laid there.
"Ah, the favor. Yes. It is about my housekeeper, my cousin. You have met Estasia, haven't you?"
"Yes." Her tone was cautious as she thought of Estasia della Cittadella, of her soft, sensuous body and vixen's face. The primness of Estasia's widow's coif did not deceive Demetrice, for she had seen the eager hunger in Estasia's hazel eyes and heard the coaxing languor in her voice when she spoke to attractive men.
"She does not like to be alone," Sandra said with some difficulty. "Would you be willing to call on her one of the afternoons I am gone?"