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  Eyes downturned, gaze flowing over the beauty of cold marble floors, the golden throne, the beautiful cloth wrapping the earthly body of God’s highest servant, I approached. Measured steps, a flawless curtsey, and I tried not to cringe when a claw-like hand heavy with rings set itself upon my veiled curls.

  “She is beautiful.” His slurred praise… the roundness of the words… I was sure if I looked up I’d find spittle dangling from the corner of his holiness’ mouth. “The very look of the Mary.”

  I should have been ashamed of my disgust, for God himself had chosen this man. But he stank of piss up close, he was greased with unguents and powders, a body already gone to decay preserved whilst somewhat alive.

  Death hovered over his form and even the white of his cassock could not hide its shadow.

  This great man I had prepared my whole life to meet, and all I wanted was to press a scented kerchief under my nose and rush from his presence before I gagged on the smell.

  “Yes, Your Eminence.” Cardinal Beluni, now standing at the side of the Pope’s throne, declared to all gathered, “She is pure, as innocent as her mother claims. Venice will be greedy for the attention of such a bride, or I do not know my cousin at all.”

  I was accustomed to others speaking over me as if I were a vase to appraise, or a painting one might purchase. I knew to remain docile and meek. But that was not why my eyes were downcast or the reason I shrank. It was the way some of these holy men laughed.

  “And she is untouched? A virgin?” That question was not directed toward me, though I did flinch to hear it bandied about before a room of strangers.

  Spanish accent, guttural and quick, another cardinal scurried forward to speak softly of something that left my cheeks flaming. “The devil will know what we are about. Women are unclean, vile sinners tainted by the snake. We cannot afford to make a mistake in this when there were two other noble ladies to consider for such a glorious honor. I say they should be brought here at once for the conclave to see with their own eyes.”

  “Your niece, Lady Juanica, was tempted, Archbishop.” The coldness of Beluni’s tone struck me, and my eyes darted up under my brow to see him snarl. “I pierced her myself and there was no blood. She had had others before me.”

  “So says Beluni! I demand Lady Juanica be examined.”

  This bickering and snappish retorts… the room was full of vicious argument beyond shocking in its implication. Already rising to my feet, backing away from the circling wolves dressed in red, I found no savior as the uproar increased.

  Ladies names were shouted, demands were made, all while the pope wheezed and stared at me. I swear he licked his lips before raising his hand and silencing the room with one gesture.

  “Your Eminence.” Again Cardinal Belini interjected his presence into the center of negotiation. Passionate in his announcement as if advocating not for me, but for himself. “The nuns have yet to confirm Lady Agnese’s virtue. Let us see that rectified immediately. In fact”—he gestured to the room—“I believe we will all be set at ease to witness the inspection so there can be no suspicion or lack of trust.”

  “Here, here.” The red satin ribbon of ordained men skirting the room converged into a formation that encroached ever nearer to the throne. To where I stood. All in agreement.

  They could not mean what I thought they meant! I knew husbands could demand that ladies of rank prove their purity before the wedding, but such things were private. Such things were not discussed by men in cassocks, who crowded about me as if I were a caught rabbit.

  Beady eyes hard with dislike met my startled gaze, the Spanish Cardinal sneering. “She is trembling! You see that, Your Holiness. The sign of a sinner caught.”

  Where was the blessing of a loving godfather to his dedicated goddaughter? Where was the holy presence of God?

  Smiling as if gentling a lamb, Cardinal Beluni slithered down the dais to my side. His beauty beside the staring pope’s hideous form made greater by comparison. “You’re frightening her.”

  “A virtuous woman has nothing to fear!” My arm was grabbed in a bruising grip. Yanked bodily away from the throne, the Spanish stranger barked, “Call the nuns and let’s have this done.”

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t know it was possible to cry so hard one couldn’t breathe. Choking on terror, tangled in limbs and the bruising clutch of cruel hands, it felt as if the world moved under me.

  Ready to swallow me whole.

  Shoved to polished marble before the throne of the Holy See when I refused to lift my skirts so all might witness, I was pinned down by relentless men. They worked in unison, as if they had done this before. Down I went, head smacking the floor, my skirts lifted. No matter how hard I’d kicked, my legs were restrained, painfully jerked apart, and bent so my knees kissed my ears. Voluminous skirts bunched under my chin, but not enough to spare me the view of two dozen men dressed in the raiment of high holy orders, shoulder to shoulder to stare between my legs.

  An ancient nun had been summoned. The coarse stuff of her habit scratched at exposed flesh, the crone crouching forward, gnarled fingers dishing out a volley of stinging slaps to redden my inner thighs.

  It wasn’t until she reached forward and pinched delicate, unseen skin that I ceased my struggles.

  Frozen, gripped by a cold sweat, my labored breaths were louder than even the pope’s.

  With my skirts in the way, I couldn’t see what she did, only feel. The two lips of flesh God designed to cover a woman’s shame were stretched wide open, the old nun’s forefinger manipulating the skin until it stung.

  She pulled the tender area this way and that, opening me like an unready flower so the glinting eyes of godly men might see what set me apart.

  Chastity.

  When I began to keen from the tugs, when my bottom began to tuck as if to escape her, she hissed.

  Again I stilled.

  Prodding fingers nudged places I’d never explored. Pulled my flesh again, and cackled triumph. “The membrane is solid where a whore would be open. The girl is sealed off by an untorn maidenhead.”

  There was no mercy here, the only pair of eyes on mine were those of Cardinal Beluni. Not once through the ordeal had he gaped between my legs like the others. His hands never strove to hold me down. Instead he lorded over the swarm, unbent, and steady where the others were excitable and vicious.

  As if to tell me he did not need proof of my innocence. As if to give me someone to scream for when I begged for help.

  The angry Spanish Cardinal ground his teeth and put his ringed hand on the nun’s shoulder. “You declare her pure?”

  The burn as my pinched flesh was pulled even further apart had me squealing and fighting anew. It was ignored, so all in attendance might see to what the nun referred.

  “Before God. She is intact.” Smacking her lips, the old woman wiped her fingers down the front of her habit and hobbled to her feet.

  Not one of the men offered to assist her, nor did they pay her any heed now that her purpose had been served. As if aware of her dismissal, the crone hobbled off and left me alone in a room full of men.

  “Your Eminence, do you wish to see the girl’s attributes for yourself?”

  All was visible to the throne without the nun between my thighs, God’s highest servant leaning forward, eyes beady as he stared between my legs. “Bring her to me. I would see with my own eyes the vessel of our Lord.”

  It was the first I’d heard his voice ring out. Ghastly in its intent. Horrid.

  Not at all the voice of an angel.

  Caught in the clutches of many, I was hoisted toward the sky, legs still spread, and carried like a kill for the fire. I was more afraid of that smacking mouth than I had been of the old nun’s jagged nails.

  Such fear stole the fight from me. Limp, teeth chattering, I shivered.

  Hovering, my legs obscenely spread by the hands of many, my private place was held just inches from the pope’s face. I felt something brush the fine ha
irs over my sex and jolted.

  “She smells of youth.”

  A smile in his voice, Cardinal Beluni stated, “Her mother was very fertile. Six children she bore. Five lived past ten. Not a single one was lost in the womb.”

  “I feel a stirring…”

  My tormentor with his beauty and sly smile, declared, “The spirit of God, your Holiness. His power shall fill your loins.”

  I felt a cough of sick air across my sex, the pope waving me away. “Have her bathed and fed well.”

  Glittering eyes still locked on mine, Cardinal Beluni reached out a hand as if I was capable of reaching back. “His Holiness is appeased. Rise, Lady Agnese, and accept your godfather’s blessing.”

  Set to the floor at the base of the dais. Far past the point of hysterics, tears came anew. I would be bruised from this, and if the sting between my legs was any judge, also bleeding. Trying to vanish into the air-puffed pillow of my skirts, clinging to the torn silk, I hid my face in my knees and rocked.

  Skittering noises, like the scampering of rats drifted away. But I knew them for what they were. The cardinals backing away, their stiff robes rubbing out a hiss of noise on that immaculate floor.

  “Why?” I drawled out the sobbed word, sick, coiffed hair a tumble past my shoulders like a common harlot’s.

  “Is she not the vision of purity?” I knew not which one of them spoke. “I would see her painted with just that look on her face.”

  “Commission Reviolldi.” Another of the faceless tyrants. “She can sit in the mornings. It would be my gift to you, Most Holy Father. A treasure to grace the Apostolic Palace walls.”

  Under the murmurs and the sounds of a room ignoring my heartsick pleas for my mother, I heard the pope’s rattling breaths. He was muttering again, his fleshy lips no doubt pressed to the lesser priest’s ear.

  The priest spoke. “Our Holy Father bids you come to him, child. He would see you comforted.”

  Hands hitched under my arms and dragged me bodily from the floor. Rosewater and incense saturated my breaths. Cardinal Beluni… countenance serene, lay me at the feet of the Holy See, yanked my torso upright by a firm grip of my dress laces, and held me in a bow so an ancient hand might once again finger my curls.

  I heard my godfather then, that death rattle of a voice crawling over my skin. “A lovely vessel of God’s will.”

  The blessing that followed was lengthy, broken up by bouts of phlegmy coughing that left the aging pope breathless. All the while my head hung, tears running down my cheeks until a lifeless sort of apathy bloomed with the aches in my joints. And still Cardinal Beluni bore my weight, like I was some marionette and my laces were my strings.

  The hand on my head slipped down the side of my face, caressing wet cheeks until my vision was full of age spots and raised blue veins. The pope’s hand, his sacred ring. I was to take his fingers and kiss it reverently as I had practiced under the watchful eye of the nuns.

  Trembling like a newborn goat, my muscles went through rote movements. It was beyond thought, the cold paper of his skin against the sweaty smoothness of my own. I took his hands, my quivering lips pressed to the gems of the papal ring.

  This was the moment I had waited my whole life for.

  And it was wretched.

  My heart gave a lurch when I pressed my mouth all the harder to the Holy See’s signet.

  Chapter Four

  “Mama!”

  I rushed to my mother the instant the apartment doors were opened by the resolute Swiss Guard standing before them. She sat with perfect posture, a vision of elegance—well-dressed, demure, and still lovely. A duchess in every sense of the word.

  The rooms offered to house us during our stay at the Vatican were filled with the warm glow of late afternoon light. Beautifully furnished, adorned with more finery than even my father’s grand palace. When we’d first arrived I had marveled.

  Now I recognized the guards at the door for what they were. Now I awaited the slap of my mother’s hand when she took in my disheveled appearance and judged me an unclean strumpet.

  I wanted her to slap me for the shame that traced down my face in rivulets of warm tears. More, I wanted her to hold me in her arms and whisper that I was safe. That I was loved, no matter what had happened.

  To my infinite shock, the latter is exactly what took place.

  Gathered in mother’s embrace, she pulled me to her breast and shushed me. She smelled of ambergris and orchids. Of home. “My precious girl. I have never been more proud of you.”

  “You will be greatly rewarded, Lady Arermici. Our Holy Father was exceedingly pleased with her.”

  I gave a shriek to hear that Cardinal Beluni had followed me into the only slice of sanctuary I had.

  The doors closed with a resolute click behind him, and I clung to my mama all the harder begging her to send him off and save me.

  Again, my mother patted my curls, picking out the loosened pins as she cooed over me. But her words were for the intruder. “Our families will be united through the wedding to Venice, Cardinal Beluni. But more importantly, our immortal souls will be gathered up and held close by our Most Holy Father in heaven. Did I not promise to deliver virginity in perfection?”

  When I felt a male touch settle on my head just where the pope had laid his hideous hand, I lashed out. The cardinal, in his prime and strong, was not to be moved by my panicked strikes.

  Instead he was moved by my sorrow, his voice gentle as he stepped away. “You had to resist, child. The existence of your maidenhead was not enough. Only a true virgin of mind and spirit would have fought those who encroached upon it. And now, now you shall receive great reward. Infinite blessing.”

  The only blessing I craved was to be far from this horrible place. “Leave me be!”

  That earned me the smack I had been expecting upon my arrival. Cheek stinging from the force of her hand, my mother expelled me from her arms. “You shall not address His Eminence thusly! Apologize.”

  Could she not see the state I was in? What they had done to me? “But—”

  “Peace.” The cardinal lifted his hands as if in benediction, face serene. “You faced a trial before God and were victorious. You cannot understand the glory your piety has earned. If you had not fought so hard, not one of them would have believed of your true innocence. You were perfect, and now shall serve as the chosen vessel of our almighty God.”

  It seemed the cardinal attempted to placate, but my noble mother was having none of it. Shoving me to my knees, she took my fallen hair in a tight fist and made me bow. “Apologize at once, Agnese. You insult a man of God with this whining and tears. How dare you sin in this place!”

  I could feel individual hairs tearing out of my scalp, her grip unforgiving. The sting, the pressure of pulled flesh, sent me reeling. The kind of terror that infused my body before the pope was different to this blanket of fear my mother’s anger inspired.

  I was innocent, and I begged her to see. “They tore my skirts, Mama! Shamed me.”

  “Of course they did! Did I not tell you to obey?”

  “Madam, you will unhand her at once!” An enraged snarl came from the man whose feet my mother shoved my face into. “I forbid you from striking our vessel again!”

  Never had my mother jumped away from my punishments so quickly. And not only did she jump, she fell to her knees, her hands pressed to the red silk of the cardinal’s cassock as she begged for forgiveness.

  Were those tears streaming down her cheeks? “She must be corrected, or her feminine willfulness will bloom into Eve’s evil, Your Eminence.”

  The Beluni God-given beauty turned ugly in its rage. “You were the lady’s custodian, madam, but that does not mean she belongs to you. This one was destined for the reigning pope from birth. And you would strike her?”

  Voice small, chastened and weeping, my mother said, “She is still my daughter… ‘tis my duty to correct her.”

  My confessor didn’t seem the least bit forgiving. “Your duty
here, Duchess Arermici, is to guide and serve our vessel. Not to mark her pretty face. Our Holy Father will be disappointed.”

  It was as if God himself had found her wanting, and that was all it took for my mother to crumple. “I will do as you say, however you wish. Forgive me, Father!”

  I backed away from the tableau before me until my shoulders hit silk-draped walls. I backed away from the wrongness of what I sensed before me. Not even my father’s rare strikes had ever brought this woman to tears. They had cowed her yes, but never once made her cry.

  Face red, the cardinal shoved her back. “If you cannot guide her to carry out this monumental duty, then you are of no use to us. There are other daughters who can be brought before the throne. Daughters from houses not connected to the majesty of Venice or Arermici. Houses that cannot be trusted! There is even talk of a Spanish foreigner being considered, should Agnese fail. As if our lord would be born to that heathen race!”

  Sprawled on her bottom like a child, a calm swept over my mother, her slumped shoulders rolling back, her neck lifting like a high-born lady’s. “I swear it on the Virgin Mary. Agnese will perform as you wish. It is unthinkable for another to steal this honor from me.”

  He cocked a brow at her use of me, issuing orders in a steady cadence. “She is to be bathed and fed. Give her wine, should she need it.”

  With that, he turned, a rush of red satin, rosewater, and incense. The door slammed at his back, leaving my heart to lurch.

  I stared at that portal, certain that it was not a cardinal at all who had been in my presence, but the fallen angel Lucifer in all his devious beauty.

  “Stand, daughter. We have much to discuss. And though he told me I could not strike you, he failed to mention what would be your fate if you disobey or fail in your sacred purpose here.”

  Chin quivering, I set wet eyes on the majesty of my assertive mother. She met my gaze, piercing me with the sharpness of that look, and stated, “You are to be filled with holy seed so that God’s son might be delivered into your womb. If you fail to conceive, I will see you drowned as any witch must be drowned.”