The Palace (Saint-Germain #2)

Donna Estasia threw her silver-handled brush across the room and turned expectantly to her companion.

"But I wasn't finished, bella mia," Ragoczy said, letting her glorious chestnut hair pour through his fingers.

"It's been brushed enough," she said, pouting. Her petulance was unattractive, for it narrowed her large hazel eyes and pinched her ripe-lipped mouth. "You never take off your clothes. I haven't seen you naked," she complained.

"No." He had begun to braid her hair into a single plait down her back.

"Stop that!" She gave an angry toss to her head and her hair spilled over her shoulders once again. Very deliberately she buttoned the top of her shift.

Ragoczy leaned back, resting against the pillar at the foot of her bed. "Very well, Estasia. What offense have I committed?"

"You do not please me. That's offense enough." Her expression dared him to contradict her.

"And how do I not please you?" There was kindness in his face, and a certain frightening sympathy. "Is it because every time we are together, we make love?"

"We do not make love." She stared up, and then thought better of it. "You... you disgust me."

"You take no joy from me?" he asked, smiling, but the smile was sad and strangely old.

"You know I take joy. And you pleasure more than anyone else. And it is not enough!" She fumbled with a few of the jars on her vanity table. "You say you are not a eunuch, but I don't believe it. You won't even let me touch you."

"I told you when we began that I wouldn't. You understood then. Why change now?" He reached out and took her hand. "Estasia, you know what I am. I can't be anything else."

Her shoulders dropped miserably. "Won't you even try?"

Almost reluctantly he moved nearer to her. "But come, bella mia, with whom else can you be so fulfilled and so chaste?"

"I don't want to be chaste. I want to be drunk with your flesh. You treat my body as something sacred that cannot be defiled. But I am a widow, I know what I want. Let me be profane." She clung to his arm. "Please, Francesco. Just once. If you are a man, act the man."

"Diletto, remember what I told you the first time I came to you?"

Sulking now, she released his arm. "Of course. You always remind me. But I didn't know you meant it when you said how you would love me. How should I guess that you meant it?"

"You should know because I said it." He pointed to the small, valuable mirror of clear Venezian glass on her vanity table. "Look there. Tell me what you see."

"I won't be distracted!"

"I'm not distracting you. Look in your mirror and tell me what you see."

Angrily she snapped her head around and picked up her mirror. For a moment she looked into it; then, more impatiently she put it down. "Well?"

"What did you see?" His oddly penetrating eyes were on her face. "Tell me, Estasia."

"I saw my face, of course." There was a mulish set to her jaw, and her pointed chin jutted forward.

"And what else?"

"Oh, Francesco, stop this. I don't want your tutoring now. I want your body. I want you to possess me. I want to be vanquished by you."

"What else did you see in the mirror?" His voice was so totally compelling that she answered him.

"This room. What else should I see?"

"And me?" he asked, and waited.

"You?" Some of the color left her face, and she said quietly, "No. I didn't see you."

He spoke softly, his small, gentle hands touching her shift, her arms, her shoulders. "Bella mia, I am not like you. All that is mine to give you, I give you."

"But you do not love me."

"After my fashion."

She shook her head, and some of the terror that had glazed her hazel eyes faded. "No. You don't burn for me. You don't scorn each hour you are away from me. You've never kept a vigil at my door."

In spite of himself, he laughed. "That was not part of our bargain. You had desires, needs that I could satisfy without danger. Estasia, do me the honor of telling me the truth: I have done what I said I would do, have I not?"

She sniffed. "Yes."

"Thank you." He said this without sarcasm. "Listen to me, bellissima." He was silent until she looked into his face. "If you want me to love you, I will. If you want me to spend the evening talking, I will."

"Really? And what of your needs?"

"I'm not so voracious that I must be slaked at all times." At last he smiled. "I don't require victims."

The cunning was back in her face. "And what if I refused you? Not just tonight, but from now on? What would you do then?"

He was becoming bored with her teasing. "I'd make other arrangements."

"You'd hunger a long time." She was smugly satisfied, and a triumphant glint lit her eyes.

"Do you really think so?" he asked politely, raising his brows. "Well, if I am as distressingly inadequate as you say, it is cruel of me to take your time. I'll remove myself, and leave you to your more conventional lovers."

She snatched at the black robe he wore. "I didn't give you permission to leave."

It was very still in Estasia's room. The few candles that remained lighted sputtered loudly and the icy wind fingered the windows like spirits in need of warmth. Francesco Ragoczy did not move, hardly breathed. He fixed his gaze on Estasia until she released his clothing.

"I didn't mean it that way," she said, sulking again.

"No?" He turned away from her and moved restlessly about the room, touching nothing, seeing very little. "Bella mia, I dislike being played with. You told me you must see me tonight, and now that I am here, you only want to castigate me. Caprice has no fascination for me, bella mia. If you wish to tempt and cajole, do so with another love." He stopped pacing and regarded her evenly from the other side of the bed. "If you tell me to leave once more, I will do so. And I will not return."

Estasia gave a brittle laugh. "How could you think I wanted you to go? It's only that I want full proof of your love. And you have refused to give it. Well, I must be satisfied, I suppose. You have declared that you will take your pleasure as you like, and I know I am foolish enough to accept that." She rose from her vanity table. "But I'm not done with you, Francesco."

As he watched her pull off her shift, Ragoczy knew that he should break with her. "One day, Estasia, you will run out of new sensations. What will you do then?"

Standing naked in the cold, candle-dim room, she stared at him, uncomprehending. "Sensation?"

"Isn't that what you desire?" He had come nearer to her. "You always ask me to do something new, to touch you in a new way, to excite you through a variety of means."

"Oh." She giggled. "That's because you're willing to. And since you don't do-"

He cut her off before she could renew her complaint. "I'm willing to caress you now, wherever you like, in whatever manner you like."

"Any way?" she asked archly, and moved nearer. "Would you bind me to my bed and beat me with lashes of silk? Would you take me by the hair and hold down my body with yours, a knife to my breast, while you bruised me with your kisses?" She was breathless when she finished speaking, and she leaned forward in a kind of delirium.

Ragoczy was seriously alarmed now. He took her hands firmly in his and forced them to her sides. "No, bellina, I would not."

"But why not, since I wish it?"

"Because I don't want you to be my victim, I want you to be my companion in pleasure." He released her hands. "If you can't accept that, then there's no more to be said."

She sighed, resigned. "Oh, very well, if you won't, you won't. But you will take me to bed, won't you?"

Ragoczy knew that he should leave, that his involvement with Estasia had gone too far. He stared at her delicious nude body, and saw a hunger in her much greater than his own. "Estasia..."

She flung herself onto the bed and reached up for him. "I am so anxious for you. Look how I sweat, though the room is cold. See to what desperation you bring me. Francesco. Francesco."

He stood near the bed, but came no nearer. "You have told me I no longer satisfy you. Why do you want me, if that is the case?"

"Don't be tiresome, Francesco," she snapped even as she turned languorously to show him a more promising view of her beautiful breasts and splendidly rounded hips.

Instead of sinking onto the bed beside her, Ragoczy crossed the room to her vanity table. He picked up her mirror and looked into it. "In certain lights, there is a faint outline," he said in a remote way.

But Estasia was out of patience. "I think," she said with a malicious smile, "that I must certainly go to confession tomorrow. I will tell the priest what has passed between you and me. I will tell him, Francesco, how you take your pleasure, and how shamelessly you have used me. I will say how you have beat me, you have violated me against my will, using a crucifix when you had exhausted your own flesh. Should I," she mused soulfully, "go to the good Francescani at Santa Croce? Perhaps I might go to the Vallombrosani at Santa Trinita. They do not in general hear confession from women, but they might make an exception for a confession such as mine. Or," she added after a moment, "God's Hounds! Surely the Domenicani with their especial concern for heresy and blasphemy would be very interested in what I could tell them. But I would have to choose between San Marco and Santa Maria Novella." Her look was no longer languid. She pushed herself up on one elbow. "Think about my confession before you leave, Francesco."

Through her recitation Ragoczy had stood very still. At last he put down the mirror. "I see," he said evenly. "As long as I come when you call me, and do whatever you ask, your confessions will be ordinary. What happens when you grow tired of me, Estasia? Will you confess then, and let the Church take me off your hands?"

She did not hear the fury in his calm words. "No, I wouldn't do that," she said when she had considered the idea. "It would bring me too much notoriety, and I don't like to have my life too much circumscribed. I had my fill of that as a daughter and a wife. No prisoner was ever more closely guarded than I was, I promise you. I don't want to live that way again." She lay back, her legs somewhat apart, her arms open and inviting. "Do come to bed, Francesco, schiave d'amore."

The word "slave" stung him like a lash and he very nearly hurled her mirror across the room. But if he had learned one thing in his long, long life, it was how to wait. He did not touch the mirror, and after a moment he crossed the room again. "You leave me very little choice. Very little."

Her eyes grew wide in anticipation. "Then you will beat me."

"I said I would not." He sat on the bed, his eyes unreadable. "Where do you want me to start? Shall I touch you? Shall I kiss you?"

"Oh, Francesco, don't. You know what I like." She slid nearer to him,

"But you have told me that I no longer satisfy you, so you must instruct me. Otherwise I'll have to bear the results of your displeasure at the hands of Mother Church. So tell me, Estasia, what must I do."

"Santa Lucia protect me," she declared. "Touch me, touch me the way you always have. Put your hands here"-she flinched as his cold fingers closed on the curve of her breasts-"and then do as you always have."

Anger made him rougher than he had ever been with her, and he felt disgust with himself for catering to her demands.

"That's much better," she purred as he forced her body to greater arousal. She moaned with delight as he grazed over her flesh with harsh kisses. It pleased her that he took no satisfaction from her, and she made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a gasp. Suddenly she thrust herself against him. "Do more. Do more. I want more."

Grimly he urged on her overwhelming passion, and was not surprised to realize she was resisting her fulfillment. He felt her muscles tighten, and he wondered if she could maintain this new tension for long. As if in answer to this, she cried out as her legs cramped.

"Estasia, shall I stop?"

"No... No... No..." Her face was set in a rictus smile, and then, almost in disappointment, she trembled in violent release. She seized his arms, holding on desperately until she gave a last shudder, and her rapture was ended.

When at last she opened her eyes, she said wickedly, "Next time, I will have you bind me and then you will abuse me..."

"Estasia," he said, moving back from her, already regretting all the pleasure they had shared over the last several months.

"You will hurt me in your lust, and then, unless you have been lying to me, you will enter my body like a man. If you are not a eunuch, perhaps I will not confess." She smiled nastily at him.

"Listen to me, bella mia." There was something in his voice she had never heard before, a coldness that was more than ruthlessness, more than hate. "I have lived more places than you know of in this world. I would dislike having to leave Fiorenza, but rather than be coerced by you, I would."

Her laughter was uncertain. "But you would lose your palazzo, and all your beautiful things."

If anything, this reminder made him more implacable. "I have lost much more than this before. I won't allow your extortion of me. Believe that."

At that moment, seeing his dark eyes on her, she did believe him. "Why, Francesco," she said, with a miserable attempt at archness, "did you think I meant what I said about confession? I think you are not used to our Fiorenzan ways. I shouldn't have thought that a man like you, with all the experience you say you have had, would be taken in by my amusements." She had pulled her blankets up around her throat and she stared out at him with a mixture of fascination and apprehension.

"Of course. I should have realized that this was only sport." His irony was bitter.

"You're being hateful because I scare you," she said quietly. "You don't like to be bested, do you?"

"No better than you do, bellissima." He took a step nearer the bed and she pulled away from him. "I think perhaps that this had better be farewell, Estasia. I'm afraid I am too foreign to enjoy your sport."

"Farewell?" It was as if the word were wholly unknown to her. "You'd leave me? Just because I said I'd confess?" She gathered her covers more tightly around her, and then, quite suddenly, she began to sob. "Oh, how I hate you for this. You can't enter me as a man should, you frighten me, and then you leave."

He stilled his sudden rush of sympathy for Estasia. "Yes. Then you're well rid of me, aren't you?" He went across the room without turning, and opened her window.

"I don't want you. I never wanted you!" She was shouting now between ragged sobs. "Get out! Get out! GET OUT!" But these last hysterical screams were addressed to an empty window. Ragoczy was gone into the snow-brightened night.

Text of a letter from Simone Filipepi to his brother, Alessandro, called Botticelli.

To his Sandro, brother in flesh and in the Sight of God, Simone sends his prayers and greetings, at this joyous time:

In three days it will be the Nativity, Sandro, and my most ardent wish for you at this time is that your heart will be moved at last, and you will see that Savonarola is right. You have been blinded too long by the riches of fame of the perfidious Laurenzo. You have allowed his favor and affection to woo you from the true splendors of this world. I have been on my knees all today, in supplication before Almighty God, in the hope that you will at last repudiate the Medicis and come into the company of those who follow the teachings of heaven.

My retreat will end in seven days, and at that time I will return to Fiorenza. I hope that Donna Estasia has recovered from her indisposition so that I will not find too great upset in your home. It is most unfortunate that she should be unwell at the time of my retreat, but the offices of the soul must supersede those of home and family. You would do well to admonish Donna Estasia to be more diligent in her piety, for then she would not be visited with such unpleasantness. Tell her to turn her thoughts away from the flesh, to the joys of the saints in heaven.

A messenger to this monastery has told me that you are still working on murals in Palazzo de' Medici of pagan debauchery. Sandro, dear brother, think of the heavy burden of sin you take on to flatter the vanity of Laurenzo. To excuse him by reason of his education and poetry is to fall into grave error. Laurenzo is damned, and Savonarola has said that he will be in his grave before the next grapes are pressed. Do not let him seduce you with his corruptions, for he will take you down with him to sup in hell.

It is my sincerest wish that this finds you well, and filled with true penitence. I wish you the solemn joy of the Feast of the Nativity and I commend my familial respects to you even as I commend my soul to God and the angels.

Simone Filipepi

Il Monastero della Pieta, Brothers of San Domenico, December 22, 1491