The Wolves of St. Peter's Read Online Free

had met Susanna on his third or fourth night in Rome after opening the wrong gate, surprising her as she picked her way across the yard from the outhouse. She was the maid to Benvenuto the Silversmith, whose house and workshop consisted of a jumble of sheds adjoining Michelangelo’s. Francesco had been out wandering the streets until night had fallen, hoping to avoid Michelangelo, who’d been in a particularly foul mood. When he told her this, she’d laughed. Then, taking him by the hand, she had led him inside the house, where a feeble fire with more smoke than flame burned inside the gargantuan fireplace.
    Benvenuto had been in Florence on business, and Francesco said he was from Florence too. She’d given him wine and sympathized with his forced exile. Michelangelo, she claimed, could scare away demons with his scowl. Francesco had drunk her wine and, deciding that even with a blackened front tooth she was not unattractive, had started to tease her, telling her she talked like the gypsy girl who collected rags with her mother near his home. She’d slapped him for the comparison, but he’d caught her hand and, kissing her fingers, explained that he’d always thought the gypsy girl very beautiful, with her dark eyes and hair like a raven. She forgave him, letting him kiss more than her fingers.
    He’d spent the night in her bed, waking in the morning with his cheek against her breast. It was infinitely better than the restlessnights he spent next to Michelangelo, who snored and kicked him with the boots he often wore to bed. Francesco had made up the bit about the gypsy girl, but he did like Susanna’s dark eyes, as, unlike Calendula’s, they didn’t confuse him or remind him of what he’d lost. Maybe that was why he’d found her so easy to confide in.
    His story had made Susanna incredulous.
You fell in love with your employer’s wife? And you’re still alive? You’re a very lucky man.
    As miserable as he was to be separated from the woman he loved, he knew he was indeed lucky to have escaped with his life. If Guido had taken one moment to think that afternoon in Florence, he wouldn’t have gone after Francesco himself. He would have sent his bodyguard—a brute of a man named Giovanni, although everyone had long forgotten that and called him Pollo Grosso, “Big Chicken,” for the bright red hair that stuck up like a comb from his big square head. If Guido had sicced Pollo Grosso on him, Francesco would have been dead for sure. Because despite his cowardly sounding name, Pollo Grosso was a vicious dog who did his master’s bidding without thought or remorse. He was as devoid of feeling as he was of articulate speech, and his only pleasure was to kill.
    When Francesco looked out again from his hiding place, Susanna was still peering over the gate.
What’s so interesting,
he wondered,
that she’d stand outside in the rain?
Deciding that he wasn’t going to wait her out, he walked up behind her.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œThere you are,” she said accusingly. “I’ve been waiting for you. There’s a chicken in the yard. I don’t know what to do.”
    â€œA chicken?” he echoed, looking around for the bird. How odd. He’d just been thinking of Pollo Grosso and now a real chicken appeared. “I would think it obvious. Kill it for my dinner. Where is it?”
    Most of the yard was filled with the giant blocks of marble Michelangelo had chosen for the Pope’s tomb, blocks he refused to sell just in case His Holiness changed his mind. Now stacked with firewood and covered with vines, they had taken on the quality of a ruined monument, and it was from out of this that a mottled brown-and-white chicken emerged.
    â€œIs a chicken with three legs a good or bad omen?” she asked as the bird blinked up at them.
    It was on the tip of Francesco’s tongue to tell her she was mad, but she was