The Wolves of St. Peter's Read Online Free Page A

right. The chicken had three legs: one dead-center and one on either side. It stood on two of these legs, listing to the left while the third leg stuck out from the opposite side, looking like a useless appendage until suddenly it gave a funny little hop before coming to rest on the third and center legs, listing now to the right. Francesco laughed for the first time that day.
    He told her omens were superstitious nonsense, but Susanna was insistent, and as the bird did its little dance for them, tilting from one side to the other, she rhymed off a litany of strange sightings. “But what about the two-headed calf born in Tivoli only three days before an earthquake? There can be no other explanation. And last year, just before the Tiber flooded its banks, a dwarf was stillborn not far from here. And the day before that terrible storm swept through Ostia and knocked down my father’s house, a bat with red eyes flew down the chimney.” She grabbed his sleeve. “They say too the day before the Castel Sant’Angelo bridge collapsed and all those people died, a donkey—”
    â€œEnough,” he interrupted, wondering if gypsy blood actually did run in her veins. “Look at it. It’s too ridiculous to be anything bad.” Indeed, if there were any bad omen that day, it was the discovery of Calendula’s body.
    â€œWell, a good omen then,” she rebutted. “The day before you came, there was a giant blue moth on the window ledge. That’s how I knew when I met you that you were a good man.”
    â€œIs that why you slapped my face?”
    â€œThat was just to get you to kiss me.”
    He kissed her now—even considered more, as it would be hours before Michelangelo returned—but all he could think of was Calendula’s bludgeoned face and missing finger, and he changed his mind again.
    He needed to find Raphael.
    â€œWell, don’t kill it then,” he said, backing away while trying to maintain the glib tone. “Maybe this will bring you another man. A rich one this time. But you better put the chicken in your yard, because Michelangelo will see it only as an omen he is about to have dinner.”
    He tried to make his escape, but Susanna insisted on his help in catching it. In any other case, she would have swept the chicken up by the legs and carried it upside down. The third leg made this awkward, however, and Susanna was afraid of hurting it, for fear it could turn against her, changing it from the good omen she was now convinced it was into a bad one. In the end, Francesco opened the gate and propped it open with a rock while Susanna attempted to herd it out with her shawl. Only the bird refused to leave. Instead, it stopped short at the gate and, evading the shawl, flew to the top of the stone wall, where it recommenced its dance, its head bobbing from side to side in time.
    â€œForget it,” Francesco said after two more failed attempts. “I don’t have time for this right now. It’ll just have to take its chances with Michelangelo. I must find Raphael.”
    â€œNow?” Susanna asked, her disappointment palpable. “Come inside with me instead. It’s raining, and I have a fire.”
    He still didn’t want to tell her about Calendula. And he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he liked the simple companionship he had with her, the distraction from the dark regrets that found him even in his dreams. But he couldn’t avoid the subject forever. She was going to find out, if not from him then from someone else. News traveled fast in Rome. “It’s one of the girls from Imperia’s, Calendula,” he said a little more matter-of-factly than he felt. “She’s dead, I’m afraid. I just saw her body pulled from the Tiber.”
    Susanna looked unfazed, and
just another whore
echoed in his brain. “Was she murdered?” she asked.
    â€œIt appears she was.”
    â€œI thought so,”