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

she said with a certain amount of satisfaction as she attempted to steer him toward the silversmith’s yard. “The way she went around flaunting herself and that new ring. It was bound to happen.”
    He was annoyed with her. He didn’t expect grief—he wasn’t even sure he felt that himself—but this bordered on glee, the kind reserved for watching your enemies humbled. He had to wonder why. Because she was jealous? “Aren’t we the lady then,” he said mockingly as he pried her hand from his sleeve.
    â€œMore than her,” she responded haughtily.
    â€œAnd I suppose all you do for the wages Benvenuto pays you is mend his clothes and cook his breakfast?”
    She aimed a blow at his head, but he was ready for it and dodged it easily, telling her to piss off, which made her even angrier. “Well, at least I
know
now the chicken is a good omen,” she yelled as he kicked open his back door.
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œOf one less whore in this city!”
    He tried to slam the door, but, because everything in the houseleaned, it jammed against the floor instead, leaving a gap just wide enough for a three-legged chicken to slip through. Francesco swore and attempted to shoo it back out again, but it flew onto the shelf over the room’s one window and gazed down at him, unperturbed.
    Francesco gave up and hunted for Michelangelo’s letter. Impatiently, he sifted through sheets of paper filled with sinewy, muscular males he hoped Michelangelo wasn’t thinking of painting on the Pope’s ceiling. But the letter wasn’t there, nor was it on their only chair. The room was dark, which made the hunt even more difficult, but there really weren’t too many places to leave a letter other than the table and chair. He looked in the fireplace, wondering if Michelangelo, in a bad moment, had thrown it in there and forgotten about it. Not that it would have burned. The grate hadn’t seen a fire for several days, because Michelangelo was engaged in a feud over prices with the man who delivered the wood.
    Feeling more irritable with every passing minute, he searched the bed, tearing off the coarse woolen blanket and the tanned hides that covered the straw mattress. He opened the small trunk that held Michelangelo’s extra clothes: a pair of breeches, two stained shirts, and a jacket of unusually fine brocade Francesco had never seen him wear. There was nothing among the bottles of tonics and cures for Michelangelo’s many ailments, ailments Francesco was sure were all either imagined or feigned, no doubt to add to his image as a long-suffering martyr.
    Francesco was at the point of admitting defeat, concluding that Michelangelo had either dreamed up this letter or taken it with him to the chapel that morning, when the chicken started its little dance again on the shelf over the window. It was the only place Francesco hadn’t searched, since Michelangelo would have needed the chair to reach it. And why he would have hidden the second letter there ifhe wanted Francesco to send it was even harder to fathom. But there it was, and he pulled it out from under the chicken just as it gave one of its little hops. “You might have some use after all,” he said. “That is, if Michelangelo doesn’t lop your head off before I return. The bastard probably hid it up here just so he’d have something to complain about.”
    Francesco tucked the letter beneath his cloak, fastened his dagger at his waist, and, wishing the chicken good luck, went back out into the rain.
    Thankfully, there was no sign of Susanna.

CHAPTER TWO
    W ITH HIS FEET SQUELCHING IN HIS SODDEN BOOTS AND HOSE , Francesco followed the streets that were by now familiar to him. First came the squalid Piazza Rusticucci with its little church of Santa Caterina. The soap-maker had covered his cauldron of fat with old boards to keep out the rain, but underneath the pot a fire still