The Family - Mario Puzo [6]
Back in the cardinal’s chambers, everyone sat in silence until Duarte came back to announce, “The culprit has been discovered. He is but a kitchen boy, formerly in the employ of the House of Rimini.”
Rimini was a small feudal province on the eastern coast of Italy, and its ruler, a local duke, Gaspare Malatesta, was a formidable enemy of Rome and the papacy. He was a big man, his body huge enough to hold the souls of two, and his massive face was pitted and craggy, but it was for his hair, crinkled wild and red, that he was known as “The Lion.”
Cardinal Borgia moved away from the side of his ailing son, and whispered to Duarte, “Ask the kitchen boy why he holds His Holiness in such contempt. Then be certain he drinks the bottle of wine from our table. Be certain he drinks it all.”
Duarte nodded. “And what would you have us do with him once the wine has taken effect?” he asked.
The cardinal, his eyes glowing, his face flushed, said, “Place him on an ass, tether him tight, and send him with a message to the Lion of Rimini. Tell him to begin to pray for forgiveness and make his peace with God.”
Juan lay as though in a deep sleep for several weeks, and the cardinal insisted he stay at his palace in the Vatican to be treated by his personal physician. While Adriana sat by his side, and several maidservants cared for him, Rodrigo Borgia spent hours in the chapel praying to the Madonna. “I will bring to the one true church the souls of thousands,” he promised fervently. “If only you will plead with the Christ to spare the life of my son.”
When his prayers were answered, and Juan recovered, the cardinal became even more committed to the Holy Catholic Church and to his family.
But Rodrigo Borgia knew that heaven alone could no longer secure his family’s safety. And so he understood there was one more action to be taken: he must send to Spain for Miguel Corello, also known as Don Michelotto.
This bastard nephew of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had felt the tug of fate from his beginnings. As a child in Valencia he was neither mean nor sadistic, yet he often found himself defending those souls whose goodness made them vulnerable to the bullying nature of others. For often, kindness is mistaken for weakness.
Miguel, from the time he was a child, accepted his destiny: to protect those who carried the torch of God and the Holy Roman Church into the world.
But Miguel was a strong boy, and as ferocious in his loyalty as in his actions. As a burly teenager it was said that he had been attacked by the most savage bandit in his village when he stood to defend the house of his mother, the cardinal’s sister.
Miguel was but sixteen at the time, when the bandit leader and several young vandals entered their house and tried to move the boy away from the wooden chest in which his mother’s precious holy relics and family linens were hidden. When Miguel, who seldom spoke, cursed the bandits and refused to move away, the leader slashed his face with a stiletto, cutting across his mouth deep into his cheek. As blood ran in great streams down his face and onto his chest, his mother screamed, his sister began to cry in loud sobs—but Miguel stood fast.
Finally, as neighbors gathered in the streets and began shouting, the bandit and his gang, fearing capture, ran out of the village and into the hills.
Several days later, when this same pack of bandits tried to reenter the village, they were met with resistance; and while most fled, the leader of the pack was captured by Miguel. In the morning this unfortunate bandit was found with a heavy rope around his neck, hanging from a large tree in the village square.
From that day forward, Miguel Corello’s reputation for fierceness spread throughout the principality of Valencia, and no one dared do injury to him or any of his friends or family for fear of retaliation.