Murder in the Garden of God by Eleanor Herman Page B

dreamed of her life as the duchess of Bracciano – the jewelry, gowns, palaces and banquets – perhaps she cast her gaze around dreary reality. She had squeezed her dowry, and the Montalto family, for all she could get. Yet her pretty gowns, if one looked closely, were cheaper copies of the fine Venetian fabrics, the dyes imitations of kermes red. Most of her gems were paste, or semi-precious stones, or mismatched pearls. Camilla never threw a banquet. She never wasted a single candle. Her narrow house was a far cry from a glorious palazzo. And as things stood, Vittoria would never get a carriage.
    But that might change. Soon.

Chapter 7
    Murder in the Garden of God
    A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself:
but the simple pass on, and are punished.
    – Proverbs 22:3
    O n the night of Sunday, April 16, 1581, Camilla Peretti’s house on the Via Leutari was entombed in darkness. The day was long over, the candles snuffed out. After supper, the embers in the kitchen hearth had glowed briefly, then cooled to gray ash. The noises of the day had trailed off into silence. Gone was the thudding of footsteps on wooden floors, the creaking open and slamming shut of doors. Gone were the measured notes of conversation of the Peretti adults, the cries and squeals of children, the gossip and yelling of servants. Perhaps, as midnight approached, there was only the sound of mice nesting in the walls or scuttling across the floor in search of a crumb.
    Outside, the street so teeming with life during the day was also mostly mute. The constant clattering of horses and carriages, the shouts of coachmen, the curses of suppliers pushing heavy carts, the lilting greetings of neighbors – all had vanished into the night. Perhaps now and then a horseman galloped past, or a carriage rattled by, hurrying home to safety after late night revelry.
    Francesco and Vittoria were asleep when her maid Caterina knocked loudly on their bedroom door. It was unusual to be disturbed at such an hour unless a family member was ill or news leaked out that the pope had died. Surely, something of great moment was happening. Francesco opened the door, and Caterina gave him a note which, she said, had just been delivered by Domenico Acquaviva, known as Mancino, a friend of Marcello’s who was well-known to Francesco.
    The note was from Marcello, begging Francesco to meet him in the Sforza garden on Monte Cavallo, one of the hills of Rome. Marcello was in great danger and urgently needed Francesco’s help. Francesco must have believed that Pallavicino henchmen were hot on his trail, hoping to avenge Marcello’s stabbing of the cardinal’s brother the summer before. And Marcello, concealed in the garden, was too terrified to move. When Francesco asked Caterina where Mancino was, as he wanted to find out more about Marcello’s situation, she said that Mancino had handed her the note and departed.
    As Francesco pulled on his hose and doublet, he told Vittoria that her brother was in trouble and needed his help. He grabbed his sword – only a fool walked out at night in Rome without a weapon – and roused a servant to accompany him holding a lantern. Vittoria followed him down the winding stone stairs and into the courtyard, and right behind them came his mother, his sister, and other women of the household who had been awakened by the messenger banging on the street door. In robes and nightcaps, holding candles high and squinting in the darkness, they asked what was going on.
    When Francesco told Camilla that he must go immediately to help Marcello, she “begged him insistently many times that he not go out at that hour,” according to the chronicler. “Camilla, his mother, told him many reasons to stop him, founded on the importunity of the hour, the immediate departure of the messenger as soon as he had passed on the note, and of many cruel crimes happening during the pontificate of Gregory XIII, who was then reigning.” 1
    Now Vittoria, too,