The Medusa Amulet by Robert Masello Page B

the new horses had been harnessed. Jacopo took the reins, and one of his accomplices—a wiry fellow with a huge, livid bruise on one cheek and a blackened eye—assumed his place inside the cabin.
    “What happened to you?” Cellini said, knowing full well. “You look like you got hit with a bucket.”
    The man spat in Cellini’s face. “If I wasn’t under orders to deliver you in one piece, I’d break you in two.”
    “And if my hands weren’t tied, I’d give you another black eye to match the one you’ve got.”
    The carriage rolled on for several days, until Cellini felt that his back would break from the constant jouncing. With his hands and feet tied—these scoundrels must have been expecting a good bounty for his safe delivery—there was little he could do to make himself comfortable, and the prospect of whatever awaited him in Rome was hardly encouraging. As they finally approached the Eternal City, the roads became smoother and better paved, but they also became more crowded, with shepherds bringing their flocks to market, and rickety wagons carrying barrels of wine from Abruzzo, wheels of cheese from the Enza Valley, and loads of the distinctive blue-gray marble from high in the Apennines. Cellini could hear the driver—right then it was Bertoldo, the one with the sword who had first clapped him on the shoulder in Florence—shouting, “Make way! We come on order of His Holiness, Pope Paul! Get out of the way!”
    From the oaths and epithets he heard in reply, there were many who didn’t believe him. But the contadini were like that, Cellini mused. They worked the farms and fields all day, sometimes not speaking to a soul, and when anyone did speak to them, they were instantlysuspicious of his motives—especially if it was a stranger with a sword, driving a fancy black carriage and ordering them around.
    Jacopo, sitting inside again, couldn’t resist parting the curtains and holding his ugly mug in front of the window. Cellini had the impression that he hoped to be spotted traveling in such style by someone—anyone—he knew.
    The streets of Rome, unlike Florence, were a mess. In Florence, the streets were narrow and often dark, but the people knew how to behave. They did not throw their offal into the gutter, they did not empty their chamber pots out the front windows, and they did not leave dead dogs or cats or birds to rot in the sun. But these Romans, they lived in a cesspool and didn’t even seem to mind. Every time he had come to Rome, Cellini had marveled at the state of chaos, the teeming confusion all around, where the greatest masterpieces of the ancient world were surrounded by tanning yards and the classical temples overrun by pig markets. As the carriage passed through the Porta del Popolo, the tomb of Nero’s mother appeared on their right, a crowd of beggars littering the steps. The tomb of the Roman emperor Augustus fared no better, pieces of its marble façade having been torn down and burned for the lime they would yield. The Campo Marzio was cluttered with workmen’s shops, some of them tucked into the ruins of once-glorious mansions. The Temple of Pompey had been turned into an unruly hotel, where scores of families had carved out spaces for themselves, with open fires and hanging laundry, beneath the enormous and dilapidated vault. If Florence was an elegant ball, Rome was an untamed circus.
    And Cellini feared that he was about to become its main attraction.
    Passing through the Borgo, as the bustling area between the banks of the Tiber and the mighty Vatican City was called, Cellini could not help but recall his first trip to Rome, when he was only nineteen. He and another goldsmith’s apprentice, Tasso, had often talked about leaving their hometown of Florence; Rome was the place where fortunes and names were truly to be made. And one day, on a long ramble,they had found themselves at the San Piero Gattolini Gate. Benvenuto had jokingly said to his friend, “Well,