The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) by Kate Quinn Page A

it had in the reliquary? I’d seen it so many times when I was a girl: the blessed and sacred hand of Santa Marta, carefully preserved and displayed in the convent of the same name in Venice. Not the largest and most illustrious of Venice’s many convents, not by any means—but one where my father said most of his infrequent prayers. It made sense to a thrifty soul like his that Santa Marta was the one to intercede if you wanted to cook for the Doge at Carnival or were hoping to be hired for the wedding banquet of the latest Foscari heiress. What does the Holy Virgin know about the desperate prayers that come from a kitchen, after all? No one ever saw the Holy Virgin cooking. So when my father felt the need of a little divine assistance in his work he would take us—my mother, my sister, and me—to the Convent of Santa Marta, to pray at the altar of their church. And on that altar you could very clearly see the severed and preserved hand of the patron saint of cooks herself.
    Of course, I never laid much faith that it
was
the saint’s true hand. There’s nothing more practical than an order of nuns with choir stalls to repair, and with so many convents in Venice competing for well-dowered novices, an abbess needs a little something extra to bring the wealthy families flocking to her doors. San Zaccaria had countless relics; Santa Chiara had one of the nails that had pierced the hands of Christ; and they had rich young girls lining up to join. So, some long-ago abbess of the Convent of Santa Marta might well have shrugged her worldly shoulders and made a discreet perusal among those purveyors of relics who can get you anything from a fragment of the True Cross to a lock of Mary Magdalene’s hair as long as you’re not too fussy. And lo and behold, the Convent of Santa Marta had a relic of its own to display: the hand of its patron saint, which was said to come to life and make the sign of the cross whenever it granted the prayers of the faithful. Not a famous relic; I doubted anyone had heard of it outside Venice. But it brought a cluster of novices with hefty dowries, and the hand soon had a beautiful new reliquary of silver and ivory, studded with garnets and pearls along its sides and set with a rock crystal viewing window through which the worshippers could see the hand itself: a little withered, a little dark and dried, but still boasting a carved gold ring on one small curled-in finger.
    I shivered, looking at the hand now in the heap of my clothes. Maybe it looked different now because I’d stolen it.
    So help me, I didn’t mean to. I only wanted the reliquary. I was desperate to get out of Venice, desperate to get to Rome, but not so desperate that I would have stolen a sacred relic (or even a not-so-sacred one). I’d needed money, and I reckoned the reliquary would be worth a good three hundred ducats after I broke it down to its anonymous components of cabochon jewels and carved silver panels. I should have had three hundred ducats as a dowry from my father—three hundred ducats he’d given to the convent of Santa Marta instead as an offering, once it was clear I’d never marry. That convent
owed
me. And what with one bit of bad luck after another, it was really the only place I could go for quick money after I’d stolen my father’s recipes and bolted. The only place with anything valuable at all, anything that might stake me enough for my journey south.
    So I took the reliquary, but I’d never have taken the hand. I broke the rock crystal viewing window with the heavy base of an altar candlestick, looking desperately about the empty church as I shook out the shards. I couldn’t bring myself to reach inside and touch the relic itself, so I just muttered an incoherent prayer of “Santa Marta, please forgive me” as I shook her hand out of the reliquary. I meant to wrap it respectfully in the embroidered altar cloth, but I heard a noise from the nave and panicked. I’d managed to distract the