The Serpent and the Pearl Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Empress of the Seven Hills

  “Power and betrayal were never so addictive than in this gorgeously wrought tale of star-crossed lovers caught in the turbulent currents of Imperial Rome. Kate Quinn deftly contrasts the awesome splendor of torch-lit banquets with the thunder of the battlefield. Empress of the Seven Hills is a riveting plunge into an ancient world that is both utterly foreign and strikingly familiar—where you can feel the silken caress of an empress and the cold steel of a blade at your back.”

  —C. W. Gortner, author of The Queen’s Vow

  “[An] epic, sexy romp—the long-awaited sequel to Daughters of Rome . . . Readers will delight in the depictions of historical figures like Hadrian and Trajan, as well as the engrossing and dramatic relationships that drive this entertaining story.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Kate Quinn outdoes herself with a story so compelling that the only complaint readers will have is that it ends. From the moment Vix and Sabina appear on the page, readers are taken on an epic adventure through Emperor Trajan’s Rome. No other author brings the ancient world alive like Quinn—if there’s one book you read this year, let it be this one!”

  —Michelle Moran, national bestselling author of The Second Empress

  “Quinn handles Imperial Rome with panache.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Daughters of Rome

  “A soap opera of biblical proportions . . . [Quinn] juggles protagonists with ease and nicely traces the evolution of Marcella—her most compelling character—from innocuous historian to manipulator. Readers will become thoroughly immersed in this chaotic period of Roman history.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A fascinating view of four women during the year of the four emperors . . . Regardless of whether you already have an interest in Roman history, Daughters of Rome will fascinate you from beginning to end.”

  —Book Loons

  “The two sisters are fascinating protagonists . . . Ancient historical fiction fans will enjoy this intriguing look at the disorderly first year after Nero’s death.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Ancient Rome is wonderfully portrayed in this book, with awesome details of first-century Roman political culture . . . I love a complex plot, however, and this one is layered with great characters, engrossing historical facts, and a little romance.”

  —PrincetonBookReview.com

  Mistress of Rome

  “[Quinn] skillfully intertwines the private lives of her characters with huge and shocking events. A deeply passionate love story, tender and touching, in the heat and danger of the brutal arena that was ancient Rome . . . Quinn is a remarkable new talent.”

  —Kate Furnivall, author of The White Pearl and The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  “Equal parts intrigue and drama, action and good old-fashioned storytelling. Featuring a cast of characters as diverse as the champions of the Colosseum, Mistress of Rome is destined to please.”

  —John Shors, bestselling author of Temple of a Thousand Faces

  “Stunning . . . a masterful storyteller . . . It is no mean feat to write a novel that is both literary and a page-turner.”

  —Margaret George, author of Elizabeth I: A Novel

  “Full of great characters . . . So gripping, your hands are glued to the book, and so vivid it burns itself into your mind’s eye and stays with you long after you turn the final page.”

  —Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

  “[A] solid debut . . . Quinn’s command of first-century Rome is matched only by her involvement with her characters; all of them, historical and invented, are compelling . . . Should make a splash among devotees of ancient Rome.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “For sheer entertainment, drama, and page-turning storytelling, this tumultuous debut novel is well worth reading.”

  —Library Journal

  Books by Kate Quinn

  MISTRESS OF ROME

  DAUGHTERS OF ROME

  EMPRESS OF THE SEVEN HILLS

  THE SERPENT AND THE PEARL

  The SERPENT and the PEARL

  A NOVEL OF THE BORGIAS

  Kate Quinn

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Kate Quinn

  Excerpt from The Lion and the Rose copyright © 2013 by Kate Quinn

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2013

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62494-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Quinn, Kate.

  The serpent and the pearl : a novel of the Borgias / Kate Quinn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-425-25946-7 (alk. paper)

  1. Borgia family—Fiction. 2. Rome (Italy)—History—1420–1798—Fiction. 3. Nobility— Papal states—Fiction. 4. Political fiction. I. Title.

  PS3617.U578S48 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2013004891

  Cover design by Danielle Abbiate

  Book design by Tiffany Estreicher

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincident. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by Kate Quinn

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Characters List

  Readers Guide

  Special Excerpt from THE LION AND THE ROSE

  For my husband’s remarkable grandmother, who served as the inspiration for Carmelina:

  Mildred Jackson, née Carmelina Mansueto, a fiery Sicilian cook who has never (to my knowledge!) cooked for the Pope or defended her virtue from a Borgia prince, but would absolutely threaten to fry your ears in a pan if you committed the sacrilege of breaking the pasta into the pot instead of folding
it.

  PART ONE

  May–August, 1492

  CHAPTER ONE

  Before all else, be armed.

  —MACHIAVELLI

  Carmelina

  W hen I first came to Rome, I had nothing to my name but a tatered bundle of recipes and a mummified hand. One was my shame and the other, with a little luck, was my future. “Santa Marta, don’t fail me now,” I murmured, patting the lumpy little bundle under my skirt, and knocked.

  I had to knock four times before the door yanked open, and a serving woman with a face like an angry walnut appeared. “Yes?” she said shortly, looking me up and down. I might be tall, long-faced, and plain at best, and I certainly did not look my best that morning, but she didn’t have to make it quite so clear.

  I pinned a smile into place. “I seek Maestro Marco Santini. He is maestro di cucina here?”

  “You’re not the only one seeking him. He owe you money? He had to pay the last one in spices, and Madonna Adriana wasn’t happy—”

  “He’s my cousin.” All true so far, though anything else I told her would likely be lies.

  “Well, he’s not here. Madonna Adriana’s son is to be married, and Madonna Adriana palmed the feast off on that cardinal cousin of hers. Maestro Santini, he’ll be at the Cardinal’s palazzo now with the other servants, making preparations. Dio,” the serving woman muttered, “let him be there.”

  “Where?” I felt my smile slipping. I’d crossed half the city already in too-tight secondhand shoes; my feet hurt and sweat collected between my shoulder blades because a late-May morning in Rome was far hotter than it had any right to be. And if this stupid woman kept blocking my way I’d cut off her thumbs and fry them in good olive oil with a little garlic and make her eat them. “It’s very important that I find him, signora.”

  She set me on my way with a grudging set of directions, so I spared her thumbs and plunged back into the chaos that was Rome. At any other time I would have gaped at the noise, the crush, the din, so different from the silent waterways I’d always called home, but life for me had narrowed. Carts rumbled past me on one side, swaggering young bravos in parti-colored doublets shouldered past on the other, sharp-eyed servant girls counted coins to wheedling vendors, and stray dogs sniffed my skirts as I passed—but I saw none of it. I plowed through the crowds as if blind, walking a tunnel of noise and color I’d followed south all the way from Venice to Rome. A terror-laced tunnel with Marco at the end of it: a cousin I hadn’t seen in five years who had somehow become my only hope for survival.

  Well, my eyes might not have registered much, but my nose did. Even as my heart thudded and my feet ached and my frightened thoughts yammered in my brain telling me I was a fool, my nose was busy parceling out the scents and smells of Rome. You can’t turn off a cook’s nose: My whole life was fracturing around me like one of those impractical Murano goblets that break the instant you look at them, but my nose was happily telling me manure, yes, from all the carts; ox blood, my, you don’t get that in Venice; let’s see, that smell there feels like sun baking on marble, and what’s that dusty sweet scent? Incense? Yes, incense, of course, considering there’s a church or a shrine in every piazza in this city. Even with my eyes shut, my ever-busy cook’s nose could have told me I was no longer in Venice. Venice was sulfur and brick and the hot, melting-sand smell of sun on glass; rot rising from the canals and salt from the lagoon. Venice was home.

  Not anymore, I reminded myself grimly as I passed the Ponte Sant’Angelo where they hung the bodies of those thieves less fortunate than me—those, in other words, unfortunate enough to get caught. I saw one fresh corpse, a thief who had had his hands and ears chopped off and strung about his neck before being hanged. He had a smell too, the rich stink of rot. Beside the thief was a heretic who had been hanged upside down and was now little more than a few picked bones. The crows were busy all over the bridge, pecking and gulping, and I said a quick prayer that they’d never peck and gulp at my bones. Which at the moment was far from certain, and for a moment I thought my queasy stomach would heave up what little food I’d been able to afford that morning.

  But then I saw my goal: the Cardinal’s palazzo rising rich and arrogant midway between the Campo dei Fiori and the Ponte Sant’Angelo. “Can’t miss it,” the sour old walnut in the apron had told me. “Not with that huge shield over the door. Got a bull on it—what kind of crest is that for a man of God?” And even if I’d missed the bull, there was no mistaking the crush of people flowing through the great doors. Ladies in figured velvets and air-light veils; clerics in red and purple robes; young dandies with jewels on their fingers and those huge slashed sleeves—yes, a wedding party awaiting the arrival of the bride.

  Those grand double doors weren’t for me, not in my too-small shoes and the patched ill-fitting dress I’d gotten used off a vendor who tried to tell me the stains at the hem were embroidery and not old mud. But there’s always a separate entrance for servants and deliveries, and soon I was knocking on another door. This time I didn’t even have time to pat the little bundle under my skirt and mutter a prayer before the door was wrenched open.

  “Thank the Madonna, Maestro, you’re—” The young man in the apron broke off, staring at me. “Who are you?”

  “Carmelina Mangano.” I felt a lock of short black hair spring loose on my forehead, the heat frizzing it out from under the headdress I’d improvised from another length of stained cloth. “My cousin, Maestro Marco Santini—”

  “Yes?” the apprentice said eagerly. “You know where he is?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Oh, God in heaven,” the boy moaned. “He flitted out to play zara this morning—just a round, he said, no more than an hour, just to relax him before the feast. Saints help us, it’s been hours now and we’re sunk—”

  Sounded like Marco was up to his old tricks. “A nose for sauces and a hand for pastry,” my father had often complained about my cousin, “and nothing between the ears but cards and dice!” But the apprentice had turned away from the door, yammering and moaning to a cluster of flour-aproned serving girls, and my nose started swooning.

  Saffron. Sweet Santa Marta, how long had it been since I smelled saffron? Or the sweet sizzle of duck being turned on a spit and sauced with honey and the juice from an orange? A sharper smell, that would be fine vinegar, the good stuff from Modena so tart and yet so mellow on the tongue it could bring tears to the eyes . . .

  I’d spent the last weeks breathing fear like air, the sour taste of it and the acrid smell of it—and now I smelled something else, something good, and the fear was gone. Without meaning to I’d followed my entranced nose inside the kitchens, past the cluster of agitated apprentices. All around me was a kitchen thronged with people, but I just closed my eyes and sniffed rapturously. Olive oil. Good olive oil sizzling in a pan rather than lurking sullen and spoiled in a jar; olive oil so fresh from the pressing it would still be bright green when it was poured . . . the sweet burn of pepper just ground . . . the smoky saltiness of cheese fresh-cut from the wheel—I hadn’t smelled good cheese in at least a year. Flour, the fine milled stuff so light it drifted in the air, and something savory baking in a crust . . .

  Or burning in a crust. My eyes snapped open, and I saw a telltale puff of smoke from the nearest oven. I flew across the kitchen, lifting double handfuls of my stained skirt to seize the hot pan and whisk it out of the heat. The pastry shell bubbled black and scorched, and before I could think twice I was shouting.

  “Sweet Santa Marta!” I yelled, and the agitated cluster of white-aproned apprentices and serving girls turned to stare at me. “Letting a tourte burn? If you worked for me, I’d dice you all into a pottage!”

  “Who are you?” one of the serving girls blinked.

  “Who cares who she is?” an apprentice snarled. “Maestro Santini’s scarpered off to play zara again, and if we can’t get that bloody wedding feast ready—”

  They began to argue, and I just let my ey
es travel the kitchens. What a sight. Small, cramped kitchens, for one thing—the Cardinal with the bull over his door might have spent a fortune on that fine tapestried entrance hall I’d glimpsed as the wedding guests streamed in, but he hadn’t spent a ducat on his kitchens. Still, the cramped, smoky fireplace and bowed spit and inconveniently placed trestle tables weren’t what made me start cursing. It was the sight of the roast birds not being turned and basted on their various spits, the bowls of flour not being kneaded into pastry, the eggs not being whipped into delicious frothy peaks. The sight of iniquity, immorality, pure evil, and possibly the world’s end: a kitchen in disorder.

  “If we just send out the roast peacock,” one of the undercooks was saying, “do you think they’d miss the veal?” But I cut him off.

  “How many wedding guests?”

  Blank looks passed between them. I wouldn’t need to cook this lot into pottage; it was clearly all they had between the ears. “The menu,” I snapped. “Tell me.”

  “Whole peacock in its plumage—”

  “Veal with morello cherries—”

  “Bergamot pears with cloves—”

  A menu pieced itself together out of the disjointed chorus. A good one, too—Marco was a dice-rolling pazzo, but the pazzo had trained under my father, and he could cook.

  So could I. And there wasn’t a recipe here I didn’t know as well as my own name.

  “Someone get me a small knife.” I looked around the kitchens, found a discarded apron, and tied it over my disreputable dress. “And where are the onions? Genovese onions, if you have them.”

  The pot-boys gazed at me as they perspired in the heat of the banked fireplace; the white-aproned apprentices stood behind the long trestle tables with their haphazard arrangement of pots and bowls and looked at their toes; the serving maids whispered behind their hands before sinks mounded with dishes. “Who are you again?” one of the apprentices said at last, rudely. “We aren’t taking no orders from you.”