Page 94 of Thus with a Kiss I Die
“Whoever struck her in the first place might strike again.” Lady Pulissena’s querulous voice grew sharp with fear.
Cal was patient. “Nonna Ursula is guarded every moment.”
“She’s old. She could die. I’m old. I could die. We’ve got no time left.” She was crumpling, yet on a mission. “Take me to her.”
“She always did know what she wanted,” Elder told me.
Lady Pulissena had Cal’s arm, and I gave her mine, and slowly we walked with her toward Nonna Ursula’s room. I looked over her bent gray head at Cal, and we exchanged dubious glances, both halfway sure we were about to witness an old-lady brawl—and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
CHAPTER51
Lady Pulissena sized up Nonna Ursula with a single glance. She took in the cloudy eyes, the hearing horn, the heavy cane leaning against the table by the bed. She also noted the bump on her forehead and the black-and-purple bruising that extended down the side of her face into her nose, and the way she rested against the pillows, pain puckering the skin of her forehead. In aching pity, Lady Pulissena said, “Ursula . . .”
Nonna Ursula stared, looking through the shadows in her room toward Lady Pulissena. She must have recognized the voice, and disdained the pity, for she pointed her shaking finger; and without hesitation, she charged into the fray. “Pulissena! You ordered the murder of my son!”
“Way to tell her, Mamma!” Elder enthused, and settled down to enjoy the show.
Immediately Lady Pulissena fired back a bolt. “He killed my husband and I was left a widow in exile. Your son deserved to die!”
“Your husband tried to seize power from the house of Leonardi.Hedeserved to die.”
Old Maria sat beside the fire, staring at Lady Pulissena as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“I told the old goat he couldn’t win against Prince Escalus, but he insisted we do it for his son.His son.” Lady Pulissena breathed hard and painfully.
Cal helped her toward a comfortable, pillowed chair by the window, but Lady Pulissena pointed toward Old Maria’s wooden chair beside the bed. “There,” she said. “There. If we’re going to fight, I want the old grimalkin to hear me.”
“You’re loud enough Mephistopheles himself can hear you in hell.” Nonna Ursula scowled. “Sit down if you’re going to!”
“I’m getting there as fast as I can,” Lady Pulissena snapped.
That was the first notice Nonna Ursula had about her onetime friend’s worn and crippled joints. She watched as Cal helped Lady Pulissena hobble over, and as he and I lowered her into the seat. “You’re a shipwreck!” Nonna Ursula exclaimed.
When Lady Pulissena caught her breath, she agreed. “Battered on the rockbound coast of age.”
Nonna Ursula handed me one of the blankets from her bed to wrap around Lady Pulissena’s knees. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
While the two women contemplated each other, I summoned Old Maria and commanded she send to the kitchen for warm spiced wine, bread, fruit, and cheese.
“So . . . about Bastiano’s son,” Nonna Ursula suggested.
“As soon as Bastiano married me, I saw the boy for what he was. A sneaking little weakling waiting for his father to die, stealing what he couldn’t have for free, a jack-a-dandy, no ambition—”
“Iseppo was the greatest swordsman to run away from every fight,” Nonna Ursula said.
Lady Pulissena’s laugh sounded like a creaky door. “You ever had a way with words, Ursula. Iseppo died fleeing the first battle. One of Escalus’s guards had to chase him down to kill him. Bastiano was shocked by the boy’s cowardice, if you can believe that.” She’d slipped from a confrontational mode to a conversational tone.
Nonna Ursula picked up the pace. “If it was all for his son, why did you take the reins when Bastiano began to slip? I know it was you, Pulissena. You used your knowledge gleaned from our friendship to sabotage Escalus. If it hadn’t been for Barnadine’s fierce defense, he would never have fought his way free. Then in the end . . . you resorted to drugs and assassins.”
“I didn’t!”
“Didn’t use our friendship? Do you expect me to believe that?”
“No, I did that,” Lady Pulissena admitted frankly. “Bastiano, who had begun the fight with all fire, in the death of his son, withered and wept, a pitiful shell of a man. He’d led us to destruction, then faded before the final battle. Yet we were condemned by his actions, and I . . . did envy you your position as mother to the podestà. I did what was needed to win. But—she held up one finger in front of Nonna Ursula’s face—“once all the battles were done, and the house of Acquasasso was vanquished, I did not order the assassination of your son. I did not.”
Nonna Ursula shoved that finger aside. “Who did?”
Lady Pulissena grinned, her wrinkled lips stretched tight over her teeth. “Your séance didn’t uncover the butcher?” Apparently, this woman had experienced at least one of Nonna Ursula’s séances.
