Chapter 5: Tondolo
Young Tondolo led the new Pope through the long corridor covered with thick carpet and stopped outside a room. The smell of frankincense1 wafted through the crack of the tightly closed door. Legend has it that when Saint Leah was born, fragrant resin dripped from the trees nearby, which emitted a pungent and exotic fragrance after being burned by fire. This expensive incense from the East became a hallmark of the Holy See. During every major celebration, huge copper basins would be erected in the square, and barrels of incense would be poured into them. Thousands of florins worth of incense would be burned in a single day.
For example, in today’s Miracle Square, several large copper basins were continuously burning frankincense and myrrh. The entire city of Florence was filled with this heavy, solemn fragrance, and Rafael’s money was also being burned away like water.
Rafael sniffed and discerned a pungent mixture of pepper and laurel leaves in addition to the frankincense and myrrh. This was used to stimulate the patient’s mind. Usually, only patients who were completely unable to wake up before dying would be forced to use this method of stimulating the nerves – to allow him enough time to leave a last testament.
He glanced at Young Tondolo and pushed opened the door.
Palazzo Riccardi was originally the residence of Pope Riccardi III. In order to be elected Pope, he had donated all his wealth to the cardinals, including this palace, which had only recently been completed. After Cardinal Tondolo obtained Palazzo Riccardi, he did not make many renovations, so the palace still retained the square and regular style of the period of Pope Riccardi III.
The bedroom was not large, with purple velvet curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows tightly. Slender, classical columns supported a high ceiling. The rise and fall of the figure on the four-poster bed with curtains drawn was barely visible. Incense burned in the stove in front of the bed, but its peak had passed, and the smoke now drifted lazily outward.
Rafael’s brow furrowed briefly, then smoothed out.
Julius also carried the scent of myrrh and laurel leaves, indicating that he had spent a considerable amount of time in this room. What did he want to hear from Cardinal Tondolo? Was it really, as he had said, merely to learn what unfulfilled wishes Tondolo had?
Rafael was reluctant to maliciously speculate about his mentor, his guide, and the man who had sheltered him for so long in his youth, but…