So he grabbed Lucias arm and pulled her towards him. They found each others faces very close, each felt the others panting breath touching their cheeks. Lucia read in young Franciolinis eyes the fear of dying, not the wickedness. Her instinct would have been to withdraw, and instead she did the opposite, she gently placed her lips on those of him. She didnt even have time to feel the roughness of the beard that hadnt been shaved for a few days, which was swept away in a vortex of tongues tangled together, hands looking for naked skin under her clothes, caresses that would isolate her from reality to reach heavenly heights, and then sensations never felt before, until she reached an intense pleasure, accompanied however by a deep pain. Now the blood was hers, and it came from her intimate parts violated by that sweet encounter; she had never felt anything like it in her life, but she felt satisfied.
«How could you think Im here to kill you? I love you, I have loved you since the first moment I saw you, a few days ago, riding out of this palace on your steed. I saved your life, I cured you, and now you have made me a woman, and I am grateful.»
She finished getting rid of her clothes and, completely naked, slipped into bed next to her love. She opened her nightgown, began to caress his chest, to kiss him, then guided his hand to touch her swollen nipples. And it was kisses and caresses and sighs, for endless magical minutes. Then she sat astride him on his belly and, guided by the instinct that told her to do so, began to swing up and down, at first slowly, and then increasing the rhythm progressively, until she reached intercourse again.
The orgasm plunged Andrea once again into unconsciousness. The girl would have liked to talk to him gently, but with the clear objective in mind to bring the speech about the symbols linked to the strange seven-pointed pentacle, seen in the basement of the cathedral, brought back to the portal of Franciolinis palace and recalled by Andrea in his delirium. There were many topics he would have liked to talk about with him, now that he had recovered, but at that moment it was again impossible.
While Lucia retrieved her clothes from the floor and settled down, still feeling in her lap sensations that stimulated the pulse of her intimate areas, excited voices came to her ears from the entrance of the palace.
«You cant enter in this house, youre not allowed!», Ali was shouting. Then his voice faded to the point of extinction.
«Arrest the Moor, kill him if he resists. And search the house. The Cardinal wants Countess Lucia back in the palace immediately. As for young Franciolini, if he is still alive, arrest him without harming him. He must be tried for high treason and heresy. Its not us who will kill him, but justice, divine justice and that of men. And the punishment will be exemplary, to make the people understand who they must be subject to: God and His Holiness the Pope!»
Lucia had just recognized the voice of the person who had uttered these last words, the Dominican Father Ignazio Amici, who together with his uncle presided over the local court of the Inquisition, when the door of the room opened wide and the satisfied grinning of two armed guards was drawn on his bow.
Chapter 4
Culture is the only thing that makes us happy
(Arnoldo Foà)
The insistent sound of the alarm clock managed to catapult Lucia back into everyday reality. With the same hand with which she had silenced the ringer, she found the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table. It had become her custom to light the first cigarette as soon as she woke up, but in recent times she had even done so before leaving the bed. Then she would reach the bathroom with the smoking stick in her mouth, devote herself to the toilet and make-up, occasionally taking a big puff of smoke, throw her cigarette butt in the toilet and earn her way into the kitchen to prepare her coffee, after which she would light another cigarette, concentrating on the new working day that awaited her. In the workplace she was absolutely not allowed to smoke, so even if she sometimes thought that this vice would be very harmful in the long run, she would throw behind her shoulders any hesitation while watching the red tip light up every time she sucked.
My body needs its dose of nicotine, so much for that puritanical dean of the foundation!, Lucia often thought lighting her third cigarette of the day, the one that allowed her to get a decent hour without having to leave her place of work before the breakfast break. In the year 2017 the spring was very rainy and, although it was the end of May, the temperature had not yet reached the summer average; so, especially in the morning at the time of going out, it was still cool, and it was difficult to decide which was the most suitable dress to wear. A quick glance at the wardrobe, while wearing a light, flesh-coloured, almost invisible pantyhose, made the choice for that day fall on a red, long-sleeved, but not wintery, dress of a length suitable to leave the legs bare just above the knee. A thread of lipstick, two strokes of brush to her naturally wavy brown hair, a line of pencil to emphasize the hazelnut of her eyes, a last pull from the cigarette, whose cigarette butt remained punctually smoking in the ashtray, and Lucia Balleani, twenty-eight years old, one meter seventy-five centimetres of austere beauty, almost unattainable by the common man, graduated in ancient literature, specializing in medieval history, was ready to face the impact with the external environment. She was one of the last descendants of a noble Jesi family, the Baldeschi-Balleani and, ironically, despite the fact that from birth she had never been able to live and dwell in the sumptuous family residence in Piazza Federico II - let alone in the beautiful villa outside Jesi - she now found herself working just in that palace. She had willingly accepted the job offered her by the Hohenstaufen Foundation, which had found its natural home there, in the very square where tradition says that in 1194 Frederick II of Swabia, prince and later emperor of the Hohenstaufen family, was born. Like all noble families, from the 1950s onwards, when sharecropping with the income from immense agricultural estates inherited from time immemorial ended, the Baldeschi-Balleani were not immune from gambling away most of the familys possessions, selling them or selling them off to the highest bidder, in order to maintain the standard of living to which they were accustomed. The Baldeschi branch, a little wiser, had moved in part to Milan, where it had set up a small but profitable design and architecture company, and in part to Umbria, where it ran a charming farm holiday in the green hills of Paciano. The Balleani branch was left with the crumbs and Lucias father continued with tenacity and little profit to run the farm, which consisted of plots of land scattered throughout the countryside of Jesi and Osimo. Lucia was a girl, besides being very beautiful, very intelligent. Thanks to her fathers sacrifices she was able to attend the University of Bologna and graduate with excellent grades. Her point of view was history, in particular the medieval one, perhaps because she felt in a strong way, inside herself, on the one hand the belonging to the city that had given birth to one of the most enlightened Emperors of history, and on the other hand to the family that first gave a Lord to Jesi. In fact, it was the Ghibelline Baligani family - the surname had become Balleani with time - that in 1271 had established the first Lordship in Jesi. With ups and downs, Tano Baligani, sometimes siding with the Guelphs, sometimes with the Ghibellines, depending on how the wind was blowing, had tried to maintain the dominion of the city, against other noble families, in particular against the Simonetti, who also took the reins of command of the city at certain times. In the two centuries that followed, the Balleani would become related to the Baldeschi family, who had given the city several Bishops and Cardinals, in order to seal a tacit agreement between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, especially to oppose the external enemy and counter the expansionist aims of the neighbouring municipalities, in particular Ancona, but also Senigallia and Urbino. Precisely because of this passion of her, the dean of the Hohenstaufen foundation had wanted to hire Lucia for the reorganization of the library of the palace that belonged to the noble family. The library boasted extremely rare pieces, such as an original copy of Tacitus Germanic Codex, but which had never been properly classified. Besides the classification of the books present, Lucia had other interests, of which she had tried to talk to the Dean, such as that of collecting all the historical sources about the city of Jesi present both in this and in the other libraries in the area, in order to give the prints an interesting publication. Or that of mapping the subsoil of the historical centre, rich of vestiges belonging to the Roman age, in order to have a reconstruction of the ancient city of Aesis11 as close as possible to the one that had been in reality.