Betta began her search for Micheletto in the slums of Rome, for she knew intuitively that he was somewhere within the warren of the ancient city, hiding amongst the crush of humanity. That morning she had shed the relative finery of her palace garb, which marked her out as the servant to a rich family, and wore instead a rough woolen dress that she had had borrowed from her sister.

Ginevra had been stunned to see Betta, hooded and masked when she crossed the threshold of the baker's home, for she had believed the story of her sister's death in Naples. Betta had embraced her younger sister, who glowed with the vitality of early pregnancy, and cautioned her to speak of the visit to no one. Betta's alliance with the Borgias placed her sister's family in constant danger and her supposed death had been orchestrated to spare them from becoming pawns in a game they were not equipped to play. Betta took her sister's oldest gown and left in its place a leather purse filled with coins that Betta had scrupulously saved over the months spent in Naples with a generous mistress.

Despite the change in clothing Betta still found herself the subject of intense stares as she walked towards the docks, where the stench of the ocean and fish and unwashed humanity made her eyes water. There were greedy little fingers that reached into her clothing and basket that she slapped away with reflexes honed by her time among the poor in Naples and the assassin's teachings.

As she stalked him through the streets Betta tried to reconcile the man she knew with what Lord Cesare had told her. That men could be lovers was no great shock to her, but the perfumed and curled young boys attached to the households of some rich men had no kinship to Micheletto. And if he was a lover of his own sex did that mean he was similarly attached to his master? Betta could certainly recognize the pull of Lord Cesare, a man who possessed extraordinary handsomeness and a force of personality that made anything seem possible.

She had begun the search in the dark tavern that Micheletto had directed her to and after speaking with men who had the same flat stares as the assassin she was forced to venture even deeper into the poorest section of the city. It was a place where people went when they had no hope and even the children looked death in the face daily with resignation. Betta spread the bounty of the Borgia family throughout the slums until finally she was shown to a small room let by a red headed man who had vanished into it a fortnight before and not seen again since.

She pushed into the room without bothering to announce her presence with a knock or word. Micheletto sat by the open window utterly still and quiet except for the dagger he turned over and over again in his fingers.

"Have you come to end my pain?" He still did not look at her although it was obvious he knew who it was.
"Just to help, if I can." Betta waited to see if he would order her from the room. When he did not she sat her basket down and knelt at his feet. He was not the type to dull the edges of his grief with drink and he looked as though he had not eaten in days. The flesh that was normally stretched over lean sinewy muscle hung loosely and his eyes were deeply shrunken in his face and his hair hung longer and even more unkempt. When he finally looked her full in the face Betta twitched back as though struck.

She had never realized how empty his face normally was of expression until she saw it splintered into a thousand fragments held together by pain. It was a broken face, torn apart, but he had never been so dear to her as in that moment, stripped of his cold mask of indifference.

"Lord Cesare sent me to find you."

At the mention of his master Micheletto's face twisted and he rose. He had tried to move too quickly though for his face drained of color and he started to fall. Betta grabbed his shoulders as he swayed, his great strength giving out at last under the twin onslaughts of grief and self-induced deprivation. She led him to the mound of straw and blankets that served as a bed and pressed a flask filled with cool water to his lips until he relented and drank deeply.

Micheletto drifted in and out of consciousness for hours and the ensuing silence pressed too deeply into Betta's mind and she sought to fill it with words that came, first in a whisper, and then in a flood as she expunged her own demons to one who seemed only loosely tethered to life.

She found herself telling him things that she never thought to share with another human being. She spoke of the first time her father had raped her in a drunken stupor, thinking she was her dead mother, and then continued to rape her as he descended into depravity. How she had eventually found herself with child and the woman her father had drug her to had damaged her body so badly she was told afterwards that she could never bear children. She had only found respite when she was working in the Borgia household and had only had the strength to resist him when he had threatened her sister.

Once the words had begun to spill out they could not stop and Betta talked on and on. She spoke of when she had first seen the intensity of the bond between Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. That seeing them together even when they were scarcely more than children, as she had herself been, was so painful and beautiful to watch. "They are like flames who always reach for one another," she said, and seeing that Micheletto now watched her face with eager anticipation she continued. Betta told him of the events that had occurred since he had left them in Naples and recounted the face of Prince Alfonso when he had seen his wife greet her brother on the road as though he were her own personal savior.
"I would have killed you that first time we met, you know." His words were spoken after he had been silent for so long that his masculine voice seemed a shout in the darkened room. Night had begun to fall around them and Betta had no candle to illuminate the shadows.

Betta laughed. "I know."

"Then why are you trying to save me?"

"I would save you because you saved me. Because of you I am no longer ruled by fear, not of my father or any who could threaten those whom I love. My life is finally my own."

After a long moment Micheletto sighed. "I can not return to my lord's side. He would never trust me again and I would rather die then be a masterless dog."

Betta's voice came out low and intense for she knew that it was the loss of his beloved master's favor that fueled much of his grief. "You would leave him as he faces the greatest challenge of his life? He will march on Forli soon, yes? What will happen to the Borgias should he fail or on the day when the Holy Father is no longer there to protect them? What will become of my mistress and her child? Give Cesare Borgia the help he needs and then if you can no longer serve him be a ghost that watches over our family."

Micheletto looked at her for a long while and she could see that her words had made some impression. "I wish I could be other than I am. I could have been happy with you, I think."

"If our lives had been different perhaps we could have been happy together. Had a little farm somewhere and you could have grown grapes for wine and I could have kept a herd of goats and made cheese." The impossible sweetness of that dream made her smile as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. "And our children would have had red hair and you could have terrified the young men of the area when they sought after our daughters."

The corner of Micheletto's mouth twitched. "My mother would have made you fat."

Betta laughed. "Undoubtedly."

She laid down next to him on the pallet. In the night he reached for her and she took him into her arms. The solace they found in each other was rooted in a deep need for the comfort that could only be provided by the warmth of another. Her body was the last gift that she could give to bring him back from the abyss of guilt and grief that he drowned in. There was no pretense of love between them, nor any great passion, but only a need to reassure one another that they were not alone. If, when he moved inside of her, there were tears that fell on her neck they could not be distinguished from the ones that she still shed.

When Betta woke in the morning Micheletto had fled, leaving behind only the stiletto he customarily wore at his belt to mark where his body had rested in the night. Betta understood that this token was the most meaningful gift he could have given her as well as an injunction to keep the family they both loved safe. She smiled and then examined her body in the morning light, seeing its beauty for the first time not as something to be ashamed of but instead as something to glory in, and she could share again if she wished. It was hers. There was no longer any evidence of the horrors she had experienced in its smooth contours and curves. She stretched, luxuriating in the memory of sensation, and then rose to return to her family.