Chapter 156 - Agnello di Borghesi

"Father Agnello, don't tell me your secrets. You will regret it, because you won't die," Lex said with a grimace. Death wasn't there, with its overwhelming power waiting for its prey to falter.

"I would rather not tell, believe me. But I don't know what I revealed to them in my moment of weakness," the priest spoke weakly.

"What moment of weakness? I'm sure it never happened," Lex countered again. Considering the sorry state he was in, if he had said something important, they would have killed him. If they were insisting, it was because they took nothing from him. At least that was the common logic.

"You really know how to cheer someone up, little imp. I already feel less worthless for the confidence you place in me," Agnello conceded. The princess smiled,

"You are my tutor, after all. I think I learned to trust you, Father Agnello."

"Don't go around trusting people, because that's stupid," the priest scolded.

"Ahhh, speak like a priest, please. Sometimes you don't speak with a heart full of love," she complained, shaking her head.

"I'm not that kind of priest."

"I see that your energy is returning, just because you want to have the last word, Father Agnello!" the princess provoked.

"Balbo, please shut up His Highness, it's too much chaos."

"I understand, Father," Balbo said, putting his fingers to his lips in a silent request for Alexa to comply with the convalescent priest's request.

Alexa took a deep breath. In fact, she would rather not have to listen to the secrets of a man like Blue Eyes, because Lex was sure she wouldn't like what she would know. And when the priest recovered, he would most likely regret that he had given up his secrets so easily. 

Balbo then said he would be outside, waiting to be called.

After the Castilian swordsman left the cell, Lex moved closer to the Italian priest.

"It took me a long time to discover all these things, but there's still a lot that I need to know. However, I found that those women, or at least some of them, met Princess Letitia personally. They wore masks painted on their faces, so I couldn't recognize them, but I know that at least two of them are with Cordelia."

"One of them was captured. It seems that at least two escaped the catacombs."

"Alexa… I know that one of the goals is to bring Letitia back with a new body. Maybe they are trying to summon her damned soul... And they seem to believe that blood is important in this ritual."

"How come?"

"Those texts I gave you to translate can help to discover the reason," speaking was difficult and Father Agnello was restless, wanting to continue to speak but barred by his weakened physical condition. "Just keep in mind that… Maybe the plan was to get Cordelia and Magnus to consummate their union. And from that union Letitia would return as a child…"

"OH! OH! Yes! It makes sense! Maybe that explains the creepy ritual thing before they got to Holstein! It should serve something! But, my question is… is Cordelia aware of their plans?"

The priest shook his head, showing that he wasn't sure.

"Alexa, if they need a v.i.r.g.i.n Cordelia for this, she cannot consummate her marriage to Prince Gutard."

"Oh, that also makes perfect sense! So the gello was about to take the virility from the sovereign Prince, if I hadn't interfered. Oh, dear, Father Agnello, you are so cunning! But at this point it should no longer be a problem ..." Alexa interrupted her own reasoning. 

She had no actual proof that Cordelia's marriage had been consummated, although it was expected. Gutard was a smart politician and knew that it was important to ensure the legitimacy of the marriage, if he wanted those sh.i.p.s and the alliance with de Wits. 

However, anything was possible.

"Ah, the figurine! What if that cursed figurine under the princess's bed was just another spell? Perhaps destined to prevent the powerful and obviously manly Prince Gutard from consummate the wedding!" Alexa exclaimed.

"I've been thinking about that too," said the priest quietly. 

The princess wet his dry lips carefully with a soaked cloth, and sighed, cringing,

"I can't believe we're dealing with my father-in-law's intimate life."

"They want to bring Letitia back. She was the Great Priestess of their Cult."

"If it's the key objective, they have been planning this for a long time… I suppose they will try to kill Gutard now. They must be desperate that Magnus left on a long journey," the princess concluded thoughtfully.

"That's why they can't know my secret," Father Agnello struggled for air to his lungs.

"Your secret?" Alexa couldn't understand Father's statement or his great concern. How any possible secret of his could interpolate with the fact that the witches tried to invoke a soul for the specific body of a child. Cordelia's child to Letitia's son. Or do any di Borghesi would do in this case, since Letitia was a di Borghesi? 

Unless…

Alexa looked more closely at the man in the narrow bed. And she remembered the first impression she had seen on the night of the interrogation.

"Wait a moment. You couldn't be ... An older brother to Prince Magnus, could you?"

Agnello neither nodded nor denied, just kept looking at the Prince's face with his fascinating blue eyes.

"Oh!" Lex would like to say that this wasn't possible, but why would it not be? Alexa remembered Magnus saying, however, that Father Agnello was his cousin, the son of one of Princess Letitia's brothers. 

Father Agnello wasn't even that old, and Alexa struggled to remember Princess Letitia's year of birth, which she had seen in Holstein's annals.

The same day she discovered that Prince Magnus was born with beautiful blue eyes.

Discovering that Blue Eyes was Prince Magnus' older brother, and on his mother's side, was quite a twist. He lived at Holstein's court as a cousin, and the confessor to the princes von Wuttenfal.

What was the reason that made him live like this, among all the other options Agnello di Borghesi had, like the brilliant man, born in a famous house, he was? Alexa had a lot of questions, but she started by exposing one of the main ones,

"Well, Princess Letitia would have to be very young when she gave birth to a son…"

"Yes, she was not even fifteen," asking for help with a gesture to recline, Father Agnello said with difficulty,

"Naturally she was single at that time. I have little information on how it happened. Just guesses. These things I only came to know very late. Too late," he repeated as if to himself. "When I was born they took me inland and away from her. And years later, my father, that is, my Uncle Cosimo, adopted me as if I were his. Because of my condition, the only possible destination was to become a priest."

"So it doesn't hinder Cosimo's succession line?" was Alexa's first logical reasoning. An 'illegitimate' son, and the firstborn, would be a hindrance to the bride's family interests, in most succession lines. Making the bastard a priest was very common.

"That's also why, I think," even though he was sick, Blue Eyes smirked at the thought. "But also because, according to my father, the circ.u.mstances of my birth required me to be dedicated to God. And on learning this, I learned a little of the history of Letitia and the Cult of Diana," he coughed a little, then resumed, "According to my father Cosimo told me before he died, when our family brought some scholars from Greece1, my mother had contact with one of them, Zenon. This man would have been responsible for corrupting Letitia and introducing her to witchcraft. When our family discovered this, Zenon was killed. Although my grandfather believed that everything was resolved, Letitia was pregnant. According to my father, she said that the child wasn't Zenon's, but 'a god's'. And that I had been conceived in a ritual. She also believed that herself was given a 'divine mission'. "

Alexa shivered.

"You must ask yourself how the di Borghesi deceived the von Wuttenfal into marrying her. But it wasn't like that," the priest looked at her closely.

"So how was it?"

"Letitia gave birth to me, and due to my grandmother's compassion, I wasn't immediately thrown to the dogs or placed in the foundling wheel1. And they immediately sent Letitia to a convent. She probably convinced everyone that she was completely sorry, and maybe even that she had forgotten many things before she could go home. It was at that time that the then Prince Kurt arrived in Florence ..." 

The effort of speaking so much had exhausted the priest, and he asked Lex to call one monk. 

Lex watched Blue Eyes receive the care, feeling restless and physically ill at hearing that scary story. 

The boy had grown up to be someone who had completely overcome his unfortunate birth. Alexa hasn't known since when Agnello used that story as an oil that fueled the flame of his personal war against Letitia, and all the harm she had caused.

But Father Agnello was right. If they found out he was Letitia's son, instead of an enemy he would become the target.

It was a secret that should be kept from common ears. 

Knowing that behind Cordelia's and Magnus' engagement there could be a plan by the followers of the Cult of Diana to summon their priestess back was unexpected. And it shed light on many things.

Now, Lex was pondering what to tell Gutard. And whether to tell him, of course.

And again, doubt came back to her mind. How innocent was Cordelia in all of this? Baby hatch or baby box is a place where people (typically mothers) can bring babies, usually newborn, and abandon them anonymously in a safe place to be found and cared for. The device was also known as a foundling wheel.The migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and acc.u.mulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West.