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not wake up, even when Michelotto shook his body. Michelotto immediately knew
something was wrong. Did the Pope drink too much? Was the Pope suffering from
alcohol poison? Or from some other form of poison?
Micheletto went to Lucrezia’s apartment and found a similar situation. The Negro
could not be found. Then Michelotto remembered what Julio said about the Negro
entering the Pope’s apartment during the night, and Michelotto became alarmed. For the
first time in his long years of service to the Pope he felt he had failed to protect him, and
by implication, he had failed the whole of Christendom. Michelotto immediately sent
for the Pope’s physicians. Then he mounted a massive search for the eunuch, beginning
within the vast architecture of the Vatican property. After much consultation, the doctors
concluded that the Pope and his daughter simply had too much of an especially strong
wine, and that both of them would wake up safe, sound, and sober.
Hours later, they both woke up only minutes of each other, with a slight headache
that soon cleared. The Pope thought he had a hangover. Michelotto gently broke the
news of Paulina’s heart attack and death to the Pope. Alexander was shocked. Almost
instinctively, he looked for the ivory goblet, and discovered that it was missing. That was
when he began to mourn Paulina’s death, refusing to eat or drink for days, seeing no one
but Cesare. He would have wine from no vessel but the missing ivory cup. So it was that
Alexander went through a period of not touching wine. Two days after the ivory cup went
missing, Cesare arranged for Lucrezia to move to a Vatican palace outside Rome.
Immediately, Cesare and Michelotto joined forces to widen and intensify the search
for Doudu. They wanted the Negro more dead than alive, word went out. The reward
for his capture was a treasure: ten thousand ducats of gold. Bounty hunters went to work
looking for Doudu, thinking it should not be difficult to find a wandering Negro in or