The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  ‘This is the boy,’ Don Orazio said, patting me on the shoulder.

  ‘He’s a runt,’ said one of the others, a tall, thin man with one eyelid sewn shut, from under which a constant thread of tears ran that had burnt a permanent red line down his cheek. He didn’t sound unkind, though, just matter-of-fact.

  ‘And he would have fought you? You’re joking. He’s hardly a boy. Looks more like a girl.’ The man who spoke next was rather plump, with heavy, black-stubbled cheeks. His curly hair sprung out from under a beret of pinked and ruched crimson felt. He didn’t sound kind at all. My mouth went dry.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him, Gianbattista?’ Don Orazio folded his arms in what seemed to be one of his favourite poses.

  ‘You. Runt. You dared to draw a blade against Colonnello della Biassa?’ The man stepped towards me. His belly, caught behind the swell of a red doublet studded with gilded metal, almost bumped me in the chest. He was wearing a sword with a looping, German-style guard, and a large hand was resting on it, fingers slightly hairy and covered with gold rings set with stones of all different colours. I noticed all this as I breathed in his smell: sweat, horse, good civet perfume, unwashed arse. Repulsion caught me by the stomach and turned almost immediately to anger. I skipped backwards and stuck my chin out defiantly.

  ‘I’ll draw my blade on any man who sneaks up on me while my back is turned,’ I hissed.

  ‘You little … I’ll thrash you!’ The man began to draw his sword, but Don Orazio grabbed him by the wrist.

  ‘What did I tell you, Gianbattista?’ he said, chuckling. But Gianbattista was not amused.

  ‘The little faggot. I won’t be spoken to like that by a stray dog!’

  ‘Why don’t you fight him, then?’

  ‘Fight it? Don’t joke with me, Colonnello. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘You’re full of piss this morning, Gianbattista. Stone playing up again?’ the tall, one-eyed man asked innocently.

  ‘Fuck off, Daniele. I’m going to punish this runty little turd properly. And then, if it’s a girl like it looks to be, my lances can have it for a bit of fun.’

  I gritted my teeth. My knife was back in the wagon, or I would have drawn it. Then I saw that Don Orazio was watching me. It was a strange look. He should have been annoyed with me, or angry. I was nothing to him, just baggage, and now I’d riled one of his officers. But his eyes weren’t angry. Instead there was something else. He was watching me with an intense curiosity and with something that might possibly have been affection.

  ‘Would you fight Don Gianbattista, Onorio?’

  ‘If I had my knife,’ I spat. I wasn’t sure I actually meant it, but I certainly wasn’t backing down now, not in front of these stinking men. And after that thing the man had said, I couldn’t, for my life. Looks more like a girl. My lances can have it for a bit of fun. Damn them. Damn them all. If I was to be a boy now, I’d damn well be a boy.

  ‘He’s small, but he’s a gamecock, Gianbattista. Son of a fencing master. I shouldn’t chance it if I were you.’

  ‘Like fuck!’ the heavy man exploded, shaking off Don Orazio’s hand and swinging at me with his open palm. I dodged further back. Don Orazio took hold of him again, this time less gently.

  ‘You see, he’s called Onorio. Honour. He can shoot a bird through the heart at fifty paces and knows his fencing guards. He almost fought me. I’m curious to see what he knows. Seeing that you want to teach him a lesson, why don’t you two have a little fencing match? Sebastiano, find Onorio a sword. A proper one. Asdrubale will have something suitable. Onorio, go with him.’

  Sebastiano, the youngest man there, gave me a slit-eyed look and strode away towards the middle of the camp. I had no choice but to follow. Asdrubale turned out to be the company armourer. He glanced at me with the air of a man who has seen everything in the world more than once, bent his finger, and led me to another wagon piled with iron-bound chests of various sizes and lengths. Opening one to reveal more swords than I had ever seen in my life, he pulled out a bundle of them, held like a bouquet of strange metal flowers in both his large hands. He clicked his tongue a few times, laid the swords back in their box and took out two of them, which he held out to me hilt-first. I drew the first one. It was quite plain, with straight quillons and simple enarmes around the ricasso. It was short, made for a small man or a boy. There were German words on the blade but Italian on the enarmes. The other sword was the same length but a little more ornate: the quillons curved like a letter S, and the pommel was fluted like a Turk’s turban. I weighed them both, swapped them from hand to hand. The fancier sword felt lively and looked nicer, and I almost chose it, but at the last moment I slid it back into its sheath and took a guard with the other blade.

  ‘This one,’ I said. It was purposeful. It was balanced. It felt like something with which you could kill a man. Asdrubale nodded approvingly. ‘Well done, sonny. Lucky choice – that sword was made by Melchior Diefstetter in Munich. I want it straight back,’ he added to Sebastiano.

  ‘I want a left-hand dagger too,’ I said, surprising everyone, even myself. Asdrubale shook his head, opened another box, took out a short dagger with curved quillons in a battered black sheath. ‘There. Take it or leave it,’ he snapped.

  ‘I’d be praying now if I were you,’ Sebastiano said as we walked back. ‘You’ll be dead in a few minutes.’

  ‘I pray all the time,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t you?’ Which was true, as far as that went. Santa Celava was never far from my mind. I felt her protection around me like my mother’s cloak. I supposed that counted as prayer.

  Gianbattista had taken off his doublet to reveal a fine linen shirt stained ivory-yellow with old sweat. He was heavy, I noted, but not as fat as I’d thought. His arms were thick with muscle, though his belly bulged over the waist of his trunk hose. I hadn’t noticed his codpiece before: sculpted in red velvet and as big as a blackbird, it curved upwards between his legs. A boy with dirty hair and a fading black eye beneath a scabbed eyebrow was holding out an armoured glove, which Gianbattista pulled on over the ringed fingers of his left hand.

  ‘When I kill him – her – I don’t want any nonsense from you, Orazio,’ Gianbattista said loudly, obviously for my benefit. ‘You’ll mark it down that I executed it – we shall call the creature “it” when we record its demise – for insubordination. Agreed?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Don Orazio said. ‘Are you ready, Onorio?’

  I drew, and handed the scabbards to Sebastiano, who didn’t look at all pleased to suddenly be acting as my second. ‘Ready!’ I said, as cheerfully as if I had been about to fight Federigo with a wooden sword. I suppose I should have been scared out of my wits, but the truth is that I have never really been scared with a sword in my hand. My father had never taught me to fear; perhaps it was a lesson, a sensible one, that he had been saving. Instead he had taught me to attack, to make myself nerveless, to use my body as if it were a marionette controlled by the greatest swordsman I could imagine – who, of course, had been my father himself. I had a good sword, and when I closed my eyes I could see my father’s great book with its pictures. In any case, I didn’t think this Don Gianbattista actually intended to kill me. I was to be humiliated, punished and … It was what would happen afterwards that terrified me.

  So, with a surprisingly clear mind, I decided that, if I couldn’t win, I would certainly not lose. If I showed this swaggering ape of a man what I was made of, perhaps Don Orazio would intervene on my behalf. No matter that I had no real idea who or what Don Orazio was, whether he could be trusted. He seemed to have just thrown me to the lions. But then I remembered that look he had given me. It was too late now, anyway. A crowd was gathering around us. The other officers had backed away and seemed to be placing bets on what was going to happen next. Don Gianbattista had only a sword, and so I handed my dagger to Sebastiano, knowing my father would have approved. My opponent grinned and flexed his knees, looking more ape-like than ever, making his codpiece dance suggestive
ly. I saw Augusto standing before me in the courtyard of the Rocca and shuddered. Saying a prayer to Santa Celava, I raised my sword in salute. Don Gianbattista didn’t even bother to return the courtesy.

  He dropped into the low guard of coda lunga e stretta and I raised my sword high over my head, guardia alta, to show that I wasn’t afraid of him. Almost instantly he came at me, fast, springing on his bandy, muscled legs. He made a thrust, which I parried easily, and another, whirling his sword through the air as if he were practising in a garden surrounded by admiring ladies. He postured, and flashed his teeth at me, and I retreated, letting him prance, letting him puff himself up. He was teaching me a lesson, all right. I guessed he was planning to drive me backwards until I tripped, then beat me with the flat of his sword, or simply get inside my guard and knock me down, but he wasn’t really paying attention to me at all. I guessed that he liked to hurt children, if that boy’s eye was anything to go by. I probably wasn’t much more to him than a dog, as he had already said. But it was not hard to deflect the flurry of blows he was aiming at me, all from quite far away. If any of them had reached me, they would only have grazed my skin. It was all a show. I ducked under another pretty sideswipe and turned his blade so that he staggered a little, then darted back out of reach, just to let our audience know I was still fighting.

  And then it happened. Don Gianbattista caught his balance with a neat little hop and a skip. He took the coda lunga guard again and I dropped the point of my sword below my knee, larga. He feinted, I parried, and suddenly he lunged with the full force of his body behind his sword. I saw it coming with a split second to spare and managed to twist out of the way. He hit me with the inside of his arm and I fell, rolling out from under his feet and scrambling up just in time to see him take the guard of the unicorn and advance. If that lunge had hit, his sword would have impaled me through the chest right to the hilt. It had been a killing blow. Don Gianbattista had decided to make his lesson a final one. I thought all this, panting, blinking dust from my eyes, watching the man sidle towards me, sword poised like a viper’s fang. He wasn’t expecting to fence any more. He was just coming to finish me off.

  Energy flooded through me, sickeningly strong. I could hear the shuffling of feet behind me, and voices, laughter, though my blood was ringing in my ears. The sword felt huge in my hand, the grips slippery with my sweat. The man in front of me clenched his left hand in its ugly steel glove. Sunlight glinted off the gilding on the hilt of his sword. The red codpiece bobbed and reared between his legs. Through the singing of my blood I heard the chink of coins changing hands and, louder, the rasping of my own breath. I blinked, and there was my father’s finger, tapping a page. You’re not with me any more, Papà, I thought. I’m alone.

  And so I was. It was I alone who straightened my backbone and felt that it was supple and hard like steel. It was I alone who deflected the great thrust the man aimed at my breast and, following through, flicked the point of my sword across his forehead, so that a flap of skin, pouring blood, was suddenly hanging over one of his eyes. I alone faced his bellow of rage, ducked as he swung at me, felt his blade hiss through the tips of my hair. And alone I rammed the pommel of my sword into the man’s neck, felt his Adam’s apple break, and as he lurched backwards, tripped him with a twist of my leg so that he fell like a rotten tree onto the ground. Whether it was Onoria Ormani or Onorio Celavini who stabbed him under the breastbone, I don’t know. Which of us pushed until the steel was grinding into the earth beneath his body, and watched as bright red blood frothed out of his mouth and his legs kicked and went still? Time has rubbed away those things, and I no longer have the answer. But when I pulled out the German blade and stood up in that ring of men and women, who had now gone quite silent, I knew I had made my final transformation.

  ‘Does anybody else wish to call Master Onorio a girl? Or perhaps a runt? Or a dog? No? Then I say this affair of honour is settled.’ Don Orazio was looking down at the body of the man who, a minute or two ago, had been one of his captains. No one said a word. I could hear nothing but the chirr of cicadas and, faintly, someone on the pilgrim road singing in a lilting tongue I couldn’t understand. The colonnello was holding out a handkerchief to me. ‘Clean your sword, Onorio.’

  ‘I need to give it back to Messer Asdrubale,’ I said stupidly. My throat was beginning to close, and I felt dizzy.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that, do you?’ Don Orazio clicked his fingers and pointed to Sebastiano. ‘Caposquadra Morelli, bring the scabbard, please.’ He let his hand drop onto my shoulder, not gently, but as though he had forgotten I was not a full-grown man. ‘To the company I say this. I, Orazio della Biassa, take Onorio Celavini into my lance, to serve under me from this day on. The lance that was Gianbattista Tascha’s is now under the command of Caposquadra Roderigo di Bondi.’ At last there was a faint cheer. Some sort of enchantment seemed to have been broken. The circle began to dissolve as voices rose, some in laughter, some babbling with the release of tension, others angry. Don Orazio heard those. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and, hand still on my shoulder, began to lead me on. As we walked away, the crowd surged around the body. People sounded angry, I noticed, but nobody sounded particularly upset.

  A large tent was pitched at the far end of the camp. Don Orazio held back the flap for me to enter and came in after me. It was sparsely furnished: a simple cot with rumpled sheets; a folding table with gilded legs holding a pewter jug, a cup and the remains of a loaf of bread; a leather-backed scissors chair, into which Don Orazio lowered himself. I stood in front of him, holding the sword like a choirboy holding a candlestick.

  ‘Half of my men – oh, more than half – are out there at this very moment, saying how fortune deserted Gianbattista Tascha, how a boy was amazingly lucky and managed to kill this man who was far superior to him as a swordsman, a gentleman, all the rest of it.’ He picked up a half-moon of bread crust from the table and pulled off the end with his teeth. ‘But it wasn’t luck at all, was it? You fought very, very well. Beautifully, one might say. Pure Scuolo Bolognese. Your progressions: Manciolino or Marozzo?’

  ‘L’Arte della Spada,’ I said, seeing the beautiful title page of my father’s book in my mind’s eye. ‘But mainly Maestro Altoni from Florence. His book is called Monomachia.’

  ‘Aha. Of course! The Florentine style. And your father taught you? Taught you well. Very well indeed. Was there a single point where you were not in control?’

  ‘I didn’t think he wanted to kill me,’ I said. Hearing my voice break, Don Orazio poured something from the jug into the cup and handed it to me. I gulped at it eagerly. It was strong wine, and I almost choked.

  ‘Careful,’ Don Orazio said, amused. ‘To tell you the truth, I thought the opposite. It says all you need know of the man’s character that he would have killed a child in front of the whole company …’

  ‘And you would have let him, sir!’ I burst out.

  ‘Yes? Would he have killed you?’

  ‘He tried!’

  ‘To try is one thing. To succeed, quite another. I never thought you were in any danger, boy. I would not have allowed the thing to happen if I had.’

  I was about to answer that he had not merely allowed it, he had instigated it. Instead, another, far more disturbing thought struck me.

  ‘So …’ I took another sip of the wine. It burnt, but my voice came easier for it. ‘I thought you set Don Gianbattista on me. But really …’

  I was standing in front of a man, a powerful man who I barely knew and hardly trusted. I had just killed one of his officers. My life, at that moment, was worth less than nothing. For all I knew they were digging a grave for me between the spindly pines, next to the man I’d run through the lungs. I really had nothing left to lose, so I might as well find out whether I was right about what had just happened. I swallowed, painfully, and handed the cup back to Don Orazio.

  ‘But really, sir,’ I rasped, ‘I might almost think that you were setting me on him.’
>
  Don Orazio looked genuinely surprised. Then he grinned. It made him look much younger.

  ‘Might you, indeed? Are you a gambler, Onorio?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I said, shocked. Which I suppose was funny, considering what I’d just done.

  ‘No, no. You’re too young. How young are you, incidentally?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ I lied, though it didn’t seem like a very big lie compared to the others I’d told.

  ‘You’re small for your age. Anyway, I gamble a little. About as much as I need to. But I’m very, very good at it. I gambled on you beating Gianbattista Tascha. Oh yes, on you killing him. I’d have wagered my entire fortune on it without the slightest fear of losing.’

  ‘I … Why, sir?’

  ‘I’m a good judge of men. I’m also a student of the art of the sword. Don’t mistake me, Onorio. When you first took a guard against me, I knew you were destined to be a great swordsman. But you should also know that Tascha was rather a poor one.’

  ‘I meant, why did I have to kill him?’

  ‘Because he needed to die,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘Why?’ I repeated.

  ‘You expect me to tell you?’

  ‘You expected me to kill Messer Tascha.’

  ‘True.’ He stood up, paced over to the cot, straightened the sheets. ‘You’ve been feverish or asleep since I brought you in. Have you any idea who we are?’

  ‘You’re mercenaries,’ I said.

  ‘Ho ho. Yes, I suppose we couldn’t be anything else. This is my company. I’ve led it, in one version or another, for twenty – let me see – twenty-three years. I’m also the Marchese of Castelnuovo Valdarno, just outside Florence. When our new pope came to the throne last year, he saw fit to strip me of my title.’ Don Orazio folded his arms. ‘You’d have to know that for years my family have been allies of Spain, and Pope Paul hates Spain worse than he hates the Protestants. I expect your father will have told you about Pope Paul.’