The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  I had been found. Celava’s medal was hanging between my breasts. I took it off and hung it from a jut of rock beside the trickle of water. The saint had heard my prayers. She had found me; I was here.

  Above me and a little way around the curve of the mountain there was another outcropping of rock that stuck out beyond the trees. I climbed up to it and looked out across the deep, wooded valley below me to where my village basked on its sunny crag. It had been the topography of my dreams for so long that for a moment it seemed less real than the place I visited almost every night. But then I saw the campanile of the church; the tall, narrow tower of the Palazzo Ellebori; and there, the bigger, square tower of the Rocca. I reached out into the air and held the tip of a finger so that it seemed to rest on the tiny keep, rippling in the warm air.

  After that, there seemed to be no need to hurry any more. I made myself a rough hut out of branches, a soldier’s bivouac. My supplies would last me at least a week. There were springs all around and enough grass for Sultan, whose ankle was a little swollen and who seemed perfectly happy to do nothing. Every morning I went down to Celava’s spring to pray and bathe in the icy water. Sometimes I found other footprints in the soft earth beside the stone basin: others came here, but they didn’t stay long. I never saw any other sign of them. It had been a more important place, surely, when I was young. I couldn’t really remember, though. Perhaps it had only been the old folk who had come up here. I guessed, with a pang of sadness, that most of them would be dead now.

  After I had bathed, I would climb up to my overlook and sit, staring across at Pietrodoro. I should have been planning, but somehow, I was content just to rest there, watching the kites, the morning mists roll down the mountains on the far side of the valley and the shadow of Amiata move across the hills and fields far below, as if the world was a vast sundial and the mountain its gnomon. There would be plenty of time to do what needed to be done. One day I saw a golden eagle being mobbed by ravens, which it barely seemed to notice as it wheeled above me on its great fingered wings. Ormani ravens, three of them. They should be flying above a field of blood, I thought. One day soon, they would be. Then the eagle tilted its wings and rose effortlessly through the air, a hundred, a thousand feet, and the ravens dived away, tumbling and croaking with joy, towards the shining carpet of leaves.

  In the afternoons I would patrol the forest, scouting paths and trails, picking early mushrooms, keeping watch for other people. There were none. One morning, when I rose, I went further into the forest and set some rabbit snares made from the cord I’d bought down in the valley. By the time I climbed up to my overlook it was mid-morning. The three ravens were black dots in the sky over the crag, circling a pillar of black smoke that was rising, thick, greasy and as straight as a bowstring, from the walls of Pietrodoro.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I ran back to my camp, threw on my doublet, buttoned it tight across my breasts and loaded my pistol. I heaved the saddle up onto Sultan’s back, fumbling with the girth and harness while he whinnied nervously. Buckling on my sword belt, I stuck the pistol through it crossways, grabbed Sultan’s reins and all but dragged him up the through the trees until we reached the charcoal burners’ path. Mounting, I urged him into a canter. He was bored and needed no encouragement. His hooves seemed terrifyingly loud to me after my days of silence. Once a family of snipe burst from cover and clattered past us, making Sultan shy and almost throw me.

  A mile down the path I came to a place where another track appeared through the trees below us. I had found it on one of my patrols. I had to lead Sultan down a dangerous slope, but once we were on the track, which had been used not too long ago and was free from dead wood and brambles, I gave the horse his head. Only then, when we were hurtling along the uneven track, kicking up stones and dust, and sending flocks of birds screeching out of the bushes, did I ask myself what I was doing.

  I had come back to Amiata to kill Augusto Ellebori. That was the whole of my plan, and all of my intention. I hadn’t thought how I was going to do it, but I had doubted that it would be very difficult. At some point, when the time seemed right, I would go down the mountain, find a place from where I could keep an eye on the comings and goings from the village, and when Augusto came out – which he would do, sooner or later – I would kill him. What would happen after that concerned me even less. Perhaps I would die with him. If I survived, I supposed I would ride away from Pietrodoro and keep riding until I found a war in which I could lose myself. I wouldn’t be able to go back to the sbirri, and fighting was the only other life I knew. Then again, I had never forgotten the Convent of Izvor. If the Turks hadn’t overrun it; if the sisters were still leading their gentle, timeless life there …

  But everything had gone wrong. The smoke, which was now rising from much closer to hand, was the smoke of battle. I knew it as well as I knew anything. I had waited too long in the forest. That was no accidental fire: war had come to Pietrodoro, and someone else had brought it. I cursed as I ducked under a branch and saw the proper road just below me, the road which connected the village to the outside world. Someone had come for the Ellebori. What if it was Duke Francesco’s soldiers? The thought that Augusto might be arrested, that he might escape me that way, was maddening. It could just as well be another bandit company, I reasoned. Yes, that seemed most likely. Don Francesco wouldn’t bother with Pietrodoro. He had his porcelain and his alchemy to keep him amused. This was likely some local dispute, I decided. Maybe I could drive them off. And then what? Save Augusto Ellebori so that I could kill him myself? It was absurd. And yet I kept riding.

  In what seemed like no time at all, I was clattering around the last bend in the road that twisted back and forth across the steep slope of Pietrodoro’s mountain spur. I came out of the chestnut forest, and there in front of me was a long saddle of land sloping gently away to left and right in stone-walled terraces. The road ran along the ridge line between old holm oaks and cypress trees towards a fortified gateway set into an ancient wall the colour of burnt sugar. Caper plants grew in thick festoons from cracks in the masonry and cascaded down from the battlements. Beyond the walls, narrow towers rose, closely packed together. It was all achingly familiar. The contorted olive trees that stood in lines across the terraces: some of them had had names, like people. Surely the oaks had been smaller. And then I saw what was happening.

  A company of cavalry was lined up where the road left the body of the mountain. I counted twenty men. A smaller group of men on foot were rushing to and fro in front of the gateway. It was the gate that was burning, and the two watchtowers on either side of it. I guessed that the attackers had doused the gate with pitch, piled brushwood against it and set it alight. They had cut down one of the old trees and were lashing ropes to the trunk, getting ready to use it as a battering ram. Every so often a rattle of arquebus fire sounded from the walls, but the attackers didn’t seem very worried. As I got closer I saw that one of the cavalrymen was carrying a flag. It was white, divided horizontally by a yellow band. Below, oblique red lines. Above, a single red rose. Orsini of Pitigliano.

  I could have reined Sultan in. I could have wrenched his head around and fled back down the road, or lost myself again in the silence of Amiata. Instead I kept on, at full gallop, until the nearest horseman saw me. They were mercenaries, of course. I could tell by their gear, and by their discipline. For one queasy moment I thought I recognised one of them, but they were all strangers. I raised my hand as I brought Sultan to a prancing, twirling halt.

  ‘I’m in time, then!’ I said.

  ‘And who might you be?’ said one of the men. He was wearing half-armour. His morion helmet was extravagantly plumed, and his face, in the shadow of its peak, was tanned and bearded. A southerner, I guessed. Second son of a Neapolitan noble family, like half the mercenary officers I’d ever known. His troop were dressed for a fight, not a parade: doublets of defence, cuirasses, mail shirts, morion helmets or steel caps.

  ‘Amerigo di … Capa
cci,’ I said, my parents’ names landing on my tongue from nowhere, or perhaps from the smoke, which was so familiar, rising above the ancient walls. I could just see the tower of the Rocca through the roiling black cloud. It seemed to have been rebuilt, but streaks of black still stained the walls.

  ‘Don’t know you,’ said the man curtly. His hand was on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘I’ve come on behalf of Signor Ruspi of Florence,’ I said. ‘To make sure that this endeavour is accomplished to the satisfaction of all parties.’

  ‘Ruspi?’

  ‘From the Signoria. Perhaps one isn’t supposed to say that but …’ I grinned and shrugged, reached into the purse on my belt and pulled out the Grand Duke’s seal, my badge of office, and held it out to him. He took it, squinted and handed it back. He’d plainly never had dealings with the sbirri.

  ‘You’re in time,’ he said, far more warmly. ‘But only just.’

  ‘What do you intend?’ I was doing my best to keep my voice level. I knew the harshness kept most of the emotion out of it at the best of times, but the strangeness of the moment was overwhelming.

  The man shrugged. ‘We’ll be through that gate any moment now. Then, I’d say it’s all up for anyone inside who keeps hold of a weapon. I’m not interested in the village. My orders are to rid these lands of the Ellebori.’

  ‘So he’s in there, then? Augusto Ellebori?’

  ‘So we believe. The filthy beast who murdered Count Alessandro’s sister.’ He grinned, revealing gapped teeth and mottled gums. ‘I’m to bring back his head.’

  I swallowed and rubbed my neck. ‘I should like to be in at the kill,’ I said, my voice sounding like fingers dragged through broken glass. ‘To assure them’ – I patted the seal in its pouch – ‘that all is well done.’

  The man eyed my sword, and the pistol in my belt. ‘You look as if you can handle yourself, Messer Capacci. But try not to get in the way. My name is de Tranzano.’ He held out a gauntlet-sheathed hand, and I shook it. ‘This gentleman has come all the way from Florence to keep an eye on things,’ he called to his men. ‘Try not to kill him by accident.’ He winked at me, and I nodded. Another shot cracked and echoed, and some of the men jeered.

  ‘Are there many men inside?’ I asked.

  ‘You aren’t from these parts,’ said another man. ‘Or else you’d know that the plague went through here a few years ago and killed almost everyone. Pietrodoro’s hardly a village any more: hardly even a fortress. We couldn’t have done this in the old days. Old Lodovigo Ellebori wouldn’t have let us get halfway up this mountain.’

  ‘And Augusto?’

  ‘Everyone fears him, and everyone hates him. He’s nothing but a petty tyrant. Even his own people want to see the back of him. This little carnival is just for show. Why do you think they’ve barely wounded any of us?’

  ‘So you’re from Pietrodoro?’

  ‘From this very place.’ He spat.

  ‘I suppose the Ellebori live in the Rocca now,’ I said.

  ‘The Rocca? Christ, no! After they butchered the Ormanis – our other noble family, signore – Lodovigo rebuilt it, but people said it was haunted. It’s a priory now. I suppose monks don’t care about ghosts.’

  ‘Do you remember the Ormanis, then?’

  ‘No. I was too young. I remember the fire though. And the screaming.’ He shook his head. ‘Left as soon as I could. I wanted to see the world.’

  ‘You can see the world from up here,’ I said, and he gave me an odd look, but just then someone whistled. A cloud of sparks was rising up from the gateway. There was a quick rattle of arquebus fire, and then the walls went silent.

  ‘Here we go, boys!’ de Tranzano called. He trotted to the head of the company and turned to face them. ‘Kill anyone who resists, but if they surrender, leave them be. Don’t touch the women or the children. If anyone comes out of the Ellebori house, kill them. Kill everyone inside – everyone, do you understand?’

  De Tranzano wheeled around again and drew his sword. His horse plunged forward into a slow canter. As the troop moved off behind him I managed to work Sultan around them until I was riding just behind him. We clattered down the old, worn pavement, along which I’d once raced my friends. I was strangely numb. The gateway was just ahead, smoke pouring from the towers, the opening itself a blackened mouth with a tongue of burning embers, with sunlight in its throat.

  In my memory, the gate had opened straight onto the piazza, but instead there was a narrow street between houses, a slot with a gutter running down the middle, old arched doorways. A place I only remembered from dreams. A woman was screaming from an upper window. As we rode past, a man ran out of one of the doorways, struggling to cock his arquebus. The trooper next to me leant down casually, put his pistol to the man’s head and fired. The body fell and rolled under the hooves of the company behind us. We burst out into the piazza. Too soon, too soon. I wasn’t ready. How long had I been waiting? Could it be twenty years? I wasn’t prepared for the smallness of this place, the way the buildings rose around the worn flagstones that sunk gently towards the well in the centre, everything whitish-yellow, the colour of bone. It was an upturned skull cup, the bowl of a cranium. There was the church. There was the palace of the Ellebori. And there was the gate of the Rocca, with two white-robed monks peering around the pillars. The two buildings – tall tower and square, burnt tower … How could they be so close together? How could this begging bowl be the vast, bright arena of my childhood?

  Sultan’s hooves clacked and skidded on the smooth flagstones. The company was pressing through the entrance to the street, momentum carrying them pell-mell into the piazza. The noise was deafeningly sharp. I didn’t even notice the gunfire until one of the troopers, whose horse had just swerved to avoid the well head, doubled over in his saddle and fell sideways. Then I saw puffs of smoke coming from the windows of the Palazzo Ellebori. Another horse shrieked and went down. I looked around for de Tranzano, saw his absurd yellow and green plumes bobbing in front of the church. He was pointing to the doorway of the palazzo. Four men were swinging the cypress battering ram against the iron-strapped double doors and another had just fired his arquebus through one of the ground floor windows. I jumped down off Sultan and sent him running through the gate of the Rocca. An arquebus ball cracked against the lip of the well, showering me with shards of stone. Ducking, I ran between panicked horses, stopped and looked up. The barrel of an arquebus was poking out of an upper window; most of the other windows were shuttered. There weren’t many defenders after all. We’d just ridden into a crude, weak trap. De Tranzano was off his horse as well. His men were disciplined: they were already pulling their mounts behind the wall of the Rocca, returning fire with their pistols. There were two dead horses in the piazza and another was rolling in agony. The wounded man had crawled behind the well and seemed to be cursing rather than dying. I walked across to the palazzo. De Tranzano loped over to join me. The men with the tree trunk had already splintered the boards of the doors and the iron straps were bending.

  ‘You’re a cool fellow,’ de Tranzano said, with a certain amount of admiration. ‘But you’re very keen to get inside, aren’t you?’

  I shrugged and tugged the pistol from my belt, drew my dagger with my left hand. The men swung the tree again, and the two halves of the door split and buckled inwards, still held by a stout wooden bar. The muzzle of a gun jabbed through the gap. There was a flash and a bang, and one of the men lurched backwards, clutching his neck. Another man grabbed the rope handle and they swung again, and again. There was a screech of twisting metal, and the bar tore loose. The doors slammed inwards. I stepped into the opening, pistol levelled. A man was walking backwards, in the act of priming the lock of his arquebus. I sighted on his face and shot him under the left eye. There was a cheer from outside and the sound of running feet. I was still walking through the smoke from my pistol, trying to remember how the house was laid out, when I was shouldered aside by first one trooper, then another, fanning
out into the rooms off the hall. There was a shot, and another. An unarmed man in a bloodied shirt ran out from the corridor which, now I remembered, led to the kitchens. One of the troopers ran him through, and he crumpled. The stairs were in front of me. I’d hated to go up there, because Lodovigo would be lurking, or worse, Donna Benedetta, whose misery filled the air like the smell of dead flowers. I was sure Augusto was up there, though. I had my foot on the bottom step when someone grabbed my arm. It was de Tranzano.

  ‘No, you don’t, Signor Florence,’ he said coldly. ‘We’ll see to business. You’re just here to observe – isn’t that what you told me?’

  ‘Do you think I’ll want a slice of your prize money? Don’t worry, Capo. I assure you that’s the very last thing I care about.’

  ‘You care about something. I’m warning you: keep out of it.’

  De Tranzano shouted an order and started up the stairs, six or seven of his men stamping and clattering behind him. I followed, reloading my pistol as I went. I could hear boots stamping on the boards above me, swords clashing. An old man’s voice raised in prayer, suddenly cut off in the middle of a word. I wound the lock of the pistol and took the last stairs two at a time.

  ‘He’s here! He’s here!’

  Shouting from the back of the house. I saw de Tranzano’s plumes vanishing around a corner and ran after him. The body of a grey-haired man in the black robes of a priest lay across the narrow corridor, his cap askew over staring eyes. I jumped over him. Around the corner, a door led into a large, open room with a painted ceiling, the walls completely covered with Flemish tapestries. With a shock I recognised the one straight in front of me: Hercules wrestling with the Nemean Lion, which had once hung in the entrance hall of the Rocca – one of the things I had loved most, which I had pressed my face against countless times, imagining myself swallowed up by the dazzling forest of threads, sinking into that vivid, magical landscape. Tumbling in the embrace of the lion, the great beast as soft as the warp and weft of the cloth. For a brief moment, the figures were more real than what was happening in the room. There was noise, and motion, and a man’s sharp cry. I stepped back over whatever invisible line divides the past from the present, and saw a tall man with a sallow face and bristling mustachios standing behind an upturned table, a sword and a dagger in his hand. He was grinning, showing a row of big, stained teeth, and his eyes were thumbprints of black in the middle of wide white circles. A man, the soldier from Pietrodoro, was staggering away from him, his hand clamped around his right forearm, which was leaking blood. The room moved around me, or was I moving through it? The light from the window caught the shiny stump of a missing finger on the hand that gripped the sword.