by Eric Flint
“Oh. I had heard Lodovico…my grandfather-in-law Lodovico Montescue, mention the Montescue candlesticks.”
“Given your upbringing, young Valdosta, you are probably unaware of the fact that the cloth of gold used for Martinmas was a gift from Alberto Valdosta. There is quite a list of other items too.”
“Well…those could be sold without offending me and I don’t see Benito caring a fig either, Your Holiness.” Was this why he’d been asked to come?
“Thank you. Of course people are used to seeing some of them, and this is Venice, so one does not wish to start nasty rumors. They breed quite well enough without help. Shall we sit?” He gestured toward the settles. Marco sat in one of them and the patriarch sat in another.
“Ulrico has gone to fetch the gentleman that I asked for you to come to see me,” continued the patriarch, “so that you could meet. He has been sent from Rome, by the Grand Metropolitan.”
“I, er, do think matters of state should be dealt with by the Doge. I am only his ward.”
“I believe this to be a matter above the state,” said the patriarch, with a mischievous smile more fitting for a boy of four than for a man of almost ninety. “Marco Valdosta, I have invited you here as the rising physician of Venice, not as the ward of the Doge. I have had a fairly substantial number of reports from the poorer parishes about your work. That’s more important to me, but we won’t tell Petro Dorma that.”
Marco’s surprise and embarrassment was interrupted by the entry of a tall man in clerical clothes with a rather long bony nose. “Ah,” said the patriarch. “Father Thomas. Father Thomas Lüber of Baden, this is the young gentleman I wished you to meet. Marco Valdosta, the ward of our Doge, and also a man of some repute of medicine and healing.”
The newcomer bowed. “I have heard a great deal about you, Signor Valdosta. Eneko Lopez wrote to me of you.” His Frankish had a decidedly Mainz accent, and he plainly suffered from some shortness of breath. He breathed audibly at each sentence.
Marco rose, bowed and made haste to shake the hand of man. “I also know a great deal about you, Father. And about your work with Professoro Ghini. I have an interest in the plants described in De Materia Medica myself. I’ve been trying to combine them with the system of quantifying dosage for treatment suggested by Dacetto, and Von Hohenheim’s Lexicon of Toxicology. He took the approach that it was dosage that made some substances toxic, and noted that bigger persons took larger doses to kill, and I was reasoning that the dose had to be proportional to the weight of the patient.”
The priest looked thoughtful. “Yes. A different approach. And one which has merit! I have been following up on an idea I had, oddly based on apples. I grew two plants, from seed from the same fruit. One at the new botanical garden Signor Cosimo has ordered cultivated in Pisa, and the other in Montfalcone, where my brother-in-law has a small estate. The fruit look alike, but the taste is quite different. Those from Montfalcone, barely three leagues away from the Botanica, are tart, delightful apples, but those in the Botanica are watery and of poor flavor, and much larger. I had wondered if it was perhaps a virtue of the earth of a particular place. That would go a long way to explaining why the curative properties of some of the plants Pedanius Dioscorides recorded, those that we have found and cultivated, are in some cases not effective.”
“Well, I have been told that the same grapes produce different wine from different places,” said Marco. “Those growing on the clay in the valley floor are quite different to those on the granite slope facing north, and different again on those that face south. But—please have a seat.”
Marco sat back down on his settle and motioned for Father Thomas to join him. Once he’d done so, they resumed their conversation.
“Precisely!” said Father Thomas. “And that is an easier example for most to grasp than my apples. Not all of the same plants produce food alike, thus why would they produce medicines of equal value?”
“I can see I have brought together two kindred spirits,” said the patriarch. “But before the two of you become entirely absorbed in the academia that interests you, let me remind you of the matter of business that you are here about, Father Thomas.”
The priest’s face fell. “Yes. It is a grim business, Signor Valdosta. You know that the Patriarchy in Rome keeps a group of clerics whose work it is to magically scry the future, to try to divine where evil will strike next and so help to prepare our defenses. Eneko Lopez was senior among those practicing this form of sacred magic, and that was one of the reasons that the Grand Metropolitan was so reluctant to grant him leave to form his new monastic order. I am not a man of any knowledge of magic, myself, but I believe he was among the most skilled at this field of magic, and is sorely missed. But I digress, a bad habit of mine. They have identified a new threat.”
“Not to Venice again?” Marco could not see how this could not be a matter of state.
“No, or at least not immediately. But the symbol which has been repeatedly oracularly derived is one that should be familiar to Venice, and has endangered her in the past: the crowned devouring serpent.” He moved his forefinger through the air, as if drawing the image of the serpent.
“Milan. I still don’t see why the Doge…”
“He will be informed. But what they have foreseen is not a war. Or not just a war. It is the reason I have been sent here, and the reason that Patriarch Michael sent for you first, not Doge Petro Dorma. Disease is what is foreseen. And not just any disease, but a disease that has not affected Europe for centuries, but devastated the cities and countryside like no war could.”
“Plague.” The word itself carried terrible fear.
“Yes. If we are correct in our foretelling, somehow this is the Justinian Plague reborn. Visions of rats, too, have been described by the seers; rats, a strange monstrous face, dead cities, and the countryside laid waste. And famine and war following in its wake. Millions dead, men, women and children. That is why I have been sent here, to Venice. That is why trusted messengers have been sent north to the Holy Roman Emperor in Mainz. That is why men are being prepared for action, and called to readiness. It will need hard, effective and fast action.”
“What can be done? There is no certain cure for the plague. Some live, many die. Most die, if the plague is virulent enough.”
“We will be working on whatever treatment we can, Signor Valdosta.” He ran fingers through his closely cropped hair. In that moment, he looked both tired and ridden with anxiety. “I will confer with you, and others at the academia. We need to prevent panic as much as anything else. But the disease must be contained. And the problem, as we foresee it, will begin in the Duchy of Milan, with whom the patriarch of Rome has poor relationships. These have not been bettered by the train of events with Carlo Sforza taking control of the duchy and its territories. And we know, from what remains of the historical record, that isolation and quarantine were all that was sure as a treatment.”
He paused. “It is known that you had a friendship with Caviliero Francisco Turner, who is the personal physician to Carlo Sforza.”
“Yes, I did—and, hopefully, still do. Francisco is the very man I would pick to head a fight against the plague.”
“Unfortunately, politics would get in the way of that idea. The states of Parma, Rimini and Ferrara are vehemently opposed to any form of cooperation with Carlo Sforza. I wish we could rise above that for such a dire situation. But it is not so. I had hoped, through a neutral, or at least not so violently opposed party, and personal contacts to, well, make them aware. To get them to make such preparations as they can, to contain and quarantine.” He grimaced. “Military force will be needed. And people fleeing in panic will spread the disease. Fear and war will merely make it worse and spread it wider.”
“I see. So, what you are asking is that I send warning to Francisco, and through him to Carlo Sforza.”
The priest nodded. “Yes. We would thus set up a route of communication that would not be open to us otherwise.”
> Marco sighed. “I don’t know what my word means to Francisco. He is a clever man, and, I think, an honorable one. But he is not an easy man to read, and he is intensely loyal to Carlo Sforza. That said, I am willing to try at least.”
“Thank you,” said Father Thomas.
Chapter 4
The Border Marches
Count Mindaug had discovered in his few days of rough traveling that having been born with many servants to wait on your needs, even a master magician could struggle. Simple tasks like hitching horses to the wagon—an unobtrusive choice for travel, perhaps, but very slow—were more difficult than he’d realized. The runaways Tamas and Emma had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, and might still have to die, but they had eased his passage somewhat. His two servants had, as he guessed, been lovers: she was a pretty peasant girl who had caught the eye of the local lord, and he, amusingly enough, was a bastard child of the same lord, a fact to which he’d owed his elevation to the important—in a minor village—position of miller. It meant he had some skill with things rudely mechanical, which could indeed prove useful.
The problem, of course, was a passage to where? He had thought about various possibilities—Vinland, Alexandria, one of the remote Iberian states. The issue was that physical distances were not the same in the netherworlds, where Chernobog held such power.
The more he thought about it, the more Count Mindaug realized he would have to go either to the Holy Roman Empire or to one of its vassal states. The problem with that, of course, was that their rulers would kill him as surely as Grand Duke Jagiellon, for his role in working with the grand duke and for his aiding of both King Emeric and Elizabeth Bartholdy. He would have to keep his true identity secret. That would be easy enough in a physical sense, but difficult in a magical one. He could protect himself reasonably well, both magically and in combat (as a noble, little as he’d enjoyed it, he had had some training with the sword, main gauche and lance). But against armies and forces of magic such as the Empire or, indeed, the grand duke could muster, he could not stand. At least, not against both at once. He wanted a secure position, where he would be protected, physically, and he could prepare for a quiet departure again, if need be. It was a situation he had realized he would have to live with, or he would not remain living for long.
He would avoid Pressburg and head northwest, and cross the black water of the March River, he decided. The far bank was the territory controlled by the Knights of the Holy Trinity, but it was formally part of the Holy Roman Empire. And then he would be going south, to Italy and the sun, and also various small states and principalities. A place where he could possibly find protectors, and return to his art.
In this, he found his awed new servants invaluable. For the first time in his life, the count had servants who did not fear him, but instead felt they owed him their lives, and it seemed were very conscious of that debt. They were both awkwardly eager to please. It was something of a revelation to him: their desire to repay him made them more industrious and more ingenious than fear or money had made his previous lackeys. There had been some wary jealousy on the boy’s part that Mindaug might try to exercise droit du seigneur. Mindaug had very little interest in women, or men, for that matter. He had had his pick and fill as a young and powerful noble. He had, in the course of his researches, encountered more and varied sexual practices than most people. He’d realized what a lever they could be, and had taken certain steps to prevent himself being thus entrapped.
He hadn’t realized that it would also make him totally uninterested.
To his servants, however, with their small knowledge of sex and power, that indifference obviously made him seem even more benign. They traveled steadily, with not more than minor brushes with authority, which he was easily able to dismiss with a touch of arrogance, and a little money. Ahead lay the March River, and the border of the Kingdom of Hungary. It looked a very similar country on the other side of that river: meandering streams and lush vegetation. The count, however, knew appearances could be deceptive, and for him, the other side of the border was much safer from his old master.
Now he just had to cross that border. That sounded simple enough, and would be if he used his magical skill. Only that would most likely call unwanted attention to himself. It really was very inconvenient.
The trouble was, the eastern Marches were patroled by the Knights of the Holy Trinity. Long ago, Emperor Magnus had given them lands there, as a simple way of protecting his border with minimal expense. It had not been a dangerous border for many years, but the abbeys built back then were old and large. They served as a place of rest, recovery and recuperation for Knights back from more dangerous fronts. That meant that there would be magic workers and doughty warriors here, who would not be in these relatively peaceful parts otherwise.
The answer, of course, was money. Not as bribes, which he gathered might just be counterproductive—a most odd and unhealthy situation as far as he was concerned—but as a distraction. Most people seemed to find it so. Elizabeth Bartholdy had had an ample and generous supply of money, a side effect of the bargain she’d made. The devil provided generously, but did extract interest. From his researching, Count Mindaug had decided that adding interest to the bill…was probably foolish. But then, he’d never rated her intelligence that highly. She’d thought herself too clever, too powerful, and ended up wrong.
They had stopped and camped some distance from the peat-stained water of the river, near enough to see the spire of the church and the tip of the watchtower’s roof at Marchegg, but not close enough to be observed. His researches had indicated that the narrow bridge that had been built there had helped the town to grow a little. But it was still little more than an outlying fortress for the Knights, who permitted, but watched, the trade that was allowed across it. It went no further than the walled town, and the gates out of that required a permit chit. Well, once in…he could get out.
Perhaps some vague strand of that long-forgotten thing, guilt, had plucked at Kazimierz Mindaug’s mind. He had bought good fat Kenyersalonna bacon and a string of small onions in the last town, and Emma had had Tamas carefully trim hazel twigs into skewers, and she’d cut squares off the bacon side, and slashed it carefully, and then stabbed the bacon onto the skewers, and then half an onion. They carefully toasted the rough rye bread and grilled the bacon, holding the skewers down at an angle so that the fat dribbled into the onion, and then carefully brought their master a wooden platter with the best pieces, and the toasted bread, and strong ewe’s cheese.
It smelled better than most of the feasts he’d had in Lithuania, or in Elizabeth’s castles and palaces, or in the retinue of King Emeric. Tasted better, too.
Here.” He handed them a pottery jar and a bottle he’d also bought in the village. “We leave the Kingdom of Hungary tomorrow, and it may be a while before you taste anything from your homeland again. Enjoy them.”
The peasant girl looked at the two gifts warily. He’d gathered that even bacon was a rare treat. Meat had been a sparse thing in her life, cooked with grain and pulses, and cabbage to make it stretch, and the bacon and bread a princely meal. “What are they, master?”
“Honey wine and some cherries in brandy.”
She curtseyed, peasant fashion. “Oh, thank you, master. I have never had those. Have you, Tamas?”
Tamas had come from the fire, so he opened the bottle and smelled it. “Here, Emma. Smell the spices! I was given some of the honey wine, once.”
The count realized that the spices he took as a normal part of fare, townsfolk took as special treats, and to the peasants, depending on their poverty, they would be far more rare. Brandy, too, was beyond their means. They were as excited as small children—something else the count had had little to do with—tasting it cautiously, sampling one cherry between the two of them, and conscientiously offering him some of their treasure. That had surprised him so much that he had almost laughed, not something he had done for a long time.
“No. Enjoy. It
is not from my homeland or unusual for me.” How easy it would be to poison them had the need to do so arisen.
“May we keep them in the wagon, master?” she asked, carefully closing the bottle and clay jar.
“But they are for you to enjoy. To eat. To drink.”
“Oh, but they are too good to have all at once!” she answered, shocked.
And not all his reassurance could persuade her otherwise. Well, if these were treasures, then tomorrow’s plan would work well.
A goose woman, with a flock of six geese coming along the track as they broke their fast, provided the portal.
“Hola, old woman. Where are you going with those?” asked the count, slightly warily, because as a young boy he had discovered that geese are no respecters of rank.
“Ah, master, I’m off to sell them to the foreigners. Across the river. They’ll give me a better price than I can get here.”
For a brief moment, the count considered killing her and taking the geese. But…money would be easier.
“How much for your fine geese?” he asked.
“These geese! Why, your lordship, they’re worth a silver penny each, but to save me driving them, I’d sell the six for four copper pence each.”
“Why you cheating old hag!” screeched Emma, taking a menacing couple of steps toward the old woman who, for her part, flinched back the same distance. “They’re not worth two copper pennies. Look at them. Scrawny, they are!”
