“They are determined to force us to act so quickly?” He was looking at the Sicilian herald, but as he continued, it was apparent that his words were intended for all the assembled delegates. “My grandfather was asked why he refused a title when he had been offered one a second time, and it was his response that the arrogance of nobles is legendary, and when it was wed to power, it was the most potent drug ever developed and was deadly to reason. I had not, until now, realized how accurate he was. Manrico imagines himself the victor in this, but I tell you, and you may tell your master, that he has authorized his own destruction with this folly. The same is true of Rafaele. Tell them to remember this day when Tunisian pirates seize their ships and burn their villages.”
The men in the room heard him out in stillness, and for once there was no whispering, no significant, sidelong glances.
“You,” he went on, addressing the Milanese herald. “If you bring me more of this idiotic irresponsi—”
Orfeo Dardo bowed, and dared to interrupt. “No, Primàrio, I do not. I am sent with a message that was brought to Milano by a Polish emissary. Francesco Sforza, my master, read the message and sent it on to you as quickly as I could ride here. The Polish messenger wished to deliver the scroll, but my master reminded him that he did not have the access to you that I have.”
“What is in the scroll, Dardo?” Damiano snapped.
“This is an official document from the English mission to the Grand Duke of Muscovy. It informs the Italian state”—he chose his words discreetly, Lodovico thought—”that Ippolito Davanzati was killed by a sword wound during an evening of…debauchery. The man who killed him is being held by the Russian state for execution.” He faltered, staring toward the windows.
“Go on,” Damiano said, his words devoid of feeling.
“I am most truly sorry to tell you this, Primàrio. Believe me.” He held out the scroll, and as Damiano leaned down to take it, he said softly, “Leone de’ Medici killed Ippolito Davanzati.”
Damiano’s hand closed convulsively around the scroll and his face became a mask. “Leone de’ Medici killed Ippolito Davanzati,” he repeated clearly. “Dardo, tell your master that…that I appreciate his haste. There is no way that such an act could be excused or concealed. Assure your master that the proper…acknowledgments will be dispatched at once to Poland and Russia.” He started to rise, then stopped, remembering where he was. “I…”
Andrea Benci, who had been sitting at his writing table to the side of the delegation, got to his feet and came around the end of the table. “Delegates of la Federazione,” he said at his most urbane, “considering the grave nature of the documents presented by the heralds, perhaps it would be wise for you to declare recess, and for the Console to meet in the morning immediately after Mass, to consider the proper response to Napoli and Sicilia.”
“Sensible,” Ercole Barbabianca agreed and motioned his delegation to follow him from la Camera della Federazione. The Genovese contingent was the first to depart.
The men were uncharacteristically quiet as they left, most exchanging only a few, whispered words. Cesare d’Este approached Damiano’s place on the dais, and murmured something to il Primàrio that brought a grateful, tortured smile to his lips.
At last the room was empty. Lodovico rose and came across the floor, thinking that his soft-soled shoes made more noise than he would have thought possible. He stopped at the foot of the dais and looked up. “Damiano,” waited in silence some little time, “come. Let’s go home.” It was, he thought, like addressing an invalid or a lost child. The unblinking stare Damiano directed at the three scrolls on the table before him was a blind one.
“I will be in the secretarial offices, if il Primàrio should want me,” Andrea Benci said to Lodovico without attempting to speak to Damiano.
Lodovico was incensed at this treatment of his friend. “If you wish Damiano to know a thing, tell him yourself.” How much of this irate response came from his own dislike of Benci he did not know, and in this instance he was not willing to examine his conscience.
Andrea Benci looked affronted. “I did not wish to trouble him with such a minor matter.” He delivered his rebuke with the expression of one who has experienced the ultimate boorishness. “If you are not willing, however…”
“Damiano is present and hears you.” Lodovico turned away from Benci and refused to look at him again.
“Primàrio,” Benci said with a bored sigh, “I will be in my offices if you should need me.”
“Thank you,” Damiano murmured, and looked up from the scrolls.
Lodovico turned back just in time to see Andrea Benci favor Damiano with a slight, respectful bow. He felt himself fill with rage as if his vitals were swollen with it. What effrontery! What self-serving arrogance! He wished he had the courage to shout at Benci, but he could not–not now, while Damiano had the look of one with a relentless fever devouring him. He contented himself with a short, caustic laugh.
Andrea Benci glared at Lodovico, then trod across the room. At the door he turned, as if the matter had just occurred to him. “My festa this evening. Do you think I should cancel it?”
This question roused Damiano. He glanced once again at the scrolls, then slammed his palm on the table. “Per San Giorgio, no! Those scum in Napoli and Sicilia would boast of it for years. Have the festa, and be sure that all of the Console attends. I will not allow those disloyal knaves to garner any satisfaction from their rashness.”
As he bowed his acceptance of this order, Andrea Benci inquired, “And you, yourself? The matter with…your son…you may prefer not to join us.”
Damiano hesitated. “I will tell you later.” He was looking now at the third scroll.
“As you wish. I am confident that no one will expect you, as you may be sure that neither Napoli nor Sicilia will take credit for your absence.” Again he gave the slight, subservient bow and then withdrew, taking care to secure the great double doors behind him.
“So.” Damiano picked up the scroll from Milano, “Leone killed Ippolito Davanzati. Why? Or did he have a reason?” It was apparent that he did not expect answer. “Why so foolish, my son?” He tapped the scroll on the table but made no attempt to open it. “Lodovico,” he said in another voice, “what is the method of execution in Russia, do you know?”
“No, Damiano.” It was an effort for him to speak, and meeting the misery in those brown eyes was more than he could bear.
“Well, doubtless someone will.” He got to his feet walking like one who has been long abed.
“The scrolls, Damiano?” Lodovico pointed to the three lying on the table.
“Leave them. No one will touch them. They’re mere formalities, in any case.” He had come down from the dais. “I need…” He did not say what he needed, Lodovico was too wise to ask.
Margaret Roper heard the news in stunned silence. “Your son…your son killed one of the Florentine escort?” she demanded when Damiano had told her all of it.
“There seems to be no doubt of it.” He walked away from her, toward the nearest pedestal on which stood a Verocchio satyr with his grin, his potency and his pipes. “I have to tell the others, Margharita. They must know. It is perhaps just as well that you are leaving for Roma next week.” He was unable to smile, and after the first attempt, abandoned all pretense. “Lodovico, have the others assembled in the courtyard?”
“Yes, Damiano.” His eyes felt hot for want of tears, but he had told himself sternly that his grief would have to wait until later, when he and Alessandra were alone and he would not disgrace Damiano. He went to the study door and held it open.
But Damiano was not quite through with Margaret yet. “You will hear many rumors, and a few of them may be true, but I ask you to remember that I have never told you anything but the truth. Perhaps, when he returns, you will tell your father that for me, as well.” He had taken her hands in his. “Will you do that for a friend?”
“You will do that yourself, Damian,” she said.
“The trouble with Naples and Sicily won’t last,” Margaret called after him. “England has been plagued by Scotland and Ireland for centuries but we have all survived. This is more of the same.”
“Do you think so?” Damiano asked without turning, and he was out of the room before she could protest. He put his arm through Lodovico’s. “I could wish that just one of the Console were as faithful as that woman,” he remarked wistfully as they walked down the corridor. The walls were filled with paintings, and where there were no pictures, the wall itself was decorated with interlacing designs. “I’ve always liked that da Vinci,” he went on inconsequently. “It’s a pity he didn’t finish it, but then, he finished very little. Still, his starts are more splendid than most of the completed work of others.” He stopped a moment and looked back at the study door. “Did you notice? She did not ask me about her father. A fine woman, Margharita Roper.”
“The household is waiting,” Lodovico reminded him gently. “The longer they wait, the more alarmed they will become.”
Damiano nodded. “For a poet, you are an astute man, my friend.”
There was no way for Lodovico to answer this. He muttered a few, jumbled syllables and pulled his arm free from Damiano’s as they started down the short flight of narrow stairs that led to the expanse between the two wings of Palazzo Pitti.
“I think now that my grandfather was wise to prefer Palazzo Medici,” he said before he started out the door. “The old place is more like a fort than this is. We could lock the bar the gates and hold off half the city if we had to.” This was mentioned lightly, as if in jest, but Lodovico knew how little humor there was in Damiano’s words, and before he could frame a reply to this, Damiano had stepped out into the sunlight to face his waiting household.
“You will help no one if you do not eat,” Alessandra was scolding Lodovico as he sat at his writing table, several sheets of unfinished verse scattered around him. “You have obligations to Damiano. You accepted them, and you must honor them. For one thing, you must do your work. You are his poet, not his conscience. For another, if you are weak and snappish—and you get that way when you skip meals, Lodovico, you know you do—you cannot aid him as be must be aided now. You are indulging in pride and vanity, my husband, and these are sins.” She put the tray she was carrying down on an uncluttered corner of the table. “I expect you to eat this. There is pork and vegetables in savor sanguino, and some new bread.” For a moment her exasperated manner faltered and revealed the worry it masked.
Lodovico reached over and patted her hand. “You are a good wife to me, Alessandra. You’re a good woman. You must forgive me for my…” He stopped and searched inwardly for the word, but it eluded him. I will eat, I promise you.”
“See that you do,” was her kindly, gruff answer. She watched him until he cleared a place for the tray and moved it. Then she hurried toward the door.
As Lodovico picked at the meal, his thoughts wandered. He could not bring himself to remember the morning, and the terrible messages of the heralds. Instead, he tried to imagine what Virginio was doing, what lodging he had found, what he had seen in Paris, how he liked the Université. He gazed out the window at the hills, touched now with a burnished autumn bronze. The first few leaves were falling, spangling the ground like gold coins idly and munificently flung along the walkways of the garden. All of the roses were gone. In the orchards, Lodovico’s near-sighted eyes could barely make out the men on ladders who brought in the bounty of the trees. It had been a good year, and the harvest was abundant, and only those who feared an early rain predicted anything other than plenty. Lodovico realized with a start that Sir Thomas More might well have arrived in Muscovy by now, and thought that it would be a pleasure to read of that distant and fabled city.
On his plate the food had grown cold, though he hardly noticed it. Lodovico began to gather up the pages on the table into a neat pile. He tried not to look at what he had written, but now and again, a phrase or a few lines would catch his eye and he would stop to read them over, his critical eye searching for imperfections which he found all too often for his taste. Perhaps no one but himself would see the awkward phrases and infelicitous images; the work would need revision, and he thought back to the twelve years he had spent in revising Orlando Furioso. He could not feel stimulated by the prospect of another such dozen years, though he knew that once he had. Testily he put the pages aside, then broke off a bit of bread and put it to soak in the congealing sauce.
When the door opened he did not look up, thinking it was Alessandra coming to hector him once more. Guiltily he popped the chunk of bread into his mouth and began to chew vigorously.
“Lodovico,” Damiano said as he came into the room. “I need you to come with me. Wear your best clothes.” He himself was magnificently dressed in a long silken farsetto in the dark-red of mourning. There was a black mourning wreath on his brow and white mourning bands on his elaborately puffed and slashed sleeves. His Venetians were the same dark red and the slashing showed linings of white satin. On a gold collar he wore the badge of la Federazione–a knotted rope worked in plaits of gold and silver. Lodovico had never seen him wear the badge at any time other than full state functions.
“Where are we going?” Lodovico asked as he got to his feet.
“To Andrea Benci’s festa, of course.” He watched Lodovico closely and saw apprehension, quickly concealed, tighten his face. “Do not be concerned, my friend. I will not behave stupidly. I am on guard against such things now.”
“Very well,” Lodovico responded cautiously. “Will you tell me why you are going?”
Damiano gave him a swift, acute stare. “Because I don’t want to create any more doubts than now exist. If I stay away, it will only add fuel to the fires started by Napoli and Sicilia. I can’t let that happen.” He folded his hands and studied the elaborate rings that flashed on his fingers. “I have little in reserve now. I had thought that when Sir Thomas returned, there would be time and information enough to shore up the breaches in la Federazione. I hadn’t realized how far our enemies had come. Sir Thomas, if he left Muscovy tomorrow, would not be here in time to divert their intentions. So,” he said more quietly, “I made an honest man a spy for nothing.”
Lodovico recalled the troubled tone of Sir Thomas’ letters, and could not find the words to deny this.
“And my son—my damned child—has given the dissident members of la Federazione the lever they need to turn us back to the old ways of petty, belligerent states. When Sir Thomas returns, he may well find Austria and Spain picking our bones.” Damiano’s voice had grown louder again, and ragged. He breathed deeply. “I am going to the house of Andrea Benci for his festa, where perhaps I may learn something to save us. I must do this.” He dropped his hands to his side. “I am depending on you to help me.”
Lodovico pushed the tray aside and put a little iron figure of San Giorgio on the stacked pages. “I will need time to change,” he said.
As be bowed his two late-arriving guests into his banqueting hall, Andrea Benci said in an undervoice, “Primàrio, do you think this is wise? With what you have undergone today, might it not be better if you kept…”
Damiano stopped him. “I am dressed in mourning. You need not fear that I will forget myself.”
“I did not mean to imply that, Primàrio,” Benci assured him, and allowed Damiano and Lodovico to precede him through the tall double doors to the two huge rooms where the festa was being kept.
Music and conversation faltered as Damiano strode into the room, and in the middle of the floor a few of the dancers missed the figure of the bel riguardo in the peregrina. Taking advantage of this, Damiano strolled into the banqueting hall and gestured his greeting.
Immediately the activities were resumed, but at a quickened, fervid pace, as if all in attendance had been caught napping and were determined to m
ake amends.
Lodovico reached Damiano’s side as a group of young men came hurtling across the room. He recognized Tancredi Scoglio among them, and his lips tightened to a thin line. “Damiano…”
The back of Damiano’s hand touched his shoulder and Lodovico was silent. “Good evening,” he said to the young men.
“Primàrio,” one of them blurted out, his words not quite clear. “There is a rumor in the city. They say that Ippolito Davanzati is dead. They say that…” He realized then to whom he spoke and the rest was lost in mumbling.
“They say that my son Leone killed him,” Damiano finished for him, and only Lodovico sensed the iron control that kept his voice even. “That is what I have been told, and considering the source I have no reason to doubt it. As you see, I mourn my son. The message was three weeks old when it arrived and by now the execution must have been carried out.”
A pity about Ippolito,” Tancredi said boldly.
“A great pity,” Damiano agreed.
“And good riddance to…” Tancredi began, but one of the others hushed him.
“Per la Virgin; Scoglio, remember who it is,” one of them hissed, and Tancredi muttered a few words under his breath and crossed his arms in a manner at once defiant and sulky.
Lodovico looked about, seeking a means to extricate Damiano from this company, but everywhere he looked, he saw the same eager voracity, the same destructive hunger that shone in the faces of these young men. He tried to fold his arms but the huge padded sleeves of his giaquetta made this extremely difficult, and he was reduced to planting his hands on his hips, thinking that this bulky silhouette was a great nuisance, and wishing now that he had selected a more restrained fashion for his most formal clothes. He listened to the young men ask questions and waited for Damiano’s answers.
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