“Dona Maria,” Gianni began, in a voice signaling the onset of fatherly wisdom, “I am not at all happy with the turn this enterprise of yours has taken. Milly, as you well know, is an excellent client of ours. We have profited handsomely from his custom. The wise thing would have been to put a stop to your project as soon as you learned this Abelard was with VBI. You could not have known that he was also to be married to Milly’s niece but that makes it all the more sensible to end this adventure now.”
“You are quite right, father,” as though talking to a misguided child who needed encouragement, “we should not be jeopardizing a going lucrative commercial relationship for something that may perhaps turn out not to exist. Let me then put your mind at ease. I have done some homework and calculated the value, to date, of the VBI relation, as well as any future business we might reasonably expect. Against that I have set the potential gains should Abelard be the key to King John’s lost treasure and, of course, to Abelard de Buch’s own ill-gotten gains as well as the possibility that he holds the key to a very long life. In the end there is no contest. It would be vastly more profitable to kill Milly, thereby definitely drying up the VBI connection, and pursue the Abelard trail. Of course, unless we have a way of making that trail as certain as the trade we are sure to do with Milly my case is very weak.”
“And how do you intend doing that?”
“Our ancestors, father,” she began, evidently delighted that her shortsighted father had asked the right question, “were very careful record keepers. They noted things about the people with whom they did business that we would never imagine today. Positive identification in those times had to rely on much more primitive devices. I had another look at the entries recorded by Francesco, the clerk who met with Abelard de Buch, and found an interesting detail. Abelard had recently been wounded during a drunken brawl with soldiers from Milan. When he arrived in Florence he was recovering from his injuries, which consisted of two stab wounds, one to his upper back, just below the right shoulder and another to his chest, which just missed the heart. Our clerk, having had some experience with treating such injuries, offered to put ointments and new bandages onto Abelard’s wounds. Afterwards he duly noted the position and extent of the injuries.”
“So, what does that do for us?”
“Father, such injuries would leave permanent scars. If we were to find these on Abelard it would add greatly to the probability he is one and the same Abelard de Buch. How this could be, father, is what we would then try to learn.”
“Wonderful, I suppose you will ask Abelard to disrobe and he will be happy to oblige,” Gianni said with no small measure of sarcasm.
“Father, I do not wish to be immodest, but most men would not hesitate to remove their clothes if I asked them nicely.”
“I forbid it. You were educated to use your mind, not your body, to get what you want. Keep it that way.”
“I was only joking father. I have another plan.” Dona Maria was by now used to the special limits most men applied to the behavioral playing fields of women. In her family the ends justified all and any means a male member chose to use. Women, herself included, were arbitrarily handicapped with the onerous task of preserving the family honour by not engaging in particular activities. Naturally, these activities had all been defined by the men. Growing up, Dona Maria would fight against such patent unfairness. Now, understanding much better that these one-sided rules are no more than deliberate strategies put in place to carry through emotional objectives unconsciously and inexorably driven by the brain’s most primitive areas, she wisely put an end to her useless battles. It’s best, she has found, to agree and then do whatever is necessary, a strategy, she has observed, clearly favoured by every successful woman she had ever met.
Chapter XV
VBI-Society war
The Perfect Human: An Abelard Chronicles Book Page 58
