by Ken Hood
"No." The big man's face was less scrutable than some Arabic scrolls she'd found in a castle library once. "No, that is no secret. He's been trying to bribe me to enter the duke's service, and that is no secret either. And Florence is being interminably difficult about giving me the condotta we need, but everyone knows that, too."
"Doesn't it want to employ you?"
"I think so. I hope so. Part of the problem is that the present dieci, the Ten For War, are due to be replaced on March first, and they're trying to spin out the negotiations so that their successors can share in the bribery."
"Oh. According to Hamish, everything in Florence is run by Pietro Marradi. Why don't you just go and talk to him?"
"I did, my lady. I spent all yesterday morning in his waiting room with a very strange collection of sculptors and poets. I was left until almost the last, and then told he was too busy to see me."
She found that very funny, but she must not let her amusement show. "So today you send Hamish on a secret visit to—"
"No. You can't keep a secret in Florence. The Magnificent will know within minutes that Hamish is visiting Abonio. He won't know why, though."
"But you told Hamish to make—"
"That was just for realism. Marradi will know. And he knows Hamish is my closest confidant."
After several more olive trees had gone by, she said, "I see what Hamish meant when he said you weren't straightforward."
"Does that make me straightbackward? Or bentforward?" The cavernous brown eyes were as somber as ever. He must be making fun of her.
—|—
She was very little wiser an hour or so later, when he led the way into a farmyard, setting dogs to barking and geese into paroxysms of hissing. She had confirmed that she neither liked the big man nor trusted him and found his reputation for ruthlessness entirely credible. Without a word of explanation, he jumped down from his horse.
"What?" she said, looking around in alarm at the low-roofed buildings, half-buried in vegetation like lurking bears.
"Friends of mine. They make some of the finest wine in all Italy." Two ragged-looking urchins came shrieking out from behind a barn, and chickens flapped away in the opposite direction.
Alarmed, she said, "But I do not wish—" and no more, for Longdirk lifted her off the saddle as if she were a child and set her down. Who did he think he was? Or she was?
The boys jumped at him and hugged him in volleys of Italian. He picked them up by their smocks, one in each hand, and swung them high in the air, their howls of glee totally drowning out his efforts to address them. An obese and ancient peasant woman waddled out of the main hovel, wiping hands on apron, jabbering even faster than the children, and smiling to reveal a very sparse set of teeth. She was motherly enough to calm Lisa's worst fears, but not perceptibly the sort of person she cared to befriend. Longdirk set the boys down and introduced Lisa in his limping Italian to madonna Something.
"Do tell her," Lisa said, "how delighted I am to have met her and how much I regret that we cannot stay." The children had noticed Lisa and were gaping openmouthed at her.
Predictably, Longdirk ignored her wishes and led her into the old woman's lair, with the crone following them, nodding and leering. Lisa found herself expected to sit on a tottery stool at a rough plank table with him beside her. Admittedly the deeply shadowed kitchen was cozy after the wind, nor could she could deny that the smell of baking bread made her mouth water, but there was a baby screaming somewhere nearby and she had no desire to indulge in the wine set before her in a cracked pottery beaker or the curious scraps of food Old Mother What's-her-name began piling on a platter between her and Longdirk—cheese and pastries and dried fruits. The children started stalking these with nefarious intent, ignoring their grandmother's efforts to chase them away.
Nevertheless, Lisa's self-appointed escort was waiting for her to proceed. She took a sip of wine. "Is this what you meant when you said you had something to show me?"
"Partly. Do try some of these treats. The white cheese is good. May I tell monna Agnolella that you like her wine?"
"Tell her anything you want."
"I'll tell her you can't help your manners, then."
"My manners?" Angrily Lisa turned to the crone and went through a dumb show with the wine—smile, nod, smack lips. "Does that satisfy you, Sir Toby? I do hope you're going to eat the food. I can't possibly." She would have to make an effort, though. Perhaps she could slip some to the boys or the smelly dogs around her feet. Why had this annoying man brought her here? Slumming! It would have been fun with Hamish, but Longdirk did not know what the word fun meant. He never smiled.
In response to another of his labored speeches, the old woman bared her gums in a leer even more gruesome than its predecessors, then disappeared into the depths of the house, shooing her wayward brood before her so the visitors could be alone. Mercifully, the baby's yelling stopped.
The pastries were, in fact, delicious. Lisa graciously took a second. "So what exactly am I supposed to be looking at, Constable?"
"Just looking." Longdirk had his back to the solitary window, putting his face in shadow. "I come here quite often. It's a good place to meet people without being disturbed. Or seen. I pay her a few lire for the privilege. Luigi died at Trent, so times are hard for her yet. How old is your mother?"
"I don't see what business that is... If you'd listened to Baron Oreste's story, you would know that. She'll be thirty-three next birthday."
"I did listen. Monna Agnolella is the same age."
"Nonsense! You're serious? You mean that baby I heard..."
"All of them. Twelve sons. Two of them serve in the Company, following in their father's footsteps. One of them's almost as big as me. Agnolella runs the place with the other ten. Nine, I suppose. The baby won't be much help yet."
Lisa took a drink of wine to mask her dismay, but he had seen it and must be secretly laughing at her reaction.
"Looks about seventy, doesn't she?"
"What have her troubles to do with me, sir? Why drag me here just to gloat over a... a... When did she start—eight?"
"Let's see. Niccolò is nineteen—she probably married at thirteen. That's normal. A dozen babies in nineteen years is not unusual, but twelve living is. In a sense she's lucky Luigi died, or she'd have gone on bearing children until one killed her. As to what it means to you..." He folded his enormous hands on the table and stared at them. "My lady, I admit that falling into the Fiend's clutches is a very real danger to you and absolutely the worst thing that could happen. But there are other bad things in life that you don't know much about, and one of them is poverty."
"It is most kind of you to take such an interest in my education, Constable, but I do not see why it need concern you."
"Because Hamish is my friend."
"I understand he is of age. He is certainly articulate."
The big man sighed and began to pop morsels of food in his mouth, continuing to speak as he chewed. "He is also very impressionable where... women are concerned. Honorable within... limits, but very few men are... capable of celibacy for long, no matter how solemn their intentions—"
"You speak from experience, I presume?"
He nodded with his mouth full. "Mm." Swallow. "Get Hamish to tell you about his family."
"He already has." Not deliberately, but in passing Hamish had mentioned ghastly things like sleeping six to a room and not having shoes when there was snow on the ground, but he had not seemed to think any of them remarkable. "I still do not see why this concerns you."
"His father was... the schoolmaster and... rich by local standards." Longdirk had eaten just about everything the old woman had put out. He washed it down with a gulp of wine and reached for the bottle to refill his beaker. "What I'm saying, ma'am, is that any future with you and Hamish in it can only bring misery to both of you. Think on it. You are not stupid, only naive."
"You cannot imagine how relieved I am to hear that."
"Let's find s
omething you will listen to, then." He dropped a small leather packet on the table and fumbled with the catch. "I have a trifle here that is rightfully yours."
"I don't recall losing anything. How long have you had it?"
He glanced up. His eyes glinted very brightly, although his expression was indeterminable against the light. "Six years? More than five." He tipped a shiny pebble out onto the table. "This is an amethyst."
"I've never seen—"
"I know. Just listen for once, will you? As a gem it's worth nothing, pennies at most, but it has other values. The first, to me, is that it was a parting gift from my foster mother, the woman who raised me."
"Your... But I couldn't possibly..." Was he playing some sort of elaborate joke? "I mean—"
"Listen! She was the village witchwife and more than a little crazy. She and the hob both. But that isn't what makes this stone special, my lady. The baron didn't tell you everything that happened on the Night of the Masked Ball. You and your mother escaped, but so did Valda, your, er, the king's..."
"My father's mistress."
"Accomplice. And Nevil—or the demon Rhym, I should say—hunted her for years and had his minions hunting for her. He put a huge price on her head. That's important, because it's the only confirmation we have of what Valda told me when... Yes, me. She turned up years later in Scotland. Where she'd been we don't know, but somehow she'd acquired more demons to replace those she'd lost, and she was looking for a good..." He paused as if he had reached a difficult part of his story and tried another tack. "Valda believed that when Rhym possessed your father, your father's soul was displaced in the confusion. That doesn't normally happen in a possession, but remember they were playing with very powerful gramarye. She was convinced that the soul of the mortal Nevil, the real Nevil, had become immured in the yellow diamond that had formerly contained Rhym."
Again Lisa took a drink. Yes, this had to be a joke, in very bad taste.
The condottiere refilled her beaker. "So when Valda reappeared five years ago, she was prepared to redress that misfortune. She wanted to reincarnate your father's soul in a mortal body. She chose me." He was not looking at her now. "An honor I was more than glad to be spared. Things went wrong again. It's a complex story, my lady, but the short of it is that the soul of your real father is now immured in this gem."
Lisa stared in growing horror at the shiny purple crystal. After what seemed a long time, she found her voice. "You can prove that?"
The big man sighed. "I'm very sure. A great tutelary confirmed that there is something in there, something not potent enough to be a demon."
"You mean... my... my father is imprisoned... fifteen years? In there? Is he conscious? Aware? Does he know—"
"I don't know." He shrugged his great shoulders. "Nobody does. In a thousand years of tending mortals, Montserrat had met no precedent. If he can be restored, he may well come back as a raving maniac—and who supplies the living body? But this pebble contains the rightful King of England." Before she could speak, he went on. "There is more. Valda is dead. Hamish killed her."
"Hamish? But she was a hexer, an adept... Baron Oreste—"
"And Hamish is Hamish. Get him to tell you that story, too. Yes, she was a hexer. Both she and your father knew Rhym's name, the conjuration that was supposed to control the demon."
"It didn't cont—"
"That one time it didn't. Nevertheless, if properly invoked, it may still control Rhym. If your father can be restored to life, he may be able to snare the Fiend with a simple incantation, bottle Rhym up again, and so stop all Europe's suffering with a word of command. So before you accept this gem, you should be aware that the Fiend will stop at nothing to lay his—"
"Constable, no power in this world will persuade me to touch that amethyst!"
"Your father, my lady—"
"No! No! No! It is yours! Keep it." She would not believe such a tale.
He sighed and nudged the stone back in its case with a meaty finger. "Very well."
"May we go now?" This had not been a very successful outing.
"Yes, if—" He frowned and looked around. "Can you hear something?"
"Flies. Lambs bleating."
He shook his head. "Sounds like drumming."
"The children?"
"Perhaps." Longdirk was unconvinced—puzzled and uneasy, cocking his head as if listening to a distant beat.
Perhaps it was the wine—"Is it true that you are possessed by a demon?"
She flinched at the look in his eyes. It seemed he was not going to answer, but then he said, "How can I be? If I were, I would already have raped you, mutilated you, and tortured you to death. That's what demons do to pretty little girls."
PART TWO
March
CHAPTER ONE
The condotta was signed where important civic ceremonies were always held—under the high, three-arched loggia adjoining the Piazza della Signoria. The crowds cheered lustily to hail their dashing new Castilian captain-general and his big deputy, who could undoubtedly defeat all the Fiend's horses and all the Fiend's men single-handed with a club. Their betters were of another mind, though.
The new slate of civic officials, especially the dieci della guerra, were steamingly furious, because the agreement had been finalized before they took office, cheating them of their just share of the graft. For this they blamed the barbarian giant, who had actually begun striking camp at Fiesole, preparing to move to Milan, and had thus forced messer Benozzo to ride out in haste and agree to initial the terms. Toby had been bluffing, of course, but the big mutt was a mile more devious than he looked and could outwit anyone anytime when he wanted to.
All the two-lire politicos and their wives were now snubbing him as obviously as possibly. If that made the ceremony unpleasant for Toby, it was pure torture for Hamish Campbell. A chancellor was supposed to steer his condottiere safely through the quicksands of Italian politics. That was his job, and to plead that the sands of Florence were quicker than others or that a non-Italian could not understand their constant shifting would be a confession of incompetence. If only someone knowledgeable had written a book on the subject!—someone like that slinky messer Machiavelli who advised the Magnificent, for instance.
However joyously the people of Florence hailed their new defender, the petty leaders were treating Toby more like a foreign conqueror than a guardian who had just sworn to defend them with his life. Most of the sumptuously garbed notables and their almost-as-sumptuously-garbed wives had just stalked by him with noses raised on their way to pay their respects to the captain-general himself before moving across to the Palace of the Signory for the banquet. The don was posturing in his silver helmet, flaunting his baton of office within a circle of fawning admirers. Apparently he had managed to overcome his dislike of taking orders from a rabble of moneylenders and haberdashers. The worst must be over, though. The slow grind of protocol was now about to bring forth the larger parasites.
"The people like you," Hamish muttered.
"What people?" Toby looked down with a grin. Nobody human should be able to smile while being humiliated on this scale, but he was showing that he bore no grudge against Hamish for it, which was typical of him. "If you mean the stolid citizenry of the republic, my lad, then they're still hard at work—weaving, dyeing, or fulling, whatever that is. No, don't bother to explain, I have an appointment later this afternoon. Those out there are the froth."
True. The overdressed spectators in the square were all handpicked Marradi supporters, probably mostly officials of the minor guilds who had no effective influence over the heavyweights of the major guilds, which in turn could do nothing without the Magnificent's approval, but a chancellor was supposed to explain such things to his condottiere, not vice versa.
"Fulling or not, the populace approves of you."
No condottiere in all Italy except Toby cared a fig for any populace. He sighed. "I hope I prove worthy of their trust. Any word on the darughachi?"
"Not
hing new. His Highness remains in Rome, officially conferring with the cardinals. Unofficially, he is reported to be bedding the entire female population between the ages of thirteen and eighty. He is expected to come north later in the spring, when he has finished."
"It's still spring? Feels like high summer." Toby's face was dewed with sweat under his bronze helmet, for he was in military garb. His doublet and breeches were so heavily padded with linen that they would stop a saber or even a pike. They were as elaborately trimmed as anything the landsknechte wore, extravagantly piped and slashed in cerise and vermilion and peacock blue. With a broadsword at his thigh, he looked even more huge and dangerous than usual, dominating the piazza. The notables of Florence might be snubbing him, but the eyes of their wives and daughters were nowhere else. When he was leaving camp this morning, even Lisa had admitted that he was Mars incarnate.
Which reminded Chancellor Campbell that he had squandered every lire due him for the next six months in providing Lisa with an appropriate wardrobe, and the countess, although her health had improved until now she was well enough to be a real thorn in his flesh, was showing no signs of offering to recompense him for any of it out of the funds the Company had provided. When the first of the condotta gold arrived and Hamish received his arrears, he would have to turn it all over to Toby to start repaying his debts. Oh, women! Oh, ruin! Oh, Lisa...
Oh, spirits! Here came Lucas Abonio with his half-witted wife on his arm and his two quarter-witted daughters at his heels. Unlike the snotty Florentine politicians whose petty noses were out of joint just because Toby had called their bluff and forced them to cut short their games at his expense, the Milanese ambassador had a real grievance against the new deputy captain-general and against his chancellor, too. Hamish had gone within an eyelash—a rat's eyelash—of committing Toby to serving the Duke of Milan in return for various castles, fiefdoms, chests of treasure, hands of daughters in marriage, and so on. Abonio had almost certainly informed his ducal master than the deal was made, only to learn later that he had been, um, misinformed.
