by Dave Duncan
Lucrezia!
"I'm admiring your ancestors, duchessa. Which one was this? Why did he look like that? Did he have gout, or was he a lawyer?" The Marradi family could afford to marry well now—it was amazing how the highborn would swallow their pride and disgorge a daughter in return for a few sacks of gold—but it had sprung from humble roots. The don would dismiss this entire collection with a sneering remark about pedlars and fish merchants.
"Don't be tiresome, Tobiaso. You had just as many ancestors as we did, and you have just as little idea of what they really looked like. Now come here." She was artfully posed on a padded silk couch between two towering marble giants.
He strolled toward her, keeping the corners of his eyes peeled but fairly confident now that he faced nothing worse than grievous social embarrassment. "I do know what mine looked like. They looked like English soldiers. They were probably in uniform at the time."
"You expect to shock me, Tobiaso? When a man catches my eye I inquire into his history."
Shock her? Shock Lucrezia Marradi? According to Hamish, who was never wrong when he was being serious, she had two daughters older than Toby, had several times escaped conviction for hexing only because witnesses or magistrates had conveniently died, and had come home to Florence because her sixteen-year-old son had banished her from Ferrara for poisoning his father. She was a beautiful and fascinating woman. The gleam in her eyes could flatter a man to madness.
He set down the candelabra and grinned vacuously. "Wonderful party, madonna!"
"You are not drunk!"
She was, though. He was sorry to see that. It would make matters more difficult.
"Just intoxicated by your beauty."
She jumped up, a child doll staring imperiously at him. "Sit!"
He perched his bulk on the edge of the couch. She remained standing, and their eyes were level. Why did she have to hurt herself like this? He was twice her size and half her age.
Any man who felt sorry for Lucrezia Marradi was out of his mind.
Smiling coyly, she patted his cheek. "You never get drunk, you never sleep with women, and tonight you refused two of the most beautiful boys in Florence."
"You forgot the sheep."
"I'll send for one if you ask nicely. Why don't you want a silver helmet?"
Gramarye? Possibly. More likely she had eavesdropped on his rehearsal with her brother that morning. Didn't matter. "It would annoy the don. I have enough troubles without that."
"And the Milanese earldom?"
"Promises are cheap."
She moved forward to stand between his knees. Her perfume closed around him like velvet. "You are a strange and fascinating man, Tobiaso. You hide your success. Usually when peasants rise to higher station they scream their glory from the rooftops."
"Or their wives do. I was outlawed at eighteen, monna. I learned not to draw attention to myself." He was sweating. There were enough jewels in her hair alone to finance a summer's campaigning, and the promises in her eyes were brighter yet. This was dangerous, deadly. Briefly he thought of being like other men, and his head swam with longing. Yes, he had the hob under control now, most of the time, but certain things he must avoid: demons, terror, rage—and passion. Already he could feel it stirring as his heart began to beat faster. Only once had he ever tried to make love to a woman, and the hob had gone berserk. Jeanne had died; half the hamlet had perished in fire and chaos. Never again would he dare succumb to desire.
"If my abstinence were from choice, duchessa, you would have melted it a long time ago."
Her pretty lip curled in mockery. "Are you admitting to a tragic battle wound, Tobiaso?"
Why must she pick on him? Although the life expectancy of her lovers was scandalously low, there were scores of men in the Marradi Palace tonight who would fight duels for a chance to bed Lucrezia. She was pathetic as well as deadly.
"Only a broken heart. Let us part as friends, madonna."
"Look!"
She gestured at the nearest statue, an oversize, overmuscled male brandishing a club and wearing only a lion skin that concealed nothing of importance. Doubtless this was a very clever use of a hunk of marble, but to an uncultured backwoods yokel it was obscene. He scowled at it.
"I could not locate a lion skin, Tobias," Lucrezia said throatily. "But I have a leopard skin waiting upstairs. You will pose for me."
"I am honored, but I don't want to spoil your fantasies."
"You will surpass them. You will be a superb Hercules."
"Is that his name? He's a bit paunchy, isn't he?" Toby flowed to his feet, clasping her shoulders and lifting her aside so he would not bowl her over. That was a mistake. She weighed nothing. His fingers registered the warmth of her skin, and he saw his strength excited her. Her eyes were bright, her lips moist and expectant. There was gramarye in her allure, making the hob stir under his calm like a shark in a still pool.
"Most beautiful madonna, Florence paid me an infinite compliment tonight by making me her defender, but what you suggest is more flattering still. Were it possible, I should never hesitate. There is no one else, believe me, nor could any woman come before you. Yet it cannot be. My heart breaks. I thank you, but I must bid you good night." He bowed and walked quickly toward the far end of the gallery and the sounds of the orchestra, hoping she had left the key in the lock.
"Stop!" More than the command itself, her tone made him turn. She was holding one hand close to her mouth, and spears of light flashed off the jewels of her rings. If she had a demon immured in one of those, then a few words would serve to unleash it. "You think you can spurn me like that, boy? You great barbarian lout! You are about to suffer. You will grovel naked at my feet, howling for release, for pain, for anything I choose to—"
"No!" Toby shouted. "You must not use gramarye on me, duchessa!" His fragile control over the hob would shatter if it sensed the presence of demons. Any gramarye would provoke it. "No, no, I beg you! You endanger the whole palace!"
Unconvinced, Lucrezia began whispering an incantation.
Anything might have happened then, had not Hercules hurled himself to the floor beside her with an earsplitting crash that jarred the whole building. Fragments of marble and mosaic tiles flew like hail; gravel rattled and boulders rolled. Lucrezia recoiled with a startled yell. The orchestra outside wailed into silence. For a frozen instant duchess and mercenary stared at each other in mutual dismay. A hundred people would come flooding into the gallery to investigate.
Lucrezia rapped out a command and vanished faster than a soap bubble.
So she was a hexer! That did not mean she had deliberately pulled over the statue, though. In among those rings she was wearing, she must have at least one guarddemon. It had recognized the hob in him, foreseen the danger when Lucrezia tried to use gramarye on him, and provided a diversion.
Whoever heard of a demon capable of that kind of subtle thinking?
A distant clamor of voices reminded him of his peril. He dived for the door, unlocked it, and stepped back behind it just before it flew open and a jabbering crowd of guests and servants poured through. In the pervading gloom, he was able to tag on the end as if he had entered with them. A matching throng rushed in from the far end, and everyone gathered over the remains, clamoring in astonishment. A statue falls over in an empty room?—what an extraordinary omen!
CHAPTER EIGHT
As dawn gilded chimneys under a buttermilk sky, Toby strode out to the stable yard, relieved that the party was over and he was free to go. The air was cool and sweet, and even the potent tang of horses was welcome after the cloying palace scents. The buzz in his head came only from lack of sleep, for he had drunk much less than most of the guests. He was carrying the unconscious and partially clad don slung over his shoulder.
The waiting men-at-arms of the escort jeered like seagulls at this evidence of an aristocrat's inability to stay the course, although they expected a man to whore and drink himself senseless on every possible opportunity, because that
was what they did themselves whenever they could afford to. Then they began taunting Toby for being able to leave on his own feet, as if this evidenced lack of manhood. He laughed aloud, enjoying their vulgar banter far more than the cynical backstabbing of the gentry he had just left.
The men of the Don Ramon Company were a diverse lot, whose roots spanned the Continent from Portugal to Poland. Some had been born in marble halls and others, like him, in the ditches of poverty. They all shared courage, pride in their own endurance, and a fierce independence that would tolerate neither weaklings in their ranks nor incompetent officers. Among the rights they claimed was that of electing the don's honor guard, and thus to serve in it was a mark of approval greatly prized. There, in the morning chill, illiterate pike-wielding thugs stood elbow to elbow with knights who led entourages of their own. Toby belonged with the thugs, of course.
He heaved the unconscious don aboard the coach as he had once heaved sacks of meal for the miller back in Tyndrum, then glanced around. A man must not arrive at a ball covered in mud and reeking of horse, but that did not mean he had to go home in the same dreadful engine of torture in which he had arrived. He thumped a handy shoulder.
"Facino, I grant you the privilege of holding the condottiere's hand on the journey. Make sure he doesn't choke. I'll see your horse gets back safely."
As a staunch Italian republican, Facino was unimpressed by the Spaniard's impeccable pedigree, and he erupted in lurid protestations that being bounced around in a box with an unconscious drunk was above and beyond the call of duty. His comrades barked more cannonades of laughter.
"I'll give you a medal!" Toby hoisted him bodily into the coach, although he was no lightweight, then closed the door on him. The onlookers laughed louder still, and now even the knights among them were joining in.
Facino's head came out of the window. "A gold one!"
"He didn't tell you where he's going to hang it, Facino!"
"It's the horse that deserves the medal!"
And so on. Chuckling, Toby turned to adjust the stirrup leathers on Facino's mount. He was forestalled—
"Allow me this honor, comandante!" The big man with the buttery smile was Baldassare Barrafranca, former lord of Rimini. His career as a condottiere was a catalogue of dismal mediocrity, but he was a capable enough fighter when aimed in the right direction and told when to start. He led his own post of five lances. He was not a man Toby Longdirk would turn his back on in a dark alley.
At which thought, Toby glanced around and caught the eye of the Chevalier D'Anjou. For a fleeting moment he saw slavering jaws, yellow fangs, and slitted wolfish eyes, as if some demonic nightmare was about to leap on him. He blinked, and the illusion had gone—lack of sleep could play strange tricks on a man. The veteran knight was scarred and weatherbeaten, with a gray-streaked beard and head habitually canted to favor his right eye, but he was no demon. On the other hand, he could not be described as likable. Toby could not recall ever seeing the crabby old blackguard smile before.
"That is as long as they will go, comandante," Barrafranca said, oozing back with a half bow.
"Thank you." Toby put a boot in the stirrup and swung up onto the mare. He nodded to the Chevalier. "Lead the men out, if you please, squadriere."
There was a perceptible pause before the yellow teeth showed again. "It is my honor, comandante. Guard, mount up!"
The seigneur disliked taking orders from the Scottish bastard. Toby watched the old scoundrel scramble onto his great destrier with help from his squire. Camp tales described him as the last survivor of the French royal house, rightful monarch of several countries. Unlike Barrafranca, he had no cause to blame his misfortunes on Toby—which did not mean he couldn't or wouldn't. He might have been dangerous if he had not knocked all his brains out years ago.
* * *
The procession clattered off along the Via Larga in proper order—six men in pairs, the coach, and a dozen more men behind. Toby was absurdly conspicuous in his party silks, but the others all wore leathers, helmets, and breastplates emblazoned with the don's arms of three papillons argent upon gules.
Conversation was impossible in the cramped streets, with carts and pedestrians to be avoided and the clatter of hooves echoing between drab stone walls. He was leaving Florence with what he had come for—three florins a man, twenty thousand men, six months minimum. Three hundred and sixty thousand ducats! What would the good folk back in Strath Fillan say to wee Toby Strangerson earning that kind of money? He would get to keep none of it and the lowly men expected to die for it would see little more. Florence paid a portion in food and fodder, and withheld taxes on all of it. One fifth went to Josep Brusi in Barcelona as return on his investment, another fifth to the don, although he must pay for the artillery out of that. Each man had to provide his own weapons and mounts, or have his pay docked to cover their cost. Toby's share was officially one twentieth, but he always took the last twentieth, which was rarely there to take, because cities were notoriously lax about paying their mercenaries. And there were always unforeseen costs.
His chances of living to enjoy a soldo of it were remote anyway. If he had any sense at all, he would catch a ship to Africa and never come back. Longdirk versus the Fiend—why pursue a feud so hopeless? He often wondered about that. He seemed to be too stupid to do anything except fight on.
The company rattled through the Porta Pinti and set off along the Fiesole road, through countryside wakening to spring and a fine day. Escaping thoughts of all the work waiting for him in camp, he spurred forward to join Leonello and Agostino, and listen to their discussion of the relative merits of fat women and thin women, a subject about which he knew absolutely nothing and could never hope to.
CHAPTER NINE
D'Anjou rode at the head of the line on Oriflamme, who was still his favorite, although the old warhorse was long past his days of glory. So was his master, for that matter. A night dozing on a bale of straw in an overcrowded stable had turned his backbone into a red-hot iron bar. He ought to ask the company hexer to straighten out the kinks for him. The present one was impressively expert and did not demand outrageous fees, but it was a point of honor for an old campaigner not to make such a request until the fighting season opened. He would suffer longer in the name of honor.
Uninvited, another horse settled into place alongside Oriflamme. The Chevalier scowled unwelcome at its rider.
"There were interesting rumors going around last night," the newcomer remarked in heavily accented French. He was Baldassare Barrafranca—a stupid, boorish man of nondescript lineage. He had left the stable for a while during the bodyguard's nightlong vigil and gone off to worm his way into the palace kitchens—making a play for some of the female domestics, no doubt.
"There are always rumors," D'Anjou snapped. "If they reported that the noble High Constable Longdirk shits nothing but nuggets of pure gold, then I must inform you that this is absolute holy truth. He also pisses pure vintage Bordeaux."
Barrafranca chuckled coarsely. "I have better vintage here. Finest Chianti—Monseigneur?" He offered a wineskin.
"You will withdraw that word." D'Anjou did not raise his voice, but his tone conveyed mortal threat. He had shed blood often enough over matters of honor. In his present station titles were mockery, and he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any hereditary rank. Knighthood he had earned, so he would remain merely "Chevalier" until the Fiend was overthrown and he could return to claim his birthright.
"Of course, messer!" the Italian said hurriedly. "I have no wish to offend."
"Then I accept your apology and also your wine." The rotten stuff would rinse the early-morning sourness from his mouth. D'Anjou reached for the wineskin, but the move twisted his back, making him bite back a gasp of agony. He was not an old man by tally of years, but the human frame was never meant to be packed into a steel shell, lifted seven or so feet off the ground, accelerated to full gallop, and then struck off again by a wooden beam moving equally fast in the opposite direct
ion. Two or three such impacts could be forgotten, but the effects were cumulative. There had also been crossbow bolts and arquebus balls. Now he had to cock his head sideways to see clearly, and his hand would no longer grip a lance as it should be gripped. To stop and give up, though, was unthinkable.
He drank and wiped his mouth. Italian horse piss! He thought longingly of the wines of his youth, the subtle, delicate progeny of vineyards his father had lovingly planted at various chateaux. Gone, alas! But what would his father have said to a son of his serving as common bodyguard to mercenary rabble, spending the night in a stinking stable while the trash he was forced to serve hobnobbed in the luxury of a palace? That he was not worthy of decent wines?
"Tell me the rumors then," he said.
"Well, first, our noble condottiere is to be Captain-General of Florence."
D'Anjou spat at the weeds. "Did one ever doubt it? One does not grudge the Spanish boy his success." Or not very much. The child put on absurd airs, but give him a lance and a horse and he was magnificent, worthy of comparison with legendary knights like Du Guesclin, De Coucy, or Lancelot himself. More to the point, Don Ramon had a pedigree as long as D'Anjou's own, a genuinely noble lineage, even if his family had fallen on hard times in the last few centuries. "He is a man of courage."
"This is most true. And a man of breeding."
Ha! Baldassare Barrafranca talking about breeding? It was to laugh. He claimed to be marquis of some tin-pot town in the Romagna, but his grandfather had stolen the title at sword point, and he himself had lost it through his own incompetence as a condottiere—incompetence revealed, amusingly enough, by the cur Longdirk. Dog eat dog.
It was nice to know that history could throw up a scrap of justice once in a while. D'Anjou had seen little of it in his life. As a child he had been Louis, but all his male relatives had borne that name among others—uncles, cousins, even his brothers and both his sons—and theirs had been a very large family, spread across Europe. Its head had been an Uncle Louis who sometimes wore a golden hat and sat on a fancy chair in Paris—a most excellent man, cursed by ill fortune. When the King of England succumbed to a mysterious and extremely fatal accident and was succeeded by the juvenile and extremely inexperienced Prince Nevil, King Louis had launched a war against him, which was the correct and time-honored thing to do in the circumstances. It was gravest misfortune that the stripling turned out to be the greatest military genius since Genghis. Louis had lost the war, his throne, his land, and eventually his skin, which Nevil had removed personally to have tanned and made into a jerkin.
