by David Blixt
“And let everyone know our destination? No.”
“But just wandering the streets, it could take days!”
“Then days it takes.”
“It better not take days. We have to be back by Sunday. I’m not missing Capulletto’s feast. I’m sure it will be memorable.”
“We will be back in time.”
“I’ve only been to one – the first one, in fact. O, what food he serves!”
The Moor eyed the doctor. “I always wonder you are not fatter.”
“A discerning palate does not lead to gluttony,” replied the doctor haughtily. “In fact, if you have a taste for good food, you tend to starve among the common fare.” Hearing an odd sound, Morsicato rounded on his companion. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard it, what was it?” The doctor saw the flicker of a smile curling Tharwat’s lower lip. “Damn me. Was that a laugh?”
“No.”
“You’re right – that was no laugh. That was a titter.”
Tharwat was solemn. “I do not titter.”
“Admit it! You giggled like a girl!”
“I had something in my throat. My scars make strange noises sometimes.”
For years Morsicato had longed to examine al-Dhaamin’s throat. It was far more than professional curiosity. He wanted to know who had inflicted such a disastrous injury upon his friend. But now was not the time to ask. “Deny it how you like, I’m telling Pietro what I heard. And Cesco.”
Tharwat gave the doctor an evil glance, then continued walking.
“They certainly like identifying themselves with Virgil,” observed the doctor. “That’s the third house I’ve seen claiming to be his birthplace.”
“Blame Pietro’s father. He made Virgil popular again.”
“Popular is the right word,” replied Morsicato. “Did you know there’s a movement to translate The Aeneid into the vulgare. I wonder who will attempt it?”
“Cesco should do it,” said Tharwat.
“He’d try to improve it. Is that the church?” Morsicato pointed at a round brick building two stories tall, with another ring at the top.
“It is a rotunda,” said Tharwat. “I see nothing to mark it as a church.”
“There,” said Morsicato, squinting at the wooden doors. “Inscribed, the sign of San Lorenzo.”
The Moor squinted at the image of a man beside a flaming grid-iron. “I have never understood why Christian saints are depicted with the means of their deaths.”
“Christ died on the cross,” said Morsicato simply.
“Then why worship the cross? Shouldn’t you worship the man?” The doctor shot the Moor a scandalized look. At once Tharwat bowed his head. “Forgive me. Arguing with Cesco is enough to corrupt the purest heart. Please, go in so you may keep your promise to Ser Alaghieri. I will find the apothecary and return in fifteen minutes.”
The doctor didn’t want to waste time in church, but Pietro had made him promise. So he stepped through the door, bent a knee, crossed himself, and prayed in a pew. Finished, he made a donation with money Pietro had given him. Morsicato didn’t know why Alaghieri wanted forgiveness from San Lorenzo, but he was more than happy to pray on behalf of Pietro, who was unable to pray anywhere.
Emerging, Morsicato found al-Dhaamin waiting for him, drawing curious glances. “It’s the clothes,” explained Morsicato. “You’d draw less attention naked.”
“I doubt that. Come. It’s not far.” Tharwat led him around two corners to a short flight of steps leading down to a cellar door. Over the door was a wooden plank with two words scrawled across it: Lorenzo’s Apothecary. “It matches Borachio’s description, and the name is correct.”
Morsicato’s lip curled. “A little presumptuous, naming your shop after a saint. Especially a saint not interested in nature.”
“Geographic reference,” replied the Moor. “It notes his nearness to the Rotunda.”
“Do we just go in?”
“I’d rather we weren’t seen entering,” said the Moor. “We are somewhat conspicuous.”
“What then, start a fire and smoke him out?”
“There is a rear entrance.”
“You’d rather we broke in the rear?”
The doctor’s deliberate unhelpfulness never seemed to discommode the Moor. “I will go to the rear and wait. Count to twenty, then go in and sound him out as a man of medicine. If he is unhelpful, call for me.” Without awaiting a reply, the Moor strode away.
Morsicato counted twenty, then descended to knock on the apothecary’s door. No response. Knocking louder, Morsicato could hear a shuffling within. Then nothing. Morsicato began to hammer on the door’s wooden frame. This elicited an unintelligible cry the door’s other side. Morsicato banged the palm of his hand so hard he feared he might split it open.
This time the voice within was quite clear. “Piss off!”
“I have business!” called Morsicato.
“Take your business somewhere else!”
“I am a doctor, I require herbs!”
A suspicious pause. “What do you want?”
“What I don’t want is to be standing in the street, shouting my fool head off for all to hear. Open this damned door!”
There was muttering and a scraping of a barricade, then the door swung wide and a lean man of forty or more peeked out. His face might have been unremarkable but for the brow – the apothecary had the most prominent forehead that the doctor had ever seen. Adorning it was a single eyebrow that twitched and danced as if it lived independently of its owner. Morsicato couldn’t decide if it was the massive brow that dwarfed the rest of the features, or if God had played a cruel joke on this man, giving him small eyes, nose, and lips against the monstrous fuzzy Alp above them.
The chin bore whiskers. It wasn’t a beard, but neither was it clean-shaven. It was the growth of a week or more. Bizarrely, the man wore the robes of a Franciscan friar, the homespun brown tattered and worn. A cast-off from an order that embraced poverty. This was a poor man.
Belatedly, Morsicato noticed the apothecary held a club with nails crudely hammered into it at all angles. Seeing Morsicato’s jourdan, the man relaxed his grip on the home-made mace. “You really are a doctor.”
“I said I was,” retorted Morsicato.
“My mistake,” shrugged the apothecary. “I thought you were a bill-collector.” He glanced nervously into the street above them. “Hurry, come in.”
Morsicato did not wish to hurry into the dark, dank space on the other side of the door, but did as he was bid. Instantly he started to sneeze, though what was assaulting his senses he couldn’t tell. A single taper burned on a scarred table. Through watering eyes, Morsicato peered around at the chamber that was both shop and home to the apothecary. The floor was littered in packthread and the remains of dead roses. In the corner was a truckle-bed, barely off the floor. Skin crawling, Morsicato imagined he could actually see the lice in the straw.
The wall-shelves were bedecked with cracked and crumbling earthen pots, bladders, and boxes filled with the instruments of the man’s trade. Yet despite the apparent poverty, Morsicato perceived the care taken to separate items. Instead of jamming the shelves to overflowing, many of the larger items hung from hooks in the ceiling. Snake skins, tortoise shells, cured fish turned inside out. On one wall hung a ragged old tapestry, probably thrown out by some local lord.
The apothecary shut the door, bolted it, and dragged a trunk against it for good measure. In the dim light he studied Morsicato. “You’re not a Mantuan doctor.”
“I’m traveling. My name is Pathino,” lied Morsicato, using the name of a man they all owed a bad turn.
“Never heard of you.”
Morsicato waited, but the man didn’t say anything more. “I like to know the name of the men I do business with.”
The apothecary’s beady eyes became hooded with suspicion. “You need herbs, I have them. If you can pay, why do we need to know names?”
> “What if I want to recommend you to someone?”
“You know where to find me. I’ve been in this shop for fifteen years. Three fires, a hundred break-ins, and one flood haven’t changed that.”
“Very well. I’ll just ask you neighbours your name when I leave. They’re bound to know it.”
The doctor could see the other man’s mind working. If Morsicato paid for herbs, then went asking the neighbours his name, they would know that he possessed some money. He was the kind of man who owed everyone money.
“Spolentino. That’s my name. Now what herbs does the fine traveling doctor need?”
Instead of answering, Morsicato looked around. “You have an extensive inventory. Do you have steady business?”
“Does it look like I have a steady business?” demanded Spolentino angrily. “What do you need?”
Morsicato felt something brush his shoulder. “Is that an alligator skin?”
“It is. Brought all the way from Egypt, where it was caught at great personal risk and expense.”
“I’m sure. But I have no need of alligator scales. I was just curious—” Morsicato examined some musty seeds that lay on the old table. But the apothecary swept them onto the floor in an angry gesture. He still held the club in his other hand.
“Look, I’m not here to satisfy your curiosity. Tell me what you want, I’ll tell you how much. Else you can get out.”
Time to broach the subject. “I’m looking for scorpion venom.”
Spolentino recoiled, his massive brow bristling with suspicion. “And you came to me specifically?”
“You are an apothecary,” said Morsicato lamely.
“I assume you know, doctor, that scorpion juice can be deadly.”
“Yes,” said Morsicato. “But it can be —”
“As a traveling doctor you might not know it, but Mantua’s law says it’s death to even own the means of making poison. Which, as a doctor, you must admit is ridiculous. The same things that kill can cure. It just takes a skilled hand to know the difference.”
“True, true,” agreed Morsicato. “Now, for the venom —”
“I don’t have any,” said Spolentino bluntly.
“Oh? But I heard —”
“What? What did you hear? From whom?” Spolentino was working himself in an apoplexy. His panic was clear. “I don’t deal in poisons, never have! Who sent you? Who?”
The agitated apothecary was between Morsicato and the door, the ugly club raised high. Tharwat had mentioned a rear exit – it had to be behind the moth-eaten tapestry. Backing towards it, Morsicato held out his empty hands. “Wait, I just —”
The spiked club started making arcs in the air. “Who sent you?!”
Morsicato was on the verge of doing something desperate when there was a cracking sound at his back. The tapestry fluttered and Tharwat appeared, falchion in hand.
Horrified, Spolentino instantly dropped his club and fell to his knees. “I don’t have the money!”
Eyes on the apothecary, Tharwat said, “Are you well, doctor?”
“Fine.” Morsicato cleared his throat. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“I don’t have the money!” cried Spolentino again.
“Stop talking,” said Morsicato testily. “We’re not here for money.”
That brought the apothecary up short. In his mind, all anyone wanted from him was money. His eyes narrowed. “What is this? Who are you?”
“We need to ask you some questions.” Morsicato reached into his robe and produced a bag of coins. “If you like, we could torture you, maybe maim you for life. But we’d much rather bribe you.”
Spolentino’s eyes fixed on the purse. “How much?”
“Depends on what you know. We’ll start by talking about these poisons you don’t sell.”
♦ ◊ ♦
Verona
Undressing for bed, Pietro was struggling with tangled points when Cesco knocked on his door. “Nuncle?”
“What can I do for you?”
Entering, Cesco nudged the door shut with his toe. “That wasn’t an accident, me hearing Bail’s story.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You want me to make a scene?”
Still in his trousers, Pietro freed his shirt from the jumble of cords that held his small-clothes. “You object?”
“I’m suspicious. You’ve never wanted me to make a scene before.”
Pietro sat on the bed, the starlight from the single window enough to see by. “We were in hiding then. It was unwanted attention. This is different. You won’t be happy unless you live up to expectations.”
“Or flout them,” said Cesco. “I could be the model of filial piety.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No,” admitted Cesco. “But by telling me that story, you seem to be insisting I out-shoot the target.”
“I suppose I am.” Pietro waited a moment. “So do it.”
Cesco grinned. “I like the Verona you. You’re a little meaner, more determined. It suits you.”
Pietro didn’t know how to respond to that, so he stood and crossed to a bundle lying beside a bowl of water, on top of his shaving tools. He picked up the package and tossed it to Cesco. “I got this for you.”
Unwrapping the cloth, Cesco held the object to the starlight. It was a masque, a grotesque carnevale affair with three faces connected at the cheekbones. One face laughed, one screamed, one cried. Cesco fitted the hard leather into place. The screaming face was at the center, the others curved to cover the sides of his head. “How do I look?”
“Horrific,” echoed Pietro.
“Is this like the one he wore?”
“I doubt it. It isn’t meant to be.”
Cesco slipped it off and looked at it again. “I like it. But isn’t it a little predictable?”
“Yes. But that’s me. I thought it was a nice homage. It’s up to you to flout expectations. Just let us in on what you plan.”
“So you can censure me?”
“So we can help.” Pietro smiled. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
“I do. But what I have in mind may not be possible.”
“Do what is possible,” said Pietro, quoting the saint that shared Cesco’s name. “And soon you will find yourself doing the impossible. What did you have in mind?”
Twenty-Three
Verona
Sunday, 28 July
1325
The sky was magnificent, a blue of purest summer. The sun had barely begun its descent when the gates to the Capulletti house were thrown wide to welcome revelers. Servants in tricked-out parti-coloured tunics and expensive hose began to usher the guests through the arched brick tunnel into the courtyard.
Pietro Alaghieri approached the gates, dressed to the hilt. It was not his habit to wear expensive clothes. Until today he’d believed his days of fancy hats was behind him. But for this occasion he had gone out of his way to dress sumptuously. From the tip of his high feathered cap to the soles of his tall leather boots, he was a vision of sartorial splendour.
His shirt, which showed only at the cuffs and collar, was of a pristine white batiste. His farsetto was of the old style, hanging down almost to his knees. So blue it was nearly black, it had a pattern sewn into it using the same colour thread creating the Alaghieri family crest - per pale or and sable a fess argent - interwoven with a running mastiff, the symbol of his knighthood. Its sleeves billowed out at the elbow, short in front, long and pointed in back, reaching past his knees.
The one garment he’d refused outright to wear was hose. He’d not donned a pair of skin-tight leggings since receiving the ugly wound on his thigh. Thus he wore knee-length breeches that matched the doublet, tucked into his tall boots.
Belted and trimmed, the whole affair was topped with a short, brocaded cape of blue with real silver accenting the edges. “To be removed only when you sit to eat,” he’d been instructed by his eleven year-old goad. Cesco had chosen his clothes.
On
e matter he hadn’t thought about was his complexion, the deep circles under his eyes. “We want you to look as young as you are,” Cesco told him. “If your clothes attract a potential wife, we don’t want her to look at your face and run.” So two weeks of lying awake fretting was masqued with the aid of tinted beeswax, lightly applied. Like a whore trying to hide her age. Feeling ridiculous, Pietro was uncomfortably aware of the admiring glances he was now receiving.
Standing at his elbow was Antonia, dressed far more demurely in a simple Germanic gown, embroidered with ribbon trims on the neckline. The sleeves ended in a point over the hand with a loop to go over the second finger to keep them in place. Her head was covered, and there was no plunging neckline on her gown (“Not that I have so much to display,” she’d muttered as she’d dressed). She was thankful that she hadn’t yet cut off her hair for the Order. It wasn’t entirely vanity. A shorn woman was noticeable.
Her simple appearance was by design as well as inclination. The idea was for Pietro to draw attention to himself while Antonia faded into the background. “You can be the sun,” she’d said, “and I shall be a cavern.”
“If you go unnoticed next to me, when Cangrande arrives you’ll be positively invisible.”
“Isn’t that the whole idea?”
Standing just behind them in the teeming mass of party-goers was Fra Lorenzo. Obviously unhappy to be there, he was pleasant enough to Antonia, if not Pietro.
Beside Lorenzo was another man in Franciscan robes. He didn’t look happy, either. “Wish I had shoes,” said Borachio, shifting his weight on the cobbled street.
“You get used to it,” said Lorenzo.
“And my head itches,” complained Borachio, feeling the bare patch on his head for the umpteenth time.
“You get used to that, too.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t already,” said Pietro pointedly. “After all, Brother Lucius, you’ve been in orders how long?”
In response to Pietro’s warning look, Borachio answered dutifully. “Three years. But it was a very lax house of God. The abbot had three sons in the order with him.” He grinned, causing Pietro to fret once again. In the abstract, it had been such a marvelous idea. Whereas the reality could light a fire to engulf them all.
