by David Blixt
Cesco’s response was cruel. “I don’t want to possess any creature that’s entirely dependent on me. What good is that? I want her loyal, but she’s got to know that in the end it’s all up to her.”
“I sense an allegory.”
“What, you’re the only one who can teach by metaphor?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Above them the dark-eyed falcon ringed, gliding on the faint wind. It watched for movement in the tall grass of the field, at the edge of the nearby forest.
In an idle tone, Cesco said, “Lord Bonaccolsi’s army won without you.”
“A resounding victory,” agreed Cangrande, “for which Passerino received all the credit, while I am covered in shame.”
“Do you think Passerino suspects your real reason for abandoning him?”
“You mean, do I suspect that he suspects that I suspect him of betraying me?” Cangrande laughed. “All this cross-biting is a bit confusing. Yes, he probably does. But he’ll never know for certain until the moment I pull the blade across his throat. The real shame of it is that Mastino will never know that he owes his life, in part, to you.”
Cesco’s eyes were still on his bird. “By the by, I know why the merlin.”
Cangrande raised his eyebrows at the seeming non sequitur. “Oh?”
“Yes. Arthurian myth. King Arthur’s wizard was called the Merlin. There’s a legend that states the Greyhound prophecy originated with him. So you fly a merlin, which is beneath you, to show your affinity to the prophecy.”
“Hm. That would be very cunning of me.”
“A subtle cunning. A careful crafting of an aura around yourself. Makes you more than human.”
Cangrande grinned wolfishly, showing his perfect teeth. “Are you awed?”
“A little. I certainly haven’t met your like before.”
“Except in a looking glass.”
“I don’t own one.” Cesco nodded towards his bird. “She’s got a high pitch.”
“That she does. Pray she doesn’t fly too high.”
“Another allegory.” Cesco brightened. “By the by, I never did thank you.”
“For?”
“It was quite considerate of you to let me meet my mother.”
Cangrande shot his heir a sidelong glance. “Shame on Pietro. He promised not to tell you.”
“Ah. Thank you again.”
“For?”
“Confirming my suspicions. I wasn’t sure if Pietro knew who she really was.”
“Damn me. Well, there’s a good lesson for you. Never answer more than is asked. So who was it told you? My sister?”
“She knows as well? It seems a secret very loosely kept. Was she your mistress? Is that your type?”
“I have no types – except, perhaps, not stupid. Yes, I do prefer my women to have a little something to bite back with.”
“No toothless women, then. I quite agree.” Cesco jerked his head in his falcon’s direction. “Though if she bites back, I’ll probably regret it.”
“Probably.” The bird pulled away in a wider and wider circle. “She may be raking out.”
“No. She’s just hunting. You’ll see.”
The dark smear in the sky darted suddenly down towards the ground, picking up speed as it changed angles to come up behind some prey. Something in the air must have alerted the quarry, for there was a quick rustle of grass beneath her. Moments later the falcon rose again, sailing just above the level of the grass.
Cangrande took a short step back, leaving the boy alone to complete the exercise. Petruchio had taught the boy well. This time everything was done properly, from the vocal cooing to the single click of the tongue, to the rigidly held left arm. Just before she settled into her perch the beautiful falcon dropped the pelt at the boy’s feet. Apparently he had won the bird’s trust, despite his shenanigans. Or because of them.
The dead animal was a hare, eyes wide and unseeing, its neck crushed by the falcon’s pounces. “The skin’s barely broken, there’s very little blood to stain the fur,” remarked Cangrande, impressed.
Cesco stroked the bird’s cere, the naked wax-like skin above the beak. “She’s a good footer, a natural born gamer.” A mimic, he had adopted Petruchio’s phrases as his own.
The hare was bagged and the falcon treated with a bit of older meat. Then she was flown again, this time with greater care.
“Ser Alaghieri leaves today for France.”
“We’ve said our good-byes,” said Cesco tranquilly.
“Actually,” said Cangrande slowly, “I was wondering if you wanted to go with him.”
That gave the boy a start. Cangrande was pleased to see he was still capable of surprises.
Cesco looked wary. “You’d let me leave?”
“Despite your late foolishness, you have earned a choice. I give you the greatest gift one man can bestow upon another. I give you liberty. You are free to fly away.”
Cesco smiled a little. “This is my airing?”
“If you like.”
“So you deem me broken?”
“Quite the opposite. But I tell you – if you choose to stay, I will break you. Nothing surer.”
Cesco stood looking at his bird, dragging out the silence. Finally he answered. “Thank you, but no. I accept no gifts, need no favours. And you will not break me.”
“Believe what you like,” said Cangrande. “If you remain, it will happen.”
Cesco’s smile became a wide grin. “Well, one of us will break, surely.”
“You believe you are hawking me?”
“In my fashion.”
“I will die before you break me.”
“Funny. That’s just what I was going to say.”
Prince and princeling watched the bird fly across rising sun. Above it, further north, the moon still hung high in the morning sky. A partial moon, unfulfilled. Soon the sun would obliterate the moon entirely with its light.
“Have you named her?” asked Cangrande.
“Yes. Her name is Susanna.”
♦ ◊ ♦
Based on prior experience, Pietro had eschewed hiring Veronese servants. So the morning sun found him riding his horse Canis alone through the Porta Palio. He’d planned on leaving earlier, but even with Cesco absent, his goodbyes had taken longer than he’d expected. He’d not teared up until he took leave of his hounds, now a part of the Scaliger’s menagerie.
Pietro hadn’t gone a mile before he spied a familiar figure off to the side of the road. Pietro guided Canis to where the Moor waited. “I looked for you to say farewell.”
“I had other business. Your sister is well?”
“She is, thank you.” Pietro detested the formality between them, but couldn’t find a way to break it.
Tharwat pulled his horse’s head around, ranging his mount alongside Pietro’s.
“Are you going with me?”
“No.”
“A shame. I’d like to see the Pope’s face when he met you.” It was the type of glib reply that Cesco could have pulled off. From Pietro it sounded boorish and insulting.
They rode in silence for another quarter mile. Then Tharwat turned his mount down a track, leading Pietro down into a glen. “Where are you taking me?”
“To a cabin in the valley.”
It occurred to Pietro that he should be afraid. But in his heart he knew Tharwat was no Assassin. He may have been trained in their arts, but that was not the man he had become. The man who had risked his life to free Pietro from prison was the same soul Pietro had known and trusted these last ten years.
Their destination was a shack at the bottom of a deep ravine, nestled up against the rocky wall. Isolated, with no cover, no trees or shrubs, it would have been impossible to creep up upon unseen.
It was clearly deserted. More, it had been burned. For some reason the fire had not caught well, and only one wall was blackened and charred. The rest of the cabin was whole.
&
nbsp; “What is this place?” asked Pietro.
The Moor turned to face him. “I traced Donna Maria to this valley. This is where she was taken, but she is not here now.”
Pietro became instantly more alert. “Who brought her here?”
“I do not know. More than one man. Despite the smoke, there are still traces of blood on the floor. Not much. She was not killed here. Only—”
Only tortured. Hardening himself for what lay ahead, Pietro tried not to conjure the image of the vibrant woman with the lilting accent, the one who had received just moments of her son’s life, and had now paid dearly for them. Damn.
“I would have spared you this. But there is something you must see.” Dismounting, the Moor led Pietro into the shack, the walls of thick-cut wood sturdier than they appeared.
Tharwat struck a light. “Over here. You’d be best off kneeling.”
Pietro did as he was told, and in the light of the Moor’s candle he saw the blood in question. He also saw something else. Beneath the dried blood, fifteen letters were scratched into the floor. They didn’t make a word. Instead they were divided in sets of three – up, across, down, across, up, across, down. The whole jumble looked like the letter ‘M’:
MRCTSM
AATA
BVXDB
“What does it mean?”
Tharwat closed his eyes to picture the scene. “She sat here, bleeding, her back to the wall. I can only assume her hands were tied behind her. Tortured, injured, both, she used her wit to scratch this.”
“Does it identify her attackers, do you think?”
The Moor shook his head. “I believe this is not a dying declaration demanding salvation or revenge. I believe it is something more important.”
Pietro studied the letters. “I can’t make heads or tails of it. Can you?”
“I have been struggling with it since I found this place.” Tharwat produced a small, flat bundle. Unwrapping it gingerly, he revealed a piece of slate with chalk markings on it. In the center was an exact copy of the letters on the floor, in their same relative positions.
“I have, I think, worked out a small piece. The letters are Roman, so I believe the code is in part in Latin. I have nothing to base that upon, other than this.” He pointed to a chalked scrawl at the bottom. Next to the letters CAV, he had added a small E, and a legend:
CAVe - beware
“It is a warning,” said Pietro. “It could be about her attackers.”
“I may be wrong in my interpretation, but I believe this was not meant for us. This is for Cesco. A puzzle. In her limited time with him, the mother in her saw his nature. She knew the trick to engaging him.”
Pietro considered for a long time. “Should he be told?”
“That question has plagued me. It is why I came to you. What do you think?”
Warmed as he was by Tharwat’s trust, Pietro’s mind did not stray far from the question at hand. His mother left this message for him. Would he conceive it his duty to find her? Or would he shrug it off, pretend it didn’t matter? Would it matter to him? Having gained Cangrande’s grudging respect, would the mother who abandoned him even enter his thoughts?
Pietro took the slate board and re-wrapped it in the Moor’s cloak, careful not to smudge the chalk. “Let’s try to solve it ourselves. And we have to find her, if she’s still alive. Meantime we make certain no one else finds this code.”
Together they finished the job the lamp had failed to do. In minutes the whole cabin was ablaze.
Pietro squinted at the growing fire. “I’m for Avignon. You have to stay by him as long as Cangrande allows. Please.”
“The Scaliger will find a way to be rid of me,” said Tharwat. “When he does, I will find you. Until then, I will protect the boy. And search for his mother.”
“Tharwat, I want you to know something. There’s no one I trust more than you.”
A long moment passed, the only sound the crackling of the flames. Then, at long last, the Moor nodded. “It is an honour to have the trust of the best knight in Christendom,” rumbled Tharwat al-Dhaamin from out of his broken throat. “An honour I strive every day to earn.”
They stayed until the darkness fell, the first stars appearing overhead. Flames licked at the sky, reaching to their utmost height, yet unable to touch those damning harbingers of future history. Instead they distorted the stars, making them seem to dance and writhe before Pietro’s eyes. There was no telling what they held in store.
FIN
Post Script
Historical Apologies and Literary Addendums
The fate of poor Dante’s bones have been the cause of much speculation, almost as much as the events of his life.
Immediately following his burial in the Church of the Frati Minori in Ravenna, the city of Florence demanded his remains. The Ravennese refused. Now, there is no evidence of an attempt to steal the poet’s body, that’s a fiction on my part. But a century later the Florentines enlisted Pope Leone X to their cause, and Dante’s bones were ordered back to Florence by papal authority. The Ravennese Prior, Antonio Santi, submitted, but when he opened the tomb he was shocked – shocked! – to find it empty. He proclaimed it a miracle, saying the poet who had walked with the dead had risen again to continue his travels. Having nowhere else to look, the Pope and the Florentines had to accept this adorable story. How could a pope deny the reincarnation of the soul in the body?
In 1865, Italy was preparing to celebrate the sixth centenary of the poet’s birth when a worker, opening a hole between the two chapels Rasponi and Braccioforte, found by chance a long wooden box half-decomposed by the damp. Inside it was an almost complete skeleton and a letter in which Antonio Santi, now long-dead, testified that those were Dante’s bones, quickly saved from Florentine arrogance.
But the story doesn’t end there. Some dust was taken from the box and placed in six leather bags, which were taken God knows where. The contents of one of these bags was somehow transferred to an envelope, which was found in the 20th century by a very excited clerk who claimed he’d found the poet’s true ashes in a library in Florence. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
Meantime, a fine tomb was built in Ravenna, and there the poet’s bones rested undisturbed until World War II, when they were hurriedly exhumed and buried in a mound of earth to protect them from bombing. After the war they were reinterred in the tomb, where, I hope, they remain to this day.
Above his sarcophagus hangs an eternal lamp whose oil is still provided by the city of Florence in penance for having exiled Dante seven hundred years ago. As far as I know, Venice bears no share in that particular penance.
♦ ◊ ♦
Speaking, as we are, of corpses…
On February 12th, 2004, Cangrande della Scala’s body was exhumed. This was the second time the great man’s remains were disinterred. The first was in 1921, when the main intent was to find a rumored copy of Dante’s Paradiso written in the poet’s own hand. This was, alas, only myth. But the recent unearthing of the Scaliger, replete with scientists and historians from several fields of study, led to some wonderful discoveries. My favorite was the noting of Cangrande’s perfect teeth. No wonder his smile was famous – he lived his whole life without a single cavity. And died with a liver destroyed by alcoholism.
On Good Friday, 2004, I received a copy of the initial findings thanks to my friend Antonella Leonardo, who facilitated every important meeting I had in the city during the writing of The Master Of Verona and this book. I truly cannot thank her enough, both for her encouragement and for the many wonderful people she has introduced me to.
♦ ◊ ♦
Once more, all of my initial ideas for this book came from Shakespeare. As we draw a little nearer to the events of the week of July 12, 1339 (Juliet dies two weeks away from her 14th birthday – once more I am betrayed by math), I get to add in more characters from his Italian plays. Shylock, Jessica, and Launcelot Gobbo are all, of course, from Merchant. Valentine, a f
eatured player in Two Gents, has also gotten a place in Mercutio’s roster, since the invitation to the Capulet ball reads ‘Mercutio and his brother, Valentine.’ The closest Cesco has to brothers are the two Nogarola boys. In the last book I brought up Petruchio, Kate, and their children, but now I’ve added Grumio, whom I only mentioned in passing, as well as shout-outs for Baptista, Lucentio, Hortensio, and Bianca, all from Shrew. Borachio and Corrado (Conrade) are now added to list of Much Ado members I’ve used – Don Pedro, Don John, & Benedick. More of these and other plays to come.
For those keeping score, the minor treason at the heart of Antony’s troubles was born in my short story Varnished Faces, where he and his uncle crash a Paduan wedding reception in masks and make a shady business deal with an old man named Gremio, another character from Shrew.
In answer to the obvious query – yes, this series will indeed end with events laid out in Shakespeare’s play Romeo & Juliet (I do have an idea for a coda novella, but it’s hard when most of your leads are dead!). Because these books were born out of that play, I have no plans to contradict anything said in that show. Rest assured, everything that happens on the stage will be treated as Gospel.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t have some surprises in store, both historical and literary. Knowing that I’m playing a long game, be assured that, as Mussato says in Ecerinis, ‘secrets will out.’ Living with R&J the way I have, I know it better than I know most people, and still it has the power to astonish me. Such is the might of Shakespeare’s pen.
Nevertheless, there are many books between now and then. Plenty of time to build the expectations I intend to flout.
♦ ◊ ♦
Names, names, names. I resisted the name Paris as hard as I could, intending to use the title as a mocking nickname later in life. But re-reading R&J, I decided there was no way around it being his baptismal name. It’s not the young men who so address him, but Capulet, Lady Cap, Friar Lawrence – people not accustomed to using nicknames. Therefore, much as I changed Tybalt to Thibault, I turned Paris into Paride, the modern Italian version of the name. This is contrary to Dante, who uses Paris when referencing the Trojan lover. But I like Paride. I find it easier to create if I vary character names a trifle – Montecchio, not Montague, and so on. A failing, perhaps, but one that I hope in no way diminishes the story. And now I have painted myself into the corner with Cesco, who won’t be called Cesco too much longer...
