The Thief Of Peace

by Jess Whitecroft

  Albani made a low, weird sound, and then everything happened at once. He staggered sideways, but he didn’t put out his arm to break his fall. He knocked over a table as he went down. His face was dark and distorted. He was trying to open and close his mouth, but it had gone slack at one corner and would no longer obey him. Teo rushed to his side, his anger forgotten. Nicci, who had seen this before and knew what it meant, turned to Vicini.

  Tick, tick, tick. The noise burrowed into Nicci’s mind in that scared, stretched moment. He never stops thinking. Not for a second.

  Teo was shushing, pleading with his father not to move, not to panic. Nicci looked into Vicini’s eyes and imagined he could see cogs turning within his mind. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Why – even now – was Vicini still thinking?

  “Well, don’t look at me,” Nicci said. “Call a doctor!”

  “Right,” said Vicini, seeming to snap out of it. He hurried away.

  *

  Teo sat beside the bed, trying to pray, but once again his mind was too scattered.

  The doctor had come to draw his father’s blood, but nothing had worked. Albani lay unconscious in a luxurious bed that was a million miles from the last sickbed Teo had attended. Intricately carved posts, velvet hangings with gold fringes, a coverlet of embroidered silk – none of these things mattered any more, if they ever did, because in the end it was all the same, whether you breathed your last on a bed of silk or a hard, narrow bed in a monk’s cell.

  The bedroom door opened and Teo looked up. It was Vicini.

  “Any change?” he said, approaching the bed.

  Teo shook his head. “I thought he was trying to say something earlier but then he…faded out again. Has he taken fits like this before?”

  “Once. After he lost his wife, and Luca. He lost the use of his right arm for a while, but he was stubborn.” Something like a smile glimmered at the tight corners of Vicini’s lips, but didn’t touch his eyes. “He built it back up by drawing his big hunting bow. The first time he couldn’t even nock the arrow. It fell from his fingers and clattered on the floor. He was furious with me when I tried to pick it up. So the next time he left the arrow and just concentrated on the bow. Kept on pulling and pulling, forcing his fingers to grip.”

  “Stubborn,” said Teo.

  “Very. An immovable object, at times.”

  Teo exhaled. Nothing felt real anymore. “Who did this, Vicini? You mentioned a woman. A she-wolf, you said.”

  “Fiorina del Campo,” said Vicini. “She was your brother Giacamo’s lover. The wife of the man who killed him.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “She made a remark that makes me suspect she was responsible for the package.”

  “What kind of remark?”

  “Please excuse my language under the circumstances,” said Vicini. “But she said that the only balls in the Albani family belonged to the Medici. On account of their…”

  “…their coat of arms, yes.” You didn’t have to look far in Florence to see the palle of the Medici. They were everywhere. “But where did she get hold of such a horrible thing?”

  “A slaughterhouse, perhaps,” said Vicini. “They could have come from anything. A young pig. A veal calf. Who knows? The point is that if she intended to cause trouble she’s done it now.”

  Teo frowned. “Do you think this is unrelated to what happened to Brother Armando? Because the timing…”

  “I agree,” said Vicini. “This has all the hallmarks of a plot. Which is why you can’t stay here.”

  “What? What are you talking about, Vicini? I can’t go back to San Bendetto. It’s not safe there.”

  “It’s not safe here either. I like Volpaia’s idea.”

  “Which is?”

  “He wants to hide you,” said Vicini. “Take you to a place of safety.”

  “But…” Teo glanced down at the still, quietly wheezing figure in the bed. “My father.”

  “I know, but it’s not safe for you here. At least until I can begin to find out what’s going on. You’re the heir, Teodoro. Whether you like it or not, you’re all that’s left of the house of Albani, and if someone is attempting to destroy it, they’ll come for you next.”

  Teo touched his father’s hand for a moment. The skin was cool and damp. There was no movement. “All right,” he said.

  “Go with Volpaia,” said Vicini. “He says he knows a place where you can hide.”

  “And then what? Will you…?” Teo hesitated again. Albani hadn’t been the best father in the world, but was he really about to leave him here to die without the last of his children at his bedside? “Will you send word?”

  “Only if I have to. The fewer people who know where you are, the better.”

  “Yes. Of course. Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Teo, getting to his feet. “I know we’ve had our disagreements in the past, Vicini, but you have always served my father well. And for that I’m grateful.”

  He found Nicci waiting in the loggia, where the stone faces of his three dead half-brothers stared forwards and saw nothing. Nicci was sitting on a low bench and didn’t look up at first, absorbed as he was in making a fuss of one of Albani’s greyhounds. The dog’s thin tail whipped back and forth as Nicci stroked its ears and murmured the usual doting nonsense of all dog lovers – good boy, yes, such a good boy, who’s a good boy, then?

  Somewhere, a peacock shrieked. Teo approached, and Nicci glanced up. He stood up, the dog gazing up in bafflement as to why the lavish affections it had been enjoying a moment ago had suddenly been withdrawn.

  And suddenly all that warmth was burning bright in Teo’s direction.

  Nicci embraced him. It was a solid, masculine hug of condolence, but it stole Teo’s breath.

  “How is he?” Nicci asked, his dark eyes bright with concern.

  Teo shook his head. “No change. I…I spoke to Vicini. He told me about your plan.”

  “I know a place in the hills,” said Nicci. “Near Volpaia. Nobody will know you’re there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you. For trusting me. I can’t imagine it’s easy for you after everything you’ve been through.”

  “It’s not,” said Teo. “But it’s as I told you: I need friends.”

  9

  It had been almost a decade since the last time Nicci had set foot in Volpaia.

  The town sat on a hill, against a backdrop of gently undulating green slopes that were full of olive groves, or striped with the tidy lines of Volpaia’s famous vineyards. The old town walls were the colour of dust beneath the scorching summer sun, and as they approached Nicci could just make out the squat, squarish shape of the fifteenth century church where he had been baptised.

  He pulled on the rein, turning the horse off the main road, causing Teo to shoot him a quizzical look.

  “It’s this way,” he said, and led them up a narrow path that climbed up the side of a nearby hill. He’d been here a million times before with a bow in his hand, or a handful of snares to set for rabbits. The first times he’d come up this path he’d been carried, riding horsey on his father’s back, his chubby legs sticking out to the sides and snagging on branches. Then as an older child, eager for approval, in those sunny days before fathers developed feet of clay. Then, finally, as a young man. Dragging his feet, knowing that a lifetime of catching rabbits and raising children would never satisfy the desires that burned inside him.

  He’d been such a brat back then.

  “You take after your damn mother,” his father had said, during one of the many fights that had spilled over during those years. “Think you’re better than this town. But you’re not. Volpaia is your name and Volpaia you are, and the sooner you get that into your thick skull the better off you’ll be.”

  Nicci stopped the horse and dismounted. His first thought was that the little stone hut looked so much older than he remembered. The scarlet oleanders had bloomed out of con
trol and ivy had swallowed an entire wall. It looked like one of those places in a story, where some wicked fairy had put the inhabitants to sleep for a century, as a punishment for their poor hospitality.

  “Here we are,” said Nicci. “It’s not much, but it’s out of the way.”

  When he turned back to Teo his first thought was blue. The red flowers blazed so bright that Nicci’s eyes immediately forgot that there was any other colour in the world than red, but then he turned back to Teo and everything was blue. Dark blue doublet and cloak. Ultramarine eyes, with their impossible lashes casting bluish shadows upon the darkness beneath them. He looked exhausted. And exquisite.

  I’ve made a mistake. I can’t be near you like this. Your beauty will drive me mad.

  He reached out and opened the door. It scraped against the stone. Inside was an old bed frame, a broken-backed chair that Nicci remembered from home, and not much else. “I need to get some things,” he said. “Food. Bedding. You should stay here.”

  Teo said nothing, but the look in his eyes said he didn’t want to be alone. When had he last been alone, anyway? Not since he’d joined the monastery, at least.

  “Nobody knows that you’re here,” said Nicci, and unbuckled his sword. It was a flimsy thing – for fashion more than anything – and not even that sharp, but it was something. “Here. Do you know how to use this?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I won’t be long. Sit tight.”

  “Nicci…”

  Nicci turned on his way out of the door. Teo ran the tip of his tongue over his lips, his eyes wide with anxiety and lack of sleep. “Thank you,” he said, again, after a short but fraught pause. Nicci nodded and all but fled, terrified of what might come out of his mouth if he didn’t.

  He hurried down the narrow path, then turned into an even smaller path that led to a tiny brown house, shielded from view by olive trees.

  Home.

  There were tiles missing from the roof and the sight gouged the bottom out of his stomach, but as he drew nearer he saw that the plants on the porch were still being tended, if not as carefully as they had been in days gone by, when she’d been able to afford help here and there.

  He saw her hat first, a wide brimmed straw thing bobbing behind the low garden wall. When she stood up and saw him she let out a startled shriek, and then – regaining her composure – a long, slow sigh. “Oh no,” she said. “What have you done this time?”

  “Hello, Mamma. Nice to see you.”

  She took off her hat. Amazingly it was the same one she’d been wearing over ten years ago, battered and mended so many times that only a few strands of the original straw remained. Her hair was flat and sweaty against her scalp, the white streak wider against the black. “If you want money, I don’t have any,” she said, but held out her cheek for his kiss just the same.

  “I don’t need money. I just need food. And bedcovers. And a mattress.”

  “Oh no…”

  Nicci held her by the shoulders. “No, listen. It’s nothing like that, I swear.”

  “Not here, Nicci. Not here, for goodness’ sake. Can’t you keep all that business in Florence where it belongs?”

  “I told you. It’s not like that. He needs somewhere to go…”

  She groaned and shook him off, waving her hand as she stomped inside. He followed.

  “Mamma, please.”

  “Please what? You say it’s not like that, but there’s a he in this picture.” She stopped and turned in the middle of the kitchen. The room looked dusty, and far smaller than he remembered. “Who is he? Some boy who hangs around artists’ studios? Tight hose? Painted cheeks?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s a monk.”

  She laughed, an unladylike guffaw. “Well, nobody can accuse you of having a type, I suppose. What on earth have you got yourself into this time?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You can. And you’d better. If you’re going to drag this – whatever it is – to my doorstep, then you can at least have the decency to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Mamma, please. It’s better that you don’t know. I don’t know half of what’s going on myself. It’s probably only for a couple of days and…”

  She slammed down a fist on the kitchen table. “Niccolò, you will tell me or you will leave. It’s as simple as that. I don’t need this kind of trouble.”

  He sighed, out of options once again. “All right,” he said. “The short version is that he’s the son of a noble family. There might be a conspiracy to kill him and he’s no longer safe in the monastery. Please don’t ask me anymore, and please don’t breathe a word of this. You don’t know any of this, do you understand? I was never here.”

  Her jaw relaxed slightly. She had more white hairs than he remembered, but her neck was still smooth and her complexion could inspire envy in a woman twenty years younger. She was forty-three years old, an age that had once seemed ancient to Nicci but now seemed like a handful of years away. She’d been a bride at fourteen and a mother at fifteen, a girl taken far too young, so that he’d torn something inside her when he made his way out, and there had been no more children.

  “All right,” she said. “That will do. You were never here. We never had this conversation.”

  “That’s right.”

  Nicci gathered up some things – bread and cheese and wine, and a straw mattress. These he carried up the hill on a creaking handcart he remembered from laundry days, when he’d hauled wet clothes back from the little river where he’d learned to swim. His mother had taught him when he was very young, because her beloved elder sister had drowned doing laundry. Everyone had assumed she’d be afraid of water after that, but when Susanna Tredici – a girl whose very name was an unlucky number – saw something that was likely to kill her, her reaction was to discover how she might survive it.

  She wouldn’t betray them. Of that much, Nicci was certain.

  When he returned to the hut, Teo was asleep. He’d collapsed on the hard bed frame, one hand dangling down to the floor. Nicci’s sword lay beneath his slack fingers, as though Teo had plunged into sleep so fast and so deep that the clatter of sword on stone hadn’t roused him.

  He’d probably slept on harder beds than this, Nicci thought, remembering the hair shirt. It still felt like a perversion to him, that Teo should have been obliged to mortify his flesh, as if God hadn’t made the rest of him, along with his hands and face and the tongue Teo used to sing His praises.

  Nicci moved quietly, but not quietly enough. Teo opened an eye and then jerked awake, as though waiting for a bell to ring and call him to prayer.

  “Sorry,” Nicci said. “I was trying not to wake you.”

  “I was only dozing.”

  “When was the last time you slept?”

  “Properly?” said Teo, rubbing the nape of his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  Nicci opened a bottle of wine, the deep red, near-black peasant brew he’d grown up drinking. It held the chill of the cellar and Teo drank gratefully, licking the dark stain from the corners of his lips. “What is this place?” he asked.

  “I used to come here hunting when I was a boy,” said Nicci. “My mother’s place is just down the hill.”

  Teo glanced at the cup in his hand, and the mattress. “Is that where you…?”

  “Yes. It’s all right.”

  “She knows I’m here?”

  “She knows just enough to deny everything,” said Nicci. “I’m sorry. I had to tell her some things, in order to get her to go along with this.” Teo looked wide eyed and panicked again and Nicci hurried to reassure him. “No, it’s all right. She’s my mother. She’s kept bigger secrets for me than this.”

  “Such as?”

  “Not important right now,” said Nicci, and realised there was nothing for it. “Listen, I need to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t realise that your whereabouts was supposed to be a secret.”


  “It wasn’t,” said Teo. “At least, not until my fears started to get the better of me again.”

  “Right,” said Nicci. He took a breath, once again wondering how to say this. “Well…what it is…um…I might…” He swallowed. “I might have mentioned to someone that you were at San Bendetto.”

  Teo’s eyes were huge. He’d gone very pale. “Who?”

  “A boy. A friend. A…an apprentice. Now, I’m sure he would never have told anyone…”

  “Oh, well, if you’re sure,” said Teo, springing to his feet.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? A man is dead, Nicci.”

  “Really?” said Nicci. “You’re really going to blame me for that?”

  Teo stopped pacing for a moment and sighed. “No,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “No. I’m not. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. And you’re right. I never asked you to keep me a secret, and that was my fault. I told myself I was only imagining danger. I let myself get complacent.”

  “Complacent about what? Would you like to tell me what in the world is going on? Because right now I only understand about a quarter of what’s happened to me today, and I’m the one that’s…” The one you dragged out of bed. The one who chose to help you. The one who would do just about anything for you. “…here.”

  Teo resumed his seat on the edge of the bed frame. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you are.”

  “So?”

  There was a long hush. Teo, his eyes downcast, twirled a ribbon from his sleeve round and round his finger, wrapping it so tight that the fingertip turned red, before letting the ribbon fall loose and starting his work all over again. The ends of his eyelashes were gold and the late evening light caught the honey coloured strands in his untidy chestnut hair, and the fragile strands of still-boyish bristle at his jaw. He was bronze and gold and blue and his mouth was as red as the tip of his strangled finger, and he made Nicci ache with nothing but the merest flutter of his lashes.