by Dave Duncan
Realizing that she had not spoken yet—had, in fact, been smiling at him all this time as witlessly as a stuffed owl—she belatedly said, “Thank you, sir.”
“How fares your mother this morning, my lady?” He led the horses over to the mounting block.
“Sleeping. Sister Bona still isn’t worried.” Lisa would have been quite frantic had this happened in the villa in Savoy, or even in Siena, but here she had advisors, and Sister Bona was a very comforting, competent-seeming sort of person. If the countess wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep, she said, then it would do her no harm. And that was exactly what Mother was doing, all day, all night. It was worrying, but it did allow her daughter time to engage in healthy exercise, such as long rides with Master Campbell. Two a day. Three yesterday.
“She probably has a lot of sleep to catch up on,” Hamish said with one of those irresistible smiles that quirked the corners of his mouth into almost-dimples. “Fourteen years.”
“That’s absurd!” Lisa settled on the saddle and took the reins.
“Not completely. I read once—” He pulled himself up short, grinned at her before she could tease, then swung up nimbly on to Eachen’s back. “She probably feels safer here than she has felt in years, so she’s catching up on her sleep. Let’s make the most of it. Would you like to see the Roman theater?”
“What’s on the playbill?”
Hamish’s laugh never really started. A large speckled horse came trotting into the yard with the huge and ominous figure of Longdirk on its back, heading for them.
Lisa glanced at her companion, and her heart sank like a rock. “You look like a schoolboy caught playing truant.”
“That’s exactly what I am.”
“Fair morning, my lady,” Longdirk said. As always, his face was infuriatingly unreadable.
She nodded without bothering to hide her displeasure.
Hamish just sighed, and said, “Where, when, what, who?”
“I hate to drag you away from important pleasure,” the big man told him solemnly, “but it has to be you, and milady can’t tag along.”
Lisa was shocked at how the day darkened. Being separated from Hamish for very long was unbearable. Did this overgrown barbarian realize the suffering he was causing her?
“Lucas Abonio,” he said. “You know his residence? Take every conspicuous precaution to make sure no one sees you entering or leaving.”
Hamish opened his mouth, then shut it with a click. “And what furtive message do I whisper to His Excellency?”
Longdirk shrugged. “Tell him about Babylonian chariot racing or that procession of equine oxen that interests you. You’ll think of something.”
“Italy has not been good for you. You used to be a nice straightforward boy.” Hamish turned to Lisa, then glanced down at Longdirk’s horse as if noticing it for the first time.
“Yes,” the big man said. “It is a plot to get you out of the way. Writhe in jealous rage all you want, but go and see Abonio.”
“Heartless swine,” Hamish said sadly. “You’ll be safe with him, dearest, but he doesn’t know a Roman theater from a hole in the ground.” Then he made a brave attempt at a grin and urged Eachen into a canter.
“The Roman theater is just a hole in the ground,” Longdirk said. “Not worth wasting time on. I know more interesting places to visit.”
“I believe I will wait until Master Campbell returns.”
“No you won’t. I have something to show you. Come along.”
Thus it was that Lisa found herself being escorted across the meadows by the condottiere himself that nippy spring morning, her wishes in the matter having been totally disregarded. She would have objected more strongly had she had anything better to do, or if the Highland gorilla were less intimidating. He scared her, but she was never going to admit that, even to herself. And she hated the way he ordered Hamish around, sending him off to Florence like a flunky just to … to what, exactly?
The two of them rode in silence for a while. Then Longdirk suddenly pointed at the plain below. “The large dome is the sanctuary, of course. And the tower beside it is the campanile.” He went on to point out the main landmarks in the city and then those outside— villages, hills, roads, naming every one and adding pertinent information. As the trail entered an olive grove he glanced around at her. “You smile, ma’am?”
“Oh, pray forgive me! I was just remembering how you chide Master Campbell for lecturing.”
He blinked. “His lectures come out of books. I learned all this on horseback.”
“Then you must write a book.” That stopped him! “Who is Lucas Abonio?” she inquired, brazenly pressing her advantage.
Peering down from his much greater height, he studied her in silence for a moment, as if she were an errant piece of ordnance. “This must be in confidence.”
“Oh, I have no wish to pry, Constable! I should not have presumed to—”
“He is the Milanese ambassador to Florence.”
She considered that answer for about four olive trees. “This is a secret?”
“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 bent-forward?” 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 Li
sa 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 something 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.”
