The Prince's Doom

by David Blixt

  When he held up his hand for silence, he continued in a more serious vein. “A knight rights wrongs. A knight protects the innocent. A knight listens to the words of the Lord. Do you understand this?”

  “We do,” proclaimed the assembled youths.

  “Then take the communion offered you and be one with the Lord.”

  The new knights ate the bread and drank the wine offered by the priests, and Cangrande proclaimed, “I bestow on each and every one of you the highest honour Verona can bestow. I name you Cavalieri del Mastino!”

  Excitement began to build. The moment these knights finished basking in the crowd's adulation, they would go off to arm themselves for the mêlée.

  On the edge of his stone seat, Pietro girded himself for the coming battle. He did not know what he wished for most – his ward's safety, or a return of the daring Cesco of old.

  Dandolo rose to depart, and Pietro recalled his earlier comments about a diviner. A chill crept along his spine. What had the Venetian been divining?

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  NOW GIROLAMO HAD a name. He'd searched for almost a decade, ever since the gift first revealed itself. But all he had was the vaguest memory of her face, hidden in shadow, her muffled voice, and the scent of lavender. He'd tried both the church where she'd summoned them and the house they'd been dispatched to, without success.

  But now, armed with a name, the little stone at the end of the chain was swinging true. It hung over a rough map of Verona. He asked, and it swung to where she was now. But everyone knew where she would be. There were times, even now, when he mistrusted. It had been wrong before. So he asked it where she was lodged. It showed him, hovering over a different part of the map.

  A roar from the Arena shook Girolamo's concentration. Knowing from experience how hard that concentration was to restore once lost, he stood up in the alleyway where he hunched and tucked his pendulum away. Then he set out in the direction it had pointed him towards.

  Four

  IT WAS OVER almost before it had begun. Armour shining under the November sun, the two armies lined up. Not wishing to pit Paduan against Veronese on such a day, leadership was bestowed upon the new bridegrooms, the Scaliger's heir in charge of one army, his nephew commanding the other. Each had loyal Paduan knights to protect them, and the flags they carried were not of cities or families, but of solid hues – purple and gold.

  Pietro expected Cesco to take this opportunity to revenge himself upon Mastino – an expectation clearly shared by Mastino himself, who kept shooting mistrusting glances at Cesco as the armies lined up. But though his army did well, Cesco himself refused to draw his sword, instead playing a very skillful game of cat-and-mouse with Mastino's army. Riding hither and yon, he let himself be chased around the Arena in a dazzling display of horsemanship. The crowd laughed at his antics, but his foolishness demoralized his army, which quickly fell to Mastino's bated swords. Once his defenders were dispatched, disarmed and dismounted, Mastino's forces quickly cornered Cesco, who cheerfully yielded his banner to his cousin's waiting hand. “How you must love me, cousin!”

  “Love you?” asked Mastino, pulling off his helmet to frown.

  “Amor vincit omnia. You have conquered, and therefore you love. I feel bathed in my family's love today, don't you? Hoist, hoist, the masses are waiting.”

  Mastino obediently hoisted the banner of the vanquished side, and the masses bellowed their approval. Reaping the victor's accolades, Mastino found he could not smile. He had waited so long to be knighted, to be finally given his due. Yet both knighthood and victory were tarnished. Cesco had not truly tried, and there was no sweetness in beating an apathetic foe.

  He had a weapon yet, should he choose to employ it. A weapon that would stir up Cesco against the world. The trouble was the double-bladed nature of that weapon, which could as easily cut Mastino's own heartstrings as the bastard's. Best to wait, devise other traps to prod the bastard into.

  One person who did not wait to prod Cesco was Cangrande. Almost the moment the mêlée was ended, the Capitano di Verona exited his balcony to greet his heir in the tunnels below. Neither demurred when Pietro joined them.

  Dismounting and tugging off his helmet, Cesco gave them a lopsided smile, reminiscent of Pietro's own. “Alas, though I was defeated, it's no dishonour to the Scaligeri. I was beaten by one of our own.”

  Cangrande gazed down at his heir. One eyebrow arched. “Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo.”

  Cesco slapped his forehead dramatically. “Thank you! I couldn't remember the exact quote. Hence the mistranslation.”

  “ 'If I cannot bend Heaven, I will raise Hell.' Do you wish to explain it?”

  Pulling off his mailed gauntlets, Cesco blinked. “Why, don't you understand it?”

  “You hardly raised Hell in the mêlée. Audentes fortuna iuvat.”

  Pulling his tabard over his head, Cesco shrugged. “Fortune may favour the bold, my lord, but she's already made clear her feelings about me. I don't see any point in wasting time wooing a bitch like her.”

  “That will be good to remember, as I make dispositions for the war with Treviso.”

  Cesco shrugged again as a servant unbuckled his petta, the breastplate with family seal etched in acid upon it. “I'll find something useful to do, wherever you set me.”

  “I daresay you will.” Pietro understood why Cangrande's brow was furrowed. The Scaliger usually had more power to exert in these clashes. But Cesco seemed not to care how the conversation went.

  “What a great success today has been,” observed Cesco lightly. “Sit Verona potens Itala virtute propago.” Let Verona's offspring be powerful, by Italian valour.

  Cangrande placed a hand on Cesco's shoulder. Despite the young man's recent growth, it was doubtful he would ever reach the Capitano's magnificent height. “Cesco – it grows easier. Experto crédite.” Trust one who has gone through it.

  Cesco patted the hand. “My, we are in a Virgilian vein! Grandfather Dante would be proud. Let me conclude, then, with an observation as true thirteen hundred years ago as it is today. Quisque suos patimur Manes.”

  Pietro winced. He knew the quote well, had himself taught it to the boy, years ago. Each of us bears our own Hell.

  Cangrande sucked in a long breath. “You against the world, eh?”

  “I hope I'm not against anyone! Except hunger. Isn't it time to feast? My bride should be done with her nap by now. Capitano. Nuncle.” With a bow and a salute, Cesco departed, immediately joined by Detto, Paride, and the rest of the pack of Verona's new knights.

  Watching Cesco vanish around the curved walls of the catacombed tunnels, Pietro experienced something unprecedented – the Scaliger placed a friendly arm about his shoulders. “He'll come out of it. Ómnia fert aetas.”

  It was kindly said. Time bears away all things. But Pietro could not help noting that the Scaliger did not add the other half of Virgil's phrase: 'Animum quoque.' Even our minds. His response was as churlish as the Scaliger's had been kind. “I thought you wanted him broken.”

  Cangrande allowed his hand to fall to his side. “So I did. I must be more careful what I wish for. Never fear, there will be some great trial soon. If not, I will invent one. The boy is too much himself to remain in this sullen vein for long.”

  Pietro hoped that was true. He dreaded what would happen when the pent-up anger and frustration burst its dam. Like flood water, it would not care where it directed itself.

  Nor upon whom.

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  THE EVENING FEAST was magnificent. The food was delectable, the wine superb, and the entertainment the finest in the land. If this was to be Manuel's final bow, he had gone beyond the dreams of entertainers crafting an ongoing spectacle that would pay the performers for a year and be talked of forever.

  The dwarfish Jew himself led the first round of revels, singing:

  Wedding is great Juno's crown

  O blessed bond of board and bed

  'Tis Hymen peopl
es every town,

  High wedlock then be honoured:

  Honour, high honour and renown

  To Hymen, God of every town!

  “To Hymen!” cried the male revelers (and a few of the bolder feminine ones as well).

  With so many people to host, the planners had eschewed any of the palaces. Cramped within doors, some great person would of necessity be snubbed. Instead, tables were set in the open expanse of the Piazza dei Signori, with braziers full of spiced wood warming the air.

  “Ah! Now comes the true event!” Ever a lover of good food, Morsicato tucked in with delight at each new confection and dish presented, the creation of which had taxed the inventiveness of the Scaligeri cooks for a full month. As was the custom, each course was brought in on horseback, making an entrée, as the French called it.

  Cangrande's personal chef, the soft-spoken genius of the saucepan Giorgio Gioco, had crafted the banquet's menu and overseen the preparation. For this, the most significant meal in Verona's history, he had firmly embraced the theory of Four Humours cuisine. The enormous feast offered a variety of dishes to balance Melancholy, Choler, Phlegm, and Blood. Melancholic foods were cold and dry, while choleric foods were hot and dry. Phlegmatic meals were cold and moist, whereas bloody foods were hot and moist.

  Most often a cook would pair fish, a phlegmatic food, with a hot and piquant sauce, balancing cool moistness with choler. Today, however, each course balanced the next, with wave after wave of culinary delight: dried venison, roast turtle dove, eel, oysters steamed in milk, cold quail and fatty pork, sautéed radicchio with mushrooms, duck breast with oranges, plums and apples, filleted horseflesh and cheese soup, iced wild hare and boiled duck stuffed with lamb and glazed in butter and beer.

  Once discussion of the mêlée was exhausted, conversation turned to the wedding ceremony. Lord Bonaventura seemed especially taken with the vows. Turning to Cesco, seated with his new Rossi relations, Petruchio called, “Twenty-three words! I commend you, my young lord! The best vows ever!”

  “He's just glad we got to the feast faster,” confided his wife Kate.

  “Actually, I'm just interested in getting back to my mistress.” This was Petruchio's favourite joke of late. An avid falconer, he had fallen in love with a beautiful long-winged lanner, which he had named Comare – a common word for 'mistress'.

  “Air her all you like, she won't rake you the way I will.” The buxom red-head covertly stabbed her husband with a knife in the hip, making him jump.

  “The ceremony had to be short,” replied Cesco over his shoulder. “That's a lot to memorize. Isn't it, Maddelena?”

  His little bride sat beside him, flanked on her other side by her nurse. A cute child, she was slightly chubby, with dark brown hair neither straight nor curly. Addressed, she hid her face behind her hands, and Cesco winked at the crowd. “Alas, I am too old for her. Imagine, being forced to marry someone three times your age! I am positively ancient!” Cheerfully, he slipped an orange wedge between her fingers and she began eating it.

  “Say thank you to your husband, Maddelena,” said Madonna Rossi, seated close by.

  Maddelena dutifully said, “Thank you, husband.” Her sisters tittered at her and she flushed, not knowing why it had been funny.

  But her husband wasn't laughing as he leaned close. “Call me Cesco. Or, even better, Francesco. No one calls me Francesco. It'll be a secret between us.”

  Maddelena's eyes were watery. She had finally been made to understand that she wouldn't be going home again. Her nurse would come with her, and a maid, but she was going to live in a strange house with this strange boy she'd met once at a church in Padua.

  Cesco began cutting her meat for her. “It'll be like having a brother, only you get to order me around. You can have your mother and sisters to visit whenever you like. Do you like dogs?” She nodded. “We've got a lot of dogs. We can get you one of your own. A puppy. Would you like that?”

  “I'd like a cat better,” she said with a half-timid glance.

  Cesco winced, but rallied. “A cat it shall be. Christ Jesus, a cat among all the hounds.”

  Nico da Lozzo grinned good-naturedly at the young couple. “What a sweet child. I hope she grows into a beauty, like her mother.” He nodded to the lady, who smiled politely back.

  “Cesco can always find one if she doesn't,” observed Petruchio, earning him a wifely slap on the back of his head.

  Playfully ruffling Maddelena's hair, Cesco twisted around to address Petruchio. “I've taken you as my example. I'm out to make a friend of my bride.”

  “You'll have an easier time taming her than I did,” said Petruchio. “Maybe that's the secret. Get them while they're young!”

  “Old, am I?” huffed Kate.

  Petruchio chucked her under the chin. “Never. That would mean I'm getting older, which is patently absurd.”

  “Yet you are withered,” observed Kate, a tight grin spreading.

  “Tis with cares,” replied Petruchio, his smile matching hers.

  “I care not.” They said it together and howled, to the bewildered eye-rolling of those around them. The strangest couple, those two.

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  PIETRO WAS SEATED with his brother Jacopo and the lords Castelbarco and Capulletto – Montecchio was seated with the Carrara clan, his relatives by law. The conversation was carried mostly by Poco and the uncommonly ebullient Castelbarco. For Pietro, the day was full of despair, while for Antony it was too much a reminder of losses past. Tessa, Capulletto's lady wife, was being deliberately engaged by Castelbarco's own considerate spouse while Antony stared at the Carrara table with a sullen expression.

  “How are you finding life in Florence, Master Jacopo?” asked Castelbarco. “Is the city much changed under your new charter?”

  “Much, and very little. The city grows, the people remain the same. I do hope the new system succeeds, but I don't see how it can. Drawing lots for public office? What will that do, save create one happy man and a thousand jealous ones? Government by chance.”

  “Which is why they limited the terms of office, no? Two months only?”

  “Yes, and no officer can be succeeded by a member of his own family. It's all meant to stop the factions. But the Signoria is in control of the drawing of lots. Already there are cries of rigging. It's an ingenious system, certainly – for those at the top of the ladder to keep those below squabbling over the rungs. Still, it has halted the violence, for now. The fighting was interfering too much with trade. That couldn't be allowed.”

  “A cynic,” remarked Castelbarco.

  Jacopo shrugged. “A realist. We Florentines may be a stiff-necked bunch, but we are clear-eyed in matters of business. Which is why I think my brother is more at home in Verona. He is a Romantic at heart.”

  “Romantic?” Surprised, Pietro frowned. He considered himself a lawyer.

  Poco showed his teeth. “Secret missions, martyrdom, adventure, peril! Above all, honour. You are made for the court of King Arthur. I don't doubt that in a few hundred years your deeds will be sung in legend.”

  “Hear hear!” said Antony heartily. “I had a song written for him once. I should have it appended to continue his tale.”

  “You're both mad,” said Pietro, flushing.

  Poco clicked his tongue. “Tch. It's just a pity that stiff neck of his can't bend enough to make nice with the Signoria da Firenze. Think of the riches that would be heaped upon him.”

  “I don't need riches,” said Pietro.

  Poco turned in mock appeal to Castelbarco and Capulletto. “See? Not a true son of Florence. He doesn't care for money.”

  Antony clapped a hand to Pietro's shoulder. “Fortunately, he is already rich.”

  “He could be richer still, if he could just choke down that pride of his.”

  “I humbled myself in Avignon to escape the condemnation of God,” growled Pietro. “I can live with the ire of my birthplace.”

  “The German theologian Eckhart was not so for
tunate, I hear,” said Castelbarco.

  “Yes,” said Pietro. The news had come over the summer. Not officially executed, but dead in custody.

  “I've heard the name,” said Poco. “Was he accused of heresy as well? Did you meet him?”

  “Yes, and no,” admitted Pietro. “The order for his trial was issued while I was in Avignon, but our paths did not cross.”

  “Do you know much about his heresy?” asked Castelbarco.

  “Supposed heresy,” corrected Pietro with lawyerly precision. “No, I've not read his works. I heard it had to do with Christ's poverty.” This was the bête-noir of the Avignon church under John XXII, which had amassed astonishing wealth selling indulgences.

  “A little,” said Castelbarco. “He wrote that to be full of things is to be empty of God.”

  “That would do it,” said Pietro, sipping lightly at his wine.

  “Ah,” said Castelbarco with relish, “but he followed the thought to its natural conclusion. That we are all beings of nothingness. God is the font of all life, our lives are merely borrowed. Being borrowed, we are mere reflections, poor images of God Himself. Not that, to Eckhart, God resembles man. God exists as God only when we pray, when action is required. The rest of the time God is a force of life, greater than human conception.”

  “I have always thought it was the folly of Man to try to understand the nature of God,” said Pietro.

  Castelbarco wagged a bony finger at Pietro. “Which was Meister Eckhart's point exactly. He said Man must live without asking why. That only in abandoning the pursuit of God can one discover the true Gottheit, which is beyond God Himself. The fecund source of all life.”

  “No wonder he was condemned,” murmured Poco. “Abandon God to find God? Bad for papal business.”

  “I'm certain I'm butchering his meaning. I am no theologian,” added Castelbarco defensively.