The Prince's Doom

by David Blixt

  “I pray that is not a threat.”

  Giovanna studied him, her eye lingering upon his eyepatch and slightly hunched shoulders. “If it were, would I be so foolish as to mention it? You are not so fearsome as once you were, but I know enough of your history to respect even a shadow of your former self.” She smiled. “But it is heartening to hear that you pray. I did not know that a heathen astrologer ever bent knee to the Lord.”

  Tharwat said nothing, gazing out of his remaining eye with stolid placidity.

  Giovanna's lips curled. “So much for goading. My demand stands. Paride must be included in whatever Cesco plans next.”

  It was the Moor's turn to twitch a smile. “I do not believe he makes plans, Madonna. He is a creature of spontaneity. But I shall pass along your request. I must warn you, knowing the two boys, I doubt any closeness will occur. They are as unlike as men may be.”

  “I do not care for genuine closeness. I care for raising Paride's station. Do that, and I care nothing if they try to murder each other in private.”

  “You should,” said the Moor. “Because we both know which would win.”

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  FLUSHED AND SWEATING from exertion, Cangrande dropped into a seat beside his sister, waving off the hunchbacked diviner with a pair of coins. “Go to, man, and avoid her. She has too much truck with your kind as it stands.”

  The cripple backed away, holding the lady's gaze until he was swallowed by the crowd. Busy waving for more wine, Cangrande missed the look as he said, “You should be dancing with delight, my dear. Does your stroke prevent you? Surely Bail will carry you. Your own Bailata. Ha!”

  “I don't doubt it.” Unlike Katerina's limp, the slur from her stroke had long vanished. “But if you keep drinking the way you are, Francesco, he'll need all his strength to carry you into the palace.”

  “They usually employ a cart. Lord, my head is swimming. If the Trevisians fell upon us tonight, they could win the war before it starts.”

  “Another man might find that a sobering thought.”

  “Another man might not fight as well drunk as sober. You seem agitated. I thought today was your coronation. You should be well-pleased.”

  Her features realigned. “Am I not? Both my sons are knighted today. Though some might say they're too young for the honour you've done them. I'm not complaining, brother dear, but little Valentino has done nothing to deserve knighting.”

  “Few ever do.” Cangrande waved to the crowded tables and dancing guests. “I was younger than either of them when our father knighted me. Besides, when are we going to have another such chance to trot out the whole family? See those two over there,” he pointed. “My sons.”

  “Their names?”

  “Bartolomeo and Ziliberto.”

  “Not Alboino?”

  “No.” Cangrande's grin became a touch more feral. “I can only imagine Mastino's reaction were I to name one of my offspring after his father.”

  “Yet he will appreciate you naming one after his uncle? I think the omission will be a point of contention.”

  “Very well. I shall go out tonight and father a new one to call Alboino. Does that please you?”

  Katerina was studying the two young men. “They are very alike. Do they have the same mother?”

  Cangrande looked abashed. “Their mothers are sisters.”

  “Making them both brothers and cousins. Technical incest. That is repulsive.” Katerina's nose wrinkled, yet she did not pursue this with the vigour he expected. “How old?”

  “Barto is sixteen, Berto is just shy of Cesco – fourteen next month.”

  “What are they like?”

  “They are like themselves. Which is to say, nothing like me. Barto is a follower, and Berto is the follower of a follower.”

  “Cesco has met them?”

  “In passing. He didn't seem very interested. But I thought it time to bring all my natural children into the fold.”

  “Including your daughters? How many are there?”

  Theatrically, Cangrande counted on his fingers. “Margherita, Francheschina, Lucia, and –” he paused, then snapped his fingers together. “Giustina! Not to mention the infamous Rosalia, of course.”

  “No Katerina, I notice.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Honoured, I think. Did you invite any of them?”

  “And tempt the wrath of Fate? No, that was a narrow escape as it was. Why taunt him more? Poor boy.”

  Katerina stared unseeing into the crowd. “It would be worse if he ever learned the whole story.”

  Cangrande's head snapped away from the revels, the full weight of his attention landing on her. “Which is why we must make certain that our little Greyhound never hears it, no?”

  “I quite agree,” said Katerina, still not looking at him.

  Cangrande studied her distraction. Then, hailed, he produced a flash of teeth and flung himself back into the dance while she remained behind.

  Her distraction had not made her oblivious to his use of the title. Unprompted, her brother had applied the name Greyhound to Cesco. That was a victory in itself.

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  THROUGH A GAP in the revelers, Pietro spied his sister sitting on the stairs by the old well at the far end of the square, deep discussion with a Franciscan friar. Looking at him now, it was difficult for Pietro to see the gangly, frightened young man who'd come to Verona fourteen years ago. But Fra Lorenzo was still handsome, even if he'd added pounds and lost hair – his tonsure was more expansive than strictly necessary.

  Lorenzo noticed Pietro threading through the milling throng and his smile faded. It was understandable. Pietro had once resorted to blackmailing the friar with a piece of his sordid French past. A deed that caused Pietro deep shame.

  Rising, Fra Lorenzo forced himself to be complimentary. “Ser Alaghieri, you've worked a miracle. Blessed be the peace-makers.”

  “Thank you, but I had little to do with it. It was Suor Beatrice's notion, funneled through Cesco. I'm just here to reap the praise.”

  “Your sister is a remarkable woman. The Dominicans are fortunate to have her.” Fra Lorenzo's face darkened. “I half expected her to have company at the convent.”

  Pietro puzzled for a moment. Then enlightenment struck. He looked accusingly at Antonia, who raised a defensive hand. “He knew already! Arranged for them to meet, even.”

  “Oh.” Pietro forced himself to be calm. “Forgive me, Father. You understand, I'm sure, the desire to keep that story to as few hearers as possible.”

  “Better than most,” agreed Fra Lorenzo. “And if there is blame, I accept my share. I have a soft spot for young lovers – as you are well aware.”

  Knowing the friar's past, Pietro did understand. “I don't think there can be blame. This was set in their stars.” His sister gave him a piercing look. But there was no denying the power of those charts. Not anymore.

  He glanced back to where Katerina sat. Standing beside this disused well in the volto dei Centurioni, next to Pietro's first home here in Verona, they were elevated by a step and so could look down on the bobbing and weaving heads to see the great lady issuing orders to a servant. As if she had no more concerns in the world. Believing in those charts all along, Katerina had helped them come true.

  “The question of the girl troubles me,” said Lorenzo, picking up his earlier thought. “I hoped she would seek the cloister. But she did not. I have heard nothing from her since she went back to her father. God knows I've written. Has he gone to check on her? Has anyone?”

  Shamefully, Pietro hadn't even considered it. But then he did not know her, had only a vague recollection of meeting her after the burning of the forge. “It's understandable that Cesco hasn't contacted her.”

  “It is,” agreed Lorenzo. “And I'd like you both to see it stays that way. He's not entirely to be trusted. Not in his current state.”

  Pietro's brows came together. “What state is that?”

  “Surely you know.”
/>
  Pietro realized he did. “The hashish.” Just how many of their secrets did the Friar know?

  “I work with herbs, I recognize the signs. It might have been moderate, even healthy, before the peace. But now?” Fra Lorenzo looked momentarily furtive. “Actually, I think it is partly my fault. I convinced him to swear an oath. If God granted him his heart's desire, he was to abandon the filthy habit forever.”

  “And his heart's desire was this girl,” groaned Pietro.

  “She has a name,” snapped Antonia. “Lia.”

  Ignoring her chastisement, Pietro fumed. “So, having kept his side of the bargain, he's decided that God has broken His, and is embracing the substance to punish God. Never mind that he's punishing himself more. Dammit!”

  “No need to blaspheme,” said Lorenzo sharply.

  “The Devil there isn't! Is there any other meddling you'd like to share?”

  Antonia laid a hand on her brother's arm. “Pietro. It is not his fault. You said it yourself. It was in their stars.”

  Pietro opened his mouth to find only ashes. He glanced again at Katerina, a great wad of emotion lodged in his throat.

  He was rescued from this awkward pause by the arrival of Detto. The Friar congratulated young Nogarola on his knighthood. “Thank you,” answered Detto perfunctorily. “Has anyone seen Cesco?”

  Frowning, Pietro scanned the crowd. “He didn't come back?”

  “No.” That one word was fraught with meaning.

  “He might not be in the mood for company,” said Fra Lorenzo.

  “He might also be feeling the strain of the day,” said Antonia.

  But Pietro was recalling another day in Cesco's life when he'd been thwarted, hurt. A child in arms, barely walking, he'd been ignored by Donna Katerina and had retaliated by threatening to fall out a window. During the years in Ravenna, such blatant self-destruction had moderated itself into mere recklessness. But now? “Find him. Quietly. Don't raise a fuss.”

  Their first stop was Cesco's lavish new mansion along the via Pigna. The girl and her servants were all there, but of Cesco there was no sign. He'd left her at the door with a brotherly kiss on the forehead, then headed back in the direction of the revelry.

  He'd never arrived.

  “Hiding, or abducted?” asked Antonia, striding back towards the noise.

  “I don't know which is worse,” said Pietro. “Yes, I do. Come on.”

  They searched the palaces, the nearby taverns, the stables, all his known bolt-holes, without success. It was his wedding night, and while the whole city celebrated the peace he'd brought about, Cesco had vanished.

  Five

  RISING FROM HER SEAT in the open square, Katerina da Nogarola begged to be excused from the festivities. “I grow exhausted with joy. No, Bail, you stay, enjoy the night. It's barely a dozen steps to our house.”

  This was perfectly true. The Casa da Nogarola stood at the end of the alley that contained her family's private church, Santa Maria Antica. With two servants to light her way, she traversed the alley slowly, leaning upon her cane – her clumsiness became more evident when she was tired. Earlier tonight she had thought of her feathered mattress with a worrying anticipation. Time enough to sleep when we are dead.

  She missed her former grace and majesty. More than anything, her stroke five years earlier had made her feel ugly, more disfigured than diseased. Hence tonight's flirtations with Pietro. Unkind? Perhaps. But while her infirmities were a price she accepted, Katerina missed feeling attractive, and Ser Alaghieri had always been an excellent bolster for her sagging feminine pride.

  Neither fatigue nor pride mattered now. That damned diviner. After all these years, to appear tonight of all nights! Fortune had a dark sense of the absurd.

  Anxiousness churned her blood and she paused to steel herself beside the white and cream layered marble of Santa Maria Antica. Her eyes fell upon the freestanding marble sarcophagi of her uncle, father, and eldest brother. Apt, she thought. Too bloody apt.

  Fashioned from expensive rose marble, the monuments were unadorned save for the family crest and their names – Mastino, Alberto, and Bartolomeo. Her middle brother Alboino was not entombed here. There wasn't much cause to remember him, save for fathering the namesakes of Alberto and Mastino, and for dying young, thereby forcing her littlest brother to take over the city before his time. Cangrande had been just twenty when he was made leader of Verona, a burden that would have broken any other man. On this day, with cheers and singing and joy echoing throughout the streets, it was hard not to see the hand of Fate, of Fortune, or even God.

  My hand, thought Katerina. I have been the instrument of Fortune. Is she now finished with me? Is that what this means? Is she truly that fickle?

  Her imagination roiled in anticipation of the meeting to come. It would be dangerous. She could be exposed. But exposure would not be too high a price for the glory of this day. She had succeeded.

  Impulsively, Katerina ran her gloved left hand over the stone of her father's tomb. She had some sensation in two of her fingers, but the rest were numbed by the terrible burns of long ago. Like her other infirmities, she resented the scars, but accepted them as the fee for her part in the great wheel. She had a goal, a duty, a purpose. She was meant to guide the Greyhound to his great destiny. It had been foretold, the greatest gift ever. The greatest privilege.

  There is always a price. My scars, my stroke, were mine. Cesco pays his tonight. He will never thank Fortune, or me. But one day he may understand.

  Katerina lingered a moment beside the marble casket of her father. A hard man, and a devout one – despite the fact that he had littered the Feltro with his bastards.

  Bastard. Bastardy was such an interesting concept. Base born. But if they were truly base, why were bastards so often formed better than the legitimate heirs?

  Legitimate. A word ripe for mockery. The product of legal mating – as if a ring and a vow made the coupling of man and woman legitimate. In having Cesco declared legitimate, her brother had set a dangerous precedent. If bastards could inherit, the wheel could turn and crush the nobility. Yet what choice had they had, really? Better a bastard than ruin. Her family had always been pragmatic.

  Katerina's two feeling fingers traced the outline of her father's name. He was not a man to talk of Fortune. For him, it had all been God's will. Alberto della Scala had been far more religious than any of his children. His legitimate children, at any rate. Oh, her brother liked his shows of piety for the Virgin, but he was as often out of church on a Sunday as in it. The Pope's fault, for being too free with his excommunications. Barred from services, a man might realize that with the Church or without it, the world rolled on just the same. The dwarfish pope was undermining his own institution, eroding his own power by wielding it too carelessly. There's a lesson in that.

  Turning from her father's resting place, Katerina gazed upon her eldest brother's marble tomb. Bartolomeo had been her favourite. All of Francesco's mirth, none of his rage. Francesco awed his people, but Bartolomeo had loved them, genuinely loved them all. It appeared in his every smile, a smile not half so bewitching as Francesco's, but far more genuine. He had wanted nothing from Katerina. At her request, he had placed Francesco in her care. She'd been so young, then. Just married, still in her teens. Nearly thirty years ago.

  Katerina shivered. Without the warmth of bodies and braziers, the cold night pressed in. Yet, having paid homage to the two men resting here, she felt obliged to face the third.

  Mastino. The Mastiff. The first Scaligeri to rule Verona, having taken it by force from the malevolent Ezzelino da Romano. Mastino, the first Scaligeri master of Verona.

  She had never met her uncle. His was the legacy they were all indebted to, and eager to run from. Wild, free, and fierce, he had died untimely, like most men in her family. Murdered in the volto dei Centurioni alongside Bail's father. Two families knit together by blood shared and blood spilled.

  The year of his death was engraved upon the marbl
e. 1277. He'd held Verona together for eighteen years, a record beaten only by her father, the devout Alberto.

  Eighteen years. That's how long Francesco will have ruled when he takes Treviso next summer.

  Enough. She had an appointment, one that could not wait. Leaving the dead behind, she carried on towards the Casa Nogarola, already within sight. Inside, a servant took her shawl. “You have a visitor, Madonna. He offered the correct password—”

  “I am expecting him,” said Katerina. “I shall meet him alone.”

  “He is in the waiting room upstairs, Madonna.” As her escort doused their lamps and departed, the servant lit a candle for her. The rest were out attending her husband and sons, or else partaking of the revels themselves. This resulted in a pleasant silence, marred only by the thump of her cane and the awkward fall of her step.

  It also meant they would not be overheard.

  Reaching the top step she saw a lamp was lit in the waiting room. Further down the hall a second light emanated from beneath her study door. There were standing orders that no one was to enter Katerina's study without her express permission. Bailardino, of course, went where he pleased, but when in Verona he preferred to spend his hours in one of her brother's palaces, not here in this cramped casa. No one else had the right to enter her domain uninvited.

  A rush of fear filled her, propelling her to the door, her good hand fumbling at the latch and throwing the portal open. “Get out of here at once—!” she began, then stopped short.

  Her study was a shambles – documents everywhere, cushions askew, the detritus of the bookshelves across the floor. A fire was blazing in the hearth, and another in a brazier upon the opposite side of the room, creating a positive wall of heat.

  In the center of the room, Cesco was seated in her favourite chair, feet propped upon a stool, several heavy parchments in his lap. “I let myself in. I didn't think you'd refuse. But I'll go in a moment.”

  “I was expecting someone else. Stay, by all means.” Katerina took a moment to conceal her surprise. And her delight. She surveyed the shambles. “Was there another earthquake?”