The Prince's Doom

by David Blixt

  Cesco didn't look up. “Yes. God appeared long enough to sneeze, and the foundations of the world were rocked.”

  “You'll clean all this, of course.”

  “In another life, perhaps.” Cesco held up a parchment, the least faded. “This one seems to keep me busy.” He gestured at another. “This one, too.”

  Katerina closed the door behind her, the cripple forgotten. Now the moment was upon them, she refused to be interrupted. “Where is your bride?”

  “Tucked in bed with her rattle and blanket. I was heading for a whorehouse, but ended up here instead.”

  Katerina examined the room. “You were compelled to destroy the room because it lacked willing feminine pulchritude?”

  “I was in search of Lord Nogarola's trove of erotic drawings. My education is lacking.”

  “We keep them in my bedroom.”

  “To arouse him when you fail to. Sensible.”

  She was too pleased to be insulted. “I did not know you could read star-charts.”

  Cesco raised his eyes just long enough to deliver a look of withering scorn, then returned to tracing a finger along a coloured line upon one chart.

  Katerina took a step closer, but did not sit. This was a conversation best had on her feet. “I simply meant I wouldn't have thought Tharwat would teach you. He didn't want this information in your hands, you see.”

  He did not rise to that bait. “You were expecting someone else, I take it. Feel free to find them. I'm fine on my own.”

  “You need not be on your own, ever. You have me.”

  “I have never been more lonely than in your company.” He said it absently, but the malice was palpable.

  “Shall I send for Tharwat to help you decipher?”

  Cesco clicked his tongue. “Go, by all means. But you'll be wasting his time, and mine. He and Nuncle Pietro use astrology for all of their codes. I broke those years ago. It was safer to simply keep my birthday from me. I see it's June Thirteenth. Beware the Ides of June. Gemini Ascendant, the Moon squared with Mercury and Jupiter both, while trining with Mars and sextilling with Venus, which itself is opposed to Mars. I have very little relationship with Saturn I see. Mercury again, trined with Jupiter, making me a master of cause and effect, which I should call the obvious. Venus opposed to Saturn. Does that make me unstable, or just filthy-minded? Ah! Mercury is conjunct with Jupiter.”

  “Hence your love of knowledge. And words,” added Katerina.

  “Tasty, tasty words.” His eyes continued across the parchment.

  She waited until he had taken it all in. “So – what do you think?”

  Setting the three charts neatly aside, Cesco straightened in the chair, crossed his legs, and rested his folded hands upon his knee. “I think it will be a short winter, but hard.”

  Katerina frowned. “What?”

  “Just making polite conversation.”

  “Politeness doesn't suit you,” said Katerina.

  “Fine, you crippled mewling cunt.”

  Katerina's hand tightened on her cane. “What?”

  “Just making impolite conversation. It's that, or no conversation at all. And I have the feeling, Donna Katerina, that you'd disapprove of silence above all else. You've waited far too long for me to see these.” Glancing around, he cocked his head. “I know this room so well. I almost expired here, you know. My very first night in Verona I was in a truckle bed by that wall, gasping and dying of poison. Nasty poison, too. Scorpion venom, mashed mouse, hellebore, and so much more. You weren't present, of course, as you were feigning your illness, waging whatever private war you deem more important than actually solving the problems at hand. But this was my sickroom, dear Auntie. For two whole weeks your sons watched as I was bled and fed and washed and nursed back to life. I always think of this as the Poison Room, a chamber filled with venom and death.”

  “Poetic,” observed Katerina. “But then, look who raised you.”

  “A pity no one shared these with me back then. It might have helped to know I needn't fear death – at least, not for a few more years.” Lifting the nearest chart, he pointed. “Death, without death. What on earth is that? No, don't speak. I prefer to work it out on my own. That way I know I can trust the source.”

  A lifetime of clashing with her brother had taught her how to engage such a speech. “Self-pity doesn't suit you.”

  “But I wear it so well! And self-pity is the only kind I'll allow. Certainly not the pity of others.”

  “Good, as I won't offer you any.”

  “I wasn't asking, you droop-faced bitch.”

  Katerina's jaw hardened. “Cesco—”

  “I'm merely being accurate. You've had a stroke, and you are the mother-figure to Cangrande, the Greyhound. In terms of pure logic, that makes you a droop-faced bitch, does it not? Here we are, the bastard and the bitch. A confrontation so longed for by the bitch, and not at all by the bastard.”

  “Then why come?” Cesco made a face as if the question were too foolish to answer, and Katerina corrected herself. “Why today? Why not any time in the last two months?”

  “I was arming myself.”

  “What with?”

  “Knowledge. The only weapon worth having.”

  “Is that why you've deigned to see them? When last we spoke, you were determined not to know your future.”

  Languid in her chair, Cesco's smile did not reach his eyes. “Ah, but that was before the blessed goddess Fortuna trumpeted her declaration of war against me. If I am to don my invisible armour and march into the field, I needs must understand the terrain.” He gestured at the heavy rolls of parchment. “I know now what these are. Not star-charts. They're maps. Maps of how the battle will be fought. I was foolish to ignore them. Wars are won, not in numbers, but by strategy and intelligence. Had I taken up your kind offer, I might not have lost the first engagement. So I am here, setting aside pride to glean what my foe has in store for me.”

  “The stars are not your enemy, Cesco.”

  “Pity, as I'm determined to be theirs.”

  “They only mean to guide you to greatness. To your destiny.”

  Cesco looked upon her for a long time, considering, as if only now seeing her clearly. Then he shrugged.

  “What?” asked Katerina.

  “I never took you for a fool.” He rose as if to depart, then seemed to reconsider. “I am curious about one thing. When you were tempting me to bite the apple, Eve, lo these many years, you laid out the reason for the multiple charts – the night I was born, there were conflicting aerial omens. These charts are the varied results. Good, bad, muddied. I understand all that. What interests me is why you had these made in the first place. Why such a focus upon me, one of the Greyhound's many bastards littered all over the Feltro? How did you even know my chart would matter?” She opened her mouth, but he held up his hand. “No no, please. I think I mentioned that I prefer to work it out on my own. If I ask you no questions, you'll tell me no lies.”

  “I have never lied to you,” said Katerina.

  “Of course you have. Everyone lies. About everything. It helps to know that. Gives me a sense of the rules.”

  “Information was withheld until you were old enough to accept it.”

  “What, that I have a variable nature? I could have told you that at five. I probably did.”

  “You had to be old enough to accept the price.”

  “Price?”

  “The fee of greatness. It is a terrible privilege, to be given a life with true purpose. There is always a price. For you, the cost was your happiness. In return, you will shape the world in ways I cannot imagine.”

  For a moment Cesco appeared constricted within his skin. “And your price? Was it the hatred of all those you've mothered?”

  That cut close to bone, but she remained relentless. “I have sacrificed much to bring you to your destiny.”

  He was as tall as she now, thin and spry and hard. “Yes, but who were you willing to sacrifice? Not yourself.”


  “I have burned for you. Quite literally.”

  “Ah, you've heard I like older women, and of my own family.”

  “Cesco!”

  His voice had fully dropped, making his laugh richly deep. “Shock? From you? Astonishing. If you have burned, it was on a pyre of your own making.”

  “No. The pyre made by the stars, to forge your destiny.”

  “This destiny you keep mentioning – apart from a questionable death, there's no sign of it in those charts.”

  Katerina arched a brow. “Here was I, thinking you were clever. Or does your love of insult so clutter your brain that you cannot see the obvious?”

  This time her goading was successful. Cesco spoke slowly. “You said once that these charts were a weapon. A weapon I could use against Cangrande. They hurt him – how? He does not care if misfortune is heaped upon my head, so he cannot be lamenting the hardships these predict. I cannot say I envy my future self. Or rather, any of my possible future selves. Except this one.” He held up a parchment, the honeyed wax of the broken seal making it bob awkwardly at one end. “But I think it's time to be done with fantasy,” he added, and tossed that star-chart into the fire.

  Katerina lunged forward before catching herself. He was right. The chart that predicted happiness, peace, marriage for love, was no longer possible. Yet she watched it burn with strange reluctance. She had guarded these charts for fourteen years, cherished them, pored over them. To see one burn was frightening. Never again would she behold those intersecting multi-coloured lines, so harmonious and beautiful. And false.

  “The fee you mentioned.” As the parchment crackled, Cesco started to pace, continuing his deductive monologue. “So Cangrande is wounded by these charts, not for my sake, but for his.”

  “Or Verona's,” she observed.

  “They're one and the same to him. Thus my brief life and brush with greatness somehow diminishes him. How? Everything I achieve reflects glory upon him. Yet he was pushing me towards that fate,” he said, pointing at the blackened and curling parchment, “even seemed pleased if I could be happy. He was sad today, whereas you, Madonna, you found it possible to smile. I beheld the radiance of your joy quite clearly over my darling bride's head.”

  “I was happy for the day,” replied Katerina. “A victory for Verona.”

  He wagged a finger at her reprovingly. “You were happy in Fortuna's victory over me. As happy as the Capitano was sad. Because if I do not marry for love, I will achieve a greatness, one that might even eclipse him. Because if I have this greatness thrust upon me, then somehow he is less than…”

  He paused on a half-drawn breath. With a startled laugh, he smiled to himself. “Son of a bitch. I'm the Greyhound.”

  “Yes.” Katerina swelled with triumph. “After today, that is certain.”

  Hearing her overweening, overpowering pride, his smile vanished. “And what does it matter to you who the Greyhound is?”

  Katerina della Scala raised her chin. “It was foretold that I would be mother to the Greyhound, guide him and shape him. Shape you.”

  “With your brother as your quintana, honing your lance. No wonder he hates you so.” Shaking himself, Cesco became brisk. “Well, thank you, droopy bitch, for safeguarding my future. So many questions answered. Felix qui potuit rerum cognóscere causas. It's a Virgilian kind of day.” With a theatrical shrug, he glanced at the remaining parchments. “Myself, I'm more interested in palmistry. At least those lines stay where I can see them.”

  Katerina crossed closer. “You cannot deny your destiny.”

  “That would make me like himself, wouldn't it? I understand him so much better now. You are quite the conniving cunt, aren't you?”

  “When I need to be.”

  “And when you don't, as well.”

  “Now that it is certain, now that we are sure – it is time for you to come to me. Pietro and Francesco have had their time. It is my destiny to shape you, to mold you, to prepare you. Come and live in Vicenza – or wherever you like. Rome. Florence. Even Padua! Come to me, and let us be what we are meant to be.”

  He frowned at her. “What about your actual sons, children of your flesh. Why not extend this offer to them?”

  “Bring Detto, of course. He has no place in the prophecy outside his friendship with you. But he can be at your side as you and I explore all the possibilities Fortune has in store for you!”

  The moment held, suspended like a snowflake on a still night. Then Cesco spoke in a voice sharp as a dagger. “Do not wish to be my mother, Katerina della Scala. It's dangerous employment. We still haven't found my real lady mother's body. Somewhere meaningful, Fuchs hinted. Horresco réferens. Truth be told, I rather wish it had been you in her place. I liked her, that one time you allowed us to meet.” Forcibly relaxing, he crossed to a sideboard and poured himself a drink. “Ah well! Varium et mutabile semper femina.”

  Owning an excellent education, Katerina scoffed. “I am hardly fickle.”

  “I wasn't referring to you. But it's past midnight, Virgil's day is over. I think Horace had it right. 'If a man's fortune does not fit him, it is like a bad shoe. If too large it trips him, if too small it pinches him.' I find mine pinches.”

  “Too small?”

  “Much. I have no interest in the leopard, the lion, or the she-wolf. What have they ever done to me? The she-hound, however…”

  With a sudden burst of energy he hurled the goblet to clatter against the far wall in a flash of crimson and silver. Against her will, Katerina shouted. She did not see what happened next – he was a blur of motion. But she felt the shock and staggered, her right cheek throbbing.

  Cesco rubbed the back of his hand with detached interest. “Never struck a woman before. Strange. Doesn't feel any different than striking a man.” He brought his eyes up to meet hers. “Párcere subiectis et debellare superbos. Spare the meek, but subdue the arrogant. I didn't know till now it was a genderless distinction.”

  Touching her throbbing cheek, Katerina was horrified to find tears in her eyes. “Cesco – you must let me guide you…”

  “I must, must I?” His hands were shaking. “Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem. I think what I must do is die, and before that, suffer. I need no guidance for either, thank you.”

  Something was burning in the room. Was it the parchment? “Why fight Fate? What good does that do?”

  Cesco wore the hint of a smile upon his upper lip. “Who says I have to do good?”

  Ignoring the smell of something burning, Katerina began to recite: “ 'He will unite the land with Wit, Wisdom, and Courage, and bring to Italy, the home of men, a Power unknown since before the Fall of Man.' ”

  Braced for another blow, she was utterly unprepared for laughter. Cruel, mocking laughter. “That's your reply? Truly? Oh my poor, poor, foolish Auntie. I suckled at the poetic teats of Dante Alaghieri. I knew the double-edged swords of words before I ever lifted a blade of steel! 'Look to your walls of wood.' 'Who will win the battle? A great king.' 'Beware the earthborn serpent coming behind thee.' Prophecies are never clear. They can't be! Otherwise men would know what they mean.”

  The smell was growing worse. “What are you saying?”

  “Wit, Wisdom, Courage – you can have all of those things and yet not be Good, or Just, or Kind. A witty man distracts his foes. A wise man eliminates them altogether. And a courageous man dares do anything for his own good. Words have meaning beyond those we want them to have. Did you never stop to consider what power there was before the Fall of Man?”

  Katerina felt a flush of numbness. Absurdly, she started to hiccough. Fighting to breathe, she answered, “There was Paradise.”

  “True. But, my dear, sweet, charmingly naïve Auntie, there was also Lucifer.”

  Then he was gone, brushing past her and through the door.

  Katerina stood entirely still, breathing in and out of her throbbing jaw. The smell was worse than ever. One of her eyes went out of focus. The hiccoughs grew mo
re fierce. Suddenly overcome, Katerina sank to her knees, dazed and lightheaded. Her eyes latched upon the bent goblet on the floor. Above it, the tapestry was stained with crimson.

  Too late, she understood. He would not come to her. Her part in his life was over. Like the cup he had cast aside, she was an empty vessel now.

  It was horrible, at this late date, to be utterly unsure of what she had wrought.

  A latch clicked in the next room, followed by slow footsteps. Out of her one focused eye, she beheld the sunken face of the diviner gazing down at her.

  “Well. If this is not Fortune's whip, I'm damned.”

  Through his thick Bergamo accent, it was near impossible to understand him. But his malice was unmistakable, and she was quite unable to call out.

  With pain, he knelt his deformed body close and whispered, “Tell me that is not the boy you hired me to kill.”

  Six

  A RED-HEADED PADUAN sat in a taverna around the corner from the via Stella, on the east side of Verona. A flagon of wine stood before him, untouched. As it represented the last of his coin, he wanted to savour it.

  All around him were other Paduans. Lacking the status to stay in nicer parts of the city, they were in this converted farmhouse to celebrate the double wedding that sealed of perpetual security.

  The war had been far harder on Padua than on Verona. Foreign overlords, constantly changing factions, murder in the streets, abductions for ransom, and taxes, taxes, taxes, all flowing into foreign coffers. With the promise of an end to that life, of being united for the first time with the great tyrant of Verona, these men looked forward to victory in war, glory in peace, and prosperity in their daily lives.

  Tonight, their delight overflowing, these Paduans had gathered to sing songs and raise cups to the Scaliger, to Carrara, and to the Pax Verona.

  Watching these joyful knock-heads from a perch on the hayloft that now served as a balcony, the red-headed Paduan scanned their faces, their clothes, their carriage. He was looking for a friend. Not a friend he knew. A new friend, a young fellow with wide eyes and an open purse. Because the red-headed Paduan was out of funds. Again.