by David Blixt
“You need to hire a staff,” said Poco grumpily as he fought the fireplace to remove a deformed lump that smelled like burnt bread. “A cook will do you wonders.”
“You can stay on, if you like,” offered Pietro, using his hands to balance himself against the tabletop. His head beat like a drum, and the light from the open windows was dazzling.
Studying his handiwork, Poco said, “I don't think you'd want me.”
“Look at it this way,” offered Pietro, smelling the burnt bread. “There's certainly room for improvement.”
Joke as he liked, Pietro knew his brother was correct. During the decade he'd lived in Ravenna, he'd had a household staff. But those had been mainly hired to cater to his father, and then to look after Cesco. Growing up poor, most of his life spent in one exile or another, Pietro was used to fending for himself. Habit saw him eating meals at inns and taverns, or at the houses of friends, or else contenting himself with meat and cheese. Once he'd had a very competent steward to look after his personal needs, but his life had been so nomadic these last few years that he had released the fellow, along with the cook and groom. Whenever he arrived in some city, be it Avignon or Rome, he hired a local lad to act as his manservant during the day, and fended for himself after dark. When in Verona, he housed his horses in Scaligeri stables, kept his arms and books in Scaligeri abodes, and allowed himself to be looked after by Scaligeri servants. That must change.
Pietro knew full well why he was so resistant. His mistrust of servants grew from his former page, Fazio, who had been revealed to be a spy for Cangrande's wife. Ever since, he'd been reluctant to put too much trust in anyone under his roof. If someone could be bought by him to do a job, they could also be bought by someone else for a different job.
Yet look at the Scaliger's servants. Tullio, Ziliberto, Aventino, Manuel. Loyal to the last inch. That's what I need. Someone I can depend on. Someone devoted and trustworthy. But where will I find—
“What you really need is a wife,” said Poco.
Startled, Pietro laughed. “A what?”
“A wife,” repeated Poco, sliding onto the bench nestled between the table and the wall. “You know – spouse, bride, consort, helpmeet, mate, nag, scold. A Kate to your Petruchio. Someone to play the chatelaine and run the house while you're off doing knightly deeds.”
Hearing mockery, Pietro was quick to defend himself. “I'm not interested in marrying anyone just now, thank you.”
“Pity.” Busy cutting the blackened bread in hope of something edible inside, Poco glanced his brother's way. “If for no other reason than it would relieve a little of your pent-up tension.”
Pietro flushed. Katerina had offered that very thing. “Just because I'm not out tom-catting after every available hemline—”
“I'd be surprised if you've ever seen what's under a hemline, much less enjoyed it.”
That hit remarkably close to home. But Pietro was not about to admit his utter lack of experience in this one field wherein his brother had long-since surpassed him. Mulishly, he exploited an old rumour. “What, didn't you hear about me and Petrarch's sister Lucia?”
Pausing his excavation of the bread, Jacopo's expression was part amused, part offended. “Brother, have we met? Do we know each other at all? Even if I believed for one second that you would ever lay a finger on Lucia, the sister of your friend, your host, in whose house you were living as a guest – if I believed it for the briefest fluttering of my heart, I would know by your actions that it was a tissue of lies. If there were any truth to it, you would have married the girl instantly. You could teach morality to Aesop, honour to Charlemagne. The very idea,” added Poco with a wry chuckle as he searched for some olive oil to soak his burnt bread in.
Pietro slid along the bench to sit beside his brother. “Jacopo, I – thank you. But I'm not as moral as you make me sound.”
“Mayhaps not, but you work at it every hour of every day. You'd never allow such an accusation to stain your honour, not while you had the power to fix it.” Poco paused, then pointed a finger. “Ah. Father's trick. Sending me off on a side-road to avoid the real topic.”
Pietro hadn't intended any such trick. “The real topic being?”
“Marriage.” Setting his bread aside, Poco folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. “I was watching the wedding and knighting yesterday, feeling very happy. I know, I know, it's hardly a perfect match! But in the grand scheme of things it's good, both for him and for the city. But especially for you. Because you're free.”
“Free?” asked Pietro.
“You were, what, twenty when Cangrande gave you Cesco to raise? Well, you did it! He's raised! He'll be fifteen next summer, a grown man. He's Cangrande's heir – legitimate, thanks to you – a knight and a married man. His whole future is laid out for him. Which means it's time for you to start thinking about your own.”
Pietro took a hunk of blackened bread and tried sopping it in oil to make it less rock-like. “What about your future?”
Poco shrugged. “When I want a wife I'll find one. I'm not like you. I don't know what I want to be. I'm not a poet, I'm no knight, certainly not a famous banneret. I'm not a lawyer, my mind doesn't work that way. Whereas you have an international reputation at law. You argued before the Pope and won! I'm going to end up what I was probably always going to be, a low-level member of the laity with a modest income of my own. I'll always have father's name to trade on, so I'll never be poor. But Pietro, you're the heir. The family depends on you. You're the one who has to carry on. You've had fifteen years of Cangrande's gold filling your coffers, and you inherited the lion's share of father's wealth.”
“He didn't have much,” objected Pietro.
“Fine, but you also got mother's land and the house in Florence.” It was where Poco was currently living. “You're rich and famous – not just for whose son you are, but also for yourself.”
Pietro was suddenly feeling acutely self-conscious. “This can't be my little brother talking! This sounds more like Antonia.”
Poco nodded. “We've discussed it. Imperia agrees with me.” Imperia had always been his nickname for his little sister, forever bossing him around.
Pietro groaned. “A two-pronged attack. Well, if you're worried about heirs, you've left enough of them about-”
Poco startled his brother by slapping his hands together. “Dammit, Pietro, listen! I'm serious! You're thirty-two years old, the same age father was when you were born. And by that time he'd already had Giovanni.” This was their late elder brother whose death had elevated Pietro to the role of Dante's heir. “You know cousin Durante already has a son about ten years old, and another just a few years behind?”
“No,” said Pietro, frowning. Durante Alighieri was Pietro's first cousin, the son of Dante's half-brother Franco. It had been Franco who had paid the fee in Jacopo's name to lift the order of exile and allow Dante's youngest son to return to Florence.
“Little Franco and Gabriello,” confirmed Poco. “Do you want them to be the ones to carry the Alighieri name into the future?”
“Alaghieri,” corrected Pietro.
Poco made an exasperated sound. “Sweet Jesus, Pietro, stop! I know father used the old pronunciation. But he did it out of pride, of pique. Do you think that, if Florence had allowed him to return, he wouldn't have changed his name back to Alighieri?”
“They didn't allow him to return, though,” countered Pietro. “What they did do was send some grave-robbers to try and steal his body.”
Poco's face screwed up. “What?”
“Didn't you hear that one? Cianfa Donati tried to steal father's bones.”
“Cianfa?” echoed Poco, aghast. “He's been so friendly to me…”
“I'm not surprised! He's afraid you can expose him. He brought grave-robbers all the way from Florence to Ravenna, and they were breaking into the chapel when Cesco scared them off.”
“That bastard!” Outraged, Poco frowned some more, then shook his head. “Distra
ctions! Save it for later, hear what I'm saying now. Whatever you call yourself, you will always be known as an Alighieri from Florence. And Cesco is not your son, and definitely not your heir. He's a della Scala. You need to settle down and carry on our family name.”
Sitting side by side with his little brother, his back against the wall, Pietro stared. “You've been thinking.”
“I have,” agreed Poco. “I get a lot of attention in Florence for being Dante's son. I'm invited everywhere, for his sake. And it's made me think a lot about the family.” He pulled a face, and the expression that emerged was bleak. “While you've been doing great and important things, I've been wasting my time.”
“You've been enjoying yourself,” said Pietro uncertainly.
“Yes,” agreed Poco with a sad laugh. “Yet no one composed a song for my sake. No one cares what my opinion may be. I'm not important. You are.”
Wrapping his arm about his brother's shoulders, Pietro said, “You're important to me,” and surprised himself by meaning it. They had always been at odds, quarreling as brothers will. But it seemed that Pietro's little brother was finally – finally – growing up.
Poco beat his head gently against Pietro's shoulder. “I mean it, brother. You've done all you can for him. Time to take care of yourself for once. Find happiness. Build a life. Make father proud.”
A heartfelt plea. Had it come from nearly anyone else – Antonia, Morsicato, even Cesco himself – Pietro could have dismissed it. Somehow, coming from Poco, it had weight.
Yet Poco did not know about Cesco's broken heart. Pietro wanted to see the boy to the other side of this. And then there was the question of Cesco's mother. She was dead, they now knew. But they did not know who she was, or the nature of the arrangement between herself and the Scaliger that demanded such secrecy.
When we have those answers, thought Pietro. When all the questions are behind us, and he is happy, healthy, and whole. Then I can look after myself.
Aloud, Pietro loosed a soft chuckle. “You like the new crest, though?”
Poco grinned and patted his brother on the shoulder. “I love the new crest. An excellent start.” He looked down at the bread they had failed to make a meal of. “Shall we step across to the Four Swords and buy a decent breakfast?”
Pietro had planned to visit the Nogarola house before church. But he decided he owed his brother a decent meal and some overdue friendship. “Let's. But take the bread. There are still some buildings that must be rebuilt from the earthquake, and that would make a fine keystone.”
Poco lifted the half-loaf and struck Pietro with it.
♦ ◊ ♦
“EXPLAIN YOURSELF.”
“What part?” asked Cesco with smiling politeness. Summoned to the Domus Nova in the early morning, he had arrived in his own time.
Cangrande was upon the dais, sitting in his chair of office, reading over papers as though Cesco were a petitioner the Scaliger did not have time for. “Tell me about the brawl. You look as though you've been dragged through a knothole.”
“I was defending a fellow knight's honour,” answered Cesco around his puffed lip. “As any good knight should.”
“Mm.” Cangrande signed a document and picked up another. “And what mortal insult caused such a rumpus?”
“The dastardly villain impugned Ser Bailardetto's heritage, his nationality, even his race.”
“And how did he manage all that?”
“By cracking hazel-nuts at the next table over.”
Cangrande's eyes came up from the page before him. “Say that again.”
Cesco did, relating the whole exchange.
Cangrande pursed his lips. “Interesting. By your standard, being Cane Grande, if someone beats his dog, I must challenge him for whipping my sister.”
“Only if she were a real bitch,” said Cesco.
Cangrande picked up another paper to peruse. “It is in poor taste to mock the infirm.”
“I learned my taste from you.”
“Then moderate your tastes to match mine.”
Standing at a little remove, Benedick listened, slack-jawed. Detto was off waiting for some news of his mother – the same woman that Cesco had just referred to as a bitch. To Benedick's extreme discomfort, Cesco had invited him and Salvatore for the interview with Verona's Capitano. “As my witnesses,” he'd said. “Perhaps my seconds.”
Dressed in borrowed clothes finer than any he'd owned in his life, Benedick hoped he displayed the proper amount of deference. He had to resist brushing his unruly red hair out of his eyes. Salvatore seemed equally uneasy. But the Scaliger had given the two Paduans only a cursory glance before ignoring them thoroughly.
And why shouldn't he? Born to a relative nobody, a distant relation of a former Paduan Anziani, Signore Benedetto da Padova owned little more than his sword and the clothes he'd been drinking in. The clothes were shabby but the sword was good. Worn but well cared-for, passed on when his wise and amusing uncle had died. Father and mother unremembered, though his mother was still alive, somewhere. She'd broken his father's heart, running away with a traveling merchant when Benedick was just a baby. His father had become ghostified, a mere shell, and it had fallen to Benedick's uncle, a confirmed bachelor, to raise a young man nobody else wanted. They had become as much friends as relations, and the old man had mentored Benedick in the arts of war, drinking, and wagering. Benedick's only natural talent lay in talking, but without money for an education or a law degree, there was nothing for it but to join the military.
Sadly, his nationality meant he'd joined the Paduan army. Being on the losing side of a fifteen-year war meant little glory and less wealth. Peace having come at last, he'd journeyed to Verona knowing there was another war in the offing. What he truly wanted was a contract with a fine condottiero.
Now, instead of training in some enterprising mercenary leader's band, he stood watching a family duel, desperately hoping he had affixed his future to an ascending star, not a shooting one.
Another document signed and passed off, the Scaliger leaned forward. “You've caused me a problem.”
Cesco offered a crooked half-smile. “Not a serious one.”
“True, the Paduans aren't howling for your blood. But they are upset. Carrara came to see me about it, as did your father-in-law. Both are concerned about fights breaking out between our citizens. I reminded them that dueling is outlawed in Verona.”
“That doesn't hold for Padua,” observed Cesco.
“That is so,” admitted Cangrande. “And since I said I'd let them be governed by their own laws, I can't change that fact, though I have gently suggested they amend their laws on this matter to match our own. Which still leaves me with a problem.”
“Would that be me?”
“It would.” Rising, Cangrande began to pace. “You may be the architect of this peace – no protestations, please. We both know the truth.” Cangrande glanced at Benedick and Salvatore. “Gentlemen, if you breathe a word of this to your fellow citizens I'll hunt you down and peel the skin off your noses.”
Incongruously, Benedick bowed. “Yes, lord.” Salvatore did the same.
Momentarily amused, Cangrande resumed his pacing. “As I say, Ser Francesco, you may have brought all this about, but no one knows it, nor can anyone be told. If you're picking fights with Paduans, people will think we are not united in peace, that the next generation will manhandle the city of Padua in a way distasteful to its citizens.”
“All that is perfectly true, O Capitano. But if you consider a trifle longer, you'll realize you should be thanking me.”
“For?”
“For the service I did you.”
“What service? Stop that!”
Cesco ceased blowing his nose into his hat and replaced it, looking unabashed. “You needed something like this. You have ordained this blessed peace, and have doubtless assured your place in Heaven with the other lambs and doves. Angels are this second weeping tears of joy for your very being.” Bouncing on the
balls of his feet, hands clasped behind his back, Cesco looked as if he wanted to fall in step with the Scaliger. “On Earth, however, not everyone is as rapturous. There are Veronese unthrilled with the Pax Verona. Our soldiers, for example. No booty, no women, no reward for all their years of labour. They long to see some Paduan blood spilled, even if only in a bar-brawl. You can't do it. But if your heir splits his knuckles on a few Paduan chins, well, that boosts their morale. Thus when you give the order to besiege Treviso, they'll march with contented hearts.”
Cangrande ceased pacing. “Clever. If that's why you did it.”
Cesco was all smiles and blinking eyes. “Whyever else?”
Cangrande answered question with question. “What happened between you and the lady Katerina?”
“Who is to say anything happened?”
“The room was dismantled in a way that tells me you were there. What did you and my dear sibling discuss?”
Cesco shrugged. “She showed me my stars, and I thanked her.”
“With the back of your hand?”
“Yes. My poor hand nearly broke upon the granite of her chin. But she was perfectly well when I departed.”
They gazed at each other. Finally Cangrande seemed to accept his heir's word. Yet when he spoke, there was a dire metal in the Scaliger's tone that made both Benedick and Salvatore step involuntarily backwards. “Did you learn anything of interest?”
Cesco ceased fidgeting to stare directly at the Scaliger. “Some doggerel about evanescence. Nothing very important. Nothing that matters.”
Benedick had no notion what they were talking about, but the way they were gazing at each other belied Cesco's words. It clearly mattered very much.
Slowly Cangrande began to smile – not his famous allegria, something more canine. “You're quite right. It matters not a whit. It changes nothing.”
“Nothing,” agreed Cesco.
Resuming his seat, Cangrande became brisk. “Glossing over your striking my lady sister, what you say about morale makes a fair amount of sense. But it's an excuse invented after the fact. We both know why you picked a fight. I advise you to choose worthier targets in the future. Never strike downwards. Don't waste time on pointless battles. Fight ones that are important.”
