by Philip Kazan
‘That was a good shot.’
She drops the bird and wheels round. There is a man standing in front of the mastic bush where she has just been hiding. He is neither tall nor short, and he has a sword and a dagger hanging from his belt. His hands, though, are empty. In fact, he has his arms folded across his chest, and is watching her with a sort of bored amusement.
Time slows. She feels the bow in her left hand, plots the path of her other hand around to the quiver, is able to imagine tugging out an arrow, nocking it, aiming … She drops the bow. She has been carrying Tommaso’s knife shoved through her belt, and that is what her right hand finds, almost of its own accord. The pommel fits against her wrist, the twisted wire of the grip feels alive against her fingers. Suddenly, in a way she doesn’t understand, she feels almost whole again. This is Onoria Ormani, daughter of Amerigo. She draws the blade, and as she does, time speeds up again. Now it is running faster than it should. She feels weightless, surrounded by light, although the day has only grown more gloomy.
As her sword comes up – It’s a knife, just a knife, she corrects herself – she sees the man as if for the first time. He isn’t that small after all: much bigger than her, anyway, broader, solid as a statue. He is wearing dirty riding boots and a much-worn leather doublet of defence, quilted and pinked and stitched in stern decoration. His crimson sleeves and breeches are baggy and slashed into wide ribbons, revealing black cloth striped with yellow beneath. On his left arm he wears a chain mail sleeve. His cap is broad-brimmed, slashed like the rest of his clothing, and slouched to one side, with a spray of pheasant feathers drooping wetly from a silver clasp. His face is lined, skin loosening over taut muscle, and his short beard is halfway between black and silver. His eyes are narrow like slits notched into his face with a broad-bladed chisel, each with a fan of crow’s feet. And the eyes themselves are sharp as flints and the colour of steel.
She has taken the tense, uncertain guard she assumed for Augusto that day in the courtyard, the porta di ferro, because she reckons he’s a soldier, and because he’s a soldier he’s also an arrogant pig who’ll act like the animal he is. The brute is looking at her, but all he sees is a girl, she tells herself, defenceless and soft. He’ll come to take what he wants, what he thinks he sees, and I’ll stick him in the gut. He won’t be expecting that, the pig.
But then she looks into his eyes. He is still standing with his arms crossed, big hands in light riding gloves tucked calmly against the gaudy tangle of his sleeves. A man alone with a tired, hungry girl in the middle of God knows where. He’s going to kill her, no matter what else happens. ‘If this is my death, then so be it,’ she whispers, ‘but you’ll do it in the way I choose, and I’ll hurt you before you do.’ She raises her arm so that her knife is higher than her head, turns her wrist and points it straight at the man’s face. Left fist tucked into the curve of her waist. Knees flexed. Becca cesa. She hears her father’s voice, feels his hand on hers. Keep it steady. Like the scorpion’s tail.
When he sees Onoria do that, the man shakes himself, like an animal, a bear, and suddenly his sword is in one hand and his dagger in the other, and he too has taken a guard, left foot forward, blades held low. He is a proper swordsman, Onoria thinks approvingly. And this is good. Now she will die with honour.
‘Come on then, sir!’ she calls, although her voice is nothing but a hiss. So she stamps her foot and lets her spine arch backwards. Alive. She feels alive.
Then the man does something with his hands, and suddenly he is holding both dagger and sword by their blades in his left hand. With another flourish, he buries them both in the shiny green leaves of the mastic bush.
‘I’m not going to fight you for that big chicken,’ he says. ‘Put your spur down, little gamecock.’ The man’s voice is surprisingly friendly. He speaks Tuscan with a seasoning of other places. ‘What’s your name?’
She stares at him. Her hand is starting to sweat around the grip of the knife. She could rush at him, get him through the neck before he can pull his sword out of that plant. But his arms are folded again. She can’t see his hands. Her blade stays up, but she scuffs her feet a little, letting her toes in their wet leather sheaths find a better purchase on the ground. He can have her name, and then …
‘Onoria,’ she says, and because her voice still won’t work properly, she says it again, carefully, pushing the sounds out from her wounded throat. ‘Onoria!’
‘Well met, Onorio!’ The man touches a finger to his cap with a little twirl. It isn’t mockery, though. Not exactly. ‘Onorio. It suits you, young sir. And do you have a second name, boy?’
And then she …
And then I told the first great lie of my life.
‘Onorio Celavini,’ I said. ‘I am Onorio Celavini.’ I had been praying to the saint in my heart and perhaps it wasn’t me who decided that her name would be mine from now on. The finder of lost and hidden things, she is, but also, perhaps, the protector of those things that wish to remain hidden. But is it wrong to use a saint to cover what I did that afternoon? Because I threw away truth as if it had been a rabbit bone I had picked clean. I abandoned my family. I abandoned my sex. And my life? That had been the one thing I’d planned to throw away, and now I found myself clinging to it again, desperately, as I had done when I found Augusto’s knife as he was killing me, and afterwards when I had left the bodies of my mother and father, of my brother and jumped from the window. And when I had, the next day, turned my back on the smoke rising from my gutted world and began to stumble through the forest. I didn’t know, at that moment, exactly what I had done, or precisely why I had done it. It’s easy, now, to say that I just hoped this terrifying stranger would be content with this exchange, would touch his cap again and flash his steely eyes, and leave me to steal away to the woods and cook my prize.
It wouldn’t be the truth, though. What is true is that I was a young girl, alone, lost, starving, soaked to the skin, who already knew what men would do to me simply because … I didn’t really understand that part. But this stranger in his slashed hose and feathered cap was dangerous because he was a man and I was not. Except that now, suddenly, miraculously, that had changed. Onoria, by some swift, strange alchemy, had been transformed into her opposite. She had become he. Onoria, Onorio. It was terribly, terribly easy. So easy that I didn’t believe it myself until the man spoke again.
‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘I’m going to put my blades back in their scabbards, yes? Perhaps you’ll do the same?’
Boy. He’d said it again. Boy. I kept a tight grip on the knife as he turned and, with slow and deliberate movements, pulled his sword and dagger from the bush, wiped the steel on his hose, slid them into their sheaths and held his hands towards me, palms out. Only then did I lower my own blade and, feeling slightly foolish, slipped it between my belt and my doublet.
‘Celavini. I’ve not heard of that family. Where are you from?’
My blood rushed to my head. ‘I …’ Thoughts were spinning around, and I couldn’t catch on to any of them. ‘There was a fire,’ I blurted. ‘I’m the only one who … who …’
‘You escaped from a fire?’ The man dropped his chin towards his collar and observed me, frowning. He knows, I thought. He’s been sent by the Ellebori. He’s been hunting me. But when he started speaking again, he didn’t sound like a hunter. ‘And you’ve been wandering for … how long?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘A long time, I think.’
‘What happened to your voice?’
‘A man tried to …’ I blurted and shoved a knuckle into my mouth to stop myself.
To my horror, the man closed the distance between us with two long strides. His hand was on my chin, fingers clad in damp leather cupped gently around my face, tilting back my head. I tried to grab my knife, but he dropped another heavy hand onto its hilt, and I froze.
‘Quite a pretty boy, and all alone. He hurt you badly. What did you do?’
‘I killed him,’ I said, opening m
y eyes and staring up into his.
‘I believe you,’ said the man, letting go of me. ‘He has done you some damage, the animal. It sounds as if your voice box is crushed.’ He shook one of his gloves free and put a cold hand against my forehead. ‘You’re feverish. When was the last time you ate?’
‘Days,’ I said. Now that he’d said it, I could feel the fever threading its way through my blood. My teeth began to chatter.
‘Hmm. Where did you say you were from?’ I pointed vaguely south. ‘And you’re all alone? Quite alone?’
‘Everybody died,’ I whispered.
‘Relations?’
‘I don’t know of any.’
‘Where the hell were you going, boy?’ The man sounded genuinely concerned.
‘Florence,’ I said.
‘Dear God.’ The man bent to pick up his glove. The back of his neck appeared, pale and grubby, between his hair and his collar. I could have pulled out my knife and stabbed him there, between the bumps of his spine. I could have killed him in a moment. A child could have killed him. A girl … But I didn’t. And then he straightened, and the moment was gone.
‘You’re a fighter. Who taught you to fight?’
‘My father. He is a famous …’ I stopped myself, but my voice had begun to whistle again, and the man hadn’t heard me properly.
‘Your father? Was he a soldier?’
‘In his youth. He was a fencing master.’
‘So they have fencing masters here, eh? I don’t know this part of the country. Anything south of Siena is a mystery to me. Well, well. Tell me, what was the guard I took when you so gallantly drew on me?’
‘Cinghiale porta di ferro,’ I whispered.
‘Oho! Yes, very good, very good.’ He pulled his glove back on, wiggling his fingers. Seeing me watching, he winked. ‘So what is your plan, Onorio? Do you know how far it is to Florence?’
‘No,’ I said, and bit my lip, because I sounded young and foolish.
‘It’s a long, long way. Why are you going there?’
‘My mother’s family is from there. Was. I don’t know.’ I was going to cry, and that was the worst thing that had yet happened.
‘Pick up your bird, then,’ said the man. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where? Who are you?’ I demanded.
‘Me? I’m Orazio del Forese. Don Orazio del Forese of Lucca. My men are waiting for me up there a little way. We’ll cook that bustard for you and someone will look at your throat.’
‘But I’m going there!’ I turned and pointed, absurdly, at the dark mass of the holm oak wood, which was starting to gather wisps of mist.
‘It is a damn fine wood, boy, but if you don’t get looked at by a surgeon, you’ll be there for good.’ He shrugged. ‘Someone might find your bones, after the foxes and the badgers are done with them, but is that where you want to leave everything your father taught you? Cinghiale porta di ferro? What a waste that would be. Don’t you agree?’
I shrugged. ‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you?’
‘Well done,’ he answered patiently.
‘Were you at Montemurlo?’
‘Montemurlo? Why on earth … Yes, I was, though that’s a bizarre question for you to be asking. It was only a little battle, you know. More of a skirmish.’
‘What side?’
‘What do you mean, boy?’ Don Orazio del Forese’s eyebrows lifted ominously.
‘What side did you fight for at Montemurlo?’
‘Why, the Grand Duke’s, of course! Don’t tell me you’re one of those damned Sienese …’
‘My father fought for the Grand Duke there,’ I interrupted. ‘My mother’s uncle was killed.’ I picked up my bow and put it over one shoulder, took hold of the bustard’s scaly legs. ‘If you’re soldiers … If you are men who fight for Grand Duke Cosimo, I’ll go with you.’
Don Orazio laughed out loud. ‘We’re honoured, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Though you’ll more likely be dead by nightfall, by the look of you. Come on, boy.’
He led me up the northern lip of the hollow. There was a horse grazing there, reins dragging on the ground. The land here was more creased than I’d thought, and I wouldn’t have seen it as I’d stalked the flock of birds. It wore an expensive-looking saddle with a high pommel and cantle, much like my father’s, the one that had always stayed on the wall. Without warning, Don Orazio took me under the arms and lifted me up, dropping me astride the horse’s neck in front of the pommel. I felt him climb smoothly into the saddle, and then he was draping the reins around me. ‘Hold on,’ he said, but I was already almost lying against the horse’s mane, feeling the beast’s warmth seep into me. Don Orazio clicked his tongue, and we moved off at a fast trot, the horse obviously trained to follow the most subtle of commands.
There wasn’t far to go. If it hadn’t been for the heavy mist, perhaps I would have heard the noise of about a hundred and fifty men, thirty or so women and at least two hundred horses, a short line of carts and wagons: a company bigger than every man, woman and child in Pietrodoro put together. If I had heard that low, steady rumble of voices, rattle and chink of harnesses, that whinnying of horses – impossible to believe that I hadn’t, I told myself, as we rode towards it – I would never … But I had not heard it. The colonnello of Don Orazio del Forese was another hidden thing waiting to be found that day, muffled in the cape of Santa Celava. It was waiting for Onorio Celavini, the boy who had not existed even one hour earlier. The boy who was helped down from Don Orazio’s horse by a couple of frowning, slightly amused soldiers, who had to untangle his cold, cramped fingers from a nest of stiffening bird claws, who was half led, half carried to one of the carts, where a pock-marked, large-bosomed woman sat me down on an upturned cask, wrapped a blanket around me and gave me a flask to sip from, filled with some bitter liquid that burnt so horribly going down that I screamed, though no sound came out. The boy who the company surgeon examined, though only my neck and throat, because I pulled the blanket around me as closely as I could and heard Don Orazio whisper loudly in the surgeon’s ear, ‘Someone tried to bugger the child. I shouldn’t prod him and poke him too much if I were you.’ The boy who climbed into the back of the wagon fell dizzily asleep and woke up to the rocking and creaking of movement under a darkening sky, unable to remember where he was. Or his own name. Or that he was, from now on, a boy.
CHAPTER TEN
That evening I sat in front of a fire, shivering with fever and wrapped in a heavy blanket that smelt of horse. The large woman, who was the surgeon’s helper, or mistress, or most likely both, had been instructed to mash up my portion of the meat together with almonds and milk, but the very fact that it had been seasoned with salt and long pepper and a sprinkle of cinnamon seemed like a miracle to me. It was almost painless to eat, and I realised how much I had been suffering as I’d tried to keep myself alive. The other men in the circle – there were many fires, many circles on the level pasture where the colonnello had set up camp for the night – watched me with expressions that ran from curiosity to indifference, but no one was out-and-out unfriendly. Perhaps Don Orazio had told them to show me kindness, or perhaps they were used to picking up strays; I didn’t know, and I didn’t honestly care. I ate my fill, drank some more of the repulsive liquor that, I had to admit, did soothe my throat.
I was ill for three days, shivering in the surgeon’s wagon as the company moved south into the valley of the Orcia river. It was my great good fortune that the surgeon and his mistress were kindly, reasonably talented but basically incurious creatures, and apart from the odd dose of liquor and some undeniably good food, they left me completely alone. I would leave the wagon to piss, and if people had noticed that I only squatted, I would have told them that my guts were in disarray. But no one did. There were no further examinations, no attempts to undress me. I was not much more than a piece of baggage.
What a relief it was to find that I’d been asleep as we passed within sight of the crag of Pietrodoro. That evening we made camp a little s
outh of Radicofani, near enough to the Via Francigena that we could hear the pilgrims on their way to Rome chattering early in the morning, because pilgrims, apparently, rise even earlier than soldiers.
The next day I felt better. I could turn my head without my neck feeling as if it was splitting apart like a rotten fig. I could also speak for more than a couple of words without my voice turning into the hiss of an angry goose, although it was now high and rasping, and would crack if I talked for too long, or spoke too loudly, and so it has remained. Feeling almost restored, I climbed down from the wagon and looked around me. We were in a kind of sparse forest of low, spindly pine trees. Radicofani was there in the distance, leaping up out of nowhere, dark and crooked like the sole surviving tooth in an old man’s mouth. Men were packing up their bedding and tending to their horses. No one was paying any attention to me. The chatter of voices from the pilgrim road was quite loud, and I could pick out four or five foreign languages. Now, I thought, would be the perfect time to slip away. I could easily vanish into the trees. I doubted I would be missed, and when the company had moved off, I would join the pilgrims on the Francigena and make my way to Rome, where surely …
‘Master Onorio! To me, please!’
I spun around guiltily. Don Orazio was beckoning me over to where he stood in a small group of men. They were all dressed like him: doublets of defence, slashed hose and sleeves in many bright colours, riding boots. I waved to show that I had seen him, but I was horrified. Thinking fast, I gestured that I needed to piss, and trotted away to where the trees were a little thicker on the far side of the wagon. Once I was more or less out of sight I checked my appearance in a panic. Bartolomeo’s old clothes were looking even older now and fitted even more badly, because I had lost a lot of weight on my journey. I hitched up my hose so that the codpiece was snug between the fork of my legs and tightened my belt to its last hole. Then I trotted over to the men, trying not to look like an obedient puppy or a terrified girl.