by Eric Flint
“True. But at least a man of strong principles. It is my feeling that we should back him in this race.”
“With troops? It would be difficult to find a commander he’s not going to drive to drink, Your Majesty. Or vice versa.”
The Emperor shook his head. “No.” he paused, and then continued. “Hans, I say this only because I trust you, but I have news out of Rome that makes it unlikely the Holy Roman Empire is going to commit troops or engage in anything but defense for the next while. They have been employing magical means, and their predictions have a good record of accuracy. This must go no further, but they predict a major outbreak of the plague in northern Italy. If that happens, it will spread, and our foes will take advantage of us while we are weakened. It destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire. It could destroy us, far more surely than an invasion from the East could. We will prepare as well as possible, but…”
Now Baron Hans Trolliger knew just why the Emperor looked so weighed with care. The last great plague still lived in the memory of men—as did the worst of them all, Justinian’s Plague of a millennium earlier. And it was not just the disease that killed. Crops had rotted in the fields without men to harvest them. People had starved, although the seasons had been, reportedly, benign. The wheels of commerce ground to a halt. Trade stopped as people feared the spread of disease that came with the traders and, of course, war came down on the decimated people.
And walls and armies, magic and prayer…all had proved ineffectual.
There had been many outbreaks of some infectious diseases since then, destroying people and settlements. But the last great sweep by the plague had been nearly five centuries before. There were more living people now. More roads, more vessels. More likelihood of more contact with noisome places, from whence the disease was reputed to spring. Just, all in all, more possibility to spread the plague. This time it could quite easily be worse. The horror was almost too much to contemplate.
“I see,” said Hans Trolliger. “Well, you know that you can trust me, my liege. What do you want of me? I am wholly at your service. This calls for all good men to stand against it, no matter what other differences we have.”
“You’d think so, Hans. But there will always be a few who’ll try to play it to their advantage. I’m afraid my task for you is a difficult one—or, rather, to be dealing with a difficult man.”
“De Hunyad.”
“Yes. We cannot offer him the backing of men, which I suspect is what he’ll ask for. Money, and even weapons, yes. But we’ll need some form of agreement. He’ll hold to that, if we don’t give him weasel space.” The Emperor sighed. “We have a somewhat more dangerous—to us, and indeed to Hungary—claimant on hand to introduce if he fails.”
“Who would that be, Your Majesty?”
“The castellan of Braclaw and the voivode of Zwinogrodek. Count Kazimierz Mindaug.”
“A Lithuanian!”
“He is of that origin, yes. Somewhat out of favor with the grand duke, to put it mildly. His castle at Zwinogrodek was razed to the ground and the count had fled to his cousin, Elizabeth Bartholdy. And following her, and King Emeric’s demise, he has fled again. He crossed the March River some days ago, and is traveling southwest. He is a very competent magic worker, a schemer and a scholar of note. Unfortunately for him, he is not aware of all of the methods of the Knights of the Holy Trinity. He is in disguise, traveling with no escort, masquerading as a traveling bookseller. He is being watched carefully, both magically and physically. He still, by blood, has as good or better claim to the throne of Hungary and, indeed, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as any other rival.”
“I’d put him in custody, until you need him. Perhaps put him to the question, too,” said Trolliger.
“The spymasters want him to reveal his associates first. Someone like that does not move without a plan.”
“Sometimes I think we are all too devious for our own good, Your Majesty.”
“It would be nice if life was all simple and straightforward. I also think the spymasters see devious plots in people drawing breath. In the case of Count Mindaug, however, they may well be correct. Now if we can discuss what I can permit you to offer De Hunyad…”
The discussion moved on to what the baron would be authorized to offer, what compromises he could accept, and what was nonnegotiable. But Baron Trolliger had to wonder just what the Lithuanian Count Mindaug was doing sneaking about the Holy Roman Empire. It was a little worrying. All very well to say he was being watched and was needed, but such men were dangerous and had skills that were beyond that of most watchers. And worse, they were unpredictable. If there was one thing Hans hated in his ordered life, it was unpredictability.
Even dealing with a hot-tempered elderly Hungarian like De Hunyad was at least something where he could guess, with reasonable accuracy, what the man would do.
Chapter 7
Venice
Maria had longed to return to her daughter and to Benito. To leave the cool halls of Aidoneus, the Lord of the Dead. The longing to see Venice again, too, had been like a dull ache within her.
And now that she was here in Venice, had held Alessia in her arms…she found that longing seldom lived up to reality. She had gone to the marshes, and set out to reestablish the old religions among the stregheria. That had gone so well, for a while. She had told Aidoneus in no uncertain terms that their marriage of four months a year was over. She had found a potential new bride for him and she could not wait to tell Benito that she had solved that problem.
And that was where the matter stuck. She found herself, perforce, for Alessia’s sake continuing under her brother and sister-in-law’s roof. She could have rented a lodging for herself, but as the Church would not recognize her relationship with Benito, his money was not available to her. As Umberto Verrier’s widow, she had a small pension paid by the Arsenal. The Arsenal’s guildsmen did not forget their own, and he was, she found, accepted and remembered as one of the heroes of Corfu. Her old boat was still here, waiting for her. She could have gone back to poling the canals. Between those two she could have afforded a room somewhere and have bought food, even it if was a long, long, long step down from the comfort and safety of the Casa Montescue.
But she knew that would reflect badly on Marco and Katerina, and they would be very hurt by it, Marco in particular. They certainly had done nothing to deserve being hurt—the opposite was true. Katerina, with generations of Casa Longi blood, treated her like a friend, a sister, even an equal. Marco…
Maria had looked after him and Benito, and Marco had been a romantic fool. Back then, she’d always felt ten years older than him. Benito might be Marco’s younger brother, but somehow he’d always been the one who had been less the innocent child, more able to cope. Now, that too was different. Marco had moved on, moved up into a world she really didn’t grasp, a world of intrigue and politics, and also of academic study. He was still Marco, still as soft, as gentle, as kindly. But being married to his love, and part of a still-functioning ancient and noble Casa—and especially being part of the Lion—had changed him. She knew they had looked after, fought for, and nurtured Alessia, as if she was their own beloved child. She couldn’t be that ungrateful.
And secondly, there was no way it would have been as good or as safe for Alessia. For that, Maria would put up with being part of a great house, full of servants, where she was but a guest.
That wasn’t easy when she was used to running and commanding her own household. So she had turned to worlds she knew…or, rather, thought she knew. She was a priestess of the Great Mother. She was a woman of the canals of the popula minuti.
She would do the work of the Goddess here, in Venice’s lagoons. Among the swampers, and among the stregheria.
Very rapidly she discovered two things. Time was like a river. It moved on, and she could not go back. She still had relations, and even people who were friendly, if not what she would have called friends, among the canalers. But…she was Benito Valdosta’s woman. An
d she was Marco’s sister-in-law, and half of the poor of Venice regarded him as the greatest physician ever to breathe. They regarded the Casa Montescue as part of the Longi, a core part of the Longi. And that was where Maria lodged. As far as they were concerned, that was where she belonged and who she was now.
Oh, they were proud of her. They thought she’d gotten somewhere. But she wasn’t one of them anymore.
And in truth, she knew she wasn’t. Not that she didn’t understand them and love them, or at least, some of them. But their world, especially for the women—some of the men had been on Venetian ships to Flanders or Outre Mer or Trebizond on the Black Sea—was the canals of Venice. Few of the women had been more than a league from where they had been born. Once she had been like that too. But, since then, she had lived in Istria, and Corfu, and then Aidoneus’s shadowy halls. And because of Benito, she had mixed with men from far further afield: men—and in the case of Francesca, a woman—of very different orders of society, from princes and dukes, to thieves and powerful merchants. It had changed the way she saw things, given her a bigger picture.
Or made her too big for her boots, according to the canal women. And by the time she realized that they were saying this, it was far too late. They might like her. They might possibly listen to her, sometimes, but in general they listened to her the same way they’d listen to the Schioppettieri. Which was when she was watching or when it suited them.
When it came to the worship of the Great Mother, among the stregheria…it wasn’t that they didn’t give her respect as the priestess of a powerful, old goddess. It was just that, away from Corfu, she was not their priestess. They had those of their own that they called on. There were secret shrines, secret rites, secret places of worship. She hadn’t even realized it when she went trampling in, full of missionary zeal.
And now she found that she was not welcome among them. Really, seriously we-will-kill-you not welcome. The stregheria varied and were divided. But on this they seemed at one. The Great Mother was the first and oldest of the fertility goddesses…but the lagoon gave primacy to the Lion of Etruria.
On Corfu, her role as the Bride and as priestess meant she was the most powerful woman, certainly among the women, and as a result, with many of the local men. That had taken a lot of getting used to, and then it took a lot of getting used to its absence.
Chapter 8
The Duchy of Milan
Francisco Turner had just come back to Milan with Carlo Sforza. They’d been readying several regiments, and a fair number of cannon, for the move to the West. Sforza always liked to prepare well first, and then strike hard and fast. And he liked to oversee a part of the preparation personally. “They believe you know everything then, Francisco,” he said dryly.
“Or they’re scared you might,” said his physician. They’d reached the entrance to the ducal palace that Sforza preferred to use for all but formal occasions. “Well, if you have no further need of me, m’lord, I’ll go and take a run.”
“When they finally catch up with us, my friend, your running won’t get you away from the cavalry,” said Sforza, amused.
“Very true. But I just have to run faster than the rest of my troop,” he said lightly. “It keeps me fit and makes me feel better, and gives me the excuse for a mug of beer down at the water’s edge.”
“Don’t drink too many and fall in,” said his commander. “I shall venture on some of my paperwork in the scriptorium with my overanxious secretary and the scribes. I’d rather be at war.” He turned away and passed into the palace.
* * *
Francisco thought about the situation they found themselves in as he kept to a steady pace along the canal path. The canal would make something of a defensive perimeter, but it was too shallow and too long, and not well overlooked with a clear field of fire. Taking Milan had seemed a masterstroke when Carlo Sforza executed it. No one outside a small clique of sycophants had liked the last duke much. Certainly not the peasantry, nor the minor nobles, nor even the heads of great houses and lands.
The problem with the latter was that they liked Carlo Sforza even less, if for different reasons. They feared his military prowess; he was not one of them and not a known quantity. And if one lowborn condottiere could seize power and make himself an overlord in their place, what was to stop others from doing likewise?
Francisco had to admit…fairly little. All that stood between many of the Italian city-state rulers and their mercenaries was a certain lack of competence among the condottieri, and the possibility of the citizens and minor nobles successfully resisting. He did understand why they should be worried about Carlo, but the sensible arrangement would be to strengthen their own armies and make themselves somewhat more popular with their peasantry and minor nobility, and the craftsmen in the towns and cities. They preferred to get rid of an upstart who was upsetting their normal way of doing things.
It wasn’t going to work, but there might be a fair amount of bleeding and dying done before that was established. Ferrara clove to its lord, Enrico Dell’este—his habit of winning, and working iron like a tradesman, and not employing mercenaries, made him safe if unpopular with his peers. It was a shame that he hated Sforza since they were more alike than either of them realized. That was something that Francisco was never going to point out to either man, but the reason Duke Enrico Dell’este’s daughter Lorendana had been attracted to Carlo Sforza was probably that very similarity.
Venice had a fair degree of loyalty to its nobility—they went to sea together with the commoners, and lived in crowded cantonments with them. And, as a second string, the popolo minuto adored the two Valdosta brothers as part of themselves, and the Valdosta brothers were loyal to the Doge. Cosimo de’ Medici’s contributions to grandeur and the quality of life in Florentine territories meant he was more popular than most. He was a shrewd man, who knew when to display the common touch. Admiral—now Duke—Doria in Genoa had a support base at least among the sailors and ex-sailors. However, the bulk of the people in the rest of Italy’s states cared very little who their next overlord might be.
Francisco had reached the end point of his run, so he gave a brief last sprint and stopped at the water’s edge to scoop up a handful of water to wash down his face and hands. The water flowed into here from the Ticino River so it was not of the order of filth that the canals of Venice were, but he still had a rooftop collection system for his and—to the best of his ability—his commander’s water. You might get bird droppings in that, but not human ones. Several times in the course of his soldiering, Francisco had seen flux that could only have come from the well water, and had no faith in that either. It was better with a bit of alcohol in it. That seemed to kill or least weaken whatever it was that carried the diseases. On that thought, he decided to go and have a beer.
He must have bumped a reed or something in the water, because a bottle bobbed up, just short of his fingers. He resisted his natural instinct to grab hold of it, and stood up and walked across to the taverna, Grosso Luccio, and bought himself a mug of beer. It was dark and frowsty in there, and not unpleasant outside, so he took himself back out into the late afternoon spring sunshine. He sat down on a stump that had been dug in there as a hitching post, and looked at the water. It was, for a place on the edge of the city, quiet at this time of day. The tradesmen were still at work, but most shoppers had gone home, markets had packed up and the farmers or their wives headed home.
But it really was still too cold to enjoy sitting outdoors for long. He might as well go back inside and finish this mug. His man would be here with his horse soon, and they would ride back to his apartments in the Palazzo Ducale. To run anywhere near his quarters would be to run through the streets, and this was more pleasant than having to constantly explain to worthy citizens that they didn’t have to hold you for your pursuers, or to let them hide you from the same. Or have to explain to stall-holders that throwing fruit which was past its best could cause the runner to stop and do some surgery on their tripes.
With this thought, he started to stand up…only to find a slim, delicate hand around his ankle, with a grip that was more to be expected from a steel manacle.
He looked down at the face of the slight woman in the water. A foxy little triangular face, alive with mischief and a little malice. There was a greenish pallor to her skin, and there was a lot of that to be seen.
“Scream and I’ll pull you under,” she said in a tone that suggested that she could, quite easily. “I’m not to drown you, but I know how to take you to the very edge of it. And I can do it any number of times.”
Francisco prepared himself to reach for the main gauche at his belt. He had a second knife in his sleeve, too. He was an old soldier. He wasn’t going to show either unless it was to the fish-girl’s guts, if he had to use them. No sense in forewarning the enemy, unless one hoped to frighten them out of something, and it was too late for that.
She held up a bottle—the same one, by the looks of it, that had bobbed up when he was washing his hands. “A message for you. The healer who is also the Winged Lion of Venice wanted it delivered privately.”
It took Francisco a second to grasp just who that had to be. It was going to take him a little more time to get his head around the evidence of the truth of that rumor. “Next time, tell Marco to send two bottles. The one with the message and the other with some grappa to help me get over the shock of meeting his messenger!”
“You don’t like the way I look?” she said, pouting, thrusting her nubile bare breasts above the waterline.
Francisco thought that if anything showed her to be non-human, beside the slight greenish tinge to her soft-looking skin, it was, firstly, the perfection of those breasts, and, secondly, the fact that she wasn’t a mass of shivering goosebumps. He did not think her nipples were pert from cold either, but rather, for other reasons.