Ariosto

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Iddio.” Virginio at last put his fingers to his jaw and turned away from his father.

  Lodovico stepped back aghast. He was breathing quickly, a dizziness jumbling his thoughts and making it impossible for him to frame a response. “Now then,” he said unsteadily. “You’ll answer me, Virginio. You will…” Or he will what? He did not know.

  “Or what? You’ll disown me?” His young face was set now, closed against his father.

  How could he disown Virginio? “I want answers.”

  Virginio attempted a sarcastic laugh and failed. “You don’t know what that could mean. You don’t know, what I’d say.”

  “I’ve already heard what Tancredi reported. I will suspend my judgment until you’ve spoken. If you aren’t willing to tell me, what must I believe?” He wanted beg his son to forgive him, to open his heart to him, but it was like shouting across an abyss where the words were lost and only the echoes, broken shards of what was said, could reach Virginio on the far side.

  “Believe what you want.” He reached for another pillow and began to hammer it with his fists. “You believed Tancredi, didn’t you?”

  This is not what Lodovico had intended at all. How had he let it come to this, in so little time? Virginio’s mouth was sulky, but there was something of the boy he had seen not so long ago behind his slightly averted eyes , some of the look he had had when he had been shamed. Seeing this and recognizing it, Lodovico’s resolve crumbled. “No, Virginio, I did not believe him. But what made him say it?” There were tears welling in his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose to stop it.

  “Say what?” He went on pummeling savagely at the pillows.

  Lodovico forced himself to an outward calmness. “He came the other night, very late. He said that you…that you had been taken into a Confraternità. He mentioned a Cardinale. I inferred it was Cosimo de’ Medici. You know what they do? Not the public charity, not the banquets, but the other side of it. You’re old enough.”

  “I’ve heard rumors,” he answered testily. “That’s all there is in Firenze. Just rumors.”

  “What happened, Virginio? Tell me.” He took a step nearer.

  “Nothing happened!” The words were soft but had the impact of a shout.

  Lodovico waited in silence, wishing he could find the right phrase to break down the resistance Virginio had built up.

  Where argument had not succeeded silence did. Virginio turned to the mound of pillows he had battered into a lumpy wall behind him, and after a while, he began to speak. “I thought they liked me. I really though they did. Tancredi was pleasant and his sister made him laugh and let me open her bodice when she’d had a few cups of wine. Their mother was good and smiling. I thought they liked me.”

  Lodovico knew what it was to be stung by hypocritical friendship, and remembered the terrible sensitivity of his youth. He said nothing.

  “That uncle of theirs,” Virginio went on after a bit. “He’s always so attentive.”

  “Andrea Benci?” Lodovico asked, trying to discount his own—jealous?——dislike of the man.

  “The one who’s il Primàrio’s secretary, yes. He came to the house very often, and paid a lot of attention to Tancredi. Sometimes he’d lecture him on the way lived. He kept saying that if he didn’t do something about his gambling and drinking and whoring he wouldn’t be able to advance himself later in life. He held me up as an example once and Tancredi didn’t like that.”

  So far Lodovico was able to sort out all the hes and hims, and resisted the urge to correct his son’s form. Now that his anger was over, Lodovico let himself sit on the foot of the bed. “What more?”

  “After he told Tancredi that he should be more like me,” Virginio said, a thoughtfulness replacing the wounded tone he had been using, “Benci took more of an interest in me. You know, he talked to me. I thought it was wonderful that someone as important as he was should talk to me.” He snorted out a bitter laugh. “What a fool! He invited me to the Palazzo Pitti, and I was sure that it was because he’d decided I was brilliant. Instead, he introduced me to Cardinale Medici. We had melons out in the gardens and the Cardinale was even nicer than Benci had been. And I was taken in by it! I could see myself advancing right up through the civic government into the Signoria. I imagined that I would be their protégé. I thought that because Benci was disappointed in Tancredi, he’d decided that I would be a worthy successor.” There was as much embarrassment as self-condemnation in his words, and he dared not meet his father’s understanding eyes.

  “And what then?” Lodovico’s heart was sad but serene. What he had been told was wrong, and his son not been debauched and corrupted. Whatever else Benci and Cosimo de’ Medici might have done, they had, between them, made certain that Virginio would keep away from their influence.

  “There were little favors. I kept telling myself that it was because I deserved them, and that the recognition I wanted was coming to me.” He turned onto his back and stared blankly upward. “And then Tancredi got nasty. I reckoned he was jealous, and thought nothing about it. That was before the Cardinale invited me to the banquet of his Confraternità. Tancredi told me what took place afterward, and I said that had nothing to do with it.” He sniffed like a child and his voice, which had for the most part steadied downward into manhood, cracked. “I was wrong.”

  Lodovico nodded gently. “Your vanity is more hurt than your virtue, Virginio.” He stood and looked down at his son. “It is a lesson that we all learn, who live in the shadow of the great ones. You must decide for yourself how much of yourself you will trade for advancement and favor. There are many young men who would have accepted the Cardinale’s offers.”

  “I know,” he admitted, torn between disgust and compassion. “I saw a number of them. What worried me the most is that most of them are intelligent and competent. They have real ability, and yet this is the way they seek to advance. I’d heard about that. Everyone hears about it. This minister or that representative or such-and-such a bishop bought his greatness with his body. It’s whispered about at school and in church, I but that’s not the same thing as seeing it happen.”

  Which of his son’s companions had made that decision? Lodovico wondered. He had observed such arrangements many times in the past, and could recall at least three successful protégés who had turned on the men who had advanced them once they had reached sufficient power to be able to afford revenge.

  Virginio ran his hands over his hair. “I want to be in Firenze. It’s boring here. But I don’t want to be around Benci or the Cardinale. I don’t think I want to be around Tancredi, either, not if he thinks I lay down for Cosimo.”

  “What do you want, then?” Lodovico asked, and without waiting for an answer, made the suggestion that had been forming in his mind. “Would you prefer to leave for Paris? I could spare a few more fiorini d’or so that you could travel a bit in France. I will ask Damiano for a man to accompany you. He’ll agree to that.” If it were necessary, Lodovico would tell il Primàrio what his second cousin had attempted to force upon Virginio. As long as the boy was reluctant, Damiano would help him to get out of range of the wily prelate.

  Though it was difficult, Virginio managed to smile. “I’ve been sitting up here since I came back waiting for you to throw me out. I know about what Tancredi told you. I thought after that you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Lodovico bent to embrace his son, thinking as he did how tall he had grown. “I’ve known you longer than Tancredi,” he reminded Virginio, and stood back. “Nerissa has made a berlingozzo. Will you come and eat some of it for her? You know how cooks are about, food—you refuse a meal and it is worse than demeaning a gift.”

  “I’ll be down shortly.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I can’t present myself looking like this. I must have a clean shirt somewhere.” This was said with a naïve vanity that pleased Lodovico very much. It was reassuring to know that Virginio cared about his shirts.

  “I’ll take your message to her,” Lodovico
said from the door, and gave himself the pleasure of smiling as he pulled it closed.

  A new and enjoyable atmosphere of camaraderie and trust grew between Lodovico and his son for the next five days, and each reveled in it. Then Margaret Roper rode out from Firenze for her lesson in English and the good fellowship ended abruptly.

  “I’ve met you, I believe,” Margaret said to Virginio in frosty accents. There was less than a decade of difference in their ages, but Margaret spoke with the confidence her father had taught her, and Virginio, still longing to strike out on his own, begrudged every hour of study and experience Margaret possessed.

  “Yes, I was there with friends.” They stood in the antechamber where Lodovico gave the young woman her lessons. Neither wanted to be the first to sit.

  “You occasionally visited Cardinal Cosmo, I understand,” she said and only the lifting of her brows revealed her disapproval.

  “Sometimes,” Virginio admitted.

  Lodovico watched them from the door, dismayed. He had been looking forward to this day, envisioning it as a greater opportunity for sharing his new intimacy with his son. He tucked the volumes he carried under his arm and came farther into the room. “You know each other?” he asked, as if he had not heard the uncordial exchange.

  “Yes,” Virginio said. “I’m going riding this afternoon, father,” he went on in a different, uncaring tone. He had said earlier that he would enjoy learning a little English from the daughter of the Chancellor himself.

  “If that is what you want, Virginio,” Lodovico said, hoping that his disappointment was not too obvious.

  “It’s fine weather. I’ve been poring over books for days. I need to get out.” He gave Margaret the shortest of bows, refused to kiss his father’s hand, and left the room with unbecoming abruptness.

  “I upset him,” Margaret said after a moment as she sank onto a chair. “I hadn’t realized he was your son. I Would not have spoken to him as I did…”

  “I heard nothing that would…” Lodovico hastened to assure her, but she cut him off.

  “No, not now, earlier. The secretary of the Premier—Andrew, his name is, I believe. He presented your son, and apparently thought I knew who he was. I didn’t. I had heard a rumor…” Again she stopped and stared down at her hands in her lap. Today she was dressed more in the Italian style, in a rust-colored gown with a stiff lace collar. Her hair was still covered, as was the custom with many married women, but instead of the stiff kettle headdress, she had a simple chaplet of gold net. Lodovico realized that she was really quite pretty in a solemn sort of way.

  “I know something of those rumors. But you know rumors,” he said lightly, quoting his son without being aware of it. “Firenze is full of rumors. Nothing but rumors.”

  “I…I didn’t mean…It is none of my affair, Messer Ariosto.” She could not bring herself to look at him.

  Lodovico took the chair across the table from her. “My dear Margharita, don’t trouble yourself. You have my word that my son is not what you were led to believe. You have lived in a royal court, and this is not so different. You must not be surprised to hear everyone’s reputation shredded and carded like wool.” He chuckled gently at his own witticism.

  “I must beg your pardon,” she said in very good Italian. “I have forgotten charity and the nature of courtiers. Andrew said that it was not as it seemed, but I felt it was good manners only.”

  “Andrea Benci?” Lodovico asked, startled. He did not want Benci defending Virginio after he had treated the boy so shabbily. He refused to think that it might have been an apology. Benci was a political creature and apologized for nothing unless it could be used later advantage.

  “Yes.” She looked up, trying to put herself at ease. “Italia Federata is still strange to me, and so I don’t always see how very like England it can be.”

  Lodovico smiled at this, then set the leather-bound volumes he had been carrying on the table. But even as he began to point out examples of phrasing a erudition in the work of Poliziano and Ficino, he could not still a question that nagged him—if Andrea Benci was the political creature Lodovico believed him to be, what could he gain by maligning Virginio?

  La Fantasia

  By nightfall the odd army had reached low hills, and it was at the crest of the highest of these that Falcone and Lodovico ordered that camp be made. The night was clear and perfumed with flowers and other rare fragrances that were new to Lodovico. The ferns and mosses glistened with evening dew as if they had been sewn with diamonds, and the trees nodded in the low wind. There were blossoms everywhere, but hidden, as if unwilling to show themselves to ordinary mortals. It would have been idyllic but for an ominous tinge of green in the sky.

  There was an evening meal of venison and grouse and pork and white fish, and afterward the soldiers gathered in coteries to brag and sing and gamble through the evening hours. Lodovico and Falcone strolled around the camp, and later, they went to be blessed by the officers of their religions.

  “But I don’t like that sky,” Falcone said later. It was dark and yet the distant clouds were shot with light. This was no approaching storm, but something more.

  Lodovico fingered his beard. “I’ve been watching it,” he said evenly. “If we were at sea, I’d take in most of the canvass, but here, I don’t know what to think.”

  “There are no night birds,” Falcone went on. “I’ve been listening for them.”

  “They don’t want to come near the camp,” Lodovico suggested, though he did not believe it himself.

  “We heard them last night.” The Cérocchi Prince, stood still, his head cocked to the side, for all the world like the bird for which he was named. “There’s nothing. It’s quiet. Hardly a rustle anywhere. What forest at night is so quiet?”

  Lodovico shared his concern. “Have you spoken to Cifraaculeo? Has Lincepino said anything?” Though he did not like either the Cérocchi high priest or the Cesapichi wizard, he respected their integrity and trusted them to be truthful in these matters.

  “No. I couldn’t find Lincepino. When I went to Cifraaculeo, he did nothing more than invoke the gods for me, and then returned to studying the stones it carries.” This concerned Falcone a great deal, for his eyes narrowed to slits and his brow drew inward puckering the skin above his nose. “I wish that my father had come with us. He is wiser than I. Yet one us…”

  “One of you had to stay behind to govern your people, and it is better that you, strong and young, should be in the field, and that Alberospetrale, touched with age, should remain where his experience and understanding will be the most needed.” Lodovico gave Falcone’s shoulder a compassionate pat. “ I know what it is to leave those you love behind.” He dared not think of that too long, for as he spoke the words, the face of Aureoraggio shone before him and he longed for her as intensely as he longed for the benediction of heaven.

  “Ah. To you, I must appear contemptible. This is my own land, not the home of a stranger, and yet I hesitate in the face of the danger that threatens it.” Falcone looked across the camp toward a place where Pau Attans watched Italian Lanzi play at dice. One of the French soldiers had lost a pair of silver spurs and the betting was growing heated as other fighters wagered various weapons in place of coins.

  “I think that had better be stopped,” Lodovico said quietly, a somber note in his words. He had often seen that gambling could be more divisive than the most subtle strategy of the enemy. With a sign to Falcone, he made his way through the men to the place where the soldiers gathered, shouting.

  “And I’ll bet my steel helmet,” a burly Lombard was declaring as he approached.

  “Done. This gauntlet…” What the gauntlet was forfeit for or against was never revealed, for at that moment, Lodovico broke through the press of men, bent down and seized the leather cup that held the dice.

  “What has possessed you?” he inquired gently of his soldiers, his voice in contrast to his brilliant eyes that raked over them. “We are hunting a most deadly foe,
and all you can do is cast bits of bone to see how quickly you can throw down your arms. I am ashamed of you, my Lanzi. See how the warriors of this country conduct themselves, with dignity and circumspection. They stand and watch you, but they take no risks. Have you forgotten that at any time we may be set upon by gigantic opponents of flint and frost who are so ferocious that legend has claimed they are invincible? Have you forgotten that?” He looked from one man to another, and not one was able to meet his challenging eyes. He took the cup and flung it far away, so that only a slap of leafed branches revealed its passage.

  “Capitano…” one of the Lanzi objected, getting to his feet and folding brawny arms.

  “Do you question me?” Lodovico asked this soldier, a wide, martial smile on his mouth. “Or would you prefer to save your strength to battle the deadly forces that even now move against us? If you are so foolish to desire to fight me, don’t hesitate, I pray you. Let this be settled now.”

  The Lanzi grumbled an incoherent protest, but his hands did not move toward his weapons, nor did he take the belligerent stance of a brawler.

  Then one of the French mercenaries got to his feet. There was a pile of winnings beside him—coins, a saddle, a short sword, and a boar spear. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and regarded Lodovico with a sneer. “There is more to be won, Ariosto.”

  “I say that there is not,” Lodovico responded at once. He could sense violence in the Frenchman and felt his body tighten in anticipation. It would take more than words to persuade the man.

  The Frenchman swaggered forward a few steps, a rictus smile on his swarthy face. When he was slightly more than an arm’s length away, he took a stance, legs apart, and rocked on his heels. “Who are you to give us orders? We hear a great deal about your supposed bravery, but where are the deeds to prove it?”

  Cries of protest and approval came from the Lanzi, and a few of them withdrew judiciously, recognizing danger. Massamo Fabroni put up his hand as if to bring to a halt to the impending battle.