“She has a strong will. She will not be overcome it,” Lodovico said rather weakly, for he hated the idea of Margaret in that holy, pernicious city.
“She should do better than simply learn to resist!” was Alessandra’s answer. Her needle jabbed into the linen and she gave a little yelp, then pulled her hand free and stuck a finger into her mouth.
“Are you hurt?” Lodovico asked.
“Not badly,” Alessandra replied indistinctly.
“Is the shirt for Virginio?” he inquired, not caring but eager to show his wife that he was concerned with her.
“Of course.” She had peered at her finger, licked once, then, apparently satisfied that there was no serious damage, she went back to stitching. “I found a fine cloak for him, and I thought I would finish this shirt to send at the same time. Damiano said that he was sending a messenger into France at the end of month, and he would give authorization for a package to Virginio.” Her smile deepened as she went on. If the report from Padre Gregorio is right, Virginio is doing very well for himself. When he called yesterday, I was so frightened that he would tell us that our son had gone the way of so many others and spent his days in mischief and his nights in debauch. Instead, he brings word that Virginio is acquiring a reputation for scholarship and at the same time is known as a good fellow. What more can I wish for him?”
Lodovico could not admit it to Alessandra, but had shared her fear, and when the Augustinian priest had come with news, he had fought the urge to send him away. Now, he was glad that he had been willing to listen to the traveling prelate. “It was good of him to stop,” Lodovico agreed.
“My husband,” Alessandra said with a sigh, “how is it that you can spend hours scribbling about the most fabulous adventures, but when you are discussing your own son, you become nearly mute?” She did not expect an answer and got none.
For a time Lodovico busied himself cleaning and sharpening his quill, though he was not aware of these simple, habitual actions. His mind drifted to the endless snows of the Russias, and to Sir Thomas More in those deadly wastes, still believing that he was obligated to Damiano de’ Medici for the safety of his wife and family. Damiano, Lodovico decided, had been right. The confrontation could not wait until the exiled Chancellor of England returned to Firenze with the private gleanings of his travels to report to Damiano. The ink had dried on his pen again as Lodovico gazed out into the night where a ruddy and insubstantial image of himself in the narrow panes of glass seemed to hover in the branches of the distant trees.
Damiano was late, and so Lodovico had passed the time deciphering Leonardo da Vinci’s backward hand in one of his notebooks which Damiano had had bound in red leather. Most of the drawings were concerned with a variety of vehicles that Leonardo apparently thought could be made to fly. He was just finishing the description of the function of wings in birds when he looked up, hearing a hasty, unsteady step in the hall. He marked his place with one finger and holding the book closed with the rest of his hand, he half-rose.
The footsteps stumbled, and Lodovico, unreasonably alarmed, put the books aside, and drawing the little dagger he had appropriated that morning from its sheath on his belt, he went toward the door, just as Damiano lurched through it.
Sobbing, his face sallow as old ivory, his left arm held against his side, Damiano was unaware of anyone else in the study. He fumbled for the latch and nearly fell as he tried to swing the door closed. “Dio. Dio. Dio. Only two. Only two,” he breathed as he leaned back against the door as if to hold himself up as much as to assure himself it was closed. His mouth was an agonized square, his face waxen and smooth.
The shock which had immobilized Lodovico at the sight of Damiano left him so suddenly that he had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling. “Damiano…”
For the first time, Damiano’s vision cleared and he saw his friend. He groaned at the sight of him. “No. Oh, no.” Then he staggered away from the door, leaving a long, wet, red stain on the green-and-gold paint.
Lodovico saw the blood but could not bring himself to accept what it meant.
“The table,” Damiano panted as he tugged at it futilely. “The door. Jesu, only two of them. If I’d had a sword…”
“Damiano, what happened?” Lodovico demanded as, belatedly, he reached out to aid him.
“The door!” Damiano insisted. “As you love Christ, block it!” He half-fell toward a chair. “They were waiting for me, all of them. Benci, that nephew of his, the lot of them. The Gonfaloniere, Manrico’s bastard, all of them.” He put one hand to his side with the same wide-palmed touch that an infant might use on an unexplored thing. It came away red and he nodded to himself, leaning back.
As he struggled with the heavy table, pushing at it without success, his right hand still clutching the dagger, Lodovico managed to ask, “What did they do?’ He knew well enough what they did, he told himself furiously: they had attacked his friend.
“Hurry. Hurry. They’ll be here soon.” His eyes were closed now and there was a sheen on his face, like the blighting touch of frost.
The writing table in Damiano’s study was designed be moved by two men, and the parquetry floor was uneven. Lodovico was able to push the imposing piece of furniture a quarter of the way across the room toward the door when he heard running footsteps far down the hall.
“I should have paid that Burgundian to kill him,” Damiano said weakly, more to himself than Lodovico. “He would have done it. I should have paid him. A Borgia or a Sforza or a della Rovere would have paid. I thought it was wrong. Despicable. Then this.” A spasm shook him. “The door, for God’s sake!”
Lodovico looked frantically about and saw at last the candelabrum in the corner. It was taller than a man, of ornate iron. He fairly ran across the room and grabbed the candelabrum, tilted it and began dragging it back across the study. He could feel his arms tremble with the unaccustomed demand of this effort and his unacknowledged fear. The sound of iron against wood was hideous and ordinarily would have put Lodovico’s teeth on edge but now he barely noticed it.
“The study!” shouted a voice far down the hall, and the sound of running feet grew louder.
Part of the pedestal of the candelabrum caught against the carved foot of the table and Lodovico tugged and grunted, working it free, refusing to listen for the approach of the men pursuing Damiano.
“Perdonami, perdonami Iddio,” Damiano muttered as he tried to sit straight in the chair. He caught sight of Lodovico just as the foot of the candelabrum came free and Lodovico gave an involuntary cry of relief. “And you, my friend. Forgive me. I didn’t think that this would…”
Lodovico had no time to answer and little inclination to speak. He was too busy with the candelabrum, and was convinced now that if only he could drag it a few more paces, he could block the door with it. The little dagger felt hot in his hand and he had skinned his knuckles on the elaborate iron, but he would not drop the weapon. He steadfastly refused to think of what might happen once the door was blocked and more ambitious, bloody men gathered outside it.
He had almost reached the door when it started to open. Shouting some unknown word of blessing or curse, Lodovico thrust the candelabrum ahead of him, using it like a multi-tipped pike. Candles broke, scattering white flakes of wax over the floor, and the iron dug into the painted wood just where it was smeared with blood. Lodovico pressed down on the metal, determined to wedge it tightly against the door.
“The footprints! Look! Blood!” one of the voices announced distinctly, excitedly, as if the speaker were half drunk.
“Lodovico…” Damiano was saying with careful, painful effort. “While there’s still time. I forgot you’d be here. I didn’t intend. I never intended you to have to…”
Now there was a pounding on the door, done first with fists and then with sword hilts. Lodovico shot one worried glance at the latch, then looked back at Damiano, who had lifted his sanguined hand listlessly. “The window. You can get out. They don’t know…”
“It’s two storeys to the paved courtyard,” Lodovico reminded him unemotionally.
“Climb down. I beg…” Damiano whispered.
Lodovico wanted to weep, to shout at the enraged men on the other side of the door to be silent, for they would have their wishes soon enough. He could see death lying over Damiano’s face, as if the body had been invaded by a stranger. But he could not say it, not to the men bludgeoning the door, not to Damiano, pale in the high-backed chair. Instead he tried to chuckle. “Climb down? At my age? If we wait, someone will come.”
“Someone is here.” Damiano coughed once and shook his head. “Cosimo will come.
When this is over. Cosimo will come.” There was a scraping and splintering, and fingers pushed eagerly through the first little cracks in the wood, searching for whatever had blocked the way.
“We need more room!” one of the men shouted, and the hacking was renewed by fewer, stronger arms.
Lodovico went to the foot of the candelabrum once more and pushed against it, not sure that it was enough to stop the men if they actually chopped the door into pieces. He said as he worked, “There are men who will not allow this, Damiano. There are men who will be outraged, all over Europe. They will hasten to you as soon as they learn what is happening here.” He could not hear Damiano’s answer, if there was one. He put all his strength into blocking the door though his hands were blistering with the effort and the edge of the dagger nicked the fleshy part of his palm.
A section of wood gave way and a padded and slashed silken sleeve of periwinkle blue pushed through the jagged space. There was a short sword in an embroidered glove, and it slashed blindly, wildly about. Lodovico had to resist the urge to grab for the blade, confine it, and slap the hand that held it. He felt himself about to laugh and knew that he must not.
“Only two. Not enough. Tried for Benci. No good; Benci wouldn’t have been enough,” Damiano remarked casually, dreamily. “I’d have to get my cousin as well. But only two…” The faint voice choked. “I didn’t want to have to do it that way. I wanted to prove…to prove…? my grandfather’s ideals…were right. It should be possible to…govern with reason and sense…It should…It is…But Benci…Why Benci?”
The short sword was withdrawn and the assault on the door continued. Lodovico tightened his hand around the dagger and waited.
“My cousin…Benci…They could have been killed … but…if I did that…where would it stop? Where?…And now this…” His voice had faded to a shadow of sound, and Lodovico did not hear more than five words of what Damiano was saying.
The hole in the door was wider and more weapons and arms appeared.
“It could have worked,” Damiano said wistfully, though he was unaware that no one could hear him.
Lodovico had wanted to listen, had tried to, but his mind was on the door, at the buckling panels. He could not think of what he ought to do. How did he, a man with only one short dagger, defend himself against half a dozen men with swords? “Damiano!” he called, wishing that il Primàrio would think of something more he might do, wanting his friend to know that he was standing by him.
With a shriek the door burst its hinges, splintering around the candelabrum, and three men stumbled into the room with drawn weapons held at the ready. The first to turn was thick-bodied and coarsely dressed—with sudden indignation, Lodovico recognized the smith Carlo, and just behind him, the elegant figure of Andrea Benci. The third was a young man not known to Lodovico, a handsome youth dressed in the Roman style.
Lodovico had intended to place himself between these invaders and his stricken friend, but one swift glance told him that was useless now: Damiano sat quiet in the high-backed chair, dark eyes turned toward the window, head to one side. He was very still.
With a sound born of despair and fury, Lodovico thrust the young man aside and lunged at Andrea Benci, the dagger in his hand darting forward like a serpent’s tongue. And then a coldness possessed him, a cold more intense than any Lodovico had ever known. His side, his back, his jaw ached with it, and he could not move anymore. Without a murmur he fell forward across the fallen candelabrum.
Il Trapasso
The battle was not yet over. Lodovico could hear, seemingly at a distance, the advancing steps of men, some moving quickly, others more slowly, accompanied by strange shouts and excited words.
“We’ve done it!”
Lodovico thought he must have lost his weapon or he would be part of the battle, the celebration. He had given his word to Damiano and he was afraid now that he had not accomplished what he had vowed to do. There was more he must do, things to be finished, but he could not find his weapon.
“Benci?”
“No good. The blade went too deep.”
Was that Benci speaking? The voice was not polished. It sounded like one of Massamo’s Lanzi.
“Benci was right: the poet was in on it.”
Benci, Lodovico thought contemptuously. Benci, Benci. A cowardly old man, a subtle, incorrigible villain. He let others do his fighting and himself fled real danger. He was a treacherous man. Lodovico had never liked him. He was too neat. There was something else, a thing his right hand remembered, but he could not describe, though he took a sullied pride in it.
“Renaldo, stop it. He’s dead.”
Lodovico wanted to protest, but he had fallen through some accident, in some manner he could not recall, and was now unable to rise. There was too much cold in him to rise. One of the warriors of flint and frost had pinned him to the ground. It would take help for him to get up again. The cold was heavy upon him. But he sensed that the battle was stopping. The clash of metal on metal and stone had almost ceased. He thought he saw boots approaching him.
“Leave him. Just cover him up. With all that blood…”
Damiano was hurt. He remembered that now. Damiano had been wounded and Falcone would not bring his army in time because the warriors of flint and frost were holding them at the crest of the hill. Damiano needed a champion. He had tried to do what he could. He had tried to break through for Damiano. He had not completed that, and it rankled.
Something fell across his shoulders, something light. Falcone’s cape. They had brought him Falcone’s cape. His eyes filled with tears. Falcone’s cape. It would take time to free him from the grip of the warrior of flint and frost, though he hoped they would do it quickly, for the cold was growing even more oppressive and the cape was not sufficient to warm him.
“They’ve got to be moved. We need them out of here.”
And quickly, quickly, Lodovico urged silently as his strength ran out of him.
“Thank God we succeeded.”
Then the forces of Anatrecacciatore were defeated! His charge must have helped the army. They would have come after him, of course they would have, crying Omaggia and striking true to the heart of the evil.
“You should thank the Cardinale.”
The Cardinale! What had Damiano’s cousin to do with it? How could he have come? He was in Italia Federata. It was not possible.
“Shame about Benci.”
“Why? The Cardinale would have got rid of him, anyway. Saves us the trouble.”
Cosimo, Cardinale Medici, was a venal, greedy man who was not worthy to fight on behalf of Falcone and Nuova Genova. Just as well to recall him before he did more harm. A man like that would destroy an honorable battle. He wanted to warn the others that they must not rely on the Cardinale, though, or trust him. It would be dangerous to do that.
“And get that thing out of here.”
There was a scraping and a shadow fell across him. If only he could rise, could move, if he could help them to lift this immense stone warrior. The shadow was bigger, deeper, darker, and there was a sound in his cars he had never heard before. The cold was worse, much worse.
“Move him, can’t you?”
More rustling around him, and the cold. The cold. Something brushed his face and he looked up. Bellimbusto had returned, faithful. The shadow, he thoug
ht, had been Bellimbusto. He must have fought honorably, for a hippogryph would never come to a disgraced master. He had expiated his sin, then, surely. Already he felt easier, less oppressed. He knew that he would be rescued now. Bellimbusto would not let him lie in the terrible, terrible cold.
There was one keen instant when the talons reached out for him, to pluck him away, raise him up. One moment only of anguish and loss.
Then they were free again, soaring into the unknown and radiant splendor while around him, above him, within him, the great, thundering wings shone now black, now bronze, now gold, now evanescent light.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
978-1-4976-5076-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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