Philip had read it, and nodded once. "You are a sweet-tongued rogue, Princess," he said with approval, and set his men upon the road, escorting d’Avina’s beadle to cry her words in the city. A message and a generous gift of her grandfather’s emerald-studded goblet went also to the commander of the French condottiere lying at the pass to Venice, informing him courteously that Elena held the mint. Philip seemed to think that the Frenchman could reason from that information to the strings of his purse, and would do so with alacrity.
When she had greeted the people, down to the last broken beggar, she turned. "We will talk together now," she said, sweeping a glance over the two men under guard. "Come."
To a thousand cheers and balls of snow that soared in the air and splashed against the ground, they left the piazza and walked under the heavy archway of the mint. They passed through walls ten paces thick into the inner court. Around the perimeter were empty stalls with snow-covered counters and benches like the Rialto banks. Philip led them into the powerful mass of the mint itself, his keys jangling as he opened guarded, lead-bound doors. They entered a chamber lined with chests, supported by arches carved with leaves and flowers in soft white stone. The old bandit waited until Franco and Allegreto were inside, and then ordered his men out. Only Dario remained, standing behind Elena as Philip closed the door.
She sat at the head of the broad table. She was tired, her insides shaky from spending the whole night in conference with Philip and Dario over how to proceed. She had a document before her, and pen and ink set upon the board. There was red wax and a candle, and a seal of sorts hastily created from a Monteverde ducat attached to a stub of wood. She looked up at the two men before her. Neither of them had taken a seat at the benches along the table.
"I give you joy of your victory, Princess," Franco Pietro said dryly, leaning one hand heavily on his crutch. "May you not live to regret it."
Allegreto took a step toward him. The chain at his feet rattled. He stopped, staring darkly at his enemy.
"We are here because I wish to parley in private with both of you," she said, ignoring Franco’s words. "I do not intend to release you until you have agreed to end the conflict between the houses of Riata and Navona."
They were both silent, looking at one another with all the fondness and reconciliation they would feel toward toads and worms and pestilence.
Elena allowed the hush to lengthen. She left them standing like a pair of refractory boys on either side of the huge cracked slab of tree trunk that formed the table. The light from a high slitted window fell down between the arches, as if it were a church, though the room was lined with the silver hoard of Monteverde. Finally she said, "What would be required, my lord, for Riata to agree to this?"
Franco Pietro turned his look on her. "I do not see how it can be done, Princess. I said that I would consider, but I do not trust him. Look to what he has just done, tried to overthrow and murder me. You did not know his father, but Gian Navona’s malice bred true in his bastard whelp."
She looked at Allegreto. "And what would be required for Navona to agree?"
He curled his lip. "To drive every Riata from the face of the earth," he said coolly.
Elena put her fists together and leaned her forehead on them.
"Do not be naive, Elena," Allegreto said. "This will not succeed."
"Not while you live, Navona dog," Franco said. "But it is a rare and noble hope she has. I do not fault her for it."
Elena looked up in surprise at Franco Pietro, but he was frowning at Allegreto.
"What gallant words!" Allegreto said, with a disdainful flick of his good hand. "Lying whore."
Franco took a noisy step, pounding his crutch on the tiled floor. "No more than you, you murderous harlot. What do you know of honor?"
"Nothing," Allegreto sneered. "I am Gian Navona’s bastard, what do I know but iniquity? Kill us both, Princess, and be done with it. That will find peace for Monteverde."
She looked at him. "Do you want peace?"
He cast a look back at her, a grim and impatient demon. "Avoi, I would die for it, is that not what I’m saying?"
She gripped her hands before her on the table. "That may be, but I will not kill you for it."
He flicked his fingers toward Franco. "He will."
Elena tilted her head, looking toward the Riata. "Would you?"
Franco glanced at her with an uneasy frown. "Is this a game, Princess? What questions are these? Yea, I would kill him, for he’d serve the same to me!"
Elena spread the pages before her. "I ask you both to reconsider. I have written here an agreement between you. It requires that you swear your loyalty first to Monteverde—and whoever is the elected prince of it. It states that you will not spill blood in any contest between the houses of Riata and Navona, or take hostages, or seek to overthrow the chosen prince. I would ask that you sit down and read it, and sign it, and abide by it, for the good of Monteverde and of yourselves and your own houses."
Silence filled the chamber. Elena could hear Dario breathing deeply at her shoulder.
Franco Pietro moved first, banging his crutch as he scraped the bench back and sat. He reached out his hand for the documents.
Elena handed him one of the copies. She glanced at Allegreto. For an instant, it almost seemed as if there was something besides derision in the shadowed look he returned her, a contact like a passing touch of his fingertips on her skin. But he set his mouth in a mocking smile and took the papers with a sharp sweep of his hand, sitting down across the bench with his back turned to her.
She had lost to him at chess. She doubted she could have defeated Franco, either. She watched their bent heads and thought they could be plotting anything; laughing at her feeble attempts to assert control.
After long moments Franco Pietro looked up, holding the page open with his hand. "I can agree to this. If he will."
Elena felt a surge of surprise and hope.
"No," Allegreto said. He tossed the crisp vellum onto the table. "Do not trust him."
Even to her, such an easy capitulation by Franco seemed suspicious. "It is to be signed under solemn oath," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and certain.
"He’ll break his word before a fortnight has passed."
Franco lunged up over the table, his face red. "You question my honor?"
Allegreto made a move, as if to reach for his dagger. The chains rattled over the edge of the wood. Dario stepped forward, his blade singing from the sheath. It came down between them, the point resting lightly on the tabletop.
Allegreto was frozen for a moment. He looked at Dario under his eyebrows, and sat back. "I question how much you relinquish by this," he said to Franco in a quieter tone. "It is all sacrifice and no gain for you."
Franco grimaced as he lowered himself. Dario lifted the sword from the table, but he kept it free and ready.
"She holds Matteo," Franco said. "And what is to prevent you from poisoning me in my bed? I see no assurance at all to hold you in check!"
"Nay, I have nothing else to lose, do I?" Allegreto said. He looked to Elena with a bitter smile. "Nothing."
Franco narrowed his one eye. "And I question what is between you and the princess—these telling glances that you give her. I would be fool indeed to sign this surrender, only to see Navona elevated by some bedroom trick."
Elena pressed her lips together. She looked at the center of the table, and then at the pale carving that arched above the heavy door. She had been coming to this moment, inevitably. She had felt it like a great stone that slowly began to turn and roll and gather speed to crush her. She thought of the tower room, and the warm sheets; his body curled and tangled with hers. She thought of him smiling down at her as she counted for a game of morra. A fierce sweetness seemed to break inside her, a pain that drifted down her throat and settled in her heart, a dark silent crystal buried in her own blood and sinew.
"There is nothing between me and Navona," she said, in a voice that sounded cal
m, a little thin, peculiar to herself. "I will be impartial between you."
She heard the words die away in the barren chamber, amid the chests of silver. She could not look at Allegreto.
"Hang us both as traitors," he said in a vicious tone. "That would be impartial."
She bore his anger. He had a right to it. He had seen this true, before she had admitted it even to herself. Taken his ring. Advised her to kill him.
"I cannot." She did look at him then, only for a moment, so that she would not break or show anything before the Riata. One moment, to brand his demon-beauty in her mind. "But you will both remain under close arrest, as possible conspirators, until you agree to what I have asked. Dario."
The young man strode to the door, rapping on it sharply with the hilt of his sword. The great metal-bound barrier swung open to admit Philip and his men. Elena watched as they came with pikes and swords and clubs to surround the prisoners.
Allegreto paused, under the arm of a guard, and glanced back at her from the door. As his eyes met hers, it was a dread feeling, as if they both knew, as if he was fading from her through a mist, gone already far beyond what she could see.
The guard jostled him. He turned and went through the door.
* * *
She rode down from the mountains on a gray palfrey, with only ten of the bandits and Dario for an escort, now dressed in Monteverde’s green livery. She left Philip to guard the mint and her prisoners, and approached the gates of the city alone.
But she was not alone, not quite. People from d’Avina had followed her out onto the road. They had cheered her as she passed the burned-out gatehouse and bridge, the gray tower of Maladire. She had thought they would fall behind, but a crowd of them came with her, walking and riding in her train. Some ran and galloped ahead, easily enough, for she kept the palfrey to a gentle amble. Among them she recognized the young miner who had looked up at her on the dais, striding along just after her bandit guard, his white hood thrown back in the sun. As they moved down through the pine forests and left the snow, they seemed to gather followers. By the time they reached the apple orchards and terraced vineyards, the procession was doubled in size, and people had begun to line the road in each village. In the warmth of an autumn afternoon, a girl ran out and offered Elena a sheaf of sunflowers, their great yellow heads nodding gaily as she kissed Elena’s hand.
Elena felt no fear. She felt as if a trance held her, and everyone. Even when she came within sight of the city below, she was somewhere beyond fear, simply moving forward to a fate that seemed inevitable.
When she reached the gates at sunset, she had a great march of common people behind her. Her small banner, a green-and-silver pennon taken from the magistrate’s hands at d’Avina, drooped in the shadow of the city walls. She could see the citadel, a white glitter of towers and crenellations on the mount, rising above the city. The drawbridge was drawn up, closed, and the smooth rapid water of the river coursed between her and the city, flowing blue and clear into the lake.
She waited. From the gatehouse, she could see faces peering from the windows.
She took the banner from a bandit at her side. She rode forward, into the easy range of arrows and stones, with Dario close behind her.
"I am Elena di Monteverde!" she cried, her voice almost lost against the massive walls. "Open the city! I have come home!"
Behind her, a swell of noise began to rise. She heard the miner’s voice call out her name, and the chant become a bellow from the crowd.
Over the sound of the people came the creaking groan of wheels and chains. The drawbridge lowered, falling into place with a thunderous crash that grew to a roar as the crowd cheered.
With a sheaf of sunflowers, a troop of bandits, and a flood of shouting followers, Elena rode across the bridge into the city of Monteverde.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was summer, but Her Grace the Magnificent, the Prima Elect, the Most Potent and Just Principessa Elena di Monteverde, could not tell it from inside the council room of the citadel.
Within the huge chamber, it was still as cold as winter. Candles and torches barely lit the high ceiling blackened by decades of their smoke. While one of her grandfather’s elderly councilors held forth with relish on his theme, she sat dressed in miniver and damask, her scepter laid at the head of a table. The board was twice as long as the one in the mint at d’Avina, polished black and carved on the legs. But it reminded her; it brought back that day. She did not think of it often; she tried not to, and the life of the Prima di Monteverde was a life of harassment, of meetings and writs and petitions and mercantile matters, judgments and decisions, careful arguments and piles and piles and piles of scrolls and records to be read and pieced together for their history and intelligence. She had no time to think of else, except at night in the moment she lay down to sleep, when she thought of Allegreto.
He was incarcerated within sight of the citadel. If she had walked out on the parapets, she could have seen across the city and the lake to the two castles that rose from the promontories and guarded Monteverde’s harbor. Franco Pietro resided in one, and Allegreto in the other.
He haunted her today. The subject of this meeting was her marriage, and her councilors were fervent on the topic.
A number of prospects had been put forth. Princes and dukes from places as far away as Denmark and Spain. Men of high blood and power among the elite of Monteverde. Even one or two of the councilors themselves were proposed, causing them to blush and claim their unsuitability while they vowed they were at Her Grace’s service if she should deign to consider them. The discussion had been intense and brutally blunt, day-long, the favored and disfavored alliances flying back and forth across the table like frantic birds unable to find a roost. The cherished possibility of one faction was deemed to favor the anti-pope; another was too poor a soldier, a third too ambitious for his own power to be allowed a great role in Monteverde’s fragile new Republic. Elena sat and listened to a procession of names and disputes.
But I don’t want a prince, she thought with a sad inward smile. Lost to her, the girl who had once said those words to her godmother. She had a letter from Lady Melanthe, of fierce support in what Elena had done. Lady Beatrice had returned to England safely—a miracle itself—with news of Elena’s abduction. But no one had conceived that she would fly from Navona and establish herself alone at the head of Monteverde. Ligurio would be proud, Ellie. I am proud. Lancaster is confounded. Be careful. Overlook nothing. Trust no one.
Her godmother promised to come in the next spring and spend the summer. Elena longed for it.
But it was not in her character to trust no one. She trusted Philip. She trusted Dario. She trusted a great many things and people, because she had no choice. The houses of Riata and Navona were barred from the citadel, but no one else.
It was trust and not suspicion that Monteverde needed now to heal. It was faith that she restored possessions to their former balance, that she showed no favor to either side. It was a thin thread, liable to be broken by any whisper of treachery. She lived in daily fear of word of some murder or escape from the castles.
But there had been none. For his son, or for realizing the popular support of Elena’s cause, or because she kept the French condottiere at hand, Franco Pietro yielded up his Navona holdings without direct opposition. But he would not sign any agreement to cease the blood vendetta until Allegreto did. And Allegreto would not sign.
Elena watched the old councilor in his fur cap and dragging robes. He seemed to be coming to the end of his words, looking toward her expectantly. They all were turning toward her, two long rows of faces, bearded and smooth, elderly and middle-aged and a few near as young as she.
Elena was hungry. She was tired. And she felt utterly alone.
She put her hand upon the scepter. The old councilor nodded around the table and sat down with a fur-trimmed flourish of his sleeve, as if he felt none could dispute his point that Monteverde was in dire need of an heir and the custody
of a strong man at the earliest possible moment, and therefore they must not waste their breath in futile arguments. Let Her Grace the Principessa say her wise preference among the prospects put forward, and proceed from there.
Elena stood up. She laid aside the list of names that her secretary handed to her. "I do not intend to wed at present," she said quietly.
An astonished silence met her words.
Before they could burst into protest, she lifted her open hand. "Monteverde does not need an heir. We are a republic again, and will choose our leader by the laws we have adopted, as set forth by Prince Ligurio."
The old councilor made forceful motions, requesting to speak. Elena nodded, but she remained standing.
"Your Grace, it is true what you say, it is true. I misspoke myself, perchance, to speak of an heir to rule, though it would be great happiness to all to see the house of Ligurio again bear fruit. And doubtless your prudence and modesty have prevented you from considering a marriage before we received the annulments from Rome. But the Holy Father has given us surety now on that point; there is no question of any betrothal or connection between you and Franco Pietro of the Riata, or your—" He paused, with a slight gesture of distaste, as if he could not even bring himself to speak the name. "Your abductor," he said finally. "But I cannot countenance that Your Grace remains unwed. It is dangerous. Milan takes notice, that we have no man to order our defense."
"We have Philip Welles," she said, glancing down to the gray-haired soldier at her right hand. "He is experienced and loyal. He has dealt well with the condottiere, has he not?"
She allowed them to sputter their objections. Philip was old, he was English, he was a bandit. She stared them down.
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