Riccardo sank to his knees, but his lips did not move in prayer. His litany was a trinity of words that were all the same: where, where, where? The duomo was huge, with numerous chapels, vestries and votive niches. He must find a place that would allow him to overhear the Nine’s conference, and for this he must find the place where they would meet.
He walked about in the light of the devotional candles, the wavering banks of tiny golden flames making a shimmering whole. He walked the length of the nave, drawn to the greatest mosaic of all – the She-Wolf. He gazed down at the grey beast, suckling her babes beneath his scuffed shoes, and the wolf, wonderfully rendered in tiny nuggets of silver and pewter glass, seemed to look back at him with the eyes of a beast who owns the city and everything in it, a beast who can count on the utter and unquestioning loyalty of her twins.
The duchess had said Minerva was a Roman goddess, that this cathedral was built upon a Roman temple. Beyond that, his own ignorance frustrated him. Could there be some tunnel, some way down into the depths of the cathedral, where the ancient stones of a Roman temple lay? He patted his feet along the mosaic, the nuggets of priceless glass winking at him knowingly in the candlelight. There was no telltale join, no cavity, no ring to raise a secret trapdoor. Riccardo cursed himself for his boyish notions. The She-Wolf looked on him balefully.
Riccardo spun on his toes and walked back up the nave to the Chigi chapel, a beautiful place ringed with ancient green columns and with a golden rood screen. If the She-Wolf did not hold the secret, then he must return to the Owlet – the Chigi were Civetta, to a man, and this was their foundation. He revolved around in the glorious little space. This was a possible meeting place, but it was open to the greater cathedral; a clandestine conference would demand a closed space. Very well: back to the symbol of Minerva.
He moved swiftly now, looking for an owl somewhere, anywhere. In the stones of the pilasters, in the glass of the mosaics, in the paint frescoes. He was becoming increasingly frustrated. He heard the great bells above chime the three-quarters – he had but a quarter of one hour before the meeting was to commence. Suddenly the whole notion, the Nine, the coded message, Minerva, seemed far-fetched. A bubble of mirth rose in his throat, but just as it seemed about to burst forth and betray him as a simpleton or a lunatic, he felt a presence at his elbow and turned to greet the priest. He did not recognize him and felt relief. The fellow was young and eager, he must have come here in the last year or so.
He sketched a pilgrim’s blessing. ‘Pax vobiscum, Father,’ he murmured and the fellow replied in kind, nodded, regarding him with benevolence.
‘Here are many wonders,’ he remarked.
Riccardo agreed.
‘Have you seen the Chigi chapel?’
Riccardo relaxed a little. The young priest was proud of his new church and wanted to show it off. Such instruction could be useful.
‘There are many wonders here indeed,’ he agreed. ‘Is it true this place is built upon a Roman temple?’
‘Indeed, so it is said: the temple of Minerva.’
Riccardo nodded, his face shaded by the cowl. ‘Meet it is when our God can enshrine himself over the gods of ignorant pagans.’
The priest nodded solemnly. ‘True, true, it is a common practice to commandeer a site where the faithful already gather – borrowing worship, I believe it is called. In Rome, too, there is a church named Sopra Minerva – on top of Minerva. A papal church, the very church of our own Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini.’
That name was certainly familiar, but Riccardo feigned ignorance. ‘Piccolomini?
‘Ah, you are not from Siena. Many years ago one of the Piccolomini family of the Civetta contrada rose to preferment with the Vatican and became Pope Pius III. His own library is in this very place – there at the north of the nave. The Piccolomini Library.’
The Piccolomini Library. Riccardo’s heart gathered pace. ‘Is it possible to see inside the library?’
The priest hesitated and Riccardo’s instincts began to prickle. From childhood he had had what his father called a sensa sesto – a sixth sense: the same sense, his father asserted, that allowed him to talk to horses and have them understand him. A sense that would always tell him when something was amiss.
As a child he had once tugged his father’s coat insistently in the square outside, pulling them both clear as a stone detached itself from the duomo, falling and falling through the starlings and the sky, to land in the very spot they had been standing. Many times since he had done the same: turning to avoid the slice of a sword in battle, stamping out a lick of flame in a haybale, or pulling a child from the path of a carriage. Always, always, the portent was preceded by a pricking in his thumbs and at the base of his neck where he tied his hair. Riccardo felt it now.
In that split second of hesitation he knew that the priest wanted him to leave, that he did not want him to see the library.
All Riccardo’s doubts vanished. The Nine were meeting, they were meeting tonight, and they were meeting in the Piccolomini Library. In the foundation of the most important Civetta who ever lived, a pope, no less. A man, moreover, who had a connection with Minerva.
‘I regret, my son, that the library is closed to visitors,’ said the priest smoothly, his face now shuttered too. ‘Is there anything else I may show you before you continue upon your way?’
Riccardo shook his head, made his farewells and moved toward the great doors and the outside. But in the portico he looked about him and squeezed his length into the blackest shadow of one of the columns, nose to nose with a painted apostle who looked back at him with almond eyes. At length he heard the great doors grind closed and his world turned black. Riccardo counted a hundred heartbeats and emerged, creeping back into the vast dark space on silent feet. The candles for the dead burned still, lighting his way back up the nave to the forbidden door of the library. His hand shook as he took the handle: dreading it was locked, dreading it was open. The handle turned and he was inside. The candles were lit here too and a wondrous cycle of frescoes leaped from the walls at him, their glories reaching up into the dark. Everywhere was the same man in his scarlet robes and hat, in progress, in Siena, in conclave, in Rome: Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini. The portraits were so vivid that it took Riccardo a couple of moments to realize with relief that he was alone in the room.
Before he left, the priest had left just eight ornate chairs in a neat circle. Riccardo did not have time to wonder why there were only eight: under the watchful eyes of Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, Civettini, cardinal and pope, he cast frantic eyes around the room for a hiding place. He struck upon the two great windows at the north end of the library with their two thick twin tapestries shutting out the night. One sweep of a hand would find him out at once, but it would have to do. In the dusty space he breathed steadily and tried to slow his heart. He had barely got his breath when he heard the strike of nine and the handle of the door. He tried to count footsteps, lost count, and heard the scrape of the eight chairs, murmured greetings and then silence.
‘Well, Faustino, you have my sympathy and the sympathy of all. But if you’ll forgive the indelicacy, we have now lost, in your son, an important part of our plan.’
Riccardo did not recognize the voice that broke the silence – aged, cultured, measured; it was not the voice of Salvatore Tolomei, Pia’s father.
Then Faustino’s voice. Slow and rumbling like a growl. ‘My son cannot be replaced. But his place in our design can, and will, be filled by another.’
‘So you mentioned at your house.’ This was Salvatore. ‘But can he ride as well as Vicenzo? There was no one in Siena to match your son on horseback, and his skill was the key to all.’
‘Salva, I loved my eldest more than life, so you will know what it costs me to say this – Nello rides every bit as well as his brother, and better. Vicenzo was his better in all things, except this.’
‘And the horse?’
‘I will pair him with the best that there is.’
‘But the best there is Berio, that tall fast bay,’ put in another voice, troubled. ‘And it is forbidden for the Eagles to draw him again, as Vicenzo rode him in July. It’s forbidden for a contrada to ride the same horse twice in a year.’
‘I’m aware of the rules.’ Faustino again, testy. ‘But there is not a problem; I have found another horse, just as fast.’ Now his voice held a smile in it, as if amused by a private jest.
‘And how will Nello take all of this?’
‘To be given a new horse, the best that money can buy? Well, I should imagine. In Siena that’s better than being given a new bride, be she never so beautiful. Eh, Salva?’
Riccardo waited for Pia’s father to rush to his daughter’s defence. He waited in vain.
‘And you’ll train him?’
Faustino again. ‘I will. He is to run in the Maremma – well away from the city. We have a castle there, the Castel di Pietra.’
Riccardo attempted to collect his thoughts. First, Nello was not present. Two, he was to take over his brother’s place, not only in his marriage bed, but in whatever plan the Nine had for the coming Palio. Riccardo had not known that Nello was a rider of such skill, but imagined his childhood: growing up with his strange appearance, undersized and overlooked. He could not equal Vicenzo in any other arena of life, but Riccardo could imagine Nello riding and riding, every day, desperate to better his brother at this, essentially Sienese, skill.
‘Are all the other horses taken care of?’
‘That’s up to you, capitani. We will bring them in through known traders. Boli, from Arezzo, supplies the San Martino fair.’
‘And the horses of the other contrade? Our enemies, the ones not present tonight?’ A new voice this time, younger.
‘Simpleton, they will not run, they will not be drawn. It’s very easy. Ten run. Nine for the Nine, and one other. I have elected that one should be from the Tower. Nine nobbled, and one clear winner.’
‘And what of the Tower boy? He’s a fine rider. What if he doesn’t lose to Nello?’
Riccardo’s flesh crept – it was as if they had torn back the tapestry and seen him.
‘He’ll lose.’ Faustino spoke with utter certainty.
There was a clamour of questions, all at once.
‘How is that to be achieved?’
‘His horse will be handicapped?’
‘He owns his own?’
‘Not yet. But he will, that will not be a difficulty.’
‘He is yours, this boy? Your creature?’
‘Yes. I had him carry the carcass of the Panther. He knows the price. He knows who I am.’
This innocent word covered so much. Riccardo did indeed ‘know’ Faustino. He knew him in the sense that society would have it, and he knew him through and through, the workings of his predator’s mind. Riccardo knew that Faustino could carve a man up on the rack, then have his son and a stranger carry him out like a platter of meat.
‘And besides, I have contrived a distraction for him. He will not be a problem.’
‘Faustino.’ Another voice, gravelly and hesitant.
‘Gabriele?’
‘Why don’t you just get rid of him. You know.’
There was a silence. Riccardo’s throat tightened as his flesh crawled with dread.
‘Because,’ Faustino’s voice was almost a whisper, ‘because, he was the only one – the only one in this city – who tried to save my son. Not even his own kin went to his aid.’
There was an awful silence, broken eventually by the first authoritative voice. ‘And Domenico?’
Riccardo strained his ears through the dull, thick cloth. Was his father in danger?
‘There’s no doubt he knows horseflesh – he will know the true quality of the beast I feed into his stable. But Domenico is a Torre. First, second and last. If his son has a new horse, what is that to him? He knows nothing of our plan.’
‘And the next step?’
‘The Unicorn next. I will move tomorrow and report to the next meeting: nine days from now, at nine of the clock, in the—’
‘Don’t say it! Even here we may be overheard!’
Riccardo’s blood thrummed in his ears.
‘Father Pietro prepared the place, emptied the church. He is my cousin’s nephew, an Eagle to the bone. And Nello is without, guarding the door. No one will pass his rapier.’
‘Still, we must be sure.’ Salvatore again, blustering and peevish.
‘Sure of what? The starlings in the eaves? The altarboy behind the curtain?’
Riccardo nearly left his skin as a hand caught at the cloth before his face – he could see the rough folds, caught in an unseen grip. He crammed every inch of his flesh further and further back into the window till his ribs and the cross-ribs were as one. If the toes of his boots could be seen, he was dead. But the cloth relaxed and fell to its full length. Riccardo breathed again, but almost swallowed his own heart as a blade came swinging through the curtain to strike a spark on the stone, inches from his left arm. The blade vanished again and he heard it punching through the tapestry covering the neighbouring window. Amid the universal censure of the other voices, Salvatore Tolomei could be heard above all, spitting with rage.
‘What are you doing? You can’t draw in the house of God! Do you want to bring ill luck to our enterprise?’
‘He’s right,’ said a new voice, rough and straightforward. ‘You shouldn’t even be carrying a blade. I care not for the house of God, but it’s what we agreed.’
‘I’ve a right to wear a blade,’ prickled the unknown voice, ‘a unique right, for we are the governors, and we were given the right, thanks to the valour of our contrada at—’
‘The battle of Montaperti against the Florentines,’ finished Faustino. ‘We know. You’ve bored us all with the story. But if you take my point,’ he emphasized the word, ‘we must all act as brothers in this. No blades in future.’
‘You’re one to talk,’ scoffed the unknown voice. ‘It’s your hot head and your blade that has taken this enterprise backward. No, no, Gabi, don’t try to stop me.’ The voice shouted down a mediator. ‘He beat up Raffaello Albani’s son, left him in the square like carrion. He will not touch the Tower boy, but he lost us the house of the Panther – they’ll never join us now. And you’ve opened us up to reprisals—’
He got no further. Riccardo heard Faustino’s furious snarl.
‘Beat up his son? His son? What about my son? What about my son? He bled out in the square too, and only the Tower boy held his throat to stem the flow.’
There was an appalled silence. Riccardo imagined the Eagle had flown across the room to wrap his talons round the speaker’s throat. For some moments he could hear only Faustino’s heavy breath. When the new voice spoke again, it was in calmer, measured tones.
‘Salva, you wanted me to make sure. I made sure. And since when has a Sienese needed God? We are a city. The contrada is our God.’
Salvatore fretted still. ‘And those are priceless tapestries! My family tapestries, brought back from—’
‘Yes, yes, brought back from Rome by your illustrious papal Pannochieschi pisspot.’
Riccardo, knowing Salvatore might inspect the damage, shrank behind the tapestry and felt the sweat trickling down the small of his back. A clean hole from the sword strike now let the candlelight through, and golden dust motes danced in the soft beam. Beyond the cloth there was a strained silence, a silence that told Riccardo no one would gainsay Faustino Caprimulgo when they recalled what he had done to the Panther.
When Salvatore spoke again it was in a tight, small voice dripping with resentment. ‘I mean to say, Fausto. Look to yourself, that’s all. Look to yourself.’
They would do well to get to the end of their objective with any sort of accord, Riccardo thought. The alliance of the Nine was already shaky, so shaky there was surely a way to cleave them apart.
The elderly voice again, learned, assured. ‘All right, gentlemen. When we meet again it wil
l be in – how shall I put it? – let us say in the church of the Once and Future King. Apt, don’t you think, Faustino? It could pertain to you and Nello.’
‘The Once and Future King,’ repeated Faustino, his voice heavy with irony. ‘I like it. You, Ranuccio, undertake to bring the Giraffa there? The Giraffa contrada hold the mechanism for the horse draw. If we do not fix the draw, then the race is out of our hands.’
Ranuccio. Riccardo quickly calculated he was listening to the voice of Ranuccio Odeschalchi, capitano of the Bruco contrada, the Caterpillars. The Caterpillars were historical allies of the Giraffa.
‘The Giraffa are a certainty,’ Ranuccio agreed. ‘I am sure of our man. In the affair of the donkey he did not miss a step. He cannot come to this meeting because it is crucial he is not suspected. He is adamant, though, that we will take the city. Not only by way of the draw, but by reason that the Giraffa are the only imperial contrada, and will give us the sanction of the ancient law. Then we will have three nobles, one imperial. And a prior.’
Riccardo could picture Salvatore, prior of Siena, mollified by this salve to his pride. Then there was movement, the ring of bells and the scrape of a chair as one man stood. It was Faustino.
‘Gentlemen, before then we will place the horses and begin our training. I will ready the Unicorn, for all depends on the Unicorn. Ranuccio, make sure of the Giraffa, they must have all ready for the draw. The ninth of the Nine. Until the next meeting, we will maintain our old rivalries, maintain the semblance of discord.’
‘And Romulus?’ asked the learned voice.
‘He will contact me before we meet next.’
‘And will he come to our gathering?’ Salvatore was all eagerness.
‘That depends on the Giraffa. Now leave at intervals,’ commanded Faustino, ‘different doors, remember.’
Riccardo could hear the footsteps recede and, accompanying one of them, the scrape of a scabbard. Sword and Faustino stopped at the door.
‘Faustino. This boy of yours. I don’t need to tell you. He must win.’
The Daughter of Siena: A Novel Page 12