The Master of Verona pa-1

by David Blixt

  He waited, listening to the room beyond the doors. Was there a nurse waiting with the baby? Surely not. He'd be calmer. Or else she was asleep, dead to the world. And soon will be moreso. Smiling, Ciolo trained his eyes on the shaft of exposing moonlight. He needed complete darkness to open the door. He prayed to a merciful God to send a cloud, then on second thought redirected the entreaty to the Fiend.

  Whoever heard his prayer, it was answered almost at once. The light crept away. Once it was dim, Ciolo moved swiftly. Lifting his knife, he grasped the handle to the child's room and pulled the door wide.

  Blackness within. Ciolo stood to one side of the doorway, pausing for his eyes to adjust to the more complete darkness. Still the child burbled. Ciolo squinted at the corner the noise was coming from and thought he saw an outline. Reversing his dagger from point up to point down, a stabbing grip, he stepped fully into the gap, one hand on the door frame to guide him into the room. He was a professional. What did it matter that his victim was a child. He was certainly going to the Inferno already. One step. Two…

  A sharp cracking noise made Ciolo wince. An instant later the breath exploded from his body. Confused, he found himself sprawled several feet back down the hallway. Something had hit him in the chest, hit him hard enough to stun him and knock him backwards. His free hand came up and found a thin line of wood protruding from his breastbone. His fingers brushed the fletched end absently. He whimpered, afraid to pull on the arrow's shaft.

  A hinge creaked as the second door opened. A shuttered lantern was unveiled and the light approached him, growing brighter. To Ciolo's dazzled eyes it seemed to be borne in the hands of an angel. An angel all in white. The colour of mourning.

  "Not dead, then?" asked the angel as she came to stand over him. "Good."

  Ciolo sputtered, the blood on his lips leaving the taste of metal on his tongue. "Holy Madonna…"

  "Shhh." The angel set aside both the lantern and the instrument of his demise, a small trigger-bow. Her right arm must have been hurt firing it, for she used her off hand to take the blade from his unresisting grasp.

  Behind her was another shape, a young girl clutching a baby. The infant Ciolo had come here to murder. He didn't know if it was a boy or girl, it was too young to tell and he'd never asked. He wanted to ask now, but breathing was trouble enough. Still his mouth tried to form the words.

  The woman shook her head. With a lilting accent Ciolo found beautiful, she said, "Tell me nothing except the name of the man who paid you."

  "I–I don't…"

  "Not a good answer, love."

  "But — madonna forgive me, but — it was a woman."

  The angel nodded but didn't smile. Ciolo wanted her to smile. He was dying. He wanted absolution — something. "Angel, forgive me."

  "Ask forgiveness of God, man — not of me."

  His own knife flashed left to right in her pale hand. He made the effort to close his eyes so as not to see his life's blood spill to the floor.

  With a choked whimper, Ciolo lay still. The cloud above passed, revealing the stars once more.

  I

  The Arena

  One

  The Road to Verona

  The Same Night

  "Giotto's O."

  In the middle of a dream in which no one would let him sleep, it seemed to Pietro that the words were deliberately meant to annoy him. Almost unwillingly he dreamed a paintbrush touching a rock, forming a perfect circle.

  The painter used red. It looked like blood.

  "Pietro, I'm speaking to you."

  Blinking, Pietro sat up straight in the rattling coach. "Pardon, Father."

  "Mmm. It's these blasted carriages. Too many comforts these days. Wouldn't have fallen asleep in a saddle."

  It was dark with the curtains drawn, but Pietro easily imagined his father's long face grimacing. Fighting the urge to yawn, he said, "I wasn't asleep. I was thinking. What were you saying?"

  "I was referencing Giotto's mythic O."

  "Oh. Why?"

  "Why? What is nobler than thinking of perfection? More than that, it is a metaphor. We end where we begin." This was followed by a considering pause.

  Shifting, Pietro felt his brother's head on his shoulder. Irritiation rippled through him. Oh, Poco's allowed to sleep, but not me. Father needs an audience.

  Expecting his father to try out some new flowery phrase, he was astonished to hear the old man say, "Yes, we end where we begin. I hope it's true. Perhaps then I will go home one day."

  Pietro leaned forward, happily letting Jacopo's head fall in the process. "Father, of course you will! Now that it's published, now that any idiot can see, they'll have to call you home. If nothing else, their pride won't let anyone else claim you."

  The poet's laugh was sour. "You know little about pride, boy. It's their pride that keeps me in exile."

  Us, thought Pietro. Keeps us in exile.

  There was a rustling beside him, and suddenly there was light as a groggy Jacopo pulled back one of the curtains. Pietro tried to feel ashamed at his satisfaction for having woken his brother up.

  "The stars are out," said Jacopo, peering out of the window.

  "Every night at this time," said their father. Pietro could now see the hooked nose over his father's bristly black beard. But the poet's eyes were deeply sunken, as if hiding from illumination. It was partly this feature that had earned Dante Alaghieri his fiendish reputation. Partly.

  The light that came into the cramped carraige wasn't from the sky but from the brands held aloft by their escort. No one traveled by night without armed men, and the lord of Verona had dispatched a large contingent to protect his latest honoured guest.

  Verona. Pietro had never been, though his father had. "Giotto's O — you were thinking about Verona, weren't you, father?" Dante nodded, stroking his beard. "What's it like?" Beside Pietro, Jacopo turned away from the stars to listen.

  Pietro saw his father smile, an unusual event that utterly transformed his face. Suddenly he was young and full of mischief. "Ah. The rising star of Italy. The city of forty-eight towers. Home of the Greyhound. My first refuge." A pause, then the word refugio was repeated, savored, saved for future use. "Yes, I came there when I gave up on the rest of the exiles. Such plans. Such fools. I stayed in Verona for more than a year, you know. I saw the Palio run twice. Bartolomeo was Capitano then — a good man, honest, but almost terminally cheerful. In fact, it was fatal, now I think of it. When his brother Alboino took over the captainship I made up my mind to leave. The boy was a weasel, not a hound. Besides, there was that unfortunate business with the Capelletti and Montecchi."

  Pietro wanted to ask what business, but Jacopo got in first, leaning forward eagerly. "What about the new lord of Verona? What about the Greyhound?"

  Dante just shook his head. "Words fail me."

  Which probably means, thought Pietro, he doesn't really know. He's heard the stories, but a man can change in a dozen years.

  "He is at war though, yes?" insisted Jacopo.

  Dante nodded. "With Padua, over the city of Vicenza. Before his untimely death, good Emperor Heinrich VII gave Cangrande the title of Vicar of the Trevisian Mark. Technically this means he is the overlord of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso. The Trevisians and Paduans disagreed, naturally. But Vicenza is ruled by Cangrande's friend and brother-in-law, Bailardino Nogarola, who had no trouble swearing allegiance to his wife's brother."

  "Then how is the war about Vicenza?" asked Pietro.

  "Vicenza was controlled by Padua until they threw off the yoke and joined Verona. Two years ago Padua decided it wanted Vicenza back." Pietro's father shook his head. "I wonder if they realize how badly they erred. They gave Cangrande an excuse for war, a just cause, and they might lose more than Vicenza in the bargain."

  "What about the Trevisians, the Venetians?"

  "The Trevisians are biding their time, hoping Padua wears down Cangrande's armies or wins outright. The Venetians? They're an odd lot. Protected in th
eir lagoon, neither fish nor fowl, Guelph nor Ghibelline, they don't care much about their neighbour's politics unless it affects their trade. But if Cangrande wins his rights, he'll have their trade in a stranglehold. Then they'll intervene. Though after Ferrara, I imagine the Venetians won't desire land anytime soon," he added, laughing.

  "Maybe we'll see a battle!" Fourteen, Jacopo didn't care about politics. Ever since joining them in Lucca, he had treated his brother to a litany of dreams involving serving under some mercenary condottiero until he was proven so brave he'd be knighted by whatever king or lord was handy. Then, Jacopo always said, came the money, leisure, comfort.

  Pietro wanted to want such a life. It seemed like the right kind of existence, leading to the right kind of death. Women, wealth, maybe a heroic scar or two. And comfort! That was a dream he and his siblings held in the way only a once wealthy, now ruined family can. Dante's exile from Florence had beggared his children, and his wife had only saved their house by using her dowry.

  But Pietro couldn't imagine himself as a soldier. At seventeen he'd hardly been in a friendly scuffle, let alone a battle. He'd had a lesson in Paris, one quick tutorial that basically told him which end of the sword was for stabbing. The only other combat moves he knew he'd copied from fightbooks.

  As the second son he'd been intended for a monastic life. Books, prayers, and perhaps gardening. Some politics. Lots of money. That was the life Pietro was brought up for, and he'd never really questioned it. He'd lived in a kind of distant awe of the old poet.

  Not that father is old. Thirty-five at the turn of the century, the years since Dante had found himself 'Midway though the journey of our life' had been darker than the wood he'd written of. Denied fire and water, his property confiscated, he was declared hostis to his friends and family — a family whittled down from a healthy seven children to three. Alighiero, the brother nearest Pietro's age, had died at twelve when a pestilence swept through the city. The same plague had claimed the baby of the family, little Elisio, aged eight. Dante had never even seen his youngest child, born three months after his exile.

  The mostly deeply felt loss was Dante's eldest son, Giovanni. A few years older than Pietro, he'd had the duties and rights of the firstborn. Just nine when the poet was exiled, Giovanni had joined his father traveling through northern Italy for his next nine years. Then, as Dante prepared to visit the University of Paris, Giovanni was drowned in a river mishap. The city of Florence refused Dante the right to return and bury his son, so Dante's firstborn now lay in a tomb in Pisa.

  That tragedy had altered Pietro's life. Nearly sixteen, he was suddenly elevated to the role of heir, summoned to follow his ever-wandering father in his brother's stead. His two remaining siblings, Jacopo and Antonia, had remained in Florence until last year, when the city leaders started making noise about executing all male heirs of exiles. Dante's wife had quickly sent her remaining son off to join his father, who hadn't exactly been pleased.

  Since then they had traveled over the Alps back into Italy, down to Pisa and Lucca. A stone's throw from Florence. No wonder his father was thinking about home.

  If asked, Pietro would have said he was a disappointment to his father. He hadn't the wit to be a poet, and he was a poor manager for his father. Pietro often thought his little sister would be a better traveling companion for the great Dante. She had the mind for it. Pietro's sole consolation was that his little brother Poco, by his very presence, made Pietro look good.

  Like now, as Jacopo pressed their father further. "The Greyhound. What's he really called?"

  "Cangrande della Scala," said Dante importantly, lingering over each syllable. "The youngest of the three sons, the only one still living. Sharp, tall, well-spoken. No. That won't do. I said before, words don't do him justice. He has a… a streak of immortality inside him, inside his mind. If he continues unchecked, he will make Verona the new Caput Mundi. But ask me no more about him. You will see." When Jacopo opened his mouth Dante held up a hand. "Wait. And. See." He pulled the curtain shut, blocking the stars and plunging them once more into darkness.

  They rode on through the night. Pietro listened to the easy chatting of the soldiers outside. They talked of nothing important — horses, wenches, gambling, in the main. Soon his father's breathing became regular. A minute later the coach was filled with snores as Poco joined in.

  But Pietro couldn't sleep now if he tried. Instead he carefully peeled back a section of curtain and watched the miles pass by. Dante always insisted on riding facing forward, so Pietro could only see the road behind them, illuminated in bizarre twisted patches by their escorts' torches. A wind was fretting the oak trees and juniper bushes that lined the road. He could smell the fresh breeze. A storm, maybe. Not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. But a storm.

  In a little while the trees thinned out, replaced by farms, mills, and minor hamlets. A jolt of the wheels and suddenly they were rattling over a stone road rather than dirt. The clop of each hoofbeat hung crisply in the night air. Pietro was again glad of their escort. Too many things happened to foolish nighttime travelers.

  Spying Pietro, one soldier cantered his mare closer to the carriage. "We're coming up on the city. Won't be long now."

  Pietro thanked him and kept watching. Verona. A Ghibelline city, which meant they supported the Emperor, who was dead, rather than the pope, also dead. Verona had a famous race called the Palio. They exported, well, everything. Any goods from Venice that weren't going out by ship had to pass through either Florence or Verona. Florence led only to the port at Ostia, but Verona was the key to Austria and Germany, and thus on to France and England. It lay at the foot of the Brennero Pass, the only quick and sure route through the Alps.

  All of a sudden the suburbs were upon them, the disposable homes, shops, and warehouses of those not wealthy enough to buy property inside the city walls. But already it smelled like a city. Pietro found it strange that the smell of urine and feces was a familiar comfort, but he'd lived in cities all his life. Florence, Paris, Pisa.

  As the carriage slowed to a walk, then stopped, Pietro's father roused. "What's happening?"

  "I think we're outside the city gates, father."

  "Excellent, excellent," said the poet sleepily. "I was so consumed with composing the encounter with Cato — I told you about Cato? Good — I lost all track of our travels. Open the curtains. And wake your brother!"

  Their escort was hailed by the guard at the gate. The escort shouted out the names of the passengers — one name, really, followed by "and his sons!" The city's guards acknowledged the claim and came forward to confirm the number of passengers in the carriage. And, Pietro knew, to gawk a little at his father.

  "It is you, then?" asked one.

  "I thought you'd have Virgil with you," said another. Pietro hoped he was joking.

  Dante smiled his fool's smile. "You didn't recognize him? He's the coach driver." One guard actually looked, then laughed in an abashed way. The poet passed a few more words with the guards, and one of them made a comment that he thought witty until Dante sighed. "Yes, yes. Hellfire singed my beard black. My sons are tired. May we enter?"

  They were delayed while word was sent ahead and the gate was opened. Then the coach resumed its course, passing into the dark archway that led into the city. When Dante recognized a church or a house, he named it.

  All at once Dante smacked his hands together and cried, "Look! Look!"

  Pietro and Poco twisted around to see where he was pointing. Out of the darkness Pietro could make out an arch. Then another, and another. Arches above arches. Then the torches revealed enough of the structure for Pietro to guess what it was. The only thing it could be.

  "The Arena!" laughed Poco. "The Roman Arena!"

  "It's still in use," proclaimed Dante as proudly as if he'd built it. "Now that they've evicted the squatters and cleaned it out, they can use it for sport again. And theatre," he added sourly.

  Quickly they were past it, but Pietro kept picturing it in h
is mind's eye until the coach came to a halt. The driver called down, "The full stop!" Dante snorted. Everyone itched to display their wit for the master poet.

  A footman opened the coach door and Pietro poked his head out. Word of their arrival must have spread faster than fire. A crowd of men, women, and children, grew larger every second. After two years of traveling on foot, of leaving their hats on posts in each new city they came to until someone lifted them, thus offering lodging and food, Pietro still wasn't used to his father's newfound fame.

  Stepping out of the coach, he made sure his hat was at the proper angle. A present from the lord of Lucca, it was Pietro's only expensive garment. But even in his fancy hat with the long feather he heard the crowd's sigh of disappointment. He didn't take it personally. Instead, he turned to hold out his arm to his father.

  Dante's long fingers grasped Pietro's outstretched arm, putting more pressure on his son's flesh than he showed. As his feet touched the stones of the square the crowd took a single step back, pressing the rearmost hard against the walls. They were gathered to glimpse Dante, an event Pietro guessed they'd tell their friends of while making the sign to ward off evil. The old man was evil, but not in that way.

  "Fool carriages," muttered Dante. "Never get cramped like this on a horse."

  Jacopo had popped out of the other side and now came around the back of the carriage, an idiot grin on his face. With a word to the porters to stow their baggage, they followed a beckoning steward. The awed crowd parted for them.

  Following the steward's lamp, they passed under an archway with a massive curved bone dangling from it. "La Costa," chuckled Dante. "I had forgotten. That bone is the remains of an ancient monster that the city rose up and killed in olden times. It marks the line between the Piazza delle Erbe to the Piazza della Signoria." The marketplace, the civic centre.

  The alleyway opened out into a wide piazza enclosed all about by buildings both new and old. The whole square was done up in cloth of gold and silken banners that shimmered in the torchlight. Below this finery were Verona's best and brightest. Dressed in fine gonellas or the more modern (and revealing) doublets, these wealthy nobles and upper crust now stood by as Dante Alaghieri joined their ranks.