by David Blixt
They rode the whole morning before encountering another party on the road. A noble woman in an open carriage, with only a driver and an escort of two men-at-arms. Moving slowly in the opposite direction, the carriage seemed no threat, yet it had Pietro’s thumb pricking. As he trotted past the conveyance, Pietro glanced inside. He was rewarded with a view of a mass of curly red hair and an ample bosom. The woman nodded gravely. Pietro bowed from the saddle and passed on. He rode easier when the vehicle was out of sight.
He’d noticed Antonia and Esta looking at the conveyance with longing. “If there were any way we could wait for a carriage, we would,” he told them.
“We’ll manage, Ser Alaghieri.” Esta was a large woman, almost as broad in the shoulder as her husband, but her chest could not be described as a barrel. It was more apt to simply say ‘robust’.
Antonia nodded. “If you need to rush ahead, go. Morsicato can stay with us.”
Pietro shook his head. “We don’t know what kind of welcome we’ll get, and I can’t have us exhausted when we arrive. We all ride together.” He glanced at Cesco’s back. “Besides, we have to figure out how to tell him.”
“He’s too young!” Esta only knew the secret because it was impossible that she not know.
“In body, perhaps,” remarked Antonia with a slight smile. “In guile, he’s positively ancient.”
Aware he was being talked about, Cesco dropped back to ride between Antonia and the doctor. “So, Auntie, tell us – have you joined your brother and given up God?”
Wincing, Antonia glanced at her brother. But Pietro did not react – he was used to being baited. “Don’t be a beast, Cesco. You should apologize.”
He blinked innocently. “Whatever for?”
Morsicato went on the attack. “For the scare you gave us, you little whoreson. Disappearing last night.”
“I just wanted to see if any life still crept through your carcass, piss-guzzler.”
“Hmph. Honestly, I’m surprised you weren’t blamed for the fire. And yes, I heard about that business with Donati. You’re lucky you came off so well. What eleven year-old gets knife wounds? Your uncle Pietro never got knife wounds at your age!”
“He didn’t know what he was missing.”
Dropping back as well, Detto rallied to his friend’s defence. “You should be thanking him!”
“For almost getting killed?” asked Pietro lightly.
Cesco looked across Antonia to Pietro. “You would prefer someone stole your father’s body?”
“Not at all. I would have preferred you tell me what was in the wind, so I could have had them all arrested.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“And how do you think I’d feel if you were hurt?”
“But I’m fine!” To demonstrate his fitness, Cesco tossed the lute to Detto and flipped over in his saddle to stand on his head. Around Ravenna the boy was famous for his horse-tricks.
The doctor was unimpressed. “Stop that this instant. Be serious.”
Cesco obediently rolled back over, retrieved the lute, and started strumming. “I will when you sing a new song. I’ve heard this one all my life. A chorus of ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that!’ Is it any wonder if I strike a few discords?”
Pietro took a deep breath. “Cesco, I need you to listen. Important things are afoot.”
Detto looked sulky. “I don’t see why I’m being sent home.”
“You’re not,” said Cesco, his fingers finding a jaunty tune. “I am.”
The Alaghieri siblings exchanged a look as Esta shook her head. “You told him? He’s too young!”
“That is for the stars to say,” observed the Moor from behind them all. “His chart did say he would not be long lived.”
“Mine?” asked Cesco.
“No,” answered the Moor.
Morsicato leaned in his saddle to take his wife’s hand. “Dear, it’s simple. If we do not move now, time will run out. At the moment we have the advantage of confusion. If we wait even a month, someone else will take the reins. It’s harder to mount a horse that already has a rider in the saddle. Pietro’s message says it has already begun.”
Cesco plucked a few low strings, adding a musically dark emphasis to the doctor’s words.
“What message? Whose chart? Who’s going to die?” Detto cast a worried look at Cesco. He knew of Tharwat’s skill at astrology. It was one of the things his father hated about the Moor.
“Bailardetto, be quiet for just a moment.” Antonia spoke with the authority she had gained in taking the name Suor Beatrice.
“You’re talking about Cesco as if he wasn’t here! Doesn’t he have a say?”
“They’re getting there.” Cesco palmed the lutestrings to stop their vibrations. “Right now the generals want their troops in order. But if Madonna Esta thinks I’m not ready, she’s wrong. I’ve been waiting for this day all my life.”
Deliberately Pietro laughed, one of the best tactics when the boy became over-dramatic. “All your life? How old are you now? Sixty? Seventy?”
“I’m acutely aware of my age, thank you. In fact, I was discussing it with Signor Donati just last night. Just because you all were still in swaddling clothes at my age doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself. I know a hawk from a hound.”
This turn of phrase produced matching frowns in Antonia and Pietro. Morsicato said, “What do you know?”
The eyes he turned on them were pools of verdant innocence. “I know – nothing. Nothing at all.” Strumming again, his words came as lyrics:
Great books have I conn’d by the score, dear sir,
And learned hist’ry might reach this sore chin,
Masters of oratory I’ve done proud, sir,
With barbs to turn your blood to gruel so thin,
But about myself? I know not a whit!
Chamate, and how neglected kings may die,
Now in me lies the root of war’s great art,
– what , dear Nuncle, was I not meant to see? –
And with sword in hand can I part a heart,
Yet about myself, I cannot tell you shit!
Nearby, the guards were laughing. Esta frowned at the vulgarity. The rest were listening intently.
I know medicine, doctor, just a touch,
Enough to see a heart that’s out of home.
I can speak four tongues, though that’s not much,
Since our Moorish friend is a walking tome,
But ask about poor me, every tongue is bit!
O, teach him to harp with his nails sharp,
That is how you make a man of many parts!
As steeped in knowing as I can ever be,
Yet woefully, wonderfully ignorant –
About me. About me.
Grinning, Cesco let the cord play out and bowed to the applauding guards before turning back to his minders. “But I am free to guess. Tell me, Donna Esta, what’s my name?”
The doctor’s wife looked startled. “What’s your – why, it’s Cesco. Cesco.”
“Yes, that’s what you all call me. But what, Madonna Morsicato, is my baptismal name?”
Flustered, Esta hesitated. Morsicato supplied the answer. “Pierfrancesco Alaghieri.”
Throwing back his head, the boy laughed theatrically. “Oh, that didn’t sound rehearsed! I hope you never have to lie to a patient, doctor, because you’re terrible at it. And your wife goes to the truth before she remembers to lie.”
Esta flushed. “You say that as if it were a bad thing.”
“An honest woman is a wonderful thing to know,” winked Cesco. The lasciviousness was quite crude in one so young. “Still, the ability to lie when required is a handy skill. Even after all this time, you have to think about it, your mind spinning like the wheels of a water-clock, searching for the right lie.”
“What lie?” demanded Detto. “Cesco, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about my name. My station. My life. It’s all a lie.” He looked delib
erately at Pietro. “Isn’t it, Nuncle?”
Pietro and the Moor shared a considering gaze. Tharwat shrugged. “This might be the best way.”
Pietro considered, then opened his hands in invitation. “Tell us, nephew, what you’ve deduced. We’ll judge if you’re ready.”
Trotting ahead, Cesco flipped around to sit his saddle backwards, facing them all. Enjoying himself greatly, he unknowingly gave a perfect imitation of someone the knight, the astrologer, and the doctor knew all too well. “Well, to start, I’m not your nephew. That’s the first untruth.”
“Untruth,” said Pietro wryly. “How delicate.”
“Yes,” said Morsicato. “He’s not exactly calling us liars.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.” He addressed Detto. “The story we’ve been told is that I am Ser Alaghieri’s nephew, the orphaned son of his older brother, Giovanni, who drowned the year before I was born.”
Detto frowned. “That’s right. You are.”
“I’m not, actually.” Cesco brushed the curtain of curling hair from his eyes. “As attractive as it would be to be Dante Alaghieri’s grandson, there must be some other explanation for my being raised in Ravenna. I would guess that I was fostered out to protect me from something.”
Detto’s brow knit in anger at being lied to. “Protect you from what?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” Cesco’s eyes flicked among his guardians. “But it’s plain sense. I’ve been surrounded by bright if unorthodox men, all geniuses in their way – except for Uncle Jacopo, who’s as dumb as a box of rocks.”
He might have expected Antonia and Pietro to object to the insult to their absent sibling, or perhaps laugh. Instead they were listening intently. Knight, nun, astrologer, and doctor had spent many late nights debating how much of the story the boy believed. Now they were finding out. “Go on,” said Pietro.
“I’ve received a superlative education – numbers and letters, history and geography. I’ve been taught everything from languages to warfare by some of the finest teachers Ravenna has to offer, while my mind was broadened by dear auntie novitiate here, and grandfather Dante, the greatest poet of the age.”
Pietro opened his hands. “I hear nothing yet of why you’re not an Alaghieri.”
Cesco leaned back in his saddle, folding his hands behind his head and stretching his legs as if relaxing. “It’s like this – if I were your nephew, that would explain you, Uncle Jacopo, Aunt Antonia and Grandfather Dante. But what about the doctor here?”
Morsicato shrugged. “A doctor has to practice somewhere.”
“Ah, but I’ve seen how you dress wounds! What is a battle-hardened knight-physician doing in a little rural city with no serious ties to any faction, Guelph or Ghibelline? Your wife complains hourly about being stuck in this backwater hole. You adore her, so why not move away?”
“You tell me,” growled Morsicato.
Instead of answering, Cesco pivoted to face the Moor. “Then there’s the Arûs, our Moorish astrologer. Why is he here?”
Tharwat remained silent. It was Pietro who spoke. “Why shouldn’t he be? He’s my friend.”
“Not your servant, though. The Ravennese may buy the tale that he’s your slave, but he owes you no bondage I’ve ever seen. Why, then, has he never left, despite all the harassment the locals give him?”
“I like seaside living,” said the Moor, his voice rasping.
Cesco turned to Detto. “Have you noticed that they never let me out of their sight if they can help it? If I’m out, either Pietro or Tharwat is always around. And when we traveled to Florence, Nuncle Pietro hired forty armed guards to go with us.”
Antonia’s reply was sharp. “There’s a price on his head. The Neri faction, including the Donati whose nose you tweaked last night—”
“It wasn’t his nose I tweaked.”
“— were only letting him return to take care of our mother’s estate. They could have changed their mind at any time.”
“Then why didn’t they go with him? They stayed with me wherever I was.”
Pietro answered that. “You’re a child. I’m a man, and a knight. I can protect myself.”
Storm-clouds threatened Cesco’s mood for a moment. “How did you get that limp, again? Or those neat little scars on your face?”
“The limp I got at the first Battle of Vicenza, just as you’ve been told. These,” Pietro brushed his forehead scars with a gloved finger, “I got from a cat.”
“A very large cat,” added Morsicato with a dark chuckle.
Cesco pulled a face. “Fine, don’t tell me. I’m still right about you two never letting me get off by myself.”
“You sneak off often enough.”
“Always with my Shadow. So there’s some danger looming over me. I figured that out long before now. In fact, I knew it even before I started breaking your codes.”
Antonia went rigid and the doctor took in a sharp breath. Pietro and Tharwat said nothing. Esta and Detto both asked the same question, at the same time. “Codes?”
“Codes.” The boy’s satisfaction was manifest. “Ser Alaghieri and his friends are spies for someone of great importance in the Ghibelline cause. The messages come in all forms, by all means. Yet you rarely send messages yourself. So you are the clearing house for secret communications.”
“Spies?!” Detto was laughing until he saw the faces of the adults. “Really?” They had all just risen in his estimation. Whereas Esta was staring accusingly at her husband, and Pietro was feeling the glares of the soldiers, who now suspected him of some dark arts. This might end badly for them all.
“Alas, nothing so dramatic,” said Pietro, voice bored. “The doctor, Tharwat, and I have friends in far-off places. With the full knowledge and cooperation of the lord of Ravenna, we occasionally receive bits of news and pass them on to important people.”
“Bits of news that arrive in secret, in code,” added Cesco.
“Information is valuable.”
“My point exactly.”
Pietro’s gaze narrowed. “So instead of leaving well enough alone, you decided to spy against your own family. How clever. How loyal. How mature.”
Cesco waved this off. “That’s your father talking. You’d have done the same.”
“Actually, no. Did you learn anything of interest?”
“About the grain supplies in Spain, quite a lot. About the iron mines north of Erfurt, even more. About the truce between Robert the Bruce and Edward II, and the secret communications that led to the Pope recognizing the Bruce as king of Scotland, everything. About the accession of Muhammad-bin-Tughluk, a little. About who my father and mother are, not a jot or tittle.”
Pietro listened as the child recited a litany of secret communications compromised, knowing that Tharwat was engaged in the same exercise, mentally cataloging which codes were too easily deciphered. He actually felt a perverse pride in the boy for finding them out – a pride tempered by the frustration of tethering him to the ground. “If there’s no hint that we’ve been lying to you – and I’ve yet to hear anything that sounds like real evidence – then what on Earth leads you to think you are anything more than you’ve been told?”
“Spoken like the great lawyer you are destined to be!” Now it was Cesco’s eyes that narrowed. “Fact: you are raising me not to be a poet or a lawyer, but to have knowledge of warfare, medicine, law, philosophy, art – all the qualities needed to be not just a knight, but a great nobleman or prince. Fact: you try to guard me in a way that speaks of some significant danger. Fact: you three have cast aside great careers to take care of me. And most damning fact of all: you never tell me about my father – not even his date of death. Now why would that be if my father was, forgive me, a long-dead and forgotten Alaghieri of no weight? No, I am the son of someone famous, someone important, someone who ordered you to stay with me until I was sent for.”
A long silence ensued. Then Pietro burst into laughter. Morsicato joined him, then Antonia, and even Tharwat smiled.
“Do you have any idea how absurd you sound? It’s the secret dream of every unhappy child in the world. ‘I’m some great king’s son, and when I’m old enough he’ll send for me and save me from this boring, humdrum life!’” The soldiers were laughing too, and Pietro pressed on. “Maybe we were raising you that way because we want the world to be open to you, Dante’s only grandson. Maybe we guard you because you get into so much trouble. Maybe we’ve cast off our great careers because we’re happy in our lives, and wealthy enough not to care. And maybe we don’t talk about my elder brother because we hardly knew him, and have nothing nice to say.” He appealed to the soldiers. “The wild imaginings of children – honestly!”
Detto looked angrily at Pietro. “He says you’ve all been lying to him his whole life. Tell him the truth. Now.”
Morsicato smiled. “We’d better.”
“Yes,” replied Antonia. “Or else Bailardetto will have us in stocks and screws.”
Detto was ready to give them a hot answer, but Cesco forestalled him. “Don’t bother. They have to tell us soon. Something’s happened. The letter Nuncle Pietro has tucked in his sleeve is some kind of news. He came racing from Bologna to share it, only to find his house on fire. It’s why we’re not staying to fix things in Ravenna. That’s over. Wherever we’re going, they have to tell us the truth before we get there.”
“Maybe,” said Pietro. “But if we’re going to reach your castle in the sky, we have to pick up the pace. Captain Martino? Let’s ride harder. Amusing as this has been, we’ve slowed to a crawl.” Pietro clicked his tongue and his horse trotted forward. The soldiers obeyed and soon they were moving along at a brisk clip once more.
Pietro pushed his mount’s pace just a little bit harder to ride alongside the fuming Cesco. Reaching into his sleeve, he withdrew the coded letter he’d shown Tharwat the night before. He wondered how Cesco had even known about it. “Here, clever puppy. Cut your teeth on this.”