by David Blixt
Cesco snatched up the single sheet and devoured the contents. The eyes that came up were wide with delight. “I haven’t seen this code before.”
“When you break it, we’ll talk more.”
“So I’m right.”
Voice so soft it was almost lost in the clatter of hooves, Pietro said, “Not about everything, little man.”
“But about this?” insisted Cesco excitedly.
Pietro felt a huge grief spreading through his chest. “Yes. Yes you are.”
Six
They were forced to suspend their conversation in any case. The advance party had stopped at a crossroads ahead. Arriving, Pietro could see the road was heavily beaten. Men and horses. Lots of horses.
The captain of Novello’s men-at-arms rode over. “An army, Ser Alaghieri. Traveling fast.”
Pietro dismounted at once. “Anyone in sight?”
“No, sir. But the marks are unmistakable. At least two hundred mounted. The Lord knows how many foot. And in a hurry,” added Martino.
Tharwat dismounted and knelt, studying at the tracks. “The mounted left the foot to lag behind.”
“Vicenza,” guessed Morsicato. “The Paduans have marched on Vicenza again.”
“Father!” Bailardetto sawed his reins as three sets of hands restrained him. “They’re besieging my father!”
“Actually,” said the Moor, “I believe they were retreating.”
A quick examination of the crossroads proved him correct. There were traces of a heavily laden army heading north for Vicenza, but those were old. The freshest marks, made within the last day, were definitely pointed south. Without their wagons. Almost in wonder, Captain Martino said, “They left their siege machines behind?”
Pietro addressed al-Dhaamin, choosing his words carefully and keeping his voice low. “If they heard the news, why wouldn’t they press the attack?”
The Moor’s face was blank. “I don’t know.”
Detto punched a fist into the air. “My father beat them back!”
Pietro glanced at the Moor, who shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Why not?” asked Cesco. “After all, Nuncle Pietro beat back a whole Paduan army single-handed.”
Detto eyed Pietro skeptically. “He did?”
Mind elsewhere, Pietro ignored them. “Tharwat. Could you..?”
Passing the reins of the spare mounts to a soldier, the Moor stepped lightly into his saddle and kicked his horse into a gallop north. If Novello’s men took umbrage, Pietro ignored it. He would trust al-Dhaamin’s survey more than a whole troop of explorers.
They waited at the crossroads, taking a cold meal and making water. Cesco was uncharacteristically pliable. Eating, answering Detto’s questions, teasing the dogs, all the time his eyes were somewhere in the aether. Puzzling out the code was evidently consuming his store of excess energy. A blessing.
After a long conversation with his wife, Morsicato crossed to Pietro’s side. “Everything all right?” asked Pietro.
“I have some serious explaining to do when we get home. Do yourself a favour, son. Don’t get married. Or if you do, make sure she speaks a different language.” Pietro suppressed a grin as the doctor watched their charge. “An apt solution, giving him the message.”
“His love of puzzles.” Pietro pulled a hunk of cheese from his saddlebag and began unwrapping it. “I decided to make it work for us.”
Morsicato took an offered corner of cheese. “It’s his flaw. One of them.”
“To be unable to say no to a challenge? I know.”
“No one better.” With a shared smile, Morsicato returned to his wife, leaving Pietro to sit beside a tree and eat his bread, cheese, and grapes in peace.
That, given enough time, the boy would crack the code, neither man doubted. Hopefully he would then feel he had earned the truth within it. In that way the challenge fit the pattern of testing and tempering that had begun eleven years before in Vicenza, and refined seven years ago by the very capable hands of Pietro’s father.
Father… By himself for the first time since the fire, Pietro let himself feel the merest tinge of his loss. His eyes welling, he quickly tucked those emotions away. A dragonfly upon the water, he’d barely touched them and they’d nearly swallowed him whole.
Pietro had never dreamed when he took responsibility for raising Cesco that this day would actually come. And never, never, had he dreamed it would be so soon. Too soon… Esta was right, in a way. It was too soon. Far too soon.
Not too soon for Cesco, who might well be ready. No, it was too soon for Pietro, who did not want to let him go.
♦ ◊ ♦
Eight years ago, at the tender age of twenty, Pietro had found himself charged with raising a three year-old boy. Terrified, upon arriving in Ravenna he had turned to his sister for guidance. She’d stared back at him as if he’d grown a second head. “What makes you think I know the first thing about babies?”
“You’re a girl,” had been Pietro’s simplistic reply. She’d laughed and informed him that, as she was more concerned with father’s affairs and intended someday to join a nunnery, she had never had much truck with children. “Find a nurse.”
Dante was no help either, having been absent for almost all his own children’s youth. Tharwat, so capable in so many fields, was as ignorant as Pietro. The doctor was able to tend childhood maladies, but couldn’t cope with this brilliant and infuriating boy.
So it had fallen to Pietro to be the father-figure. Pietro, who’d always had a strained relationship with his own brilliant, caustic father.
An obvious prodigy, Cesco was ostracized by the children of Ravenna almost from the first. Three years old, he’d gone out to play in the street and rushed back to his new home, his nose bloodied, scrapes on his hands and knees, bruises all over from a kicking.
As Morsicato tended the injuries, Pietro had demanded, “How did it start?”
Little Cesco sniffled blood mixed with snot and tears. “I didn’t punch first.” Which wasn’t quite an answer. When Pietro repeated the question, Cesco had shrugged.
“Were you showing off?”
“No!” A hard look had made the boy revise his answer. “Jus’ talking.”
“What about? What kind of talk?”
“Nothing. Honest! Jus’ talk!”
Cesco had never given a satisfactory answer. Not that Pietro needed one. It was all too easy to imagine the scene: Cesco walking up to a group of the town’s boys – older boys, as Cesco would see them as equals, worthy of his camaraderie. Pietro imagined the cast of Cesco’s gait, the wryness of his grin. So superior, so coy, so clever, using big words to tease them. What the words were didn’t matter, it was how those words were spoken.
Civilization never extended to children. Like animals, children perceived so much that adults glossed over, and were merciless in exacting revenge for slights. They may not have had the words for how Cesco made them feel. Words like inferior, menial, and brutish. But the feelings had existed. So they had made him feel the same way.
“No one likes a know-it-all,” Pietro had said.
“Me either,” was the three year-old’s testy reply. “Ow! Here, doctor, lemme do tha’!”
The next day Cesco had slipped out of the house against orders. Within minutes he returned home, running full out, a pack of kids on his heels. Pietro had been correct, these boys were almost twice Cesco’s size. But this time, it was two of the older boys who bore bloody noses. Cesco darted into the house and stayed there for days, avoiding the rocks thrown into open windows whenever he passed by.
Over time he won the admiration of a few Ravennese boys through sheer daring. At around age five he became the leader of a small crew that wandered the city during their free hours. Which began a new and frustrating era of his childhood, the little rakehell years. Cesco’s sense of dangerous fun started getting him into trouble. Races, contests, wars with sticks, petty thefts – these were common activities for young boys. But Cesco was soon escal
ating their deeds, making what was playful into games for mortal stakes. Miraculously, none of the boys died. But there were injuries – Lord, the injuries! Cesco had had his share, but they were nothing compared to the litany of broken bones and lost blood belonging to the other boys. Before he turned six years old, the town’s parents had decided he was a bad influence. There were deputations to the Alaghieri household, threatening action if ‘that boy’ went uncontrolled and unpunished.
Cut off from his playmates, Cesco had turned to adults. But the only adults who had time for him were his own family, the doctor and his wife, or the Moor. And these adults were always poking, prodding, urging him to funnel his energies into some productive vein. Pietro was as guilty of this as anyone.
Dante had tasked the boy hardest. Ignoring Cesco’s existence in the early years, somewhere along the way Pietro’s father had decided the boy was interesting. They played word games, then chess, then started creating riddles, then puzzles of philosophy and religion that would have made the scholars at Bologna blench. Dante’s writing slowed, much to everyone’s despair, but it couldn’t be denied that in Cesco the poet had found a foil, a goad, a butt for his jokes and a hone for his wit. They had driven each other mad, but couldn’t resist each other’s company.
Dante’s sudden death four years ago had been a blow of colossal proportions, the only time Pietro had ever seen Cesco at a loss. Not so much weeping as howling, gnashing, tearing. For the first time Pietro was frightened at the depth of emotion within the boy who was always so controlled, so sarcastic, so glib. It reinforced how terribly lonely the boy must feel.
Thank God for Detto. Three times a year, Bailardetto Nogarola was sent by his parents to live in Ravenna, acting as a page for Pietro. But Pietro neglected the training of his page, allowing him instead to be the friend Cesco so desperately needed. And Pietro had to admit, Cesco probably had more to teach Detto than he would ever learn as a mere page.
Natural worrier that he was, Pietro fretted for Detto as well. Was he doomed to a life as a tag-along? Would he ever grow into his own man? For that was Pietro’s measure of a man – did he belong to himself, or was he another man’s creature? Having spent most of his life in the shadow of two remarkable men, Pietro valued independence above all else. It was a lesson he had imparted to Cesco. Perhaps too well.
Even with Detto as his companion for weeks at a time, Cesco must have felt isolated growing up. Ignored and shut out by his peers, talked down to by strangers, forced to perform for adults he knew. Because, as much as they wanted to be his friends, Pietro and his fellow tutors were all too aware of the future that lay before Cesco, and the need to prepare him for it.
They just hadn’t expected it to come so soon.
♦ ◊ ♦
Morsicato returned to sit beside Pietro. “I’ve been banished. But I’ve got wine.” He passed over the stone bottle. “How long do you think he’s known?”
“I think he’s always suspected, but never been sure enough to ask until now.”
“Well, we always worried how he’d take it. Looks like we needn’t have bothered.” Mopping his forehead, Morsicato stole another hunk of cheese. “He’s devious. Like his father.”
Pietro shook his head. “His father didn’t have us.”
“Still, do you ever worry?”
“No.” The answer was a little too firm to have the ring of truth. “Worrying will only add grey to your beard.” He indicated the mouthful of hair the doctor was chewing along with his cheese. “See?”
That elicited a chuckle. “Aren’t none of us getting any younger.”
Putting his cheese away, Pietro stood to rub down his sweating horse. “Be thankful. Now we can watch the whole world go grey trying to rein him in.”
He was echoing an old debate, one that Pietro, the doctor, and the Moor had shared over many bottles of wine through the last decade. Did you shape genius, or did genius shape you? Sometimes, in the early years, Pietro’s father had descended upon them to proclaim opinions made of granite. “Genius is the gift of God, and cannot be bred or altered. You cannot steer an ocean.” Well, thought Pietro, if anyone had known...
Antonia and Esta approached, walking gingerly - both were already saddle-sore. “Where are we spending the night?” His sister’s pleading tone almost made Pietro laugh. Antonia Alaghieri never pleaded with anyone.
“Before, I was thinking Vicenza. Now we’ll have to see what shape the world has taken. It might not be safe.”
Esta was still irked she had not been part of the inner circle of ‘spies.’ Evidently Antonia had explained, softening her attitude towards Pietro – Morsicato was clearly still persona non grata. To Pietro she made polite conversation. “I’m so sorry about your house. But you haven’t been living there much lately. Are you sorry to leave Bologna?”
Pietro hadn’t even thought about that loss yet. He tried to make it sound trifling. “I’ve learned about everything I want to know. I just kept putting off the examinations. But really, it’s been no fun at all since Petrarch left.”
“Who?”
Antonia answered. “My brother’s French friend, Monsieur Petrarca.”
“She only calls him French out of spite,” objected Pietro. “He’s as Florentine as she is.”
“His family followed the pope to Avignon,” said Suor Beatrice, “the place father called —”
“— la puttana of France,” finished Pietro. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
In frustration Esta repeated, “Who is he?”
“Francesco Petrarca. Son of a papal clerk whose father has more ambition than understanding. Petrarch wants to be a poet, his father demands he study law. We’ve had many discussions over merging the two, and becoming a modern day Cicero. But, sad to say, Petrarch has no interest whatsoever in the law. Even with me tutoring him, he didn’t do well.”
Antonia smiled at this last, new fact. “Oh-ho! Is that why he left Bologna?”
“His father is ill,” said Pietro gravely, chastening his little sister. “He’s returned to Avignon to await the inevitable, which will set him free to become whatever he wants.” A condition that could be said about Cesco. And me, too. “Still, I am sorry. He’s the best friend I made there, other than the professors. If I had listened to Mari, I would have been friends with him much sooner.” He was referring to Mariotto Montecchio, an old friend from Verona. “They knew each other in Avignon. Mari even wrote to me about him, years ago.”
“Well,” chuckled Morsicato, “Montecchio’s judgment is not always sound.”
“Oh?” replied his wife acidly. “He at least is a devoted husband. I doubt he ever deceives his wife.”
Morsicato groaned under the weight his wife’s palpable ire. “Dear one, if I could have told you, I would! It was a secret!”
“From your wife?”
Taking her by the elbow, the doctor led Esta a decent distance off, the better to be berated in private.
Antonia knelt beside her brother. “Secrets, secrets are no fun.”
“Secrets, secrets hurt someone,” answered Pietro. “How true.”
“Speaking of,” ventured Antonia, “have you considered that we might be acting too hastily?”
“Antonia, if we don’t move now—”
“I understand. But I wonder if a little circumspection might not be wiser. I would not be so nervous, except for the fire.”
“The fire is why we have to move.”
“Exactly. Like game, we were safe in our thicket. But the fire has flushed us into open ground. Making us easier to hunt.” Seeing her brother’s frown of concentration, she rose and moved off to rescue the doctor, leaving Pietro to grapple with that unsettling notion. He was the knight. She was only a novice.
Not far off, Cesco was lying on his back, staring at the small screw of paper. Suddenly he made a raspberry noise, crammed the note into his boot, and sat up. He looked over at Detto, who was standing under a tree whistling to a small finch. The finch fluttered to the lowest bran
ch then, after cocking its head, hopped down onto Detto’s outstretched finger.
“How do you do that?” demanded Cesco.
“Do what?” asked Detto, secretly pleased. The truth was that animals loved him. He had a kind of natural magic that calmed any beast and made them trust him implicitly. It was a skill Tharwat also possessed, to a lesser degree. Oddly, this simple ability made Cesco insanely jealous.
As he demonstrated now by drawing his sword. “Care to try?”
Grinning, Detto cast the finch back into the air and unsheathed his own weapon. “I’ll try not to take off your head.”
For the journey, Tharwat had fitted the boys out with blades very like the old Roman gladius – short, wide thrusting weapons with wicked tips. Though Bailardetto was looking to outstrip his friend in growth despite Cesco’s year head-start, they were neither of a size where they could wield a longsword. Nevertheless Tharwat, Pietro, and Morsicato had each taken turns teaching them swordplay, first with stick, then staff, now with blade. It was an accelerated training, since both were quite adept. The adults had suspected it was a skill they would need, and the boys were encouraged to spar whenever they had the opportunity.
“Go off a ways,” Pietro told them. “You’ll frighten the horses.”
“Not to mention,” taunted the doctor loudly to their backs, “the very real possibility they’ll kill one of the animals by mistake.”
Both boys grabbed bucklers, the fist-sized round shields used to beat away an opponent’s thrust. Thus armed, they prepared to spar. The hounds barked excitedly, accustomed to what was coming. Soon the air was ringing with their shouts and the clangs of their blades. Novello’s soldiers started making discreet wagers.
Still brushing his horse, Pietro paused to watch the mock duel. Detto was already shaping up to be a fine fighter. His feet were widespread, his stance low, his knees bent, just the way his father had taught him. He was well-balanced and the power of his arm was astonishing for one so young. In ten years he would be one of the strongest swords in Lombardy.