Voice of the Falconer

by David Blixt

  With a secret smile, Pietro did some quick math and came up with eleven-tenths. But the crowd didn’t waste time on such trivialities. They erupted, surging forward. Cesco was plucked off the lip of the well and handed from body to body, carried along over the heads of the crowd in a joyful processional that ended at the front steps of Cangrande’s palace, directly below the balcony upon which Mastino still stood, utterly flummoxed. “Sca-la! Sca-la! Sca-la!” they roared. No longer for Mastino. Their chants were for Cangrande’s heir, this magnificent child who championed the common citizen, the tragic boy who had been lied to all his life, the boy almost twice as old as Cangrande had been when he’d earned his knighthood.

  “Holy Christ,” murmured Castelbarco in genuine prayer as he watched in wonder. Pietro felt similar astonishment, but with an inner glow of pride. In minutes this eleven year-old had turned a suspicious and angry crowd into a cheering, jubilant throng of supporters.

  Yet when the crowd set him down, something in Cesco’s expression made Pietro start. Still smiling and waving, he wore look of puzzlement on his face. Pietro saw Cesco’s hand lift to pluck at his collar, his movement swift as if swatting a fly.

  Immediately Pietro swung out of the saddle and started towards the boy, but Cesco held up his free hand to halt him. Taking this as an indication that he was about to speak again, the crowd stilled.

  “For the love you have for this city, the love you bore my father and the love you have for the noble Mastino, please – let these questions raised today be answered by wiser heads than mine.” Stepping out of the shadow of the palace and looking straight up, Cesco addressed the Mastiff. “O cousin, we must discover the truth of this matter! Shall we retire indoors to discuss these lies and this marvelous truth?”

  Under the Houndshelm, Mastino shook his head. “But, my little friend, I fear – I fear for my life! These men who have brought you, they have suborned the army! As you say, men who yesterday swore faith to me now serve your masters! If I open the doors, will they stop until they have slain me and all my loyal followers?”

  Cesco’s next move was so swift that no one had time to react. Plucking a knife from the belt of someone in the crowd, he sliced the flesh between his shoulder and neck. Dropping the blade, he squeezed the wound, wincing in real pain as crimson liquid spilled forth. “See, cousin! See how I bleed! I would sooner see my own life-force spilled here and now than let them harm one hair on your head! But your fear is no cowardice, I am sure! If you like, let me in alone. I shall place myself in your power, and let the people see the amity between us!”

  Horrified by both the sudden violence and the dangerous suggestion, Pietro was even more surprised at Mastino’s response. “Youth is fragile. What if some mischance befell you? How could I quell the masses? They would suspect me of having done away with you and my life will be forfeit! No, little one, let us meet tomorrow when cooler heads have prevailed and we can untangle the knots your sponsors have woven!”

  Cesco bowed his head in reverence. “I am but a child and have not the wisdom of your years. I shall retire to my uncle Bailardino’s house. Meanwhile, talk to them, cousin! Talk to the people of Verona! Make them see sense! For, in spite of all good will, this great city cannot have two masters!” Cesco turned to where Pietro was hovering. “Ser Alaghieri, will you escort me from this place? I have caused enough trouble today!”

  The crowd begged him to stay, hands plucked at him, a cloth came forward to staunch the blood flowing from his neck. Pietro touched the boy’s exposed flesh and was horrified to discover, despite his dappling of sweat, how chilled he was. Was it the performance? The old nervous illness? Or something worse? Pietro glanced around for Tharwat, but the Moor had disappeared.

  Soldiers forced a path for them back to Pietro’s horse. Before they could start, Cesco stumbled. “Lo,” he called out as Pietro lifted him, “I swoon! Remember, all of you – the only blood that should be spilled here today is mine! Not Mastino’s! Never his! He is an honourable kinsman to my great father!”

  Lifting Cesco into the saddle, Pietro had to hold him in place as they exited the square by the easiest route – past the church of Santa Maria Antica, and so to the street behind the square, heading towards the river.

  The Nogarola house was just a few yards from the gate to Mastino’s palace. Lifting Cesco down from the saddle, Pietro had to fight the throng to get him to the door. Cesco waved and smiled all the while. Pietro noted he only waved with one hand. The other seemed to be cupped around something.

  Pietro got the door closed behind him. “You little bastard. That was amazing. Though a little melodramatic at the end.”

  “I had no choice,” murmured Cesco just loud enough for Pietro to hear. “Our enemies don’t waste any time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cesco daubed the cloth at the self-inflicted wound where his neck met his shoulder. “Well, I don’t want to unduly alarm you, Nuncle,” he said, smiling crookedly, “but I believe I’ve been poisoned.”

  Thirteen

  The sun was just setting as a furtive group of men tapped on the massive doors of the Casa Capulletto on the via Cappello. These men represented influential merchant guilds and banking houses in Verona. They and their colleagues had divided themselves into three parties to seek out certain important Veronese and sound their support for the new faction that had erupted upon the scene.

  The tall doors swung wide and the servants, told to expect such a deputation, ushered the guests quickly in, sealing the portal behind them. The emissaries followed an arched brick passage through to an enclosed garden wide enough for a hundred men.

  It seemed the yard was already appointed to make them comfortable. But a quick glance around told them these were the preparations for some great soiree as yet unenjoyed. For nine years the Capulletti had thrown magnificent feasts to celebrate the day of San Bonaventura – an ironic name for a saint, in light of the title’s present owner and his slightly mad wife. Today was the feast day, tonight the night when all the best and wealthiest of Verona (with one pointed exception) were to have come here to show a fine masculine leg or a lovely feminine bosom.

  Instead the doors were shut against the mob, the city braced for civil war.

  The guests were greeted by the lady of the house, her station evident by the ring of keys hanging over her distended waistline. If their errand had not been so urgent, their target so influential, they might have smiled up their sleeves at the sight of this tiny thing with her swollen belly welcoming them in her role as chatelaine. Instead they bowed as she offered refreshment and asked them to wait, as the master of the house was concluding a previous appointment.

  In truth, Antonio Capulletto had no other appointment, merely a knack for maintaining a hold on his clientele. After judging the right interval, he appeared through the doors that led, not into his house, but to his office along the opposite courtyard wall. Hobbling along in his wake was an elderly blood relative, Arnaldo, a spent force, present out of respect.

  Without acknowledging his wife, the master of the house slapped his hands together loudly. “How now, my friends! What news this is! My house was in the midst of preparing the food for tonight, and now – well, we’re in quite a stew ourselves, aren’t we?”

  All unseen, a fair haired boy ran the length of a balcony above, skidding to a halt to listen as old men spoke their fears.

  “...a disaster!”

  “...civil war...”

  “...untried youth, not even a man…”

  “…won the crowd in a matter of minutes…”

  “…wonder what the Venetian envoy thought…”

  One merchant sliced through to the heart of the matter. “What are you going to do?”

  Capulletto waited until he had their undivided attention. “Pietro Alaghieri is one of the most honourable men I’ve ever met. He once did me a great service, and I have no doubt he is in the right. I intend to put all my resources behind him.”

  At once voices
began clamouring, asking “Is that wise?” and “Shouldn’t we have a foot in both camps?”

  Capulletto waved their objections aside, doggedly declaring his support for Pietro’s faction. “You’re all probably right. Prudence mandates overtures to both parties. But not here, not now. I support Alaghieri to the death, and beyond.”

  “Montecchio is saying the same thing,” someone said, mentioning the unmentionable.

  Capulletto blinked, sandy brows furrowing. Then, like a snapping oyster, his bearded jaw clamped shut, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “You sent to treat with him as well.” His Capuan accent had never quite lost its rustic roughness, and in anger became more pronounced.

  They blenched but, to their credit, did not buckle. Antony took a turn about the garden, biceps visibly flexing. A broad, mighty man, he was able to use his size to his advantage both on the battlefield and in the market place.

  Finally he came to a halt. “It isn’t Pietro’s fault that he attracts licker-fish like the horse-thief. In fact, it shows what an honest man Alaghieri is – everyone wants to support him. What I said stands. Besides, will any of us thrive in a city ruled by Mastino della Scala?” That set off another hot debate, weighing the unknown Scaligeri heir against the known, unpalatable nephew.

  High above these heated voices, the fair-haired boy wore a sour expression. Theobaldo Capulletto despised his uncle with a passion unhealthy in one so young. He watched now as the ancient fool (twenty-eight years old!) prattled on to his guests about his friendship to this knight Alaghieri. If Dante’s son was his uncle’s friend, then he was assuredly Theobaldo’s enemy.

  His eyes strayed, as they always did, to Tessa. Dear, dear Tessa. Trying to smile and be a good hostess, in spite of her discomfort. Once so lively, now timid, terrified of the swelling in her twelve year-old belly.

  While his uncle declaimed, Theobaldo sauntered insouciantly down two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Easing himself through one of two doors, he crept to where his aunt-by-marriage stood, well back from the gathering of men. His fingers brushed her shoulder.

  Tessa knew who it was without looking. Her hand crept around her back and stole into Theobaldo’s. A fleeting embrace of fingers, just enough to bring tears to both the pregnant girl and the ten year-old boy she’d once been meant to wed.

  “He won’t even notice,” said Theobaldo, loud and clear. Sure enough, the beefy master of the house didn’t raise his head from his conference.

  Tessa stepped slowly back and back into the shade of the long balcony that ran around the third floor of the house. Slipping through one of the two doors leading into the house proper, she fled up the stairs as fast as her swollen ankles could carry her, Theobaldo right behind, their hands clasped tight.

  They came to rest in a shadowy spot on the balcony where they pressed close together and watched the happenings below. “Who’s right?” asked Tessa in Theobaldo’s ear.

  He knelt beside her. “Whoever the right person is, he’ll side against him.”

  She touched his hair, sad for the bitterness in his tone, sad for his fate, sad for her own. “Oh, Thibault.”

  Thibault. No one called him that anymore. It was his mother’s version of his baptismal name, but that Germanic lady was dead from trying to give Thibault a brother. His father had used it lovingly, respectfully, but Luigi Capulletto had died after a bad fall from a horse during a hunt. Orphaned at six, Thibault had passed into the hands of his uncle and grandfather. Thibault remembered Ludo Capulletto as a fat, vicious old man with nothing but scorn for Thibault’s dead father; a diseased carcass who rarely stirred from his bed, and then only to work with Uncle Antonio and the lawyers to steal away Thibault’s rightful inheritance.

  At the time, Thibault hadn’t understood or cared about the money and the lands draining from his end of the hourglass. He knew only that he was alone in the world. His sole comfort came from the two ladies of his nursery.

  The first was his nursemaid Angelica, a short plump woman full of laughter and mockery whose gigantic husband doted on her charge, able to toss little Thibault into the air and catch him one handed. His other hand was usually down his wife’s dress. Their own little boy had been stillborn, and so from the time Thibault was an infant all her milk and their combined kindness had been for him alone.

  The other was Tessa. Betrothed to each other since before Thibault was born, they’d been raised together to be as much sister and brother as bride and groom. He had pulled her hair, she had teased and tickled him, they’d sung and played nursery games under Angelica’s delighted care. Despite her thirteen month advantage in age, young Thibault had surpassed Tessa in height and strength by the time he was seven, and everyone commented on what splendid children they would have – his ice-blond hair, her delicate features and deep blue eyes.

  Even now his insides quivered as he recalled a day two years past when she’d taken his hand like this and led him to a sunny room on the highest floor where no other houses could see in. Their nurse was off ‘making fun’ with her husband, Andriolo, and they were alone.

  Dropping his hand, Tessa had closed the door, then crossed the room to stand in a sunbeam. Blushing, she’d said, “You’re to be my husband.”

  “I know that.” Thibault had been anxious to get back to the nursery and his toy Trojan Horse. So intent he was on returning to finish the battle, he hadn’t immediately noticed what she was doing. The laces of her child’s bodice were loose, and in a deft move it lay on the floor. He’d watched, feeling his blood beating all through him, his face and neck turning scarlet. Tessa had reached down and, gripping the hem of her shift, pulled it up over her head. She wasn’t wearing small clothes, and her young boy’s body was bare and bold before him.

  “What are you doing?” He was awkwardly aware of an impulse to do something. What, he had no idea. He’d seen her naked a hundred times when they were small, though now Angelica saw fit to separate them on bath-day. There was something different in seeing her like this. It felt wrong, and exciting.

  “You’re going to be my husband,” she said again, and despite having clearly rehearsed this speech, her voice shook. She clasped her hands in front of her, a belated modesty. “You know what Nurse and Andriolo are doing. That’s what husbands do with their wives.” She hesitated. “Do you want to try?”

  He did. He very much did. They spent a breathless hour looking at each other, tentatively touching and recoiling, not sure what to do or what should be happening. Whenever their skin met there was a flush and a tingling in them both, and they laughed shyly and pulled away. The sun warmed them as they tried to behave as adults did, with no concept or model to copy but Angelica and Andriolo, whose rough play they couldn’t duplicate.

  Frustrated, Thibault had at last begun to cry. “I don’t know what to do!” His tears had made him even more ashamed.

  She’d pulled his head to her breast, suddenly a sister again. “There’s all the time in the world. When we’re married, then we’ll know.”

  “I want to be married now!”

  “So do I, my Thibault,” she’d said. “So do I.”

  The door had opened and Angelica’s face had flushed, first in astonishment, then in mirth. “Oh my! You little devils! Is this what you do when I’m off at my wifely duties?” Bolting up, the two children had thrown on their clothes, Thibault running so fast from the room he never knew what excuse Tessa had made.

  For weeks afterwards Angelica had teased and embarrassed them with knowing comments in front of her husband. But she never told Uncle Antonio. Thibault and Tessa themselves never talked of it, but from then on whenever Thibault looked at Tessa there was a stirring that hinted at what married life would be like.

  Then all at once their engagement was shattered. Like everything else in Thibault’s life, Uncle Antony had taken what was rightfully his. Remembering that wretched marriage day, with Tessa’s wedding veil hiding the persuasive bruises from her father’s fists, Thibault felt a cold rage. He didn�
��t blame her, of course – her unwillingness was clear as glass. He didn’t even truly blame the girl’s parents, who had seized a sudden chance to elevate their daughter by marrying her to the head of the household.

  No, Thibault’s rage was reserved for his uncle, who had done this for the same reason he did everything: to hurt Thibault. In the worst day of his young life, Thibault had been forced to watch, helpless, as his wife married his uncle. It made Thibault’s flesh creep to imagine his uncle seeing Tessa’s skin, touching it… Worse, to think the knowledge denied Thibault had been bestowed instead on his usurping uncle. As it clearly had. Within the first month Tessa had become pregnant.

  Angelica was delighted since she too was with child, and so could again be nurse in the Capulletti home. Early on, Thibault had mentioned to Tessa the possibility of losing the baby – perhaps if she fell on it? But she said it was better this way. “As long as I’m pregnant, he won’t touch me.” Thus in a perverse way Thibault came to love the child inside her, who kept her from his uncle’s bed.

  Holding Tessa’s hand now, he felt her squirm. “What is it?”

  “The baby,” she said sourly, face pained. “She’s active.” Unlike Thibault, Tessa was not fond of the uncomfortable daughter within her. Angelica was sure it was a girl, and no one even thought to argue. Though missing several teeth and with breath that could kill a horse, the nurse was never wrong about such things. It gave Thibault pleasure to think that his uncle’s first child would be a girl, not an heir. He was determined not to be displaced so easily.