Ignoring his son, he took two steps toward Henry’s wife and raised her from her curtsy. “Welcome, Margaret, to my court,” he said with a smile. “Sadly, the onerous duties of state have kept me from embracing you till now.” He embraced and kissed the girl, who seemed on the verge of tears. Then he turned to the still kneeling Henry.
“Rise, my son,” he said, trying to subdue the surge of deep irrational pride he felt at the sight of the splendid man his son had become.
Henry stared at his father. “Am I forgiven?” he asked in a soft voice strangely at odds with his magnificent physique.
Frederick, by way of reply, hugged him tightly. Pray for him, Constance, he thought, pray for both of us.
SIEGFRIED OF RATISBON and Berard walked side by side in the little garden atop the ramparts of Aquileia’s patriarchal palace, with its rectangular herb beds and a pear maze at the far end.
“It’s a pity,” the chancellor said, “that he’s got only one other son.”
Berard nodded. “True, but at least little Conrad is robust and has outlived the worst dangers of infancy.”
The chancellor halted and turned to look at Berard. “Why hasn’t he taken another wife? It’s five years since Yolanda’s death.”
Berard smiled. “You have doubtless heard of Bianca Lancia?”
Siegfried resumed walking. “Aye, so I have. Tell me,” he asked with a gleam in his eyes, turning his head toward Berard, “is it really true that he has a harem of Saracen girls that accompany him everywhere?”
Berard smiled. His old friend was an upright churchman and an excellent diplomatist. His only failing was a fondness for gossip. “I’m afraid it is. And to tell the truth, a harem full of comely girls must seem tempting to any full-blooded man, don’t you think?”
Siegfried nodded. “I’m not saying that other princes don’t indulge their lusts—alas, it’s men’s nature to do so—but Saracens, Berard, followers of Mohammed, in the bed of the Holy Roman Emperor?”
Berard smoothed his beard. “He grew up with Muslims and doesn’t find their company distasteful. Frederick stands above the petty bigotry of other men.”
The chancellor swallowed the rebuke with good grace.
“Well now,” he said, changing the subject, “to whom shall we wed him?”
“I don’t think your project will find much favor with Frederick, but Piero has been talking of an English alliance for some time.”
They reached the end of the walk. “Shall we sit awhile?” Siegfried indicated a stone bench beside the maze.
The two men sat in silence, each contemplating the little garden in the afternoon sun. Both had reached the autumn of their lives, and were glad of the warmth. The chancellor in particular, who suffered grievously from gout, found that irritation and cold aggravated his pain. Here, in the sunshine of Italy, far from the strains of trying to rule Germany and Henry at the same time, life seemed almost the way it had been in his youth. He watched a sparrow fly across the lavender and settle on the lichen-covered parapet beside them.
“It’s a long time, Berard, since you and I first met. It must be more than twenty years since I received young Frederick at the gates of Basle. We all prayed then that he’d turn out to be a true Hohenstaufen. He’s a great man, our Emperor, but a strange one, too.”
“Alas, God hasn’t seen fit to give him an heir of his own mettle.” Berard said. “Henry will never rise above his own mediocrity.”
Siegfried sighed. “We haven’t seen the last of that business yet. I’ve known Henry since boyhood, and I don’t think he’ll remain as submissive as he now appears for long. It’s my opinion—”
Frederick waved at them from the end of the walk. He strode toward them in a moss-green hunting cloak.
He’s nearly forty years old, Berard thought, and still he cannot walk but must run.
“I was told that the two of you were taking exercise. Instead I find you sitting in the sun like plotting lizards. What have you been up to?”
“We’ve been marrying you, my lord.” The chancellor’s eyes sparkled. “It is high time you took a wife. We can’t have the people getting into this habit of not getting married any more, it’s a bad example.”
“And who, may I ask, have you picked as my bride?”
“We’ve considered several candidates, but I think we settled on the King of England’s sister, didn’t we?” Berard cast a look at Siegfried.
“I’ll tell both of you, as I’ve told Piero before: I don’t need a wife and I’m not going to take a wife!” An angry nerve twitched above his left eye.
The outburst was so unlike Frederick, who enjoyed banter, that they could only stare. The strain of the last few weeks must have overtaxed him, Berard thought. After Henry’s public submission, father and son had attended banquets, jousts, and hunts together, tight smiles on their lips.
Then, suddenly, with that mercurial changeability he’d always had, but which was becoming more pronounced, Frederick smiled. He extended his hand to help Siegfried up from his seat. “Come, my lords, let us walk a little. I wish to deliberate some matters with both of you that are best discussed in the fresh air. The walls, here as everywhere, have ears.”
THE NEXT MORNING, a meeting was held in the great hall at which all the delegates to the Diet were present. By the time Frederick rose at the end of the session, the German princes had unanimously pledged themselves to raise an army against the Lombard Communes in the spring of the following year.
GHIOA DEL COLLE, APULIA, SUMMER 1232
The wheat stood high and golden that year, bent under the weight of a rich harvest. In the hot stillness of the afternoon, an eagle glided toward the horizon above a few solitary olive trees on the crest of a hill.
Frederick, leaning against the trunk of an ancient cork oak, sighed with contentment. “What,” he asked, removing the stalk of wheat he had been chewing, “is God’s price for such bliss?”
Bianca opened her eyes. Her head lay cradled in his lap. How typical! Frederick, who professed to scorn them, would have made a first-rate merchant. He was forever totting up ledgers, real and imaginary. His friend the mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci had introduced him to a new counting method with Arabic numerals. There were nine numerical signs. But the real innovation lay in the tenth, called a zero. This, according to Frederick, revolutionized mathematics, making it possible to reckon unimaginably large figures without the aid of an abacus. Frederick had introduced it into all the royal counting houses.
“What are you thinking, my love?” she asked.
He laid a hand on her bulging belly. “I was thinking how beautiful Sicily is. How much more beautiful and promising than the so-called Promised Land.”
Bianca smiled. “You mean the Holy Land doesn’t flow with milk and honey?”
“In most places, particularly Judaea, it doesn’t even flow with water. It’s arid and stony, with a harsh, blinding light that hurts the eye and burns the soul. Maybe it even deranges the mind. Perhaps that’s why it has brought forth so many prophets …”
Dangerous ground, this. When Frederick expounded on religion he tended to say fearful things, things that could harm his soul and his reputation. Quickly, she said, “Tell me about Henry. What news of him?”
“He’s behaving himself, for the time being.”
After a moment, he added, “Henry’s problem is that he looks like a Hohenstaufen but doesn’t think like one. You see, it’s a little like breeding horses.” Noticing her frown, he said, “The more often you cross a superb horse with an equally exceptional one, the better the offspring.”
He pulled off another blade of wheat, and began to chew. “Recently,” he said, “Matteo of Santa Eufemia proved to me that it even works with plants. Wheat, for example. The abbot grows wheat that yields far more than its ancestors. The Cistercians are making great advances in this. But you see, there’s a rub. When you’ve succeeded with so many generations of wheat or men or horses, the strain exhausts itself. That’s happened w
ith Henry. It happens to civilizations, too …”
Bianca laid her hand on his. How lightly he had condemned his son, and yet how much bitterness that knowledge must cause him.
With his eyes on the distant eagle still circling above the olive trees, he said, “Perhaps the son you carry will one day redeem my race.”
Bianca caught her breath. She’d given him two daughters, and still he dreamed of a son. But what did he mean … “Oh no,” she muttered, closing her eyes as another stab of pain shot through her.
One glance at her told him what the matter was. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled once, a sharp piercing whistle. A pack of hounds shot out from behind a nearby hillock. An instant later, armed men came running.
“The lady Bianca is unwell. Make a litter. We must get her to her waiting-women fast.”
The horse-litter in which she followed him this morning would jolt her too much. Frederick chewed his lip. He watched his men make a makeshift litter of a cloak tied between two lances. How could he have taken a pregnant woman, only a moon away from her time, on a hunt over rough terrain, even if she insisted on coming?
A HUSH FELL on the lying-in chamber as Frederick entered. Although it was only early afternoon, the chamber was lit by dozens of candles, the shutters closed to protect the newborn from the evil eye. On a portable altar against the wall, grains of incense burned in a silver censer before an effigy of the Virgin.
The women surrounding the bed backed away. Only Peppa continued to brush Bianca’s hair.
In the bed, hung with coral silk, Bianca was propped up against the cushions. In her arms she held her son, tightly swaddled in white linen.
She looked pale, more so than after her other two confinements. Frederick felt a stab of fear. He raised her free hand to his lips. “How is my swallow?” he asked, trying to banish the image of the dead Yolanda from his mind. “May I hold my son?”
Bianca attempted a weak smile. There were purple shadows under her eyes.
He picked up the child. Big eyes of an inky color between black and blue looked up at him. “He’s beautiful. I can already see great talent and good looks.”
“Is he at the beginning or the end of the wheat cycle?”
“The beginning, without any doubt,” Frederick laughed. “New blood, you see.” He studied the infant. “His eyes will be like yours and Manfred’s. Let’s call him Manfred. Maybe his uncle will then finally forgive me.”
Bianca lowered her eyes. She was tired. She should feel elated that after two daughters she had finally borne a son. Instead, she just felt a terrible weariness. To Frederick, despite what he had said to her in a moment of wistfulness, the child’s sex didn’t matter … She tried to fight the tears that stung her eyes.
Frederick looked at her. He sensed her unhappy mood and was at a loss what to do.
She began to cry. “Please go away,” she sobbed. “Leave me alone.”
He glanced at Peppa, on the other side of the bed, for guidance. The old nurse had helped bring each of Bianca’s children into the world, to the annoyance of the midwives, who had been relegated to the role of spectators. She must know what this was all about.
Peppa shrugged. “It’s best that you leave my lady to rest now.” She turned and busied herself with a pile of linen. After all these years, Peppa still didn’t approve of him. She was a formidable old dragon. Yet, for a reason he couldn’t fathom, he would have liked her acceptance. He kissed Bianca’s forehead. “Sleep now, my sweet. I’ll come back tonight.”
Bianca stared at the door, tears trickling down her cheeks, while the women in the chamber pretended not to notice. She looked down at the tiny face of the baby in her arms. His eyes were closed now. In the corner of one eye was a dark red mark. Peppa assured her it would disappear in a few weeks. Even if he turned out to be as talented and handsome as Frederick had said, it would avail him nothing. He would always be a bastard, while his two half-brothers wore their crowns in proud splendor. A new sob racked her. I, through my sin, am the cause of the curse this child will bear all his life. She felt a chill run through her.
Her head spun. Before her eyes rose the scene of a battle’s aftermath. The stony ground was littered with dead and dying men and horses. Sprawled on the ground beside a trampled gorse bush was a man, auburn-haired and clean-shaven, in an emerald cloak. Beside him lay a golden crown in the muddy grass. The face was white in death, the hand still clutched a bloodied sword.
With a scream, Bianca fell to one side in a dead faint.
THAT YEAR, a fierce summer gave way to an unusually cold winter. Bianca recovered from her malaise. Little Manfred flourished and his mother, watching him grow, forgot the foreboding she had felt on the day of his birth.
Frederick was engaged in preparations for the Lombard campaign in the spring. The court had taken up winter quarters in Foggia. This flourishing city in northern Apulia was now the capital of Frederick’s empire. In its vaulted chancery, all the threads of government came together.
* * *
DUSK HAD FALLEN by the time a blast of fanfares from the sentries announced the emperor’s return with his huntsmen. The huge iron-banded gates of Foggia’s palace creaked open. Frederick and his lords, amid much laughter and banter, rode into the torchlit courtyard.
After he had dismounted, Frederick clapped Piero on his back. “Well done! You excelled today, my friend.”
“Only because you held your falcons back.” Piero felt a surge of pride. To hunt as well as a nobleman had long been a dream of his, one that he had turned into reality by hard training. Not that he was particularly interested in either falconry or the dangerous business of killing a boar, which so entranced those of noble birth. But Frederick’s approval was another matter.
“He’s bagged more than anyone else, including myself,” Thomas of Aquinas said.
Frederick rubbed his hands together. “I’m famished.” The stars glittered in the clear sky. The air was cold and bracing.
They walked through the great marble arch, their boots clattering on the inlaid breccia floors. From here they passed into an open courtyard with an octagonal fountain flanked by six griffins. The palace, which had taken nearly eight years to complete, was a blend of Saracenic and classical architecture. Greek and Roman statues stood in niches. The privies and bathing chambers had water channeled to them in lead pipes.
“Your Grace!” A steward ran toward them, followed by a messenger in a foreign livery. “A message from the bishop of Ratisbon.” The messenger drew a letter from his cloak. Kneeling, he handed it to Frederick.
Frederick glanced at it. It was sealed with the German chancellor’s privy seal, employed only for personal correspondence. He broke the seal and began to read. He turned to Piero. His face was grim. “Come.”
The chancellor followed Frederick’s brisk stride to his private apartments. From a large fireplace came the scent of burning olive wood. Eastern rugs covered the floors. Cushioned divans lined one wall. There were book chests and a carved lectern. In a corner, upon her plinth, stood the marble Lady of Ravenna.
Mahmoud, a linen towel over his arm, appeared in the doorway to a smaller chamber. He salaamed. “Your bath is ready, oh sultan.”
“The bath can wait. Leave us.” Frederick threw off his cloak. When the door had closed, he turned to Piero.
“It’s Henry. He’s freed the inhabitants of three Rhineland cities from allegiance to their overlords. With his wife’s father, the Duke of Austria, he has attacked the Duke of Bavaria.”
Piero’s dark eyes clouded. “He’s trying to wrest control of Germany from the princes, and then …” he halted, afraid to finish his sentence.
“… from me.” Frederick completed it for him.
“It is treason.”
“Aye,” Frederick said, his voice husky with pain, “treason.”
“You must act immediately, send an army to halt him.”
Frederick shook his head. “No, Piero. I must go to Germany myself. Conrad w
ill come with me. He must be elected king in Henry’s stead.”
Frederick sat down on a settle. He stared into the fire. At length, he said, “First, I must meet with Gregory. I must secure his consent to Conrad’s election. Fortunately, he still has need of the troops I sent him. He’ll have to agree, whether he likes it or not.”
Piero nodded. At least the moment was propitious. The Roman populace had once again rebelled against papal rule. Burning and plundering, the mob made its way to the Lateran, threatening the pontiff himself. Gregory, dressed as a groom, managed to escape to Rieti. From there, he had called on Frederick for help.
“My lord, forgive me. While it is true that today he has great need of you, that may not be so tomorrow. Gregory is the wiliest of men. He—”
“I know,” Frederick snapped, “better than anyone else.”
“What I mean is,” Piero said, “you must reassure him that you’ll take immediate steps to secure the succession of Sicily, that the current situation is only a temporary one, until such time as you have a new heir.”
Frederick sighed, “Pour me a cup of wine. My throat is parched. I can’t contemplate what you’re about to tell me with a dry gullet.”
Piero poured wine into a cup and handed it to him.
Frederick drank deeply, then put the cup down on the floor. “Sit,” he said. “It’s the English alliance again, is it not?”
Piero leaned forward. “My lord, you must reassure Gregory. The only way to do that is to have another heir. You must marry again. An English alliance will also strengthen your power, and the rich dowry of King Henry’s sister will go a long way to defray the expenses of the Lombard war.”
Frederick stared into the fire again. After a while, he asked, “How much would such a dowry bring?”
“Twenty, perhaps thirty thousand gold marks.”
“Thirty thousand gold marks and a few sons, if I’m lucky, to appease the pope.”
“Precisely, my lord.” A smile flickered over Piero’s lips. “I am told by the English ambassador that the princess is very comely.”
The Falcon of Palermo Page 39