by Dave Duncan
“Am I correct in assuming that His Highness has left the city?” He tried not to let the question sound like a sneer.
Carisendi shook his head and blinked his bleary eyes. “No, indeed, messer. I saw the prince not an hour ago. He is preparing a … He has no plans to leave Florence yet.”
That was a surprise, if true. “And he approves of this action?”
“That is not your concern, Constable. Under the condotta, you are bound by the directives of the dieci della guerra.”
“I am well aware of this. Why do you buy a guard dog and then chain it?”
Ten hapless burghers twitched and fidgeted; they scratched and shuffled their feet, and few of them could meet his eye. They all knew that what they were demanding was wrong. He wondered who was twisting their cords—the Magnificent? or Sartaq? or perhaps it was the Fiend himself.
“You must understand,” Carisendi bleated, “that the forces of Rome and Naples have not yet made their way north. Florence cannot denude herself of defenders while two great armies are due to pass through Tuscany. Once they have gone by, then the matter will be reviewed. Your advice will be solicited at that time, Captain-General; yours also, of course, Constable.”
That was never. Bruno Villari had repeated loud and often that unless the College provided more spiritual protection—meaning hexers well supplied with demons—he would refuse to move his men out of sight of the city walls. Conversely, while Rome retained its potential for attack, King Fredrico would not strip Naples’ defenses. Nobody was coming north.
“You can expect a large influx of refugees, Your Magnificence,” Toby said. “I haven’t heard any news today, but I imagine Trent and Turin have both burned by now. Verona will fall tomorrow or the day after. If Nevil sees no sign of organized opposition, he may even tackle Venice and Milan at the same time before—”
“I have not finished issuing you your instructions, messer. Effective immediately, you are to post guards on all gates to prevent any mass exodus.”
“So we are not your defenders? We are jailers?”
The chairman scowled. “Certainly not. You will allow people to pass freely, but not carry away their household possessions. Trade must continue, but panic could be extremely deleterious. And henceforth you will concentrate all your energies on preparing Florence to withstand a siege.”
Somehow even this ultimate stupidity was not a surprise. “Florence cannot withstand a siege. Your walls are two hundred years old, and while they may have been adequate when they were built, cannons have made them obsolete. The Fiend will set up his artillery on the hill of San Miniato and blast you to fragments.”
“We have cannons!”
“But they cannot throw a shot high enough to reach the hilltop.”
The dieci exchanged shocked glances.
“Cannot you extend the walls to include the hill?” Carisendi asked weakly.
“I can try,” Toby said. If the citizens were to be held in the city at sword point, they would be happier being kept busy building walls. “The timing will be very tight, but if Milan manages to hold out for a month or so, the Fiend won’t get here before the middle or end of June.”
The old man sighed. “Take whatever steps you can, messer. Your written instructions will be delivered by noon.” He looked very frail as he returned the two mercenaries’ bows.
Side by side they marched across to the door.
“Absolute insanity!” the don barked, even before he was outside the chamber. “This is what we get for prostituting our honor to a stinking gang of dyers and weavers!”
For once Toby was inclined to agree with him. He had signed the condotta, so he was bound to obey orders. In the past he had always contracted to perform a specific deed and retained some freedom to choose how he would do it. He had not seen that Florence’s terms were different. Too late now, for he could not march away in a snit, leaving the city with no defenders.
No cities had ever successfully resisted the Fiend—they surrendered or they fell. Unlike the great Genghis, Nevil rarely showed mercy to those who submitted to him, because the demon in him enjoyed the cruelty too much. Even if he left one of his two armies in the north, the other could crush the defenses in a matter of days. He had too many demons, too many guns, too many men.
The only hope was another appeal to the Cardinal College. If it would supply the hexers needed, if it would send Villars north, if Naples would then cooperate, if there was enough time … then Toby might be able to organize a line of defense in the Apennines. Milan and perhaps Venice were lost now, and all the lesser cities of the Po Valley, but it was still just possible that the war could be kept away from Florence.
As the two mercenaries crossed the antechamber, Hamish stepped into their path and one glance at his face was enough.
Toby said, “I bet my bad news is worse than your bad news.”
“I doubt that.” Hamish never smiled now.
“Tell us!” the don snapped.
“The prince has appointed a suzerain. The edict has just been proclaimed.”
“It’s a tie,” Toby said. “We all know what the Fiend does to suzerains. Who is the lucky man?”
Hamish pulled a face as if the words had a foul taste. “The King of England.”
His listeners exchanged perplexed glances.
“No, Hamish. The king of England is the one we’re fighting. You’ve got your flags mixed up.”
“Pietro Marradi, the Magnificent. As of this morning he is suzerain of the Khan in Europe. He’s going to marry Lisa, and then he will be officially recognized as King of England.” It was the wedding, not the appointment, that was sickening Hamish.
Toby’s first thought was that Sartaq had made a very shrewd choice—an amazing choice! He had done the unthinkable, appointed a commoner, but Marradi’s infinite political skill was just what the Khanate needed if it was ever to outmaneuver the Fiend. Even if he was more than twice Lisa’s age, he was still young enough to take a second wife. She was marrying the richest man in Europe…
His second thought came just as the don put it into words: “I wonder what the Fiend will think of this?”
39
It was done. The ink stain on her finger was evidence enough to damn her. She, Blanche, dowager Queen of England, had signed the contract betrothing her royal daughter to an Italian banker. Would future generations scorn her and heap curses on her head, or would they praise the brilliance of her acumen as madonna Lucrezia predicted? Would they laud Prince Sartaq as brilliant strategist or condemn him as merciless tyrant? A bully, certainly. Had she listened to Lisa, the pair of them would even now be locked up in a dungeon in the palace of justice, indicted for defying a direct order from the Khan’s darughachi. He had not been bluffing, she was certain.
The verdict of history not yet being available, Blanche was pacing the chamber she shared with Lisa, back and forth, to and fro, hither and yon. It was a spacious and elegant room, but it had not been designed for pacing and was cluttered with chairs, chests, wardrobes, and dressing tables. Lisa had hurled herself bodily into the feather mattress and, as far as it was possible to slam curtains, had slammed the curtains behind her. Periodically muffled signs of sobbing came through the heavy material. Blanche had reasoned, pleaded, and remonstrated, to no avail. All Lisa would say was that she was going to kill herself at the first opportunity.
“Kill me first,” Blanche said miserably, and received no reply. After all these years … For a while, a little while, a brief two precious months while she had been Longdirk’s guest at the villa, the nightmares had stopped. After all these years! For some reason she had trusted that large young man as she had trusted no one since the demon ate her husband, and her sleep had been untroubled. And now it was all back—nights of torment, hands shaking, stomach writhing at the sight of food. Now she was known. She was exposed, like the nightmare where all her clothes fell off in the middle of a busy street. She was trapped, like the nightmare of the cage and the rising tide. Now�
�� today—she had, just maybe, found a new way out. She had betrothed her daughter to one of the richest men in the world, who was now one of the most powerful, the Khan’s suzerain. He would not let his young wife and his mother-in-law fall into the Fiend’s talons, would he?
The record of suzerains’ survival was not very encouraging, but their families had done somewhat better. The nightmare of the skinning knife was perhaps the worst of all. What choice had she had? None. Sartaq was overlord, and Lisa was his ward. It was no more than courtesy on his part to ask Blanche’s consent.
A scarcely audible tap on the door barely preceded its opening, and in strode the duchess of Ferrara, magnificently attired in scarlet and emeralds. Perhaps no one so petite could be described as striding, but her habitual no-nonsense air was even more marked than usual. She eyed the anonymous bed curtains, then looked inquiringly to Blanche.
“She is still a little upset, Your Grace.”
Lucrezia shrugged her elegant little shoulders. “You can see why our Florentine laws leave marriage entirely to parental judgment. When I threw tantrums as a child, I was birched. My husbands were all amused by the scars. I should have thought Her Majesty was a little old for that, but I can certainly arrange to have it done now if you wish, monna.”
“Oh, no!” Blanche said hurriedly. “I am sure that once the shock wears off she will be restored to her usual self.” Was Lisa’s usual self adequate for the present situation?
“Well, by all means let us give her another five minutes.” The duchess settled on a chair, arranging her skirts. “My brother is a patient man, but even he cannot tolerate a wife who throws hysterics. I know he chastised Filomena a few times when they were first married. Now his friends are pouring in and will naturally wish to congratulate the future bride.”
“Just a few minutes.” Blanche wanted to sit down also, but her body refused. She took a few more paces, turned, paced again … Like the nightmare of the snakes…
“I cannot see,” said the duchess, “how we can possibly have everything ready by the end of the month. Normally it takes two years to arrange a Marradi wedding. Lisa? Are you likely to be bleeding around the thirtieth?”
There was no reply.
Lucrezia looked to Blanche, who felt herself blush.
“I believe that date will be acceptable.” Lisa was quite right—this wonderfully delicate, suave, civilized duchess was also a ruthless and callous bitch. Her brother, Blanche’s future son-in-law, was known as the Fox, and vixens were vicious.
“Lisa, dear,” Lucrezia said, raising her voice to address the four-poster, “you realize that you are making a terrible fuss to avoid something that you will be absolutely begging your husband for once you have tried it?”
The bed uttered an audible wail.
A ruthless, callous, and vulgar bitch.
Lucrezia tutted in annoyance. “By her age I had experienced two husbands and several lovers. There wasn’t anything about men I didn’t know. Is she really a virgin?”
“Certainly!” Blanche had gone so far as to ask, and Lisa never lied to her.
“Amazing!” Lucrezia studied the bed curtains with amusement. “So her previous romances have all been pure and platonic?”
“What previous romances? This is slander, madonna!”
“You are not going to tell me that a woman of Lisa’s age has had no male friends whatsoever?” Lucrezia’s smile flowed into a simper. “Have you not noticed how frequently she mentions Constable Longdirk?”
“Oh. Well, she is young, and he is an impressive figure of a man.”
“Only if your taste runs to blacksmiths and quarry workers. So there was a, shall we say, friendship between them? Nothing improper, of course, but a … an interest?”
Cornered as in the nightmare of the giant cat, Blanche conceded the possibility. “If you imply no more than that, well, yes I do believe that Lisa and Constable Longdirk were, um, attracted to each other.”
Lisa uttered a wordless howl of protest from behind the curtains.
Lucrezia laughed. “Stubborn, isn’t she? I do hope you explained the impossibility of such a match?”
Blanche nodded, although she recalled that she had once brought up the subject with Lisa, and it had not seemed so impossible then.
“And what were Longdirk’s feelings?”
“He behaved perfectly. But you could see by the way he looked at her that he was … drawn.”
Lucrezia sighed and smiled again. “So tragic a tale! We must give some thought to the guest list. Normally the families … I do hope, madonna, that you are not planning to invite your husband!” She trilled a laugh.
“Of course not!” Vulgar, ruthless, callous, and heartless bitch.
“Perhaps some of the English exiles,” the duchess said, “to balance the parties. Let us decide tomorrow.” She rose. “Come out now, Lisa, and prepare to meet the visitors, or I’ll have you dragged out.”
Like the nightmare of the sealed tomb.
40
Toby had little time to worry about Hamish’s broken heart or Lisa’s sword-point marriage. He had a year’s work to do and only days to do it in—days and nights, for he never seemed to sleep now.
The most urgent need was to enclose the hill of San Miniato within the city walls. He tossed the problem to Hamish, telling him it would help him forget his lust for another man’s betrothed. Whether this was true or not, Hamish went to work with his usual zeal.
The don looked like the next most trouble. The dieci’s written instructions forbade both him and Toby to leave the city, but he never read the edict, and Toby forgot to mention that clause. He sent the captain-general off with a hundred lances to scout the roads through the Apennines. The Company itself had to be brought into the city, a move that raised rumbles of mutiny because the only thing less popular than storming a city was being trapped inside one during a siege. Fortunately there were many green areas within the walls to pitch tents.
Those were all obvious problems. A thousand lesser matters swarmed like midges—livestock and fodder, setting up guns, tearing down every building and uprooting every tree and shrub within a mile of the walls, stockpiling human food and fuel, hanging chains across the river, organizing hospitals and fire-fighting, establishing a new casa, drilling the citizenry—a clerk or wool carder could drop a rock off a battlement as well as a knight could. Days went by in a blur of questions, demands, and protests. He made each decision in turn and went on to the next. There were many evenings when he could not remember having been off his feet since dawn.
Antonio Diaz, for example, looming out of the morning confusion and raising his voice almost to a shout: “Another five hundred!” Toby had never seen him so agitated.
“Another five hundred what?”
“Gone!”
It took a few questions to establish that the cavalry was absconding, vanishing into the night, but it was going by squadrons, not just deserting in a rabble. The don had not been seen since he went off to the north. There was a connection there somewhere. The don would never run away from battle, but he would prefer to pick his own ground.
“Fewer mouths to feed,” Toby said. “The only use we’re going to have for cavalry is as a source of steak. Let’s just keep this under our helmets.”
“We can’t draw pay for units we can’t locate!”
“What good will gold do the Florentines when the Fiend arrives?”
Diaz harrumphed and stalked away in outrage. The poor man had too many morals for his own good.
Behind all this surface frenzy, the war continued along its own relentless track, always a few days ahead of the news so that every report had to be extrapolated: “If they were there then, they must be about here now …” The vast tide of refugees Toby had feared did not appear, because most people just dived into the nearest town and slammed the gates, hoping the war would go elsewhere.
Turin had burned. Trent had burned. He had predicted both of those. There had been a minor battle outsid
e Turin, and the Chevalier had been wounded, but no one knew how badly.
Milan and Verona ought to be next, but after the middle of the month the picture shimmered and steadied again like a reflection on a pool. Nevil had not laid siege to Milan. He had not turned aside to Venice. He was not even trying to link up his two columns—he did not need to, because no serious opposition had taken the field against him. His western army was apparently heading for Genoa. The eastern force had bypassed Verona, headed straight south to the Po, and then halted to build a bridge where there had never been one before.
Toby found Hamish on the hill of San Miniato bellowing at a work gang who had unloaded a wagonload of stone in the wrong place. He was using half a dozen languages, but his meaning was quite clear.
Toby thumped a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t going to work, my lad. You don’t have time to finish the wall, and half a wall is as much use as half a head. Pay them off and send them home to their wives.”
Hamish gave him a hard stare. “News?”
“Bad news. Nevil is still busy building his bridge. Work is going very slowly. His western column has bypassed Genoa.”
“This is absolutely crazy! Has he lost his mind?”
“No,” Toby said. “He’s defined his objectives.”
It was amusing to watch the gears turning, the rising incredulity as Hamish worked it out. “The western army is heading down the coast at a forced march?”
“Looks like it. And when it reaches Lucca, it will turn inland. By that time, of course, the eastern army will have crossed the Po and sacked Bologna. I estimate he’ll be here by the first week of May.”
Hamish grimaced as if he were being racked. “We’ve got to get Lisa out of the city!”
“Oh, that would not be courteous,” Toby said sourly. “She’s the reason her daddy’s coming to call.”