The Prince's Doom

by David Blixt

  “Ansaldo. Antonio Ansaldo, yes. He stood surety for a sizeable loan for his friend, under curious terms. If he did not repay the loan within three months, he would have to give Shalakh—”

  “A pound of his flesh,” said Morsicato, who had heard the terms of the bargain. He'd had misgivings at the time. Now he felt ill.

  “What kind of surety is that?” Pietro was utterly horrified. “No judge would allow that to stand!”

  “Under the laws of Venice, it is perfectly legal,” said Tharwat. “Having no fear of failing the bond, Ansaldo did not take the terms seriously. But his ships failed to return within the allotted time, and he is now in the gaol, his life in the balance. The trial is set for the day after tomorrow. When the Jew's vengeance is slaked, he will be more amenable.”

  “You mean,” said Pietro, “after he has killed this man we might be able to get what we're after?”

  “Yes,” rasped Tharwat, his face impassive. “You might even go and offer Shalakh legal advice. It would gain his favour.”

  “Help him commit murder?” queried Pietro, incredulous.

  “Or talk him into accepting the money offered in place of flesh. There are many people willing to pay the sum owed.”

  “You think Pietro can convince him, when he wouldn't even listen to you?” demanded Morsicato. “Pietro's a Christian. You, at least, are not.”

  “He has no sympathy for me. I serve Christians.” Tharwat sighed. “In truth, I doubt anyone could succeed. Shalakh is determined to extract the penalty of flesh. Only his daughter's return could soothe him, and she has vanished with her Christian husband.”

  “This is dreadful,” said Pietro. “To get the information we need, I have to help the Jew kill a fellow Christian, when what I'd like to do is go and represent this Antonio myself.”

  “That would ensure we never get the information we require.”

  “Hang the information,” exclaimed Pietro. “This is a man's life!”

  Tharwat's expression did not alter. “It has nothing to do with us. I advise we wait until the trial is decided. Afterwards, whatever the decision, the Jew may be more pliable.”

  It was an answer that Pietro disliked. “I'm going to Venice tonight. I'll see what can be done.”

  Tharwat opened his hands, indicating the decision was not his to make. “Shall we return to the matter of Cesco?”

  Pietro tried to calm his unsettled head before nodding. “Yes. Cesco's mother. We have a name, at last.”

  “What does it matter?” asked Morsicato. “He's been legitimized. He's the Heir. What does it matter now who his mother was?”

  Pietro pressed his lips together. “Something about her is vitally important. I feel it in my soul. Otherwise why keep it such a mystery?”

  “Then start at the beginning. Why did Cangrande take Cesco in?” asked Morsicato.

  “Because he's the Greyhound,” said Tharwat.

  “How did they know it was him, not someone else? And why did his mother give him up?”

  “That's one question we know the answer to,” said Pietro. “She did it to protect him. There was an attempt on his life.”

  Morsicato's face twisted sourly. “Made by Donna Katerina, through this cripple. Chess moves, to bring Cesco into her sphere.”

  “Yes, we are aware of Katerina's motivations,” said Pietro, setting aside the moral implications – they had debated them many times over the years. “She wanted to fulfill her destiny to raise the Greyhound. But Cangrande had no such desire. For him, if Cesco lived in ignorance and ignominy, all the better. So why bring Cesco into his household? Why acknowledge him publicly?”

  “You mean why Cesco and not one of his other bastards?” Chewing his beard, Morsicato pointed a thoughtful finger. “There's a question. Barto is older.”

  Flummoxed, Pietro turned to the Moor. “Tharwat?”

  “I was asked to make charts for the boy two months after his birth. They were already fixed upon him. I was never consulted about the Scaliger's other natural children.”

  “So even before the charts were made, he was important,” mused Pietro. “Three years ago I heard them discuss some arrangement between Cangrande and Donna d'Amabilio. Whatever it was, it had strength enough to bind him.”

  “Love?” suggested Morsicato.

  Pietro pulled a wry face. “Does it seem likely? If the Scaliger fell in love, he'd keep his lover close. And he'd have been more upset when she disappeared. No, there's something about this woman that we aren't meant to know. We still don't know her true name. Amabilio was her husband, I presume. So who was she? Royalty? Someone's sister or daughter?”

  Tharwat cleared his throat. “I am willing to travel to England to look into this bank. But it will take time.”

  Pietro shook his head. “We need you here. There's something more pressing to attend to.”

  Morsicato grunted. “Cesco's behavior.”

  “Yes. He's lashing out. Amusing and clever, but destructive.”

  “Subversive,” said Tharwat. “We must find a channel for his anger.”

  “How?” asked Morsicato. “He's a knight now, not a squire. Everybody knows he's the Heir. Nobody but the Capitano can rein him in, and so far Cangrande hasn't done a damn thing.”

  “He's tried,” said Pietro. “Cesco's got quite a following – not just Detto and the rest of the young men, but among the older soldiers. He's out at Otto's camp right now, wooing them. Cangrande can't quash Cesco without alienating his condottieri, and he needs them for Treviso in the spring.”

  “Besides,” added Morsicato, “short of murder or locking the boy in a cell, what could stop him? He's got his rage up, and like you said, Tharwat, he's bent on taking his revenge against anyone who crosses his path. It's a miracle no one has died yet.”

  “It is up to us,” rasped the Moor. “We must try to mend him.”

  “Is he a tool that's broken?” asked Morsicato.

  “Others see him as just that. Which is the problem.”

  Pietro was remembering the smiling, happy young man he'd brought to Verona three summers ago. “How do we reach him? The direct approach is no use. Every time I make to talk to him, I'm met with a wave and smile and he's gone, surrounded by his Rakehells.”

  “Could be worse.” Morsicato chuckled in spite of himself. “They could pelt you with urinated snowballs, the way they did that band of Paduan minstrels.”

  “If I call at his house,” continued Pietro, “he's not home.”

  “Would you be,” asked the doctor, “with a five-year-old wife, her nurse, her maid, and a whole gaggle of women waiting for you?”

  “You can't really be defending him?” insisted Pietro.

  “No,” said Morsicato with a shrug of one shoulder. “But I don't believe things are as dark as you seem to think. This might even be healthy. He's a young man – not even, he'll be a man next summer. If not for this knighthood and the marriage, he'd still be under Cangrande's roof and none of this happening. But he's got a taste of what he's always craved – freedom. Can you blame him for going a little wild?”

  “You've changed,” observed Pietro. “You were always the one against letting his reins slip.”

  Morsicato shrugged. “Just observing a fact.”

  “That might have been true – this could be just adolescent rebellion writ large – save for his sudden taste for wine. And,” Pietro shot a glance at the Moor, “for the hashish.”

  Pietro expected the doctor to begin raging. He had been furious when he'd discovered Tharwat was supplying the boy with small amounts of hashish and opium to give him strength and clarity, a skill passed on from the Moor's own youth. For the last two years, much against his will, the doctor had been forced to make the little sticky brown wafers for their ward.

  But the doctor looked strangely smug as the Moor defended his decision. “It is a discipline. I thought over-indulgence was a lesson he had learned. If this was a mistake, it was mine.”

  Morsicato grinned. “The good news
is that we don't need to fear that much. Ever since I took control of his doses, I've reduced the amount of the opium a little each month. At the same time, I've continued with other herbs – ginger root, anise, laurel, basil, tansy – as well as nightshade, hellebore, monkshood and even a small amount of hemlock.”

  “You're poisoning him?” marveled Pietro in horror.

  “Building his tolerance for poisons, actually. As long as he eats the wafers in moderation, he'll be resistant to ever being poisoned again.”

  It was Tharwat's turn to look angry. “You fool.”

  Morsicato's barrel chest swelled, his jaw jutting pugnaciously. “I'm the fool? I'm not the one who started him eating—”

  “You reduced the opium. But his eyes proclaim him a lotus-eater, or so swears Fra Lorenzo.”

  Morsicato made a rude noise. “What does a friar know about medicine?”

  “A good deal, according to Antonia,” answered Pietro. “She's told me about a theory he has, that plants are like men, good and evil in one.”

  “Not very original. I first heard that in-”

  Tharwat clapped his hands hard for attention. Gaining it, he spoke in a low, barely-contained tone. “Doctor. By reducing the opium, you have thrown the mixture out of balance. He will not feel the relief the wafers bring.”

  “And he will be weaned off of it!” stated Morsicato triumphantly.

  “No,” said the Moor. “He will just eat more of it, chasing the clarity and energy he had before. And poison himself in the bargain.”

  The doctor blanched, his jaw hanging foolishly open. He had not anticipated this quite obvious response to his strategem.

  Pietro stared at them both. “So now he's being poisoned by us?”

  In his gravest tone, Tharwat said, “Doctor, you must show me your current mixture, and we shall consult on how to revise it in future.”

  “Why not just stop giving it to him?” asked Pietro.

  It was Morsicato who answered. “If he has been over-indulging, it would do more harm than good. He cannot just stop. I was trying to wean him off the filthy stuff, which is the way to do it. I told him how often he should take it…”

  “But being Cesco, he's hardly going to follow rules. Especially after Lia.” Pietro closed his eyes. “Our meddling does more harm than good. It's a wonder he's still alive.”

  “We must ply him with better distractions than the ones he has chosen,” said Tharwat.

  “Pity the war won't start again for months,” said Morsicato. “Nothing like a war for a young man. But these races and contests seem to amuse him. Shall we invent more?”

  “He can do that himself,” said Pietro. “I want to engage his mind.”

  “It's not his mind that's broken,” said Tharwat. “It's his heart.”

  They sat looking blankly at one another, bereft of ideas.

  “Normally I'd say find him a wife,” said Morsicato.

  “He has one,” said Pietro.

  “A lover then. Someone to dedicate himself to. To do great deeds for. Turn chivalry into something useful.”

  Pietro shook his head. “Too soon.”

  “Well, we can at least address the medicine. I have an idea that will solve everything.”

  “Excellent.” Pietro rose. “While you do that, I'll ride to Venice.”

  “And do what?” asked Tharwat.

  “I'll know when I get there.” The Moor stared at him. “What?”

  “You are a good man, who cannot see an injustice without intervening.” Tharwat paused. “If you see Girolamo, will you deliver a message for me? Tell him I have not yet secured the lady's permission.”

  “Permission for what?” asked Morsicato gruffly.

  “To join me here. To become my apprentice.” Both Pietro and Morsicato exclaimed their surprise, and Tharwat explained. “The Scaliger is not the only man who thinks of his legacy.”

  Morsicato swore. Pietro put their mutual objection in plain terms. “Why would you take in a murderer?”

  “He did not commit murder.”

  Morsicato's words practically burst through his beard. “He tried to kill Cesco!”

  “Had he done that, doctor, I would not let him live. But he did not reach the point of attempting it. Intention is not action. Who knows what he would have done when he had arrived that house? All I know is that the stars have put him in our orbit, and he has much to offer. In exchange, I mean to teach him. If I read the stars aright, I have only a little longer on this earth. And Cesco will soon be leaving our orbits. I want someone to carry on when I am gone, someone to read the stars and help as best he can.”

  That dire statement elicited a fresh round of protests. “You've seen your death?” asked Morsicato.

  Pietro focused on another dire aspect. “What do you mean, leave our orbits?”

  “Ser Alaghieri, you recall the night you rescued Cesco from Pathino from the cave?”

  “Am I likely to forget it? I still have nightmares. More since Pathino's death. I think he wanted me to do the deed so he could haunt me.”

  “I told you then that I had seen the intersection of your life and the boy's. That you were meant to raise him, mold him, give him a foundation for his life.”

  “Yes.” Pietro recalled the conversation all too clearly. It was just after his illusions about Cangrande and Katerina had been shattered, before he'd called upon the raving Count of San Bonifacio. “You also said you had seen your own death. On the chart with the twin stars.”

  “Yes. If that chart is correct, I do not have much longer here. No, doctor, it is not at hand. I may have two years, perhaps three. Before it comes, there is a divergence.”

  Pietro frowned, parsing that statement. “A divergence.”

  “Yes. Your influence over the boy is coming to an end. Your line and his part ways.”

  Chilled, Pietro fretted over that statement's possible meanings. “Do I die? Does he?”

  Tharwat shook his head. “Not for many years. But recent events have shown which of his charts is more likely true. Both remaining charts indicate a break from you.”

  “And from you?”

  “For a time. Ours realign more swiftly than yours.”

  “But they do realign?”

  “On one chart, yes. Briefly.”

  “You're certain?” insisted Pietro.

  Tharwat opened his hands. “This is Cesco. His stars are as tricky as he himself.”

  “So you don't really know anything.”

  “I may be mistaken, of course. But you should be prepared.”

  Pietro wanted to protest, debate, argue. But how did one argue with the heavens? A man may control his actions, but not his stars. Still he had to ask, “Why?”

  Tharwat shook his head. “He is in rebellion. And what is more natural than to rebel against your father?”

  Pietro took several slow, deep breaths. “Thank you for that. Is there nothing I can do?”

  “Wait. Watch. Be yourself. All will unfold as the stars dictate.”

  Pietro did not like the sound of that. So far the stars had been remarkably unkind.

  ♦ ◊ ♦

  NOT FAR OFF, in the palace of Vicenza, Detto climbed the stairs to the room set aside for his mother's convalescence. He hesitated at the door, conflicted. A dog wandered up and he knelt to pet it, glad of the distraction.

  Glancing over the edge of the low balcony, he gazed down into the open central atrium with the fountain of the three muses. He remembered playing in that fountain with Cesco on their first arrival together, when all the secrets were revealed. He had been so happy, then.

  “Oh!” Emerging from the sickroom, the nurse was startled to see her mistress' son. “Ser Bailardetto! She'll be so pleased to see you.”

  “I'm sure.” Rising from the happy dog rolling on the tiled floor, Detto entered.

  As a child, he had feared this room. Now he found himself resenting it. His mother's first stroke had occurred nearly seven years earlier. Half his life, then, he had
known her to have that twisted face, slack and expressionless on the left, fierce and beetling on the right. He feared the right side more.

  Propped up in bed, Donna Katerina was surrounded by distractions – a chess match half-completed, a book, papers, quill and ink on a small tray. Being confined was a terrible thing for an active mind.

  Seeing him, Katerina reached out with her right hand. “A welcome early Chrishtmas gift. Come and tell me talesh from the court.”

  Obediently Detto sat in the nurse's vacated chair and told her news of Verona. When she inevitably asked of Cesco, Detto was brief, mentioning the contests without speaking of anything more personal.

  After a time, Katerina lifted a hand. He took it. “Detto – my mortality ish on my mind. My body ish weak. If it failsh me, if I am not here, there ish shomething you musht do for me.”

  “Anything, mother.”

  Minutes later Detto was outside, clambering back onto his horse. It was the middle of the day, and he pelted out of the gates of Vicenza with tears in his eyes.

  His path did not take him back towards Illasi.

  Seventeen

  FROM THE MOMENT they entered his city, Cangrande embraced Guecello Tempesta and Berthold von Neifen as long-lost brothers, throwing them into revel after revel. For the last two days they and their companions had been run through a gantlet of hunts, jousts, dances, concerts, plays, acrobatics, and feasts, feasts, feasts. Whenever they tried to gain a private audience, they found the Capitano di Verona unavoidably detained elsewhere.

  Utterly flummoxed, the two men began to appreciate Cangrande's strategy. As there were not yet any open hostilities between Verona and Treviso, there was no means to force the issue without Treviso itself declaring war. Though tempted, Tempesta knew his own people would revolt if he were perceived to be dragging the Greyhound to their gates.

  Berthold had thought to goad the Scaliger to take offence by bringing Riccardo Annibaldi, a Roman who had insulted Cangrande before the emperor. But the master of Verona was too wily to take that bait, and got in first by repeating the story before Riccardo could mention it, thus making himself the butt of the joke.

  Another element added to the concoction was Cangrande's invitation of his cousin-in-law Rizzardo to join them. Rizzardo da Camino was a member of the famous family that Tempesta had helped overthrow to gain control of Treviso. His marriage to Cangrande's niece had promised a foothold in the city, a promise denied by Tempesta's coup. The inclusion of Rizzardo in their company could have been interpreted as an insult, a possible opportunity for Tempesta to pick a quarrel that would incite the argument he was here to have.