Thorn

by Fred Saberhagen

  Still, Thorn thought dutifully, looking out the window into the burgeoning night, eighteen is rather young in these modern times, and actually Joe is right. He tried to make himself think solemnly about the problem.

  Sometimes he thought that he would never live long enough to bring his own life under a proper measure of control.

  Chapter Ten

  Coming downstairs from the attic of the Palazzo Boccalini, Helen walked in front of me. Her hands were behind her back, her wrists looped with the thin chain, whose free end rested lightly in my grip. Her torn shift perforce gaped shamelessly. She looked as if she might be on her way to execution.

  On the second flight of stairs we met the fat cousin, Allessandro, on his way up, candle in hand. He stopped at once, eyeing us inquisitively; evidently he had been impelled upstairs by curiosity as to just what games I might be playing with my gift.

  “I have thought of a sport that needs some room,” I told him, answering his quizzical look. “In the courtyard,” he suggested. “Not room enough.” It was not the Medici palace. “We will need the street.”

  Allessandro looked doubtful at that, but said nothing as he followed me down again. When we reached the ground floor I hailed the first male servant who came in view and gave bold orders for the front door to be opened. The masters of the house were already beginning to gather round, and looked at one another doubtfully. Watching them, the servant hesitated. But Helen was right on cue, displaying alarm at the prospect of being taken outside—the tall foreigner must at least have hinted to her, upstairs, what this new sport was to be like—and my adoptive cousins immediately warmed to the idea.

  “Come on!” I roared. “Bugger the watch and the curfew. You don’t mean to let them cheat you of some fun?”

  Once I had put it in those terms, there was only one reply red-blooded youth could give. So far, at least, everything had been almost too easy. The night outside in the street was dark as tar, except for one feeble torch in a servant’s unenthusiastic hand. “More lights!” I demanded, wishing for a distraction, and for some delay to let whatever Medici agents might be watching get themselves ready for action.

  A manservant went back into the house for lights, reducing the odds minimally. I did not wait for his return; as soon as I had Helen facing the dark, street in the direction I wanted, where there should be running room at least, if no active help, I gave two quick tugs on her chain, in a moment she had slipped her hands free of its loops and was off at top speed, running in desperate silence.

  Watching the startled faces of the men around me, I tarried for a quick count of three and still got off in pursuit ahead of any of the others. My intent was to appear to be chasing Helen, at least until it became necessary to do more.

  Helen ran with better speed than I had counted on, her white figure staying a little ahead of me in the darkness, maintaining a lead my long legs did not overcome. My drawn sword in my hand slowed me a little. I had taken off belt and all on entering the house, as a twentieth-century visitor might have doffed his hat, but then had routinely buckled the weapon on again as I came out.

  Before I had run ten strides, shouts shattered the night behind me. A great alarm was going up, drunken voices, in which merriment was still the dominant tone, bawling for more torches. But not everyone, unfortunately, insisted on waiting for more light. Two pairs of feet were pounding after us, and one of these pursuers was already getting uncomfortably close. Meanwhile, ahead of me, Helen’s first burst of speed was faltering. Fear indeed lends wings, but chaining and hunger are not the best of training regimens.

  No use trying to delay what must now be done. I stopped and turned abruptly and cut at the nearest sportsman, aiming low for the legs. My blade bit bone, and with a loud cry he went sprawling. My second pursuer was drawn and ready for me when he came running up. He was evidently an armed professional retainer of some kind, and managed to delay me in masterly style, our swords conversing almost invisibly in the near darkness, whilst he bawled for help. But his allies behind him still dawdled, clamoring for their precious torches.

  At last I got home with a thrust to the midsection, and was able to turn and run away again. Behind me the cries of my latest victim went up alarmingly, mingled with a new uproar from dogs safe behind stone walls. There was no hope now of avoiding a pursuit in deadly earnest. But of course I very soon had to slow my flight, begin to grope my way slowly, meanwhile calling the girl’s name loudly as I dared. I added in her own language such assurances as I could think of, and prayed that she had had the wit and nerve to stop and wait for me, or else that some of the Medici men had come to her aid.

  There were actually, as I later learned, no Medici men on hand. Their sole spy on the scene had stayed prudently where he could keep a good watch on the Boccalini. But fortune and the saints smiled upon us anyway. Helen’s voice, a ghost-whisper of softness, replied at last to one of my more urgent hisses, and presently her small hand came reaching out of darkness to touch mine. I sheathed my sword and took it. “Can you find the way,” I whispered, “to the workshop of the artist called Verrocchio.”

  “Yes.” She paused as if surprised. “Yes, I think so.” A moment more to get her bearings, and she tugged at my hand and we were off. Helen had been in the city longer than I had, had walked in it much more, and so had greater knowledge of its streets. More dogs awoke behind the walls surrounding us; but behind us the enemy were still organizing, perhaps suspecting some trap, at any rate not ready to dash recklessly off into the dark.

  We turned corners; the sounds of their preparations fell behind us and disappeared. I began to breathe a little easier.

  “Why are we going to Verrocchio?” The king’s sister was not shy of asking questions.

  “They know us there, and are friendly. It has been arranged.”

  Helen said nothing more at the time, but led me through alleys and narrow ways, until we emerged upon a broader street almost at the painter’s door, having met no one en route. It took a minute of rapping with my dagger hilt to get any answer at all from within the studio, and somewhat longer than that to get the master of the house roused and brought to the door. Then, however, it was opened for us promptly enough. Verrocchio, candlestick in hand, alarm showing in his heavy features, his gross body wrapped in a fine robe, motioned us hastily in; we were already past him. After one last fearful glance into the darkness, he closed the portal quickly behind us.

  “Send word at once that we are here,” I ordered him, thinking it unnecessary to specify to whom word should be sent. Then turning to the gaping servants and apprentices, I demanded: “Bring decent garments for this girl at once.” The help all stumbled away hastily under my glare, wrapped in whatever oddments of bedcovers and clothing they had grabbed when the alarms began, the younger apprentice tugging the bearded one by the arm to get him moving. Leonardo, who slept at home, was of course not in the group. Helen meanwhile stood quietly at my side, waiting for whatever might happen next.

  “What happened?” Verrocchio blurted to me, then looked as if he did not really want to know. He turned his head and called after his retreating staff: “Perugino, there is a message you must carry!”

  I took the candle from the master’s shaking hand, and set it on a table, and seated myself there. I did not bother to answer his question. Helen, at my gesture, seated herself next to me.

  The bearded apprentice was back in a few moments, fully clothed. As he was unbarring the front door again, ready to go out, I detained him with some words of caution. If he should have the bad luck to be collared by the watch for breaking curfew, he was to say that he carried an urgent business message for the Medici, and demand to be escorted to their house; and if it should become necessary to tell the watchmen any more than that, he could add that the message concerned a painting of the Magdalen. He gave me a look of fear and desperation mingled, and hurried out as soon as I released his sleeve.

  Verrocchio and I barred up the door again. When I turned back to the t
able, Helen was gone—into a back room to change her dress, an old woman servant assured me. I sat down again to wait. In a minute or two Helen was back, and as she re-emerged into the light of the candle on the table I rose unconsciously to my feet. What they had given her to put on was the very gown of the painting.

  “It’s all we have that really fits her, sir,” muttered the old woman, a little perturbed by my reaction.

  “Never mind … it is all right … it is beautiful. Now, bring us something to eat and drink. Biscuits, wine, whatever.”

  Again Helen, my unknowing bride-to-be, sat down with me at table. The dress that had appeared glorious in dim candleglow at the far side of the room was not as glorious seen close up. Faded, somewhat worn, a little dirty here and there, tired with the flesh of many models.

  Paintings, stacked in racks along the far walls of the room, regarded us with dim eyes. Verrocchio, still nervous, joined us at table when I gestured. He was still wrapped in his fine robe. Biscuits and spiced and watered wine were brought, in fine dishes and crystal goblets that were doubtless used ordinarily only as artists’ props. I sipped wine, but after all did not feel much like eating. Helen, after days of hunger, was not going to let any opportunity pass. Noting her appetite, I counseled myself that tomorrow I should begin to limit her intake; I had no wish for a fat wife.

  Only after my drowsy thoughts had reached this banal conclusion did I realize that I had decided a matter of considerable importance, without ever giving it full conscious thought.

  “Why are we waiting here?” Helen asked me, between measured mouthfuls of her second biscuit.

  “For some friends to join us.” I wondered how much more to say, and sighed. She was going to have to be told at some point, and the telling really could not be put off much longer. “Including one who is a priest.”

  At that Helen looked bewildered. I glanced meaningfully at Verrocchio, who with apparent relief stood up and left the table and the room. The girl and I were alone with the dim-eyed paintings.

  I met her darkly puzzled gaze. “The priest is coming here to marry us,” I informed her.

  Comprehension grew by degrees in Helen’s eyes. Never shall I forget how she looked on that first night we were together, sitting at that rude table. (Mina, my beloved, you will understand.) The model’s gown, begrimed by use like all the women who had worn it, yet held some glory in its rich brocade. Her hard, small fingers, crumbling a biscuit. Her beaten, hunted, haunted face, so young. Her bare feet worn with the stones of Florence, with the hard roads of half of Europe. Her wild and filthy hair. Leonardo should have been on hand that night, and so should Goya.

  As understanding grew in Helen’s eyes they shifted from mine, to go staring past me at the wall. She raised a dirty hand and bit its thumbnail. Looking for the moment even younger than her years, she slowly began to weep, tears streaking down her cheeks.

  Now this was a reaction that I could scarcely take as complimentary. But it was obviously no calculated insult either, and somewhat to my own surprise I was not angry. I had understanding enough to realize that she wept for her whole ruined life, in which my portion was so far quite a minor one. So I only waited, silently, till she should be ready to talk to me again.

  At last the tears stopped, and in a little while the silent sobs. Helen’s eyes came back to me, and when she spoke again her voice was under good control. “Matthias allows me no alternative.” Though stated flatly, it was really a question.

  I shrugged. “Of course it is nearly always possible to kill oneself. But I think that if that path held any attraction for you, you would have taken it ere now.” My first wife had in fact traveled the route under discussion, in a fit of madness two years earlier, her point of departure being my castle roof. I thought that I had learned to recognize the signs; I saw them not in Helen.

  My blunt comment had made her look at me in a new way again. Now, you must understand that it was not my intention to be cruel. Cruelty I understood; I was, alas, already expert in inflicting pain, as well as undergoing it, and I could have been much more fiendish than that if I had tried. No, my apparent callousness was really intended to be helpful; and I still think it helped her more than if I had tried or pretended to be kind. For Helen I was a hard rock rearing up suddenly out of the treacherous bog of life, a rock that was not going to be put aside for her own purposes. But, on the other hand, this stony intrusion offered firmness and support; she could cling to it, for long enough to catch her breath at least, without fear that it was going to sink. Nor was it going to attack her treacherously; it would never turn harder and crueler than it looked.

  Helen’s eyes fell to the table, to the bread and wine that had come to her through me. She looked up at the rustic but sturdy roof-poles of the shelter that I had brought her to. She rubbed the chain-sores on her ankle, and pulled the worn and gaudy gown a little more closely round her body. “What has the king promised you, in return for marrying me?”

  “Nothing specific. That I will have an honorable position somewhere is implied, understood between us.” At least I hoped that the king agreed with my understanding on that point.

  “And what about me? Am I to be put back into the convent as soon as we are wed? Or what is the arrangement?”

  “No convent. And there is no arrangement, except that you are to be my wife.” I looked her over thoughtfully. “The ceremony will be here. Directly afterwards we will proceed, with some kind of protective escort, to a gracious house not far away. There you will have a bath.” (Bathing, contrary to popular belief in the twentieth century, was as well thought of in that day as in this, at least among the well-to-do.) “And I expect we will remain in that house for a day or two, being hospitably entertained, if I know anything of our hosts.”

  Helen was looking at me with a measure of disbelief. I went on: “After that—well, what comes after that has yet to be decided. But I can promise that as my wife you will be treated with respect. And I think I can promise that from now on you will be well fed.” There were a few more things, of great importance, that I meant to say to Helen; but I judged that the saying of them could wait till after the ceremony was over.

  It was my turn to be judged by her; a king’s daughter and a king’s sister looked through the grime. You are of good birth, then. Yes, I might have known that my brother would not marry me to a churl, whatever else … well, my lord Wladislaus the Romanian, or whatever I should name you … but that is not a Romanian name, is it? I hope you gain the reward that you are counting on for all these efforts and sacrifices to please my brother.”

  Her manner implied her doubt that I would gain much. And the king’s sister looked long and boldly into my eyes, trying to puzzle me out. I continued to study her, with the same object. For whatever reason, the feeling grew in me that my decision had been correct. When at last Verrocchio peeked into the room again, I signed to him that we no longer required privacy, and he hesitantly rejoined us.

  But before he could cough up any of the questions that must have been troubling him, horses were stamping in the street just outside his door. Presently another dagger-hilt came rapping on the wood. This time I answered the knock myself, and a moment later was joyfully letting in Lorenzo. Helen had been in Florence long enough to recognize the young tycoon on sight, and her eyes widened.

  Immediately young Lorenzo, smiling, fresh, and good-natured at an hour that would now be called three in the morning, took me aside and heard from me privately the full story of our escapade. He did not trouble to hide his glee when I came to describe the street fighting; that several of his rivals in business had been pricked with sharp weapons did not grieve him in the least. As soon as this brief confidential talk between the two of us was over, he went back to the street door and opened it again. In a moment we were joined by a sleepy friar, just dismounted and scratching his backside. Ten or a dozen horses were gathered outside the door, and I could hear the low voices of other men; Lorenzo would never have come on such a mission in
the dead of night without a good escort.

  The friar asked few questions and showed no surprise, being evidently experienced in matters of intrigue. As evidence of Medicean forethought he had come armed with all necessary holy dispensations, civil permits, writs, blessings and the like, enough spiritual and bureaucratic armament to have wed two Barbary apes on short notice had such a union appeared desirable. Only on one point was he in the least anxious, and I hastened to assure him that the formalities of my own conversion from the Eastern to the Roman Rite had been accomplished ere I left Hungary.

  The bearded apprentice had managed, somehow, somewhere, to gather an armful of flowers in the middle of the night, and came to present them to Helen. She appeared quite touched. The younger lad had at last found her a pair of respectable shoes that almost fit, for which I thanked him. Verrocchio did not seem to know quite what he ought to do about a wedding gift; if he would keep his mouth shut afterwards, I thought, that would be quite enough. In the end he gave each of us a gold ring, making sure Lorenzo saw the gesture. And so finally my bride and I were standing before the friar, the menials all dismissed, a worried Verrocchio as one witness, and Lorenzo-the-Magnificent-to-be, nodding benignly, as the other. Helen was taking it all quite well, I noted with cautiously increasing optimism. At least she spoke the required words in a firm, clear voice: “I, Helen Hunyadi, of the household and family of Matthias, King of Hungary-

  Then it was my turn. “I, Vlad, son of Vlad Drakulya and of his household, Prince of Wallachia—”

  I had surprised Helen one more time. Without taking my gaze from the priest I saw her face turn up to me.

  Chapter Eleven