“The influence of Grantville, I assume,” Francesca said. “Reliable, effective, and undoubtedly more deadly.”
“Indeed,” Davit replied, “as with so many other ideas from that place…or so I have heard.”
“It is good to know we are so well protected.” There was a moment of silence, then Francesca continued with, “You do not wear the yellow signs.”
“There is some confusion in the decrees as to whether they are required when one is traveling.” Davit shrugged. “And even if there weren’t, it is still often worth the risk to be able to move without notice or remark. I am not ashamed of being a Jew, but…”
“I am sorry to have drawn you out.” And she was. It was beginning to dawn on her just how much oppression was visited on the Jews of Italy, in the heartland of the Church.
“It is of no moment,” Davit said with a smile. “I have some business in the north, anyway.”
“You travel often, then?”
Davit shrugged again. “I am a merchant and a banker’s son.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if it should be self-evident. Which, Francesca realized, it should be.
She changed the subject. “We are well along?”
Davit nodded. “We will reach Mantova tonight. Four days from there to Brescia, if the weather holds and we have no mishaps with the carriage or the horses.”
“Dio forfend,” Francesca said.
“From your mouth to His ear,” Davit said.
* * *
“Bologna,” Paolo said as they crested a small hill and saw the city in the distance. “Three days’ hard ride it’s been. My arse is tired.”
“You say that?” Roberto said. “You? The iron sergeant?”
“That’s what I get for lolling around behind you in a fancy palazzo every day.” Paolo spit to one side. “We got soft, is what we did. And don’t tell me you’re handling this any better than I am, Capitano. I saw you moving this morning.”
“Not moving, would be more like it,” Roberto muttered. He peered at where the sun was riding in the later afternoon sky. “Should we press on, try to gain distance?”
“I would say no,” Paolo said matter-of-factly. “By the time we get through the city, it will be dusk, and we won’t make much time after that. Better to stop a bit early and give the horses a bit of extra rest and some grain. That will pay off more in the long run.”
“Wish I knew where La Cecchina is,” Roberto muttered.
“At worst she’s three days ahead of us,” Paolo said. “But now that we’re out of the mountains, we’ll be able to gain on her. Especially now that we’re getting toughened up again.” He shifted in the saddle. “I think,” was his final statement, muttered.
Roberto chuckled. He looked at the angle of the sun again, and decided that Paolo was right. “Send one of the men ahead to the Golden Cockerel to bespeak rooms and stable space for us.”
“Right.” Paolo turned in the saddle, stuck his index and little fingers in his mouth, and whistled shrilly. “Ercole!” he bellowed then. “Here! Now!”
Within a moment, Ercole was pulling in alongside the attendant’s horse. “You called, Sergeant?”
“I am not a sergeant, you horrible little man,” Paolo said.
“Once a sergeant, always a sergeant,” Ercole said with a toothy grin from where he rode easily beside Paolo.
Roberto could see that Falconieri’s judgment of Ercole’s riding skills wasn’t far short of the mark. The man rode like he was a part of the horse.
“He has you there,” Roberto remarked with a chuckle.
“Fine,” Paolo growled. He repeated Roberto’s instructions, ending with, “And you make sure they know it’s Capitano Roberto Del Migliore that’s coming. They should still remember us…him. Now, repeat that back.”
Ercole rattled the instructions back almost verbatim, ending with, “…Capitano Roberto Del Migliore.”
“Good enough,” Paolo growled again. “Off with you.”
In an instant Ercole’s horse was flying down the road ahead of them. “The man can ride,” Paolo muttered.
“You won’t be telling him that, of course.”
Paolo turned a glower on Roberto. “Do I look like a fool or idiot, Capitano? Of course not.”
Roberto chuckled again, and they continued to watch the city gates grow larger as they approached.
Chapter 15
There was a bone-rattling crunch! sound, followed by an immediate slowing of the carriage as the left rear corner sagged somewhat, accompanied by the sound of something large being hideously scraped along the road. Francesca’s heart sank.
The carriage scraped to a stop in a cloud of dust.
“Merda,” Davit muttered. He opened the door on the side away from the sag, and climbed out. A few moments later, he stuck his head back in the door. “The wheel is broken. You’ll need to dismount.”
Marco was out the door in but a moment. Francesca took her time, and descended with some care. Once out, she walked around to the rear of the carriage, where she could see that the left rear wheel had indeed broken. Antonio and Benvenuto were crouched before the wheel, examining the broken section. They finally stood, dusting their hands off.
“One of the felloe sections was not good wood, Maestro,” Antonio said. “It looks good from the outside, but on the inside it’s like it was worm-eaten or something. Anyway, it held up for a while, but finally gave way here. And once it broke, that caused the strakes to bend, and here we are.”
“Did the wheelwright know of this?”
Antonio shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Probably,” Benvenuto said at the same time.
Davit had the look of a man who had bitten into an apple and found half a worm. “We’ll discuss it with him later. We have a spare wheel, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Does it match this wheel?”
Antonio shrugged. “It looks close. Close enough to get us to the next town or inn, anyway.”
“Get it on, then.”
Davit’s tone was resigned. Antonio nodded, and he and Benvenuto took the bags out of the luggage carrier and pulled up the flooring under that to show an assortment of tools. Shortly a couple of pry bars were on the ground alongside a large mallet, followed by a short-handled shovel and several pieces of wood of various shapes.
As they got to work, Francesca stepped over beside Davit. “We’re not going to make Cremona tonight, are we?”
“No.” Francesca followed Davit’s gaze to the afternoon sun. “We wouldn’t have made Cremona today anyway. Now we probably won’t even make the halfway point tonight. This,” he gestured toward the work with a thumb, “will take a few hours at best.”
“Or longer,” Francesca muttered.
“Or longer,” Davit conceded, “if things don’t go well.”
Francesca turned away, her stomach knotted, only to see the expression of worry on Marco’s face. She felt her own lips tighten. They were in the middle of the countryside…hours north of Mantova…not in a town or city. There was nothing she could do about this, not even hire another conveyance.
“Do we start walking?” Marco asked.
“We may have to,” Francesca said. “We can’t sit out here for a long time.” She thought for a moment. “I think we could make Brescia in three days, maybe a bit more.”
“Three long hard days, right?”
“Three long days with very tired feet at the end,” Francesca said. “Or at least a day, maybe plus a bit, to get to Cremona. Once there, maybe I can find another conveyance to rent. But I don’t have connections to anyone in Cremona, so it would be hard to do.”
They turned to watch as Antonio and Benvenuto had assembled some of the wooden pieces into Francesca couldn’t tell what and started to put it under the back of the carriage. Benvenuto, being the burlier of the two, crawled out from under the carriage and, stepping around to the broken wheel, grabbed two spokes, one on either side of the wheel hub, set his feet, and lifted. From underneath, t
hey could hear the sound of the mallet beating on something, and with each blow the carriage would jerk a little bit and raise a bit more. They were obviously putting some kind of lift under the carriage.
Two or three more hits, and Antonio called out, “That’s got it.” He rolled out from under the carriage himself, and clambered to his feet, mallet still in his hand. Taking the wheel in his other hand, he gave it a spin and watched it turn in its unbalanced, limping, lopsided manner clear of the ground for a couple of revolutions before it settled to rocking back and forth. “Right. Let’s get on with it.”
Benvenuto picked up a pry bar and approached the broken wheel.
Francesca watched, the knot in her stomach turning to ice at the thought of pursuers riding while she was stalled here.
* * *
Roberto took a deep breath as they exited the Modena city gate. “We’re gaining on her,” he said. “I can feel it.” His focus and anticipation went up another notch.
Paolo nodded. “I can, too.” His mouth quirked. “Feels like old times, Capitano. Been a long time since we were on the trail of someone.”
“Still no sign of a woman and a girl, though, or even a woman by herself.”
Someone moved up on the other side of Roberto. He looked over at Ercole and raised his eyebrows.
“Messere,” the guard began, “one of the gate guards we just went by thinks he saw Maestra Caccini a couple of days ago…he thinks.”
“And how did you get that piece of information?” Roberto asked, astonishment mixed with disbelief.
“How would he know it was her?” Paolo added.
“I showed them this,” Ercole said, pulling a piece of folded parchment out of his jerkin and handing it over.
Roberto unfolded it to see a remarkably good likeness of the maestra sketched in charcoal, even though it was somewhat smudged. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“Giuseppe did it.”
“He has undiscovered talents, then.” Roberto passed it over to Paolo, who grunted and passed it back. “If I had known you had that, I would have had you showing it to all the guards at all the gates.”
Ercole smiled. “I’ve been checking, Messere. This is the first time someone had even a bit of a memory.”
“So what did the guard say?”
“He thinks it was two days ago, and it was a carriage that went through. He said it was kind of like one of the new-fangled Hungarian coaches. Painted brown, with undyed linen curtains, but they had been pulled back, and he saw her through the window as it rolled through the gate. He remembered her because she looked a bit like one of his aunts.”
Roberto felt his eyebrows go up again. “A carriage? How many horses?”
“Two horses.”
“Merda. Was he sure about that?”
Ercole nodded.
“Merda,” Roberto repeated. “They’ll be making good time, then.”
“As long as the roads are good,” Paolo said. “Once they’re north of Mantova, though, that may not be the case.”
Roberto shook his head, then looked back at Ercole.
“Did you think to ask if anyone else was in the carriage with her?”
“A dark-haired man and a youth.”
Roberto’s curses this time were longer and harsher. “That’s why no one has noticed her. She’s not traveling with her daughter. She’s traveling with a different group.” He slapped his thigh in frustration. “I should have thought of that.”
“Where’s the girl, then?” Paolo asked.
“Dio alone knows,” Roberto snarled. “In hiding, in a different convent, on a ship to America. Who knows? I tell you, Paolo, this woman is a better strategist than half the condottieri of Europa—no, more than half. We’re busy chasing her phantom while what should have been our best hope of finding her, her daughter, has disappeared off the board altogether. I am a fool! Idiota! Grullo! Citrullo!”
Roberto handed the parchment back to Ercole, and gestured him back into his position. He could tell his face was set in a frown, because even Paolo was looking at him sidelong and not saying anything.
Roberto considered distances, times, horses, carriages. “We will press harder,” he said, nudging his horse into a trot.
Paolo caught up with him in a few moments. “You will wear the horses out faster, Capitano,” he said.
“A chance we’ll have to take,” Roberto said. “We need to make up more time now.”
His face still grim, Roberto faced ahead and thought, trying to anticipate what other stratagems Maestra Caccini could have devised.
* * *
Ferdinando heard steps behind him. He was out on the rear piazza of the palazzo again, trying another combination of lenses for his telescope.
“Who is it, Piero?”
“The Lady Maria, Your Grace.”
Ferdinando sighed, and lowered the telescope as the steps came to an end behind him.
“What is it, Lady Maria?”
“Your Grace…the dowager duchess…”
The grand duke heard a tone in the lady’s voice that he’d not heard before. He wasn’t sure what it signified, but he knew it was a marker for something different.
Ferdinando turned, only to find the lady sunk in a deep curtsey. Before he could speak, she said a single phrase.
“Se n’e’ andatai.”
He froze. “Gone? Are you telling me that my grandmother is…dead?”
Lady Maria raised her face, and he could see the tears on it. That got through the shock. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“How? Why?” Ferdinando pushed the telescope into the arms of Piero and stepped toward the lady. “Are you certain? Call the doctor!”
“Doctor Rinaldo is there now. The duchess had complained earlier that she didn’t feel well, so I got her to lie down and rest while I sent for the doctor. She seemed to go to sleep, but when the doctor arrived, we were unable to awaken her, and he said she was…dead.”
The next hours were dark to Ferdinando, chaotic, blurry in later memory. He had rushed to his grandmother’s chambers, to fall to his knees beside her bed amidst the weeping and wailing women of her suite and take her cold hand in his. It did not warm in his grasp. And the slackness of her chin and throat was proof enough that she was gone.
He had stood and backed away. “Tend to her,” he had said, then left the room to wander through the palace. He had eventually ended up back on the piazza. He didn’t know how long he had been there, when his focus returned, and he felt himself again. It was growing dark.
Ferdinando sighed, then turned around. Faithful Piero was there. That did not surprise him. But also there was Alessandro Nerinni, the palace-major while Del Migliore was gone. He had a goblet and a bottle of wine in his hands. A moment later, he had poured some of the wine into the goblet and handed it to the grand duke without a word. Ferdinando took the goblet, also without comment, and drained most of it in a single gulp. He held it out, and Alessandro refilled it.
Taking a more moderate draft of the wine, Ferdinando lowered the goblet after a moment and said, “I need you to send a message, Maestro Alessandro.”
“Immediately, Your Grace. To whom?”
“Send it to Del Migliore.”
Ferdinando spent a long moment dictating the message. When he was done, he waved a hand and said, “By fastest messenger.”
“As you will, Your Grace.”
Alessandro bowed, then left to carry out that order.
Ferdinando turned and looked out over the Boboli Gardens as dusk turned to night, holding his goblet out from time to time for Piero to refill from the bottle that Alessandro had left with the page.
“The end of an era,” he murmured with the last cup. Even more so than the death of his mother five years earlier was the death of his grandmother.
* * *
The carriage rolled to a stop in front of the village taverna. This wasn’t even the halfway point on the road to Cremona. It was simply the first village they had come to after gett
ing the wheel replaced on the carriage.
Francesca sighed. It was very close to dark. They could not drive farther, not with the light gone. But they were behind their schedule now—hours behind. She was tense with fear at the thought of looking over her shoulder and seeing men in the colors of Firenze riding up behind them.
Davit dismounted from the carriage, then held out his hand. “Come, Donna Negri,” he said. “This is as far as we can safely go tonight. We will arise early tomorrow and begin our travels with the earliest rays of dawn.”
“We should have walked,” Francesca muttered as she stepped down.
Davit shrugged. “It would have occupied some time for you, but it would not have saved any. It would have taken you just as long to get here.”
And that, Francesca realized, was the truth.
“Well, roust out the village wheelwright or blacksmith and make sure the new wheel is on solid.” Francesca knew she sounded angry. She was so tired, and so worried, that she didn’t care. “We can’t afford to have this happen again.”
Davit nodded in dour agreement.
Chapter 16
“Cremona at last,” Francesca murmured as they rolled through the city gates. It was nigh on to full dark, and they had barely made it to the city before the gates closed. It had been a long day. They had all been up with the first glimmer of predawn light, and they were on the road as soon as Antonio could see his horses clearly.
Antonio had pushed the horses all day, knowing that they had to make up for lost time. They had made up the time, at the cost of exhausting the horses. Even Francesca could tell that they were weary, heads drooping.
“Good horses,” Davit said, as if he was reading her mind. “We will exchange them for fresh horses here, and leave them to be rested and fed well. They should be good to go when we come back through a few days from now.”
“Good,” Francesca replied. “I’m glad we’ve reached Cremona, but I’m also glad we didn’t kill the horses to do it. So, two days to Brescia from here?”
1636- the Flight of the Nightingale Page 10