Devil's Lair (17 page)

“Fiammetta,” Petrarch said.
“The woman in your poems.”

“She died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

Giovanni sat down on a stone
bench beneath a statue of Mnemosyne. He leaned over and plucked a thorn.
Testing it on a fingertip, he traced the grooves in his skin.

“My brother Gherardo was a
monk in Montrieux,” Petrarch said. “There were thirty-six in his monastery.
Only he survived.” Petrarch sat beside Giovanni on the bench. “We were once a
crowd. Now we are nearly alone.”

“Fiammetta was everything.”

“I lost my Laura.”

The thorn caught flesh and
summoned blood. Giovanni scarcely felt it.

“Beauty cannot survive this
world,” Petrarch said.

“My lady was beautiful. God
gave her black sores and purple bruises and pain beyond endurance. She shares
her grave with a dozen strangers.”

“Write to her,” Petrarch
suggested. “She will read it.”

“My pen is mute.”

The laureate nodded. “A time
for words and a time for silence. The words will come.” He sighed. “We are
haunted by memory and spurned by her daughters.”

“My muse is dead.”

Petrarch put a comforting
hand on Giovanni’s shoulder. “Then follow Dante.”

The chapel smelled of
incense and candles. Stepping inside, Giovanni felt as if he were entering
pages of scripture: the long walls on either side were covered with paintings
like an illuminated manuscript. The chapel ceiling was deep blue with a field
of golden stars.

“Giotto?” he asked, admiring
the frescoes.

Petrarch seemed impressed.
“You know your artists.”

“I knew him well enough in
Naples, when he worked for King Robert.”

“Did you and I ever meet in
court?”

“You had left before I
arrived.”

“King Robert,” Petrarch said
wistfully. “I do miss the man.”

Giovanni studied an
allegorical painting of Envy: a man stood in flames, holding a bag of gold,
with a snake coming out his mouth and biting his eyes.

Petrarch said, “Enrico had
this chapel built with the coin of his father’s shame.”

Giovanni knew the Scrovegnis
were usurers. Dante had seen Enrico’s father in Hell, with a bag of gold around
his neck. “If one can buy a seat in Paradise, this would do it.”

They proceeded to the
crucifix and lit candles for the souls of their lost loves, Laura and
Fiammetta.

While Petrarch was at his
prayers, Giovanni surveyed the rest of Giotto’s frescoes, which depicted the
lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The story began on the south wall with the
Virgin’s parents, Joachim and Anna, showing their expulsion from the temple and
their meeting at the Golden Gate. The upper panels of the northern wall
envisioned scenes of Mary’s birth and marriage. On the chancel arch the
Annunciation and Visitation were shown. Moving from to the south wall, Giovanni
admired the Life of Christ: the Nativity, Sacrifice of the Innocents, Ministry,
Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost.

He saw on the west wall,
above the door and encompassing the high window, Giotto’s fresco of the Last
Judgment. Jesus sat in the center, worshipped by choirs of angels and saints in
Heaven. Below Him, on His right side, were the souls in Purgatory struggling to
purge their sins. On His left, in a river of flame, flowed the souls of the
damned. Blue demons prodded unrepentant sinners who tumbled down to where other
shades were tortured: hung by their necks and hair and teeth and testicles;
tied and impaled and burned and devoured; raped and pinched and flayed. One
usurer was whipped as he loaned money to a woman being bit by serpent. The
Devil sat on another serpent, squeezing sinners in each hand as he chewed one
soul and defecated another.

Staring at these horrors,
Giovanni knew with a sense of foreboding that if he ever passed through the
gates of Hell and survived to the seventh level, to the burning sands and the
rain of fire, he would surely find his father.

Petrarch led Marco into the
Hall of Lances. The others followed. The knight saw ancient weapons and armor
lining the hall on either side. The collection included more than two dozen
lances mounted in a row.

“I give you the Lance of
Longinus,” Petrarch said.

Marco studied the
collection. “Which one is real?”

“All of them. Or none.
Relics are like loaves and fishes. They tend to multiply. Would you care to see
my collection of Holy Grails?”

“The true Grail is not in
your collection,” Nadja said.

Petrarch smiled. “Don’t tell
Rienzo. He believes the odds are in his favor.”

“We will take them all,”
said Marco.

“You will take one,”
Petrarch answered.

Marco stepped forward,
confronting Petrarch with the full advantage of his height. He felt William’s
hand on his arm.

“No, Marco,” said the friar.
Then, to Petrarch: “It is a generous offer. But we will choose.”

Petrarch bowed. “Of course.”

William said to Marco, “The
honor is yours.”

Marco examined the row of
lances. “How do I chose?”

“God will guide your hand,”
said the friar. “If not, then we have no hope.”

Marco moved down the row,
studying each weapon.

“Close your eyes,” William
suggested.

Marco closed his eyes. He
brushed his fingertips across the shaft of each lance, hoping the right choice
would make itself apparent, but he felt nothing. Frustrated, he let his hand
drop and felt the edge of a table top. He had not noticed the table when he
entered the hall, because he had been looking at the lances. Now he ran his
hand over the cool, flat surface and discovered five objects there.
Spearheads.

“Ignore those,” Petrarch
said. “Odds and ends, mostly.”

Keeping his eyes closed,
Marco touched each of the spearheads. One seemed warmer than the others. He
picked it up, held it a moment in the palm of his hand, then closed his fingers
around it. Something tingled in his spine, rising to the crown of his head. He
felt a soft shudder flow through him. The darkness in his mind’s eye brightened
with a scintillating blue light that pulsed and danced before him. It thrummed
with a music just beyond hearing. The light was playful, a teasing sprite,
until it formed into a thin diamond. It looked like the spearhead glowing in
his hand, but when Marco opened his eyes the light was gone and the weapon
proved to be nothing more than dull iron.

“This one,” he said, before
the certainty abandoned him.

Petrarch took the spearhead
from him, examined it briefly, then shrugged. “Very well, Aeneas.” He handed it
back to Marco. “Let this be your golden bough.”

CHAPTER 17

Marco donned his new
sabatons, his greaves, his cuishe, his breeches of mail; with Nadja’s help he
put on his breast, his back, his vambrace, his gauntlet; he hung the old dagger
on his right side and the new sword on his left. The Holy Lance, with its iron
head now set on an ashwood shaft, he held in his fist. Marco hung his polished
shield from the knob of a door and pondered his reflection. He liked what he
saw. When he donned the helm, a voice from his dream still echoed inside.

Remember.

Nadja was not surprised when
William declined Petrarch’s offer of new clothes. She and Giovanni accepted
gratefully and retired to separate chambers to be fitted, with Nadja assisted
by Marietta, a handmaid about her age, who arranged on the bed a half-dozen
gowns of satin and samite and even spun cotton.

Nadja selected a lavender
cioppa of silk brocade, pleated from the neckline, and held the dress up to the
to morning light. “They’re all so beautiful.”

“My master says to choose
the one you like.”

“He’s much too generous. I
thought he meant a new kirtle.”

“I might fetch one for you,
Miss.”

“Whose clothes are these?”

“Lady Isabella.”

“Do you think she’d mind if
I tried one on?”

Marietta went quiet.

“No, you’re right,” said
Nadja. “It’s not my—”

“Sorry, Miss.” The servant
girl did not meet Nadja’s gaze. “Died of the buboes, she did, these three
months past.”

Nadja nearly dropped the
dress.

Plague clothes.

“Oh no, Miss. We burned her
sick clothes. She had no use for fine fittings then, in the last days,
excepting the dress she was buried in. Oh, that was the finest, with a veil of
course, so you could see how she was in good times.”

“How was she?”

“A fighter, Miss. A strong
one, our Lady Isabella. She screamed day and night for nearly a week.”

“How horrible.”

“I didn’t mind so much. The
worse was what came after.”

“What?”

“The quiet, Miss. That awful
quiet.”

Their provisions were
restocked and four horses fetched: roan palfreys for William, Giovanni, and
Nadja; a destrier for Marco. The destrier was pale grey and took to the name
“Ash.” Strong and well-bred, Ash bore Marco through the field behind the Reggia,
cantering for several stadia without tiring beneath the weight of knight and
armor. Exhilarated, Marco returned to the lych gate where the others were
gathered. One of the horses remained unburdened. William stood beside it,
holding the reins and stroking its neck.

“Time to mount up, Father,”
Marco said.

“I’ll walk.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Too late for that.”

From his own saddle Giovanni
said, “If the Rule of Saint Francis forbids you a horse, why not ride
Apuleius?”

“I’d rather walk,” the friar
insisted.

“Even Christ rode upon an
ass. Are you more pious than our Savior? Or is it pride?”

That argument worked. The
fourth horse became a sumpter. William rode the donkey. They kept to the main
roads, skirting the Adriatic Sea before cutting inland toward Sulmona. Within a
week they reached the base of Mount Maiella.

They walked their animals up
the steep mountain trail, past thickets of dry ginestra. Halfway to the summit
they found an abandoned shepherd’s hut, a round little hovel of piled stone,
where they rested and lit an open campfire to warn the eremites of their
approach.

When William finished his
morning prayers he saw Giovanni watching him from the fireside, sitting where
he had slept only moments before. The poet’s eyes were watery from the day’s
first light. His hair was a tangle, his expression curious.

“Are your prayers ever
answered?” Giovanni asked in that somber voice he reserved for the mornings.

“I’m not sure,” William
admitted. He poked at the embers with a stick and fed them a handful of leaves.
Bright flamelets arose to consume the offering.

Giovanni stared down the
mountainside to the valley below. “Do you believe God is all-powerful?”

“Yes.”

“And all-knowing?”

“Yes.”

“And perfectly good?”

“Of course.”

“Then what use is prayer?”

William smiled. The question
reminded him of his student days at Oxford. “I understand your dilemma.”

“If I pray for it to rain
tomorrow,” Giovanni continued, “am I influencing God?”

“You tell me.” William wiped
his hands together to remove the last of the leaves.

Giovanni said, “God already
knows if it will rain or not.”

“He knows both.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why limit God to what will
happen?”

“God must know the future.”

“Only one?”

“Can there be more?”

“If God knows everything,”
said William, “then He knows all possible futures. He knows it will rain
tomorrow. He knows that it will not.”

“But He is more than the
Knower. He is the Cause.”

“Yes.”

Giovanni scratched his right
ear, as if to dislodge some phrase that had fallen inside. “If the rain is
good, and if God is good, and if He is all-powerful, then God will make it
rain.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why limit God’s actions to
what is good? This is foolishness. This is wrong.”

“Wrong because there is evil
in the world?”

“God does not make the rain
because it is good. The rain is good because God makes it.”

“Then the drought is good
because God makes it.”

“Yes.”

“And pestilence, too, is
good.”

“Yes.”