Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Horror, #Occult & Supernatural, #Historical Fiction, #Vampires, #Saint-Germain, #Inquisition, #Women Musicians - Crimes Against
States of Grace (27 page)
“I know,” said Ruggier. “I think Yeoville is determined to find something amiss with us.”
“That’s the last fig!” Oralle bellowed, and was answered with a scuffle.
“Yes; I think so as well. It is his nature to be suspicious, and the rest follow his example. That is why I have confined my feeding to game, and only game, on this journey; I cannot risk discovery, particularly from men such as these, who are touchy of their honor.” Di Santo-Germano worked the comb steadily as he went on. “Tonight I will stand the early watch with Belfountain and—it will be delle Fonde, I suppose.”
“It is his turn,” said Ruggier. “I will have Yeoville with me on duty.”
Di Santo-Germano moved to the rear of the horse and took the tail in his hands to begin combing. “I am inclined to keep this gelding. He’s steady-tempered and he has more stamina than the others in this remuda.”
Ruggier’s long experience with di Santo-Germano allowed him to recognize that his master was bringing himself to a point indirectly, so he waited patiently, saying, “I am sure that will be possible.”
Combing carefully, di Santo-Germano sighed. “How well you understand me, old friend.” He finished his task and set the comb aside with the brush. “I have been expecting something of this sort. These men have traveled too closely with us for them not to have noticed that we are something more than merely foreigners, and that is troubling to me.”
“Because of all we have encountered of late,” Ruggier said.
“Yes, that and the hard lessons learned over the centuries. Little as the Catholics may like Protestants of any sort, and all manner of Protestants dislike Catholics with a poisonous intensity, all of them would turn their fear and fury upon such a creature as I am, or you are, and justify their actions in the name of both religions. As much as the rival Christians despise one another, they loathe anyone deemed unnatural far more.” He stared off into the night, seeing farther than the starry darkness. “At least they will move on tomorrow, after we reach Mestre.”
“They may speculate—” Ruggier began.
“So they may, and they are welcome to do so, once they are out of the Venezian Empire; to whom can they confide their misgivings but one another, and how can that endanger you or me?” said di Santo-Germano. “It would probably be best if I help them to have good reason to depart, what do you say: a generous bonus for them to return promptly to Antwerp, perhaps?”
Ruggier answered in the Venezian dialect. “I say it is a prudent thing to do, and that you will do what you decide is best.”
“Da ver’,” di Santo-Germano agreed, and raised his voice as he heard delle Fonde approaching. “You come in good time: what am I to do for you, Signor’ delle Fonde?”
Delle Fonde halted at the edge of the remuda; behind him the men of the Company brayed and hooted derisively, sounds which delle Fonde made a point of ignoring. “I am about to begin my guard duty”
“And you come to summon me to my task; thank you,” said di Santo-Germano. He glanced over at Ruggier. “There are only the dun and that new horse—the liver-chestnut-yet to groom.”
“I will attend to them,” Ruggier assured him. “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished.”
“Very good,” said di Santo-Germano, and went over to delle Fonde. “I am at your service.”
The mercenary laughed once. “No, you’re not,” he said, and pointed back toward the others who were finishing their meal. “We are all at your service, careful as you are not to remind us. But it is more than that—you take risks for us, and you pay for more than you agreed to, and you never ask any of us to do more than you would, and you tend to chores to spare us. So: I have seen how you take pains not to dwell on our differences.”
They were a short distance from the remuda now, going toward the first in a crescent of simple tents. “What would be the purpose of such distinction? We are all traveling the same roads, and for the same reason.”
“Say what you will,” delle Fonde remarked, emboldened by their coming separation, and less inclined to observe the proprieties than he would have been earlier in their journey, “you and your manservant are unlike others we have escorted. In larger groups, I would not have noticed as much, but with so few of us, and traveling so fast …” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “I thank you for not entering into our disputes.”
“Why should I?” di Santo-Germano asked. “I am not one of Belfountain’s Company, I am the man who engaged your services. I have no place in those disputes, unless they concern me directly.”
Delle Fonde considered this. “Surely you must have convictions, expectations, and—”
“I do, but I have learned, over time, to keep most of them to myself,” said di Santo-Germano as they passed the second tent.
“Yes; though you share our work and our dangers, you hold aloof from us, not just in your dining privately, or in your refusing to drink with us. I cannot help but wonder why.”
Di Santo-Germano regarded delle Fonde for a long moment, then said, “Let us agree that, in these times and these places, it is safer for you not to know. I have no desire to put you or your comrades at risk for my sake, beyond the risk you have as my escort.”
“So you have secrets, too,” said delle Fonde.
“Anyone does, who has lived as long as I have,” said di Santo-Germano, lengthening his stride; delle Fonde, who was much the same height as di Santo-Germano, had to move faster to keep up with the foreigner.
“Life gives many secrets, soon or late,” delle Fonde agreed, adding quietly, “All of the Company has secrets.”
“And yours weighs heavily upon you,” said di Santo-Germano.
Delle Fonde shrugged. “No more than many other men’s do.” He stopped as he heard the bushes rustle. “But I hate to be mocked.”
“A wild goat,” said di Santo-Germano.
“Are you certain? There are wild boar in this region, and bear.”
“I am certain,” said di Santo-Germano, who could see the animal at the edge of a thicket.
The men around the campfire got into a scuffle which Belfountain broke up by knocking Mercer’s and Oralle’s heads together.
“It’s the promise of liberty that makes them fractious,” said delle Fonde. “They are inclined to pull at their bridles.”
“Then better for them to rest well tonight,” said di Santo-Germano, and they completed their next two rounds of the campsite in silence, watching as the men banked the campfire and went off to their tents, a few of them continuing desultory conversations for a short while, all aware that morning came too quickly to allow them the luxury of midnight discussions. Soon only Ruggier remained awake with delle Fonde and di Santo-Germano tending the horses and cleaning tack in anticipation of the morning ride.
As they reached the tent farthest from the fire, delle Fonde stopped still, listening to the soft drone of insects and the first snores from his comrades asleep in their tents. “I don’t think I will be staying with Belfountain after this. I am going to claim my prize-money and return home.”
Di Santo-Germano cocked his head. “Is this a recent decision?”
“No,” said delle Fonde. “Not really. I have been gone more than nine years, and I know my parents are getting old; they may even be dead, as could anyone. I would like to see them again, if they live, and my two brothers, and my three sisters. I want to know if they are all well. If I could read and write, perhaps I would know something, but—”
“And where do they live?” asked di Santo-Germano.
“In the mountains of Savoia,” said delle Fonde, and continued as if compelled to speak. “I thought I would not miss them: we parted badly.” He coughed. “They had arranged a marriage for me—a good marriage in many ways—but the affianced bride and I …”
“You were not suited to each other,” di Santo-Germano suggested.
“That was the heart of it. She came from a Catholic family, and I did not.” He held his breath at this revelation. When di Santo-Germano said nothing, delle Fonde scowled, and began to speak again, reciting a story he had known since childhood. “Back in the days of the Crusades, when all the Jews were expelled from France, there was, as a result, a derth of goldsmiths and silversmiths in that country, and so a number of Roman goldsmiths and silversmiths were offered work there. My many-times-great-grandfather had been making molds for coins in Roma—which is how we got our name—”
“Of the stamps, or molds,” di Santo-Germano translated from a Roman dialect earlier than the one spoken there now.
“Yes.” Delle Fonde stared into the darkness at the middle distance, and went on, still somewhat enveloped in the hazy dream the tea imparted. “Sabinus—my ancestor—accepted employment and brought our family to Lyon, where he was authorized to mint coins for the Crown and the city, as he had done in Roma. After many years, he became a convert to the teaching of Piere Waldo, and for that, his sons were arrested and imprisoned, and he was branded on the forehead and told to go to the Holy Land to pray for forgiveness at Jerusalem; when he did not return, all the family was excommunicated and threw in their lot with Waldo’s followers and settled in Savoia, remaining close to our religion—Christian but not Catholic—down the generations. Many of my family have been executed for being heretics because we have remained faithful to the Waldensian Creed.”
“But not so faithful that they would not wed you to a Catholic,” di Santo-Germano pointed out.
“You understand,” said delle Fonde with visible relief.
“I grasp the problem,” said di Santo-Germano, taking up delle Fonde’s account. “So you left, and gradually, you have come to value what you left behind. It is not an uncommon experience.” He recalled the many times he had seen such forces working in someone’s life, and felt the familiar pang that accompanied his own recognition of how far he was from his own family, his people, his breathing days, his gods who had made him one of them. “You have a feeling of interrupted circumstance, of lost continuity.”
“Just so,” said delle Fonde with a little sigh as he began to walk the camp perimeter again.
“You would like to have that familiarity again, before it is lost,” said di Santo-Germano, walking beside delle Fonde.
“Yesi You,” delle Fonde dared to say, “must know the same—being an exile. You must miss them as you would a severed arm.”
“True enough, but I cannot return to them,” said di Santo-Germano, making no other remark about his past. “However, if you visit your family, do not be astonished if what you are seeking is difficult to find—you have had years apart, and you have had experiences that none of your family will share with you.”
“Do you fear that for yourself?” delle Fonde asked impulsively.
It took di Santo-Germano a moment to frame his answer. “It is difficult to be without context; it is a burden that does not lessen with time.”
Delle Fonde made a face of chagrin. “I should not have—”
“Clearly you wish to speak to someone, and of this group, I or my manservant are the least likely to use this information against you,” said di Santo-Germano.
Now delle Fonde made a gesture of regret. “It was wrong for me to speak to you, Conte. If you will forgive my impertinence?”
Di Santo-Germano held up his hand. “No. You have said nothing for which you should ask pardon. If anything, it is I who should ask pardon of you, for permitting you to say so much.” He saw delle Fonde take a step back, shocked. “I could easily have silenced you when you began to speak, but I did not; I brought your questions on myself.”
Delle Fonde smiled uneasily. “But I imposed upon you, Conte.”
“Hardly imposed. Rather let us say that you and I have taken advantage of our parting to come to comment upon matters that cannot be shared with closer associates.”
“Like those we meet in taverns,” said delle Fonde, “to whom we impart secrets without worry.”
Di Santo-Germano nodded in what could be considered agreement. “You may rest assured I will keep your confidence, and by tomorrow you and I will part company in any case. Whom could I tell of your family’s religion, and why should I speak of it at all?”
“Yes,” said delle Fonde. “Why should either of us say anything?”
As they continued on their rounds, neither spoke again until they were relieved at midnight by Ruggier and Yeoville.
Text of a letter from Basilio Cuor in Amsterdam, to Christofo Sen in Venezia, carried by private courier, and delivered fourteen days after it was written.
To the most estimable Christofo Sen, secretary to the Minor Consiglio, in Venezia, the greetings of Basilio Cuor in Amsterdam on this, the 23
rd
day of July, 1531;
rd
day of July, 1531;
I am confirming my note of ten days ago: Saint-Germain, or di Santo-Germano, if you prefer, is gone from Amsterdam, and from Antwerp. I presented myself at his houses in both cities, and was misdirected-deliberately, I believe-back to Amsterdam, which lost me precious days in following him.
It is my belief, based upon what I learned from the woman occupying his house in this city, that di Santo-Germano has returned to Venezia, and may even now be in his house on Campo San Luca; she was careful to tell me very little, but I mentioned that I had business with his trading company which would prove profitable for him, and she suggested that I speak to his advocate to learn to whom I could broach this matter, for the advocate has di Santo-Germano’s direction in Venezia and other places. Proceeding on this information, I made inquiries of one of the clerks of his advocate, but the man is as tightlipped as a clam, and would tell me nothing useful, but the assistant to the factor Altermaat confirmed that di Santo-Germano is bound for La Serenissima, and so I am confident in expressing my certainty that he is once again in the city.
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