The Master of Verona (5 page)

Asdente shrugged. "It's just pragmatism. Nogarola has to fight. He's fixed himself too firmly to Cangrande's star to do anything but!"

Pretending to cuff at a bead of sweat, Ponzino surreptitiously blinked back the dampness in his eyes. "Do you think the citizens will ever forgive us? After they welcomed us in the way they did, to be so betrayed?"

Asdente looked at the
Podestà
in shock. "Who cares?"

The Count changed the subject. "Do you think a rider got off?"

Asdente nodded happily. "We saw one heading west just as the fires were starting." He washed out his mouth from the wineskin and spat, a difficult exercise without front teeth. Sometimes, as now, he forgot, and grinned abashedly as crimson spittle ran down his chin. "A child. Some of my boys tried to catch him, but I called them off."

"Why?" demanded the
Podestà
, aghast. "The longer Cangrande is unaware, the better our chances!"

Vanni Scorigiani looked at the ground, feigning embarassment. "Aw, well, my lord — you don't know the Greyhound as I do. No doubt he's brave, but he's reckless. Foolhardy. Thinks he's indestructible. He'll likely set out rapidly and poorly prepared." Asdente's twisted smile reached his eyes. "We'll make mincemeat out of him."

Ponzino goggled at Vanni, whose tone was unmistakable. If Cangrande arrived, they wouldn't take him prisoner, as the rules of chivalry dictated. They would kill him outright. Murder? How much honour was he going to lose this day?

The Count saw the struggle in the young general. "It's the sensible course."

The
Podestà
wiped his brow again. "Vanni, get down there and calm this mob. I want the women protected and the men-at-arms rounded up and ready for the siege."

"I'll try," said Asdente. The Count of San Bonifacio had no doubt he would. It was an excellent excuse to crack a few skulls. "But this kind of rage has to burn itself out."

"Do it now or I'll feed you to the Greyhound myself."

Vanni smirked. "Now, that's downright unchivalrous." He spurred off.

Together the Count and the
Podestà
turned their mounts back to watch the rape and slaughter of San Pietro. The first hint of clouds began moving in from the east. Vinciguerra sniffed the air. Tomorrow it would rain, perhaps the next day.

Ponzino is doubtless wishing for rain this very second
, thought the Count in disgust.
It would hide his tears
.

"Alighieri! Holla! Alighieri!!"

Weaving in and out of the midday crowd, Pietro turned at the hail and was at once knocked to the ground. He felt the trod of feet and a buffet of absentminded blows before a hand caught him by the shoulder. "Alighieri!"

"Alaghieri." Dazed, Pietro staggered to his feet, brushing dirt and filth from his best doublet. He turned about to behold a face no older than his own, with hair black as jet and eyes as blue as sparrow's eggs. The doublet bordered on frippery, but the hose, boots, and hat were of the finest quality. He was closely shaved, as if to show off a mouth a trifle too pretty.

"Are you all right?" asked the handsome young man.

"Fine," said Pietro shortly, aware that his best doublet was his best no longer. The teen looked familiar. The previous night had been chaotic — with all his father's luggage to bestow and his brother running about pointing out the windows, Pietro hadn't caught half the names thrown at him. Embarrassment mounting, he tried to remember…

"Montecchio," supplied the comely youth. "Mariotto Montecchio."

"Yes. You had the baby hawk."

Montecchio's smile was dazzling. "I'm training it so I can hunt with the Capitano. Maybe you can join us next time?"

Giving up on the doublet, Pietro nodded eagerly. "I'd like that." He'd missed the revelry last night, consigned to unpacking. The Alaghieri
paterfamilias
had, of course, participated, riding forth with the nobility on the midnight hunt. All night long Pietro and his brother had groused, and this morning he felt the pangs even worse, for everyone was talking of the sport.

Not that Pietro really enjoyed hunting. Like soldiering, it was more that he wished he were the kind of man who did. It seemed to be something he should love.

Montecchio looked him up and down, checking the length of his arms. "We'll get you a sparrow hawk. It'll match the feather in your –" Mariotto's brows knit together as he glanced at Pietro's head. "Where's your hat?"

Pietro ran a hand up and discovered his head was bare. Looking about, he spied his fine plumed hat a few feet away, wilted and trampled.

Montecchio leapt forward to snatch it out from under boots and sandals. "I am so very sorry," he said gravely, and he did look genuinely pained. Mariotto took attire seriously.

Pietro did his best to smile as he took the limp cloth with its broken feather out of Montecchio's hands. "It doesn't matter. It wasn't a very nice cap."

It had been a very nice cap. A trifle, surely, but Pietro was allowed few trifles. His father had an austere code that applied to all things, including dress. Pietro had barely managed to win the right to wear the doublet and hose, which his father viewed as extravagant and showy. The hat had been a gift from the great Pisan lord Uguccione della Faggiuola, who knew all about young men and their vanity. Pietro had convinced his father that refusing the gift would have been an insult. "I only wear the hat out of respect for your patron, Father," he'd said. Somehow the old cynic had bought it.

Now that gift was crushed and covered with dirt.

"I'll replace it," declared Mariotto.

"You don't –"

Mariotto insisted. "It's your first day here! No, we're going to the best haberdasher in the city. Follow me!"

Not to agree would have been churlish.

The late morning sun warmed Pietro's back as he ducked and weaved through the myriad enticements of the Piazza delle Erbe, trying to keep up. (
The finest whips and crops!)
Men of all shapes and sizes jostled with each other as buyers and sellers called out their wares to pilgrims, palmers, Jews, even the occasional heathen Moor. (
Fish! The fruit of sea, the Capitano's favorite!)
Pietro's eyes encountered millers, fishmongers, barbers, and smiths, all crying their wares from tented stalls or storefronts. (
Love potions! Dump the man you have and get the one you deserve!)
There were many small nooks, but Pietro didn't have the time to even glance into one before Mariotto was off in another direction. (
Skins, well cured!
Don't let the heat fool you! Winter is coming! Stay warm!)

It was so loud! Anvils chimed in their workshops. Monkeys hopped around in cages, hawks screamed, hounds barked, all underscored by guitars, lutes, flutes, viols, rebecs, tambourines, and the voices of the troubadors. It was Nimrod's Tower come to life, cacophonous pandemonium. A seller of headstones was immediately replaced by a purveyor of sweet pasties who held his samples in the air, enticingly aromatic. Under the law, a vendor couldn't physically accost a traveler, but this only increased the assault on the other senses, and the huge signs that hung over the stalls were worse than grabbing hands. Each proclaimed the trade of the stall owner, even as the owner shouted insults at the vendor across the way.

Above the signs, in row after row of low balconies, men capered and shouted to friends below, watching the course of various arguments and fistfights, making loud bets as to the outcome.

Mariotto easily navigated the shops and stalls, using shortcuts through alleys and leaping over barrels that blocked their path. Pietro followed him down a sidestreet perfumed with mulled wines and spiced meats. Trying to keep up, Pietro continued to make the proper protestations. "Actually, I was on an errand for my father."

Mariotto grinned. "Something devilish?"

Pietro laughed because he was expected to. "I have to order him some new sandals."

Mariotto turned to walk backward. "What happened to his old ones? Burned in the hellfire?"

"No," said Pietro. "My brother."

Montecchio nodded as though the answer made sense. "We'll head to the river and circle around to Cobbler Lane on the way back to the palace — you cannot deny me the opportunity to replace your cap. It would stain my family's honour to let this injustice go unanswered!" He whooped as he whirled off into the crowds, Pietro in his wake.

Behind them came the sound of the human tongue in disjointed harmony. Each traveler spoke his or her native language, rendering the air thick with a war of French, English, Flemish, Greek, and more. Interlaced in the tumult were the harsh, sharp sounds of German — Veronese speech owed at least as much to German as it did to Italian, and the local dialect was redolent with its accents.

Over the noise Pietro said, "Why are
you
out this morning? Aren't you in the wedding party?"

"Yes! I did my best, but I couldn't talk him out of it! Cecchino, poor fool — just a couple years older than us and already tied down to a wife! But until the feast there's nothing but servants racing about the palace and women cooing about how lovely it all was. I had to escape."

A roar of approval from the men around them caused them to raise their eyes to the highest balconies of the building nearby. Several young women had emerged and draped themselves over the railings, their garments falling revealingly open. One girl waved at Pietro and flashed something pink from beneath her bodice. Pietro blushed and waved shyly back.
I shouldn't be shocked
, he thought.
This is the market plaza, after all.

Grinning, Mariotto said, "I could arrange an introduction."

Pietro avoided that. "In Florence they're forced to wear tiny bells."

"You don't say."

"Yes. There's an old joke about churches and prostitutes — the bells call a man to repent what the bells call a man to do." This earned the first genuine laugh from his newfound friend.

Montecchio never stopped talking as he led a merry chase down the long street. Figuring that Pietro would soon be sent to hunt for tools linked to his father's profession, he made sure to point out where to find the best wax for sealing, the best cut quills.

They reached milliner row, close to an ancient tufa wall which stood in stark contrast to the rose marble and red brick all around them. These were the old walls, built by the Romans or their forebears — no one knew for certain, as the first true inhabitants of Verona were lost to memory. Regardless, the walls existed, enclosing the oldest and richest part of the city. What good they would be if attacked, Pietro wasn't sure.

Twenty minutes later he was once more appropriately, if ostentatiously, hatted. He'd settled on a puffed-out burgundy affair sporting a thin green feather just above the left ear — the Ghibelline ear. Feeling rakish, he followed Mariotto to a string of cobblers where he ordered sandals to be ready for the poet the following day.

The sun was directly overhead, which meant the bridal dinner was nigh. Mariotto unfettered his infectious grin. "We'd better get back. My father asked me to be amusing for Maestro Alighieri's children."

"Alaghieri."

"That's what I said." He clapped a hand on Pietro's shoulder. "To tell you the truth, I was dreading it. Thank you for being nothing like what I imagined the son of a poet to be."

Again Pietro smiled because he was supposed to. Inside his skin he shuddered.
That's the question, isn't it? What is the son of a poet — of any great man — if not less than. Inferior. Useless.

To cheer himself up, Pietro looked for a way to repay Mariotto's kindness. Being lost and alone in a new city was nothing unusual for him. Having a friend was. When they were five minutes from the palace, traversing the Plaza delle Erbe once more, he spotted the perfect gift. "Wait here!" Dashing off through the crowd only to reappear a few moments later, he gave an elaborate bow, twirling his new hat between his fingers in a flourish. "For you,
signore.
"

With his free hand Pietro offered a pair of fine corded leather straps. From one end of each hung a solid silver
vervel
for engraving the owner's name.

Montecchio's eyes lit up. "Jesses! Oh no, really, Alighieri, it's too much." Now it was his turn to protest feebly.

Pietro was helpless to stop his embarrassingly lopsided smile. "Your hawk should be as well dressed as you are."

Mariotto admired the small tokens. "Tomorrow we'll go riding along the
A
dige and see if the fellow will fly at all."

Pietro nodded. "I'd like that."
If father will let me.

A bell began to ring to the south, then another to the east, and Mariotto's eyes grew wide. "We're late!"

The Benedictine bells were just finishing the call to Sext when two panting teens raced up the inner stairs of the great Scaliger palace in Verona. Attaining the top, they skidded to a halt at a demure distance from the open double doors. Listening, they heard arguing and laughter echoing down the hall. They grinned at each other in relief. They were not too late.

An understeward came bustling forward. "Master Montecchio, welcome. Your father and brother are already within." He glanced at the other young man with an inquiring inclination of his head.