The Nascenza Conspiracy (8 page)

For a second, the man’s expression was utterly unreadable. He wasn’t used to being confronted, that was for certain. “That we do, young buck,” he said finally, laughing. On cue, Thadeo and the other man laughed as well, but when they were done, they regarded him with wary eyes. “Simon Jacobuci, at your service, Signorino.” He held out a hand, but Petro refused to shake it. To Narciso, Simon said, “He’s spirited, ain’t he?”

“Our Adrio has too much spirit, it would seem,” growled Narciso.

Petro ignored the warnings the priest was sending him and stood his ground to ask, “Why are you so insistent we sleep at the Campobasso inn? What’s in it for you, Signor?”

The moment of tension that followed was exquisite. Petro knew he’d violated every custom of courtesy, all because of some feud he seemed to be having with his best friend. To his surprise, though, Simon laughed outright, this time with genuine humor. “He caught me,” he said, winking first at Petro and then clapping Brother Narciso on the back. Narciso did not seem to take kindly to being assaulted, but he laughed too, a little uneasily. “Caught me right out, he did. He’s a clever one, your Adrio.” He placed a finger alongside his nose and pointed in Petro’s direction. “Might as well be glass, for all he saw right through me.”

“I did?” Petro asked, suspicious.

“Indeed, young buck. Since you ask, I’ll be admitting that my sister is the padrona of the inn there. Now, I confess I don’t think much of that lout of a husband of hers, particularly when it comes to attracting business. That’s the truth of it. What brother doesn’t want to see his little sister prosper, I ask you? It’s only natural.”

“Perfectly natural,” agreed Brother Narciso, who was radiating disappointment in Petro’s direction.

“Put me on trial and send me to prison if you must, young buck, but I was but trying to send a little custom my sister’s way. Simple as that.” When Simon began to laugh again, everyone else joined in—the men heartily, and the pilgrims’ party with relief. It was indeed an easy and simple explanation. In the heat of that summer afternoon, with the sun at its hottest and the dust from the fields still high in the air, no one wanted to prolong any distrust they were feeling. Simon now seemed determined to put everyone at ease. “One word from me, and Colleta will be giving you the softest beds and the hottest water she’s ever drawn for a weary pilgrim’s bath. I’m willing to wager that I could even persuade her to mix up a batch of her raspberry foole, and I’m telling you gentlefolk, there’s no finer treat than iced raspberry foole on a hot summer’s night. Juicy raspberries, crushed and sprinkled with sugar. Wine as sweet as honey from the bee. The finest country cream to be found, all mixed with spices and chilled with lake ice until it’s colder than a witch’s tit. Goes down a treat, I tell you.”

“That it does, Simon,” nodded Thadeo, licking his lips. “That it does.”

The third man surprised them all by speaking up in a reedy tenor. “Aye,” he said, before lapsing into silence once more.

Whether it was a vision of cold fruit foole sliding down the backs of their parched throats, or whether it was the last unexpected opinion that persuaded them, the group was definitely swayed. “My,” said Narciso, swallowing hard once more. “That does sound delicious.”

“Yes it does,” murmured Elettra. “And a bath!”

“I say we go.” Adrio looked around the group with his chin held high. He almost seemed to be challenging them to disagree.

Narciso shook his head sadly. “We’ve a schedule to attend to, thanks to your g—good pathfinders.” Petro had the distinct impression that Narciso had been about to say the word
guards
.

“We have a stipend from the insula for expenses along the road. None of which we’ve spent yet. The expense is no issue.” Adrio was being indiscreet. Petro saw the way Simon’s eyes lit up at the sound of that stipend, almost as if he was already counting the coins jingling in his pocket. Even mentioning the insula identified them as belonging to the Thirty, if not the Seven.

But no one else seemed to care. “I really think a good night’s sleep would put us in a prayerful mood for the rest of our trip, Brother Narciso,” Elettra was saying, though Petro knew that all she wanted was a hip-bath of hot water.

Even the guards seemed to be wavering. “If we’ll need another day’s journey to reach Nascenza, I can’t see how a night in an inn is any different from a night in the woods,” reasoned the Bearded Lady.

“I’ll tell you the difference,” Simon offered. “Colleta’s hospitality’s a damned sight more comfortable than a bed of pine needles and a tree root for a pillow!”

“I could do with a decent night’s sleep,” admitted One Eyebrow.

“Many priests of the faith are accustomed to long periods of privation,” said Amadeo piously. Petro never thought he’d find himself on Amadeo’s side, though for the wrong reasons.

“But you’re not a priest yet, my boy. Best leave the self-imposed austerity to the experts. Well then.” Narciso rubbed his hands together and spoke in the mildest of tones. He seemed pleased, if for no other reason than getting his own way instead of truckling to the guards’ directive. “I’d say that’s decided, then.”

“Are we all agreed?” Adrio addressed his question to the group, but Petro knew he was his friend’s real target. This was a standoff, a throwing of the dice in a game where it felt like the winner would be taking it all.

Petro had no desire to gamble. Simon Jacobuci inspired no more trust in him than the slickest of hucksters in Cassaforte’s back streets who sold forged artifacts of the Seven and magical cure-alls. Petro no more liked being addressed as “young buck” than he’d enjoyed having leeches applied to his back the year he’d come down with the ague; he found it both patronizing and hostile. What evidence did he have, though, that the man was up to no good? Absolutely none. To persist in his stubbornness would only draw more of Brother Narciso’s ire and would risk pushing Adrio away for good. “I appear outvoted,” he said, shaking his head.

“Well then!” Simon seemed delighted. He slapped his thighs and motioned to his companions. “Won’t that make a pleasant evening. Good eats, better company, and a soft place to lay one’s head. A man can’t ask for anything better. Or a woman, begging the pretty little lady’s pardon.”

“Granted,” said Elettra, flushing.

“Why don’t I take the reins and show you good folk the way, then?” Petro felt it was almost too smooth, the way Simon relieved Brother Narciso of the donkey cart. Soon Simon and Thadeo were on the cart, the poor donkey straining to pull them in a northerly direction. Their unnamed companion lurked behind, chewing on a straw as he followed the rest of the group. From his perch high above the others, Simon turned and smiled. The leer on his flattened, oval-shaped head reminded Petro of the carved, hollowed-out pumpkins children set out on their doorsteps during harvest-tide. “Isn’t this nice, now? I call it nice.”

“I certainly agree, Signor Jacobuci,” Brother Narciso responded heartily, despite having to walk for the first time on the entire journey. How a man of such authority could be so naive, Petro had no idea. “Don’t we all?”

“I do,” Adrio called out. “Awfully nice.”

“I think we all do,” said Elettra, smiling for the first time in days.

All save Petro. Clean linens and a full belly did not a free man make. To him, this last leg of the pilgrimage was beginning to feel like an escort to captivity.

Do not ask me any more of your father. What more need you know than he was a lamb slaughtered by his own countrymen, upon whose misery you soon will feast? Your nurse tells me that you are more interested in the workings of the natural world than that to which you were born. Study the books of war I have sent you, and do not make me admonish you again.

—The spy Gustophe Werner, in a letter to his nephew

The tiny village of Campobasso was smaller even than Eulo. On the whole, it made Eulo look like some sort of tourist’s paradise. Campobasso was little more than a clearing beneath an impossibly high canopy of trees through which the sun only occasionally penetrated, giving the place a haunted air. A pit of ashes studded with the cold remains of large logs sat in the middle of a natural dirt clearing, where rough-hewn benches had been spaced around the perimeter to make some sort of meeting place. There were stables, and a watering trough, and the inn that sat on a patch of sparse and barren ground. That was all there was to the bustling metropolis called Campobasso.

The inn was clean and quaint enough, however. With its stone exterior, its smoking chimneys, and a trellis of wilted-looking honeysuckle vine covering all of the southern end, it seemed right out of an old folk tale. The inn’s padrona was a woman of few smiles and great girth, but her beds were clean, the pitchers of water hot and plentiful, and the ice-cold raspberry foole strong enough to leave their heads spinning.

“My gods, but this stuff is amazing,” Adrio announced to all and sundry, quaffing down the last of his third mug. Padrona Colleta eased her bulk around some of the empty tables to refill his cup. “Well now, young signor, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

After their extended dinner, Adrio and Petro filled a bowl with hard country cheeses and salty olives and followed Colleta to the back of the public room, far from where Brother Narciso and the guards were still laughing and joking with some of the locals.
“I’ve a shed filled with ice straight from the snowy northern foothills,” she assured them, “and the raspberries and wine I have in plenty. Enough to make many a foole.”

“I’m feeling fool enough right now!” Adrio hoisted his mug high in the air to toast the padrona and spilled some of the frothy liquid in the process. He giggled at his mistake.

The padrona pulled her lips into a smile that didn’t seem especially warm. “Anything for friends of my brother,” she said. Her deep, gravelly voice seemed at odds with the welcome she conveyed, but it was difficult to fault her for something she couldn’t overcome. “Enjoy yourself, young signors.”

“She’s nice,” Adrio said, sipping deeply from the foole. “Isn’t she nice, Petro?”

“I’m Adrio,” Petro reminded him. Unlike the padrona, whose voice sounded one way and words sounded another, Petro’s tone was as foul as his mood. His head pounded from the excessive sun and wheat dust of the afternoon, and his single mug contained a liquid that was almost too cold, and definitely too rich and laden with amber wine. “Haven’t you had enough? You’re getting sloppy in more ways than one.”

The foole had left a thick pink-colored mustache on Adrio’s upper lip, but he seemed unaware of it. Petro thought of drawing his attention to it, then changed his mind and merely turned his head and slumped down further on the bench as if he hoped to disappear in the shadows. Adrio put down his mug. “Brother Narciso is right about you.”

“Oh, is he now?” Any hopes Petro might have had for a change in the winds of friendship, after the hot meal and change of clothes, were rapidly vanishing. That kind of comment was designed to irritate. Petro cast a hateful look at the priest, who sat at a table near the fireplace, with Simon and Thadeo and several other men from Campobasso.

There was something unsettling about the greedy way the men’s eyes took in the city folk, as if they were hungry for something that only the pilgrims could provide. In the case of One Eyebrow and the Bearded Lady, it would seem to be the contents of their wallets, for currently the guards were wagering their pocket coin over a game of taroccho. They alternately roared with laughter over the jokes the locals made or with outrage when they lost a round. They seemed elated to be in the company of men their own age, rather than attending to a gaggle of insula brats.

“Oh yes,” said Adrio from the depths of his cup. “The things he says about you.” He obviously wanted Petro to ask exactly what Narciso said, but Petro didn’t plan to fall into that trap. At the moment, he was too busy resenting having to come on this trip to give a fig. Adrio, however, wouldn’t let it rest. “He says you’re a bad influence. He’s told me that when he returns to the city, he’ll be writing Elder Catarre to let her know what an exemplar of behavior I was, and how you were sullen and uncooperative the entire trip.”

A little fire that had been merely smoldering in Petro’s chest flared up a little, but Adrio’s next words were the bellows that began to whip it into an inferno. “Honestly, P—Adrio,” Adrio said, “If you didn’t walk around as if you had a walking stick up your fundament, you’d make this trip easier on everyone.”

Petro had been chewing on the mental image of his best friend and the odious Brother Narciso sitting on the bench of the donkey cart, sharing confidences and talking about him, and he didn’t like the taste. “Gods!” he finally exploded. “Why are you letting that man fill your head with nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense. He understands me. He
likes
me. Brother Narciso sees the real me that people at our insula don’t.”

“The real you?” Petro could scarcely hold back his outrage. Adrio’s eyes were slightly glazed and unfocused from the foole. Petro knew, somewhere in the deeper and cooler recesses of his mind, that his friend didn’t quite know what he was saying. All the talk about Narciso, though, had angered him to the point where he no longer cared. “Who is the real you? Petro Divetri, the glass maker’s son? Is that it?” Adrio blinked rapidly, opened his mouth to reply, then paused to think again. “Because it’s not you. You are not a Divetri.”

“I see.” Adrio sounded more bitter than ground cioccolato. “I’m not good enough to be a Divetri?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you’ve meant for weeks.”

“Well, well!” In the heat of their argument, neither of the boys had noticed Simon Jacobuci stroll over to their corner. He stunk of
tabbaco da fiuto
and insincerity. In his hands he carried a small copper bowl filled to the brim with powdered
soldatos
—strips of candied apricots pounded thin and rolled in crushed nuts and powdered sugar. He plucked out one and snapped it between his teeth. “Only two remain, eh?”

Neither Petro nor Adrio knew what he meant, but Petro was still so infuriated that he didn’t dare do more than jerk his head.

“I meant, the signorina and that devout boy seem to have retired for the night,” Jacobuci added. Amadeo had abstained from the raspberry foole and excused himself from the feast that accompanied it, murmuring proscriptions against overindulgence. Elettra had wanted more bath water and privacy so she could wash the dirt from her hair.

Pointedly ignoring Petro, Adrio said, “Small loss. I’m the only fun one.”

“Indeed you are, Signorino. A reveler, that is. Mind if I … ?” Simon gestured to the bench opposite, and Adrio gestured for him to join them. Petro, in the meantime, focused his anger on the pumpkin-faced man and willed him to go away. Once he’d slung his legs over the bench, Simon perhaps sensed the air of dissension between the two of them. He raised his eyebrows, pushed the bowl of
soldatos
across the table, and asked, “Is all well?”

“All’s very well,” Adrio replied, trying to sound hearty and hale like one of Simon’s confederates. Despite his full belly, he snatched one of the candies. “Very well indeed. Let’s have a toast. To the man who made this all possible!” He lifted his mug high in the air and then buried his face in the opening. “I wouldn’t have a seat at the table without you, my friend.”

Petro had no mug to lift. Neither did Simon, he noticed. The man’s glittering eyes were almost obsidian in the dark corner of the room. They danced over Adrio with what seemed to Petro like amusement. “Oh, I’m not the man who made all this possible,” he said softly, and with meaning. Then in more vigorous tones, he added, “That would be you, my friend. Without your trust and good word, I fear none of your compatriots would have been moved to give my sister a bit of business.” They both turned their heads to regard Petro, who still glowered with suspicion and resentment. It was a feeling that burned even more hotly when he watched them exchange a glance that seemed to agree on his unworthiness as a drinking companion. Tactfully, Simon said, “You should be toasting yourself, young’un.”

Adrio seemed cheered at the idea. “To Petro!” he cried.

It was too late to warn Adrio not to use that name, especially right in front of the Jacobuci fellow. But Petro was a common enough name, and at least he hadn’t called himself a Divetri—a singularity by any measure. Around the tavern, others of Simon’s acquaintance lifted their mugs of ale and cider and laughed, in chorus, “To Petro!”

“To me!” Adrio echoed, delighted with himself. He chugged down half the contents of his mug, then wiped his mouth on his wrist. Petro snorted when he noticed that half his mustache of foole still remained. “I do like Campobasso. On behalf of my—” He had to pause to suppress a hiccup or a belch, or both. “On behalf of my party, I thank you for your generoush
… hic! …
your generous hospitality.”

Petro realized Adrio had had enough. “You’re drunk,” he snapped.

“I’m just happy. He doesn’t like to see me happy,” he confided to Simon. “A little sourpuss, our
…
Adrio.”

“That won’t do,” said Simon, never taking his eyes off the real Adrio. “No one delights in glum company. Am I right?”

This situation was ridiculous. They weren’t even giving Petro the decency of waiting until he was out of earshot before they began talking about him. He tensed his legs and pushed back, as if preparing to stand up, but Simon beat him to it. On his feet, the man bowed low. “But don’t be letting me interrupt your fun, lads. Call out if there’s anything you need. Don’t be shy.” He reached out and ruffled Adrio’s hair. “You’re welcome here.”

With loathing, Petro watched him go.

“Don’t spoil it,” Adrio groused once Simon was out of earshot. “Have a treat.”

Petro shoved the bowl away so that it clattered across the table and spilled some of its sticky contents. “Gods forbid I interrupt your fantasy of being someone important.”

“You are so arrogant.”

“I’ve never known a single one of the Seven who acts as high-and-mighty as you.”

“Look in a mirror lately?” Adrio asked.

Why were he and Adrio even friends at all? Petro couldn’t remember. Was it merely because they had known each other since their first day in the insula? There were plenty of other people who could replace Adrio, if that were the case. Finding his voice at last, he said, “You honestly think you’re someone you’re not.”

“These people were cheering for me,” Adrio replied, pinkening. “You’re jealous.”

Petro pushed himself as far away from his friend as was possible without actually climbing up the wall. “You seem so happy that Brother Narciso is going to write Elder Catarre. Think about it. When Narciso tells the Elder that Adrio Ventimilla is a bad influence on Petro Divetri, it’s you who’s going to be punished. I’m the real Petro, remember? It’s the real you she’ll separate from me and put in some other dormitorium.”