A Brightness Long Ago, page 29
He knew their armies were headed for Bischio this spring. He had known that since last year, when Folco d’Acorsi had escorted him south to the race.
Now he had a letter from the healer who had saved his life, had changed it—made him a better man, you might even say. And she was expressing fear of their army, his family’s army, from within the city of Dondi where she lived.
He could send men to bring her to him here, but in her letter she said that was not what she wanted for her life (she had said the same thing a year before). She wrote to ask him to intercede to protect the innocent souls of a small, imperilled city.
It was his family and city that endangered them, after all, she wrote in her letter. That was true, Antenami decided. There was no way around agreeing.
He bestirred himself, arriving in his father’s workroom quite early. His father appeared to have been there for some time, as always. His father never slept, or so it seemed. His brother wasn’t in the room yet. Antenami wasn’t certain which of them frightened him more. Their father, probably, but Versano had such a command of scorn . . .
He greeted his father, who was at his desk reviewing documents. Piero Sardi looked up at him. Surprise could be seen in a normally impassive face.
“Antenami. You are very early. Why?” he asked.
“To learn more about what we are planning this spring,” Antenami said, as he’d rehearsed on the way from his chambers. “I should not remain ignorant of such weighty matters.”
“You’ve been content to be so before,” his father said, but he did not look displeased.
“I know. But we have not waged a war of this sort.”
“We have warred before.”
“Barignan. I know, father. This seems . . . weightier.” He was repeating a word, which his brother would have mocked.
His father removed the spectacles he wore to read. He looked at his disappointing younger son for a time, and then his mouth moved and it was very nearly possible to say that he smiled. He pointed to another desk. “There are copies of the orders for our troops. Read them, then share your thoughts. This . . . this pleases me, son.”
He hadn’t said that in . . . well, possibly forever, Antenami thought.
He had feared the documents would be lengthy and confusing but they weren’t, and he was looking for a specific name, in any case.
Folco was heading from Acorsi along the major roads towards Bischio. He would not come to Firenta, his route would be south of them. It might or might not intersect that of Teobaldo Monticola, which was interesting.
Folco wrote that he would not seek out a fight, but if it happened he was of the view that with ground properly chosen he could prevail in an open engagement—and strip Bischio of its relieving force before it got there.
Of course, a major battle between those two men would be more than simply a tactical encounter. Even Antenami knew that much. He tried to picture it.
Absent such a meeting, Folco wrote, he proposed to join forces with Boriforte, who had been retained to lead their smaller army based in Firenta. They would either engage Monticola outside Bischio if the other commander came out, or commence a siege if he did not. Monticola’s army would be too large for an assault on the city. But its presence would also mean a very large number of additional mouths to feed, and they might well be forced out in summer by hunger. There would be a battle if that happened. The issue was what ground near Bischio would see it, and Folco intended to choose that.
He sought his esteemed patrons’ views, he wrote, but his own was that this was the manner in which they ought to proceed.
Antenami Sardi wished to be at such a battle, and also to be a considerable distance away from it.
He consulted an attached set of documents. These were Folco’s detailed orders for Ariberti Boriforte, who would be bringing up their cannons. Antenami had seen the man many times over the winter; he frequented the better class of brothels. They were obviously paying him enough to do that.
Boriforte’s orders, he saw, had already been countersigned—and thus approved—by Piero Sardi. The man was to proceed south, quite soon in fact, harrying people into Bischio before the siege. The expectation appeared to be that Folco would besiege Bischio through spring and summer—by which time the city would be starving, or Monticola would have come out to fight.
It was hoped that surrender would come before that. Monticola could surrender, or just negotiate a departure for his army, leaving Bischio to its destiny. Mercenaries did that sort of thing all the time.
But in this second set of instructions Antenami found what he was looking for. No towns or cities between the two warring cities were to be attacked or looted, Folco had written. Those paying taxes to Bischio would be required to do the same to Firenta after they triumphed. That was a large part of what this was all about. And the memory of an ugly period after the siege of Barignan was still with them. It hadn’t been so long ago.
This meant, as far as Antenami could grasp, that the small city of Dondi ought to be safe. His father wanted townspeople to survive, flourish, carry on with their markets and trades—and pay taxes here, perhaps as soon as autumn if the campaign went well.
He was a little surprised to discover that it all made sense to him. He ventured to say as much to his father. He added that it did indeed seem proper to be careful with the towns between, since they needed them amicable, or at least not hostile, if allegiance and taxes were to be transferred.
His father removed his spectacles again. He nodded briskly. “Exactly so. We handled things badly at Barignan. It cost a great deal of money to address that.” He didn’t speak of the deaths caused in the sack of that city, but he wouldn’t do that.
Antenami said, “Was that Folco’s fault?”
His father shrugged. “He commanded, so, yes. Or you could say it was mine.”
“Hardly, father!” said Antenami.
“No. No. I paid and retained him, so . . . But the error, once we were inside the walls, was the lesser commander’s. Massato. Folco entrusted him to keep order when the soldiers went in. He failed, or he chose to fail, to keep his men happy.”
“What happened to him? Where is he?”
“Buried,” said Piero Sardi. He smiled. “He kept the wrong people happy.”
He had a particular smile that wasn’t pleasant at all. The one he’d just used. In a world full of clever men, Antenami’s father was seen by many as the shrewdest. He added, “Folco d’Acorsi dislikes living with the blame for that violence, even today.”
“Is that a weakness in him?” Antenami surprised himself with the question.
Surprised his father, too. Piero looked at his younger son. “Do you know,” he said, “it might be.” He put his eyeglasses back on and wrote something down.
They heard a sound. Antenami turned. His brother came in. Versano nodded at their father, ignored Antenami.
Piero Sardi was still looking at his younger son, however, the spectacles removed again. He said, “Would you like to accompany Boriforte? We require an official to report back, and deal with supply requests. You might take on that role.”
“My brother?” Versano said quickly. He was, clearly, astonished.
“I would be honoured to be trusted,” Antenami said, looking only at his father. Thinking back, after, he realized he’d said it because of Versano’s interjection as much as for any other reason.
He had no real idea what the city official with a mercenary force was tasked with doing, but it turned out not to be so difficult, either. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought all these matters would be hard.
He took Fillaro as his principal horse—you needed three—and a dozen of his own guards and attendants.
They set out a week later along the same road he’d taken a year before towards Bischio, winding through the green and birdsong. Summer’s heat would dry the grass and flowers later, but right now they were beautiful. He saw men and women working in fields by the road. He thought about how springtime meant war and death for many, not a returning of life. That, too, was a new thought for him.
On the first night, he had Boriforte dine with him. He made a jest about the man having the same name—in the male form—as a Blessed Victim. He didn’t think the mercenary was amused. Had probably heard it too often. No matter. Antenami did bring out the orders to review them. He stressed that they were to drive farmers ahead of them as soon as they crossed out of Firenta’s hinterland and reached Bischio’s, but were to leave all cities and towns along the route untouched, for reasons set forth.
Ariberti Boriforte’s expression darkened at this, Antenami noticed. He wondered if he was becoming more of a noticing sort of man.
“We have to make all such decisions based on what we encounter,” the commander said. He drank from his wine. “It is what soldiers are trained to do.”
Antenami nodded his head, said nothing. But he decided that it might be a good thing, after all, that he was here.
After dinner, as Boriforte was leaving, Antenami asked, as if idly, whether the other man knew where that mercenary they’d once employed, Ciotto Massato, was buried, and had his family been looked after?
Boriforte said that he didn’t know. His expression (Antenami noticed) became thoughtful, even after a quantity of wine.
Before going to bed he dictated a letter to the man he’d brought for this purpose—the one with the best handwriting and spelling. He sent this with a rider to his brother, a second copy to their father, overnight, putting it on Versano to confirm with Folco d’Acorsi, and send Antenami that confirmation, that the towns along the route were to be left untroubled.
He had never, as best he could recall, instructed Versano to do anything before. The copy to their father meant that Versano likely would do it. It felt as if he was learning new things every day.
He went to bed. He slept surprisingly well, given he was in a tent and on a hard cot. He woke with the sunrise birdsong, ready for more of whatever this was.
* * *
One of the things Eldest Daughters did at important retreats was correspond widely, sometimes with important figures. It was a reason a retreat could be a pathway for an ambitious woman. One who sought not only to control her own life, but possibly influence the world beyond whichever walls she found herself behind—or chose, if she was the daughter of the duke of Macera, and had that privilege.
Adria didn’t know if she’d arrive at a Daughters retreat and be named Eldest immediately (though being young was not necessarily a problem in that regard, there were precedents). She wasn’t even certain she wanted to be. There would be a great deal she’d need to know about power first, just as she’d learned from Folco and her aunt (and her parents, in truth, though she was angry with them).
A strong, clever woman—an aged one, perhaps—leading at a retreat, a woman she could observe, that was her own ideal. The donation her father was about to make (he was saving himself her dowry, after all) could ensure she arrived as the tacitly anointed successor to such a woman.
There was a great deal of politics involved in this.
Careful investigations were done when a daughter of an important family chose the serene life of serving Jad. One could be amused, knowing that actual piety was often just an option, or take the process seriously. Adria went back and forth between the two attitudes.
What didn’t change was her conviction that this was the path for her. Once she’d left Bischio behind she’d had an increasing certainty of that. An interval in her life had ended on that racetrack. She knew it, Folco knew it. Her Aunt Caterina had known it even earlier, Adria suspected. Women like her aunt and her mother could find power and influence in the right marriage, but that was often out of their control, so much good or bad fortune went into it.
If you married a fool? Or another Uberto of Mylasia?
No, this course was better. It was even possible, she thought, that she might find piety within herself. Unlikely, given her family and her nature, but . . . life could change you, couldn’t it? She had no idea what being old would feel like.
In the meantime, she had been writing letters, a kind of preparation. She didn’t dictate them, she wanted her own hand to be clear, strong. Separate letters went to Folco and her aunt. A long one to the mother of Coppo Peralta, who had died outside a healer’s house in the dark, killed by Teobaldo Monticola.
She didn’t know if Coppo’s mother could read; she probably couldn’t, but she was at a retreat, working for the Daughters there, someone would read it to her. Adria sent money, as well. She knew Folco had done the same.
She’d also written a bookseller in Seressa, three times, and had those letters seized by her father (or her mother, which was possible).
She’d used her own man for a fourth letter as spring came. This one reached him. She knew this, because Danio replied, cleverly, carefully. Distractingly, also, as to knowing and learning things. He sent a book, bound, as she’d requested, in red leather.
Not long after, she heard that two of her father’s guards had returned from Seressa (secrets were hard to keep in a palace). Each of them had had his right hand cut off.
This was, given that they served the duke of Macera, extremely serious.
It appeared they had been found guilty by the Council of Twelve of attacking a citizen of the republic, in Seressa. A bookseller, apparently. They carried back a letter for her father from the acting duke of Seressa. This violent punishment was, it appeared, a Seressini provocation. Or it might be something else. If guards from Macera had assaulted a citizen inside Seressa, and the two men had talked about it under questioning, the provocation would have been theirs . . .
Earlier that same day, another letter had arrived for Adria, unexpectedly. This one from Firenta, which was not a city allied with them. It was from Jelena, the woman who had healed her and then had done the same for Antenami Sardi—whose man carried the letter.
Adria read it, then did so again. She spent the morning thinking about many things, but mostly of assassins sent after a tailor’s son who sold books now.
She went to her father. He would be in an anxious, angry mood because of his two men. But so was she, and she did not fear him, even if others did.
* * *
• • •
ARIMANNO, THE FIRST duke of Macera (first because he had paid a truly mad sum for the title—to vest in him and his heirs forever), saw his youngest daughter approaching through his garden on a spring morning.
He loved his gardens. Gardens were an island of order imposed upon the chaos of the world. He spent time here whenever he could, consulting with and instructing those he employed to devise and maintain them. He enjoyed these conversations greatly.
Duke Arimanno loved many things. Hunting, of course. Horses. Dogs. Cooked pheasant and good wine. Truffles in autumn. Large, generous women (his wife was neither). He was a reader: out of doors, or by lamp and fire at night. Music eased his anxieties, if well performed. False notes distressed him, elicited anger. He was quick to anger, often out of fear.
He feared many things. More than he loved, in truth. He was terrified of large rabbits (one had been rabid, had menaced him when he was young, he had a memory of shouts, screams). He disliked travel, inns, the castles or palaces of others. Not sleeping in his own bed. He was afraid of erect penises not his own. He was frightened by eclipses of the god’s sun. Everyone feared those, but the Ripoli family tale was that his grandfather had died during one, so there was reason to fear. Such things had meaning! He feared being poisoned, used a taster for his food. Also, portents and the possibility of ghosts frightened him. He lived in terror of his soul’s fate when he died and came to be judged by the god. His sister Caterina, married to Folco d’Acorsi, frightened him. So did his wife.
He had not expected to be afraid of his youngest daughter’s fire and force as she grew up. He told himself he wasn’t uneasy now, seeing her approach, long-legged, head high. Adria was very tall, it always came as a surprise when he hadn’t seen her for a time. Not as tall as he was, though, and she was his child, and much too headstrong, needed curbing like a horse.
He turned from his flower beds, waved two gardeners farther away, and crossed his arms to receive her in the sunshine, preparing a necessary rebuke.
“By the blood of the god and all the Blessed Victims, father, how dare you?”
She stopped directly in front of him, too close for his ease of mind. The duke fought an impulse to take a step backwards. It would look wrong—also a flower bed was behind him. She had spoken loudly; the gardeners might well have heard.
“Mind your tongue, child,” he said. “Remember who you are.”
“I am the daughter of a fool,” Adria snapped, not quietly. “Even if my mother is surely not one.”
He was caught between his own anger and the distressing awareness (from this morning) that he might have made a large mistake, and that this was what she was addressing.
“Mind your—” he began again.
“I will not!” Adria said. Her colour was high. She had a face more expressive of energy and vigour than grace, but there was no denying the . . . well, the vigour. She was glaring as if she meant him harm!
She said, “You sent men to kill a bookseller? A bookseller? Men who could be questioned and discovered to be yours?”
There it was. He attempted to wither her with a glance.
“I am very angry about what Seressa did to our poor men,” he said coldly.
His daughter laughed. “If I learned anything from Folco, I’ll wager the letter you just received says that they could have been sentenced—properly!—to death, and that was commuted to maiming only out of respect for you!”
This was, unfortunately, correct. The duke cleared his throat. “Even so. To assault men of my personal guard and—”
