A Brightness Long Ago, page 31
Men and women die every hour of every day, but Adria Ripoli’s was a brilliant, restless, still-growing soul, and there were differences she might have made in the world from a retreat near Rhodias, or anywhere else.
It is possible to contend that the sweep of time will do what it does regardless of who is there to observe it or try to shape it. But it is also possible to believe that people make a difference. They can offer others safety and calm, shelter in a wild wind—or be the ones bringing death on that wind, because making a difference is not always benign.
It can be, however.
She’d raced down from the roof to her room to claim the sword she’d insisted on keeping there, and trying to learn to use, from late in childhood. She was never skilled with a blade. Not every gift is ours, even with desire.
She ought to have stayed in her rooms, guarded, or crossed that upper floor to join her parents where they were. Or remained on the roof. She did not do any of those things. Her nature, her pride. We are what we are in the world, when it allows.
Their soldiers were fighting the rebels in the courtyard, having run through the ground level of the palace from the barracks outside. Some of them did break through to both stairwells, up behind the attackers there—and they did stop them, meeting the duke’s guards above, slaughtering men.
But not before one of those rebels, an Abbato it was later learned, put his sword into the youngest daughter of the Ripoli, whose name was Adria, and who had shone brighter, by a great deal, than was normally permitted one so young, and a woman.
She was set down in the largest sitting room. Her parents were there, guards around them and at the doors, with weapons drawn. Her brothers were fighting below. She was breathing with difficulty and cried out again when the man bearing her put her gently down on a cloak someone spread on the marble floor.
Arimanno, weeping, knelt by his daughter and took her hand between his own. He had held it, dancing, earlier that night. Her mother—Adria heard her voice as if from a distance—was calling urgently for their doctors. She thought of the healer who had helped her two years ago, outside Mylasia. She knew where Jelena was now, too, she’d written a letter on her behalf earlier today, to Folco. In that time before the sun had set and the blue moon had risen through stars, and . . .
There were lamps, but the room seemed oddly dark. She closed her eyes then opened them again, but there was no greater light. She heard her father saying, also from far away now though he was right beside her, “Child, hold strong! The physicians are coming!”
But she knew by then. She knew that being strong or brave was sometimes not enough. She looked at him, at love and terror in that known face. She reached for breath and said, as clearly as she could, “I am sorry I wasn’t what you both wanted me to be.” Her mother was here, too, somewhere in these shadows.
“Not true!” she heard Corinna Ripoli say. “Never think it, Adria!”
But her father, nearer, mouth to her ear, said, “You are so much more. But do not speak. Marshall strength. See, they are here now! The doctors are both here!”
Strength, again. But it was too late for that. It had been, she thought, too late when the sword went into her.
She offered no more words before she died. There are not always wise or meaningful words spoken at the end of a life. Nor does courage always find a reward, except in the memory of others, perhaps, and that is a tenuous thing.
* * *
• • •
SHE WONDERS WHO ELSE is here, wherever she is. She seems to be suspended in a space above her body. She can see her parents weeping, and others. This is no time to be weeping, she wants to say to them, there is an attack taking place!
She ought to be afraid, she thinks. She is dead, she knows it. But fearful is no way to prepare to meet your god, is it? And she has not lived that way, it’s not what she has been, and she won’t take this next step that way, either. If she can help it. Perhaps there is, being honest, some fear, just now.
But there seems to have been so little time. Time, she thinks, was the thing, wasn’t it? She’d needed more. Probably most people wished for that. There was always more to learn, and be. Places, people. Love to find among men and women. Knowledge, laughter, horses to ride.
Not about to happen, it seems. Not for her. Even now (not enough time, even here!) the people below, around her dead body, appear to be fading, or blurring, they are disappearing. From her. Whatever is coming is beginning as something ends. Life. Life ends. Hers. Such a great shame, she thinks.
Now she appears to be outside that room entirely, to have passed through the ceiling, amazingly! She is hovering above the palace, the city. They look very beautiful, she thinks. She is above the whole world, looking down . . . a long way now, at the roof where she’d been standing when . . .
Horses, she thinks. She’d so much loved their courage, power, grace.
Light, she thinks. The god who offers it. To some.
There is no more pain, at least. She can hold to courage, to her own nature, the memory of it, and look to see what will come next.
Then it does come to her, for her, and she is air, moonlight, lost, gone.
* * *
• • •
ARIMANNO RIPOLI’S TWO older sons also died that night. They, too, had seized weapons and hurtled down the main staircase into the courtyard to meet the first wave of rebels there. The third son, the youngest, was wounded in the arm, but was pulled back to safety inside and upstairs, and he survived.
There is an aspect to this, too, showing again how seldom men and women can confidently shape or even anticipate the future.
That third brother, just a year older than Adria, was much the most capable of the Ripoli sons. He would almost certainly never have come to power, but with his brothers dead he was named Arimanno’s heir, and became duke of Macera when his father went to the god.
And it was because of this, because of him, that the Ripoli dynasty survived, grew stronger, lasted as long as it did—which had a great effect on Batiara and the world, in so many ways.
It is harder to measure what his sister’s life and death meant.
It was said at Adria Ripoli’s memorial service, some time after that rebellion had been savagely crushed, with two hundred and forty-six mutilated bodies rotting in the city square and severed heads spiked on the city walls, that she had died as she’d have wanted to, defending her family and home, braver than any woman known (speeches in honour of the dead are always thus).
There was both truth and an old, sad lie in this, since she’d not have wanted to die so young at all. She had a life to look forward to and live, savour, the way one tastes fresh fruit in midsummer or new wine in autumn, or observes the two moons after love as they shine through a window, riding through clouds in the night.
She lies in the Ripoli Chapel in the great sanctuary of Macera. On the slab of marble set into the wall there are only her name and the year she’d been born and the year she died. Someone looking at this after enough time had passed wouldn’t know anything about her at all. Only that she’d lived and—by the dates shown—died young. And because she’d been a woman they’d be likely to think illness, or childbirth.
Unless they looked at the fresco above—and connected it to her. Because on one wall of the family chapel her father had had the celebrated Matteo Mercati paint a woman, tall, with dark red hair (it faded to brown in the fresco after many years passed). She was shown riding a splendid horse, which was highly unusual. She looked fierce and proud, and even carried a sword in one hand, because her father had wanted her painted that way.
* * *
• • •
THE HARSHNESS OF Duke Arimanno’s response to that night was in good part due to his daughter’s death. This was generally understood.
It was because of Adria that the women of the Abbato and Conditti families were killed in the square with their fathers and brothers and sons, dragged from their homes and hacked apart. They were not sexually assaulted—which was also because of Adria, since he’d never have wanted her so treated. They were simply killed, as she had been. He mourned his youngest daughter the rest of his days, felt her absence, lived her loss.
So did others. Folco d’Acorsi and his wife Caterina among them, her aunt and uncle. And also, a Seressini tailor’s son who had known her only briefly, and only on two occasions, but had been aware from their first meeting on a stairway in a different palace that this woman had claimed him, his heart, a part of whatever life he would live. This is a recognition that sometimes, if rarely, does come to some of us . . .
* * *
The sailors say the rain misses the cloud even as it falls through light or dark into the sea. I miss her like that as I fall through my life, through time, the chaos of our time. I dream she is alive even now, but there is nothing to give weight or value to that, it is only me, and what I want to be true. It is only longing.
We can want things so much sometimes. It is the way we are.
CHAPTER XII
It was true that the twin brothers who ruled Avegna had generously supported the celebrated school there, educating their children along with the sons and sometimes the daughters of other aristocrats, and a number of others, as well. The brothers honoured Guarino Peselli, who had founded and still led their school.
Notwithstanding this, it would have been a dangerous error to think them soft or particularly kind-hearted. Especially where the security of their city-state was concerned. Or the revenues that were a good part of that security—and of their own comforts.
Because of this, when the city of Rosso, southeast of Avegna, was late for a third season in paying taxes properly due (by agreement!) for their protection, it became necessary, the Ricciardiano brothers agreed, to make a strong statement. Such statements, in Batiara in that time, generally meant destruction and people dying.
Rosso was a fair-sized city, however, and it had maintained and repaired its walls—very likely with some of the monies due!
In short, it was not a trivial military exercise to either compel it to submit or to break through the walls. For various reasons, mainly to do with other commitments of their preferred mercenary leader, a siege was not going to be possible that spring and summer, though destruction could certainly be visited upon the farmland and water mills and logging nearby.
Their preferred mercenary leader was Folco Cino d’Acorsi. He’d attended the school, of course, and maintained cordial relations with Avegna’s lords afterwards. There had even been a time when a marriage between him and their sister had been discussed, but d’Acorsi had done better (they’d had to concede it), marrying into the Ripoli of Macera. The Ricciardiani were well-respected, style-setters in a time when style mattered, but Macera was significantly larger and wealthier.
Still, Folco fought for them when he was in a position to do so, and often just the threat of his name and army had been sufficient to quell unpleasant signs of dissent in cities from which they claimed taxes.
With Rosso, unfortunately, that had not been the case. It was another of those self-governing communes that seemed to be proliferating in Batiara. It evidently chafed at the level of taxation Avegna required (always requested politely, and with style!). The citizens of Rosso appeared to think they deserved to be free of Avegna, and that they could be.
Not a useful idea, the twins agreed, and this would be so even if other towns and cities owing them taxes were not watching with interest.
Folco had been engaged by Firenta and the Sardi family this year for the subjugation of Bischio. (There were divergent views as to just how bad this would be for political balance in Batiara, but it was fair to say no one liked it.)
Nonetheless, d’Acorsi agreed to assemble a small force and make an effort before the walls of Rosso for his old friends. His fee (very fairly) was for a set period of time he could commit, with a significant additional sum if he broke through, or induced surrender and the payment of the sums owed. He undertook to return with a larger army the next spring if he did not succeed, for a fee to be negotiated.
The lord of Acorsi was, as always, a pleasure to deal with, in person or by correspondence, although you really wouldn’t want to be late, or underweight, in paying him.
* * *
• • •
HE HAD TWELVE hundred men, four hundred of them mounted, outside Rosso.
It was early in the spring. He needed to start west for Bischio soon with an army of twelve thousand. He had only a little time here, accordingly, but he had promised to try, and was being paid.
He did not yet know—no one did—what had happened in Macera. The uprising. Word had reached Acorsi in two days and messengers had been sent by his wife to find him immediately. It was news Folco needed to learn, for many reasons.
He would weep, though not where anyone could see him doing so.
Right now, he was staring at the well-maintained walls of Rosso. He could take it, of course he could, but not in the time he had, or with these numbers and without artillery.
He had been executing campaigns like this, with variations, for a quarter of a century, since he’d crossed out of childhood.
It was a way of life, of sustaining their family, protecting Acorsi, allowing things he wanted: wealth, a measure of power, renown, the things that brought renown. Also pride, being aware that he was extremely good at war, and that the world was aware of it.
He was known to be pious, and a patron of artists, architects, poets, alchemists, philosophers, bringing them to Acorsi. He had also killed, over the years, a great number of men and women, had burned cities, let his men run wild after a conquest.
There was, in Batiara, no contradiction seen between this love of art and thought, and a violent life, and Folco Cino d’Acorsi might have been offered as an example of this truth.
Also, if he was honest with himself—and that became more important as you grew older, and nearer to your death and the god—he still loved it. War. Even now, after so many seasons in the field. Spring came, and his heart quickened, and not just for the return of flowers and leaves and light.
His wife, whom he also loved, said he preferred being on campaign to being in her bed, or with her in a garden or by a window at sunset. He denied it. He felt his denial as truth. He looked her in the eye when he said it, but it was . . . it was not entirely simple.
There was a fire, a ferocious brightness to existence when you were at war, carrying a sword, riding a good horse, knowing your life might end that day or the next. The keenness of how the world appeared to a man at such times.
Of course, this was also a little dishonest, since the leaders of a mercenary company, especially one as feared as his, rarely faced any extreme danger of dying in a battle.
They were at greater risk of stomach flux, or crippling back pain from a bad night on a cot following a long day in the saddle. Battles were rare. The art of war in their time was to achieve one’s military goals without fighting at all. That was how you kept your army mostly alive, and your horses (horses mattered a great deal), and brought money home.
The great captains all knew each other, were all engaged in the same war-for-profit dance. There was seldom need to have anything so unruly and unpredictable as a battle in open country. Your employer one year might want one; that didn’t mean you did.
There were formal rules for sieges. A city might agree to surrender by a certain date, for a certain fee paid you, if a relieving army did not arrive for them. If such a force did come, you went away. If it didn’t, you let the city open its gates and surrender. Their defending garrison marched and rode out past you—and you did no great harm inside.
There were many ways to avoid fighting. For the right sum, you could switch sides and join your current foe. A city won a war, often, just by having more money than the other side. It wasn’t as if the city-states or the High Patriarch (perhaps the best employer of all) were going to refuse to hire a strong captain the next year. Their options were limited. There were many leaders but few good ones. It was a dance.
The dying, when matters came to that, tended to be done by others. Farmers whose fields were ruined, harvested crops seized, and who starved, accordingly. Or men and women in a city like Rosso, now, which was refusing—obstinately, recklessly—to yield to him and simply deliver the taxes they owed Avegna. If they forced him to come back next year and breach their walls there’d be a terrible price paid here. There would have to be. You couldn’t allow these refusals.
He’d sent his cousin Aldo, his longtime deputy commander, to the gates to deliver that warning just now. Aldo was a daunting man with a hard voice. He was good at this (at many things), and utterly loyal to their family. He had no extreme ambitions beyond what he was doing, and hated their enemies perhaps even more than Folco did.
He was accompanied to the walls, for the experience of it, by the younger son of one of the prominent families in Acorsi. Having sons of noble families in the field with him was a status boost for a commander, but for those who ruled cities it was also useful with respect to forestalling trouble at home: sons with the army were hostages against their family’s good conduct while the lord was away at war. Cities were restive places, needed to be monitored.
The threat Aldo carried was simple. If Rosso did not yield and pay their arrears, d’Acorsi would be back next year with a vastly larger army. They would bring artillery and engineers. They would destroy the countryside around Rosso, not just a few symbolic farms as they’d done coming here now. They would live off the land during a siege. People would die in great numbers.
