A Brightness Long Ago, page 35
“Yes, lord,” I said to him. “My man has them here.”
“Not, I trust, drawn upon the Sardi Bank of Firenta.”
That was Teobaldo. He did smile, saying it. He was being paid by Bischio—and us—to fight the Sardis’ army.
I didn’t smile. This was an important exchange, the heart of my mission here. I was, to be honest, more than a little afraid. I was just carrying the money, but I was carrying it to him. For a war. Because Macera and Seressa had decided, alone and then together, that neither viewed Firenta capturing Bischio and the areas it controlled and taxed as a good thing.
Helping the smaller city retain a major commander—pretty much the major commander, with the possible exception of the one he was to face—was judged to be in their shared interest, and worth money spent. Within reason, of course. Fifteen thousand each felt like reason, I had been told by the duke. It did need to be done with discretion, given that the High Patriarch was a Sardi now.
“Not drawn on the Sardi Bank, no,” I said. “Brunetto?”
He came forward, head lowered, as was proper, and withdrew the papers from his satchel. He gave them to me. I gave them to Gherardo, who had come forward. He put on eyeglasses and read them beside a lamp. It was morning, but this room had curtains drawn. He looked at his brother and nodded.
Monticola smiled. “There are reasons why I have been looking forward to this war, and now you have given me another. Good. I do,” he added, “have a condition, however.”
I had been told there might be conditions. I had been told I was not to accept anything to do with money. On other matters I was told to use my discretion.
I had no idea what my discretion could even mean. Did I have any worth the name? I suspected if I did badly here I was a bookseller again. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing, just then. Ambition, I had decided a year ago, was complicated.
“Conditions, my lord?”
“Yes.” He continued to smile. I didn’t trust it, that smile. Handsome, assured, he said, “You will come with me part of the way west. Not to Bischio. I intend to find d’Acorsi on the way. I want you there when it happens.”
“Why, lord?” I asked, controlling my voice. But I knew.
“Because Seressa’s role will be known eventually. Bischio could never have paid me enough on its own. But I want it known at the right time for me—or for Bischio, if you prefer.”
Bischio was hardly beloved, it was much more that Firenta was feared. I was thinking hard, trying to do so usefully. “Macera’s role, too, lord?”
“You have no link to Macera, but he’ll figure it out. Say what you like about Folco, but he figures things out. And so does that clever bastard Piero Sardi.”
“I was tasked to do this transaction and return, lord.”
“And will have doubtless been instructed to react and respond to events. I know Seressa, remember? I have worked for you before. My condition is now an event. React and respond. Send the ship back with a letter, Danino of Seressa. I want you with me. We’ll be leaving soon, now that I’ve been paid.”
React to events. To conditions. Binding books was easier.
“Yes, lord,” was what I said. “I will do so.”
“I had no doubt you would. Now, sit down. I have a thing to tell you.”
“My lord?”
He seated himself first, by a large table with two lamps on it. He gestured to another chair. I had no idea what this was about. Looking back, I understand he was offering a courtesy, a kindness, because he didn’t know that much . . .
I sat down.
He said, “There was an uprising in Macera. We learned last night. A rebellion. The Abbato family, with the Conditti. It was always possible.”
I felt a chill. Like a wind in the room.
He said, “Arimanno defeated it, but two of his sons were killed. Also,” he said, “his daughter Adria. It is said she died wielding a sword. Remarkable, if so. A remarkable woman. I believe she was someone you encountered, and might have cared for in some fashion. If this is true, I am sorry to report it, but thought you’d want to know.”
And that is how I learned.
The rain misses the cloud as it falls through the world.
* * *
• • •
SOMETIMES HAVING TASKS and duties is useful. I have found that many times. When my first wife died bearing our second child, who also died, I needed very badly to be busy. I found ways to be. We hurl ourselves like stones from a cannon into work, until we crash into some wall of the self, and then we grieve . . . if I may risk overstating my imagery.
I went back to the ship and wrote my letter to the duke and council. I was as precise as I could be in recounting the morning in the reception room and in the smaller room behind—except for the detail about Adria Ripoli and my sorrow. Some things, even in office, are allowed to be your own.
I still believe that, though it is also true that you can think something is private and it is not.
I told Queratesi he was in charge of the ship returning home. I would be accompanying Teobaldo Monticola west. He asked me why. It was a fair question, there was no denying it. I did deny him an answer, however. It was in my letter to the duke, I said.
He would not appreciate my giving him orders, but he’d like being in command. And he would never open a letter under seal to Duke Ricci. You died badly if that came out, and your family was dispossessed of all they had. There’d be spies on the ship. Seressa spied on its own people, too, not just those beyond our canals and lagoon.
Monticola was right, I’d realized. Our involvement in the defence of Bischio would be known soon. It was probably surmised already, ever since the Wolf of Remigio had ridden to that city the year before to watch a race—and have discussions with the commune leaders. He was expensive. They were not poor, but . . . he was expensive. And it was hardly a secret that other powers would not be enthused about Firenta expanding in this way.
I wouldn’t be revealing anything by being seen with him. I might be making something explicit, and that could even—I thought, wishing I had someone wise to talk to—prevent a war or siege. The Sardis were bold, might test the will of other city-states, but Piero was a banker first, which meant boldness tempered by prudence. Or so I finally decided, without guidance or support, and thinking about Adria, helplessly.
We left three days later. But something else happened on that first afternoon, down by the harbour.
I was writing my letter to the duke and council. The first of a great many since that day. I was trying to imagine how my teacher would have phrased things, as I wrote.
Brunetto appeared in the low doorway of the small chamber and said someone wished to speak with me on the dock. Then he told me who it was. I went up on deck and down the ramp.
It was late in the day by then, the sun lighting Remigio’s towers and domes and the ships around us in the harbour. There was a handsome carriage at the bottom of our ramp. Beside it, standing exposed, waiting for me, was Ginevra della Valle.
I went up to her and bowed again. I couldn’t have said what I expected. I was too far out of my depth.
We were alone there, afternoon light, gulls overhead, a breeze from the sea, sounds of a busy small harbour. She said, quietly, crisply, what she’d come to say, then turned to leave me there.
I swallowed, and called after her. She did turn back, slowly. Her glance was calm, attentive.
I asked her a question, awkwardly.
She raised her eyebrows. “Because you are Seressa now, Signore Cerra, and your city is a nest of snakes. And I want you to know that I know it, and will not forget.”
I, not we, or Teobaldo.
I just nodded. What was I to say to that, which all Batiara believed to be true—with cause? I bowed again. She turned and entered her carriage and it rolled away, wheels, horses’ hooves.
I went back on board my ship, our ship, Seressa’s. I had thought, childishly, that she liked me, that perhaps I even appealed to her in some fashion. I might have, but that was so far down any measure of what mattered to her that it hardly registered at all. I understand that better now.
* * *
• • •
IT WAS A LARGE, well-equipped army Monticola di Remigio was taking to the support of Bischio. Cavalry with armoured horses, pikemen and shield-bearers among the infantry, his celebrated mounted archers. No artillery. Bischio would have cannons and bringing them made you slow.
The army had been waiting outside Remigio, encamped in tents. Waiting for me, it seemed—and the payments. Large armies were expensive and commanders did not move without money. After which, a good leader went quickly, especially if he had an intent to surprise an enemy and needed to be somewhere first. That much I managed to figure out as we headed west.
I was riding a good horse. I believe Monticola gave instructions as to that himself. I remember him as a man who could surprise you, in many ways.
They both were, he and Folco. Matched and ferociously opposed, dramatically different and much the same in skills, in what they wanted, in what they’d achieved.
We did get to where Monticola wished to be though not before Folco arrived. I didn’t understand about the place at the time. I do now. I’d been there before, too.
And there, where they met, much changed, because we are not in control of all or even most of the elements of our world: earth and air, water and fire, light and dark. Fortune and the turning of her wheel.
* * *
Folco d’Acorsi still has nightmares at times. He never talks about his dreams, but others do about theirs, and some have written them down, going back to the Ancients, so he has always known that this is a normal thing. He’s not unusual. People’s nights are troubled, variously.
He would prefer to not be ordinary in this way, but he is only mortal, and must accept that truth with humility—and pray for Jad’s light when he dies. There is no soldier he has ever known who does not think about dying.
His nights can also be troubled by fears for his wife and the children who have survived. He sometimes dreams of Acorsi besieged by a great, fog-shrouded army sent from one or more of the larger city-states—because his city is not a major power. He is a military leader whose father and grandfather were also that, and their family claimed a small city and made it theirs. He exists as the lord of Acorsi at the sufferance of Macera, Seressa, Rhodias—even Firenta now, given how wealthy the Sardis are. He serves these powers in the field, plays a role that keeps them in balance with each other—and away from his own walls.
Yes, if he takes Bischio for the Sardis now it alters that balance, but sometimes you need to cast your lot with a power you see rising. And sometimes you may want it to seem that way to them. Because Folco d’Acorsi owes as much to cleverness as he does to skill at war.
He doesn’t believe he’ll capture Bischio this spring.
He’s just about certain Seressa and Macera will together fund a force too large for him to defeat. He will take Piero Sardi’s money, go to war for him, then negotiate a truce before Bischio’s walls—before the heat of midsummer arrives, bringing illness and hunger for the troops of a siege. Money to induce him to go away will change hands.
That is his expectation. That is what should happen if he has anticipated properly. The sty in his eye, the thing that makes it hard to see unfolding events clearly enough, to plan properly, is that it is Teobaldo Monticola opposing him, and . . . too much lies behind and between the two of them.
The past can destroy the certainties of the present.
One of his dreams, hardly a nightmare, is of killing the other man. Different weapons, different ways. He has no doubt Monticola dreams of killing him.
The other man has his own city to protect, and will also have no desire to be an enemy of larger powers, but he is so dangerous. Brave, tactically brilliant. Prone to impulse and therefore unpredictable. And Folco had made a sally in his direction when he had the Beast of Mylasia assassinated, in the hope of taking Uberto’s city in the chaos that might follow his death.
It was a bad thing, that Monticola had learned of this by way of a spy (very much dead now) in Acorsi. That woman in Folco’s own palace, in Caterina’s chambers. You could have bad dreams about that, too. He can’t imagine life if his wife dies. Not a good truth, but a truth.
The worst nightmare, the one that keeps coming back, is not about this, however. The dream that too often returns isn’t about a bereft future, it is a reliving of the past . . .
* * *
• • •
HE’D BEEN VERY YOUNG.
When he wakes in terror, he always tries to remind himself of that: as forgiveness, explanation, understanding. He’ll have sweat on his face and body wherever he has been sleeping, as now, in a tent, leading an army towards Bischio, all these years after.
Twenty years old that summer. Not new to war, for his father had been bringing him on campaigns for years, had taught him (brusquely), then entrusted him with small commands: collecting tribute, dealing with brigands, serving under a senior commander with men they’d agreed to send to a war. Jad knew, there were enough wars.
He had learned quickly. He paid attention, remembered things, had never lacked courage. He was good on a horse and with a sword. He was very strong, even when young. The lost eye, from a joust during a midwinter feast at Macera, he had adjusted for. You turned your head more often, and swiftly, you learned other cues for depth in a swordfight, you made yourself better with a bow than before. Fortune’s randomness gave things to a man, took things away. What point lamenting? You offered thanks for gifts, prayed for light at the end, carried on.
He’d had his largest army yet in the heat of that summer long ago. It was late in the season but they’d been paid to join a significant force fighting on behalf of the Patriarch. Rhodias wanted two cities subdued. They’d expressed unacceptable desire for independence, which meant not paying taxes to the Patriarchal reserves. There were religious sanctions in place—denial of access to clerical blessings at deaths and births—but those seldom caused men to pay what they owed in a sadly impious world.
Soldiers were needed for that. The threat of death opened coffers.
His father had agreed to send a force to supplement one already out under another leader. He let Folco command Acorsi’s company. His father had gout by then, in summer’s heat a painful affliction. Folco didn’t think it would kill him, but he turned out to be wrong about that. He was lord of Acorsi himself by the next summer.
Carrying a memory that still entered and defined too many nights.
Teobaldo Monticola had also been young, though by three years the older man. In later times, when they were the acknowledged great commanders, people would assume Folco was the older of the two. An easy mistake to make. As the years passed, Monticola di Remigio remained strikingly handsome, had his hair, good teeth, no missing eye, no vivid scar. Three years was nothing later, but when you were both young those added years at war could matter.
The army of Remigio had been hired by the two cities the Patriarch sought to discipline. Since being disciplined in those days, in that part of the world, tended to be violent, they had pooled resources and retained an emerging, allegedly brilliant young commander to protect them.
Teobaldo Monticola was brilliant in the field. Later years enshrined it as deeply as any truth whispered to the god before an altar, but even then it was something those who knew war could see in him.
Folco’s army had considerable cavalry, three horses for each rider, two men on foot to assist each horseman, one of those carrying a pike in the newer fashion. Including infantry and archers, he led almost five thousand men. He needed to be aware also of the usual followers of any army—present to make sure his soldiers were kept happy—but they couldn’t be allowed to slow him down. He had a woman with him himself. It was pretty much expected. A commander needed to appear a man among men in all ways, especially if he was very young. Later that year negotiations would begin for his marriage to Caterina Ripoli. It became a coup for Acorsi, eventually, their young lord marrying into the family that controlled Macera.
The fact that it became a love match was irrelevant in the dance of city-states, however life-defining it might be for the man and woman.
He’d had scouts ranging in front of his army. Two of these alerted him, racing back one afternoon in a white midday heat, that Monticola’s army was encamped ahead of them in a wide, flat field. There was a wood to the north, the river was south. That army, they judged, was a little larger or a little smaller than their own.
It was not usual to encounter an enemy this way. It was also frightening, though he couldn’t show that. A force defending cities (two cities) ought to be inside already, strengthening defences, arranging for food to be brought in. It was extremely rare for armies to fight in open country. Mercenaries didn’t like dying any more than anyone else did. You wanted your payment. If a city surrendered, it was on terms that tended to be honoured. Sometimes walls were breached in an assault and then you sacked the city. It didn’t happen often. Soldiers died in assaults. It was wasteful.
If the young lord of Remigio (Monticola’s father had died when he was seventeen) was here in the open, blocking their path, it was a direct challenge, a mocking of the even younger son of the lord of Acorsi. Teobaldo Monticola would be assuming he could put Folco’s army to embarrassing flight, or smash enough of them to badly disrupt the joint forces attacking the cities he was defending.
So, Folco had been twenty years old and was being challenged, before his own army—and the world—by a man already reported to be dangerous in battle.
