A Brightness Long Ago, page 37
I went too, which is why I can tell this story.
* * *
• • •
TEOBALDO MOVED FORWARD along this bank of the stream. We saw the holy retreat, on the far side, as we went by. A little farther west we began to cross the narrow, swift river. The artillery remained on this side. I’d actually wondered if we might be attacked while crossing but that wasn’t what would happen here, not with the two of them. Messengers on horseback were also sent across, to meet those sent by Folco.
I saw our soldiers begin forming ranks in the field. Folco’s army was already arrayed on the western side, we took the east. Or, Teobaldo Monticola’s mercenary army took the east. I thought that way for a moment, that this had nothing to do with me, and then turned the thought around: I was Seressa here, and Seressa was with Bischio against Firenta, which meant I was aligned with Monticola. I’d be seen that way.
How I felt about the two of them didn’t matter. I was an office-holder, my role defined me. It was a new feeling.
I was also trying to deal with the size of the two armies assembling between water and wood. Surely, I thought, surely these two forces were not going to battle here. The slaughter would be immense, and mercenaries deplored losing men, everyone knew that. The retreat, with its domed sanctuary, was easily visible from where we were. So they’d have seen us all from there. I wondered what they were thinking behind their walls.
Monticola stopped by the riverbank on our side, watching the meeting of messengers on the other bank.
“He’s never forgotten it,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. A quarter century gone and it still burns.”
I had no idea what he meant. He wasn’t speaking to me—or to anyone else. The wind had dropped. Our wolf banners lay against the poles on which they were carried. Folco’s was a falcon, and those, too, were draped and curled. It was past midday. Not hot, a lovely afternoon, I remember. Sweetness in the air. Sunlight, high white clouds.
Our messengers came splashing across the stream.
“He says he will be delighted to meet with you,” the older of them said.
“That was his phrase?”
“It isn’t mine, lord,” the man said. “Two companions each, he suggests.”
Monticola smiled. He named two men. Gaetan of Ferrieres, his second-in-command, was one of them.
I was the other. I was the other.
I told myself it had nothing to do with who I was. He wanted d’Acorsi to see someone from Seressa and know what that meant. Mostly, I still think that was accurate.
We rode across the river, three of us. The rest of Monticola’s cavalry had also crossed, farther back east, to not interfere with the meeting, or be seen to be doing so. The water was swift and cold, the banks quite steep. I saw sluice gates, and channels leading north from them. They could be opened to irrigate the fields on that side.
I saw Folco riding towards us, two men with him as well. Monticola stopped, not far from the river. We waited, on our horses. My mouth was dry. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. Birds were singing. It was spring, why would they not be?
* * *
• • •
MONTICOLA SPOKE FIRST. He was always the more impulsive. “Greetings! Shall we open the sluices to make this interesting?” he asked.
“I thought you’d say that,” Folco replied calmly. “Let’s not. I neglected to bring watercraft.”
The other man laughed, genuine amusement. “So did I.” His expression changed. “I heard about Macera. It seems to have been dealt with by the duke, but I am sorry about the girl, d’Acorsi.”
I hadn’t expected that right at the start. I swallowed, hoped no one noticed. It was unlikely they would.
“Good of you to say so,” said Folco, still calmly. Then he was looking at me, the one observant eye. “You’ve brought someone who will also be sorry to know of it.”
Was he exposing me? Trying to? Monticola knew I knew who Adria was, I had told him about her in Bischio before the race. I’d only lied about how I knew her. Was there more to this . . . ? I was, again, out of my depth.
I said, “I am, my lord. She had even begun buying books from me in Seressa.”
“You are far afield for a bookseller, Guidanio Cerra.” I hadn’t thought he’d remember my name.
“I am no longer a—”
“He is the representative of the Council of Twelve, sent to collect my port fees.” Monticola’s voice was crisp.
“Ah. And to pay you for this army?”
Folco had been looking at Monticola, but he turned back to me. He shook his head. “Would you imagine it is unexpected, that Seressa—and Macera—would prefer Bischio not be taken?” He looked at Monticola again. “Did I need a message? Does Piero Sardi?”
The other man shrugged, but I had a sense he was displeased. There had been too little impact to his bringing me here. None at all, really. I said nothing. I remember feeling afraid. Those two could do that to people.
“Ah, well. I suppose he can go home, then,” Monticola said.
“Why would I care what he does?” said Folco d’Acorsi.
He looked at me again, and what I remember seeing—or thinking I saw—was disappointment. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t, remembering. Why were they even talking about me? To me? Or was I just a way in to something else, as you might ask a man about the state of his vineyards or horses, before killing him?
“You’d like to kill me here, wouldn’t you?”
It was Monticola who said it aloud. It might as easily have been the other man, I thought.
Folco smiled, at ease in the saddle of his own splendid horse. “And you are free of such desires?”
Teobaldo did not return the smile. “I am not. It is always with me, d’Acorsi. All I need do is think of the lie about your sister. Using her that way.”
“Do not,” said Folco, “speak of her.”
“Why? Out of fear? I am to fear you? Or is it because whenever I do I expose your father—and you—as liars before the world?”
“No. Out of simple decency towards the dead, Remigio. Have you any?”
“I do. I always have. Did your father? Do you, even now?”
I saw the man beside Folco pull at the reins of his horse, as if fighting anger. Monticola saw it, too. “Aldo Cino!” he said brightly. “Helped any Daughters of Jad over any walls after dark lately?”
I had no idea what that meant, either. The named man, who would be Folco’s cousin and second-in-command, said nothing. He was white-faced, however.
Folco’s expression as he looked at Monticola was not one I’d ever have wanted directed at me. He said, “Let us leave the dead, recent or long ago, at peace. Pray they are with Jad. Can we do that?”
Monticola’s expression became odd. Defiant, angry, aggrieved? He said, “The dead have been your tools, d’Acorsi. Both recent and long ago. It lies ill in your mouth to speak piously.”
Folco swore crudely. “What is it you want, man?”
Teobaldo laughed again, not with amusement this time. “What I want? To defend Bischio against Firenta. I’m paid to do that. If I kill enough of your men here I’ll be done.”
“You would like a battle?”
A gesture with one hand, almost of outrage. “Folco, in Jad’s name, you assembled here! I am headed for Bischio. What do you want? Redress for shame twenty-five years ago? I can’t give you that.”
I still didn’t understand, but I saw something in Folco, a tightening of his face. His cousin was looking at him.
Folco shook his head. “No. It amused me to be here. To let you see what we are bringing to Bischio. But if you want a fight . . .”
Monticola snorted. “I knew what was coming to Bischio. I know your numbers. And the artillery? Led by that vain fool, Boriforte? He was the best Piero Sardi could do for you? And you knew what I’d be bringing, once you realized I had money for a larger force.” He gestured at me, saying that. “So . . . now you don’t want to fight?”
Another headshake. “I thought I did, but it would be wasteful. Although I’d beat you.”
A short laugh. “You have never defeated me in the field in your life.”
“And you’ve defeated me? Will you say that? Before Jad? We’d slaughter a great many men here, Remigio.”
“We would. We could fight alone, of course. Then let your cousin bury you here, or carry your body home. The clerics over that way could chant the rites for you.” He nodded towards the retreat. “D’Acorsi, I still believe you deserve to die badly for what you did to Vanetta’s name and memory.”
Another motion from the cousin, but also from Folco this time, a chopping gesture with one hand. “I told you not to speak of her! Do not put my sister’s name in your mouth.”
Monticola reddened. “You hold to the lie? I suppose you have to, after all this time. Very well. Fight me, then. But know this: I will be the one fighting for the honour of Vanetta Cino, not her brother.”
“Do not! Do not speak her name!”
“But I will! I am weary of this, it has gone on too long. I will speak of her, and declare her memory tarnished by her father and brother—for their own purposes. Fight me for saying it! With an army, or with a sword. Your choice. Nothing happened in that retreat!”
“You went there! For revenge!”
“And nothing happened. And you knew it then—from her! Fight me!”
“You are a vicious son of a vicious family. You destroyed her by going there! It was over for her the moment you climbed a wall and went to her room. What value denials after that was known?”
“What value? Her word, my sworn word. The First Daughter would have also spoken before an altar for her—and for me—if asked. But your Jad-cursed father decided otherwise. He destroyed his child to damage me and Remigio, and you have sustained it for all these years! Honouring him by sullying her? Well done, my lord!”
Folco was trembling now. So, in fact, was Monticola, I saw. The past, a hard, sudden thought, can kill men today.
“Just the two of us, then,” said Folco, forcing the words out. “It is past time.”
“It is,” said Monticola.
“I should have killed you years ago.”
“You should have died trying. Do you want to pray first, my lord of Acorsi? Are you at peace with Jad?”
“As much as I will ever be.”
“Folco . . .” began his cousin.
That chopping hand gesture again, and the cousin was silent.
I realized I was shaking too. I heard the birds, the sound of the river behind us.
And then I heard, we all heard, another sound, and we came to understand that everything had changed. For all of us living through our days in that time, that place, in the world as it had been given to us—or the world our choices had made.
It was a calm day, the most tender thread of a breeze. The sky was high, distant. And in that calm, down where we were on the god’s earth, beside a river, we heard bells begin to toll, the sound coming clearly to us from the walled retreat and sanctuary, over the fields between.
We still didn’t know. Not in that moment. But we turned that way and we saw that three yellow-robed clerics had come out through the gates of the retreat and were making their way towards us.
Two of them were carrying bells, heavy ones held in both hands, and they were ringing them steadily as they came. The third was a tall, lean man, quite old I saw as they drew nearer, and I also saw that he was weeping, tears streaming down his face, and so, too, were the two clerics with him, they were also weeping as they swung their ponderous bells. And they came across the springtime earth towards us under the sun and those high clouds, and they stopped near to where we sat astride our horses, and the tall one, the Eldest Son of Jad in that retreat, spoke to us.
And so I learned, we learned, that word had just come to them of the fall of Sarantium and the changing of the world.
* * *
• • •
MEMORY IS A TROUBLING THING, I have found. Some moments, even long ago, are vividly recalled (or we think they are); others, as important, perhaps even more so in our lives, are difficult to recollect with clarity.
The day when I was with the lords of Acorsi and Remigio and learned that the City of Cities had fallen to the Asharites was a bright spring day, I know it was. But trying to reclaim the moments after the cleric told us what they had just learned . . . it feels as if there is a mist, like fog off our lagoon or the greyness of a day of winter rain, shrouding everything when I try to see back through the years.
I was shaken. I was shattered, it might be better to say. We all were. How not? Truly, how not? We were as glass, dropped from a height to break on a stone floor.
My first clear memory is of having dismounted from my horse (but I don’t remember doing that), standing in that field and seeing Folco Cino and Teobaldo Monticola kneeling. So I did the same. The old cleric was weeping still, and the younger ones were still swinging their heavy bells, and the great bells from the sanctuary were still tolling. Or so my memory says. I may not be reliable in all of this.
I think it was Folco who spoke first. I remember him as saying, “Forgive us all, most holy god. This is our great sin before you, and it will weigh upon us forever.”
Then, as if he’d been struck by a thought, he turned his head quickly and looked at Monticola beside him, who had not spoken, whose face was covered by his hands.
“Teobaldo!” he said—I had never heard him use the name—“Hold to faith and the god! He may live! They will not all have remained, and not all who did, surely, not all of them will have—”
“Yes!” cried Gaetan, Monticola’s longtime companion, kneeling beside me. “Yes, lord. Trussio might have survived! We must not—”
In my memory Teobaldo Monticola lifts his handsome head and looks at Folco beside him, and he says, “No. My son will have stayed, and died on the walls. I know him. I . . . knew him. I can only . . . I can . . . will you pray with me, Acorsi, for his soul? Will you do that?”
“For him, for all of them,” Folco said. “And for forgiveness, which we do not deserve.”
And then I remember us inside the walled retreat, though I don’t recall how we came to be there. We are within the sanctuary and offering prayers before the altar with the clerics: for Sarantium and all those who will have died there while we went about our lives, pursuing our wars and ambitions and grievances, as if they were the things most worthy of our attention and desire.
City of Cities. I knew from my teacher something of what it must have been like once. He had shown us chronicles, descriptions. We had read from them. We cannot forget that beauty, one ambassador from Moskav had written home, after seeing Sarantium. Guarino had taken some of us to Varena, shown us mosaics there, of two emperors and their courts.
Even in our own time, long since fallen from its glory . . . even a thousand years after those glittering courts, Sarantium had remained the greatest city on earth. A triple-walled stronghold of Jad in the east—even if the god was understood differently there. And now . . . it was gone. Fallen. I saw fires in my mind. The unbreachable walls had been breached. And it was not hard to imagine what the conquerors, bearing the star-strewn banners of their own faith, would have done there, triumphant after so long and bitter a time.
* * *
• • •
MY MEMORY, TO NOW, to this night in Seressa, still holds the sound of the two of them singing as they knelt beside each other. Teobaldo’s voice unexpectedly light, tuneful; Folco’s deeper, carrying faith in it, I thought, like a heavy branch.
Let light be our mercy,
Let it be thy grace,
Unworthy as we are.
Let your presence be the destiny
Of all who love you.
Let our weaknesses and errors be forgiven
As a part of what we are—
Because you have made us so.
Be merciful, most holy Jad,
Because without your mercy we are lost
In the world you have given us.
I was feeling undone, destroyed; that’s why my memory is sporadic, blurred, uncertain. I knew my own feelings were nothing, they didn’t matter, except to me. I thought of the clerics all around us, and what this calamity would mean to them in their deep faith. And that was before I discovered, standing afterwards at the doors of the sanctuary, preparing to go back out into a different world, how they had come to learn of the fall.
One of their own had gone east a year ago to Sarantium. Last spring, when I was in Bischio with both these men and with Adria Ripoli, watching her race, following her to an inn, being consumed, altered by her—again. For life, I’d thought. I’d thought it even then.
At some point that same season, we were told, a young cleric had left this retreat and gone east to defend Jad against assault—as none of the rest of us had. Well, almost none of us. Monticola’s son had been there. Remigio’s face as we stood by the doorway looked as if it had been pulled taut against his bones.
That young cleric had evidently been writing home to the retreat all the year, letters slow in winter but coming through. And the latest one had been sent on what he’d said would be the last ship, the night before the final assault—which could not be, he’d written, which would not be stopped.
The wall was breached, he said. There were not enough of them left. Sarantium was open. Morning would see it taken and they would die. So he’d written to them here.
There were brave men beside him, he’d said, some from Batiara. The empress mother had been sent away—against her will—to safety by her son. (She would live a long time, that one. She is still alive now, in Dubrava, as I find myself remembering that day, telling a part of this story.)
