A Brightness Long Ago, page 7
A mistake, Coppo thought, she should never have named him! What if this one was tortured?
“He is good at prayer?”
“Very.” A pause. Coppo waited impatiently, frantic to start moving. Adria said, to the other man, “I would kiss you in thanks, but—”
“It would kill me. You said before. And for the moment you don’t want to do that.”
Coppo heard her laugh, softly.
“For the moment,” she said. Then finally—finally!—she came, limping badly, to Coppo’s side. “You’ll have to bear my weight on the left side, and lift me onto the horse,” she said. “I’ll do the best I can.”
She’d looked back then, but said nothing. Neither did the man. To Coppo he was no more than a shape in the dark, a voice. The stranger turned and went past the tree and bushes and back through the door. He closed it. They heard a bolt slide.
If he’d helped her escape, Coppo thought, he ought to have come with them. Going back into the palace, chances were good he was a dead man.
Not his concern. Except for the fact that he might be tortured, and he’d heard Coppo’s name, which could link tonight to Folco. He was about to point this out to Adria, but decided not to. He pretty much carried her, being an extremely big man, to where the horses were. He lifted her with both arms around her waist and got her onto one of them. She cried out when she had to swing a leg to the other side of the saddle.
She looked down at him, drew a ragged breath. “He knew who I was, and that I was with Folco. It didn’t matter that I said your name. Never assume I am being careless.”
A Ripoli she was, always would be. Born to arrogance and power, however she might run from it.
Coppo grunted, nodded his head. Questions and answers would come later.
They rode, Leone guiding, Coppo beside Adria, Gian at the rear, silent and capable. They went north first, then took a path west along the river in the chill of an autumn night, vineyards on their left, as the blue moon rose behind them over the sea.
* * *
Jelena would live a long life and call herself blessed when she died, though she would not be without griefs and losses, for whose life is without those? She would end her days some distance away, across the sea to the east, dangerously.
She would meet men of strength and courage, and one woman perhaps even more brave, more reckless, than the one in her treatment room this night—though the one in there, recovering from a knife wound, had a vivid force to her.
One giant of a man she would love, and he would father her only child, though she never told him he’d done that and they would never live together. It would never occur to her to tell him of the child—or her love. They could have placed a burden on him, and she would not be indebted or a burden to any man—or woman—in the world. Nor was he a man to be bound.
He would die with Jelena beside him, however, and neither of them had ever expected that he’d die old, in a bed. She would weep that night. She was never without passion or longing, only determined not to be claimed by anything or anyone but her craft and calling. She’d wanted her daughter to go away, shape her own existence, but that didn’t happen. Not everyone had the same nature, and there were worse things than a clever child who stayed with you and learned, to the degree she could, the skills you could teach. There were worse lives for such a child, too.
But even with all of this, through the long arc of her days, Jelena never forgot that autumn night near Mylasia.
* * *
• • •
IT STARTED WITH Carlito, then the dogs barking at the gate after night had fallen. Jelena was always watchful of those in her care as darkness came, and then in the time before dawn, when souls could too easily slip away. She was with the woman in the treatment room, changing her wound dressing again, several lamps burning, and the fireplace. Light was important for what she was doing.
The wound was still bleeding. It had been because of the riding, she said to her patient. She had been given a name when she’d asked for one; she was certain it was false. Same with the three men—they were hiding their identities, to protect someone else, she thought. She hadn’t been told how the injury happened, how a young woman had been stabbed in the leg then had to seek treatment away from anywhere it might be reported. She didn’t need to know. Her task was healing, and she’d been given silver.
The men had slept elsewhere the previous night and stayed away through the daylight hours. The people in this hamlet were good to Jelena because she was good for them, but you didn’t invite speculation, and if someone with coins were to arrive on horseback, in uniform or livery, asking if there had been riders passing by, or staying . . .
One of the three men had slipped back in quietly, the leader, just now, to ask after the woman, then speak to her in whispers when he found her awake, and Jelena permitted it.
He badly desired to ride on. Jelena had made it clear that she could forbid them nothing, wouldn’t even try, but if he wanted his companion to keep her leg and live they could go away themselves if they had to, but would need to leave her to be treated.
The woman said, “Would he come here?”
The man looked nervously at Jelena. “I sent . . . um, Marco last night, to say where we are, but I doubt it. We are too close to . . . the city.”
He wasn’t a good liar. Marco was another invented name. There were mysteries here, and Jelena wasn’t lacking in curiosity. It was just that you couldn’t make someone trust you, and sometimes it really was better not to know things.
Carlito whistled as she’d taught him, from outside, and the dogs stayed quiet, knowing him. The big man, at her nod, hid himself behind the door to the treatment room. Carlito came up the walk and through the front door, carrying a stone jar of honey.
“I thought you’d need more,” he said, importantly.
He was clever and quick. Probably doomed to have these do him little good in the life he’d be allowed. Jelena had begun thinking about such things, how much having a chance to do what you were good at mattered. This boy would stay here all his days, most likely, or go off to be a soldier—and likely die that way, not find a better, freer life.
“Thank you,” Jelena said. “I did need more.” She didn’t, but why tell him that?
“I saw something on the way,” Carlito said. “One man on a horse.”
The dogs started barking in that moment.
Jelena looked at the boy. “One only, you are sure?”
“Of course I am,” he said.
“Good. Thank you. Off you go then, right now, side yard and home. No delay, Carlito, I am very serious.”
He looked at her, saw that she was. He nodded. It was possible he’d disobey, but she didn’t think so. He liked that she let him help and called him her friend, he didn’t want to lose that. He went back out, cut left through the yard to a gap in her fence. She followed to the doorway and called off her dogs. One man was all right.
It was just one. She saw him dismount by the gate.
“Put the horse in the trees,” she called softly.
“Of course,” he said, whoever he was. She saw him lead his mount towards the copse west of her yard. She waited. He came back on foot. She kept the dogs beside her. It was cold out. She became aware of the big man behind her now in the doorway. He’d moved quietly.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said to the one by the gate. “We were just talking about it.”
“She is all right?” the other one asked. He was a voice in the night, the light didn’t reach so far.
“She seems to be,” the big man said.
The one outside said, politely, to Jelena, “May I enter through your gate?” The courtesy was unexpected.
“Yes,” she said.
He came into her yard and up the path and saluted her and named himself. His true name. Not a man who hid his identity. And so, for the first time Jelena encountered Folco Cino d’Acorsi, who was famed through Batiara, and was standing on the path before her door, at night.
She bowed. Her heart had begun racing.
“I am honoured,” she said. “Will I now be killed?”
“Not by me,” he said.
He gestured, and she stepped aside for him to enter, but he didn’t. He stood in front of her. A smaller man than she’d expected, strongly built, remarkably ugly, in truth, with the eye, a scar, a broken nose. He didn’t wear a patch over the eye. The bigger, younger man came out, nodded to him, and at a gesture of Folco’s head, went up the walk to stand by the gate. He’d keep watch now, Jelena realized. The night had changed with this arrival.
“She is in the treatment room to your left,” she said. “This is someone who serves you?”
“This is Adria Ripoli, youngest daughter of the duke of Macera,” he said.
Jelena felt, abruptly, as if she needed to sit down. He looked at her. “It is, you might thereby understand, important that you heal her.”
He went into the treatment room before she could say anything to this.
“In Jad’s holy name, Adria, what have you done to yourself?” she heard him say, through the door.
She didn’t hear the reply. She went to the fireplace and began boiling water for her patient’s next infusion. She was thinking hard, using routine to keep herself steady. What was this woman doing here? A Ripoli? In this house?
But, aristocrat or not, visitors notwithstanding—she’d make the man leave soon if she could—the processes of treatment were not to be altered. They were talking quietly in the other room. She hoped, even more urgently, that Carlito had gone straight home. This was too large a thing, these people were far too important, there was real danger now.
She let the habits of work, movement of hands, slow her heart. You were better at what you did when you were calm.
But then whatever calm she’d worked to achieve was shattered like a thrown drinking glass hitting a wall, because the dogs started up again, frantically this time.
She crossed quickly to the door and opened it. She heard the big man on watch speak a challenge from beyond the gate. Folco d’Acorsi hurried out of the treatment room and stood beside her.
“Coppo! Don’t fight him!” he shouted into the night.
Too late, because there came sharp, quick, hard words—then a clashing of swords and then—almost immediately, it seemed to Jelena—the sound of someone falling, with a cry.
The dogs were still barking, wildly.
“Jad rot his soul in darkness!” the man beside her snarled. “I am going to kill him this time. I am.”
Jelena saw a shape at her gate, another very big man, and heard a deep, soothing voice, not that of the one named Coppo—and her dogs fell silent.
Something that never happened with a stranger.
The gate was opened. Someone paused to greet the two dogs, and then approached, a long stride. She saw him sheathe a sword.
He stopped on the path, a few steps from the doorway and the light.
“He challenged me, d’Acorsi. I may have killed him. Why did you send him out alone?”
Folco, beside her, was breathing hard. “A mistake. I didn’t expect you yet.”
“Yet? You thought I was coming?”
“Of course I did. You are terribly predictable.” Contempt, rage, something else. Jelena put her hands together, so they wouldn’t tremble.
Folco turned to her. “This is an unquiet night for you. I am sorry for it. Here now comes Teobaldo Monticola, called the Wolf of Remigio by some. I think he likes the name. He’s come here to trap me. If he has killed a man I value, that will displease me greatly.”
“He challenged me,” the other man repeated mildly, coming nearer. “Foolish, if he knew who I was. I’ll have to risk your displeasure.”
He was, Jelena saw as the light reached him now, memorably handsome. He was also just as well known as the man beside her, and perhaps even more dangerous. She had seen him the one time in Remigio. Not someone you forgot. It was, Jelena thought, surely impossible that these two were here. The world did not do things like this.
“I’ll boil more water,” she said.
Both men laughed in the same moment. There was no mirth in either, though. The air felt rigid, as if it might crack. She didn’t see ghosts. She did feel fear.
“I’ll have your man brought in,” the handsome one said. He walked a little way back towards her gate and called orders to men Jelena couldn’t see. He turned back. “Your six will have been disarmed, d’Acorsi. I said they weren’t to be hurt, yet. I can’t promise, of course.”
“How did you know there were six?” The voice was soft.
Monticola looked at him. “We watched you coming.”
“No you didn’t,” said Folco d’Acorsi, so quietly this time he could barely be heard. “That’s a bad lie.”
Jelena expected, from that moment, that she’d die before morning came.
CHAPTER III
Prayers in a sanctuary were believed to have more weight but the liturgy taught that you could invoke Jad anywhere at any time, that the god was always present, even at night when he drove the chariot of the sun under the world to battle demons in darkness to defend mankind.
Coppo had been told once that in the east Jad was depicted not in luminous, bright-haired glory, but as dark, bearded, anguished: suffering for his children and labouring under the burden of protecting them. It was heresy, but sometimes Coppo thought that this way of picturing the god made sense. The duty of care, the responsibility of protection, these weighed on you. And in the world Jad had made for his children there was more than enough suffering to go around.
He told himself his own sorrows were minor in the scheme of what there was, but he missed his father all the time, every day. That accident in the quarry had cut off a decent man too soon, left his only son, at ten, responsible for too much. Responsibility, that was Jad’s great burden, wasn’t it? Why should mortals escape it?
He was standing alone in the night, neither moon yet risen, outside the cottage of the healer Leone had found for them, for Adria. And now Folco was here, more quickly than Coppo had expected. But he’d had to tell Gian to report that Adria had been hurt achieving what she’d come to do, although she’d done it. They all worried greatly about her—especially Folco—given who she was, and the lady Caterina’s displeasure as to her role with them.
“If my niece does not come back, I will arrange for our new Esperañan to poison you.” The lady of Acorsi had said that to him, to Coppo Peralta, who dreamed of her. She didn’t mean it, he was sure she didn’t mean it, but even so . . .
And now he had Folco to worry about, in this isolated cottage too close to Mylasia, where it was certain that violence and tumult had already begun. At least, Coppo thought, with Folco here he didn’t have to make decisions any more.
A sound from his left. A horse, a man dismounting, not bothering to keep quiet. Coppo drew his sword.
“Identify yourself,” he called into the night.
“Delighted to do so,” came the reply. “I am Teobaldo Monticola di Remigio. You will know of me. Shall I kill you or will you stand aside?”
Coppo had never not been a brave man, and here was his own lord’s fiercest enemy in a world with many of those. Pushing towards this man’s Remigio was a reason they were here, why Adria had gone into Mylasia.
“I cannot stand aside,” he said. “And you cannot enter this house, my lord, unless invited.”
“Both, in fact, untrue,” said the voice in the dark. Coppo saw the figure of a man as big as he was emerge from the night. “Save your life and move from the gate. I am alone, for what that is worth.”
“You will wait here and I will go in and report.”
“No,” said the other man. “That isn’t how this happens, soldier. I like surprising people. I haven’t surprised Folco in too long.” Coppo heard a sound he knew, a sword unsheathed. “I don’t believe I’ll permit a guard to deprive me of that pleasure. I dislike being deprived. But I truly have no desire to fight you.”
“I said stop!” Coppo said, and levelled his blade.
“Oh, dear. I believe you have now threatened me,” said Teobaldo Monticola. “Why would any man of sense do that?”
Coppo was good with a sword, which made it horrifying, even before extremes of pain arrived at his left shoulder and then that same side, how easily the other man mastered him. It took no time, none at all, really, it was scarcely even a fight. He heard himself cry out as he fell to the hard ground.
He could say that cry was intended as a warning, but in truth it was only pain—and the fear he was dead now, here in the night.
The other man, the lord of Remigio, didn’t even look down at him. Coppo heard him step past and open the gate he’d been defending. He thought of his mother then, in the retreat where she served, washing laundry for the Daughters of Jad. Coppo was all she had. Well, no, she had her god.
Jad, from tonight, might be all there was for her. He put a hand to his side and felt the wet blood there. He seemed to be on his back, looking at the sky. Stars, so many of them, then a slow blackness growing. He felt shame, and pain, and an astonishing sorrow. He wondered if the god carried this much sorrow all the time. He hoped it wasn’t so.
* * *
Two men in riding gear, no livery to identify them, carried the wounded man into Jelena’s treatment room. Blood dripped where they walked.
They were decently careful of him. Jelena had the sense they had done this before. Of course they had, if they were soldiers of Remigio’s lord. His father had won the city. Had been offered it by the citizens, in fact, as a leader who could protect them. Folco’s grandfather had done the same in Acorsi. Strong men with an army? It was better they defend you than the opposite.
