TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

Allegreto dropped her letter in the fire. He sat down before the great hearth, watching the wax melt in a sizzling red stream and drip to the stone while the parchment smoked and took flame. Her entreaties to him slowly vanished, marks of ink that blackened and curled and fell away to ash. "No reply," he said.

He heard Zafer go to the door and speak to the guard through the barred window in it. There were vivid moments when he thought to kill himself, most powerfully when she wrote to him of how willing Franco Pietro was to sign her accord if Allegreto would, and urging him to put his head on the Riata’s block for chopping.

He could find no way out. She had tethered and trapped him on all sides, and not with walls or guards. He could not leave, he could not remain, he saw no future. He could find no way to anywhere but Hell, by his own hand or by Franco’s.

He had a set of chambers furnished as fine as a silver merchant’s, with a featherbed and writing table, any books he desired from Ligurio’s library, a second room for alchemical work and visits from the steward appointed to administer Navona’s reinstated properties. Zafer shared his confinement, and Margaret seemed to have some lodging somewhere in the castle; they both served him, faithfully performing credence as if he cared whether he drank poison pure from the cup.

With Zafer’s contrivance, he would have been able to leave this finely furnished prison easily enough in a trail of blood. But he remained, watching the fortress across the narrows for Franco to make his attempt, watching the citadel, spreading a silent cordon of protection around her as he could.

His endeavor would have been more effective if Dario had not managed to discern every attempt he had made so far to infiltrate a man to the citadel. Allegreto received sharp chiding on the matter in his letters from Elena, as if it were a schoolboy’s trick. She seemed determined to be a martyr to this cause, exposing herself in peril to everyone but him.

Dario at least was there. Zafer was the best, but he was stained too deep with Allegreto’s taint to be suffered inside the citadel.

The small fire in the hearth smoked and popped. Allegreto opened the papal dispatch again, holding the smooth vellum between his fingers. The true Pope seemed to be going mad; Allegreto’s letters of supplication had chased him all the way to Naples, where the holy father appeared to have no business but to grab at some rich territory for his fat and useless nephew, leaving Rome in disarray. If Allegreto would bring armies from Monteverde in aid of this hallowed endeavor to wring more blood from the kingdom of Naples, God’s highest representative on earth would consider Allegreto’s humble petition to lift his excommunication.

Allegreto tore off the handful of holy seals and sent them with scornful flicks one by one into the fire. He laid his head back in the chair and thought of a girl with a bloodied sword in her hand and a dream of another way.

This is my answer, she had said.

It was not stone walls that held him here. Not guards or blades or chains. It was her answer, that there was another way, and even if he could not touch her or see her again, he could at least stand in the shadows and shield her from his kind.

"My lord," Zafer said, placing a goblet with the embossing of a stag toward Allegreto—signal that he had some news. Allegreto took up the wine and rose, carrying it with him as he ducked out onto the tiny parapet walk that overlooked the lake.

Zafer stood in front of the low door, as if he merely awaited his master’s orders. "Franco was invited to the citadel, under guard, to see his son and parley with her," the youth said, softly enough that his voice was carried away by the breeze.

Allegreto set his wine down on the parapet.

The lake glimmered, blue and purple depths, the color of her eyes. She invited Franco. Winter and spring and summer, Allegreto had endured, his mind and body screaming for release from this velvet trap.

She invited Franco. Allowed him inside the citadel.

He hurled the goblet, watching red wine arch through the air as the cup turned and tumbled and fell. It receded to a mere glint against the stunning drop of the walls and the cliff, the huge surface of the lake. He lost sight of it.

"What else?" he said.

"Only the public audiences, my lord. After Franco departed, she saw Venice and Milan and Trento. And an envoy has arrived from the Duke of Lancaster. She spoke to him after in private."

"In private?"

"Dario was with them. The envoy is an Englishman, Raymond de Clare by name."

Allegreto stilled. He turned his look on Zafer.

There was a nearly imperceptible flaring of Zafer’s nostrils; a sudden wariness in his dark eyes. "My lord—he is an enemy?"

An enemy. The sanctified knight of her love poems. The gallant, charming, faultless Raymond. She saw him in private, that mud-stained offspring of an English pigsty.

Allegreto turned back to the lake. His knuckles grew white as he pressed his fingers into the rough stone parapet. He stood looking across to the citadel, containing the desire to cut his own throat and let himself fall, plunging downward like the cup spilling wine.

 

* * *

 

Elena made plans for what she knew was an error. It was courting jeopardy past reason or defense. On the night before the council meant to choose a husband for her, she left the citadel.

She had Franco’s words, that he recognized her as impartial— thus far. But he was only the head of Riata. There were those of his house who chafed under his surprising restraint, hating their lowered status and Navona’s elevation. Her grandfather had warned of such things in his book. Elena was trying to follow Ligurio’s counsel, working to bring them into some bettered situation, raising this one to new offices, bestowing a windfall on another, trying to make certain no one of the houses worked directly together, or worse, over one another.

But they were not wholly appeased. If any rumor spread of her destination, all was at risk. And her life was always forfeit if she failed.

She took only Dario, though he was loathe to do it, his obedience bought by the threat of being removed entirely from his post at her bedchamber door. Through the rainy night he rowed her across the lake to the eastern headland. Both of them climbed the path on the cliff, past the little trysting cave. Thunder rumbled above the mountains. By the light of a shuttered lantern, they came to the postern door of the castle, set deep within the rock.

A guard met them there, one of Philip’s best men. Elena wore the modest clothes of a maid, only a black shift with short sleeves, her hair wrapped up in one long cloth like a poor woman. But over that, she had a striped hood, the legal mark of a prostitute in Monteverde.

She kept her face lowered as they climbed the stairs and passed through the tiers of guards, walking between Dario and Philip’s man. Any murmur of interest from the other soldiers was quelled with a cuff, or a gruff mumble: "It’s permitted to him for a night."

By the time they reached the last heavily guarded door, Elena did not know if her heart was working so hard from the climb or for the moment when she would see him. There was a brief pause as Philip’s man worked his key. The door opened. From her lowered gaze, Elena saw that someone moved into it, blocking the way.

"Out," Dario said briefly. "He won’t want your company."

She realized it was Zafer who stood in the door. He hesitated, and then obeyed, leaving the doorway free. Dario gave her a hard little push. Elena walked through. She heard the lock and bolt made fast.

She stood a moment, lifting her face, her heart pounding in her ears. At midnight several candles still burned, but the chamber was empty, furnished with excellent comfort as she had ordered, the table covered with parchment and books. A pot of fresh ink gleamed black beside a sheaf of new-cut quills.

One doorway led outside, standing open, the rain falling in a steady splatter of sound. A peculiar scent hung in the air over the fresh smell of rain, a sudden and intense reminder of his study on the island. She walked past the table to another arched door that stood open. As she lowered her head to go through, she saw no one beyond, though the familiar blue light illuminated a table crowded with glass globes and vials and a mortar and pestle.

She was about to speak when her arm was seized and twisted up behind her. The spike of pain would have made her cry out but for the hand gripped over her mouth hard enough to stifle anything beyond a muffled yelp.

He held her trapped for an instant, driving sharp agony into her shoulder. Then he drew a deep breath at her throat and suddenly let her go.

Elena sagged with relief, turning. She rubbed her shoulder, looking up under the hood at Allegreto.

His face held no pleasure, no sign of any surprise or feeling at the sight of her. "I thought Franco might have sent a woman," he said without greeting.

She realized that he meant someone sent to murder him. It was not how she had hoped to begin.

"I was afraid to send word ahead to you. That it might be discovered."

He observed her impassively. "Your disguise is well-chosen."

Elena lowered her chin, doubtful of how to take his meaning. He was as comely as she remembered—more so, with all traces of his bruises long vanished. He wore pure black silk trimmed with silver and pearls at his cuffs. His hair had grown long again, braided now behind his neck in infidel fashion.

Raymond was a handsome man of even features and a charming smile. Allegreto was simply Lucifer made real, the lord of light fallen down to perfect darkness in the flesh.

"What is it?" he asked. "Why have you come?"

Now that she was here, facing his cool reception, she was hardly certain. She had wanted to assure him that she would not give in to the council and marry. She had thought he would have heard of what was planned. She thought he would care.

In truth, she had wanted to see him so badly that she had not let sense or reason stop her.

She walked to the table, pushing the damp prostitute’s hood from her head. "The council meets tomorrow, to choose a husband for me."

"I know it."

She bent her head. Atop an open parchment, amid his curious beakers and tools, lay the piece of black stone that he had purchased from the Egyptian—a lifetime ago, it seemed. Across the parchment were inked copies of the strange letters upon the rock. She traced the odd carvings with her fingers.

She looked sideways at him over the folds of the black-and-white hood. "What should I do?"

He gave a short laugh. "You pose it to me?"

She wet her lips, looking quickly down again. She had not meant to ask, but to tell him. But now—he was so cold. He seemed to feel nothing of the tumult she had inside herself, the pain and thrill in her blood, the sensation of merely standing in the same chamber with him again.

"You have told me that we are wed," she said to the stone and parchment.

"I lied," he said bluntly. "You are free. You have the Pope’s own word on it, I hear."

She turned and leaned back with her hands gripping the edge of the table. "In my heart, I am not free."

He walked past her to the far side of the board. "You came to torture me, is that it? Monteverde bitch. I wonder that I have not killed all the women who ever bore the name."

She let go of the edge, watching him as he put his palms on the table and bent over an open book. The pearl-encrusted cuffs fell down over his hands.

"Do you think it does not torture me?" she asked.

With a slam he closed the book. He looked up at her. "Then why did you come?" he said fiercely.

"Why are you still here?" she asked. "I know that you could escape."

His hands opened wide across the leather binding, his fingers spread and white between the joints. "And go where? Do what? I would have fought Riata, and won, but I will not fight you."

"That is all?"

He gave her such a look that she nearly stepped backward, though the table was between them.

"You take pleasure in this, don’t you?" he said softly.

She did take a step back then, when he came around the table toward her. He seemed to move with leisure, and yet he was before her suddenly, dauntingly, cornering her against the table.

"You take pleasure in binding me here, while you bid Franco to the citadel and play with your English knight." His black lashes were like smoke, lowered over his dark eyes in disdain. "I know you."

She shook her head. "Not in this!" she exclaimed. "I hate it." 

"Do you want to know how much it torments me? Do you want to see for yourself that I have a poison ready at my hand, for when I can bear this no longer?" 

"No!"

He stood back. "But that is a distraction only, to give me comfort. I will not die a suicide. Nay, I’m ten times worse a fool—I think I might claw my way into Heaven somehow, and be with you when our lives are ended, since there is no way now on the earth."

She sank down on the stool, holding her arms and palms pressed together, rocking forward with her face in her hands. "Oh, God, if you would only make peace with Riata," she said. "Then you could be free. You could come into the citadel."

"And see you wed to another, with that English dog prancing in and out of your bed as you please. What mortal bliss. Leave me here to contemplate my poison vial, grant mercy."

She lifted her face. "I will not wed. Never. I came to tell you so. I would take no one else to me."

Thunder rumbled. The candle flames swayed in a draft of air, but the blue lights burned steadily. The sound of an increasing downpour drifted from the far chamber with the cool scent of rain.

The grim set of his mouth softened a little. "You will not be able to hold to that. And you are mad to trust Franco. You should not let him near you. I cannot give you any protection from him inside the citadel."

She let her hands slide apart. "What protection do you give me?"

"What I can. You have not made it easy."

She bowed her head. "Is there no way—no chance—that you could have faith in Franco’s intentions?" she asked humbly.

"Aye, when the Apocalypse comes to annihilate us all," he said.

She gave a slight miserable laugh and put her fingers to her forehead.

He turned and walked to a shuttered window. He pulled it open. Outside the rain poured down, splashing and dripping, darkening the stone as he stared into the black night. "You would not take another to you?" he asked abruptly. "Not even your sainted Raymond?"

Elena stood up from the stool. "No. Or I would not have come here."

He shook his head slowly. The night air ruffled a lock of his hair that had come loose from the braid and fallen over his face. "I am beyond a fool. Beyond it, to believe in this dream of Ligurio’s. To listen to what you say."

"You believe in it?"

"I do. Sometimes." He sounded distant. "But there is no place in it for me, Elena. I was born for everything you want to bring to an end."

She squeezed her eyes closed. She wanted to deny it, and yet she could find no way. Already there had been loud murmurs in the council that Allegreto and Franco Pietro should be tried as traitors to Monteverde, and it was clear enough what outcome was intended.

She turned back to the table. The books and scrolls on it seemed to have little to do with natural science. A Bible lay open to the Ten Commandments. On another parchment was a list of saints’ names with sums beside them, like the bankers’ ledgers in Venice.

A brief memory flitted through her mind, of the abbot’s pleasure in accepting a score of Allegreto’s unscrupulous orphans to his quiet house. She had thought at the time that he was an exceptionally kind and virtuous man, to receive them so happily and even refuse her offers to pay for their maintenance. She ran her finger down the list and saw the name of the patron saint of the abbey, with a startlingly large amount listed beside it.

"I am trying to buy my way in," Allegreto said as she touched the page of accounts. "If you know of any notably holy personages I might support, or a miracle I might sponsor, do inform me."

She smiled painfully. "I have only one miracle to desire of you."

"I am flesh and blood. I have no miracles within me, Elena. You know it well."

She turned her face away. "I seem to have none, either.  Sometimes I think it has been a great mistake. That my grandfather was wrong. We are weak. We are still divided. I’m a maid—hardly yet twenty. Milan is only waiting for me to fail. Or not that long." She drew a shuddering breath. "The stories I have heard of the Visconti...God save, they are beasts, not men. Sometimes I’m so afraid. And I wish you were there at my side."

The rain lightened to a steady mutter outside the window. She remained staring down at her finger on the parchment list.

"Now you torment me in truth," he said.

"And myself."

She felt him when he came to her. When he stood behind her silently.

"What do you want?" he asked softly.

She could hardly speak. "Oh—do not ask." It came out as a mere rush of breath, barely words. She knew why she had come here. Had known it all along.

She felt his hand touch the cloth wrapped about her head. It came free, drifting down to the floor as her hair fell around her shoulders. He moved near her, a heat and velvet touch all down her back and her hips. But no closer. He did not embrace her. Elena gazed at the woven mat on the wooden floor, feeling tears of anguish rising in her throat.

"I should go," she said in a broken voice, and did not move.

He pushed his hands into her hair and pressed his face to her throat. "Let me remember." He drew a hard breath beside her ear. "Let me remember first."

She let her head fall back. Oh, to remember...

She turned, lifting her face to him. He doubled her hair in his hands and pressed her cheeks between his fingers, kissing her, opening his mouth against hers. He leaned back on the table and pulled her to him fiercely.

The sound of the rain seemed to rise to a roar in her ears, merging with her heartbeat. She let herself rest on him, his body strong and alive and real against hers. So long it had been, she had near lost faith that he had ever been more than a dream, a vision she had seen once between sleep and waking. Her dark angel.

He pushed her abruptly away. Elena made a faint moan, gazing up at him. They did not speak. There was no need to say that she had set aside any truth or lie that they had wed, that to conceive a child now would be utter disaster. And yet she had come here to him, and she knew not how she could leave again.

A faint bitterness played at the corner of his mouth. "How you must enjoy to annihilate me."

She shook her head. "I cannot help myself. I cannot."

He cupped her face and kissed her again. "I can." His hands slid to her shoulders. "Though it slay me."

She whimpered, seeking his lips, pressing herself to his chest. Through her plain thin gown, through his silk, she could feel his phallus erect. With a lascivious move, she rolled herself against him, begging.

"Hell-cat," he muttered, tearing his mouth away. He pressed downward on her shoulders, pushing her to her knees before him. His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her face against the hard shape of him under the silky cloth.

Elena slid her hands up his thighs. He wore no breech; above his black hose and laces, her fingers touched bare skin. She drew her hands together over his naked shaft.

With a deep sound he arched toward her. She kissed him through the black veil of silk, skimming her nails over his hot skin. He let go of her suddenly and gripped the edge of the table as she explored him, his body growing taut. She could hear him breathing between his teeth.

She opened her mouth over his rod, sucking through the silk. Her own body wanted him inside; she drew on him with that desire, as if she could take him to her very heart. She closed her fingers hard at the base of his shaft and felt the pain she caused travel up through him as he thrust into her mouth in response.

She tightened her hold and pulled and worked, tasting the wet cloth and another essence that made damp heat between her legs. She served him like a wanton, with no thought but to the way he trembled and plunged himself deep in her mouth. The silk pulled taut over the head of his rod with each shove.

She drove her fingernails into him. Low in his throat he made a sound of agony. His shaft pulsed in her hands. He cried out, arching back, an echo of the rain and wind as his body seized and shuddered. Elena opened wide her lips to take him as he burst and spilled into the silken sheath.

The exotic, earthy savor was only a trace through the cloth. She would have tasted deeper, but he pulled her up against him, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, holding her hard to his chest. When he finally broke away, she was lost for air or thought. She clung in his arms, wanting him still, consumed with folly and desire.

"Beloved," he said fiercely. Suddenly he caught her up and carried her, ducking through the doorway. He laid her on the bed, half upon it, dragging up her gown. The edge of the high bed arched her body to him like an open offering; he leaned over her and kissed the mounded curls between her legs, thrusting his fingers up inside her.

Elena gasped and twisted, lifting herself to his mouth. Where his tongue touched her, her body convulsed. She closed her legs and strained, panting under the stroke and press of his fingers. Sweet hot sensation unfurled, rising to an explosion. She clutched at his hair, pleading for it. When it came in a fury of pleasure, she sobbed for breath, squeezing tears from beneath her eyelids as the peak rolled through her.

 

* * *

 

She had no long hours to tangle in sleep beside him. Keys and the slide of a bolt awakened her from what seemed a moment’s drowse at his side. Allegreto was already on his feet when a loud voice gave warning of the appointed time. Dario sounded gruff and irritable, but Elena heard the note of anxiety beneath. He would give her no longer than they had agreed. Less, she thought it seemed—or an hour had passed in the space of a moment.

She rose hastily. The fact of imprisonment struck her with force as guards came through the door without consent. Allegreto turned her into his arms, pulling the black-and-white prostitute’s hood close around her face. He bent as if for a kiss, blocking her from the view of the guards. "Farewell," he said beneath his breath. "Farewell."

He let go of her without lingering. She could not look up at him again for fear of revealing herself.

"For the girl." Allegreto tossed a gold coin to the nearest guard as he turned away. Elena kept her face lowered under the hood.

"Ah." The guard gave a snort and waved her toward the door. "She must have been good."

 

* * *

 

Elena barely held her head erect under her heavy crown as she dined at the high board between Raymond and the Milanese ambassador. Exhaustion pulled on her mind and heart. She would have been glad to lay her head down on the snowy white damask and lose all awareness amid the cups of silver for the wine.

The council meeting had been a monumental conflict of wills between herself and some twenty men with no small opinion of their own judgment. She had clung to her refusal to wed, but the only thing that truly spared her was their inability to agree on a candidate. She feared that strong factions were forming, and none of them were behind her on this matter. It did not bode well for the unity of her rule. None had said so aloud yet, but some might think that if she would not marry at the council’s hest, perchance her election should be overturned and a man put in her place. Or if she proved too stubborn for that, she might be removed by a more uncomplicated and fatal stratagem.

They had postponed a vote until the next meeting, at least. Elena broke bread and tried to master her weariness far enough for courtesy. Dario performed credence and kept a stony eye on the signor from Milan, but the plump representative of the Visconti seemed less inclined to poison Elena than to chide her incessantly in a gentle voice. In his face and manner he reminded her of no one so much as her sister Cara, reproving Elena for her reluctance to agree to his political proposals and insisting that Monteverde and Milan had always been friends and staunch allies. This was not what she had read in her grandfather’s history.  She had taken Philip’s advice and paid handsomely from the treasury for an added protection if Milan should prove a true enemy.

She had not even dared speak to the council about it, for fear of spies, but hidden the sum in the expense of renovations to her chambers that had yet to be made. But the money went to another free company of soldiers, in the current pay of Venice, who ranged in the mountains to the north and held the passes open for commerce. It was a pure and simple blackmail—no doubt they would as happily close the way if no one paid them to do differently. But they were there, and Elena remembered Hannibal, and thought it worth her while to live with the same bed-hangings that had graced her chamber in Lady Melanthe’s day.

She nodded to the Milanese diplomat with what courtesy she could muster. She raised her finger for the signor’s wine to be filled, watching as his own taster took a ceremonial sip before the cup was passed.

The ambassador launched into a discourse on the ultimate futility of republican institutions, advising Elena to reconsider the wisdom of giving wide powers to an elected council. She was not overly pleased with the council herself at the moment, but his criticisms provoked her, as she knew they were meant to do. Before she could discover a suitably polite and clever way to undercut him, she was astonished to hear Raymond speak loudly in French.

"Nay, my lord, have you read Prince Ligurio’s book on the subject?" he asked, leaning to look past her. "I have just finished it, and it is worthy of consideration by kings."

Elena looked at him, half-expecting him to grin and wink as if he made a jest. Raymond was no proponent of civil rule that she ever knew—he had served Lancaster as his liege and master without question, even to his marriage. But his face was serious as he took up a sharp defense of her grandfather’s ideas, countering the ambassador’s objections with quotes from the Latin and even Greek.

Elena stared at him in amazement. She had to be courteous herself, but Raymond grew quite heated on the subject, saying that he had spent the past fortnight in Monteverde in talking to people of all orders, and taking note of how they loved their elected princess. They were pleased with the new laws and just administration. A fisherman of unknown family could expect that he would receive treatment under the judges equal to that of any Riata lordling.

The ambassador mumbled about the disintegration of order, but Raymond said stridently that any bloodthirsty tyrant could keep order by spreading fear. Order in Monteverde came of respect and love for the princess herself, and the selfless way she governed. This was so near a direct insult to the merciless methods of the Visconti that Elena intervened before the ambassador’s color rose too high. She turned the talk to the upcoming days of grape harvest and asked the Milanese diplomat if the weather had been favorable in Lombardy. They spoke of the country festivals that would honor the harvest once it was gathered in.

"Your Grace," Raymond said suddenly, turning to her with a smile. "Give me the honor of laying an idea before you. Let us have a celebration in Monteverde to mark the first year of your reign. It has been near a year now, has it not?"

She blinked at the notion. It hardly seemed a thing to celebrate—it had been a year of strain and misery and loneliness in her mind. But Raymond gave her a warm look, leaning near. He raised his eyebrow toward the ambassador and lowered his voice, changing to English.

"It would be a sign to doubters that all is going well," he murmured. "Arrange some processions and feasting. The people always love display." He offered her a sip of wine from his goblet. "Make liveries that they can keep. Distribute largesse, release some prisoners." He shrugged, giving her a sideways glance. "Invent some cheer, Your Grace. By hap if I am fortunate, it will make you smile again."