Twelve

 

Avignon, France

5 December 1326

 

Though aware from Cesco’s letters that Tharwat was coming to France, it was late October before Pietro actually set eyes upon the Moor. Dressed in homely Western garb, Tharwat was seated opposite Petrarch’s house working the kinks out of a bit of rope.

Spying him from a window, Pietro raised a hand and opened his mouth, but quelled the impulse at once. There was always a purpose to the Moor’s pretenses. And there were compelling reasons for Tharwat not to be seen in Ser Alaghieri’s company. Lobbying for papal forgiveness, it would do Pietro no end of damage to be seen consorting with a Moor. As ever, Tharwat was playing the protector.

Strange, in a former Hashashin. As a youth, Tharwat had been made to endure their training. He had only spoken of it once, and then only to explain his similar training of Cesco. It was something Pietro was still uncomfortable with, but he recognized the value of having an Assassin in their ranks.

Over the next five weeks Pietro would occasionally glimpse the Moor out of the corner of his eye. He was careful not to betray himself by sending secret signals. He did wish the Moor would make contact, if only to explain what long game he was playing. But the lack of contact told Pietro there was, as yet, no news.

This only added to his frustration. Petrarch had so far been entirely unable to attach a name to the unknown cleric who so opposed Pietro’s reinstatement. In the meantime they pored over the ledger and calculated the sum it would take to buy Cangrande a papal forgiveness – a vast figure indeed. Pietro’s own price was far less, but then his own purse was not as deep. Petrarch suggested bundling together the holy bribes (for in essence that’s what indulgences amounted to), and let Cangrande pay for Pietro’s pardon. Tempting as it was, Pietro knew that his excommunication had nothing to do with Cangrande, and could not therefore excuse such chicanery. It was not the way a knight behaved. Besides, he was loath to be in the Scaliger’s debt.

November was lightened by the visit of another acquaintance from Bologna, Guido Sette, whom Petrarch counted as his closest friend in the world. For the three weeks of his stay, Lucia forgot Pietro’s existence, which was such a blessing that he was tempted to offer Sette money to stay on longer.

One late November day, Tharwat brushed hard against Pietro in the street. Tharwat immediately ducked his head and made a groveling bow. Pietro barely nodded in return before resuming his walk.

But the moment he had achieved his room he removed the note slipped into the laces of his sleeve. Uncoding Tharwat’s messages was harder than any except Cesco’s, who delighted in altering the code a little each time to test and torment the recipient. Or maybe the boy only did it to Pietro.

Tharwat’s note was brief and concise:

 

Boy is mended.

Beware of your shadow.

Could riddle be backwards? DXV, not VXD?

 

Three parts. First, because Tharwat knew how Pietro’s mind worked, the reassuring fact that Cesco was healed. Pietro wondered how the Moor had that bit of news before he did, but let that pass.

The second was a personal warning, and the reason for the sudden communication. Beware of my shadow? It could only mean that there was someone in it – Pietro was being followed.

It was not as worrying an idea as it might have been. Pietro had assumed that His Holiness would have set someone to watch Pietro from the moment he arrived, almost a year ago.

Pietro then realized that if Tharwat was issuing the warning now, after lurking about for almost a month, that it was new. Which meant Petrarch’s enquiries were beginning to ruffle someone’s feathers. Excellent.

The third part referenced a continuing puzzle – a communication from Cesco’s vanished mother, a series of letters that shaped the letter M. Tharwat was sharing his latest attempts to parse her message, a message they’d not yet shared with Cesco. The boy had enough concerns.

Cesco had met his mother only once, and briefly, and hadn’t been told her true identity. Pietro himself was hardly better informed, knowing her only as Donna Maria. She’d vanished just after meeting her son, but the Moor had traced her to an abandoned building in the country. There, covered in her blood, was the message she had carved into the wooden walls with her fingernails. Pietro and the Moor had burned down the whole building, agreeing that no eyes but theirs should see the message before they could decypher it. The woman herself had disappeared, likely spirited off by Cangrande’s enemies. Which made her message all the more urgent.

Hanging from string at his neck, Pietro carried a tiny scroll-tube in which he kept his copy of the message. He removed it now to try the Moor’s key. Unfurled, the message read:

M R C T S M
A A T A
B V X D B

 

To Pietro’s mind, MAB was the vital portion of the message. Why else repeat it twice? And the shape of the whole message bore a meaning – but what meaning? M – for Maria, the sender? Or was it the initial Cesco was meant to beware. For that was the only part that Pietro was sure of, it was a warning. CAV. Cave. Latin for ‘Beware’.

The center trio of letters, VXD, was just as incomprehensible as the rest. For some time Pietro had tried to substitute proper names for the first and last letters, using X as ‘ex’ or from. The best he could devise was VERONA EX DIO. Verona out of God? Nonsensical.

Following Tharwat’s suggestion, the reversed letters became DXV. That was a sequence that bore meaning for Pietro and Cesco both. In the last canticle of his father’s Commedia, there was a prophecy to a future hero who would bear the DXV. It was more cryptic than Dante usually liked to be. In fact, Pietro was fairly certain that his father had not penned it. It was much more like something Cesco would have invented.

But what did it mean? Was it the numbers 500, 10, 5? Or some bastardized version of DVX, meaning Duke.

Beware the Duke. Which in common parlance could mean ‘Prince’.

Cangrande was the Prince of Verona.

Beware Cangrande. Was that the message? Had the Scaliger himself kidnapped Cesco’s mother, removing her as a threat to his plans for their child? It tallied with as much information as they had. But Pietro had learned that not every evil deed could be laid at the Scaliger’s doorstep. Personal likes and dislikes had to be taken out of account, leaving matters to be judged impartially. He had to follow his training, not his heart. In this, most definitely, he had to be a lawyer.

The rest of November passed with Pietro mentally combating three separate wars – Maria’s message, Cangrande’s reinstatement, and his own unknown foe. Added to that were the unwelcome advances of Petrarch’s sister. Amazing his hair hadn’t turned white with the strain.

This day, the fifth of December, passed in the usual manner. Pietro kept mostly to the house, though by now Petrarch’s neighbours had grown weary of abusing him for his unholy status. He read, he wrote a little poetry (all of it poor), he watched out the window for a sign of his shadower, he wrote several letters of no real import, and he talked with Petrarch upon the latter’s return from the papal enclosure. Still there was no answer to who was pouring poison in the Pope’s ear.

After supper, Pietro retired to his rooms and was astonished to find them already occupied. Tharwat al-Dhaamin was seated in a corner, away from the tower window and out of sight of the door. Pietro shut both then crossed to embrace the older man. “Your disguise is quite a step down from your usual attire.”

“Yes,” rumbled the Moor. “I have resurrected the disguise of the Arūs, now an animal-trainer to princes and kings. His Holiness enjoys spectacle, and the occasional execution by lion or bear satisfies his need.”

An unpleasing prospect to an accused heretic, Pietro passed it by. “You’ve actually seen the Pope? You’ve had better luck than I.”

“So I understand. You will not be successful, as matters stand. In either of your tasks.”

The breath hissed from between Pietro’s teeth. “Is that divination or intelligence?”

“The latter.” Tharwat handed over a bundle of clothes. “Dress. There is something you must see.”

Pietro stripped off his workaday doublet and put on the borrowed garb. Examining himself, he asked, “What am I?”

“My master, ruler of the papal menagerie. I hired a man who resembles you, just for this purpose. And he has been diligent in his limp.” It was Tharwat’s habit to employ men to pretend mastery over him. He subscribed to the same philosophy as the Scaliger, that the finest disguise was to let men see what they expected. In this case, an Italian with a scarred Moorish slave. Pietro had seen this method at work over the years with great success.

Dressing, he felt his heartbeat accelerate. “You can’t just tell me?”

“If I could, I would. This you must see with your own eyes.”

Stealing from the house the way Tharwat had come, across a balcony and down a rope, they evaded any spying eyes.

It was cold. The winters these last ten years had been the hardest in memory, each one progressively more bitter. Pietro remembered his father debating some clergyman about the underlying meaning. The holy man had asserted that cold brought perfection, as Heaven was the opposite of Hell, and Hell was fire. But Dante had countered that all warmth in the universe came from God above, and for that reason he had depicted the lowest point in Hell as a frozen lake, as far from God as one could get. Feeling the stab of the Mistral wind, Pietro was inclined to his father’s point of view. This cold was ungodly. Ironic, then, that the Holy See should be located here, where such frigid winds cut a man to the bone all year round.

Braced against the chill, they rode into the foul-smelling Avignon and walked bold as brass through the streets. “Your name is Anselmo of Battavia,” said Tharwat softly from his servile place at Pietro’s right shoulder. “You speak neither Latin nor French, so your slave must translate for you. You find this humiliating, and therefore avoid conversation. Turn right at the corner.”

Pietro obeyed as he committed the tale to memory. “Where is the real Anselm?”

“Closeted with a companion he could never afford himself. He will not emerge before dawn.”

Pietro hated himself for blushing. He’d just turned thirty, and yet had never been with a woman, despite many veiled offers (not to mention Lucia’s unveiled ones). Morsicato had teased him once, early in his excommunication, saying that as long as Pietro was damned he might as well enjoy it.

But Pietro’s fleshly longings were still subject to his strict sense of honour. In this, he was unlike the other males of his line. Despite both his marriage and his romantic devotion to his beloved Beatrice, Dante had engaged in several renowned affairs during his exile. While it was not in Pietro to condemn such behavior in his sire, he could not imagine imitating that example. He left that to his little brother. Poco had enough libidinousness for them both.

Yet God had decreed the marriage bed the place for such things. Besides, a knight was meant to honour women, not dishonour them. Having survived this long without indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, he was determined to remain true to himself and his honour.

Lost in thoughts of a sin he’d never committed, Pietro came to an alley between a butcher’s shop and a massive stone wall. “Turn here.” At the end of the alley was an arch bored in the stone, and in it a well-guarded gate. He knew from his walks around the city that the papal palace faced west, which put them now on the east end, the very rear. This was clearly the back entrance to the Palais des Papes, where men on less-than-savoury business could exit without drawing too much attention.

Tharwat said something to the guards and they were admitted without fuss. Pietro walked boldly past them as if familiar with the place, and thus entered the papal enclosure for the first time. I hope leaving will be as easy.

They emerged into a wide garden at the rear of the palace, planted with pleasing trees and well-tended shrubberies. Opposite them, the castle – it was more castle than palace, fortified against all threats – was magnificent, and constant construction promised to make it grander still.

Tharwat led him to a small but solid building opposite the palace, nestled into the crook of the garden wall. It scented more like a stable than a residence. The massive doors were bolted on the exterior, and within Pietro heard a low grumble of several creatures greeting their keeper’s scent. Tharwat removed a key and worked the lock. The well-oiled door made no sound as it swung wide. Pietro entered, Tharwat behind him.

“Stay by the door,” instructed the Moor, brushing past him. Pietro was more than willing to obey. Outside of horses, hawks, and hounds he had very little care for animals.

Though he’d known this was one of Tharwat’s many skills, he was astonished at how well the animals minded the Moor as he moved from cage to pen. There weren’t many – two female lions and one male, in separate pens. A pair of shaggy wolves with the whitest fur Pietro had ever seen. And a single pard, sleek and black.

The sight of the pard made Pietro recollect the very night he and the Moor had met. A leopard had been enraged by a devil named Gregorio Pathino in a failed attempt to kidnap Cesco, then just a babe in arms. Pietro still bore faint scars across his forehead from the creature’s claws. Tharwat had stepped in to wrestle the beast and come away unharmed. Pietro now understood why – like Detto, the Moor had animal magic. The caged pard prowled forward and actually nuzzled Tharwat’s outstretched hand. It sent a growl Pietro’s way, then settled in to gnaw the cured meat Tharwat gave it.

After feeding each of the animals and speaking to them in an unintelligible tongue, Tharwat returned, a collection of leather bits and pieces in one hand, and bladder of wine in the other. “There is no window, so we must watch from without. We have made it our habit, my ‘master’ and I, to sit out upon an evening taking the air. No one complains. My master drinks while I mend the whips and leads.”

Tharwat brought forth a chair and placed it in the snow outside the menagerie door. He settled down beside it, and Pietro took the indicated seat. Clearly they were waiting for something. Tharwat busied himself with small tasks, while Pietro pretended to drink the wine. He actually drank more than he intended, as it aided him to hold off the chill night air.

There was little to see in the high wall before them. The wall was dotted with glassed windows, some bearing light, some dark. Wanting to ask what lay within, Pietro refrained. He doubted the Moor had been allowed to wander the papal palace, and even if he knew the floor-plan this was not the time to speak of it.

Occasionally clergymen in rich robes entered or exited the palace. Some took the air, some wandered off to corners to pray or converse with their fellows in low tones. Many strode to the arched doorway and exited behind the butcher’s shop, off about some secretive errand.

It was an hour after the last light of dusk had faded and night was setting in when Tharwat gave a small grunt. It seemed due to some trouble he was having with relashing a whip he had untied, but as a cue it was obvious enough. Keeping his chin low over his wine, Pietro lifted his eyes to scan the yard.

There were scattered men in the hooded robes of friars – far more Dominicans than Franciscans or Benedictines, Pietro noted – and one in a cardinal’s red surrounded by a cluster of clerks and notaries. But they had been in the yard some time, therefore not what Tharwat was hinting at.

Turning his hooded eyes towards the rear gate, Pietro saw a man just entering the snowy yard. Dressed in Dominican robes, his hood was slung heavily over his face. He was exceedingly tall and painfully gaunt, making his voluminous robes hang upon him as if on a post.

Already Pietro felt a pricking sense of familiarity, but as yet he couldn’t put a name to his fear. It wasn’t until the door was shut behind him that the new arrival felt free to lower his cowl, revealing his face.

It was the Scaliger’s visage gone wrong. The cheeks, the chin, the perfect teeth. But this face had never smiled, and bore none of the meat that Cangrande had added these last years. It was a face deliberately starved of life, hiding an equally starved soul – starved of compassion,of mercy, of justice.

Gregorio Pathino. Bastard son of Alberto della Scala and half-brother to Cangrande himself.

The spaventapasseri .

The Scarecrow.