Ariosto Read online

“Um.” Lodovico reached automatically for the flint to strike a spark, but as he did, he said, “You want something of me, then.”

  “Yes, I do,” Virginio began confidently, then stopped and stared down at his hands. “Father, look.” Again he faltered. “When I’m in Firenze, everyone says…They all laugh…I’m treated like a bumpkin because I live in the country!” he burst out.

  “In a Medici villa only an hour from the Porta San Gallo,” Lodovico reminded him.

  “That doesn’t matter.” There was the beginning of sulkiness in his words now. “You don’t understand what it’s like.”

  At that Lodovico could not stop himself laughing. “But I do,” he said gently when the mirth had cooled. Now that the lantern was burning he could see that his son was truly distressed. “I said much the same thing to my father and he undoubtedly said the same to his, and one day your son will tell you that you don’t understand. I am not laughing at you, my boy, I am…” He was what? he asked himself, staring at the flame in the lantern. “Amused? Heartened? Pleased?” He tried each of the words out and then gave up. “Don’t mind me, Virginio. My thoughts have been far away and are slow coming back.”

  His son sighed with impatience. “I was in Firenze yesterday and it was terrible. Now that Adriano Montini is setting the pace for everyone…”

  “Adriano Montini?” Lodovico cut him off. What was the Neapolitan courtier doing in Firenze now? Damiano had told him that Montini was part of the della Rovere family. Why would Montini live in the city of his rivals?

  “He’s a fine man,” Virginio insisted, staunchly defensive. “He has suppers and entertainments. And there are scholars there,” he added as if to bolster his argument. “I talked to one fellow from France the other night. He told me a lot about the Université in Paris. They’ve had an influx of Spaniards recently, because of the interdict.”

  “Have they?” Lodovico was not truly listening. His mind was occupied with the matter of Adriano Montini.

  “There’s a Moor there who lectures on history, and René said that everyone goes to his talks, though the man’s Latin is unbearable.” There was excitement in his face now, and some of his guarded attitude faded. “René knows one of il Primàrio’s sons…”

  “Did he have the gall to say so?” Lodovico asked, aghast. “In Firenze? It will get back to Damiano. What can Montini be doing?”

  “He’s visiting Firenze to see how matters are going for la Federazione,” Virginio said patiently, as if reciting by rote. “He was sent here by the King of Napoli, who can’t attend meetings himself.”

  “He sends a della Rovere to a Medici city. He has more than mere observation in mind.” Lodovico got up suddenly. “I must go to Firenze. I’ll have to see Damiano.”

  Virginio’s face fell at once. “But I have to talk you!” he declared. “There are things I need to…”

  “This is more important,” Lodovico said curtly.

  “But it’s night,” his son persisted. “Open the window. The sun’s been down almost an hour. You can’t ride to Firenze in the dark, even if it is a short distance. You always tell me how dangerous it is.” He had got to his feet and stood near the door, as if to block the way. He was not certain himself whether or not he would actually oppose his father physically, but his need was strong. “You have to listen to me.”

  Lodovico looked toward the shutters and at the lantern and told himself that he was too lost in his thoughts. The boy was right—it would be folly to ride in the dark, and by the time he reached the city walls, the gates would be shut for the night. “Very well.” He returned to his chair. “What is it, Virginio? Is it about Adriano Montini?”

  “Yes, in part,” Virginio said at once, pleased that his father seemed to grasp his interests.

  “In part. What else?” He had to concentrate on what the boy was saying because his worry very nearly distracted him.

  “I’ve had an offer from…well, it doesn’t matter who, but a friend in Firenze…” The enthusiastic light was back in Virginio’s eyes and he leaned forward, elbows on knees, his hair curling over his forehead.

  “It does matter who, but we will get to that in a moment,” Lodovico interjected.

  Virginio started to protest, then thought better of it. “Well, this friend has said that I may stay with him until it is time for me to leave for Paris. I’ll have a chance to talk more to René, so I won’t be a total novice when I get to the Université, and I won’t miss three days out of four in Firenze.” His jaw tightened at last.

  Lodovico felt Sir Thomas’ letter under his hand. “Who is this generous person, and is it your friend who offers, or a family?” He took care to be certain there was no severity in his voice.

  “Well, it is my friend’s offer, but his sister assured me that their mother would be delighted to have me.” Now the words came out in a rush and there was a slight reddening of his face that was not entirely the work of the lantern light.

  “A sister and a mother as well,” Lodovico observed, not quite concealing a smile. “Who are these good people? Unless Adriano Montini has brought most of his family, I doubt he’s the one…”

  “No, no, not Montini.” Virginio could not quite meet his father’s eyes. “He would not have me, anyway. He’s older and…richer.”

  “And higher ranking, yes.” How sensitive the boy’s honor was, Lodovico thought as he looked at him. Though he was not a boy anymore. Already the man in him was honing his face and drawing his limbs out. When he returned from the Université he would be like a stranger, or like someone known long ago.

  Virginio cleared his throat. “The mother is Ottora Piaggia.’’

  “Benci’s cousin!” Lodovico exclaimed. He felt himself touched with anger, though he did not know why. He told himself it was his distress at the afternoon’s visit, but the anger was not cooled.

  “Lietiza,” Virginio went on, “she’s the daughter…”

  “I thought she might be,” Lodovico answered with gravity, trying to believe that it was only natural that his son would be drawn to young women, and that it was better he pass his time with a well-bred girl than tupping the expensive whores of Firenze.

  “She’s spoken to her mother, and she told me this afternoon that I would be welcome.” He hesitated. “Tancredi gambles. I thought you’d better know.”

  “I see.” Lodovico had heard about Tancredi Scoglio, and knew that he was his widowed mother’s greatest worry. “And you, Virginio?”

  “Well, I’ve tried it,” he admitted fearfully. “I won quite a bit at dice once, but I lost it. It made me feel light-headed, seeing that money in stacks and watching it change hands as if it were pebbles. I didn’t believe it was happening. And then, when I had the money in my hands, it was as if it were on fire, or enchanted. None of it was real. I drank half the night—I know I never told you about that—and the next day I tried again, it all went, fast as water. I wanted to go on playing,” he said in a low, shamed voice, “but Tancredi to them I was your son, and they wouldn’t let me because they said you hadn’t enough money to pay for my losses.”

  Lodovico sighed. “It’s true enough. Men with patrons may live well enough, if they are circumspect. Whatever riches I have are between the covers of books, my son, not in gold.” He regarded the averted face and felt himself ache for his wounded boy. To have his pride so harshly used—he had known a similar blow himself, when he was slightly younger than Virginio. At the time he thought he would never recover from the disgrace, and later, when he learned that no one bad paid the least attention to his terrible humiliation, he had been poisonously furious.

  “So you don’t need to worry,” Virginio went on, as if he had not been listening to Lodovico. “I won’t embarrass you by running into debts at dice. Tancredi has money from his father. Bernardo Scoglio,” he added haughtily, as if to rebuke his own father, “was a very wealthy man. Tancredi has a sizable fortune.”

  “He does now. But the dice will rob him of it.” He felt fatigued. “What y
ou want, then, is my permission to go to Firenze until it is time to leave for Paris, because you are certain that you have earned the contempt of your fellows for living here in the country, and because you are terrified that you might miss something if you are not inside the city walls.”

  “Tancredi’s mother has invited me,” Virginio reminded him forcefully.

  “So she has. Ottora Piaggia. The Piaggias did very well when they married her off to Scoglio. Don’t put too much hope in Lietiza, Virginio. She will do for a flirtation, but her mother has her eye on others to be her husband. The way matters stand, the girl will not be allowed to marry anyone but a rich man.” He also hoped that his son was not yet thinking of marriage, with the years of studying that lay ahead of him. A scholar without a patron had little to offer a wife except his books and poverty.

  “I don’t want to marry, not yet,” Virginio said, shocked at his father’s suggestion. “Lietiza is a very lovely girl, and enchanting”—he had assumed a worldly manner that was almost ludicrous in its seriousness—she is not for me. We trifle with each other, nothing more.”

  “Don’t let her mother hear you say that,” Lodovico warned. “You will find that your invitation has been cut short if you say such things where Ottora can hear you. Perhaps you shouldn’t say it to Lietiza, either. No matter what she tells you, she may nurture hopes.”

  Suddenly Virginio laughed, not with his newly-learned sophistication, but with genuine mirth. “She does nurture hopes, but not of me. She is infatuated with Ippolito Davanzati, and with him gone to Muscovy, she wants diversion. She likes me because I am smarter than her brother, and so is she, and she enjoys playing jokes on him.”

  “She yearns for Davanzati and teases her brother for poor wit?” He was amazed. “Ippolito Davanzati is crafty, but I have never heard anyone foolish enough to praise his learning or his intellect.” He remembered the last lime he had seen the beautiful young courtier. At that time Davanzati was dressed for riding, but even then his mantle was of sculptured velvet and the wool of his thick calzebrache was embroidered where it showed above his tooled leather boots. He had sat his horse with arrogant ease and only the most censorious would have been cruel enough to point out that the gelding was more suited to a palsied old woman than this magnificent youth.

  “Women are fools: you know that.” Virginio became suddenly austere. He sat straighter. “Will you let me go, father?”

  “To a house of Andrea Benci’s cousin?” He knew that it was not wise to impose his own struggles and conflict on his boy. “If you understand that you are to accept nothing but their hospitality, I will consider it. I want to hear what your mother has to say before I make up my mind. A mother, you know, has a special vision.”

  “She’ll want me to stay here because I’m going away,” Virginio muttered, looking toward the lantern again. “She keeps talking about it as if I’m never coming back.”

  You’re not, Lodovico thought. You will not come back as this lad on the brink of manhood. When you return, you will be someone else, and we will not know you. “Don’t blame her for that. All mothers share her fear when they love their children.”

  Virginio’s expression showed that he thought this was a frightful burden for any child to carry. “You’ll talk to her, though?”

  “Of course. I have told you I would.” He got to his feet, indicating that their discussion was at an end.

  “I’m going into the city tomorrow,” Virginio added, some of the defiance back in his eyes.

  “Very well. Unless there is more rain, there should be no difficulty.” He put his hand on the doorlatch.

  “You’ll explain to her.” He could not entirely conceal his anxiety, and Lodovico felt his heart go out to the boy.

  “I will do my best. And I will tell her that since you will not see Firenze again for two years at the least, it might be wise to let you have more time there.” It might also, he added to himself, ease the pain of parting. And perhaps, his thoughts continued, and he hated himself for them, having Virginio in Firenze, he would know more of the intrigues he had been so eager to escape.

  La Fantasia

  Lincepino, the great wizard of the Cesapichi, placed the mouse in a cage of woven bark, and surrounded it with a circle of water and a number of torches. He tossed strange-smelling herbs onto the fire and he chanted, conjuring the soul in the mouse to come forth.

  The little animal sat in silence, unmoving but unafraid, its eyes fixed on the wizard with searing hatred. Once it bared its teeth and made a sound not unlike a cat hissing, but the rest of the time, it was ominously, threateningly still.

  Lodovico waited in the shadows, apart from the Cérocchi and the Cesapichi, studying all they did and thinking of the many strange ceremonies he had witnessed in his travels. What he saw now fascinated and revolted him. The mouse, he knew, was unlike any mouse he had ever seen. More than that, it distressed him greatly to watch the animal sit in the cage, responding with such ferocity while Lincepino stood over him chanting in guttural accents. The herbs gave off an acrid, bitter smell as they burned and the other men waited with ill-concealed avidity in their eyes. What were they waiting for? Lodovico asked himself, and had no answer.

  Lincepino threw other more noxious substances onto the torches and his peculiar songs grew higher, more frantic. Near him, Cifraaculeo watched, a worried frown deepening in his face. He turned for a moment to Falcone and gave a hopeless, minute shake of his head.

  Then the mouse screeched with terror and turned away in the cage, whimpering and biting at itself with its sharp teeth while over the cage a mist was gathering.

  Slowly, horribly, the mist grew denser, coalescing. It elongated, and as the torches flickered low, it began to assume a shape. First there were the long, fearfully thin arms that reached out of the mist, with fingers that seemed to extend endlessly, clutching, rending. Then the shoulders, wider than Lodovico had ever seen, ridged with muscle that made the gauntness of the body more impressive and more horrible. The chest was ridged by the ribs, long and lean to the point of emaciation. Narrow hips appeared with the bones thrusting at the flesh like inner blades. There could be no doubt of the apparition’s manhood, for he was lavishly endowed, the organ long and flaccid, the testicles hanging behind massive as goose eggs. At last the head and face formed in the mist. There was a high, noble brow in a narrow head, the hair rising like a crest or old halo. The nose was long, prominent, the cheeks high with the skin pulled tight beneath them. The mouth was firm and compressed with an expression of the utmost malice. Finally the eyes shone in the mists—deep-set, dark, and vile.

  Lincepino moaned and his chanting ceased altogether. Cifraaculeo stared at the thing that had come forth from the mouse and he closed his eyes at the enormity of it. Falcone inadvertently stepped back and cried aloud when his foot touched the base of one of the torches.

  “Anatrecacciatore?” Lodovico whispered, unable to speak any louder.

  Cifraacuelo, aghast, nodded.

  The mists were growing denser, becoming palpable. In the tent the torches nearly guttered and the stench that filled the place had little to do with the herbs that Lincepino had burned. The presence was miasmic, seeping out to touch each of them in turn.

  “No!” Lincepino shouted, and at the sound of the shout, the others were released from their thralldom. The wizard of the Cesapichi grabbed for certain objects he had set before the torches and these he held aloft while barking out terse phrases that Lodovico could not understand.

  Something of the loathsome manifestation responded, for the light returned a bit, and the form in the air trembled as if disturbed by a wind.

  “What is he doing?” Lodovico murmured to Falcone. “He is binding it so that it cannot harm us. If it had reached us…” He broke off, nearly retching at the thought.

  “How does he control it, if Anatrecacciatore is such a great power?”

  “Every wizard has his weakness, surely you know that,” Falcone said in spite of the utter condem
nation in Cifraaculeo’s expression. “No matter how great his power, in some way Anatrecacciatore is vulnerable. You yourself know that his power does not extend to ducks. It may be that because of his name, the ducks are sacred to him and cannot be bound by his power, since it is from them that it was drawn.”

  The figure now was more defined, almost solid, its baleful eyes hot with rage. It struggled against the invisible bonds that held its tenuous shape and though silent, it seemed to roar with frustration. Lodovico was apprehensive, for he sensed that this formidable sorcerer might have more power than even Cifraaculeo credited to him. He watched the arms raise up as if to strike, and encounter a barrier. The spirit turned as if seeking to find its tormentors, and there was no pleading or supplication in its manner: here there was imperious and virulent enmity.

  Lincepino positioned himself out of the light, and there was sweat on his body now that had the scent fear in it. The wizard of the Cesapichi trembled as he chanted, his voice on a higher, less certain pitch.

  “You idiot!” Cifraaculeo spat at Lincepino. “He will find your terror and the binding will fail!” The high priest of the Cérocchi took up a set of wooden clappers and began to circle the ring of torches, adding his own words to the spell that bound the sorcerer. He went quickly and with a sharp, angry step, but Lodovico could see the shaking of his hands that went beyond the rattling of the wooden clappers.

  “Merciful and Omnipotent God,” he said softly as he crossed himself. “You Who see our plight, send us Your strength or surely our souls are lost forever to the force of Hell. If it is Your wish that I and these good men suffer the pangs of damnation, then I submit humbly to Your wish. Yet I pray that we are not beyond You thought and out of mind in darkness, and that You will send Your angels so that the Sword of San Michele will strike again for us against this devil’s spawn as it struck down this sorcerer’s parent. In the Name of Your Son, Who came to save us, I ask this. Amen.” Again he crossed himself, resigned now to accept whatever heaven decreed. His heart was not calm, but he felt greater certainty, knowing that he had survived with miraculous aid in the past. He took the dagger Falcone had given him and began to draw a line around the torches so that now the sorcerer was bound by steel as well as fire and water.