Inside the burning carriage Katerina's left hand searched the compartment. She reared back with a shriek, her flesh smoking. The compartment was already burning. Choked, faint, she was unable to call for Cesco. Yet she couldn't leave. She reached down again, willing herself to ignore the pain. Her fingers encountered burning straw, and for a moment she believed it was hair. She clutched and pulled at it, scalding her hands on a sizzling chamber pot that she tossed aside. She smelled her own flesh burning, yet didn't stop digging, throwing the burning thatch this way and that, until her hands felt the floor of the compartment.
Empty.
She heard the hoofbeats. A horse approached. Friend or foe, she couldn't be bothered. Where was Cesco? Where where where?
In the smoke outside, Pietro watched his father continue to beat at the groom's head with a fury that was surprising. Then he saw a glint of light from the fire reflecting a few feet away. A sword, an axe, something deadly. The hand that gripped it aiming for the great poet's back. Pietro was too choked to cry out. He was weaponless. He tried to stand, but his body failed him at last. There were no more reserves, nothing he could do to save his father's life. He watched as the weapon's blade began its descent.
There was an ugly clang, metal on metal. The weapon fell away as the attacker turned to his right. A gust of wind showed a surprised expression cross his face. "But my lord!" Then his face split apart as a sword hacked down with an incredible force.
It was a sword Pietro recognized. Cangrande had come. Thank God!
Collapsing to the ground with another fit of coughing, Pietro felt himself get dragged a few feet away from the blaze where it was easier to breathe. Twisting around onto his back, he saw Dante point towards the carriage, gasping out some words in Cangrande's ear. The Scaliger dashed into the blazing conveyance. A moment later Katerina reeled from the carriage, wrapped in her brother's arms. She screamed and fought, kicking and clawing to return to the flames. Her sleeve was on fire, her left hand and arm and shoulder burnt and blistered, her hair singed and black. Cangrande threw her to the earth and rolled her back and forth to extinguish the flames. She coughed and screamed, desperate to return to the carriage that was nothing but a shell of raging fire.
Her brother gripped her right wrist as she struggled. "Kat — your baby! Stop fighting, damn it! The baby!" She moaned once as she fell to the earth, her hands on her belly but her eyes on the fire.
Cangrande paced over to the man Dante had beaten and checked to see if he was breathing. He must not have been, for Cangrande lifted the lifeless body over his shoulders and pitched it headfirst into the blaze. He did the same for the man he had killed. He then joined Dante and Pietro, kneeling by Katerina's side as they watched the fire. After several minutes Katerina spoke.
"He wasn't there." It took her several breaths to speak again, and when she was able, all she could do was repeat this single fact. "He wasn't there! He wasn't there, he wasn't there, he wasn't there!"
Dante shook his head. "He must have been stuck, or curled up in a corner."
Pietro wiped his eyes and face. "How could he be in there and not make a sound?"
"He was a remarkable child." The poet's voice trembled. "My lord, I am so sorry."
Dante was behind the Scaliger, as was Katerina. Only Pietro, prostrate on the ground, had a view of Cangrande's face. Pietro blinked in disbelief. Engraved on Cangrande's every feature was an expression of pure, boundless -
Joy. Ecstasy, raw delight, the face an angel might bear doing the bidding of the Lord. Only this face was delighting in the death of a child. Blood of his blood.
A giggle made them all whirl about. Stepping into the road from by the treeline was Cesco. With nothing worse than muddy knees and hands he stood in the light of the fire, smiling happily.
Dante goggled, Katerina let out a sighing sob, Pietro stared between the flames and the child. Then he looked to Cangrande.
The Scaliger's face was back to its old self. With a twinkle in his eye he bowed to the boy, who made a fine bow in return. Then Cesco ran forward to embrace his foster mother, who was too tired to deny him the affection he so clearly deserved. She wrapped her right arm about him and wept.
Later they would reconstruct his miraculous escape as something quite simple. The compartment under the seat also had a door leading to the rear exterior of the carriage, allowing the disposal of waste or stowing of luggage without disturbing the passengers within. Cesco must have forced the catch just as they halted, then dashed for the trees. That rear door also explained why the carriage went up in flames so swiftly — the two grooms had taken straw from a nearby hut and stuffed it into the compartment. What Katerina thought was Cesco moving about under her was really the murderers, planning their demise.
"It's a shame they didn't live," observed Cangrande. "We might have discovered who hired them."
"But we know, my lord," said Dante, blinking. Then he realized what he was about to say would be quite a blow to his patron. "I have a heavy tale to tell, my lord," he began, quickly outlining their deductions regarding Cangrande's wife, Donna Giovanna da Svevia.
When he was finished, the Scaliger turned away. "I see. That reminds me — Morsicato. He's nearby, unconscious. Rogue Paduan soldiers attacked us on the way here. He was knocked out, and I had to tie him to his horse to bring him along. If he's up to it, perhaps he can examine your wounds, Kat." The Scaliger vanished up the road.
With the two carriage horses, removed before the fire, and the two horses that bore Cangrande and the senseless doctor, they were able to slowly make their way back to Vicenza. Pietro rode one horse, Katerina another, Morsicato lay over Dante's saddle, and Cesco sat in Cangrande's lap.
No one spoke overmuch on that ride. For Pietro it was a ride filled with one thought, one image that returned over and over to his mind — Cangrande's expression when he thought that Cesco was dead. That horrible delight tormented Pietro's imagination the whole weary ride back to Vicenza.
Forty
Vicenza
22 May 1317
Perched atop the roof of the Nogarola palace, his back to a turret, Pietro stared down at the sleeping city. The wet rooftops of Vicenza glistened under the light of the moon and the stars.
He heard bells. Barely midnight. So much had happened since the dawn. He'd lived a whole life in the span of the rising and falling of one sun. Yet while his inner eye ran over all the events, in his ears he heard only a child's voice singing through tears of fright.
They'd been dropped into complete oblivion, he and Cesco. Without each other, neither would have survived. Never out of reach, always conversing or singing, they had kept away the korai, the gods the Greeks believed called men to madness. It had seemed eternal, though he now knew it was less than an hour. He also knew how close they'd come to running out of air altogether. He wondered if he'd ever be comfortable in enclosed spaces again. Hence the rooftop.
Cangrande had insisted they creep into town unseen. Until it was clear that there were no more threats to them, the Scaliger deemed it best to keep their arrival a complete secret. Once Morsicato, singed scalp bandaged, had seen to Katerina's arm, he'd sewn up Pietro as well. The doctor hadn't bled him, deciding Pietro had already bled enough to release any foul elements in his system. Pietro had refused to add any contents to the doctor's jordan, rightly saying he was too parched to produce a drop. But Morsicato had insisted on bringing forth the maggots once more, this time wrapping them into the gash across Pietro's left hand. Recalling how close that cut had come to his face, he tried not to imagine the maggots embedded in his cheek.