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Pietro could hardly draw breath. "Why?"

"This was more important. Come and see."

Rising, Pietro limped over to the altar. Cangrande lifted the covering from the child's face, and Pietro looked down at the fine cheekbones, the fair hair, the perfect chin. There could be no doubt. This child was a Scaligeri.

The Scaliger shifted the bundle into the candlelight, allowing them both to see the boy's open eyes. Though he was fussily opening and closing his mouth like a baby bird, he stared back wide and unafraid, his eyes two orbs of brilliant, startling green.

"I am sacrificing nothing, Pietro. I am doing only what is necessary. Trust me."

Smothering his disbelief and indignation, Pietro bowed his head. "I do, lord."

"Thank you." Cangrande turned the child towards him, staring into those vivid eyes. He let out a long breath. "O sanguis meus. What adventures lie ahead. God forgive me."

There are moments in the lives of men that impress themselves on the witnesses, coming back in dreams, both sleeping and waking. In years to come, the details of the battle at Vicenza would be half remembered, half imagined in exaggerated glory. But this moment, the Scaligeri lord standing beneath the old stone cross in a dank and humble church and looking into the child's eyes — this moment would haunt Pietro the rest of his nights.

"What is his name?"

For the first time since viewing the child, the Scaliger pursed his lips in a thin smile. "He will be called Francesco."

Thirteen

Florence

25 December 1314

Three months saw the effect of the Paduan defeat at Vicenza reaching many places. In Venice, Ambassador Dandolo returned and made his report to the newly formed Council of Ten. While relating many trade secrets he had bought while staying in Vicenza, he expressed his concern that should Verona ever renew hostilities and win, the Serenissima would be in jeopardy. He was heeded, and at his advice steps were taken against the day Cangrande should grow too powerful.

In Padua, Il Grande had a parade thrown in his honour. It was generally agreed that his skilled diplomacy had saved the city. At the same time his nephew Marsilio was being talked about as the flower of Paduan honour, and his tales of Verona's latest bastard kept his friends enthralled.

Indeed, it was not the war's end but the bastard that had people talking. The official story was that the Scaliger's sister, the beautiful and lively Katerina Nogarola, had adopted a child. One day she was another barren wife, the next she was foster mother to a boy not six months old.

Returning home to find a baby in his wife's arms, her husband had taken it well enough. Lord Nogarola was said to be fond of the infant in an avuncular way — which, if the rumours were true, was precisely the relationship. The gossips denied that it was his own bastard adopted by his wife. Why? Because the night before the child appeared, the Greyhound had vanished entirely from the palace. The next morning his servants had found his discarded clothes, soaked completely through.

Many people delighted in the news, and most of these were friendly with Verona. Cangrande's enemies sighed in bemusement, reconciling themselves that yet another Scaligeri was being bred to torment them. They took comfort was in imagining what the Scaliger's wife had to say about it.

But at the end of November, one event removed all other news from prominence. With a suddenness that unnerved everyone in Europe, news come from the royal court in France. The curse of Jacques de Molay, the last of the Knights Templar, had come true. King Philip the Fair, ruler of France, maker and breaker of popes, scourge of Paris, was dead.

As Dante's sons packed the effects of their Lucca lodgings for the move to Verona, the poet received a letter from his friend Enguerrand of the locality of Coucy in Picardy. The facts as Enguerrand related them were quite in the realm of the supernatural. King Philip had suffered no accidents or injuries to his person since falling from his horse some weeks earlier. A man in his prime, he suddenly dropped to his knees on a bright November day and began to foam about the mouth, his eyes rolling back in his head. Then he pitched forward and screamed. And screamed. Still screaming, he was taken to bed and there he stayed until he left the mortal world. De Coucy related to Dante that the king was unable to utter words, though many were the final phrases attributed to him. Enguerrand closed his letter by adding:

It will be a matter of future history whether or not Jacques de Molay's curse upon the King's line down to the thirteenth generation comes true. Though I feel in my bones it will.

The ripples this stone cast in the international pond were wild and unpredictable. King Philip had been brother-in-law to the heiress of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. He had been connected by blood and commerce to the kings of Naples and Hungary. The kings of England and Minorca had been his vassals. After the English defeat last summer at Bannockburn, Philip had allied himself with the new Scottish king, called the Bruce. In fact, his political alliances had reached as far as the mystic Orient. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the moment his death became known, men everywhere looked for ways to profit from it.

In Italy, the cause célèbre was the return of the pope to Rome. With the French king dead, it was suddenly possible, even likely. Thus it was the topic of the Christmas sermon in Florence, delivered by the visiting Cardinal Deacon Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi, who purchased Grace by spending a great deal of his sermon praising the life of Pope Celestine V. His Latin was scholarly and beautiful to hear.

Dante's daughter Antonia knelt, her eyes closed in what was supposed to be prayer for an end to the Avignon papacy. But her thoughts were fixed on a package that had arrived yesterday from Lucca. From her father.

The moment it had come she'd whipped off the covering, expecting a packet of letters. Instead she had discovered a small wooden box with yellow leather tacked in place by fine brass studs. The box was wrapped in twine and sealed with her father's ring.

Rushing off to find a knife, she had returned to find her mother waiting, the box stowed on a high shelf. "You shall wait until Christmas morning."

Perverse. Unfair. But Antonia hadn't argued, knowing her mother would only further delay the unwrapping. Now she knelt between her mother and her aunt, pretending to listen to the sermon while wondering what was in the package. To her right, Gemma di Manetto Donati in Alighieri knelt stiffly, back perfectly straight, head properly bowed. It would have taken a keen eye to see the pinch she gave her daughter as the girl began to sag back onto her heels. Antonia bolted upright and fought the impulse to rub her bottom.

She was aware of the eyes on her, and resented them. It was natural, now that her father was both famous and rich, that she should have suitors. But it annoyed her. Where had they been when her family was poor, beggared, hardly able to survive? Now that Dante and genius were being uttered in the same breath, fathers with eligible sons were beginning to call at the house. So far she had managed to frighten them away by embarrassing them. As her mother frequently pointed out, the fact that she was involved in the publishing business was a mark against her marriage prospects. Her intelligence was another. So when suitors called, she made sure to discuss her negotiations with Mosso, throw in a quote from Homer or Virgil, or recite a history lesson on the man's family that was never to his advantage. Discomfort led to rapid departures and a certainty that no amount of gold was worth the bride that came with it.