Listen to me whine like a mammet. It looks like we'll be setting out for Verona after the Roman New Year. So when you write back — and be sure to write back! — send the letters there.
Give my love to Mother, and give both Gazo and Laura my best wishes. Have a wonderful Christmas.
Tuo fratello maggiore,
Pietro Alaghieri
A strange letter! Pietro's thoughts were never that fragmented. It was far more like her father to jump from topic to topic — Dante enjoyed the freedom of letter-writing, as opposed to crafting poetry, two very separate endeavors in his mind. Pietro always knew what he was going to write long before he put quill to paper.
Jacopo was still an idiot, she saw with amusement. Pietro was right, the fur was truly horrible.
Pietro hardly mentioned his wound. Their mother had made a great show at church of lighting candles and praying for the health of her oldest living child. Antonia's prayers had been less obtrusive but no less ardent. Obviously from his letter he was up and around again. As for his — what was it, self-pity? — Antonia had no time for it. He was with their father, he was a hero, he could lump his sorrows.
Setting Pietro's letter aside she lovingly broke the seal on her father's letter. It too was a long one, she saw happily. She began to read:
Cara Beatrice,
I write you, my sweet, on the fifth day after the calends of December, a day before the ides, from Lucca, where my sons and I are spending the final moments of this momentous year. It has seen the death of a corrupt order of knights, whose curse has brought down both king and pope. It has seen the throne of the great empire of Charlemagne grow cold, with the last election divided and the fate of both claimants uncertain. It has seen the idea I had nearly fifteen years ago, the true life's work of a poor Italian poet, one-third done.
It has also seen my oldest living son become a man. I must tell you, your last letter was insightful beyond your years. You appreciate that, having taken part in battle myself, I know the thrill of holding a sword, and the terror of the thousand deaths you die before you meet the foe. My son is braver than you know. That, however, is a topic I shall leave for the end of this missive, because I know you, my love, and you will be blinded with tears.
Our former host, Uguccione della Faggiuola, is distraught at our imminent departure. I fear we are abandoning him at a time of crisis. He has just suffered a terrible omen. His prized tame eagle has suddenly died. As the creature was in murderously perfect health just days before, many people are suspecting foul play (there is no pun in that, I tell you honestly — I abhor them! But, having written thus far, I am loath to begin again on fresh paper. Too expensive). There is even a rumour that I had a hand in the giant bird's death. But then, the citizens of Lucca have never recovered from the rumour — most amusing — that I am a sorcerer! They claim I have the Sight, the ability to see far off lands, and even the future, like some cheap oracular hooligan. Because on the page I consort with demons, travel to unearthly planes, and speak to the long dead, it is thought I must also belong to the Dark Orders that the Templars were accused of forming.
I take it as quite the compliment, I must say. For hundreds of years it has been thought that Virgil was a magician. He was said to have possessed a horse of bronze that, by its very existence, prevented all the horses of Naples from becoming swaybacked; a bronzed fly that, as long as it rested on his doorsill, kept the city free of flies; and an enchanted storeroom that would keep meat for six weeks without spoiling. It was said too that he had made a statue of an archer with bow drawn and ready. As long as the arrow in the statue's grip was kept pointed at Vesuvius it would not erupt. It would be interesting to learn, therefore, the position of that statue in 79 AD, would it not?
It was related to me by a local priest that my master, the noble Virgil, built the Castel dell'Ovo upon an egg. The castle will stand until the egg is broken. It was when I heard that tale I knew my sojourn in pretty Lucca must end.
That, and I can no longer bear living so close to the fetid city, the cancer of Italy, which houses but one pearl — you yourself. Since my return from France I have lived too close to the country of my birth, and the stench of that befouled place burns my nostrils. The single product of Florence that goes uncorrupted is my Beatrice.
Returning to the subject of magic, I have stated publicly my abhorrence of these rumours that persist about my person. I have done this both in love of all that is true and in hatred of all that is false. I am, after all, a loyal servant of God above. Yet it amazes me how superstitions persist in the minds of men. Pliny the Elder tells us that men in his day who bit the wood of a tree struck by lightning would not suffer from the toothache. He wrote those words before the explosion of the volcano, after the arrow was shifted. Yet the practice continues to this day! What creatures are men that they believe such things? Someday I will make a study of this phenomenon, to expose the roots of this idiocy.
Yet there is magic in this world — no one knows this better than I. Except, perhaps, Philip the Fair. But since he is no longer of this world, he offers no competition.
Speaking as I am of curses, one may be brewing in my new home. I wrote to you of Cangrande's little bastard. Il veltro del Veltro, as it were. The child adopted by Donna Katerina Nogarola. Well, a witch's hex lies over him like the sword of Damocles.
You gasp. You choke. You rear back in horror at the thought. Where did this curse originate, you ask? From the Scaliger's wife, say I. The blood tie to the Emperor Frederick has diminished over two generations, yet one can detect in Giovanna da Svevia's eye the gleam of that fiendish emperor's fire. Whereas Frederick fought only against three popes, his distant offspring must compete with a hundred mistresses all fighting for the Scaliger's favor. Of course, she is much older than he, and has turned a blind eye to the tomcatting of her canine husband. Until now, that is. With the evidence of Cangrande's philandering being flaunted before her eyes — by her own sister-in-law! — Giovanna has declared a silent war. And not against her husband. Like a jealous she-wolf, she has her teeth firmly locked into the back of Katerina's neck and is tearing mightily. It began with the invitations to Verona's Christmas feast, which I hear were mysteriously lost on the way to Vicenza. Then the new crib Katerina had commissioned was unexpectedly sold to another family at quite a loss to the maker — unless you count the payment he received from the Scaliger's wife. There are more, culminating in death by paper-cuts. Thus far Katerina has ventured no response. The whole court is waiting breathlessly for this feud to break into the open. If it does, my money is on the Scaliger's sister. She is a fascinating lady, as your brother has troubled himself to inform me no less than five times now.
On a side note about natural children — I regret taking delight in the demise of another man, but you know how satisfied I was by the death of the Scaliger's natural brother, Giuseppe, the despicable Abbot of San Zeno. Cangrande's father made this unnaturally natural child an abbot while he had one foot in the grave. He must not have been thinking clearly so close to the end, for never was there a more avaricious and spiteful man to hold the office of Benedictine abbot. But — I can scarcely credit it — his son is worse! I had an encounter with him on our first day in Verona, and he's another Ciolo degli Abbati, talented only in sponging what he can from the state and the church. Worse for Verona, the decent if ineffectual Bishop Guelco has been called to Rome indefinitely.