Katerina nodded, hands pinioning the wrestling child. Pietro lifted his crutch from the floor and began towards the exit. At a loss, Bailardino walked over to a carafe and poured himself a drink, downing the goblet's contents at a gulp. "Would you like a glass, Kat?"
"Yes, if you please. Oh, Pietro? Remember, as before…"
Pietro nodded. "Herkos odonton."
The lady smiled thinly. "Just so."
Pietro had to pull hard on Mercurio's collar. Ignazzio and the Moor followed him out, the little man bowing several times to Katerina. When the door was closed behind them, both Ignazzio and Pietro released a shared breath. "I've never seen anything like that."
"I'm not a subscriber to possession," said Ignazzio. "But still…"
"Was it like that with Cangrande?"
It was Theodoro who shook his head. "No."
As they descended the stairs, Ignazzio said, "You may regret being drawn into this little circle, young ser."
"Maybe," said Pietro. "But now I have to go and find out how much damage my friend has done."
"How will the spurned groom take his loss, do you think?"
"Badly," said Pietro with certainty. "Very, very badly."
"So there will be war, at least between these two young men, if not their families. How will you fare, caught between such animosity?"
Pietro shrugged. "If I'm closer to one, it's Mariotto. But Antony is completely in the right. Mari has behaved atrociously. Honour dictates that I side with the Capulletti family."
"But that is not where your heart lies."
Pietro shook his head. "How can I say?"
The Moor looked at him gravely. "You should get away. Travel, make a name for yourself."
"What about all this?" Pietro gestured at the room they had just exited.
"Theo's quite correct," said Ignazzio. "Who knows when they will need your services, or in what capacity. You can do nothing better than build a thriving career for yourself. It would also remove you from this current difficulty with your friends."
Sound advice, honestly given. Pietro decided that perhaps the Moor was not to be feared. Respected, definitely, but not feared. Still, he shook his head. "It would be cowardly."
"We saw you last night, and again just now. Cowardice is not a trait you own."
Pietro glanced at the Moor. "If you don't mind my asking — someone called you the Arūs. What does it mean?"
Theodoro shook his head. "Nothing. Merely a name given me long ago. Excuse me, I must dispose of these scrolls and help my master dress."
Ignazzio said, "Why don't you wait for us? Then we can go attend the Capitano together."
Pietro agreed. Alone in the hallway outside Ignazzio's chamber, Pietro recalled the Scaliger's words in that rain-soaked church:
How can a man live life as a myth? If I thought that I was truly the chosen champion of the heavens, I would fight it. Just to see her — to see them fail, I would fight it with all my might.
At the time Pietro had thought Cangrande had been talking of himself. Now he knew better.
Twenty-Five
Antonia was so swept up just being in her father's presence that she hardly noticed the return to the Domus Bladorum, the removal of capes and scarves, or the many people moving about. Running up with some confused news about Pietro's friends, Poco spied his sister. "Imperia!" he cried with such obvious joy Dante couldn't help smiling.
After the greetings, Poco returned to his news. "We're summoned! Well, you are, Father. To the court! Montecchio has gone and married Capulletto's Paduan bride! It could mean the truce is off and we're at war again! Isn't that fantastic?"
Together they made their way next door to the great Scaliger court in the Domus Nuova. The chamber was replete with rich tapestries and ornaments. Though her father always praised Cangrande's disdain of open displays of wealth, here the wealth and prosperity of Verona was ostentatiously visible. If Cangrande had been king, this would have been his throne room.
She was still looking adoringly at Dante when he pointed. "That, my dear, is the Scaliger."
Tearing her eyes away from her father, Antonia had to stifle a gasp when she saw her father's patron. Ballads and poems were one thing, beholding the living man was quite another. He was a tower of might and self-assurance. His crop of chestnut hair was longer than she'd expected, making him look young. The fact that he was young didn't register in her mind. He was powerful — everything else flowed from that.
From the Capitano, Antonia's eyes moved on to Antony Capulletto. The nice fellow who'd shown her around the palace was now a pitiable sight. He looked wounded. Defeated. Shattered.
Antonia couldn't help thinking, What a drama! Things like this never happen in Florence! Not being in love with love as many girls her age were, she nevertheless understood the concept. After years of her mother's rule, she also grasped the desire for freedom, the impulse to disobedience. This girl, Gianozza, had taken hold of her own fate, however stupidly. Antonia tried not to admire the courage that must have taken.
A wide man with sandy hair, not particularly tall, stood shaking his fists at the center of the hall. Unlike Antonia's distinguished father, his ornate clothes were at war with the opulence of the hall. He was shouting, but he'd been shouting since the Alaghieri clan had arrived.
"— an outrage that the girl's own cousin was a party to this! It was an arranged match! A match that, as you all remember, bore my lord's seal of approval, and that of our esteemed visitor from Padua! What right did her cousin Marsilio have to grant the girl's hand in marriage when his uncle, the lord of his family, had already granted that right to my son?!"
Antonia tried to listen as Capulletto railed on, but her eyes kept returning to her father — entirely still, placidly watching events unfold. He glanced over and winked at her. Embarrassed, she shifted her gaze to the tapestry at their backs. It bore an amusing image of rabbits doing battle with mounted knights. Antonia giggled, a sound she quickly stifled for fear of disgracing herself before her father.
But Dante was bored with the Little Capuan's oration, into a fourth repetition. Hearing his daughter's smothered laugh, he glanced at the tapestry. "Absurd, isn't it? Look closer at the vines in the back," he added, nodding at the background, thick with the green of a forest. There were tiny demons there, causing the rabbits to behave as they were. "As you know, my Beatrice, even the most innocent things can be the tools of the underworld."
Antonia then listened as he explained the politics of the moment to her in whispers. "The girl who has eloped is Paduan, the niece of Giacomo da Carrara. Though our host is on friendly terms with Carrara, it is generally acknowledged that the struggle between them is only beginning. At the moment, Verona is at peace with Padua. Cangrande wants to keep it that way for a while longer."
"So," murmured Antonia, "whatever way Padua blows, that will direct the Scaliger's sails?"
"Just so."
Touching the hem of Dante's sleeve, Jacopo nodded across the hall. "Pietro's here."
Antonia looked up. A knight was entering the hall, accompanied by a little man and an enormous Moor with scars on his face and neck. The knight was clothed in a long doublet and breeches that, contrary to fashion, hid his thighs. The crutch he used did not bow his shoulders at all, just canted his body slightly right. At his heels padded a lean young greyhound. For a moment Antonia fancied they should have been the subject of the tapestry, not the demon bunnies. She tried to see around them to view her brother.
Then she remembered. Pietro had been injured in his leg. Glancing again, she now recognized the colour of the hair almost hidden by a hat and a bandage. She saw the familiar cant of the head. She saw her father's lean face, her mother's colouring. Somewhere in that well-shaped youth was the boy who'd pulled her hair when she'd been small.