The battlements seemed to glow, sunny and open, not the midnight-sinister pile of stone they had been in the rain-swept dark of that terrifying night six weeks ago. Only six weeks ago? It seemed a world past. When the word of the deaths of their leader and his dark advisor had arrived, the Losimon army had turned away at the border fords and marched back to their own capital. A Ferrante cousin appointed heir by the Curia was presently scrambling for political control there, and in no mood to seek extra trouble from his new neighbors.
The animals' hooves clopped, echoing off the stone walls, as the women rode through the tower-flanked gate into a busy and noisy castle courtyard. Blacksmiths were at work repairing the portcullis, and their laborers stoked a portable forge. Lord Pia, dressed in summer linens and an Egyptian cotton shirt, leaned on a cane supervising. Under his wife's devoted care he'd made a good recovery, though appearing more frail, as his hair was grayer and he'd lost some of his robust girth. Except for a certain uncharacteristic hesitancy, his tone of mind was much improved from the over-stressed dementia of those days of madness, magic, and murder. He recognized Fiametta, and favored her with a friendly wave of his hand. Fiametta waved back while trying to look very busy, lest he come over and corner Thur again for more talk of his proposed bat-wing experiments.
The bronze Perseus/Uri had been raised to its stone plinth, square in front of the marble staircase. And so Duke Sandrino's captain guarded his house for all time. Fiametta still bit her lip in frustration that the Duchess had chosen to entrust the finishing details to di Rimini, and not to Fiametta. She trusted Papa was truly sped far from this world of woe; even his ghost would nave been livid at the thought of his greatest work fallen into the hands of his rival, though he would probably have been almost equally horrified at the thought of it in the hands of his daughter. Well ... di Rimini appeared to have done a competent job so far. At least the thing hadn't fallen over yet.
One could only carry on. The Duchess, frugal in the uncertain days of her new widowhood, had elected not to have the body of the Medusa cast to lie at the Perseus's feet and complete the tableau, but to mount the statue as it was. This saved that work from going to di Rimini, but also gave her the excuse to knock a full half off the payment Papa had thought to get from Duke Sandrino.
Thur read these tense thoughts from Fiametta's face; she'd expressed them often and vigorously enough to his ear. Lifting her down from the horse before the bronze, he kissed her forehead and whispered, "Daily bread, love."
She nodded, and sighed in resignation. The half-payment, plus the residue of monies still owed on the saltcellar, had at least settled all of Papa's debts. After buying new tools for the shop and setting aside enough to live on until business was established, Thur had stretched it further by doing repairs on the wrecked house himself. His new gallery looked sturdy enough for the Sultan's elephants to dance upon.
New furniture and fine clothes could wait. Thur had cooled her tongue by pointing out that God only promised daily bread, not a bakery. And indeed, the Duchess had soon given her a commission for some silver and pearl jewelry for Julia. And where the Duchess shopped, all the great ladies of Montefoglia must soon follow.
They laid the armload of flowers they'd brought at the bronze Uri's feet, and Fiametta stood back respectfully to let Thur's mother gaze, one last unexpected time, upon the features of her lost son. Would she appreciate the beautiful flowing form, the dramatic pose, the perfection of the casting? Would she be moved at this monument to his memory and his courage?
"Thur," the aging lady said in a choked voice, "he's naked." Her hand touched her lips in dismay.
"Well, yes, Mama," said Thur, placatingy phlegmatic. "That's the way the Italians make their statues. Maybe it's because of the hot climate."
"Oh, dear."
Thur scratched his head, looking as if he was wondering if he ought to jump up on the plinth and affix a bouquet in a strategic spot, to console her.
But she overcame her horror enough to quaver politely, "It's ... it's very fine. I'm sure." But he's naked! Fiametta could almost hear her wail in her thoughts.
Fiametta, uncertain whether to smile or snarl, bit her fingers and said nothing. She raised her eyes to the bronze face under the winged helmet, those metal lips curled faintly at the corners, and knew.
Uri would have laughed.
Author's Note
For the curious book lover, I'd like to add a word on the principal historical sources for The Spirit Ring.
This novel started with a book—three books, to be precise, all with family connections, which sat side by side on my bookshelf for years. The first seed from my family tree, and surely the rarest book among my inspirations, was a scholarly monograph published in 1907 titled The Grateful Dead, The History of a Folk Story, written by my great uncle Gordon Hall Gerould, B. Utt. (Oxon.), Preceptor in English in Princeton University. It came down through my mother's side of the family. In 174 densely written pages Uncle Gordon traced the history, through about twenty countries and twenty centuries, of a very old folk tale of that name. The fast-forward version goes: Young man goes out to seek his fortune, and comes across an altercation where the body of a debtor lies unburied until his debts are paid. Our hero forks over his grubstake (varying wildly depending on the version, but always the whole of his resources) and gets the debtor planted. He goes on down the road to further adventures, in the course in which he finds himself supematurally aided by the grateful ghost of the dead man, in reward for his pious deed.
It was quite clear from the wide range of versions, studding the monograph like little dried raisins and crying out to have the life pumped back into them, that here was a universal theme of great power.
Enter two more books, inherited from my engineer-father's extensive and eclectic bookshelf. De Be Metallica by Agricola is a 16th century Latin treatise on mining and metallurgy, translated into English by Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover. (Yes, the President. He was a mining engineer before he was a politician. His wife was also a Latin scholar.) Agricola inspired The Spirit Ring's hero, the self-effacing Swiss miner's son Thur Ochs. The kobolds came from a footnote therein. And The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini of course yielded up Prospero Beneforte, and a great deal more besides. Agricola is not light reading, but I highly recommend Cellini to all comers. In it you will discover the golden saltcellar, the bronze Perseus, the mad castellan, the vision in the dungeon of the Castel Sain Angelo, and a thousand other delightful or horrifying details of the times, as well as that wonderful egotistical monster, Cellini himself.
A couple dozen more research books followed in my reading (you will find Lorenzo d'Medici's spirit ring in the gorgeously illustrated Europe 1492 by Franco Cardini), but these three were the generative seeds.
Cellini leaves no record of ever having had a daughter. Fiametta is my own creation.