CHAPTER 23
An hour past midday, when cats yawn and even lizards find shade. Red-slate-capped towers burn like lynch-mob torches. Men creep home like ghouls, keeping to the dark side of the alleys. For an hour the city is dead, streetside and topside.
The noonday sun reigned in perfect silence everywhere but the Lion’s Fountain. There the hours passed unnoticed. The tavern had grown with its clientele, expanding into something more than an unsanitary hole in the wall. Bocca, the proprietor, was a beer-bellied red-nosed cur, known to everyone as the brewer. He was founder and self-elected prior of the Vintners’ Guild, which had recently become important enough to merit (or wealthy enough to buy) a seat in the Palazzo del Popolo. Some things hadn’t changed; the wine was still wretched and nights in the cramped piazzetta still ended with the customary brawls, only now the fights were not between Rasenneisi but bandieratori and condottieri. The debris of last night’s revels – unconscious bodies, broken stools, shattered glass – hadn’t yet been cleared when the next wave came for their morning glass: sweet wine for bandieratori, beer and spirits for the foreigners.
Piers Becket had a rusty Anglish look and brute manners to match. He was young and strong and had boyish blue eyes, and he would have cut an impressive figure were it not for the helmet he always wore to cover the patch where his straw-like red hair was thinning. The condottiere was popular with the old inner circle who had set out with John Acuto from the Northern Isles. Like them he was a sailor – or pirate; the distinction was academic – as well as a soldier; military men in Europa, Frankish and Anglish alike, were necessarily both. Tired of starving on small fish, Becket had joined one of the passing condottieri bands that were gravitating towards Etruria and its bull-market of warring states and there he jumped ship again, this time to join the celebrated Hawk’s Company.
‘I never regretted that decision until now,’ he said. ‘If I’d wanted to die of boredom in a town garrison I’d have stayed at home.’
‘How did we go so wrong?’ a fellow drinker burbled.
The question was rhetorical, but Becket had the answer: ‘Levi. We should have collected our gold and moved on the moment we destroyed the Twelfth. Waiting here, doing nothing, we’re not only passing up the cream of the year’s Contracts, we’re giving Concord time to regroup.’
‘Concord’s done,’ said a bandieratoro sitting at the next table, ‘and, as I recall, the Twelfth were destroying you until we showed up.’
‘Your flags were a nice distraction, boy, I’ll give them that,’ Becket said genially. ‘All that noise and colour – why, it was like carnival! But don’t take credit for our victory. That was a battle, not a street fight.’
The Rasenneisi table scoffed, but it was uneasy laughter. The absence of a common enemy, and of any objective other than defence, sat uneasily with both groups, who had nothing to occupy their time now but sterile arguments over precedence.
‘Congratulations, then,’ said a different Rasenneisi voice.
‘Well, thank you,’ said Becket looking around. He leapt to his feet, hand on his sword. ‘What do you want?’
Uggeri didn’t frequent the Lion’s Fountain, or any other tavern, but more than one condottiere had learned not to cross this born fighter. He coolly indicated the bandieratoro beside him.
‘Your new brother-in-law, Tommaso Sorrento, wants to congratulate you.’ The boy was slightly older, but unlike Uggeri, he was quivering with fury, skin pale, lips tight as the grip on his flag.
‘What’s this about?’ Becket said indignantly, his blue eyes darting around the piazzetta to confirm the proportion of condottieri to bandieratori was in his favour.
It wasn’t hard to follow Becket’s calculations. Uggeri thumped his stick smartly on the cobblestones. ‘Keep swords and flags out of this. It’s very simple: Rosa Sorrento is waiting. Do the right thing. Give your son a name.’
‘Get lost before I spank you with the flat of my sword. I came here to drink, not listen to baseless accusations from impertinent boys.’
‘If you’re worried about money, Tower Sorrento’s doing well.’
‘Look, Rosa’s a friendly girl – if she said I showed her favour, then I can assure you I wasn’t the first. I’m a condottiere. I already have a worn-out saddle. Tommaso here will have to find another rube to marry his slut of a sister.’ He gestured wide. ‘Try any of these gentlemen. Their claim’s at least as good as mine.’
The condottiere’s speech had started with catcalls and hooting. It ended in a long silence. Uggeri alone did not look surprised. He stood to one side and gently led Tommaso forward, like a set-dancer swapping position. At Uggeri’s touch, Tommaso jerked to life and threw himself roaring at Becket, who, despite Uggeri’s advice, was unsheathing his sword even as he fell back in his chair. When he landed, his sword came free, but he had lost his grip. He reached for it, but Tommaso’s stick came down hard on his hand with a sound like thickly piled stones crunching. Becket screamed, but Tommaso was on him, using his legs to hold down Becket’s arms as he punched his face repeatedly.
Uggeri stood guard in case any condottiere attempted to aid their colleague. One of the three Becket was drinking with made a half-hearted lunge, but a swift parietal-tap dropped him. The other two leaped back, fumbling for their blades, as Uggeri vaulted over the table. He landed with a flourish, using his flag both to conceal his body and confuse their sense of space. Other condottieri tables were getting to their feet; he had to be quick. His foot sank into the first’s stomach, doubling him over into the end of a waiting flag. The stick rebounded and Uggeri turned it, catching the base against the second’s chin just as he was about to swing his sword.
Three down. Uggeri had always been dangerous, but under Sofia’s tutelage he’d become lethal. He glared at the other tables of condottieri. Those already standing exchanged glances and sat down to their drinks; clearly this was a family matter. For a minute there was no other sound in the piazzetta than the sweet, shrill cries of swallows and the wet, heavy rhythm of Tommaso beating Becket’s face to pulp.
‘Uggeri! Tommaso!’ Sofia shouted from a rooftop overlooking the piazzetta. ‘Flags down.’ Uggeri swore under his breath and watched his teacher nimbly drop from construction hand-holds and windowsills to the ground. As she landed, Levi appeared from a northern alleyway, out of breath.
Uggeri blocked Levi’s way.
‘Stand aside,’ Levi said.
‘Your man took advantage of a Rasenneisi woman. This is justice.’
‘Justice is what your Podesta says it is. Stand aside!’
Uggeri’s flag went up, but Levi had been around Sofia too long to try a sword against a bandieratoro, or let him get any distance. He pushed the arm holding the stick aside and punched Uggeri hard in the face. The other condottieri had taken courage on seeing their leader arrive and now they grabbed Uggeri’s arms as he stumbled back and pinned him to a table.
‘Tommaso, basta!’ Sofia said. The bandieratoro looked up at her, his eyes dull, his face speckled with Becket’s blood, and drew back his fist again. Sofia kicked his exposed ribs and he fell off. She took a mug from a table and knocked back its contents as she walked to the fountain. She filled it with water, turned and poured it on Becket’s head. Enough blood washed off to reveal the landscape of swollen, broken skin.
She walked over to where the condottieri held Uggeri. ‘Let him go.’
They looked to Levi, who nodded.
Uggeri pulled his arms free and faced Sofia.
‘When are you going to get smart?’ she hissed, ‘You’re not just embarrassing yourself, you’re embarrassing Tower Scaligeri – Doc’s tower!’
He was shorter than her, but he raised his chin defiantly. Sofia slapped him with an open palm. It was more noisy than painful, but there was enough boy in Uggeri yet to be shamed by the public admonition. With a glance at Levi, she grabbed Uggeri and led him away.
As Levi took Tommaso Sorrento by the arm, he realised the boy was numbed by what he’d done. He followed Sofia, pausing only to tell his men, ‘Wait for me back at the fortezza. Dio Impestato! You’ve better things to do in the middle of the day than drink!’ But he knew that wasn’t true. Just as he knew that an army without a war will soon invent one.