The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

21





As Lady Giulietta entered the family quarters she heard the sound of a harpsichord, its notes rising like birdsong. For an instant, her heart lifted and she forgot Lady Eleanor was dead, remembering a moment later when she found Frederick where her former lady-in-waiting used to sit. “You play?”

“A little,” he said, blushing.

Having thought about it, Giulietta remembered Eleanor wishing she could learn to use a sword and decided Frederick should be allowed to have learnt the harpsichord. “I was wondering,” she said. “I don’t suppose you have news from Montenegro?”

He shook his head and Giulietta’s heart sank. It was physical. Her ribs tightened and her stomach knotted, and she felt her eyes fill with tears as she stared at the distant tower of San Maggiore and willed herself not to cry.

Why not? she wanted to shout.

“It’s all right,” Prince Frederick said.

“No, it’s not.” She felt his arm go round her and tried to shake free, discovering he was stronger than he looked. After a struggle, she let him hold her, which he did gingerly as if she might break or melt against him. That was how Duke Marco found them a few moments later.

“J-J-Julie’s crying.”

“She misses Tycho.”

“Her angel? Of course she d-does. We all d-do.”

“So here you are . . .” If Aunt Alexa wondered why they were grouped by a window seat or noticed her niece was crying, she kept it to herself. Sitting almost sideways to the window, she joined Giulietta in staring over the Giudecca canal at the islands beyond. “This was my husband’s favourite seat, and his father’s before that. When il Millioni first became duke it was said he’d sit here for hours, looking at the waters . . . Couldn’t believe his luck probably. Either that, or he was hiding from assassins.”

“Aunt Alexa.”

“Oh, come on. You know he stole the throne.”

Prince Frederick was on the point of excusing himself, and had got as far as bowing politely before Alexa grabbed his wrist and patted the seat beside her. “All thrones are stolen,” she said firmly. “I’m surprised your father hasn’t told you this already.”

“He says kings are chosen by God.” Frederick sounded unhappy to be disagreeing with a woman rumoured to poison those who offended her. “That everyone knows this is true.”

“After the event, perhaps. God agrees. If God has anything to do with it at all.”

“My lady . . .”

“Listen to me,” she said. “All of you . . . A good ruler knows that thrones are stolen, and can be stolen again, and does good works to assuage the guilt of the first, and bad works to make sure the second never happens. We have our time on earth and then it’s done. What we do with those years is our choice.” She got to her feet unsteadily, kissed Marco on the forehead, hesitated and did the same to Giulietta. Then she ruffled Frederick’s hair.

“I’m glad we had this talk,” she said, before shutting the door behind her and leaving them alone in the little corridor with its harpsichord, window seat and rotting tapestries.

“What was that about?” Giulietta’s question was for Frederick but it was Marco who answered.

“My m-mother’s scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of e-everything,” Marco replied.

He left shortly afterwards and an awkward silence fell as Frederick wondered what to say to her, leant forward and opened his mouth a couple of times and finally decided to say nothing. Only he couldn’t manage that either.

“Should I leave you be?”

They were the same age but sometimes he behaved like a twelve-year-old. She’d met newly arrived pages with stronger self-confidence. He was watching, waiting for her answer. She sighed.

“It’s just . . . You look like you want to do some thinking.”

About what, for God’s sake? She was sick of chasing the same miserable thoughts around her head: where was Tycho, why hadn’t he said goodbye, would he really be able to save Leo, what was wrong with Aunt Alexa? And that was before she began on her memories, which were worse than the questions. Uncle Alonzo and his goose quill, Leopold dying, Tycho leaving . . . She should be in the nursery convincing everyone Venice’s supposed heir was happy and alive. Instead she avoided the changeling and even her aunt had stopped scolding her for being unable to pretend.

I’m fine, she thought. I’m fine so long as I don’t think about . . .

There was her problem. Thinking about Tycho was meant to make her feel better. And when she didn’t feel better, being with Frederick and Marco was meant to make her happier. But now she didn’t really want to be with anyone. Did that make her a bad person? She knew Frederick was in love with her. She’d like to be able to say, of course he was; as if a whole succession of blond German princelings had fallen in love with her. Truth was, until Tycho men barely looked at her at all. Even Eleanor had stolen more kisses and she was three years younger. Had been, Lady Giulietta reminded herself. Now she lay beneath a marble tomb in San Giovanni e Paolo. Every year Giulietta got older Eleanor would get another year younger than her.

“What are you thinking about?” Frederick asked.

“My old lady-in-waiting.”

“Eleanor?” he said. “I know you loved her.”

Eleanor never knew that, Giulietta thought sadly. And, anyway, Eleanor loved Rosalyn, Tycho’s ragged girl. Always back to Tycho. “Could you ask your father for me again?” she said, biting her lip.

“Always assuming I’ve asked him already.”

I know you have . . . A few days back, after she asked last time, the Night Watch reported a wolf had been seen slinking from the Fontego dei Tedeschi, where Prince Frederick made his base. Two nights later the customs guard swore a wolf crossed from the mainland and was spotted slinking along the Grand Canal. The animal was said to look emaciated and starving. Rumour said one of Frederick’s men had recently died. She was cruel, she realised; cruel to ask him to get news of Tycho.

“Maybe I could see if my father’s learnt anything new.”

So sweet, thought Giulietta, then remembered the night Frederick led a snarling war pack against the Byzantine infantry. They’d ripped heavily armed spearmen to shreds, with Frederick leading. So, not sweet after all – just kind, which she was coming to realise was different. He was two people and his kindness involved not letting them overlap. Maybe all men were like that.

“My father has mages,” Frederick was saying. “One of those might . . .”

“Thank you.” Giulietta kissed his cheek.

Frederick blushed. “Or you could ask the duchess?”

“My aunt?”

“Umm . . .” Frederick took a deep breath. “You must have noticed your aunt knows most things? Things she shouldn’t know?”

“She has spies.”

“We all have spies,” he said. “Your aunt . . .” Frederick hesitated. “Perhaps hers are simply a little better than everyone else’s.” The boy looked a little thinner than when he arrived, a little more tired. His beard was still just fuzz and he chewed one side of his lip like a child. It was odd to think he’d had a wife and child.

“Tell me about Annemarie,” Giulietta said.

He looked so instantly hurt she might have slapped him. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “it doesn’t matter”, but Frederick waved her words away. Without realising, he’d hugged his arms to his chest, rocking his shoulders as if to ease a knot in his back. His blue eyes were as bleak as a winter sky.

Will anyone love me that much?

Instantly, she felt ashamed of her selfishness, but couldn’t stop herself from worrying at the question. Did Tycho love her that fiercely? If she died would the mere mention of her name fill his face with misery years later? Grief hollowed Frederick’s face so brutally she hardly dared look at him.

Standing suddenly, Frederick left the room. Tycho didn’t leave rooms. He glowered, smouldered and burnt, often all at once. At worst, he vanished in a swirl of his cloak. Frederick simply left as if he’d forgotten to do something or suddenly remembered he’d promised to be elsewhere. Giulietta chewed her nails and wondered when she’d started biting them again. She was pretty sure it was since Frederick arrived and that made no sense at all.

Frederick returned a day later, asked if Giulietta would receive him and was brought up to the window seat where she sat watching the frozen lagoon. He didn’t say hello or apologise for leaving so suddenly the previous afternoon, simply sat beside her and started talking as if he’d never been gone.

“After Annemarie died I had to go through her possessions. Well, I could have given the job to my chamberlain. But she was my wife and I loved her. Jewellery went back to her family, as did half of her dowry. Our marriage agreement specified she had to live five years or produce a child.”

“Frederick . . .”

“Since the baby died she didn’t count.”

His voice was flat, whether from shock or mute acceptance Giulietta couldn’t tell. Maybe the passing years had numbed his horror. Giulietta suspected it was immature to be shocked – but she felt shocked all the same.

“You know what I found?”

Giulietta shook her head.

“A letter.”

From a lover? She wondered what Frederick was trying to tell her.

“She wrote it the week we married. It was to her cousin in Bohemia.” Frederick shrugged. “They grew up together. She swore her love for him would never die. Said how much she hated being made to marry me. That she would remember him for ever. The day they swam together at the waterfall was the happiest of her life. She never sent it.”

How could he bear to tell her this?

“The priest who was with Annemarie at the end told me she swore she loved me more than she’d ever loved anyone and regretted nothing of her time with me. That she simply wanted me to be happy after she was gone, as she’d been happy during her time with me. So you see . . .”

What? Giulietta wondered.

“We change. We think we don’t but we do.”

They sat in silence after that, not quite touching in the window seat of a corridor that linked the family rooms and acted as a little withdrawing room when the official nature of the palace became too much. He’d remained dry-eyed and his voice had been level when he spoke to her, but she was sure his cheeks looked thinner and his expression a little more withdrawn. He wore a doublet in the northern style, richly decorated with gold thread, and a chain of gold and enamel links hung around his neck that fell to a little ivory dragon with ruby eyes. She wondered if anyone really saw past the clothes to the boy inside.

“I should go,” he said.

“Of course . . .” She stood, embarrassed, wanting to apologise for asking about Annemarie and afraid to make matters worse. So she talked idiocies about the Watch finding it hard to march on ice, and the price of fish now holes had to be cut in the ice, and recut the next day, and how fishermen were complaining they were being turned into sculptors or carpenters.

“Do you have enough food?” he asked suddenly.

She looked up, surprised by his question. “There’s enough to feed an army in the storehouses beyond the kitchens.”

“I meant the city.”

Giulietta flushed with shame. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Maybe your aunt knows. In fact,” he said, “I’m sure she does. We had reports she was buying grain last summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew the cold was coming.” His comment returned her thoughts to what he’d said earlier, about her aunt knowing things other people didn’t, even those with their own spies . . . The more Giulietta thought about it the more she realised it was true. Frederick obviously suspected something. She needed to find out what.

“Why don’t we take a walk on the ice?”

So, Alexa thought, which thread to follow now?

Of course, there were always two threads, do this or do that. Two threads for every single second of every single minute of every life: and there were self-created flaws in those threads, the things you did half well, the things you did intentionally badly, the things you did too early (usually less critical than the things you left too late). Of such was life woven until death stilled the loom.

Those were not the threads Alexa meant, although she knew she was watching her niece wrestle with the simplest of girlish questions. Who do I want to be? Whom do I love? Is it wise? The question troubling Alexa was which thread would keep Venice safest? Tycho’s or Frederick’s.

Sigismund’s bastard had been right.

She’d been buying grain for months. All the same, there would be food riots eventually, because hunger already ate at the poor. But they would arrive later and be less serious than in other cities. Her subjects might not like eating bread when they were used to fish, they might accuse her of having cupboards full of figs and cheese, but the point was, they ate.

Swirling her fingers through the water in her jade bowl, Duchess Alexa gave the two youngsters on the ice back their privacy. Frederick would tell Giulietta about Alexa seeing at a distance, for all that how she did it was still unknown. Her niece would be drawn a little bit closer to him and he would become a little bit more confident around her, which was good.

The boy needed confidence. At least, he needed it if Giulietta was to fall properly in love with him. So far, neither had the wit to realise this was what was happening. Having felt close to Frederick, Giulietta would feel guilty, which would make her angry. Anger would make her realise that if her aunt could see at a distance, she could discover where Tycho was, and Alexa could expect a knock at the door.