"I am trying to buy my way in," Allegreto said as she touched the page of accounts. "If you know of any notably holy personages I might support, or a miracle I might sponsor, do inform me."
She smiled painfully. "I have only one miracle to desire of you."
"I am flesh and blood. I have no miracles within me, Elena. You know it well."
She turned her face away. "I seem to have none, either. Sometimes I think it has been a great mistake. That my grandfather was wrong. We are weak. We are still divided. I’m a maid—hardly yet twenty. Milan is only waiting for me to fail. Or not that long." She drew a shuddering breath. "The stories I have heard of the Visconti...God save, they are beasts, not men. Sometimes I’m so afraid. And I wish you were there at my side."
The rain lightened to a steady mutter outside the window. She remained staring down at her finger on the parchment list.
"Now you torment me in truth," he said.
"And myself."
She felt him when he came to her. When he stood behind her silently.
"What do you want?" he asked softly.
She could hardly speak. "Oh—do not ask." It came out as a mere rush of breath, barely words. She knew why she had come here. Had known it all along.
She felt his hand touch the cloth wrapped about her head. It came free, drifting down to the floor as her hair fell around her shoulders. He moved near her, a heat and velvet touch all down her back and her hips. But no closer. He did not embrace her. Elena gazed at the woven mat on the wooden floor, feeling tears of anguish rising in her throat.
"I should go," she said in a broken voice, and did not move.
He pushed his hands into her hair and pressed his face to her throat. "Let me remember." He drew a hard breath beside her ear. "Let me remember first."
She let her head fall back. Oh, to remember...
She turned, lifting her face to him. He doubled her hair in his hands and pressed her cheeks between his fingers, kissing her, opening his mouth against hers. He leaned back on the table and pulled her to him fiercely.
The sound of the rain seemed to rise to a roar in her ears, merging with her heartbeat. She let herself rest on him, his body strong and alive and real against hers. So long it had been, she had near lost faith that he had ever been more than a dream, a vision she had seen once between sleep and waking. Her dark angel.
He pushed her abruptly away. Elena made a faint moan, gazing up at him. They did not speak. There was no need to say that she had set aside any truth or lie that they had wed, that to conceive a child now would be utter disaster. And yet she had come here to him, and she knew not how she could leave again.
A faint bitterness played at the corner of his mouth. "How you must enjoy to annihilate me."
She shook her head. "I cannot help myself. I cannot."
He cupped her face and kissed her again. "I can." His hands slid to her shoulders. "Though it slay me."
She whimpered, seeking his lips, pressing herself to his chest. Through her plain thin gown, through his silk, she could feel his phallus erect. With a lascivious move, she rolled herself against him, begging.
"Hell-cat," he muttered, tearing his mouth away. He pressed downward on her shoulders, pushing her to her knees before him. His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her face against the hard shape of him under the silky cloth.
Elena slid her hands up his thighs. He wore no breech; above his black hose and laces, her fingers touched bare skin. She drew her hands together over his naked shaft.
With a deep sound he arched toward her. She kissed him through the black veil of silk, skimming her nails over his hot skin. He let go of her suddenly and gripped the edge of the table as she explored him, his body growing taut. She could hear him breathing between his teeth.
She opened her mouth over his rod, sucking through the silk. Her own body wanted him inside; she drew on him with that desire, as if she could take him to her very heart. She closed her fingers hard at the base of his shaft and felt the pain she caused travel up through him as he thrust into her mouth in response.
She tightened her hold and pulled and worked, tasting the wet cloth and another essence that made damp heat between her legs. She served him like a wanton, with no thought but to the way he trembled and plunged himself deep in her mouth. The silk pulled taut over the head of his rod with each shove.
She drove her fingernails into him. Low in his throat he made a sound of agony. His shaft pulsed in her hands. He cried out, arching back, an echo of the rain and wind as his body seized and shuddered. Elena opened wide her lips to take him as he burst and spilled into the silken sheath.
The exotic, earthy savor was only a trace through the cloth. She would have tasted deeper, but he pulled her up against him, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, holding her hard to his chest. When he finally broke away, she was lost for air or thought. She clung in his arms, wanting him still, consumed with folly and desire.
"Beloved," he said fiercely. Suddenly he caught her up and carried her, ducking through the doorway. He laid her on the bed, half upon it, dragging up her gown. The edge of the high bed arched her body to him like an open offering; he leaned over her and kissed the mounded curls between her legs, thrusting his fingers up inside her.
Elena gasped and twisted, lifting herself to his mouth. Where his tongue touched her, her body convulsed. She closed her legs and strained, panting under the stroke and press of his fingers. Sweet hot sensation unfurled, rising to an explosion. She clutched at his hair, pleading for it. When it came in a fury of pleasure, she sobbed for breath, squeezing tears from beneath her eyelids as the peak rolled through her.
* * *
She had no long hours to tangle in sleep beside him. Keys and the slide of a bolt awakened her from what seemed a moment’s drowse at his side. Allegreto was already on his feet when a loud voice gave warning of the appointed time. Dario sounded gruff and irritable, but Elena heard the note of anxiety beneath. He would give her no longer than they had agreed. Less, she thought it seemed—or an hour had passed in the space of a moment.
She rose hastily. The fact of imprisonment struck her with force as guards came through the door without consent. Allegreto turned her into his arms, pulling the black-and-white prostitute’s hood close around her face. He bent as if for a kiss, blocking her from the view of the guards. "Farewell," he said beneath his breath. "Farewell."
He let go of her without lingering. She could not look up at him again for fear of revealing herself.
"For the girl." Allegreto tossed a gold coin to the nearest guard as he turned away. Elena kept her face lowered under the hood.
"Ah." The guard gave a snort and waved her toward the door. "She must have been good."
* * *
Elena barely held her head erect under her heavy crown as she dined at the high board between Raymond and the Milanese ambassador. Exhaustion pulled on her mind and heart. She would have been glad to lay her head down on the snowy white damask and lose all awareness amid the cups of silver for the wine.
The council meeting had been a monumental conflict of wills between herself and some twenty men with no small opinion of their own judgment. She had clung to her refusal to wed, but the only thing that truly spared her was their inability to agree on a candidate. She feared that strong factions were forming, and none of them were behind her on this matter. It did not bode well for the unity of her rule. None had said so aloud yet, but some might think that if she would not marry at the council’s hest, perchance her election should be overturned and a man put in her place. Or if she proved too stubborn for that, she might be removed by a more uncomplicated and fatal stratagem.
They had postponed a vote until the next meeting, at least. Elena broke bread and tried to master her weariness far enough for courtesy. Dario performed credence and kept a stony eye on the signor from Milan, but the plump representative of the Visconti seemed less inclined to poison Elena than to chide her incessantly in a gentle voice. In his face and
manner he reminded her of no one so much as her sister Cara, reproving Elena for her reluctance to agree to his political proposals and insisting that Monteverde and Milan had always been friends and staunch allies. This was not what she had read in her grandfather’s history. She had taken Philip’s advice and paid handsomely from the treasury for an added protection if Milan should prove a true enemy.
She had not even dared speak to the council about it, for fear of spies, but hidden the sum in the expense of renovations to her chambers that had yet to be made. But the money went to another free company of soldiers, in the current pay of Venice, who ranged in the mountains to the north and held the passes open for commerce. It was a pure and simple blackmail—no doubt they would as happily close the way if no one paid them to do differently. But they were there, and Elena remembered Hannibal, and thought it worth her while to live with the same bed-hangings that had graced her chamber in Lady Melanthe’s day.
She nodded to the Milanese diplomat with what courtesy she could muster. She raised her finger for the signor’s wine to be filled, watching as his own taster took a ceremonial sip before the cup was passed.
The ambassador launched into a discourse on the ultimate futility of republican institutions, advising Elena to reconsider the wisdom of giving wide powers to an elected council. She was not overly pleased with the council herself at the moment, but his criticisms provoked her, as she knew they were meant to do. Before she could discover a suitably polite and clever way to undercut him, she was astonished to hear Raymond speak loudly in French.
"Nay, my lord, have you read Prince Ligurio’s book on the subject?" he asked, leaning to look past her. "I have just finished it, and it is worthy of consideration by kings."
Elena looked at him, half-expecting him to grin and wink as if he made a jest. Raymond was no proponent of civil rule that she ever knew—he had served Lancaster as his liege and master without question, even to his marriage. But his face was serious as he took up a sharp defense of her grandfather’s ideas, countering the ambassador’s objections with quotes from the Latin and even Greek.
Elena stared at him in amazement. She had to be courteous herself, but Raymond grew quite heated on the subject, saying that he had spent the past fortnight in Monteverde in talking to people of all orders, and taking note of how they loved their elected princess. They were pleased with the new laws and just administration. A fisherman of unknown family could expect that he would receive treatment under the judges equal to that of any Riata lordling.
The ambassador mumbled about the disintegration of order, but Raymond said stridently that any bloodthirsty tyrant could keep order by spreading fear. Order in Monteverde came of respect and love for the princess herself, and the selfless way she governed. This was so near a direct insult to the merciless methods of the Visconti that Elena intervened before the ambassador’s color rose too high. She turned the talk to the upcoming days of grape harvest and asked the Milanese diplomat if the weather had been favorable in Lombardy. They spoke of the country festivals that would honor the harvest once it was gathered in.
"Your Grace," Raymond said suddenly, turning to her with a smile. "Give me the honor of laying an idea before you. Let us have a celebration in Monteverde to mark the first year of your reign. It has been near a year now, has it not?"
She blinked at the notion. It hardly seemed a thing to celebrate—it had been a year of strain and misery and loneliness in her mind. But Raymond gave her a warm look, leaning near. He raised his eyebrow toward the ambassador and lowered his voice, changing to English.
"It would be a sign to doubters that all is going well," he murmured. "Arrange some processions and feasting. The people always love display." He offered her a sip of wine from his goblet. "Make liveries that they can keep. Distribute largesse, release some prisoners." He shrugged, giving her a sideways glance. "Invent some cheer, Your Grace. By hap if I am fortunate, it will make you smile again."
TWENTY-SIX
On a morning in late October they came for Allegreto. The splotches of colored banners, the movement of a troop—he had seen them marching on the fortress across the lake where Franco Pietro lay, but he had thought it yet another escort to take the Riata again into the citadel. Zafer had heard no hint or suspicion of anything more, beyond the plans to commemorate a year of Monteverde’s new republic. Those preparations had seemed to grow apace each time there was a new report. In addition to the procession to the duomo and the special mass, there was to be a feast and a hastilude in the tilt yard of the citadel, celebrations in the market and streets of all the towns, everything from a new ballad commissioned by the miners’ guild to a bronze statue of Prince Ligurio in a Roman senator’s robes and laurel crown, donated by Venice, to be raised in the piazza while speeches were declaimed by every worthy who could find an excuse to dally in the north of Italy.
The whole chaotic plan for celebration made Allegreto uneasy. He did not approve of opening the citadel to crowds, or of the princess exposing herself at the head of a procession that would begin at Val d’Avina and advance to the city. He had even sent messages to tell her so. But his cautions seemed to fall unheard. Word came that it was her favorite, the Englishman, who promoted the festivities, and whatever delight he suggested, the princess granted willingly.
She had said she would take no other to her. Allegreto did not believe it. Zafer said nothing of carnal connection; the rumors claimed that she never saw any man alone. But still Allegreto did not believe it.
So when the soldiers came without warning on the first day of the event, he understood instantly. Haps the Englishman had convinced her at last of the wisdom of it, or Philip, or the council in some secret gathering. Allegreto hardly cared. If she meant to have an execution as the centerpiece of her entertainment, ridding herself of Navona and Riata at one brilliant blow, he could only admire the drama of it. Such a thing would impress the people beyond measure. She had offered mercy and urged peace—Allegreto and Franco had refused it. So everything came to its preordained end, and this was the perfect time to make it count.
He had tried to prepare himself. He had some slight hopes, floating half-waterlogged in a sea of desolation. He had not yet received a reply from the Pope on his latest appeal and offering—perpetual masses endowed at Monteverde and Rome and Venice, all of the isle of Il Corvo dedicated to a monastery in the service of whatever saint His Holiness considered most deserving, and the three fragments of the Black Tablet that he had managed to collect at extraordinary expense, which contained portions of the Ten Commandments carved into stone that would take no scratch from a normal tool.
He did not go so far as to make any claims that the Black Tablet was a holy relic. He only offered what he had with as much meekness as ink could convey on a page. He had begged the Pope to forgive his inability to send an army. He had no army at his command, but to have his ban lifted, to have a slender chance at Heaven, he would abase himself before this absurd madman of a Holy Father in any other manner the lunatic desired.
But it was too late now for the Pope. There would be a priest there for Franco; if Allegreto was fortunate he also might be suffered to receive the sacrament in extremity. He could hope for it.
He stood without resistance as they dressed him in a green shirt and silver houppelande. The robes were beautifully made, with fitted hose and elegant deep sleeves that trailed to the dagged hem at his thighs. The braided circlet for his head held a single feather plume, a whisper of weight that curled down over his temple and fluttered white just at the corner of his vision.
It was great finery for a man condemned. In haps she meant it as a compliment. He would have been more thankful to be spared the manacles they clapped on his wrists, rendering him helpless for the ride down the mountainside. He kept his gaze level, staring straight ahead for pride, containing the frenzy against the bonds that rose inside him. Two soldiers led the horse. Zafer walked beside, one hand on the stirrup.
Bells began tolling as they rea
ched the narrow strip of level ground beside the lake. The captain of the troops ordered haste. Allegreto prayed that if it was to be a bonfire, she would not have the courage to watch, for he was not sure he had the courage to endure it in silence. If he lost his thin hope and found himself howling in everlasting flames, at least there would only be the Devil and the rest of the doomed to hear.
The city gates stood open for them. Crowds lined the streets, staring as he passed, bizarrely silent under the deep toll of bells from every church in the city. It nearly broke his nerve—he thought he could have borne jeering and pelting with refuse better than the expectant waiting.
They passed his father’s tower and the Navona enclave. It still bore marks of smoke and flame from the upper windows, but a new portico was under construction lining the street. He recognized faces—men loyal to his house stood atop the wooden scaffolding. He met their eyes, and they bowed their heads one by one as he passed.
There were other signs of destruction and renewal in the city—empty spaces where buildings should have stood, stacks of rubble and pallets of worked stone ready to be levered into place. But it seemed unchanged in its heart, in its fine tall towers that glared at one another across the piazzas and streets. Long banners hung below every window, a hundred colors and designs to mark each house and guild. The cloth drifted with lazy majesty over the streets, lifting and falling, a soft sound above the clatter of armor and hooves as the bells fell silent.
Allegreto felt a rise of his heart as the street turned. Down a narrow cleft of shadow between the towers, the colored walls and golden dome of the duomo stood framed in brilliant sunlight. The crowds parted. In a moment he expected to see what pyre or execution block would end his life, but the sight of the church was a glimpse of wonder through a dark tunnel.