A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger
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Florence, near Orsanmichele
‘You leave tomorrow. You will join the delegation at Bologna.’ Adam Scarlett found a more comfortable position on the stool, one of four in the low single room that served as the friar’s occasional dwelling. His left foot rested on the floor, his right on the hearth, scattered with ash and meal. As he spoke to Paolo Taricani he rocked himself slowly back until his head touched the stone wall, the cool on his neck a pleasant contrast to the chamber’s stuffy heat.
‘I will not do it.’
‘Of course you will.’
‘No.’
‘Brother Paolo—’
‘Send Teti. Or Efisio. Efisio makes sense. He is quick, young. Gets it up and in and twisted before the florin hits the floor.’
Scarlett ignored the hurried pleading. ‘But you are the best, Paolo. And Ser Giovanni knows it. That is why he has chosen you for this extraordinary task.’
‘I am Il Prescelto, then.’ Taricani’s sarcasm was thick, and Scarlett worried this could get difficult.
He sighed, recalling what Hawkwood had told him. Take him as far as you can, Adam. If he’s still balking bring him to me.
He tacked right, appealing to Taricani’s ego; left, to his civic pride. Nothing worked. Finally Scarlett stood. ‘Let’s go, Brother Paolo.’
The man frowned suspiciously. ‘Go where?’
‘San Donato a Torre.’ Hawkwood’s villa that season, a short ride to the north.
Taricani shook his head, still showing no fear. That could change, and quickly, but for the moment Scarlett let him prattle on. ‘I will not go. I will not do this – this “extraordinary task”, and I will not go with you.’ He spat on the floor. His own floor. He looked tense, about to spring. His hand moved to his belt.
Scarlett spread his arms, slowly, and raised his hands to his sides. He gave the man a conciliatory nod. ‘Bene,’ he said, and left the tenement, hating what he had to do next.
Taricani’s house sat at the ass end of a narrow alley leading south from Orsanmichele. At the other end waited three of Hawkwood’s roughest men, unmounted at the moment, their horses posted out in the piazza. Scarlett gave them the signal, then went to wait in front of the church, selecting the sharp corner at Via dei Pittori as his spot. The crumbling house of the Bigallo loomed overhead, knots of thirsty pilgrims draped around the plinths, waiting, like Paolo Taricani, for a miracle that would never come. On a high scaffold an old painter and his apprentice were at work retouching a David, hurling his stone at the giant. Scarlett wondered whether the outmatched Paolo, too, would fight, and if so, for how long. The man had too much to lose, though, and it was not long until he stumbled into the piazza, his hands bound at his waist, one eye blackened, the other cut and swollen.
Hawkwood’s men had fared no better. One of them had earned a long gash across his cheek, which he wiped with a quiet fury as the others threw the friar over a horse and set off across the piazza. Scarlett took his time, arriving back at San Donato a full hour after the others. Hawkwood had waited for him, though, and as Scarlett walked through the yard toward the house the condottiero was just coming out the villa’s entrance. The men had bound Taricani to a chair, an ornate, high-backed seat brought out from the hall, and the man’s thin face now showed a few more bruises, a second black eye.
Hawkwood stood before the chair, fixing Taricani with a friendly smile. ‘You were Bernabò Visconti’s swiftest knife for years, Brother Paolo. Why he let you retire I’ll never know.’
Taricani shrugged. ‘The signore has his methods, Ser Giovanni.’
‘Indeed,’ said Hawkwood. ‘Might be interesting to plumb them with you someday.’
Taricani bunched his lips, exuding confidence. ‘At your pleasure, Ser Giovanni.’
Stay humble, Scarlett silently warned the man.
Hawkwood knelt in the dirt. He placed a palm on each of Taricani’s knees, looked up at his face. ‘You have a beautiful woman, Brother Paolo.’ He let that sit, then, ‘And a daughter who ripens by the day. My men have seen her at the markets, Paolo. She can’t be more than, what, ten, eleven?’
Taricani nodded, his eyes darkening.
‘And her name, Paolo. It is memorable, isn’t it, but I seem to have forgotten it. Help an old man, Paolo. What is your daughter’s name?’
‘Pic-Picco-Piccola-Piccolamela, sire.’
Hawkwood chuckled at Taricani’s difficulty. ‘Piccolamela. Now I remember! “Little apple” in my native tongue. An exquisite name for an exquisite girl, this virgin bastardess of an uncelibate friar. Did you choose this name yourself, Paolo?’
‘My – her mother chose it, sire.’
‘Well good for her. Piccolamela. How about that?’ Hawkwood clapped his palms on Taricani’s thighs, reading the new terror on his face. ‘Though it’s a strange coincidence. For do you know what my favourite fruit is, Paolo?’
Taricani shook his head.
‘Can you guess?’
He shook his head again. Less confidence this time.
‘Apples, Brother Paolo. I like apples best.’
Taricani’s tongue flickered across his lips.
‘And you know how I like my apples, Paolo?’
The assassin was still.
‘Green, Paolo. I like my apples green.’
Taricani pressed against the ropes, then the pleas started. No, Ser Giovanni, you wouldn’t, Ser Giovanni, she is only a girl, Ser Giovanni, oh mercy, Ser Giovanni, mercy mercy mercy! Scarlett listened for a while, then looked off into the hills until the begging faded into the familiar moans of a newly broken man.
Hawkwood stood, all business. ‘The fate of your daughter’s virtue is entirely up to you. If you refuse us we’ll have her in hand this evening, and your whore as well. I’ll make you watch, Paolo Taricani. I’ll taste your little apple first, then hand her to my man Scarlett here, then we’ll bring the garrison up from the river. I’ll cut off your eyelids if I have to, but you’ll watch every man take her, one by one, and in every way imaginable. You know I’ll do it, too. You’ve seen me do worse. By God, you’ve helped me do worse, Paolo. And if you fail in your mission, if I get word you’ve bungled the thing, or fled, why – why then I will take your Piccolamela to Venice and sell her to the Turks. Little apples fetch a handsome price in the doge’s slave markets.’
He bent over the puddled friar. ‘On the other hand, Paolo, if you do this, know that I will take care of your daughter, and your woman too. They won’t be short of florins, and no one will lay a hand on them. And if you don’t come back I will still protect them. Your daughter, though the illegitimate spawn of a half-lapsed friar, will marry well.’
Scarlett could see the resignation on Taricani’s face, the defeated angle to his shoulders. But only for a moment. Taricani was a professional, after all, and this was a job like any other. Just a job. Scarlett watched him take a deep breath, nod at the ground, and look up at Hawkwood, his eyes lit with the cold flame of a born killer. ‘At your service, Ser Giovanni.’
Hawkwood clapped the man on the shoulder. ‘Very well, then.’ He started to untie the knots, freeing Taricani from his chair. ‘The rendezvous is set for Bologna. You’ll have four spears of ours, in addition to any accompanying the delegation. From Bologna up to the Aosta pass and over to Geneva, then on the Rhine from Basel to Cologne. Next a hard ride to Hamburg, where you’ll sail to Dover.