A brightness long ago, p.16
A Brightness Long Ago, page 16
Teobaldo Monticola smiled. He said, triumphantly, “He is going to wager on her! The Falcon district never wins this race, and now, with a woman riding? It will be treated as a jest, as though even they know they can’t possibly win, they’ll be amusing people by declaring it.”
“But if they never win . . . ?” said Ginevra.
“She will be a very good horsewoman,” he said. “This is a Ripoli, remember? And I suspect there will have been considerable sums expended by Folco, and wagered to win considerably more. Even to get her selected as one of the riders, he’ll have had to bribe people.”
“My lord, why does he need money?” I risked. “He’s retained by Firenta. We learned it coming here. Isn’t this a terribly elaborate—?”
“No war this year. Only next year, if Firenta does come this way. His fee will be small now, in a season without fighting, and he is building in Acorsi. Jad knows, the bastard is building and building.”
“So are you, love,” said the woman.
“Yes! Which is why I need funds too, in a season of no wars. And here we are! In Bischio. And there is nothing, nothing on Jad’s earth under his blessed sun that will give me more pleasure than to make money tomorrow because of Folco d’Acorsi!”
He laughed aloud. Such a vivid, compelling man. I thought again of a bookshop at home, and I thought again, Not yet.
She smiled at him then, and I wondered if anyone would ever look at me that way at some point, at any point, in my own life.
He turned to me. “Danino, you have done me a good turn this morning.”
“We don’t know if she can actually win, or—”
“No. If he placed her here secretly, and bribed her way into the race, he will have bought her a good start, too. He didn’t do this without thinking. Folco doesn’t live that way. No, no. No. We have work to do now, all of us! Danino, I need you to go down and tell Gaetan to bring in ten of the men from outside the city and have everyone assemble here. And quickly.”
“Yes, lord,” I said. I turned to the door.
“Wait!” he said.
I turned back. His expression had changed.
“You didn’t owe me this,” he said quietly.
I met his gaze. I was ready for this question, at least.
“You have been generous, my lord. You have housed me with you. I am grateful.”
“I had you stay with us because my lady likes you. She thinks you are pretty, though I confess I don’t see it.”
She was still smiling. At him.
I said, “I am honoured. I think she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
A risk, perhaps, but I didn’t believe so. She smiled even more deeply. He did the same, in pride. Not a man who worried, I had realized, about women, their affection. Especially not this one.
“What a sweet thing to say, Guidanio,” said Ginevra della Valle.
“I don’t think,” said Monticola, “that this one is entirely sweet. I think there is more to him.” He turned to me. “Do you wish to serve me, Danino Cerra?”
I swallowed. “I told you, lord, I am no soldier.”
“I heard you say it. Any farm boy can be a soldier, get himself killed one way or another, be promoted if he doesn’t die.”
I remained silent, watchful. So, too, I saw, was the woman now. Something in how she knew him, his voice, change of mood.
“How long,” he asked, “were you at Guarino’s school?”
“Seven years,” I said. I remember my heart had begun beating faster. “He kept me on. I taught some of the younger ones towards the end.”
“Is that so? They taught you to ride, I know. Did they teach you anything else?”
“They did, my lord.”
“Trakesian? Mathematics?”
“Both of those.”
“Geography? Geography is important.”
“Yes, lord.”
A silence. I still remember the woman in that moment. Her posture had changed, as if she now was the one coiled, alert, attuned.
Teobaldo Monticola said, “You need not decide this morning. You can go home to sell books. But you can also come to Remigio with me. I have . . . I have two young sons who are of an age for a tutor. Would you like to do that?”
His older son, Trussio, his legitimate son, was in Sarantium, or on his way there. People knew it. The mother of the two younger boys was in the room with us.
“That is a serious task,” I said. “There are surely—”
“There are tutors all over Batiara and beyond. I make decisions in my own way,” he said impatiently. “There are many things a boy in a palace needs to learn, important as geography may be.”
“You could send them to Avegna,” I said.
“I am not sending them away from me,” he said.
Ginevra’s head was high, I saw. Her hands were clasped in her lap. I had the sense every syllable was registering.
I said, “My lord, I am . . . I am the son of a tailor.”
“I know that. Does it matter to you? It doesn’t to me. Not for this.”
I lowered my head, looking at the carpeted floor. He had shaken me. My thoughts were scattered again, like morning feed for hens.
He said, “Leave it for the moment. We have much to do. Decide after the race. If Adria Ripoli falls off at the start, or comes in eighth or tenth, I’ll likely kill you, anyhow.” He didn’t smile, saying that.
“That will spare me making a decision,” I said. He laughed.
She didn’t though, his mistress, the mother of those boys. She looked at me, at him, and her face was difficult to read.
I didn’t even try. I left the room and closed the door on the two of them and went down the stairs to tell Gaetan what his lord wanted done.
* * *
• • •
HE SENT OUT fifteen of us, having first made his men change their clothing, no livery. We were to be unknown. He’d also—though I only realized why later—had Ginevra go out as well, to sell a necklace, a jade bracelet, and earrings at a Kindath jewellery shop. The Kindath tended to be fair, and there’d be less gossip. She couldn’t very well disguise herself.
He needed money, immediately. Serales were best. Seressa’s coinage dominated our world, but any larger city’s was all right if you knew exchange rates, and a mercenary leader always knew those.
I learned a great deal that day about matters not addressed at school in Avegna, or in any Trakesian philosophy text or poem from Esperaña that I knew.
It was like a campaign. First, three men left, including Gaetan, whom Teobaldo trusted most, to determine two things: what the touts were offering as odds for different types of wager, and if any of them had accepted large bets on the Falcon district.
Then Ginevra went out, with her escort.
The rest of us remained in the house. The others changed their clothing. Tunics needed to be found. Not all of them fit especially well.
Teobaldo was in a main floor reception room, pacing. There was a kind of joy in him that day, I remember.
Ginevra returned. The three men returned.
He took their reports and her money. He wrote numbers down and considered them. He gave, crisply, commands.
It seemed there were, indeed, sums being wagered on the Falcon horse and rider. No single one was substantial, but bets were being placed with many different shops and booths. This was what he’d expected, I gathered, and what we were to do ourselves. Too large a wager would attract attention—especially a bet on a hapless district with a woman rider—and they’d change the odds.
The bets were to appear frivolous, Monticola instructed, drunken wagers for amusement. We were told to say that if the girl won, we’d give her a night of more pleasure than she’d ever known with a lover. Variations on such a thought.
I didn’t do that.
There was more: the wagers that had been coming in—it was Folco’s men doing this—were for the Falcon district’s horse to finish in the first three, not to win.
It was called a triana wager. The odds offered on the Falcon horse winning the race were thirty-five to one, reflecting how slim their hopes were seen to be. For a triana they were only seven to the one. Strange things happened in this race, it seemed. Horses crashed into each other or into the wooden walls put up in the square. A district could find itself coming third if the rider simply managed to survive the chaos. No glory, no parade—but those with money wagered on a third-place result would be happy.
You could also bet, I learned, on which district’s rider would fall first, or how many would, and even if anyone would die. People bet a coin on that last against the rider for the district they most hated. It was a tradition, apparently.
We went out just after midday, in sunshine and wind, going different directions in the city. I placed wagers and collected the slips of paper marking them all through the day. Small sums, one or two serales, five (not really such a small sum) once or twice at a larger stand or shop. We were to bet on a triana, but Teobaldo had decided that every fifth bet we each made should be for the Falcon district to win outright.
Folco wasn’t doing that, and I wondered why. I’d asked Monticola before going out.
He’d looked up at me. He was standing at the table, studying sheets of paper with numbers all over them.
He said, “The daughter of Arimanno Ripoli of Macera will not ride to come third in a race. She rides for Folco but also for herself. It may be unnatural, but . . . there is something in her, or she’d never do this. We may not understand her, but I intend to make a fortune from Adria Ripoli. And at thirty-five to one, I might. And our careful friend Folco will not.”
That last, I realized, walking the streets, was what was truly driving him. He would. Folco would not.
I wondered, not for the first time, what the history was here. Behind rumour. Many mercenaries, indeed all of them, might fight on opposite sides then find themselves working together on another campaign. It was the way of war in Batiara. But never these two. How did hatred for another man come to define so much of your life?
I thought about that and about Adria all day as I went through Bischio, with the sun in and out of clouds before it went down and lamps and lanterns began to appear, and torches in brackets on walls. And at some point, I realized that I knew—or thought I knew—something Teobaldo Monticola did not.
I was perhaps too confident, perhaps a little reckless, but at the last four large betting stands I wagered twenty serales of my own money, five at each, from the purse about my neck, on Adria Ripoli of Macera to finish in the first three of the Bischio race in the morning. A triana bet. Not to win.
“If it is ever known who I am, I cannot do any of these things any more.”
She had said that to me. That was the thing I knew.
The four men seated behind their tables taking my own wagers each gave me a close, careful look. I was young, and five serales was a considerable sum to possess, let alone wager foolishly. Two of them said, in almost the same words, one grinning, one not, “She won’t fuck you just because you bet on her. She’ll never know your name.”
It was true. She didn’t know my name. That still bothered me. It was also a childish thing to be thinking about. There were greater issues facing me.
First among them, I was allying myself—now, today—with the Wolf of Remigio. Everything I was doing was designed to achieve a triumph for him over Folco—and Adria. I’d made that choice when I saw her in the sanctuary and took word back to Monticola. My own decision. Not life throwing something at me I could not avoid. Fortune’s wheel might spin, but you acted—or did not—in response to where it went.
And because of my doing that, I now had an offer to go to Remigio, serve in the palace there. And a single day to decide. A day! Carrying the memory of a stairwell in Mylasia, her arm around my neck, a jest in darkness about a kiss without poison. And a different recollection, a second night there, killing a man in his bed, naming my friend as I did, so the one I knifed would know why he was dying. That had been outright murder. The choices we make. The person we become.
The crowds became even wilder in the streets as darkness came to Bischio on the night before its race. I bought chicken pieces on a skewer, ate them standing, allowed myself a cup of wine from a different seller in a covered arcade, and then another from a smaller stand I passed. I drank them both too fast.
My belief, of late, is that the young must be forgiven a great deal as they try to make their way into and through the world.
CHAPTER VII
There was another man who wagered significantly on the Falcon horse and rider the next day, during the mad morning’s run-up to all of Bischio gathering in the centre of the city for the race.
His name was Carderio Sacchetti and he was a shoemaker, as his father had been. He was not very successful, and not from the Falcon district. Which is why he went a distance from his own Goose district to find a betting table for his wager—which happened to be all the money he could scrape together (by borrowing) in the world.
He didn’t tell his wife he was doing this. He bet the Falcon to win, because he was in desperate financial difficulty, and a dreamer. But he did it principally because his aunt had told him to, and she was said to have become a witch since she lost the use of her left leg twenty-five years before and became dependent on the family’s charity to live.
She’d been injured riding in the race. Crushed against the wall of the Fontena Curve, where so many accidents happened. Everyone knew the story of Mina Sacchetti.
She wasn’t one of the useful witches or herbalists. No one paid her for healing or spells. That would have been good for the family, if a little risky. People just thought she was a crazed, bitter woman, not a seer or teller of fortunes.
Her nephew wasn’t entirely sure about her himself. But two evenings before she had come to him in the small home seven of them shared and said, quietly, “The Falcon. The woman riding for them. I have dreamed it.”
“What? Dreamed what?” Carderio said.
“Bet on them,” she said.
“I have no money for wagers.”
“Do it, fool.” And she spat out the open doorway into the loud street.
Carderio Sacchetti had passed a sleepless night listening to the baby cry. He suspected it was going to die soon. Just before the sun rose he decided (perhaps because of lack of sleep) that he’d spend a day assembling all the money he could, then bet on the girl his aunt told him to.
Only after he’d made his wager, three serales and twenty doppani on the Falcon district to win, did he consider that Aunt Mina hadn’t said the horse would win, only told him to bet on it.
It was even possible to bet that a rider would fall, just as his aunt had fallen twenty-five years ago. He could have done that. He might be, Carderio Sacchetti thought, the greatest fool Jad had ever placed on earth.
Two of the men he’d borrowed from might well kill him when he lost and couldn’t repay, and there was no way he could repay them. His wife might kill him first when she discovered what he’d done. It would have been so much better, he thought, drinking on the morning of the race, early, if his accursed, crippled aunt had been given some sort of healing gift, so she could help the child—not tell Carderio to do something unspeakably foolish.
Yes, he could have refused. But they needed a doctor for the infant, and the two older children were bone-thin with hunger, and his wife was looking of late as if she hated Carderio more than she hated the demons who battled Jad at night, because of how poor they were.
He and his brother and his wife went to watch the race, in the section assigned the Goose district. Aunt Mina came with them, as always. The brothers carried her through the streets. People made way on this day for Mina Sacchetti, a woman whose name had been drawn to race years ago, and who had been sitting in fourth (third, some said) when she was ridden hard into a turn by the rider for the Bridge district, and her horse, going too fast, stumbled on the slope there, and her left leg was crushed against the wall, shattering her bones.
Men from the Goose district had found and beaten the Bridge rider that night, very nearly killing him, but it hadn’t done Mina Sacchetti or her ruined leg and life any good.
Revenge, Carderio thought, was a proper thing, but it had limitations. It was surprising that Mina had lived. A tough constitution and the family’s help and prayers. Always prayers.
They were given a place at the front among the well-off, right by the inner wall, and people, even from other districts, who normally cursed or ignored his aunt, came around to greet her, to ask her blessing on race day.
Carderio watched this happen as he watched it every year. There was a dishonesty to it, but it still gave him some pleasure to see, most years. A small, good thing for his aunt in a marred life.
Right now, he really wanted to ask her if she’d meant him to make a triana wager on the Falcon instead of a bet to win, or even something else, but he decided not to. The slip for the bet was in his tunic pocket. His life, he thought, was written there.
* * *
Antenami Sardi mentioned, a couple of times, to the commune leaders he was seated with that none of the horses parading out now—to applause and cheering wilder than he had ever heard—would have kept stride for even a dozen paces with his own Fillaro.
They smiled absently, but kept their eyes on the racecourse constructed in their city centre, on the horses and riders now entering. To be honest, they appeared uninterested in hearing about Fillaro. He did now understand—he wasn’t a fool—that the horses selected for this race were deliberately not exceptional.
That, he thought, was foolish.
A city that organized its great race in such a way would surely be an easy target for his father and brother, should they judge that it was time next year. He decided he’d say that to them when home.
