Children of Earth and Sky

  His father was dead, his mother was dead. Their only son was too young to be established as a painter judged to be worth engaging. He could get a position doing backgrounds in the studio of one of those major artists who employed assistants. He might be forced to do that. It would be a surrender in his own mind. But the truth was, Pero had needed to be older, further along in his career, before his father was taken away from him, struggling to breathe, then not breathing at all.

  Life didn’t always (or ever?) allow you what you needed, in the way of time, or anything else. That was Pero’s sense of things, at any rate. It didn’t seem to matter if you prayed or if you didn’t. Not a thought he shared.

  Pero knew he had talent. His friends knew he had talent. They said so, often. Their opinion didn’t seem to matter much to the world. Not if what you needed was the attention of those who could afford to buy paintings, so you could make a living with your art.

  He’d had exactly two commissions since his father died. One was more or less a gift he’d offered another artist, a friend, and his wife—a sketch in charcoal of their new baby. He’d wanted to study an infant anyway. Most painters rendered children’s faces as if they were adults done small. They weren’t. Not if you looked.

  That sketch was pinned to the wall in the Desanti family’s crowded apartment next to his own, above where the baby slept in his basket. It wasn’t framed. Frames were expensive. They’d insisted on paying him something, though.

  His other commission, the real one, had never been framed either.

  He’d been hired to paint a contessa on the recommendation of Alviso Sano, Jad bless his kind soul. The bookseller knew people. He sold extravagant leather-bound books to merchants and aristocrats who wanted the sheen of elegance and success it gave them to have such objects in their homes.

  Paintings, especially portraits of themselves, had the same status. You were commissioned by contract to use so much ultramarine blue, so much gold—the most expensive colours. A painting was a sign, barely even coded, of how much you could afford. Sometimes the frames cost more than the art.

  One of the Citrani family, the oldest brother, had commissioned the son of Viero Villani, said to be promising, to paint his wife. The wife, red-haired and green-eyed, was a celebrated beauty. She was older than Pero, much younger than her husband, elegant, and bored.

  Sleeping with a young artist on winter afternoons, with a fire warming the small room where he was painting her, was a way to amuse oneself. Pero was young enough and she was easily compelling enough, in all ways, to make this an adventure for him. He was a little fearful, but that could add to excitement, of course. He wasn’t the first artist, she wasn’t the first wealthy woman . . .

  His mistake was to bring his passion for his work into the affair: to paint her in oil on canvas, in his studio, the sketches pinned up around him, in a particular manner.

  He’d carried it back, wrapped in cloth, to show her in the room where she’d posed, where they’d undressed each other by the fire, where he’d looked, very closely, at her face as she slipped him inside her, when she’d let him see she wasn’t always bored.

  As he’d leaned the finished canvas against the wall, she’d worn a rapidly changing sequence of expressions. He didn’t see anger, nothing like that. Later, he would decide that where she’d ended up, sitting suddenly on the daybed, looking at herself as he’d painted her, was in regret, wistfulness.

  He would have liked to have painted that expression, too.

  “Oh, dear,” was what Mara Citrani finally said. “Oh, my dear. Did I really look like that?”

  She was clothed in his painting, of course, entirely properly, in the contracted blue gown trimmed with gold. Her hair was under a cap (green-gold, done with azurite), a few red strands coming free. She sat before an arched window, with a quince tree in a garden behind her and the lagoon beyond that. You could see a ship (her husband’s—the family crest on the flag). She wore jewellery at her ears and throat, and a celebrated ring of her husband’s family. All proper, conventional really (perhaps not the quince, which had its symbolism), but . . .

  But her eyes as Pero had painted them were intense, and hungry. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, as was her throat. And her mouth . . . Mara Citrani’s mouth in that portrait was the best thing Pero had ever done in his life. It embodied the knowing, intimate, sensuous look of a woman revealing desire, or gratified desire, or both.

  A deeply private expression. One he knew only because she had invited him to that daybed and carpet with her, before the fire, and let him see how she could be when unclothed, touched, then touched again, then entered, then riding above him, hair unbound, aroused, in need—when not the haughty wife of a powerful man.

  And so: “Oh, dear,” Mara Citrani said again, softly. Then, after a silence, “It is wonderful, Signore Villani. I am wonderful in this! I would keep it by me all my life and look at it when I’m old. But . . . Pero, it has to be destroyed. You know this. He would kill us both.”

  There was a look in her eyes as she turned from the canvas to him, one he hadn’t yet seen. He’d have liked to capture this, too. He heard an unexpected tenderness in her voice. She had never been tender, not with him. It was as if she saw him, suddenly, as young.

  She’d kissed him that day, on the mouth again, but only lightly, as if saddened by the world, then she’d sent him away.

  She told her husband, on his return from the family salt mine concession at Megarium across the narrow sea, that the painting had not pleased her and she’d destroyed it. She instructed him to pay the young man, nonetheless, since he had done his best, and sometimes a woman’s needs were difficult to address. She’d smiled, saying that, made Citrani laugh knowingly.

  The boy had simply been too inexperienced, evidently. It was no one’s fault. Citrani commissioned someone else. He painted, by report, a perfectly acceptable portrait of the contessa.

  The entire escapade, Pero understood, had been an example of his inadequacy with regard to such people. Yes, make love to a beautiful woman if she offered herself. Experience that world. Pray for forgiveness after, if you were inclined. But don’t be lost to your art. Don’t show her to everyone as she had been in the prelude or the aftermath of lovemaking. (It would have been interesting to know which of these people would have said the image was.) What was the reason to take such a risk?

  There was no reason, except . . . except he didn’t think any woman had ever been painted with that look in her eyes, and he’d wanted to see if he could.

  You could die for wanting to see some things, Pero Villani thought.

  No one knew what he’d achieved, no one would ever know, no one had even looked at it. Well, she had. She’d already been turning to gaze at herself on canvas again as he’d left the room that day. The story was simply that young Villani’s work hadn’t pleased the contessa. So good for a young artist’s career, that was! He hadn’t had a commission since.

  It was likely he’d spend his life binding books. Or doing backgrounds of sea or hills for some shrewder artist’s portraits, while dreaming of painting a soldier’s properly rendered arm, or Blessed Victims, martyred variously, in procession across a sanctuary wall, or . . .

  Or, his life could end tonight, Pero thought.

  He wasn’t running yet, but he was walking faster. You learned, in Seressa, to be alert after dark, and young men abroad in pursuit of prostitutes or wine at night had reason to become skilled at distinguishing the casual footfall of another night person from what might be someone following you.

  No one would be following him with benign intent. Not at this hour. There were few lights here, only stray lanterns on canal boats in the distance. It was windy. He could hear water slap against stones to his left.

  He had a cloak against the chill, and a short sword, since he wasn’t a fool. Well, he might be a fool, since he was alone at night in a too-quiet distri
ct where he wasn’t known. That was the problem with a place of work being so far from where he laid his head at night.

  Villani was no stranger to prostitutes or wine shops, but of late it had been the excitement of those anatomy pages keeping him out after darkfall. He would finish whatever work Alviso gave him, then stay and study (burn a lamp, pay for the oil) and lock up and go home. Sometimes more oil used there, and a truly late night, as he sketched in his small room by the tanneries. You never really got used to the smell. You lived with it, if you were poor.

  His father had had a good house—other side of the Great Canal, beyond the market. Viero Villani had had some status as a painter, a measure of recognition, and then debts.

  The house had been an extravagance, an over-bold statement. It was gone, of course, the furnishings sold off. The elder Villani’s belongings, including all unsold paintings, had been claimed by his creditors. In a city fixated on commerce, the law as to debts and inheritance was precise and the courts moved rapidly. His son had managed to conceal and keep two paintings, one a portrait of his mother. You could say he was a thief.

  Pero Villani, after his father’s sudden death, had found himself with nothing but a modestly respected family name, much desire, and what was judged to be talent—though only among others in his own situation, which is to say, those who meant nothing in the world.

  The friends who knew his work were also drinking companions and would have been protection now had he been with them tonight. Had they all been making their way in a staggering group, singing, arm in arm down canal-side alleys, over bridges, under the two moons in and out of clouds.

  There was more than one man behind him.

  He was pretty certain he’d detected three footfalls. There might be four, and they’d sped up when he had. Thieves roamed Seressa at night, as they roamed any city. So did gangs of young aristocrats seeking the idle, vicious pleasure of attacking people at night to show their bravado, to prove they could. The law, so ardent in financial matters, could be slack in prosecuting sons of the powerful.

  Villani suspected the second possibility, for the simple reason that any competent thieves would have sorted out by now that he wasn’t going to have anything worth taking. Captured thieves were sent to the galleys, and there were night patrols. It didn’t stop assault and robbery—hungry men needed to feed themselves, greedy ones remained greedy—but it did tend to mean that a thief would choose his target with a bit of care.

  A threadbare artist carrying a sketchbook wasn’t worth risking death chained to a rowing bench. He’d passed under lights in brackets on the walls of city palaces when he’d left the shop. The condition of his cloak could have been seen by anyone with a thought of robbing him.

  He considered shouting that into the blackness, but didn’t. If it was reckless sons of wealth behind him, it would only amuse and incite them. Of course, it could be no one. He could be agitating himself over some drunken cluster of friends, as his own would be, somewhere in their district.

  Except there were no wine shops in this warehouse part of the city, and he’d heard this group come—quickly, not drunkenly—down a side street as he went by it, then turn to follow him.

  Two more footbridges and one square—by the lovely Lesser Sanctuary of Blessed Victims—and he’d be on his own ground. He could find acquaintances abroad, working women he knew, who could shout or scream a warning; wine shops would be open.

  He was sober and young. He ran.

  Immediately he heard them do the same, which did answer any lingering questions or doubts.

  He was in real danger. They had no particular reason to let him live. And if this was a pack of swaggering aristocrats they’d have even less concern about using a blade in the hidden dark—it might add to the glamour of their existence.

  The walkway was briefly wider here. He stayed close to the canal side. There were posts at intervals for mooring boats. If he didn’t crash into one himself, perhaps one of those behind him might. He needed to be careful, running this fast. It was easy to stumble on uneven stones, trip over a cat, a scurrying rat, someone’s garbage not dumped in the water.

  First bridge. Up one side of the curve and down. He liked this bridge, the smoothness of its arc.

  A really trivial reflection just now, Pero thought.

  Still no lights. This was a district crowded in the daytime with commerce and noise. Not now. He listened as he fled. The feet behind him were not receding. Pero had always thought himself decently fleet of foot but these men weren’t slower, or . . .

  One of them wasn’t. The runners seemed to have separated themselves. One seemed to be ahead of the other two or three. He still wasn’t sure of the number, but he did know that one man was keeping pace with him, even gaining, as the others fell back.

  He did what he ought to have done before. You could overlook the obvious. His father used to tell him that about painting.

  “Guards!” he shouted. “Guards! Help!”

  He kept shouting as he ran. He didn’t expect a patrol to materialize like saviours in the night, but there might be lights carried to upper windows by the curious, witnesses. People might pick up his cry. No one liked thieves. No one liked the bored aristocrats. The pursuers might have second thoughts.

  It didn’t happen. But just about then, nearing the second bridge, the one that marked his home district, Pero Villani realized that he was angry. Not a wisdom-inducing emotion, it almost never was, but it was there, it was in him. He was running for his life in his own city. His life was shabby and constrained. The one painting of which he was proud had been destroyed. Everyone thought it had been some incompetent’s failure. He lived among stinking tanneries and dyeworks and he smelled of them.

  It could make a man of any spirit at all just a little bit angry to also now be fleeing from whatever noblemen—who never smelled of dyeworks (who had probably never smelled the dyeworks!)—were pursuing him.

  He took this route all the time to and from the bookshop. He knew the bridge he was sprinting towards. And he knew something else. There would be an empty wine barrel at this end: a blind beggar sat on it every day. He’d recognize people by their tread, call greetings, tell you gossip he’d heard if you stopped to talk. Pero would give him food when he had some, small coins if he’d been paid.

  The beggar slept somewhere else, he wouldn’t be here now.

  The barrel would be.

  Skidding to a halt, Pero reached out in the dark, clutched the upper rim, tilted and shifted the barrel into the middle of the cobbled street, which narrowed at the bridge.

  Then, pretending to stumble, crying out, he went past it. He slowed on the bridge, as if hurt, swore loudly. Then he waited. And a moment later heard the extremely satisfying sound of his pursuer crashing—at speed—into a wine barrel in the street.

  What he did next might not have been wise, either. He didn’t feel like being wise. He had reasons for being angry. This was his city, he was a citizen of the Republic of Seressa, and whatever arrogant sprouts of overbred lineage these bastards were . . .

  He dropped his sketchbook on the wooden planks. He drew his sword from beneath his cloak. If they were going to chase him, there would be one less man doing so. He’d never had sword-fighting lessons, an artist’s son didn’t do that, but you didn’t need expertise for everything. A blade was a blade.

  He ran back, saw the downed man clutching with both hands at a knee, crying out in pain—and Pero bent and stabbed him in the chest.

  His blade hit metal. It was turned aside.

  You could be afraid, and then terrified. Not the same thing.

  This was beyond frightening. If men wearing armour at night were pursuing him, they weren’t thieves, nor were they noblemen looking for amusement. This was a soldier or a guardsman.

  Pero fled. Again. His delay had allowed the lagging pair to draw closer, but the fastest man was
down. He hadn’t been killed, obviously. Pero didn’t know if that was good or bad now. He didn’t understand any of this.

  He’d left his sketchbook on the bridge. No help for that. He continued to shout for help as he ran. He was on familiar ground now, cutting diagonally through the square in front of the Sanctuary of the Victims. He thought about dashing in, hoping a cleric was awake, begging protection, but, for good or ill, he kept running, trying to put distance between himself and those behind.

  There were lights now, spilling from cheap wine shops he knew. He recognized two women on a corner. Had his pursuers been the sort of men he’d thought they were he’d have joined these two, taken them into a drinking place, been safe among a crowd.

  Men in armour wouldn’t care, he thought. It wouldn’t stop them.

  He knew these streets and alleys; the smell told him he was home. He could lose pursuers. He cut to his right up a leather-workers’ laneway, the shops shuttered and dark, then left along a smaller, fetid alley as fast as he could, then out again at the far end into a little, untidy square where ramshackle buildings on all sides housed many of the indigent artists of Seressa, including the son of Viero Villani, currently being pursued.

  And awaited.

  There were many lights here, far more than there should have been. Torches in hand, half a dozen men in a livery he knew stood before Pero’s own building. They looked at him as he burst into the square.

  He stopped, breathing hard.

  “What did I do?” he shouted. “What did I do?”

  No answer. Of course, no answer.

  In silence they came and surrounded him and took him away with them. A neat formation, well-trained guards, an artist in the middle. They took his sword. He didn’t resist. What was the point of resisting? He was finding it difficult to breathe and not just because he’d been running. He hoped some of his friends were watching, at windows or in doorways. There had been none in the square. There wouldn’t be, not with armed guards of the Council of Twelve here among them in the night.