Shadowheart

  She looked at Allegreto. "And what would be required for Navona to agree?"

  He curled his lip. "To drive every Riata from the face of the earth," he said coolly.

  Elena put her fists together and leaned her forehead on them.

  "Don’t be naive, Elena," Allegreto said. "This won’t succeed."

  "Not while you live, Navona dog," Franco said. "But it’s a rare and noble hope she has. I don’t fault her for it."

  Elena looked up in surprise at Franco Pietro, but he was frowning at Allegreto.

  "What gallant words!" Allegreto said, with a disdainful flick of his good hand. "Lying whore."

  Franco took a noisy step, pounding his crutch on the tiled floor. "No more than you, you murderous harlot. What do you know of honor?"

  "Nothing," Allegreto sneered. "I’m Gian Navona’s bastard, what do I know but iniquity? Kill us both, Princess, and be done with it. That will find peace for Monteverde."

  She looked at him. "Do you want peace?"

  He cast a look back at her, a grim and impatient demon. "Avoi, I would die for it, isn’t that what I’m saying?"

  She gripped her hands before her on the table. "That may be, but I will not kill you for it."

  He flicked his fingers toward Franco. "He will."

  Elena tilted her head, looking toward the Riata. "Would you?"

  Franco glanced at her with an uneasy frown. "Is this a game, Princess? What questions are these? Yes, I’d kill him, for he’d serve the same to me!"

  Elena spread the pages before her. "I ask you both to reconsider. I’ve written here an agreement between you. It requires that you swear your loyalty first to Monteverde—and whoever is the elected prince of it. It states that you will not spill blood in any contest between the houses of Riata and Navona, or take hostages, or seek to overthrow the chosen prince. I’d ask that you sit down and read it, and sign it, and abide by it, for the good of Monteverde and of yourselves and your own houses."

  Silence filled the chamber. Elena could hear Dario breathing deeply at her shoulder.

  Franco Pietro moved first, banging his crutch as he scraped the bench back and sat. He reached out his hand for the documents.

  Elena handed him one of the copies. She glanced at Allegreto. For an instant, it almost seemed as if there was something besides derision in the shadowed look he returned her, a contact like a passing touch of his fingertips on her skin. But he set his mouth in a mocking smile and took the papers with a sharp sweep of his hand, sitting down across the bench with his back turned to her.

  She had lost to him at chess. She doubted she could have defeated Franco, either. She watched their bent heads and thought they could be plotting anything; laughing at her feeble attempts to assert control.

  After long moments Franco Pietro looked up, holding the page open with his hand. "I can agree to this. If he will."

  Elena felt a surge of surprise and hope.

  "No," Allegreto said. He tossed the crisp vellum onto the table. "Don’t trust him."

  Even to her, such an easy capitulation by Franco seemed suspicious. "It’s to be signed under solemn oath," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and certain.

  "He’ll break his word before a fortnight has passed."

  Franco lunged up over the table, his face red. "You question my honor?"

  Allegreto made a move, as if to reach for his dagger. The chains rattled over the edge of the wood. Dario stepped forward, his blade singing from the sheath. It came down between them, the point resting lightly on the tabletop.

  Allegreto looked at Dario under his eyebrows, and sat back. "I question how much you relinquish by this," he said to Franco in a quieter tone. "It’s all sacrifice and no gain for you."

  Franco grimaced as he lowered himself. Dario lifted the sword from the table, but he kept it free and ready.

  "She holds Matteo," Franco said. "And what’s to prevent you from poisoning me in my bed? I see no assurance at all to hold you in check!"

  "No, I’ve nothing else to lose, do I?" Allegreto said. He looked to Elena with a bitter smile. "Nothing."

  Franco narrowed his one eye. "And I question what’s between you and the princess—these telling glances that you give her. I’d be fool indeed to sign this surrender, only to see Navona elevated by some bedroom trick."

  Elena pressed her lips together. She had been coming to this moment, inevitably. She had felt it like a great stone that slowly began to turn and roll and gather speed to crush her. She thought of the tower room, and the warm sheets; his body curled and tangled with hers. She thought of him smiling down at her as she counted for a game of morra. A fierce sweetness seemed to break inside her, a pain that drifted down her throat and settled in her heart, a dark silent crystal buried in her blood and sinew.

  "There is nothing between me and Navona," she said, in a voice that sounded calm, a little thin, peculiar to herself. "I will be impartial between you."

  She heard the words die away in the barren chamber, amid the chests of silver. She couldn’t look at Allegreto.

  "Hang us both as traitors," he said in a vicious tone. "That would be impartial."

  She bore his anger. He had a right to it. He’d seen this true, before she had admitted it even to herself. Taken his ring. Advised her to kill him.

  "I cannot." She did look at him then, but only for a moment, so that she wouldn’t break or show anything before the Riata. One moment, to brand his demon-beauty in her mind. "You’ll both remain under close arrest, as possible conspirators, until you agree to what I have asked. Dario."

  The young man strode to the door, rapping on it sharply with the hilt of his sword. The great metal-bound barrier swung open to admit Philip and his men. Elena watched as they came with pikes and swords and clubs to surround the prisoners.

  Allegreto paused, under the arm of a guard, and glanced back at her from the door. As his eyes met hers, it was a dread feeling, as if they both knew, as if he were fading from her through a mist, gone already far beyond what she could see.

  The guard jostled him. He turned and went through the door.

  * * *

  She rode down from the mountains on a gray palfrey, with only ten of the bandits and Dario for an escort, now dressed in Monteverde’s green livery. She left Philip to guard the mint and her prisoners, and approached the gates of the city alone.

  But she wasn’t alone, not quite. People from d’Avina had followed her out onto the road. They had cheered her as she passed the burned-out gatehouse and bridge, the gray tower of Maladire. She’d thought they would fall behind, but a crowd of them came with her, walking and riding in her train. Some ran and galloped ahead while she kept the palfrey to a gentle amble. Among them she recognized the young miner who had looked up at her on the dais. He strode along just after her bandit guard, his white hood thrown back in the sun. As they moved down through the pine forests and left the snow, they seemed to gather followers. By the time they reached the apple orchards and terraced vineyards, the procession was doubled in size, and people had begun to line the road in each village. In the warmth of an autumn afternoon, a girl ran out and offered Elena a sheaf of sunflowers, their great yellow heads nodding gaily as she kissed Elena’s hand.

  Elena felt no fear. She felt as if a trance held her, and everyone. Even when she came within sight of the city below, she was somewhere beyond fear, simply moving forward to a fate that seemed inevitable.

  When she reached the gates at sunset, she had a great march of common people behind her. Her small banner, a green-and-silver pennon taken from the magistrate’s hands at d’Avina, drooped in the shadow of the city walls. She could see the citadel, a white glitter of towers and crenellations on the mount, rising above the city. The drawbridge was closed, and the smooth rapid water of the river coursed between her and the city, flowing blue and clear into the lake.

  She waited. From the gatehouse, she could see faces peering from the windows.

  She took the banner from a bandit
at her side. She rode forward, into the easy range of arrows and stones, with Dario close behind her.

  "I am Elena di Monteverde!" she cried, her voice almost lost against the massive walls. "Open the city! I have come home!"

  Behind her, a swell of noise began to rise. She heard the miner’s voice call out her name, and the chant become a bellow from the crowd.

  Over the sound of the people came the creaking groan of wheels and chains. The drawbridge lowered, falling into place with a thunderous crash that grew to a roar as the crowd cheered.

  With a sheaf of sunflowers, a troop of bandits, and a flood of shouting followers, Elena rode across the bridge into the city of Monteverde.

  TWELVE

  It was summer, but Her Grace the Magnificent, the Prima Elect, the Most Potent and Just Principessa Elena di Monteverde, couldn’t tell it from inside the council room of the citadel.

  Within the huge chamber, it was still as cold as winter. Candles and torches barely lit the high ceiling blackened by decades of smoke. While one of her grandfather’s elderly councilors held forth with relish, she sat dressed in miniver and damask, her scepter laid at the head of the table.

  The life of the Prima di Monteverde was a life of harassment, of meetings and writs and petitions and mercantile matters, judgments and decisions, careful arguments and piles and piles of scrolls. She had no time to think of else, except at night in the moment she lay down to sleep, when she thought of Allegreto.

  He was incarcerated within sight of the citadel. If she’d walked out on the parapets, she could have seen across the city and the lake to the two castles that rose from the promontories and guarded Monteverde’s harbor. Franco Pietro resided in one, and Allegreto in the other.

  He haunted her today. The subject of this meeting was her marriage, and her councilors were fervent on the topic.

  The discussion had been intense and brutally blunt, day-long, the favored and disfavored alliances flying back and forth across the table like frantic birds unable to find a roost. The cherished possibility of one faction was deemed to favor the anti-pope; another too ambitious for his own power to be allowed a role in Monteverde’s fragile new Republic. Elena sat and listened to endless names and disputes about princes and dukes from places as far away as Denmark and Spain.

  But I don’t want a prince, she thought with a sad inward smile. Lost to her, the girl who had once said those words to her godmother. She’d had a letter from Lady Melanthe, of fierce support in what Elena had done. Lady Beatrice had returned to England safely—a miracle itself—with news of Elena’s abduction. But no one had conceived that she would fly from Navona and establish herself alone at the head of Monteverde. Ligurio would be proud, Ellie. I am proud. Lancaster is confounded. Be careful. Overlook nothing. Trust no one.

  Her godmother promised to come in the next spring and spend the summer. Elena longed for it.

  But it wasn’t in her character to trust no one. She trusted Philip. She trusted Dario. She trusted a great many things and people, because she had no choice. The houses of Riata and Navona were barred from the citadel, but no one else was.

  It was trust and not suspicion that Monteverde needed now to heal. It was faith that she restored possessions to their former balance, that she showed no favor to either side. It was a thin thread, liable to be broken by any whisper of treachery. She lived in daily fear of word of some murder or escape from the castles.

  But there had been none. For his son, or for realizing the popular support of Elena’s cause, or because she kept the French condottiere at hand, Franco Pietro yielded up his Navona holdings without direct opposition. But he wouldn’t sign any agreement to cease the blood vendetta until Allegreto did. And Allegreto would not sign.

  Elena watched the old councilor in his fur cap and dragging robes. He was looking toward her expectantly. They all were turning toward her, two long rows of faces, bearded and smooth, elderly and middle-aged and a few near as young as she.

  Elena was hungry. She was tired. And she felt utterly alone.

  She put her hand upon the scepter. The old councilor nodded around the table and sat down with a flourish of his fur-trimmed sleeve, as if he felt none could dispute his point that Monteverde was in dire need of an heir and the custody of a strong man at the earliest possible moment.

  Elena stood up. She laid aside the list of names that her secretary handed to her. "I don’t intend to wed at present," she said quietly.

  An astonished silence met her words.

  Before they could burst into protest, she lifted her open hand. "Monteverde doesn’t need an heir. We’re a republic again, and will choose our leader by the laws we have adopted, as set forth by Prince Ligurio."

  The old councilor made forceful motions, requesting to speak. Elena nodded, but she remained standing.

  "Your Grace, it’s true what you say, it is true. I misspoke myself, to speak of an heir to rule, though it would be great happiness to all to see the house of Ligurio again bear fruit. And doubtless your prudence and modesty prevented you from considering a marriage before we received the annulments from Rome. But the Holy Father has given us surety now; there’s no question of any betrothal between you and Franco Pietro of the Riata, or your—" He paused, with a slight gesture of distaste. "Your abductor," he said finally. "But Milan takes notice, that Your Grace remains unwed. They see that we have no man to order our defense."

  "We have Philip Welles," she said, glancing down to the gray-haired soldier at her right hand. "He is experienced and loyal. He’s dealt well with the condottiere, has he not?"

  She allowed them to sputter their objections. Philip was old, he was English, he was a bandit. She stared them down.

  "Can you find fault with his ordering of our defense against Milan?" she asked.

  They could not. She knew they couldn’t, for they’d approved it themselves in the last meeting.

  "We’d be fortunate to find some prince or duke with as much understanding of matters of defense and guile," she said. "We’re repairing what was razed by the Riata—all of the Navona strongholds are impregnable again. For that, we hold the southern lake with greater strength than before. We’ve expelled the traitor Jan Zoufal and thwarted his intention to devalue the trust in Monteverde’s coin. I’m in negotiation with Venice for a fresh treaty of alliance. If there’s more that we should arrange in our own defense, put it before me for discussion."

  The faces down the table looked unconvinced. There were low mutters. Another councilor asked to speak, and Elena nodded.

  The man rose. He was one of the younger ones, heavy-browed under his fur hat. His name had been put forward as a possible husband for her. "Your Grace, what of your prisoners of Riata and Navona?" His voice had a heated edge.

  "What of them?" she asked.

  "Navona has already attempted to force himself upon you once, Your Grace," he said angrily. "Forgive me, but it would be disaster if it happened again, or some Riata malice found you. We’d be plunged into chaos, as it was in the years after your grandfather’s death. A strong husband at your side will prevent such." He turned to her. "And as long as you remain unwed, there are those who will scheme for a union between you and Franco Pietro or Gian Navona’s cursed bastard. It cannot be suffered!"

  A loud chorus of agreement echoed in the chamber. Someone called for a vote of primacy, and instantly there were seconds from half the council.

  Elena couldn’t stop it. It was part of her grandfather’s law, that eleven council members could call for a vote to override her decision, and force her to submit to it. While she stood and watched, they made a state resolution to bar the Prima of Monteverde from marriage to a man of Riata or Navona blood, on pain of death or exile for him. They further resolved to seek a husband for her without delay, the final decision to be made within a fortnight.

  If Philip hadn’t looked up at her, his plain, hard-tanned face concerned, she would have borne it better. But his fatherly glance knew her heart; knew where her secret l
ay in the castle beyond the lake.

  She felt her lip begin to tremble as the votes added up. The cloak of power and control began to slide away. She felt again like the girl who had sat on a stool before Lancaster, young and overwhelmed.

  The voices died down. The resolution passed. She stood before them.

  "You cannot force me to marry," she said, her voice shaking. "Not even with this. I will not consent."

  The young councilman sprang to his feet without waiting for her recognition. "This is imprudence beyond bearing! What if you’re murdered?" he said loudly, all courtesy and formal practice forgotten. "What if you sicken and die?" He flung out his arm. "Do you want us to fall again to Riata? Or to fight among ourselves until Milan drags away the spoils?"

  She narrowed her eyes. "It would only be what you did before I came," she said.

  They shook their heads, disputing stridently. The eight months of her rule had been peaceful, even if it was like the peace before a storm. The people were pleased with her. The houses of Riata and Navona stayed their hands. But that wasn’t enough now.

  "If God sends that I don’t survive, it’s your task to continue what Prince Ligurio tried to do," she said, banging the scepter on the table as she raised her voice. As they turned back to her, quieting, she lifted the heavy jewel-encrusted staff, trying to hold it steady, to prevent her voice from breaking. "Choose what man you like for me, but know that I’ll never consent to wed him. This meeting of the council is dismissed."

  She turned, walking away amid renewed angry murmurs, with the scepter clutched in both hands and Philip and Dario at her side. A guard leaped to open the door for her that led into the privy chamber. As the heavy door closed behind them, she made it as far as the grand desk where Prince Ligurio had signed his decrees in state. The scepter fell from her fingers, making a mark in the wood as it struck.

  She went to the window that overlooked the city. The watery green glass was open, letting a warm rosemary-scented breath of summer into the chill room. From here she could look down on the city, the bannered towers, the river that wound to the lake. She could see the cliffs that plunged into the water, with the two fortresses mounted high on them—as high as the citadel stood above Monteverde, on a level with her gaze.