The Master of Verona (86 page)

He and two of his men plunged into the dark tunnel. A torch was lit, and by its light they used breastplates to stab, then cup the fallen earth, passing them back through a line of men to be tossed aside at the tunnel's mouth. Soon they had a rhythm going, and they could sing, grunt, and chant in time to their labours.

After considerable time Mariotto emerged to let someone take his place at the head of the chain. Rubbing his aching arms, he let the rain fall over his hands to cleanse them. He wished the storm would abate. By now the cellars of Castello Montecchio would be flooded, and the chicken coops, and the kennels. He would listen again to his father's declaration that this was the year they'd dig the drainage ditch, as he had each time the summer rains came. Mari hadn't realized how much he'd missed home and family.

He kept stretching out his arms, working the life back into them, and as he did he walked, looking over his father's land. His land. He was almost out of earshot of the digging when he decided to turn back.

The wind changed direction just then, and the rain's force eased just a fraction. In that moment a noise came to Mariotto's ears, a gentle mewing like a that of a cat crying. Picking up a tree limb, Mariotto followed the sound, straining his ears over the cries of men and the fall of rain. Was that something shifting behind that tree? Was it—?

A horse. Pietro's palfrey, well hidden and tied to a tree. Huddled under a cloak beneath the horse was a tiny figure.

Mariotto ran over and lifted the cloak's edge. A terrified toddler, too small to be Cangrande's bastard, looked out at him with red-rimmed eyes. Mariotto laid his sword aside and crouched down. "Hello there. You must be Detto. We haven't met yet. My name's Mari."

Luigi Capulletto stood looking at the chance fate had granted him. Dared he take it?

Spurring away from his brother, he'd then concealed himself in the trees and watched his brother pass him in turn. Luigi had been convinced that Antony had an idea of where the children were — he'd been too quiet, too remote, not his usual gregarious self. It was just like Antony to bait Luigi into leaving so that he could have the honour of saving Cangrande's son all to himself. So Luigi had followed his hated brother.

But the fool hadn't found the child. He'd found the girl instead. To Luigi's intense pleasure, he saw his brother's rejection at her hands. After everyone had left, Luigi had retrieved the silver dagger with Mari's name etched into it. At the time he hadn't known why he did it. Now it was clear. He would ruin his brother once and for all.

Bending down, he began to work the dagger into place.

Filthy, weary, Cangrande stood flexing his arms, his eyes on the pool of water that was filling the pit his men were frantically digging. There were hissing torches and covered lanterns all about, and more men arriving every minute, bringing with them pickaxes, spades, and dogs. Beside him was his sister. Their combined attention was so intent on the earth being shifted, the buckets of water being removed from the crater, the incredible slowness of it all, that they didn't notice a young man slip up beside them. "Madonna Nogarola? I think this young fellow belongs to you."

"
Mama
!" The toddler threw himself towards her, careless of his injured arm. Exhausted with fear, he collapsed against his mother's chest.

Heads came up from the pit. In a ringing voice Mari quickly explained. All the joyful mother could manage was, "Thank you, Mariotto. Thank you!"

This fresh success gave them all heart to continue at breakneck pace. Cangrande embraced Mariotto, just as covered in muck as himself. "Good God, Mari, you look like you just climbed out of your own grave. Good work. Perhaps in our haste we have overlooked some other clues out in the brush. Could you take a few of the more tired men and search the woods hereabouts? We can keep at the digging." The Capitano gestured to the fresh reserves just arriving.

Detto's father was among the latest arrivals. Seeing his son, Bailardino bellowed for joy. Katerina passed Detto, already asleep, to the weak-kneed father, who refused to let his firstborn out of his grasp for the rest of the night.

As ordered, Mariotto took some tired workers and led them down the slopes with torches and dogs. Cangrande followed him but turned away at the base, angling instead for the mouth of the tunnel. Beside the opening of the cave there was a growing mound of excavated earth. The Scaliger announced the discovery of one child, giving them even more incentive to find the other.

He was just turning away when he heard a shout. "My lord!"

Cangrande whirled about. "Have you found something?"

"No, my lord! There's a carriage on the path!"

"Damn you and damn the carriage! Keep digging!" But Cangrande was not so far gone that he missed whose carriage it was. Bare-chested, covered in mud, he crossed to where the carriage was reining in.

The door opened and his wife emerged into the rain. One of the two burly foreign grooms Giovanna of Antioch employed aided her descent to the sodden ground. The other groom attempted to hold a cloth over her head to keep the wet off. Ignoring him, she walked through the squelching earth and faced her husband.

Covered in filth, Cangrande stepped in to buss his wife on the cheek. She leaned away from him, saying, "Have you found the boy?"

"Not yet. Lady, you shouldn't have come."

"I could say the same about you." There were times when one could see the faint traces of Frederick II's iron will in Giovanna's face.

"I had little choice." Cangrande's consternation turned to surprise when he saw his client poet emerge from the carriage's high wooden door. "Maestro Alaghieri — you've heard?"

Coming close, Dante said, "I heard that my son was hereabouts, my lord, and something about a battle and lost children. Can you enlighten me further?"

"Please, Francesco," said Giovanna in her golden tone, "enlighten us all. We understand you're at war with Padua once more."

"That's for tomorrow," said Cangrande. "Of the lost children, one has been found. Bailardino's son. The other is lost, we think, in that mound — with Ser Alaghieri," he added darkly. Quickly he explained.

Dante's other son was atop a nearby horse. The moment Cangrande finished the story, Poco leapt from the saddle and started to run to the mound of earth. "Somebody get me a shovel!"

The poet's face was more rigidly controlled. "Is — is there any chance they're alive?"

Cangrande's answer was interrupted by a shout. "We've got something!"

Dante actually outpaced the Scaliger on the run to the tunnel. Shoving past the men crowding into the tunnel, they both struggled deep into the muck. "What? What is it?"

Face glowing in the torchlight, the lead digger waved the Capitano forward. "We heard something. A voice. It seemed to be singing."

Dante could hear nothing over the noise in the tunnel. "Singing?"

Cangrande snarled, "Quiet, you bastards!"

The men quieted, listening. All digging stopped. When they heard it, so faint it was barely distinguishable, they hardly believed their ears.

Hear the tramp, tramp

Foot soldiers stamp.

Tramp tramp tramp tramp tramp!

Hear how they go!

More than a voice. Two voices, both weak. Grasping a shovel, Cangrande began shifting earth with all his might. Dante and Jacopo joined him and the others as they pulled and rent the earth wide.

A hand appeared before their eyes. They heaved on it, but dislodged the roof, and the arm disappeared again in a fresh fall of earth. They worked to brace the top of the tunnel so that nothing more fell. The hand clawed free again. They made a hole, all the time shouting the names Pietro and Cesco.

"We're here!" came the faint reply.

They dug harder. Suddenly a hole opened and Pietro Alaghieri lunged sideways out of it. It was not pure air he emerged into, but enough like it to be a breath of spring. He blinked, obviously unable to make out shapes after the endless dark.

Pietro laughed, but it came out as a cough. Someone handed a wineskin forward, but he shook his head. He retreated into the alcove of space and air under the fallen support beams that had saved his life. Dante reached after him, but Cangrande restrained the poet, lest he collapse the makeshift supports wedged above them.

Another shape began to emerge from the little gap, a child as black as night, with eyes as wide as the new moon. He looked around the way Pietro had, unseeing at first. But something cued him to the presence of his favorite playmate, for he cried out, "Cesco!"

"Cesco!" echoed Cangrande, hauling the child through the opening and carrying him past the throng of cheering men and out into the rain.

Awaiting news, Katerina actually fell to her knees when she saw her foster son.

Cesco looked up at his namesake, coughed twice, then asked, "Wha's the matter with Donna?"

"She's just tired." Cangrande lifted the boy high above his head and shrieked a single word. "Scala!"

From all around him, above and to the sides, ranged about the hillside like a pack of wild animals, like the inhabitants of some ancient, primal civilization, the soldiers and nobles and common workers echoed his cry to a man. "Sca-la! Sca-la! Sca-la! Sca-la!"

This morning they had cried out for the man. Tonight, they cheered his heir.

Watching from the shelter of the carriage, Giovanna turned away to confer with her grooms.

Back in the tunnel, other men helped a weeping, cursing father pull his sore and breathless son out of the shelter. No one understood the nonsense the youth kept muttering over and over. Someone whispered that the ordeal had driven him mad.

"
Giach giach giach
," croaked Pietro, laughing through his tears and not caring who saw.

The mood on the hill turned festive. The rain lessened to merely a drizzle, and it was soon possible to build a real fire. There was enough wine about. A few ingenious men got a spit started in the mouth of the tunnel, where they roasted some hares. A game of tag had begun between some of the half-naked men and one of the rescued boys. Cangrande played right along, pretending that he couldn't outpace the child. Then Cesco spied one of Cangrande's hounds and began to weep.

Pietro and Dante were seated by one of the fires. While Katerina talked with the mourning Cesco, Cangrande joined them and listened to Pietro's story.

"The look on Pathino's face gave me a warning," croaked Pietro, sipping water. "I dropped my sword and threw my arms around Cesco. I kept a hand over his mouth so he wouldn't swallow the muck. There was an awful sound. I was sure we were going to die. But then the noise ended. In the darkness I felt around. The wooden slats in the trap fell at an angle, making a shelter. As long as we didn't move, we could survive."

"So long as the air lasted," said Cangrande.

"Yes," said Pietro with a shiver. "I did think of that."

"How did Cesco behave?"

Pietro shook his head. "He was a hero. In the dark, in the wet, everything waiting to fall on us, he let me teach him that song."