SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

The Maggiore Hills Near Lucca

Spring, 1315

I

The entry bell to one side of the great oaken gate of the mountain villa clanked fitfully, as if from long disuse. Again it clanked, this time more sharply, the ringer indicating his impatience with delay. Its imperative tone made an old man, kneeling beside an overturned cart in the flagstoned courtyard and applying animal fat to its near hub, lift his head and sniff annoyance at this interruption of his task.

He came to his feet, gaunt and bent with years, clad in a surcoat which, once brilliant with gold braiding, now was patched and mended. “Peste!” he muttered. "What nincompoop bothers to ring admittance when the latch has been removed these past two months?" He shook his white head and gathered breath into his lungs while he limped across the paving stones the better to berate the village lout up from Lucca with freshly slain calves or beeves.

The bell danced and shook to a savage pull.

“God save us,” the old man roared in a surprisingly vigorous voice. “If it's you, Jacopo—playing tricks—I swear by the Virgin I'll break a lance-haft over your skull. All right, all right—I'm coming."

Old Erasmo threw open the gate and stood blinking.

A rider clad all in black velvet, with gold threadings at the foliated sleeves and collar of his cotehardie, stared arrogantly down at him, lowering the riding crop with which he had been poking the bell-pull A heavyset man, he had the look of nobility in his carefully trimmed beard and mustache and in the grace with which he sat the high-peaked saddle of a black gelding which danced prettily between the red Cordovan thigh-boots he affected. Amusement warred with vexation in the smile twisting his thin lips.

"You keep indifferent watch for the home of a soldier as well known as Castruccio Castracane. Is it his custom—or your laxity?”

The old castellan bridled under that fixed stare. He might have answered pertly, for his lifetime of servitude included the rank of majordomo to an emperor—the late Henry VII—had he not seen a curtained litter beyond the horseman and half a score of men-at-arms in chain-mail shirts and metal caps riding attendance. His bright eyes opened wide as he read the insignia of the house of Donati on their leather jerkins.

"Forgive me, signor," he muttered as he bowed. "We see so few visitors here in the Maggiore hills, I thought it—well, no matter. Please light down and enter. I'll inform the master you're here."

The heavyset man smiled grimly as he kicked a booted leg over the saddle cantle and stamped his legs to restore circulation. "You'll ask no questions of me? My name for instance? My rank?”

Old Erasmo chuckled. "Your soldiers' device reveals you a Donati. Your bearing, your age—pardon, signor, for the impertinence, but—I assume you to be Count Guido."

The Count of Corvanto swung about to the litter. "Did you hear that, Iride? Already we meet a good omen for our journey. If the master's as sharp as the man, we haven't wasted our time."

"I was convinced of that before we set out, Guido," said a marvelously sweet voice. "Otherwise do you think I'd have sweltered and joggled in this cursed sedan all the way from Florence? Come, your hand."

The leather curtains parted before the white, heavily ringed fingers which moved them. A servant ran to help, opening the drapes to their widest as Count Guido extended his arm.

The contessa was a woman of mature beauty whose sensual fleshiness was encased now in a blue satin kirtle, modishly cut to reveal plump white shoulders and the beginning swells of fulsome breasts. A caul of seed pearls held her rich brown hair. To the many rings on her fingers she had added a jeweled necklace for her adornment. She represented a world old Erasmo knew only too well.

Her eyes touched and held the castellan. "Signor Castracane sits late in the hills this spring,” she said. Her inflection made her words almost an accusation.”

"Perhaps he has abandoned Mars for Ceres,” jested her husband.

The old man answered only with a little bow. His hand invited them to follow him through the gate and across the flagstoned court. He shuffled slowly, exaggerating his old leg wound in order that the man and woman at his heels might see and be impressed by the orderliness of the hillside manor where his master made his winter quarters.

A long, low hall was built of those striped stones peculiar to Siena, sixty miles to the south, and was flanked at either end by pillared loggias cool with shade and made fragrant by earthenware urns filled with lilacs. The courtyard well was also striped, its round roof tiled against the rains which in this dry spring of the year 1315 were strangely absent. The beginnings of a formal garden could be seen, with box hedge yet to be planted and still encased in cloth sacks, awaiting the spade. Beyond the low wall which ran to the west, furrowed farm fields stretched as far as the lower slopes of Mount Maggiore.

There was a distant bleating of sheep being herded by barking dogs in the spring air, and the rhythmic clang of hammers on metal from the forges beyond the great hall. In the stables, out of sight of the courtyard garden, a horse neighed shrilly and stamped angry hooves on the floor plankings.

Seeing their interest, the castellan explained, "Signor Castracane forgoes his daily ride to interest himself with his paints."

"He is an artist?" asked the countess with quick interest.

Old Erasmo inclined his head.

They moved through the shadows of the loggia to an open door leading into the great hall. At the far end a dais was elevated a foot above the stone floor where a long table, bare now, stood before high-backed chairs placed in a row. The long hall, the stone walls of which were hung with banners and standards and an odd assortment of weapons and armor, was cool and pleasant after the hot, dry sunlight. Iride Donati gave a little sigh as she hastened to seat herself in a cathedra chair, leaning her cauled hair against its high back and stretching.

Her sharp eyes studied the pennons draped so artistically, recognizing them for captured standards, seeing among them the gold lion of Venice and the golden spur of Ferrara.

"Signor Castracane makes advertisement of his military successes," she commented wryly.

Her husband smiled slyly. "Would we have it any other way, my dear? The laborer but shows himself worthy of his hire.” The count swung on the castellan with gently waving hand. "Inform your master we await him. We'll take our ease until he arrives."

Old Erasmo bowed slightly and hurried off, half bursting with excitement. Jesu Maria! A Donati here at the Condotta of the Rose winter quarters? This was to believe in miracles. He found an eagerness in him to study the face of his young master when he greeted him with his news.

Castruccio Castracane was frowning as the castellan came into the bare little room he used as a studio, tilting his head the better to peruse the still life grouping on the recessed stone sill of the south window. The painting over which he labored so industriously was almost complete, but he found himself bothered by the tinting of the gauntlet. On canvas it lacked the reality it possessed on the windowsill, poised between a helmet and a dagger.

He sighed and lowered the palette. "Indulge me, Erasmo. Tell me where my brush has failed my hand.”

"Only unless you command me, signor. You have a visitor. A Donati no less, the Count of Corvanto."

Sheer surprise brought the young condottiere around, lowering the palette in his left hand, dropping the brush onto the little worktable which was the sole article of furniture in this room he called his studio.

“Donati? The only Donati I know is Corso Donati the Florentine. And he's been dead six years."

“This is his brother Guido. There's a woman with him, his wife.”

"It's a jest of some sort,” smiled Castruccio. "If there's one man in Italy who must hate my name, it's Guido Donati."

"He's come a good distance. If he makes jokes, he does so at some trouble and expense."

“But the Donati family—like all Florence—has served the Pope in his struggle against the Emperor for as far back as I can remember. It just doesn't make sense. All Italy knows I fought for the Emperor—Henry VII—before his death last year at Buonconvento."

Castruccio wiped his hands on a length of cloth, scowling thoughtfully. "He wouldn't be madman enough to attempt assassination, would he? In my own villa? With a third of my condotta within hailing distance?"

"I doubt it. He carried only a dagger, signor. And his men-at-arms remained outside the hillside gate."

"No, of course not. He'd scarcely try violence with his wife beside him. I act like an unbroken colt at sight of a saddle. However! Let's go beard this Guelphic count. If he has the courage to come here, should I lack the bravery to discover his mission?”

Still puzzled, he followed Erasmo down the narrow gallery.

As the war captain came past the wooden screen which separated the kitchen from the great hall, Guido Donati turned away from the window through which he had been studying the plows and oxen working the nearer fields. His dark eyebrows shot up as he caught his first glimpse of the young condottiere. Pursing his lips, he went to stand beside the high-backed chair where the contessa took her ease.

Castruccio gestured away the castellan as he crossed the rush-strewn floor, reading the surprise on the face of the man and the sensual interest in the eyes of the woman. In neither did he himself evince the slightest concern. He halted and stared at the man, allowing himself to frown.

Tall and muscular in tight white and gold hose and a blue jacket quartered with the Antelminelli arms, Castracane had tawny hair with reddish tints, close-cropped to his skull, and a smoothly shaven jaw that made him seem even more youthful. That youthfulness appeared to trouble Guido Donati as the older man straightened, unable to restrain the look of sheer surprise which crossed his heavy features. The woman in the high-backed chair sighed softly.

“My castellan said you were Messer Guido Donati, the Count of Corvanto," Castruccio said pleasantly. “Surely, knowing my history as you must, he was in error?"

The internecine struggle between Pope and Emperor, in which Guelphic interests warred with Ghibelline, was now two centuries old. Almost forgotten by everyone involved were the early attempts of the Hohenstaufens to establish a despotic rule in middle Europe and the Regnum Italicum, and the bitter opposition their efforts met from politically jealous Popes. At a time when an Emperor, if he was strong enough, might choose his own Pope, and when certain Popes whose duty and privilege it was to crown those Emperors might use the weight of Holy Mother Church to select that Emperor, old rivalries grew into permanent hates.

In Italy especially was this bitter feuding between Guelph and Ghibelline most apparent. Whole families of Guelphs were slaughtered or exiled because they stood for the Pope; families of Ghibellines, because they believed in the temporal power of the Emperor. Entire cities took up the sword. Some cities perished in the fight; others, like birds of prey battening on the dead carcasses of their enemies, grew swollen and great with power. Such a city was Milan in Lombardy, which stood always for the Emperor; another was Florence in Tuscany, which raised the Papal banner on its walls.

The Donati family of Florence was especially vindictive.

The count touched his thick beard which was liberally sprinkled with gray and inclined his head very faintly. "Necessity can make friends of the cat and the dog upon occasion. I need you and your Condotta of the Rose. It's that simple.”

The golden-reddish head made a negative motion. "I've retired from the field. My soldiers are scattered. Nothing would induce me to call them together again, to take the wrappings from my siege weapons. When the Emperor died, I went into retirement."

The bushy eyebrows raised. “At your age? Gods, the art of warfare must be more rewarding than I guessed."

Castracane smiled. It has been recorded that, upon occasion, he had the smile of an angel. It appeared to touch Madonna Donati, for her fingertips began to beat very gently on the arm of her chair.

"As you suggest, we know your history," she said softly, thus drawing his attention. His blue eyes considered her fleshy body revealed so modishly in an overly tight kirtle with long, pendant sleeves. Above its low-cut collar she showed a smooth white throat and bared shoulders.

"For instance," she smiled, "we are aware that you don't even know your own father and mother. You were found in a church garden when you were an infant."

"The Church of San Michele in Lucca.” He nodded, intrigued.

“The woman who found you was sister to Fra Antonio, canon of San Michele at the time: Donna Dianora Cinami, a widow. Her brother the priest thought at first that she'd given birth to you but she soon disabused him of that notion. As Moses was found among the bulrushes, so she found you in the grapevines.”

The Countess of Corvanto looked thoughtful. “They searched all over Lucca to discover who might be your parents. Were you a Guinigi bastard? An Opizi? Had a daughter of the Poggi family sinned, with you as the embarrassing result? The good father never found out. And so he kept you for his own, and for the comfort of his childless sister."

"You make yourself an expert on my life, madonna," he commented wryly. "Did your research also reveal the fact that at the age of thirteen Francesco Guinigi remarked my size and strength and brought me to his palazzo to be tutored in the career of soldier?”

She inclined her head. "He saw you for the first time in the Piazza San Michele. He came begging Fra Antonio to give up his precious dream of seeing you adopt Holy Orders in order to turn you over to Ser Francesco that you might learn to ride a horse and manage a lance.

"And how well you learned! Macche! One can almost sense the pride of Francesco Guinigi in your development. Was he your natural father, do you suppose? Had he brought you to life in the belly of some handsome servant girl? Or titled noblewoman? It's a conjecture that amuses me.

"Did Francesco see himself in you, as he had been when young? The fact that you took so quickly to the use of sword and lance would presume the fact that he—who fought so often and so well for the Visconti of Milan—was your true father. He's dead now, so I suppose we'll never really know."

The soft voice beating in his ears was bringing back old memories to Castruccio. Francesco Guinigi had been a strict tutor, demanding but not tyrannical, strict but not cruel. Often enough, he himself had wondered if Ser Francesco might have fathered him, but it was a conceit he had long ago put out of his mind.

It was enough for him that the man had lifted him from the cloister of San Michele to set him down in a high-peaked wooden saddle, and had taught his fingers to curve around the braided haft of a long-sword When he was fifteen, few grown men had cared to face his lance at the jousting barriere.

Not until he was eighteen did Ser Francesco permit him to march off to war. Then he gave him command of a schiera of foot soldiers and brought him in his retinue to fight under the Visconti viper banner at the siege of Pavia. From the fighting there he had made something of a reputation; enough, at least, for him to consider making the pursuit of arms his life work.

"You formed your own condotta after that," Donna Iride informed him, "adopting the rose as your device. And under that banner you fought at Florence with Ugo della Faggiuola and later at Rovezzano where you made Corso Donati your prisoner for ransom."

"Knowing this, still you came to visit me?” he murmured incredulously.

"As my husband says, necessity makes friends of dog and cat. Your campaigns in Sicily—for Ferrara against Venice which resulted in utter defeat for the doges, for Venice two years later against the revolt of the Serrata led by Bajamonte Tiepolo—mark you as the most successful condottiere in all Italy. A successful soldier can name his own price. We came prepared to meet it."

"I've no price because I'm not for hire. I've retired from the field. Is this all your business?"

His intonation suggested that the meeting was at an end. The contessa only smiled and wriggled more comfortably into the high-backed chair. “Every man has a price. I'll test my wits to discover yours.”

Castruccio shook his golden head. "My service with Henry VII made me wealthy. Monies secured while in his service and from certain ransoms paid by noblemen who fell captive to my banner made me independent."

“Pah,” she exclaimed, leaning forward. "What is money?"

"Enough, in this instance.”

The woman inclined her head. "The princely sum of half a million gold ducats, I believe you brought back from Buonconvento. A fortune, true. But are you merely a huckster, Castruccio? A merchant content with his moneybags? Emperor Henry is dead now."

“There'll be another emperor soon."

“Of course. And another pope when Clement dies. No man is immortal, just as no fortune remains the same. It expands or contracts. At the moment yours is expanding. So. You have enough money. But for how long?"

Messer Guido had retired into a shadow, leaving his wife revealed in the late afternoon sunlight flooding through the tall, recessed windows. She seemed to preen in that bright effulgence like a cat, extending her slippered foot so that her skirt might hug the lines of her shapely leg, then leaning forward, causing her firm breasts to mold themselves against the thin satin of her gown.

Castracane was agreeable, seeing a sudden end to this interruption of his artistic endeavors. "You've said it yourself, Madonna Donati. I find myself rich enough for my needs."

Her laughter was sensual. So might she laugh at an invited caress, he thought. "There are other appeals to be made to a man,” she said.

The soldier-artist considered this, head tilted, wondering if this woman were about to offer herself to his bed and body so that he might fall in love with her cause. She had a fine body, and beautiful dark eyes; her eyes seemed to be laughing at him at the moment.

"All is not well between you and Lucca," she murmured slowly. "Ser Francesco is dead. The Opizi and the Poggi—not to mention Posserino di Quartegiani—are all jealous of your power.”

"I have no such ambition as they seem to feel. I'm content here."

"Oh, liar, liar," she admonished him gently. “I can see it burning in your eyes. What manner of man are you, that you won't acknowledge it? Or even admit to a flash of temper at the mention of those names?"

His head shook denial of her charge but she ignored his gesture to say, “You will admit you have a grievance against Giorgio Opizi for suggesting to the governing council that it banish you from Lucca for life as it banished so many of the Antelminelli family years ago? And for the lies about you which he pours into the ears of King Robert's lieutenant stationed in Lucca?”

His wide shoulders made an impatient movement. “No longer. Time teaches a man that temper is a tricky jade, apt to turn against him if he can't control it."

"A philosopher as well as soldier," murmured the woman. “You grow more interesting, Messer Cast—oh, forgive me. Only a knight or a nobleman is entitled to prefix 'messer' to his name. You've never been knighted, have you?”

The young man flushed. It was a raw spot with him, his lack of nobility in a land where nobility was akin to godhood. For all that he had been adopted by Fra Antonio so that he bore the great name of the Antelminelli family, he still felt the ignominy of being a commoner.

"Are you offering knighthood, Madonna Donati?” he asked frankly.

"And if I were? Could that—together with a yearly stipend of one hundred thousand ducats—lure you from your paint pots?"

Castracane touched the woman with his eyes, then stared at the man. He had known the bite of inactivity this past winter. The snows came early and remained late this high in the Maggiore Mountains. To relieve the tensions building in his body, he had taken recently to the habit of riding his gray stallion at a breakneck pace along the mountain roads. Only at this moment did he understand how much he had been missing the eager bustle of a condotta camp as it prepared for war.

All this he realized the woman was reading in his hesitancy. She, rather than the man, was the acknowledged leader in this mission to secure his services. As if she suspected his thoughts she turned her head to glance back at her husband.

“Guido, I miss my shawl."

"I'll fetch it.”

She waited until her husband had hurried from the room before rising from the tall-backed chair and moving to a window recess where she leaned on her arms and stared out across the farmlands and orchards stretching away to the north. Her rich brown hair was set in a coronet above a wide, white forehead, and her thin nose with its classical cast made the gently drooping mouth below it even more sensual.

"You've never married, Castruccio."

She said it so flatly, without even the semblance of questioning, that he did no more than shrug. Her eyes darted sideways at him.

"You've thought about marriage, however? And the fact that as an unnamed bastard you have little but gold to offer any woman who might consider you?”

He inclined his head, aware that her eyes were traveling up his long, powerful legs, pausing only momentarily at the groin before sliding across his lean, hard belly and deep chest to his handsome face.

"Such a man as you must have earthy appetites. You satisfy yourself with serving maids and farm wenches, with perhaps a tavern woman thrown in upon occasion for variety."

"You concern yourself with more than my professional career, madonna. I suppose I'm being flattered."

She laughed at him. "If I wanted you to bed with me I'd do more than talk about it. No, no. It isn't for myself I ask such questions but for the girl you'll marry—eventually. None of the little tarts you take to bed would make a mother for the children you hope to have someday. Only a noblewoman should bear your babies. Yet no noblewoman would have an untitled soldier, no matter how successful or how victorious at war he may be. It amounts to this, doesn't it?"

Damn those eyes that saw so clearly down inside him! He felt like an insect held aloft on an impaling pin by a professor at the University of Padua. Castracane forced himself to calmness.

"As you say, only a noblewoman.”

Her thin brows arched as her hands went wide. "Well, then? I'm offering you riches and an opportunity for knighthood all in the same breath. Why do you hesitate? What more do you want? A chance to study painting under Signor Giotto di Bondone?”

"I'm afraid I'm an indifferent artist."

"Can you tell? Are you artist enough to be able to assess your work?” she asked, honestly curious, and moved away from the window. "Show me these paintings of yours, Signor Castracane. Permit me to judge their merits."

He knew her for a patroness of the arts in her native Florence. She had posed for Giotto di Bondone, and supported half a dozen lesser known artists from an abundant purse. What sort of critic she might make, he did not know; yet hers would be an opinion uninfluenced by a need for flattery or subservience.

His decision was immediate. He bowed and smiled and Madonna Donati found herself once more under the influence of his personal charm. She came to him in a rustle of taffeta and heady perfume, placing slim white fingers, heavily ringed, on his arm.

"Escort me to your atelier, per favore," she smiled.

"Your husband?"

“Will be searching in my effects for my shawl. It's a ruse we use often, he and I. It gives me an opportunity to speak freely without his being about to put a damper on matters."

They moved into the narrow corridor where he drew back to let her precede him. She walked with sensual grace, letting her hips sway. The thought came to Castruccio that she would make a wonderful nude model; and wondered, if he made it a condition of his employment to fight for her cause, what her reaction might be.

The atelier was a small room, its windows open to the spring air and molten sunlight. His unfinished canvas rested on an easel close beside the worktable where he had laid his brush and palette. The painting reproduced the sword and helmet resting on one of the windowsills with an imitative facility, yet with a pronounced heaviness of hand that resulted in a mild garishness of color.

Madonna Donati stood beside the easel, studying the oil with narrowed eyes. Once she glanced at the grouping on the window ledge, then at Castracane himself.

"It has merit,” she said slowly.

"Perhaps I should make my appeal to the purse of Madonna Donati the art patron rather than Madonna Donati the ambitious countess.”

Sunlight flashed on the jeweled rings on her fingers as she gestured fiercely. "Pah! I can hire a dozen artists better than you, signor. Or don't you realize that a man can be an artist on the field of battle as well as on canvas?"

"You suggest then that life itself is art?"

"'The very highest form, signor.”

His hand indicated the painting. "And this? Should I throw a cloth over it and forget it while I take the field under your banner?”

"It would be my advice, yes. I cannot imagine your art ever winning you a knighthood. Or a hundred thousand ducats."

"You make a refusal the act of a madman," he commented.

"Or of the dull clod you pretend to be," she nodded, watching him with careful eyes.

Castracane walked to the recessed window and, brushing aside the gauntlet and helmet resting on its wide sill, leaned his palms to the worn wood. No matter where he looked through these panes, whatever he saw belonged to him. Those furrowed fields where beans and herbs were planted, the vineyard beyond the stone wall, the tiny chapel in which Fra Pietro was wont to say. Mass of a Sunday morning after climbing the steep mountain road on his small gray donkey, all these were his.

It was a good domain. It stretched for miles across rolling hills and meadowlands, and down along the road to Lucca.

Flocks of sheep and goat herds fed on its grasses. There were cows to be milked every evening in the big barns, and fine horses bred for speed and for fighting in battle contained by the stone fences that crisscrossed the fields. He was a wealthy man, as his world measured wealth.

And yet— He was not a happy man.

The ambition he had denied to this discerning noblewoman flooded his veins with every heartbeat. Bastard he might be, yet bastardy was no insurmountable barrier to any man these days. If he could not be heir to a dynasty, he could create one. To do that, a man must be noble.

The Countess of Corvanto was offering him just that, as a bribe to his employment. What more did he ask? Fame? His very fame had brought her. Money? His scrigni coffers were heavy with golden florins.

Ser Castruccio Castracane degli Antelminelli. It had a ring, that name. It made music in his mind. The name could be his own, when he was knighted. Ah, and after he was knighted he could begin to look about for a wife to give him children.

What are you waiting for, man?

He laughed in his throat, harshly, in amusement at himself. "I put up arguments only to knock them down again, like a man at tenpins. As you say, Madonna Iride, my art will never get me knighted. Even as I was painting these gauds, I ached to take the field again."

Excitement flushed her cheeks. "Then you agree? You'll take employment against whatever enemies my husband or I might designate?

"Excepting only Ugo della Faggiuola, my former comrade in arms." "He is not involved.”

The tawny head lowered slightly. “Then I wear your badge, madonna."

She clapped her ringed hands, laughing. "Va bene! Always I tell Guido a woman can bargain with a handsome man five times better than he, with his long face and bushy beard. Is it not so, Signor Castracane?"

"You've proved it just now." He smiled, then added, "I'd thought to make it a condition of my employment that you pose for me. If I'd insisted on it, would you have consented?”

Iride Donati pressed his wrist with slim fingers, leaning against him just enough so that he might guess the firmness of her breasts. "Non lo saprai mia,” she whispered, and gave a tiny giggle.

Castracane brooded down at her. “My friends say I am too daring in the field of battle. Perhaps I should learn that same daring where my canvases are concerned."

A shrug and an unreadable smile were her only answer.

2

Messer Guido Donati and his wife stayed to dinner in the great hall of the villa where Castracane was pleased to lord it in the manner of il gran signor. Three musicians in the shadows beyond the grill-work screen which hid the gallery from the length of the great hall filled the air with melody. Two maidservants—the Countess of Corvanto remarked on their good looks and wondered if their master was aware of their charms—waited on the great table, running with huge wooden platters of steaming roast lamb and capons, and fish freshly caught from the nearby Serchio, together with trays of barley bread, berry tarts, sweetbreads, and herring pies.

A maidservant was employed solely to keep the pewter goblets filled with a variety of wines, red Nebbiolo wine from Lombardy and Piedmont claret with the meat, white Soave with the tarts, and golden Albano with the cheeses.

It was the woman who pushed away her platter first, wiping her fingers on the tablecloth and saying, "You've heard the terms of your employment. Now it's time you learned its target."

"The target I've been supposing. It was a Catalan hired by Vieri di Cerchi who killed Corso. I assume you'll move against Cerchi and, by defeating him, exact vengeance and satisfy your honor.”

The heavyset count nodded slowly, chewing lazily. "A good brother, Corso. The head of our family. Sometimes a touch too hot-tempered, but he did a lot for us. I was with him the night after Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip the Fair of France, and loaned to Pope Boniface against the Ghibellines of Florence—entered Florence with his French troops."

He paused to brush at cheese particles adhering to his mustache and beard. "We broke in through the Gate of Saint Martin, all of us heavily armed. With Corso to lead the way we went to one house after the other, each of them filled with the Cerchis or their followers.

"Gods, the men we put to death that night, the women we—hrummph! Your pardon, Iride. It was before we wed."

Signora Donati inclined her head, fingertips busy with a large breadcrumb, molding it this way and that. “I never suspected you were an angel when I took my marriage vows, Guido. But we only bore Signor Castracane. It would be better to let him know to what purpose we promise him so much wealth and a knighthood."

"To be sure, to be sure. I but lay the groundwork on which to build his understanding. At any rate, the Donatis and the Cerchis have long been feuding in Florence, just as the Montagues and Capulets or the Monaldi and Filippeschi feud in Verona. As you say, Corso was slain by order of Vieri di Cerchi.

"It is to oust the Cerchi from Florence that we hire you and your condotta. A quick attack on Niccolo Pasolini, who is the war captain hired by old Vieri, and Florence falls to our banner."

"I'm to be a second Charles of Anjou, then.”

Iride Donati raised thin brows. "Have you scruples, captain?"

"Only against outright murder, signora.”

It was Guido who put his mind at rest. "Your task is merely to defeat Niccolo Pasolini in the field and to march into Florence with your condotta. It shall be my affair to announce that your coming ousts the Cerchis and restores the Donatis to power.”

In an age when cities showed the way, powerful families were really far behind in the employment of these professional soldiers called condottiere. Where Venice hired Ruggiero Morosini, and Florence, Tolosetto Uberti, the Donati family offered employment to Castruccio Castracane. An example, if one were needed, had already been set them by the employment of Federico Calomallo by Matteo Visconti of Milan.

"There may be some delay," Castruccio murmured thoughtfully. "Last winter when I announced my intention to retire from the field, I gave permission to my lieutenants to seek service with other captains. Andrea Sarto, for instance, suggested he might take his lances to Pisa where Faggiuola rules. Old Gianetto Orlando owns a farm outside Arezzo. He and his men have been planting olive trees against his retirement.

"Most of the others have gone back to their homes in Lucca, in Pistoia, in little towns such as Vellano, Lizzano, Porretta. I'll dispatch riders first thing tomorrow to bring them news of my decision."

The count frowned. “Will you find them willing to serve you? Men who lay aside arms for plows and spades—”

"—itch as I do myself to take the field. Soldiering is a business, signor. You hire me to do a job. I hire the best men available to follow my orders. Compare me with the builder of a house, if you will. You go to a master architect with your needs. You leave everything in his hands, the planning of the walls and rooms and roof, the hiring of laborers to construct them.

"He knows which are the finest stonemasons, the best carpenters. If he prospers at his work—as I take pride in the fact that I prosper—good workmen will come flocking for his hiring. They will know he pays well, that success attends his efforts. Ugo remains behind the walls of Pisa so Sarto will be eager for action. Orlando will be sick of the sight and smell of olive trees by this time. My other men—returned to farms and shops and store-stalls—will have discovered there's little gold to be found in trade these days as compared with the profession of soldiering.

"And of course, I keep many of my men here at the villa. They've made themselves a hamlet of sorts out of sight of the hall. They work my forges and plow my fields. A few of them I keep always under arms, to guard against assassination or robbery." He shrugged, explaining, "These are difficult times in which we live. My villa may not be as dangerous as a city street after dark, with foot-pads and slit-purses thronging to profit by attacking a wealthy burgher, but the possibility remains."

"Even without nobility, you don its trappings,” the countess laughed. “To your servants you must appear a knight in truth, with your wealth and reputation. Tell me, do you avail yourself of knightly privileges with your people? The right of the signor, for instance, the jus primis noctis: to bed the peasant bride?

Castruccio allowed himself to smile gently while he shook his head. "Not so far, at least. I find some humanity in me."

“Other war captains do. They create their own laws."

"Not Castracane."

Her mocking eyes made him feel a fool. They knew, both of them, the conditions of the time, where a man born to the peasantry must grub the soil all his life unless uplifted to the minor orders or the priesthood by virtue of brain and sanctity. As it was with the men, so it was with their women. Only the exceptionally attractive girl might hope to find some rich or noble patron willing to share his wealth with her in exchange for her favors. The others remained on the manor farms or in city shop-stalls, resigned to lives of grinding poverty.

The count sighed. “Before mid-April then, you'll move on Pasolini?"

"Once I can run him to earth, Florence is yours."

Signora Donati studied him with narrowed eyes. "You're confident; perhaps too confident."

His smile was a mirror for his pride. "I may be an indifferent artist, but I'm an excellent soldier. What the Creator denied in one field, He gave abundantly in the other."

Guido drained the last of his wine and upended the goblet on the table. "If my wife and I were not convinced of that, Signor Castracane, we would not be at sup with you this night. Iride? The hour grows toward complines. We have a long road yet to travel before daybreak.”

He pushed back his chair and Castracane followed his example, standing tall and handsome in the candlelight, his head inclined a little out of deference to the Countess of Corvanto who was rising to her feet. A manservant came running with her fur-trimmed pelisse which her husband took and tossed about her shoulders.

“As an evidence of our sincerity, fifty thousand ducats shall be delivered to your villa before you march on Pasolini," the count said slowly. "The balance will be paid you in Florence, the day you enter it as our deliverer.”

The contessa chided, "You make victory a condition of payment, Guido. Such is not our intention. All men are human. Even the great Castracane might meet defeat."

Castruccio took her words as a cue to say, "Which then would be the greater loss, madonna—yours or mine?”

She stared at him steadily, beginning to mistrust her first impression of this young Mars. He might run deeper than her surface impression of him as a lucky commander, one who had come to riches behind the imperial banner of Henry VII. His wide forehead was that of a thinker, his mobile mouth that of a man who saw humor in himself as well as in others. For a moment doubt ran along her nerves. Under the warm pelisse she shivered.

“Come, Guido," she said almost harshly. "I weary of standing."

Castracane went with them through the gallery and out along the pillared loggia to the open courtyard. It was a cool night with a brilliant pattern of stars and a crescent moon overhead. This high in the mountains, the air was clear and dry.

Iride Donati stepped into her palanquin and held out her ringed hand for Castruccio to kiss. “When you enter Florence, you shall be our guest, captain. Until then, may fortune attend you."

She sat back and let the heavy leather curtains rustle into place. The sedan chair was heavily cushioned and under the gentle spell of its rhythmic sway she might well fall asleep. There was no need to fear the highwaymen who sometimes preyed on lonely travelers, with the men-at-arms in metal caps and mail shirts who rode as their escort.

Her husband mounted a black gelding. He reined it in a mincing, sideways step across the flaggings, leaning down to offer his hand. "As milady says, good fortune, Castruccio."

Castracane followed them to the great gate and stood a while in the cool night, breathing deeply of the wind which was fragrant with lilac as it blew across Mount Maggiore.

"I've been a recluse too long," he told himself, "I itch for battle like a novitiate for his first Mass.”

His laughter rang out, strangely boyish.

When their cortege was an hour along the road to Fucecchio, Madonna Donati thrust her hand through the leather curtains of her sedan chair and signaled for a halt. As if that hand were a magnet, it drew Count Guido forward.

"My dear? You wanted me?"

"I've been lying here thinking. Tell me your impressions of this Castracane."

Guido Donati pursed his lips. "He seems a cut above the ordinary condottiere, but that may be because of his adoption by an Antelminelli—Fra Antonio—and his education by Ser Francesco."

"Oh, Guido!” she snapped impatiently.

His eyes studied her. "You've something on your mind."

She shrugged almost petulantly. "I begin to suspect him, which is more than you do, apparently."

“Suspect him? God's blood, what's to suspect?”

“That he suspects us! That he sees through our employment to the trap we lay for his destruction."

"Jesu Maria! Said he anything of this?”

"No, no. Certainly not. Would I have hired him in such case? Maybe it's only my own imagination or perhaps I ate too many spiced tarts.” "I trust it's one or the other,” he muttered soberly. "If he knew we were arranging his death this afternoon while we bargained for his services"

She snorted, "He'd never have let us go!” She considered this, head tilted to one side. "No, I start at shadows. If he'd suspected us, we'd be in chains this moment instead of riding now to take conference with Signor Pasolini."

She sank back into the cushions.

"Make haste slowly, Guido. The wine made me sleepy."

"Be at ease, my dear. In all things.”

The little cortege went on its way, slowly and sedately.

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