The Master of Verona

Ignazzio thought of the Moor hovering over his shoulders as he put his questions to the little staff of clerks and couriers. "No, I think they honestly knew nothing of interest."

It was bad form to lie to a king. But he'd done far worse.

"Sad, sad," said Frederick. "But just as well. It never does to torture men today you may be borrowing money from tomorrow. Well, there are always the Jews. Thank you for sharing your learning with me. You may go."

"Your majesty." Ignazzio bowed his way out of the royal presence, then retrieved the patient Moor.

In another half an hour they were riding together out of the castle of Milazzo, their saddlebags full and their faces grim. But Ignazzio didn't angle his horse towards the town gates. Instead he headed down a slope towards the seashore. "Just a quick stop at the cave of San Antonio," he explained. "I'll bend a knee, remount, and we can still reach Messina by morning."

"It's well we hurry." Most emotions were lost in the effort to scrape sound from the man's injured throat, but the clip of the words indicated urgency.

"I know, I know. But I promised the king."

"A promise he likely had no intention of holding you to."

"A promise before God nonetheless. Do you disapprove?"

"Of course not. I am envious. I have not practiced my devotion in a long, long time."

That gave Ignazzio pause. He knew that the Moor was adept at the Christian style of prayer, but that it was not the faith he had been born into. "After Messina we could-"

The Moor was curt. "After Messina we shall be voyaging to Padua. You saw the symbol."

"Symbols," corrected Ignazzio. The arrested bankers had drawn them copies of the seals on their orders for gold. One was strange to Ignazzio, though not to Theodoro. The other was the Scaliger's own. "Once again someone is using Cangrande's seal to work against him."

"True. But that is not for us to investigate. We must watch the man the other seal belongs to."

Which meant there was no time to waste indulging the Moor's envy. Ignazzio was certain his companion gleaned more danger in the information at hand than he himself could see. What did they know so far? In Venice they had learned that a man fitting the scarecrow's description had received a handsome sum, drawn on a famous bank with offices in Bruges and Sicily. With that information, they decided to head north and see if they could trace the scarecrow via the bank's branch in Bruges.

During the journey north, luck had blown a small favor their way. Ignazzio had made it his habit to show the medallion that little Cesco had snatched from around the kidnapper's neck to every jeweler and smith he could find. Perhaps someone could at least identify the kind of pearl. But in Antwerp a silversmith said he thought the workmanship looked English. So after a fruitless interview in Bruges, they had pressed on to London. There they had the misfortune of being taken for Scottish sympathizers, which at least told them the medallion was Scottish, not English. They had been forced to flee back across the Channel to France, leaving them with the choice of sneaking up into Scotland by ship and risking capture, or journeying south to Sicily to the other branch of the bank. Ignazzio had been for the former, but Theodoro hadn't wished to chance their fate to the whims of the seas. Which brought them to today, and the image of two seals. One was unmistakably the Scaliger's. The other? The Moor certainly knew. Had Ignazzio ever seen it before? He was sure he hadn't. So then, whose was it? Dying to ask, he fought to restrain himself.

But then he realized Theodoro had already given him a clue. They were heading for Padua, which meant the seal's owner was a Paduan. Or resided there.

Glancing over at the Moor, lit now by the stars and the occasional torches in the street, Ignazzio said, "When can you tell me his name?"

"When we are gone from this place."

Ignazzio nodded. "All the more reason to pray to San Antonio for a safe journey." With that the astrologer kicked his heels, urging his mount down the cobbled decline.

Milazzo was not so much a town as a seaside getaway for the wealthy. Situated on a bluff just north of the road between Palermo and the city of Messina, its only true claim of notoriety was in being the place where San Antonio was shipwrecked a hundred years before. The Patron of Lost Things, the Poor, and Travelers, Antonio held the distinction of receiving the second quickest ordination as saint in church history, a mere 352 days. The holy man who held the record, ironically, was a Veronese. Always Verona and Padua, vying for dominance.

San Antonio's cave was at the bottom of the bay, far below the castle. The bluff the town was built upon was known as the Head of Milazzo. If that were literally true, the cave would have been the nose, with the mouth opening out onto the rich blue water.