The Master of Verona

The letter paused, then resumed in a slightly different ink.

Our bags are packed and we are about to embark to our new home in the old Scaligeri mansion, where the family lived before they ruled the city and Mastino built their great palace. A grand palace, like a Memory Place made real. The Capitano has harnessed the remains of a Roman bath in the cellar — apparently Verona's Piazza della Signoria is built over the remains of their old Roman forum. I have yet to visit these baths — somehow I am untrusting of a cellar filled with water. But Father visited them often during our last stay. It's all quite a change from the years of sleeping in barns or woodsheds with students and other vagabonds. I've decided that it's better to have money than not.

I don't have to tell you how excited Poco is about Verona — by the way, the fur is his Christmas gift to you. He's very proud, he caught and skinned it himself. "I'll send it to Imperia," he said — you've never told me why he calls you that. (Am I the only member of the family that doesn't have a nickname for you?) Anyway, the fur is from him. Hideous, isn't it? But I know you'll do something to make it bearable. Poco caught it during the hunt on our last day in Verona. Embarrassingly, it was held in my honour. As a token of his esteem, Cangrande presented me with the best of a litter of pups sired by his favorite hound, Jupiter. I've named him Mercurio.

Mari and Antony came to Lucca for a visit last week. As we were walking through the streets here, we noticed a group of older women nearby. They'd stopped in a small cluster and were pointing at me and whispering. Antony and Mari started making some dirty jokes and I told them it wasn't what they imagined, that the women thought I was my father. Mari said that was ridiculous, noting I don't look anything like him — the nose a little, and the high forehead. 'But he wears a beard!' he told me.

Since it's been so long you might not know it but Mari's right. Father has taken to wearing a long beard these last few years. He shaves it off whenever he has his portrait painted so he can look more like Virgil or Cicero — Roman, you know. He wants to be remembered as their heir, and since they were clean-shaven when they were painted, he is too. But he hates shaving. So, because I look more like his portrait than he does, people stare.