The Master of Verona

There was only one answer. I have to go. I have to join them in Verona. Finding her bottle of ink and a fresh sheet of paper, she began to write her reply…

Shortly thereafter Gemma Donati came looking for her only daughter. "Antonia? Franco and his brood will be joining us after all, so-"

But the girl wasn't in the study, having left the house to find a rider to bear her message to her father. Unknowing, Gemma picked up the two letters her daughter had left out. At first she was amused by the contents, then startled. "Oh, Durante…"

Gemma wept until she heard her daughter in the entryway below, arriving just as her brother-in-law rode up with his family. Daubing her eyes, Gemma rose and placed the letters just where Antonia had left them. She knew what her daughter would ask, and was tired of refusing. Gemma's attempts to find her daughter a husband were a desperate ploy to tie the girl to Florence, so that at least one of her children would remain with her. But she knew the power of her husband's words, made only stronger in Antonia by his absence. Realizing it was to be her last Christmas feast with her only remaining child, she descended the stairs with a slow, heavy gait.

Padua

The same moment Antonia was leaving church, the Count of San Bonifacio was entering one. Not a grand Paduan church, but a mean and humble one outside the city walls. Unknown to him it was the same one Cangrande had used as a rendezvous months before. On this holy day it had only two occupants. One, a frightened-looking priest, stood at the door. The other knelt in prayer by the altar. Nodding to the man of God, the Count crossed himself and sat down, resigned to a long wait. If he could enlist this penitent's aid, his cause might yet be won. He had the key to this man's spiritual vault. The Pup had given it him.

After hours of painful kneeling on the stone floor, the figure rose. And rose, and rose. He was as tall as he was thin, a grotesque figure made moreso by deliberate starvation. He crossed himself before turning about. "You didn't come here to pray," he said at once, accusing. "Your presence here is profane." His voice was deep and rich, odd to hear from such a strange figure.

"Merely secular," said the Count.

"I told you no," said the penitent.

"And I respected that," said the Count. "But things have changed."

"Your defeat is nothing to me." The man wore a medallion with an odd cross surrounded by pearls. Some pearls were missing.

"No reason it should. Still, you live so far from the city I wondered if you'd heard."

"Heard what?"

"Cangrande has taken in a son — a bastard son — and named him his heir."

The skeletal penitent remained entirely still, yet a change came over the chapel. Suddenly it was cold, as if a pall had swallowed the sun.

"A bastard heir?"

Seeing the fire in the penitent's eyes, the Count knew that at last he had found the wedge to drive the other man into action. Checking his smirk, he began setting his plan in motion.

Venice

The Count's was not the only wheel set turning because of the child. Late Christmas night, a ship was admitted past the bar and through the Lido, an unusual event after dark. It dropped anchor in a misty port off the Castello. Within ten minutes two cloaked figures were stepping from the arriving ship into a sky-blue gondola. The leading figure was short with the shoulders of a scribe. His shadow was built more like a mason or a soldier, tall and broad. As they settled into the bottom of the tiny gondola, its black-hatted oarsman pushed off and started angling them towards the Rio di Greci — Greek Street, a causeway of water entering the Castello directly opposite the small island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

They passed under the first bridge of the Greci in silence, but for the slapping of the waters against the gondola's sides. Here and there music or snippets of conversation floated by. At the second bridge, they were forced to stop. A deep-red and gold gondola had gotten turned, a mishap common with inexperienced polers. The figures in the immobile gondola were masked, and showed signs of drink. Some helpful fellows on the bridge had gotten sticks to aid them in turning, and now the unfortunate gondola was straightening out.

In the front of the sky-blue gondola, the smaller man asked, "Can't we get by them?"

The oarsman touched the wide brim of his hat and obediently shoved hard to angle them past the stalled gondola. Through no fault of his, the two bumped. There was a jeer from the masked men in the red-gold gondola, then another from the bridge.