* * * *
Verona
“Alighieri! Hola! Alighieri!!”
Weaving in and out of the midday crowd, Pietro turned at the hail and was at once knocked to the ground. He felt the trod of feet and a buffet of absent blows before a hand caught him by the shoulder. “Alighieri!”
“Alaghieri.” Dazed, Pietro staggered to his feet, brushing dirt and filth from his best doublet.
“Are you alright?” He was turned about to behold a face no older than his own, with hair black as jet and eyes as blue as sparrow’s eggs. The doublet bordered on frippery, but the hose, boots, and hat were of the finest quality. He was closely shaved, as if to show off a mouth a trifle too pretty.
“Fine,” said Pietro, a little shortly. His best doublet was his best no longer. But the teen looked familiar. It had been chaos last night, and with all his father’s luggage to bestow, his brother running about pointing out the windows, Pietro hadn’t caught half the names thrown at him. Embarrassment mounting, he tried to remember…
“Montecchio,” supplied the comely youth. “Mariotto Montecchio.”
“You had the baby hawk.”
Montecchio’s smile was dazzling. “Yes! I’m training it so I can hunt with the Capitano. Maybe you can join us next time?”
Giving up on the doublet, Pietro nodded eagerly. “I’d like that.” He had missed the revelry last night, consigned to unpacking. The Alaghieri paterfamilias had, of course, participated, riding forth with the nobility on the midnight hunt. All night long Pietro and his brother had groused, and this morning he felt the pangs even worse, for everyone was talking of the sport.
Not that Pietro really enjoyed hunting. Like soldiering, it was more that he wished he were the kind of man who enjoyed it. It seemed to be something he should love.
Montecchio looked him up and down, checked the length of his arms. “We’ll get you a sparrowhawk. It’ll match the feather in your –” Mariotto’s brows knit together as he glanced at Pietro’s head. “Where’s your hat?”
Pietro ran a hand up and discovered his head was bare. Looking about he spied his fine plumed hat a few feet away, wilted and trampled.
Montecchio leapt forward to snatch it out from under the trod of boots and sandals. “I am so sorry,” he said gravely. He looked genuinely pained as he held it in his hand. Mariotto took attire seriously.
Pietro did his best to smile as he took the limp cloth with its broken feather from out of Montecchio’s hands. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a very nice cap.”
It had been a very nice cap. A trifle, surely, but Pietro was allowed few trifles. His father had an austere code that applied to all things, including dress. Pietro had barely managed to win the right to wear the doublet and hose, which his father viewed as extravagant and showy. The hat had been a gift from the great Pisan lord Uguccione della Faggiuola, who knew all about young men and their vanity. Pietro had convinced his father that refusing the gift would have been an insult. “I only wear the hat out of respect for your patron, father,” he’d said. Somehow the old cynic had bought it. Now it was crushed and covered with dirt.
“I’ll replace it,” declared Mariotto instantly.
“You don’t…”
Mariotto insisted. “It’s your first day here! No, we’re going to the best haberdasher in the city. Follow me!”
Not to agree would have been churlish. The late morning sun warmed Pietro’s back as he ducked and weaved through the myriad enticements of the Piazza delle Erbe, trying to keep up. (The finest whips and crops!) Men of all shapes and sizes jostled with each other as buyers and sellers called out their wares to pilgrims, palmers, Jews, even the occasional heathen Moor. (Fish! The fruit of sea, the Captaino’s favorite!) Pietro’s eyes encountered millers, fishmongers, barbers, and smiths, all crying their wares from tented stalls or storefronts. (Love potions! Dump the man you have and get the one you deserve!) There were so very many small nooks, but Pietro didn’t have the time to even glance into one before Mariotto was off in another direction. (Skins, well cured! Don’t let the heat fool you! Winter’s coming! Stay warm!)
It was loud! Anvils chimed in their workshops, and the cries of exotic animals on display only added to the din. Monkeys hopped around in cages, hawks screamed, hounds barked, all underscored by guitars, lutes, flutes, viols, rebecs, tambourines, and the voices of the troubadors. It was Nimrod’s Tower come to life, cacaphonous pandemonium. A seller of headstones was immediately replaced by a purveyor of sweet pasties who held his samples in the air, enticingly aromatic. Legally a vendor couldn’t physically accost a traveler, but that only increased the assault on the other senses, and the huge signs which hung over the stalls were worse than grabbing hands. Each proclaimed the trade of the stall-owner, even as the owner shouted insults at the vendor across the way. Above the signs, in row after row of low balconies, men capered and shouted to friends below, watching the course of various arguments and fistfights and making loud bets with each other as to the outcome.
Mariotto easily navigated the shops and stalls, using short-cuts through alleys and leaping over barrels that blocked their path. Pietro followed him down a sidestreet purfumed with mulled wines and spiced meats. Trying to keep up, Pietro continued to make the proper protestations. “Actually, I was on an errand for my father.”
Mariotto grinned. “Something devilish?”
Pietro laughed because he was expected to. “I have to order him some new sandals.”
Mariotto turned to walk backwards as he asked, “What happened to his old ones? Burned in the hellfire?”
“No,” said Pietro. “My brother.”
Montecchio nodded wisely, as though the answer made sense. “We’ll head to the river and circle around to Cobbler Lane on the way back to the palace – you cannot deny me the opportunity to replace your cap. It would stain my family’s honor to let this injustice go unanswered.” Pietro’s guide laughed as he whirled off into the crowds. Pietro followed.
Behind them came the sound of the human tongue in disjointed harmony. Each traveler spoke their native language, causing the air to be thick with a war of French, English, Flemish, Greek, and more. Interlaced into the cacophony rose the harsh guttural sounds of German. Veronese speech owed at least as much to German as it did to Italian, and the local dialect was redolent with its sounds.
Over the noise Pietro said, “Why are you out this morning? Weren’t you in the wedding party?”
“Yes! I did my best, but I couldn’t talk him out of it! Poor fool – just a couple years older than us and already tied down to a wife! But until the feast there’s nothing but servants racing about the palace and women cooing about how lovely it all was. I had to escape.”
A roar of approval from the men around them raised their eyes to the highest balconies of the building nearby. Several young women had emerged and draped themselves over the railings, their garments falling revealingly open. One girl waved at Pietro and flashed something pink from beneath her bodice. Pietro blushed and waved shyly back.
Mariotto said, “I could arrange an introduction.”
I shouldn’t be shocked, thought Pietro. This is the market plaza, after all. Aloud he said, “In Florence they’re forced to wear tiny bells.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes. There’s an old joke about churches and prostitutes – the bells call a man to repent what the bells call a man to do.”
As they talked, Pietro spied a score of soldiers swaggering through the square. Montecchio never stopped talking as he led a merry chase down the long street. Figuring that Pietro would soon be sent to hunt for tools linked to his father’s profession, Mariotto made sure to point out where to find the best wax for sealing, the best cut quills.
Then they reached milliner row, close to an ancient tufa wall, a stark contrast to the rose marble and red brick all around them. These were the old walls, built by the Romans or their forebears – no one knew for certain. The first true inhabitants of Verona were lost to memory. Regardless, the walls existed, enclosing the oldest and richest part of the city – though what good they would be if attacked, Pietro wasn’t sure.
Twenty minutes later Pietro was once more appropriately, if ostentatiously, hatted. He had settled on a puffed-out burgundy affair sporting a thin green feather just above the left ear – the Ghibbeline ear. Feeling rakish, he followed Mariotto to a string of cobblers where he ordered sandals to be ready for the poet the following day.
The sun was directly overhead, the bridal dinner nigh. Mariotto unfettered his infectious grin. “We’d better get back. My father asked me to be amusing for Monsignore Alighieri’s children.”
“Alaghieri.”
“That’s what I said.” He clapped a hand on Pietro’s shoulder. “To tell you the truth, I was dreading it. Thank you for being nothing like what I imagined the son of a poet to be.”
Again Pietro smiled because he was supposed to. Inside his skin he shuddered. That’s the question, isn’t it? What is the son of a poet – of any great man – if not less than. Inferior. Useless.
To cheer himself up, Pietro looked for a way to repay Mariotto’s kindness. Being lost and alone in a new city was nothing new, but having a friend was. When they were five minutes from the palace, traversing the Plaza delle Erbe once more, he spotted the perfect gift. “Wait here,” he said, dashing off through the crowd. A few moments later he reappeared.
“For you, signore,” said Pietro with an elaborate bow, twisting his new hat between his fingers in a flourish. With his free hand he offered a pair of fine corded leather straps. From one end of each hung a solid silver vervel for engraving the owner’s name.
Montecchio’s eyes lit up. “Jesses!” Reaching out, he checked. “Really, Alighieri, it’s too much.” Now it was Montecchio’s protests that were feeble.
Pietro was helpless to stop his embarrassingly lop-sided smile. “Your hawk should be as well-dressed as you are.”
Mariotto admired the small token. “Tomorrow we’ll go riding along the Adige and see if the fellow will fly at all.”
Pietro nodded. If father will let me. Out loud he said, “I’d like that.”
A bell began to ring to the south, then another to the east. Mariotto’s eyes grew wide. “We’re late!”
