‘It was here,’ she said. ‘Here that the first Pia of the Tolomei was imprisoned, for dishonouring her husband. Here she died.’
Signor Bruni watched her, wary. She bent her ear to the wall of the tower, as if she could hear screams across the centuries. She had thought the first Pia was a literary cipher. Now, here, before this dank stronghold, she knew Pia was real, her imprisonment no less dire, her death no less painful because she’d been immortalized in Dante.
The first Pia was a living, breathing woman who had been murdered by her husband, and in the very same castle that had passed down, hand-to-hand, through the Sienese signori, until the deeds rested in the hands of Faustino Caprimulgo.
The citadel and its portents terrified Pia. She pulled Guinevere’s reins and backed the palfrey away. ‘Not me,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘It will not be me.’
Signor Bruni sought to reassure her. ‘Of course it will not,’ he said. ‘Times are different now.’
Pia turned Guinevere away from the tower, as if she had not heard him, but she had registered the kindness once again and knew what she was about to do was right.
‘If the castle is here,’ she said, again to herself, ‘then
this
way must be …’ She trailed off as she rode away. Out of the portentous shadow of the castle Pia suddenly felt sure. Her heart thumped against her ribs. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I know of a special place.’
Signor Bruni followed her willingly as she led him through a thick overhang of trees into the forest behind the castle. Pia was blinded by the sudden blackness after the burning day, but it seemed as if she did indeed see in the dark like Minerva. Behind her, Leocorno slipped on the tussocks of marshgrass and samphire but Guinevere, guided by her rider, placed her feet neatly; Signor Bruni was the pupil now, Pia the master. She turned in the dark closeness of the forest and laughed at him, the first time she’d laughed in weeks. She rode on fast, as she’d always wanted, pushing herself, wanting to tire her muscles and quicken her breath.
At last Pia could feel Guinevere tending down a slope and heard the run and rush of water. They were at a stream, arched across by a beautiful stone bridge, as old as the castle above. Pia slid from her horse and knotted Guinevere’s reins to a low branch. Signor Bruni slid from Leocorno’s back and dropped the reins, while the horse bent his head to crop the salty grass.
Pia led Signor Bruni over the bridge and at the height of the arch she stopped and leaned on the parapet, looking down into the dappled rushing torrent.
‘I wanted you to see this place,’ she said. ‘It is called Pia’s bridge. Her bridge. The first Pia, the one in Dante. She was held prisoner in this castle, the castle Faustino owns. When I was a child my father told me all about this place. He showed me the castle, the bridge. He wanted to make me afraid, keep me obedient. But he told me something else, which never had a meaning for me until I met you.’ She pointed down, almost shyly. ‘This is the river
Bruni
.
Your
river. Do you see? Do you know now why I started at your name, when you told it me in the confessional? This place is where you and I meet.’
He looked at the river, at the bridge, at her. His beautiful face was serious. ‘Why did you bring me here?’
It was time. ‘I wanted to give you two things. Firstly, because of your kindness, I received the book of Arthur. In return, I know where the Nine will meet in two days’ time.’
He looked surprised, as if he’d expected her to say something else.
‘I read the book from cover to cover, searching for all the references to churches or chapels. There are many, as you can imagine. But it was not the many references to churches that were significant. Do you remember you spoke of the duchess’s conclusions? She mentioned King Arthur’s
sword
, and that the Goose
contrada
alone have the right to wear their swords at all times. The duchess suggested the Nine would perhaps meet in the church of the Oca
contrada
. In this she was quite wrong, but she was quite right to centre her deductions on the sword
.
’
‘Excalibur?’
‘Yes. But it is not Excalibur itself, but rather the
location
of it that is the clue.’
Signor Bruni was struggling to remember the fate of Arthur’s sword. He looked down at the water rushing below. ‘In the lake?’
Pia smiled. ‘No – in the stone. Remember, Excalibur was found in the stone, and none but Arthur could draw it out?’
She turned to look at him.
‘They will meet at the hermitage at Montesiepi in the hills above the city, just above the abbey of San Galgano. They will want to meet away from the city, if they have this exalted visitor. It is the perfect place. A ruin, in a dense forest, remote, yet but a few hours’ ride from the city.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
‘Because of the legend of San Galgano.When Galgano renounced his old life he plunged his sword into the stone of what was to become his hermitage. It is still there, a
little round church was built around it, and to this day no one has been able to take it out.’
‘Truly? There’s a sword in a stone here in these hills?’
‘Yes. And not only that. Many think it is
the
sword, the very same sword, Excalibur. That it was recovered from Britain and brought across the map by a succession of godly knights over the centuries, the last of these was—’
‘San Galgano,’ he finished.
‘To rest here, in these hills.’
‘So when the captain of the Goose
contrada
broke jest about the Once and Future King, he played upon a double meaning – Arthur and Galgano.’
‘Triple meaning. Nello too.’ Her husband’s name all but choked her. ‘The king to come.’
‘Then there it is,’ Signor Bruni concluded. ‘Two days’ time – at the round church of Montesiepi above the abbey of San Galgano. And that is where Romulus will reveal himself.’
She smiled again, as if smiling was a habit that formed more strongly with each hour she spent away from her
contrada
. She felt proud that she had helped him link together two legends, a little local knowledge and some wrought-iron horse tethers on an Eagle’s palace. Perhaps Minerva had assisted her after all. She touched the owl token around her neck.
But he was clever too. ‘And what was the second thing?’
She drew a breath. ‘This.’
She took his hand and carried it to her chest, where she pressed it against her pendant, her breastbone, her
heart. And then she kissed him, taking his face in her hands and pressing her mouth to his. She reeled as the fire burned in her veins but he held her, crushing her slim frame, pushing his hands into that thick, blunt hair: the hair of an Egyptian queen. The hardness of his stubble, the softness of his mouth, the hardness of his teeth, the softness of his tongue, all were part of the rushing of her pulses above and the rushing of the waters below. The torrent was so great she did not hear the rustling in the bushes, or see the glinting pink eyes of the watcher in the shadows.
In the end she had to pull away, for she did not trust herself. Weakened, she held on to the parapet but the horseman took her by the shoulders and turned her round, almost roughly.
‘Let me lie with you,’ he said urgently. ‘Now, here.’
Pia looked deep in his eyes, and saw there joy and pain and yearning all at once. She had not known that you could not give one kiss, alone, of itself. She had wanted to thank him for his kindness – no, more: she had wanted him to know how she had come to feel about him. As the Palio approached, there were not many days left to them. But she had succeeded in making things worse. She had been an innocent, a fool. She did not have the wisdom of Minerva; she did not have even the wisdom of a schoolgirl. But how could she have known? She had never before felt the fire that he had lit in her, that she had lit in him.
She understood now and was sorry for the pain she had visited on him. A kiss was not an end in itself. It was the
start of something. But having begun, she could not continue. He knew, even before she spoke the words.
‘I would dishonour him in a heartbeat.’ Gently, she took his hands from her shoulders. ‘But I won’t dishonour you, or myself.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Like a player hearing his cue, Nello Caprimulgo stepped from the trees on the castle side of the river. The lovers sprang apart. Nello walked to them, and took Pia hard and possessively by the arm.
‘Signor Bruni,’ he hissed, ‘I thank you for your
tuition
of my wife. My lord father told me you might be riding here today. I will take over from here. Your lessons are done.’
Nello turned and led his wife back over the bridge, his fingers like a vice on her upper arm, bruising her in the places he’d hurt the day they met. Pia dared to turn once and shoot an agonized glance over her shoulder at the horseman, who stood frozen and horrified, straining her eyes to burn an image of him into her brain.
Once they reached the thicket, Nello bundled her on to his huge black horse and sprang up behind her. Without a word he kicked the horse and it thundered through the trees, the branches whipping at her face. She had expected him to take her back to the city but he headed in the opposite direction. He jumped the stallion over an ancient retaining wall, far too high for a beast carrying one rider, let alone two, and the horse knocked his left hock painfully on the topstones. Then Pia knew where Nello was taking her, and that by nightfall she would be locked in
the tower she had feared so much, destined to relive the fate of her long-dead ancestor.
Violante watched the sunset from the palace. Darkness had fallen completely when Gretchen came to her and told her that the view from the
torre
was particularly beautiful this evening. Violante nodded and entered the tower through the library door. She began to climb, higher and higher, until she saw Riccardo waiting for her at the dark summit, looking, in the arc of bright moonlight, ever more like the avenging angel. Relief washed over her that he was here, living, not yet struck dead by Nello’s sword or pistol, but as she regarded him more closely, she could see a strange look in his eyes.
‘Did Pia tell you anything?’ she asked without preamble.
‘Yes.’
She could not read his expression. It was as if joy and despair had combined. ‘And?’
‘The Nine meet at San Galgano. There is a sword thrust into the stone there – it is the root of Orsa’s sally about King Arthur.’
‘San Galgano,’ she breathed. ‘I have heard of it. But it is ruined, no?’
‘The abbey is, yes. But there is a hermitage there, a round church where the sword is buried. The Nine meet there tomorrow, at nine o’clock.’ He seemed almost indifferent.
‘Well done,’ said Violante warmly. She recounted her failure to recruit Egidio’s father, yet under the bright
moon, huge in its midsummer waxing, she still felt optimistic, despite the fat clouds gathering and scudding across its friendly face.
Riccardo said nothing. And then he looked her in the eye. ‘She kissed me.’
‘Oh, Riccardo.’ The very thing Violante had dreaded had come to pass.
He turned his back to the city. ‘Nello saw us. He’s taken her to the Eagles’ castle.’
Riccardo did not hear her sigh as it was expelled and snatched by the wind, nor hear the whisper of her purple skirts as she turned away to look over the city, to hide from him the dismay in her face. He could not tell her the rest – that they’d been fools, that Faustino had given them leave to ride into the Maremma, that they’d ridden straight into a trap, giddy as children, only for Nello to spring the mechanism and catch them red-handed.
He asked, suddenly needing to know: ‘Lancelot, Guinevere, Arthur: what happened to them all? Pia reads, you know; she has read the legends too.’
Violante hesitated for a moment, not wanting to tell him. Then she touched his scarlet shoulder, so softly he hardly felt it. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you.’
The duchess led the horseman from the tower down the stair into the library. She sat him down, took out the book and sat beside him. Then Violante Beatrix de’ Medici, who had never had the chance to read to her own child, began to read from the
Morte d’Arthur
, translating as she went.
‘And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone
four square, like unto a marble stone; and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus: – Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king …’
Riccardo heard her without a sound. At length she could see, from her eye’s corner, his dark curls sink lower and lower. The boy had ridden to the Maremma and back, and courted a married woman in between. Violante stopped her reading and watched as the heavy head sank to his crossed forearms, there to rest. He was asleep. She watched him for a moment, regarding his angel’s face at peace, the flare of the nostrils, the generous curve of the parted lips. Then she crept to the door and called softly for Gretchen to bring a coverlet. She laid the fur around Riccardo’s shoulders and left him be.