Dark fires, p.3
Dark Fires, page 3
Beside the Master and his daughter, there was only Pia to do the cooking, and Marcello to do everything else. Rollo, the concierge, rarely came into the apartment. A cleaning woman came daily, and laundry was sent out and brought back a day later smelling of sunshine and the outdoors. They ate out a lot, either as invited guests, or attended the better known eateries in town. It did not seem that anybody in the house was working very hard, but when one could afford it, one didn’t have to.
It took a while for Justin to figure out what his actual duties were. Mostly to wait on the Master and do whatever was asked: to accompany him on all outings, carrying ink and parchments, scrolls and books and the odd purchases. Master Conti was free with his money and it was rare for him to return home empty handed. Justin often overheard the daughter chastising the father for ill considered acquisitions.
“Father you can’t go about buying all these items of unproven quality and questionable ancestry. Most of them are outright forgeries, and the book sellers are bilking you out of huge sums for them.
“Not so, Opal my dear. Among them are many gems, and it gives me great pleasure and honor to authenticate them—”
“And what about the many counterfeits? What honor’s in them?”
“Ah, those are valuable too.” Master Conti’s voice glowed with pleasure. “A good counterfeit must have at its core important facts copied from a distant original. And it’s my task to glean the truth from them and reclaim those facts. Separate the good from the bad.”
“And what about the ones you burn?”
“Those are irretrievable falsehoods, and I only do so to remove them from circulation, to purify our store of documents.”
“But it all costs money...”
“Money is for spending. I don’t drink much, womanize or gamble. What else should I spend my money on?” At that point Opal usually had to give up, but it didn’t prevent her from revisiting the issue after another rash of such purchases.
Justin enjoyed visiting shops with the Master, sorting through books and documents, listening to Master Conti negotiating the final sums. He had stamina and rarely paid the first asking price. For all this, he carried around considerable sums on his person, and needed Justin to provide protection. The town was mostly secure, public safety guarded jealously by the Watch, but still the odd bit of robbery was known to happen. This led to further disagreements at home.
“Father, you need someone competent, trained to guard your person. Perhaps an ex-military who knows how to take care of himself and you. Justin is nice, but he’s just a boy...”
“Daughter, you haven’t seen him in action. Believe me, he knows how to handle himself and any unpleasantness.” Justin felt slighted by her, especially as Opal was no older than himself, but like him, she had grown up without adult oversight and learned prematurely to be an adult herself.
That all came to a head one night as they were walking home from an event in the deepening dusk, when suddenly, from a side alley, they were beset by four men with every intention of stripping them of valuables and perhaps their lives. Hard men with cruel faces, little imagination and even less conscience. Quick as lightning, Justin unleashed Viper and split a skull even before its owner could finish his demands. Equally quick the next went down, his knee shattered by the well aimed stone. The third did not even realize what happened before he lay thrashing on the ground, breathless and in pain, his breastbone splintered. The fourth man had the presence of mind to start running away, but the long reach of Viper found him, wrapped around his legs and brought the brigand crashing to the ground. In a flash Justin was on him and expertly tied his hands, just like he had learned to truss up sheep for market day.
Master Conti was grateful, and Opal was left entirely speechless, still trembling as the Watch somehow materialized and collected the garbage at their feet. The Sergeant couldn’t figure out how an elder, a slip of a girl and a mere youth could overpower barehanded four such hard cases.
The incident led Opal to change her mind about Justin, regarding him with a mixture of awe and trepidation, trying to balance out the violence she had witnessed with his usual meek deportment. She never questioned her father again about Justin’s employment, but it also awakened and excited her curiosity.
“Father, what do you know about him?”
“Nothing much, daughter. Twice he’s served me well, my money is well invested in him.”
“But how can you trust him, not knowing anything about him?”
“Look into his eyes. He might have been destitute and homeless, but his gaze is clear and honest. There’s nothing shifty about him and I trust that.”
Opal tried asking Justin directly about his past, but he had been hiding so long that he found it difficult to speak, especially when looking into the gray depths of her eyes. Due to his reticence she grew quiet and inhibited herself. The upshot was that Master Conti doubled Justin’s wages before he realized that he had never yet really paid Justin anything, and therefore gave him a generous sum, more money than Justin had ever seen in his life.
After that, Justin found himself accepted by the entire household, and life seemed to ease around him. He became part of the family so to speak, and he often wondered at how quickly it happened and how, less than a moon ago, he was sleeping under the open skies and wondering where to find his next bit of food.
Since Justin couldn’t read or write, the idea of books and the knowledge locked up in them took on a mystic quality for him. Master Conti soon noticed this lack and undertook to teach him, but he would get sidetracked into long explanations that didn’t move the teaching forward. In the end it was left up to Opal to instruct Justin. She found him a surprisingly quick learner, able to grasp things the first time, though it often led to a host of questions that the young lady found hard to answer. His mind was untrained and largely unutilized, but he was hungry to learn the mysteries of letters and meanings locked into the written words.
Justin soon found out that Master Bertolo Conti was a preeminent scholar of ancient documents, and had a number of wealthy patrons who were interested in supporting his work. Not that he needed money; he was wealthy in his own right, with a house on the seashore, a large farm further inland in capable hands, a vineyard of famous vintage and a number of olive presses that provided a steady and considerable income. He also owned part interest in a shipping firm out of Genoa, as well as a quality marble quarry the area was famous for. Money was never a problem but the spending of it was, and the main source of arguments between father and daughter.
“Father is wise, or so everybody assures me, with a reputation that’s known throughout all Christendom. Libraries welcome him, kings and lords beseech him to come and organize their letters and manuscripts. There’s so much prestige that goes with that, that greatness is now measured not in gold but in the number of books one has. The Church and even the Vatican archives are open to him. He’s privy to all the well-guarded secrets locked up in them. So he’s wise, the world agrees on that, but ask him an everyday question of living and he’s like a child, shies away from any responsibility. Sometimes it takes all my energy to drum something useful into his head other than books and ancient languages.” Opal often confided her father’s idiosyncrasies to Justin, who wisely kept quiet and took no side on the issue. He concentrated and like a dry sponge he soaked up all the teachings. Before long he could read at tolerable speed, though his lips silently mouthed the words his eyes tracked, following precisely the path of his fingers tracing through the text. He had some difficulty adjusting to the different styles of scripts and lettering some of the monasteries were known for, and he welcomed the new press-printed books that were becoming more common and cheaper at the markets. The master wasn’t so sure about them.
“This new method is welcome, of course, making more books available at an affordable price, but carries with it the danger that errors are reproduced with facts, and are multiplied by the quickness of the process. That is, it’s easier to correct errors in a single hand-copied document than to correct the multiplicity of errors mass produced and distributed on a new scale. Sometimes I bless and curse the printing press, and despair over cleaning up all the errors after it.” Justin was too new to the skill so he took at face value everything he read. Myths thus became facts of history and works of fiction the absolute truth. He soon found himself wandering into Greek and Latin, and often lost track of the strict borders around languages, using a foreign word in his speech that had everyone wondering what he’d intended to say. But he learned so fast that the languages refused to be corralled into their distinct places.
Justin accompanied Master Conti everywhere. The one problem he had, being in fine clothes and in the public so often, was disguising Viper, yet he refused to go out without it. He got around this by substituting a brass weight for the stone, and changed the rope to a strong silk cord; he then wrapped the whole around his waist as if it were an ornamented belt. Altered so, Viper didn’t appear out of place.
Justin was often sent to the courier service with sealed envelopes to be mailed all over Italy and a few even to foreign lands. This way he learned more about geography.
Justin enjoyed his new life. He was clean, wore quality clothes, slept in a real bed, enjoyed regular meals and all the comforts of a well-to-do household. With the many outings to places previously closed to him, his life became interesting. Dazzled by his good looks and quiet manner, Pia pampered him; she couldn’t seem to do enough for him. It was as if she had adopted him as her son. Having grown up in long term service, she had never married and had no children of her own. Marcello welcomed another male in the house, as both the Mistress and the maid were bossy, always knew everything better and a body hardly had a chance to maintain, much less utter, a private opinion—or so he saw and felt. At least Justin gave him an outlet for his point of view.
Ever since the incident with the robbers, the Mistress treated Justin well; she was grateful of course, and solicitous of his needs and feelings. She was quite accomplished playing the mandolin and often organized private concerts with fellow enthusiasts. Most free nights music could be heard throughout the house. She was addicted to poetry and learned other languages just to be able to sample their verses. She did embroidery, but only when bored and nothing better tempted her. With a wonderful voice, she sang the high notes with ringing purity that everybody so admired and which sent shivers down Justin’s back.
Master Conti took his new servant for granted, but never bossed him around or spoke uncivilly to him. It was as if Justin had been part of the family from the beginning; it seemed to make so little difference to him. In public he often introduced Justin as his protégé and a valued companion. Justin was not used to such consideration and didn’t know what to make of it, but willingly played along, enjoying his new standing.
In spite of the upturn in his fortunes, the underlying anxiety life had instilled in him didn’t dissipate entirely. He was always on the lookout for something bad to spoil his present good luck. It was that vigilance that Opal noticed and wondered how to fix unobtrusively. Of course, everyone around him noticed that he never spoke of his past or mentioned anything of his family. The others soon understood this to be a taboo topic and ceased prying.
Justin found out that they didn’t own the house, but were only renting it, and when the present course of study in the bishop’s library was up, they would move on to greener pastures that included more books and more ancient texts, as the mysteries of antiquity hid on back shelves, nearly forgotten. It was what Master Conti lived for, to rediscover and rescue such neglected bits of history. In a very short time Justin himself became infected with his master’s passion, and it became important to him what happened a hundred years ago and beyond. This growing zeal spurred him on to more learning and reading and soon he was writing, making notes of what he had found in the vast dustbin of history. In time his script became even, almost neat, and the grammar and style much improved. Both Bertolo Conti and his daughter were astonished to witness such rapid progress.
Master Conti insisted on having Justin at hand wherever he was invited, to partake of the company of the rich, the famous and the powerful. Not quite at ease, Justin nonetheless adapted to these meetings, his discomfort hidden by his natural reserve. He rarely ever spoke but answered with sparse replies when asked directly. He was soon accepted as a necessary appendage to Master Conti, and not bothered much. His good looks, however, excited a flurry of interest from the ladies who often attended these gatherings, and more than once sought to engage him, or better still, to incite him to reveal himself. He remained unfailingly polite and attentive, but distant, with the end result of heightening the mystery. The ladies were free to paint him in whatever colors suited their own personalities. Some therefore found him haughty and standoffish, while for others, it only deepened his mystique.
The usual circle soon got used to him and on account of his attentive silence, he was often assumed to be educated and accomplished. He had a calm face that didn’t react to the run of the conversation; like still water it became a mirror of whatever people wanted to see or read into it.
One cold rainy day, Justin was going to the courier with the usual load of mail. As he crossed the bridge, his attention was caught by some workmen dragging a corpse from the water. The Watch was there of course, investigating, and a knot of the curious had gathered to be horrified at the misfortune of drowning or at the possibility that murder had caused it. Something made Justin turn to see for himself and to his shock, he discovered the discolored face of Pup staring sightlessly into eternity. The men wrapped the body and carted it off to wherever bodies were taken when there was no family to claim it. This struck Justin hard and for days he remained more silent than usual (but only Opal seemed to notice something in his absent manner).
At night, Justin tossed and turned, promising himself to find out what had happened to Pup. If his friend had been used and abused then cast aside like a dirty rag, Justin swore, he would seek revenge. It galled him that a life was worth so little.
The next day he visited the sacristy of St. Sebastian Church and paid the fee so Pup would be decently buried in the cemetery outside town that was cared for by the parish. The priest then claimed the body from the Watch, carted it away, and with only Justin in attendance, laid the bundled corpse into a dark hole in the ground. From the mason Jason ordered a headstone inscribed with, “Pup, not the smallest nor the least of God’s creatures buried here on October 10th, Anno 1482.”
Next, Justin looked up a certain house on Summerside Lane and upon inquiry in the neighborhood, found out the name, Calvino Molinelli, a rich wine merchant who occupied it. Justin marked the name and again promised himself an accounting.
Then with the last of his money, Justin hired a lawyer to see what he could do for Dog in jail.
“You call him Dog, but what’s his real name?” the lawyer wanted to know. But as with Pup, Justin didn’t know, but gave the time, date and place when and where Dog was arrested. The lawyer promised to do his best.
Two days later the lawyer reported that Sergio Valente, also know as Dog among the other prisoners, was found guilty of thievery and sold to a copper mine for a three year sentence. Justin made note of the information, determined to help his friend. To him it seemed so unfair that he himself was enjoying such good fortune while his friends suffered all the bad.
Chapter 6
It took weeks for Justin to recover enough that he could enjoy life again. He found things to laugh it, and he sounded much freer in letting his mirth boom out. Perhaps in his friend’s death he realized that life was fleeting and that he’d better grab all he could before fate robbed him too.
Justin accompanied Master Conti to the Bishop’s Palace and shared in the deference shown to the Master by the underlings.
“This way Sirs, His Grace will see you right away.” A manservant led them through a crowded waiting room where envious eyes followed their progress past the frescoes and the tapestries. Gilded highlights glimmered everywhere, the size and opulence at the same time impressive and oppressive in its detail and complexity: the eye couldn’t find rest anywhere. The servant pushed through ornate double doors into a dim interior. Curtains closed off the light from the windows; a bank of flickering candles gave the interior illumination, the smell of burning wax heavy in the air. The servant announced the visitors. “Master Conti, your Grace.” He bowed and left, closing the massive doors behind him.
“Conti, it’s well that you have come,” came a weak voice from the shadows on the far end of the room. Master Conti approached the source, Justin close behind him. In an upholstered wing chair facing the fire sat the prelate, sunk deep into the cushions. In the shallow light, he looked more frail than ever.
“It’s a privilege to study the many fine documents in your collection.”
“Yes, yes.” The prelate waved spider thin hands. “It’s of other things I want to talk with you now.” He cast a displeased look toward Justin.
“It’s all right, Your Grace, Justin is my ear to help me remember.”
“It’s not his ear that I worry about, more his tongue.”
“He’s trained to keep quiet.” Conti stretched the truth a little.
“I hope so for your sake. Very well, then.” The Bishop was obviously reluctant to start but he took a big breath and dived in. “Rome is sending a Grand Inquisitor to root out the heretics here in our town. It’s a direct assignment from His Holiness the Pope, and there’s no way around it.” The voice trembled with a mixture of vexation and anger at so being put upon. “Doubtless, you’ve heard what’s happening all around us? There is a general purging of the Church and the supporting congregations. Even the Holy See is not immune from it. The Pope’s near his death bed, and belatedly wants to earn divine favor by cleansing the Church of what he calls impurities in deeds and doctrine. He spent nearly twenty years wallowing in sin and now turns religious so he can brag to St. Peter at heaven’s gate what a warrior for Christ he was.” In his irritation the bishop choked on his backlog of saliva and broke into a fit of coughing that convulsed his emaciated frame. More than ever he looked like a bag of skin stretched over a rack of bones. Finally the eruption subsided, leaving the prelate gasping heavily.
