The Carnival of Ash

by Tom Beckerlegge

Genres: Historical Fantasy; Coming of Age

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

Cadenza is the City of Words, a city run by poets, its skyline dominated by the steepled towers of its libraries, its heart beating to the stamp and thrum of the printing presses in the Printing Quarter. Carlo Mazzoni, a young wordsmith arrives at the city gates intent on making his name as the bells ring out with the news of the death of the city's poet-leader. Instead, he finds himself embroiled with the intrigues of a city in turmoil, the looming prospect of war with their rival Venice ever-present. A war that threatens not only to destroy Cadenza but remove it from history altogether...

© Tom Beckerlegge(P) Penguin Audio and Rebellion Publishing 2022

Release date: March 15, 2022

Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Print pages: 484

Sample

First Canto The Five Deaths of Carlo MazzoniI. An Auspicious Arrival

The retreating winter had left cypresses shivering in the graveyard beside the Church di San Felice. In the shadow of listing crosses, muddy hollows stagnated; angels slipped despairingly into a tangled sea of grass. Rows of headstones stood absent-minded, crumbling and clad in moss, their inscriptions weathered to the point of illegibility. Having already departed the world once, the graveyard’s inhabitants now faced disappearing from memory altogether—a mouldering republic, on the verge of oblivion.

Presently, an old man came tramping through the forest of crosses. Wild-haired and stooped with age, he moved nevertheless with a light step, pulling behind him a small cart bearing a body wrapped in a sheet. An upended shovel jutted into the air above his shoulder. Upon arriving at his destination, an unmarked plot at the cemetery’s eastern limits, he planted the shovel in the hard ground and began manhandling the corpse from the cart, only to discover—to his surprise—that the hole he had laboured to dig the previous day was already occupied.

A young man lay at the bottom of the grave, his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest, cradling a sheaf of parchment. He was unshaven and unkempt, his hose torn at the knee and his doublet motley with wine stains, dirt and what appeared to be dried blood. An ugly bruise flowered on his temple. Try as he might to affect the inert and indifferent air of the dead, the youth was visibly shivering in the cool morning. The gravedigger, whose name was Ercole, reached down with his shovel and nudged him in the leg. He twitched but did not open his eyes. Ercole straightened up.

“I confess that the ways and whims of the nobleman will forever remain a mystery to me,” he said, his tone conversational, “but I’ll wager there’s softer beds to be found in the city.”

“Leave me be, sir.” A sombre whisper, floating up from the earth. “The only comfort I seek is darkness, silent and eternal.”

“You would have me throw a blanket of soil over you?”

“Wield your shovel, sir,” the young man said, his eyes still closed. “I am no more alive than the heap of flesh and bone inside that sheet.”

The gravedigger looked down at the corpse by his feet. “You’ve a lot more to say than he has,” he said.

“Then I will speak no more.” He drew his papers tight to his chest. “This city is deaf to my words anyway.”

“Ah. You are a poet.”

At that, an eye opened. “What would you know about poetry?”

“Scant little, sir. I am but a humble gravedigger—my daily companions have few pretty words to offer me on our short journeys together. But this is Cadenza, home to a hundred poets, all of them solemn with heartbreak, their spirits bruised and buffeted by the violent affections of their art.”

“Do not speak to me of broken hearts, as though I were some lovestruck maiden,” the youth said bitterly. “You know nothing of the black deeds I have committed to leave myself here, my clothes torn and my reputation in ruins.”

“I know that you would not be the first to find yourself nursing a sore head and regrets at the day’s first light,” Ercole tried. “The sun will still rise in the sky, the birds will not fall silent at your passage. Do not rush to make a decision that cannot be undone.”

“Would that I could undo the previous night,” came the groan, “then I would bound from this place and bid you good morning. But what is done is done, and here I must remain.”

Ercole tugged thoughtfully on his ear. “This does present me with something of a problem,” he said. “Seeing as I now have two dead men—a tanner, steeped in the odoriferous perfume of his trade; and a poet, cloaked in the dismay of a night gone awry—and only the one grave with which to accommodate them.”

“A question of arithmetic. Do you see an abacus upon me?”

“Would you not wish a headstone for your final resting place, so that your family may find you?”

The young man shook his head. “I have brought eternal disgrace to my name,” he said hoarsely. “I am not fit to bear it, even in death.”

“And what house would this be, so brittle a construction that it trembles at a single night of mischief?”

“Mazzoni.” He swallowed. “My name is Carlo Mazzoni.”

Ercole’s brow wrinkled. “Not a family I am familiar with.”

“We left Cadenza twenty years past—I am the first of my line to return. I arrived two months ago, directly upon the day that Tommaso Cellini died.”

“An auspicious arrival. A bookcase fell on him, so I hear.”

“It was a tragedy,” Carlo said. “He was a true poet.”

“And a beloved ruler, yet what protection did mere reputation offer him, in the face of toppling furniture? I wonder what Tommaso would give, to be alive.”

“I dreamt of walking beside him at the March of the Poets,” Carlo murmured. “Two artists, step in step. Now I dream only of death.”

“Only a young man would speak of death so lightly. You have not seen enough of life to know its value.”

Carlo laughed incredulously. “You would accuse me of ingratitude?”

“The priest would contend that violence to oneself is an affront to God.”

“And what would the gravedigger contend?”

Ercole considered the question. “The gravedigger tries to affront as few people as possible,” he said finally, “especially those blessed with the all-seeing gaze of the omniscient. But—so far as he has seen—one corpse looks very much like another.”

“In death, we all are brothers,” Carlo proclaimed. “Let us speak no more. Pick up your shovel and give me my blanket.”

A gust of wind blew through the cypress trees, rain upon its breath. Ercole blew out his cheeks. Finally, with a shrug, he bent down and rolled the tanner’s body over the edge of the grave. A cry of protest echoed around the cemetery.

“Hold, hold!” Carlo spluttered, wriggling out from beneath the stinking corpse. “Surely you cannot think to bury me with this stranger?”

“In death, we all are brothers,” Ercole reminded him. “And if you had any idea how difficult it is to dig a grave in this weather, you would not ask such a foolish question. Stay if you will, but you will have to share your blanket, for now and all eternity.”

He prised free a clump of earth with his shovel and flung it into the hole, his hair blowing in wild strands across his face. Raindrops peppered the headstones. The soil, too, fell without distinction, covering the dead and the living alike. Finally, a pale hand of surrender rose up from the grave. Shouldering arms, Ercole stood back as Carlo climbed awkwardly out of the ground. The poet’s unruly brown curls were flecked with soil, the dark rings beneath his eyes only exaggerating the gauntness of his cheeks. A sour cloud of wine hung about him.

“Wisely done,” said Ercole. He nodded at the sheets of parchment garlanding the tanner’s body. “Though I think you may have forgotten something.”

Carlo bowed his head. “The earth can have it,” he said quietly. “I will leave it in the unlit halls of the dead and blind worms, where no eyes shall look upon it.”

“A most sympathetic audience,” the old man agreed brightly.

Once more, the shovel’s bite rang out in the cool air. Yet before Ercole could deliver its contents to the earth, Carlo made a strangled noise and leapt back into the hole. Gathering up the loose pages, he brushed the dirt from them and clambered to the surface, offering Ercole an apologetic look as he scrambled to his feet.

“Poets,” the gravedigger said, with a shake of the head.

II. City of Words

Tradition had it, around the busy hearths and dining tables of the Mazzoni family, that their copy of De Incendio Urbis by the ancient poet Lucan had been one of the first volumes to enter Cadenza, back when the City of Words had been little more than a cluster of workshops and rude dwellings on the banks of the Adige River. The scroll, part of a library of epic poems and lost plays, had travelled the rutted paths from Venice in a cart belonging to a man named Angelo Uccello. How this august collection had come into Uccello’s possession remained a matter for debate. Some named him a son of Alexandria, a direct descendent of the librarians of the Museaum; others claimed he was the son of a crazed Venetian nobleman, who had spirited away his family’s books when his father had threatened to burn them; still others, more prosaically, declared him to be nothing more than a common thief. Uccello himself offered no comment on the subject. He remained an elusive figure, who commissioned no busts or paintings of his likeness in his lifetime, and in death bequeathed to the city the histories and lives of all manner of men, save himself.

So Cadenzans could only speculate as to why Uccello paused in their village, where fishing boats dozed on the river and ploughs etched their simple signature in the earth. He presented his scrolls before a local landowner, for whom the wisdoms of Athens and Rome meant little, and who wrinkled his nose at the cylinders of stale parchment. It was rumoured that Uccello averted dismissal only by thrusting upon his host a codex infused with the obscure magic of the Kabbalah, said to predict the hour of death of any man who would open it. Before the week was out, Ucello’s volumes had been installed in a townhouse somewhere in the vicinity of the Old Market. He sought to add to his collection, sending agents to comb the catalogues of remote Alpine monasteries. Word of the assemblage of codices and tracts at the House of Uccello drew curious scholars from the universities of Bologna and Padua; in time, a second reading room opened on the other side of the river.

Just as Salerno, the Town of Hippocrates, was a font of medical knowledge, and the glassblowers on the Venetian island of Murano were acknowledged as the masters of their craft, so Cadenza became defined by its love of the written word. Noble families vied to build ever-grander libraries, complex networks of patronage extending down to the lowliest reading desk. The guild of the Folio was established to arrange and administer the flow of volumes around the city. Cadenza’s eastern and western banks were christened the Recto and the Verso: upon the former, traders and scholars rubbed shoulders in the busy streets; upon the latter, well-to-do citizens built palaces by the Adige. A second bridge, the Ponte Nuovo, was built upriver from the Ponte Mercato to link the two banks. Imposing walls encompassed Cadenza like parentheses.

This period of prosperity and civic accord came to an abrupt end on the Feast Day of San Sebastiano, amid trembling floors and a tumultuous rain of masonry. A violent earthquake struck the city, felling towers and swallowing up the House of Uccello. Rescuers hastened to the library through clouds of choking dust but there was no sign of its founder. All that could be retrieved from the reading room before it slipped into the earth was a handful of damaged scrolls—including, so the Mazzonis maintained, Lucan’s De Incendio Urbis.

In their grief and dismay, some Cadenzans saw the hand of divine judgement, a warning against the city’s infatuation with its books. Stinging verses were nailed to doors, accusing the Folio of fattening themselves at the city’s expense. Men marched through the streets beneath the banners of the wolf and the hawk. To staunch the threat of insurrection, the Folio proposed a new ruling council, the Seven, whose members would be decided by a popular vote every two years, and who would meet inside a new library to replace the House of Uccello. The Accademia was constructed on the Piazza della Rosa: a cathedral dedicated to the worship of books, its vast central chamber was surrounded by eight reading rooms, each topped with cupolas that nested in the shadow of the great dome.

The scrolls saved from the House of Uccello—carefully brushed free of dirt and dust—were the first to be re-housed in the new library. De Incendio Urbis was afforded pride of place on the shelves of the Mezzanino, a magnificent gallery that extended around the perimeter of the dome above the Accademia’s main reading room. Here, beneath the gaze of studious cherubs leafing through winged volumes, it was promptly stolen by a librarian named Guido, who slipped the poem beneath his robe and walked calmly past the guards at the doors. Such an act risked banishment or even the loss of a hand: Guido, however, who prayed nightly in an inn by the Garden of Leaves to the Sword and the Cup, the Baton and the Coin—the four gods of cards—was inured to fortune’s fickle winds. He sold the scroll to an unscrupulous dealer at the Old Market, who in turn sold it on (at a significant mark-up) to Duke Sandro Strozzi, a noted collector of rare volumes.

Arrived from Rome in the aftermath of an ugly dispute with Pope Boniface VIII, and wealthy beyond imagining, the Strozzi family had stamped their mark upon Cadenza’s skyline with their palaces and libraries. They sought also to alter the architecture of its corridors of power, filling the Seven with allies and supporters. At the Strozzis’ instigation, a new position of power was created, the Artifex, to sit at the Council’s head—an office duly assumed, upon a unanimous council vote, by one Bartolomeo Strozzi, Duke Sandro’s younger brother. In celebration of his coronation, Bartolomeo ordered the building of a Palazzo Nero directly opposite the Accademia on the Piazza della Rosa, symbolizing a new balance between Cadenza’s libraries and the institutions of the state: and all of them subservient to the will of their new master.

De Incendio Urbis remained on the shelves of Duke Sandro’s study for almost ten years before taking its leave in dramatic fashion, flying through an open window like a startled canary. It had been launched by Sandro’s wife, the Duchess Alessandra, upon the discovery of a stash of letters from the celebrated ink maid Ginevra di Lecce detailing in explicit fashion an imagined coupling between the duke and his sister-in-law, Monna. A loud cry went up from the street below but Strozzi—whose head had been directly in the scroll’s path before he had sought cover behind a divan—judged he had more pressing issues to attend to than the pursuit of his lost volume.

Had the beleaguered duke been able to go to the window, he would have seen the druggist Pandolfo sprawled out in the dirt, a bruise on his temple and the scroll resting innocently beside him on the ground. The unfortunate druggist, momentarily rendered senseless by the duchess’s wrath, was helped to his feet, the scroll pressed into his uncomprehending hands. Returning to his shop on the Via Maggio, Pandolfo brusquely palmed it off on to a melancholy poet named Neri, who sought to ease his troubled nights with infusions of a sleeping draught of henbane, mulberry juice and lettuce. The gift—offered with such apparent disdain—was in fact a silent token of Pandolfo’s love. Yet its contents proved a bitter poison for Neri. Driven to despair by the brilliance of Lucan’s poetry, one night he took a walk across the Ponte Nuovo and vanished in the fog. Pandolfo’s body was discovered three days later, black lipped and ghastly, dead by his own arts. De Incendio Urbis was clutched in his grasp: a sexton carefully pried the scroll free and tossed it into a chest, where it would lie forgotten for decades.

As Lucan’s poem surrendered to darkness and obscurity, the insalubrious neighbourhood north of the Via Maggio witnessed the arrival of men with strange tools, metal workers claiming the skills of type-founding and punch-cutting learnt in Cologne, Paris and Kraków. Cadenza’s first press was established at the sign of the Heron, from whose generous bill came flooding forth all manner of books and pamphlets. No longer would the Folio have to send out its agents to procure volumes for its libraries’ shelves. The Printing Quarter flourished, marching to the stamp and thrum of its presses while never quite shaking off its reputation for double-dealing and skullduggery. It was at the sign of the Cart that an apprentice punch-cutter produced a chest filled with dusty scrolls that he had discovered in his family’s attic—scrolls purchased on the spot by Giacomo Mazzoni, a trader of growing prosperity.

At this time, the Palazzo Nero was newly occupied by Tommaso Cellini, a brash and brilliant young poet who had swept to power on a tide of public support. Under his command, Cadenza had embarked on a campaign of aggressive expansion, sealed not on the battlefield but the page, contracts and secured lines of credit snaking back to banking houses in Antwerp and London. The new Artifex became famous for his extravagant feasts and festivals, the centrepiece of which, the Carnival of Wit, was said to rival even Venice’s orgies of extravagance. Raised aloft over the salty lagoons to the north-east of Cadenza, Venice had watched the rise of its provincial cousin with amused condescension, confident in the unsurpassable skills of the Aldine Press. Only once, during a dispute over contract writing, had skirmishes flared into open warfare, which had ended in a chastening defeat for Cadenza in the field at Rovigo—although there were those who also detected Venice’s subtle influence behind the riots that engulfed the Printing Quarter that winter.

These were turbulent, uncertain times for the city. In the fourth year of Tommaso’s reign, he survived an assassination attempt by Donato Pitti, head of one of the city’s noble families. The Artifex reacted with characteristic speed and vigour, rounding up every last member of the Pitti bloodline and casting them onto bonfires in the middle of the Piazza di Pietra. Donato himself was tied face-down beneath a plank and dragged by an ass through the streets before his bloodied body was added to the flames. His palaces were torn down, reducing the once opulent neighbourhood in the south-eastern corner of the Recto to rubble and ash. Giacomo Mazzoni—who had had cause to do business with the Pittis and was, by nature, of a cautious disposition—judged it wise for his family to leave Cadenza, quietly packing up their possessions and heading for their countryside villa on the edge of Ferrara.

As a young boy, Giacomo’s son Carlo had been fascinated by the story of the ancient poem in the family library, from where he was regularly chased for trying to free De Incendio Urbis from its protective glass case. While his elder brothers learned the ways of the family business, Carlo had been earmarked for the church—to which end, his father had engaged a tutor from Cadenza, a scholar persuaded away from the Accademia at no small cost. Frustrated by the limits of a provincial education, Carlo petitioned his father to be allowed to return to the city in which Giacomo had made his fortune.

To further his cause, he turned to Lucan’s verse. In De Incendio Urbis, the poet had turned upon his former ally, the Emperor Nero, accusing him in crackling invective of starting the Great Fire of Rome. Inspired, Carlo began work on a poem of his own—though his effort, which he named in tribute The City of Flames, was devoted to Cadenza, and the efforts of Tommaso Cellini to shield the city from those who would put it to torch. Time and again, Carlo affirmed the Mazzonis’ loyalty to the Artifex, devoting verses to lauding his name and deeds. Giacomo proudly declared the finished poem to be a work of genius, and it even drew grudging praise from Carlo’s tutor.

Carlo’s entrance into the church was delayed. Instead, several months after his twenty-first name day, he rode forth from his family estate for Cadenza. He carried on his person a letter from his father to Lorenzo Sardi—one of the city’s foremost poets and an old acquaintance of Giacomo—and his own verse, its pages bound in cloth like a sacred relic. As he followed the Adige’s meandering path through the countryside, Carlo entertained himself with idle dreams of his reception: of stages before packed squares, and salons hushed in awe; of wistful sighs and rapturous applause.

At the appearance of Cadenza’s proud towers on the horizon, however, he quickly apprehended that something was wrong. There was a hubbub at the city gates, its walls alive with frantic activity. Bells reverberated in their chambers: their mouths round with surprise, a death upon their lips. Tommaso Cellini was no more.

III. A Restless Temper

Carlo stood and watched, his teeth chattering with the cold, as Ercole filled the grave he had just vacated. The rain fell in insistent diagonals; rolling up City of Flames, he slipped the poem inside his doublet. His skull was a cage of pain, a crushing weight pressing down on his brow, nerves scraping against one another like shrill blades upon the whetstone. The smell of the luckless tanner lingered in his nostrils, threatening to rouse the dregs of wine sloshing about in his belly into open rebellion.

Yet what was pain but passing discomfort, when measured against the shame that had settled around Carlo’s shoulders like an icy cloak? Befogged by wine, his mind retained only ugly glimpses of the previous evening, but in the whistling wind he heard echoes of the catcalls and jeers that had marked his exit from the Ridolfi salon. How he had come to find himself in this dank graveyard remained a mystery—Carlo could not bring himself to search his recollections further. It was as though he had been possessed by a demon, so violently and inexplicably had he behaved. Never again, he vowed, would a drop of wine pass his lips.

A metal clang made Carlo start. Ercole had tossed his shovel into the cart and was brushing the soil from his hands.

“That should do it,” he said. “Come, let us remove ourselves from the rain’s reproach. I’ll not prise you from the grave only to lose you to a chill.”

He whistled a jaunty air as he navigated his cart away through the puddles. Benumbed with cold, Carlo saw little option but to follow him. The angels on their plinths formed a disapproving gallery as he trudged by. Upon descending from the terrace, Ercole abruptly wheeled his cart off the path and ducked behind a statue, gesturing at Carlo to follow suit. Crouching beside him, through the rain Carlo spied a cloaked figure kneeling before a headstone.

“What are we doing?” he whispered, shivering.

Ercole ran a damp palm through his hair. “Paying our respects,” he said. “You are gazing upon the magnificence that is Hypatia the ink maid.”

“I have seen ink maids about the city,” Carlo said—curious, despite himself. “But I have not heard the name Hypatia.”

“You are so ignorant I could weep for you,” Ercole murmured. “Of all those elemental creatures who serve the city’s hearts with their pen, Hypatia is the most brilliant and elusive. She comes here, from time to time, to pay her respects at the tomb of Ginevra di Lecce.”

Hyptia glanced back over her shoulder, as though feeling their gaze on her. Within the depths of her hood, Carlo caught a fleeting glimpse of a heart-shaped face, framed with dark ringlets of hair. At the sight of the two men watching her, Hypatia rose. Drawing her hood around her, she walked quickly away.

“Like a startled faun, she flees,” breathed Ercole. “Yet, mark it well, she will return. Reason enough to stay alive, my boy.”

Manhandling his cart back on to the flagstones, the gravedigger pressed on with renewed vigour. Above the soaring crosses, a high wall marked the cemetery’s end—Ercole steered through the gate and tramped along a muddy, overgrown path lined with thorns. They crested a small rise. Before them rose a crumbling church of blackened stone, listing upon its foundations, a round tower rising up at an uncertain angle. Sections of the roof had been torn away, leaving gaping holes between the slates. Birds nested in the tower’s upper reaches.

“Behold, the Church di San Felice!” Ercole exclaimed, his face crinkling with delight. “It was held to be the finest on the Verso, in its day.”

“That day would seem to be long passed,” said Carlo.

“The church was struck by lightning five summers ago and burned beyond repair,” the old man explained. “Now it stands empty, abandoned by parishioner and cleric alike. Yet life cannot continue without end, and the dead still need a place to rest. For now, I stand as custodian of the graveyard di San Felice, welcoming new occupants in the hope that a priest might appear to perform the holy ministrations. But as the city stands currently, in chaos and confusion…”

Ercole deposited his cart outside the entrance to the church and slipped inside. The cavernous nave had been stripped of altar and pews, its bare stone floor covered in dust and droppings. Cobweb tapestries shivered in the draughts. A set of wrought-iron steps spiralled up to the pulpit, where the lectern had been fashioned into a writing desk with the addition of a stool, parchment, pen and ink. Lighting a candle from a set by the door, Ercole headed in the opposite direction, towards a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar.

Carlo followed him down into a windowless chamber with blackened and scarred walls, the ceiling adorned with arcane chalk symbols. A bench was scattered with cracked glass vessels and misshapen tongs. Jars filled with murky liquids lined the shelves. A furnace had been installed in the corner of the room, its smoky breath laced with the unmistakable tang of gunpowder.

Carlo stared him about in wonder. “What manner of gravedigger are you, Ercole?”

“One possessed of a restless temper—a wayfarer, given to digressions and sudden enthusiasms that leave me unable to linger long in any one place,” Ercole replied, picking up a beaker and tapping its contents. “I have broken bread with Englishmen and shared a Tartar’s fire. I have roamed uncharted lands by sled and by dhow, dodging the snapping jaws of monsters undreamt by the bestiaries. I have encountered savages in the court of kings and nobility in peasant hovels. And just as I have learnt that a man’s title offers little clue to his true nature, so I am compelled to find the true nature of matter, in all its forms and various transformations from one state to another.”

“You speak of alchemy.”

Ercole spun round and gripped Carlo by the arm. “Do not confuse me for some peddler of quackery, my words coated in worthless yellow lacquer. I speak of the science of transmutation, the search for a harmony both natural and perfect.”

“Transform my misery into joy,” Carlo said dourly, “and I will name you the greatest alchemist who ever lived.”

Ercole filled a bowl of water from a pail. “Let us begin with the application of water to dirty flesh,” he said. “Your night’s misadventures have left a smell upon you that makes even my hardy nostrils recoil.”

Carlo ruefully obeyed, carefully laying down his poem before commencing to scrub himself clean. To his surprise, Ercole reappeared with a fresh doublet and hose, of finer quality and fit than Carlo’s own, before proceeding to lay out beer and bread upon the table. The old man attacked the food with glee, but Carlo’s stomach remained too tender to eat, the pungent waft of ale threatening to decant the contents of the previous night all over the floor. He stared mournfully into space.

Ercole took a deep swig from his tankard and smacked his lips.

“Sitting here as we do,” he said thoughtfully, “in the depths of this ruined building, I am reminded of the works of Caesarius of Heisterbach. He wrote of an unchaste priest who hastened to ring his church bells to ward off an approaching storm, only to be struck by lightning, burning his robes and consuming certain intimate parts of his body as punishment for his sins.”

Carlo grunted.

“My point being,” the old man continued, “that if your transgressions truly require atonement, God knows where to find you. Do not punish yourself unduly in the meantime. Come, eat—the world is a happier place for a full belly.”

“Are all the gravediggers of Cadenza so wise?”

Ercole shrugged. “Spend a day with a shovel in your hand,” he said. “Picking up a pen will feel as no great labour.”

“Then take me on as your apprentice, and I shall dig happily forever.”

“This is no place for the young. Heed the words of an old man, Carlo: go home to your father. Better a son in disgrace, than no son at all.”

“But when he learns what I have done, how I disgraced myself before Lorenzo Sardi…”

“Sardi? The Duelling Count?”

“I did not know about the feud until I arrived here,” Carlo told him. “My father left Cadenza before it began. He wrote me a letter of introduction to give to Lorenzo.”

“Let me see if I have your plan aright,” Ercole said, brushing the crumbs from his beard. “You arrive at the count’s door and proffer him this letter; he welcomes you like a long-lost son and at once demands to see your poem, sitting in raptures as you read it to him, earning instant acclaim and the promise of eternal literary renown.”

Carlo reddened. “There is no need to mock me.”

“It is your father who deserves upbraiding. He did not prepare you for the ways of the world.” Ercole tore off a hunk of bread and took a bite. “So,” he said, through a busy mouthful, “what did happen?”

IV. Giddy Memorial

In the furore engulfing Cadenza in the immediate aftermath of Tommaso Cellini’s death, it had taken Carlo several hours to gain entrance to the city. He had to step smartly to avoid knocking into people as they staggered by, dizzy in their distress. Wails rained down from shuttered windows. On a townhouse balcony, a woman was dragged screaming from the balustrade; beneath an elevated passageway between two libraries, angry youths gathered to denounce the malign hand of Venice. The clamour of the bells reverberated around the streets.

Although Carlo’s father had drawn him a map showing him the way to Lorenzo’s palace, the city had changed greatly in the years since Giacomo Mazzoni’s departure, and evening had fallen by the time Carlo entered the secluded square before the Palazzo di Sardi. He brushed himself down before knocking on the door, rehearsing the lines of introduction he had practised during the journey to Cadenza. Yet before he could even present his father’s letter, the steward curtly informed him that Lorenzo was not at home and would not be expected any time soon. The door banged shut in Carlo’s face.

He retreated to a fountain and slumped down beside it, blinking back tears of humiliation. His triumphant entrance into Cadenza was in danger of becoming a mockery. He was considering a second, more forceful essay on Lorenzo’s palace when the door opened, and two men hurried away across the square. They were deep in conversation—at the mention of Lorenzo’s name, Carlo’s ears pricked up. He elected to go after them, heading through the streets and down a long alleyway to the river, where a broad stone bridge trailed off into the darkness over the Adige. Lorenzo’s men headed north, making for a tavern where a crackling torch lit up the sign of the Ship. As Carlo neared the entrance, a glass shattered on the cobbles by his feet: he looked up, startled, and saw shadows moving on the roof. He ducked hastily inside the tavern.

The courtyard was a rolling and restless sea of shoulders, young men packed tightly around the open casks of wine, drowning their grief beneath waves of burgundy and claret. Under the influence of the grape, the atmosphere was exuberant and fragile in equal measure: a giddy memorial. As Carlo squeezed through the throng, through the vine-trailed columns he spied Lorenzo Sardi seated at a table beneath the arcades. He could identify the poet by the empty chairs and respectful space cleared around him; alone in the courtyard, Lorenzo had been given the luxury of room. Carlo tried to push his way towards him, and felt a hand against his chest. It belonged to an elegant young man dressed in sleeves of slashed crimson, curly dark hair spilling out from beneath his beret. A jewel glinted in his ear, a mocking half-smile on his lips. “Welcome, stranger!” he declared. “You have invited yourself into the house of Lorenzo Sardi, the great poet. He is in mourning for our dead ruler and does not wish to be disturbed. I would know your name, sir, before you take another step.”

“I know well whose house this is,” retorted Carlo. “I bring Lorenzo greetings from my father, Giacomo Mazzoni. I am his son, Carlo.”

The young man stared at him. “And is Giacomo Mazzoni also a madman, who would endeavour to make an introduction on the day that Tommaso Cellini died?”

Carlo faltered. “I did not know about the Artifex. This is my first day in the city, I do not have a bed to sleep in. If Lorenzo will not see me, I do not know where—”

“My lord is the Duelling Count of Cadenza, not a German hostelier! Find rooms on your own account.”

“Hold!” An imperious palm, raised aloft, stilled the tavern. Lorenzo Sardi sat back in his chair. His forehead was high and majestic, his prominent brows following narrowing diagonals towards the bridge of his nose, setting his eyes in an inquisitorial frame. Caught in the poet’s intense gaze, Carlo felt himself being appraised and found wanting—an unsatisfactory manuscript, riddled with errors and infelicities.

“Let him pass, Raffaele,” the count ordered. “You entered the city this day, young man?”

“I did, my lord,” Carlo replied, approaching Lorenzo’s table. “I bring a letter from my father, Giacomo Mazzoni, bearing his greetings.”

“Why, it has been a quarter-century since I last heard the Mazzoni name.”

Carlo bowed. “My father will be honoured you remember him.”

“Naturally, I remember Giacomo, though many years have passed since we last had cause to speak. Remind me again why your father left Cadenza.”

“There was unrest in the city. He feared for his family.”

Lorenzo stroked his beard. “Unrest?”

“My lord…” Carlo faltered. “I am sure you remember. There was a plot… to poison Tommaso.”

“I do indeed remember. The Pitti family. Donato Pitti and Giacomo Mazzoni were partners, were they not?”

At this revelation, so delicately imparted, a murmur ran through the crowd.

“In matters of trade only,” Carlo said quickly. “My father was ever a loyal servant of Tommaso’s, but he feared the Artifex might suspect his compliance in Donato’s madness.”

“A strange way to prove loyalty,” Lorenzo mused. “To flee, in order to avoid having to give account for oneself.”

“He could not be assured of a fair hearing, my lord. Armed gangs were roaming the streets looking for Pittis and anyone who associated with them. The city was blind with vengeance!”

“Much like tonight.”

In the silence of the packed courtyard, Carlo realized that the bells had stopped ringing. Lorenzo took a sip of wine.

“At best,” he said, “your family has a most unfortunate sense of timing. Two decades after turning tail following an assassination attempt, Giacomo sends his son back to the city upon the very day that Tommaso dies?”

“To make my name as a poet.” Carlo held out his parchment. “I offer this as testament to my abilities. If you would only look at it…”

Lorenzo waved him away irritably. “I have no interest in your verses,” he said. “To think that you can thrust your work beneath my nose at the mere mention of a name long-dismissed from my memory, I can only mark as brazen impudence. That is, unless this poem is but a mask for some darker errand.”

 “Of what are you accusing me, my lord? The bells were ringing before I entered the city!”

“You would name yourself a harbinger of death, rather than a villain outright.”

Carlo could feel the ring of men about him draw closer. Fists tightened around goblets. He stared in disbelief at Lorenzo, who returned his gaze without blinking. Taking a deep breath, Carlo raised City of Flames into the air.

“Allow me to perform my work,” he called out, “and the crowd can decide whether or not I am an imposter.”

“A most diverting proposal,” came an amused voice from behind him. “But the only verses heard tonight shall be Tommaso’s, by order of Lorenzo. I fear they would be wasted upon you—come, let me show you the door.”

Raffaele’s grip was tight on Carlo’s arm as he ushered him away through the glowering throng.

“What are you doing?” Carlo hissed.

“Saving your life,” Raffaele muttered, through a forced smile. “The men in this tavern are reckless with grief and would like nothing more than a straw man on which to visit their wrath.”

“Only because your master names me a traitor! Surely Lorenzo cannot think I had a hand in Tommaso’s death!”

“It does not matter,” he replied. “Either way, word of this exchange will soon be flying around the city. I advise you make for the countryside with all possible haste, and pray that the becchini do not come looking for you.”

“Who?”

Raffaele shook his head incredulously. “I swear you come direct from the stage, a country innocent playing for laughs. The becchini are Tommaso’s personal guard. They are known as gravediggers for good reason, and are not in the habit of taking chances.”

Propelling Carlo through the tavern door, Raffaele gestured down the street.

“Here we must part,” he said. “I wish you safe passage home.”

Carlo jammed his boot in the door.

“A moment, please!” He could hear the desperation in his own voice. “You are a member of Lorenzo’s circle, are you not? A poet, hoping to earn renown, just as I am!”

“You think us brothers-in-arms?” laughed Raffaele. “There is more than this door standing between us, Carlo son of Giacomo.”

“I see that now; I should not have come here,” Carlo said quickly. “I seek to redeem the Mazzoni name, not muddy it further. What would my father say if I returned to him now, after a single day? I cannot leave the city until Lorenzo has heard my poem. If I have to recite it from atop a bonfire while the becchinistoke the flames, then so be it. In the meanwhile, do you not know of a place where I may stay?”

A glass flew down from the tavern rooftop, exploding on the cobblestones inches from Carlo’s feet. Raffaele sighed.

“Follow the river south and you will come to a tavern at the sign of the Boar. Tell them I sent you.” He gripped Carlo by the arm. “You understand the risk I am taking for you, should my master find out? ...