The Master of Verona Read Free

Same Night
    "Giotto's O ."
    In the middle of a dream in which no one would let him sleep, it seemed to Pietro that the words were deliberately meant to annoy him. Almost unwillingly he dreamed a paintbrush touching a rock, forming a perfect circle.
    The painter used red. It looked like blood.
    "Pietro, I'm speaking to you."
    Blinking, Pietro sat up straight in the rattling coach. "Pardon, Father."
    "Mmm. It's these blasted carriages. Too many comforts these days. Wouldn't have fallen asleep in a saddle."
    It was dark with the curtains drawn, but Pietro easily imagined his father's long face grimacing. Fighting the urge to yawn, he said, "I wasn't asleep. I was thinking. What were you saying?"
    "I was referencing Giotto's mythic O ."
    "Oh. Why?"
    "Why? What is nobler than thinking of perfection? More than that, it is a metaphor. We end where we begin." This was followed by a considering pause.
    Shifting, Pietro felt his brother's head on his shoulder. Irritiation rippled through him. Oh, Poco's allowed to sleep, but not me. Father needs an audience .
    Expecting his father to try out some new flowery phrase, he was astonished to hear the old man say, "Yes, we end where we begin. I hope it's true. Perhaps then I will go home one day."
    Pietro leaned forward, happily letting Jacopo's head fall in the process. "Father, of course you will! Now that it's published, now that any idiot can see, they'll have to call you home. If nothing else, their pride won't let anyone else claim you."
    The poet's laugh was sour. "You know little about pride, boy. It's their pride that keeps me in exile."
    Us , thought Pietro. Keeps us in exile .
    There was a rustling beside him, and suddenly there was light as a groggy Jacopo pulled back one of the curtains. Pietro tried to feel ashamed at his satisfaction for having woken his brother up.
    "The stars are out," said Jacopo, peering out of the window.
    "Every night at this time," said their father. Pietro could now see the hooked nose over his father's bristly black beard. But the poet's eyes were deeply sunken, as if hiding from illumination. It was partly this feature that had earned Dante Alaghieri his fiendish reputation. Partly.
    The light that came into the cramped carraige wasn't from the sky but from the brands held aloft by their escort. No one traveled by night without armed men, and the lord of Verona had dispatched a large contingent to protect his latest honoured guest.
    Verona . Pietro had never been, though his father had. "Giotto's O — you were thinking about Verona, weren't you, father?" Dante nodded, stroking his beard. "What's it like?" Beside Pietro, Jacopo turned away from the stars to listen.
    Pietro saw his father smile, an unusual event that utterly transformed his face. Suddenly he was young and full of mischief. "Ah. The rising star of Italy. The city of forty-eight towers. Home of the Greyhound. My first refuge." A pause, then the word refugio was repeated, savored, saved for future use. "Yes, I came there when I gave up on the rest of the exiles. Such plans. Such fools. I stayed in Verona for more than a year, you know. I saw the Palio run twice. Bartolomeo was Capitano then — a good man, honest, but almost terminally cheerful. In fact, it was fatal, now I think of it. When his brother Alboino took over the captainship I made up my mind to leave. The boy was a weasel, not a hound. Besides, there was that unfortunate business with the Capelletti and Montecchi."
    Pietro wanted to ask what business, but Jacopo got in first, leaning forward eagerly. "What about the new lord of Verona? What about the Greyhound?"
    Dante just shook his head. "Words fail me."
    Which probably means , thought Pietro, he doesn't really know. He's heard the stories, but a man can change in a dozen years .
    "He is at war though, yes?" insisted Jacopo.
    Dante nodded. "With Padua, over the city of Vicenza. Before his untimely death, good Emperor Heinrich VII gave Cangrande the title of Vicar of the