The Road to Damietta Read Online Free PDF Page B

Since Clare and I were good friends and often visited each other, I went by way of the back entrance, unannounced.
    She lay under a blanket of fox skins, pale but beautiful in spite of her illness. "Where were you to get such a reddish nose?" she asked me.
    "At Signor Bernardone's."
    "What's under your arm? You're always buying something. Either that or someone is buying it for you."
    I opened the package and spread the cloth on the coverlet.
    "How lovely," she said. "It matches your coloring."
    "Signor Bernardone told me the same thing."
    "What did Francis say?"
    "Nothing."
    Clare and I always talked frankly to each other. But how I felt about Francis Bernardone I had kept from her, thinking that she would belittle him as so many others did.
    Clare was not ill from a fever. I learned this before I ever finished the cup of broth her serving woman brought for me. She was ill from fear and anger.
    "Have you heard of Rosso di Battero?" she asked me.
    "He owns a castle beyond Porta di Murocuplo, in the hills," I said. "He's thin and tall and hollow in the middle, has a gray beard curled to a point, rides a gray horse, and he's always protected by six guards also riding gray horses."
    She smiled wanly. "You know him better than I do. I've seen him only once. Last Easter in the cathedral, from a distance. I just found out that my family intends that I marry him."
    Clare's father was a stubborn man, strict and fanatically religious. Her mother was an iron-willed woman. Her brothers were famous for their use of the sword, quick to take offense, vindictive, and cruel. I could imagine what a family command would mean to her, especially since people asked why a girl of such beauty remained unwed. Was her life doomed by some terrible disease? Had she made a pact with the Evil One, with the Devil himself ? I had heard these questions and others, asked in my own home.
    She was not drinking her barley broth. She lay with her hands folded tight on the coverlet, her gaze upon the window and the falling snow, a figure as remote as the cold white statue in the niche above her head. I asked her if she would marry Rosso di Battero. She picked up a heart-shaped fan and covered her face in disgust.
    "No," she said, fanning herself. "No."
    "If your family commands you to, you wouldn't dare refuse them."
    "You'll see. At the very moment I am threatened."
    "What will you do?" I asked, thinking of Count Luzzaro.
    "I'll flee."
    "Where to?"
    "To Perugia. Anywhere. To Venice. I have cousins in Venice and also in Padua."
    "Your brothers are fast riders. They'll come for you and bring you back," I said. Then, struck by a thought, I added, "You can hide with me. There's a big room off my tower. It was used once
for weapons, a storage place. It's closed now and nobody ever goes there. You'll be safe for days."
    "What a cunning thought," she said.
    She tossed the coverlet aside, sat up, and glanced at me over the top of her fan. "How did Francis look?"
    "Like a harlequin. Dressed up with one leg in black silk, the other in red silk, and a tunic of four or five colors."
    "I mean, how did he act?"
    "Sober," I said, deciding not to say a word about our meeting in San Rufino Square or about Simonetta. "Quiet."
    "From the stories going around, he may have good reasons for being quiet. It's said he stole from his father, things like cloth and money, and gave them away. I don't believe it for a moment," Clare said.
    She sat down at the mirror, and a woman came to dress her hair. Long and heavy and very blond, in the lamplight it looked like melting silver.
    "Francis would never steal from his father," she said, "or from anyone else. It's an awful lie."
    I agreed with her and we talked on until the bells rang for vespers, but nothing more was said about him.
    As I hurried home I tried to think of a likely reason for freeing Simonetta. Father met me as I entered the Great Hall. He glanced at my wrist and empty glove before I had brushed the snow from my