Fortune's Fool

  Fortune’s Fool

  by David Blixt

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, events, and organizations portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  English language excerpts of Dante Alighieri’s L’INFERNO, PURGATORIO, and PARADISO that appear in this novel are from, or adapted from, translations of each text by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (Doubleday).

  English language excerpts of THE BALLAD OF VERONA by Manuello Guido are from, or adapted from, a translation by Rita Severi.

  Fortune’s Fool

  Copyright © 2012 by David Blixt

  eBook Edition

  Cover by David Blixt

  Maps by Jill Blixt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-944540050

  ISBN-10: 1-944540059

  www.davidblixt.com

  Published by Sordelet Ink

  www.sordeletink.com

  For Jan -

  “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”

  Dramatis Personae

  Maps

  Induction

  Prologue

  ACT I - Naught’s Had, All’s Spent

  ACT II - The Rock of the Lord

  ACT III - Doom’d to Walk the Night

  ACT IV - Children of an Idle Brain

  ACT V - Sins of the Father

  Postscript

  Dramatis Personae

  ♦ a character recorded by history ◊ a character from Shakespeare

  Della Scala Family of Verona

  ♦ Francesco ‘Cangrande’ della Scala – Prince of Verona, Imperial Vicar of the Trevisian Mark (Verona, Vicenza, Padua, & Treviso)

  ♦ Giovanna – Cangrande’s wife, Paride’s aunt

  ♦ Alberto II della Scala – Cangrande’s nephew, brother of Mastino

  ♦/◊ Mastino II della Scala – Cangrande’s nephew, brother of Alberto

  ♦ Verde della Scala – Cangrande’s niece, sister of Alberto & Mastino

  ♦ Caterina della Scala – Cangrande’s niece, sister of Alberto & Mastino

  ♦ Albuina della Scala – Cangrande’s niece, sister of Alberto & Mastino

  ♦/◊ Francesco ‘Cesco’ della Scala – Cangrande’s heir, a bastard

  ◊ Paride della Scala – son of the late Cecchino della Scala

  Nogarola Family of Vicenza

  ♦ Antonio Nogarola II – Vicentine nobleman, elder brother to Bailardino

  ♦ Bailardino Nogarola – Lord of Vicenza, husband to Cangrande’s sister

  ♦ Katerina della Scala – sister to Cangrande, wife of Bailardino

  Bailardetto ‘Detto’ Nogarola – son of Bailardino and Katerina

  ◊ Valentino Nogarola – son of Bailardino and Katerina

  Alaghieri Family of Florence

  ♦ Pietro Alaghieri – Dante’s heir, lawyer, knight of Verona, steward of Ravenna

  ♦ Jacopo ‘Poco’ Alaghieri – Dante’s youngest son

  ♦ Antonia Alaghieri – Dante’s daughter, taking holy vows as Suor Beatrice

  Carrara Family of Padua

  ♦ Marsilio da Carrara – Lord of Padua

  ♦ Niccolo da Carrara – cousin of Marsilio, brother to Ubertino

  ♦ Ubertino da Carrara – cousin of Marsilio, brother to Niccolo

  ♦ Cunizza da Carrara – sister of Marsilio

  ♦ Taddea da Carrara – daughter of the late Il Grande da Carrara, cousin to Marsilio

  Montecchio Family of Verona

  ◊ Romeo Mariotto ‘Mari’ Montecchio – Lord of the Montecchio family

  ◊ Gianozza della Bella – Mari’s wife, cousin to Carrara

  ◊ Romeo Mariotto Montecchio II – son of Mari and Gianozza

  Aurelia Montecchio – sister to Mari, wife of Benvenito Lenoti

  Benvenito Lenoti – knight of Verona, husband to Aurelia

  ◊ Benvolio Lenoti – son of Benvenito and Aurelia

  Capulletto Family of Verona

  ◊ Antonio ‘Antony’ Capulletto – Lord of the Capulletti family, father of Giulietta

  ◊ Arnaldo Capulletto – uncle of Antonio

  ◊ Tessa Guarini – wife of Antonio, mother of Giulietta

  ◊ Theobaldo ‘Thibault’ Capulletto – nephew of Antonio

  ◊ Giulietta Capulletto – daughter of Antonio and Tessa

  Supporting Characters

  Abbess Verdiana – Benedictine abbess of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona

  ♦ Albertino Mussato – Paduan historian-poet

  ◊ Andriolo da Verona – Capulletto’s chief groom, husband to Angelica

  ◊ Angelica da Verona – Giulietta’s Nurse, wife to Andriolo

  Aventino Fracastoro – Personal physician to Cangrande

  ◊ Baptista Minola – Paduan noble, father of Katerina and Bianca

  ♦ Bernardo Ervari – knight of Verona, member of the Anziani

  ♦ Bernardo Gui – Dominican cardinal, former head of the Inquisition

  ♦ Bishop Francis – Franciscan Bishop, leader of Veronese spiritual growth

  ♦ Fra Bonagratia da Bergamo – Franciscan friar, former lawyer

  ◊ Fra Lorenzo – Franciscan monk with family in France

  ♦ Francesco Dandolo – Venetian nobleman, ambassador to Verona

  ♦ Francesco ‘Petrarch’ Petrarcha – Florentine exile, aspiring poet, studied at Bologna

  ♦ Gherardo Petrarcha – younger brother to Petrarch

  ♦ Guglielmo da Castelbarco – Veronese noble, Cangrande’s Armourer

  ♦ Guglielmo da Castelbarco II – Castelbarco’s son

  Giuseppe Morsicato – Knight, Nogarola family doctor

  Hortenso & Petruchio II Bonaventura – twin sons of Katerina and Petruchio

  ◊ Jessica – Venetian Jewess, daughter of Shalakh

  ◊ Katerina Bonaventura – Paduan heiress, daughter of Baptista Minola

  ♦ Lucia Petrarcha – sister to Petrarch, living near Avignon

  ♦ Manoello Giudeo – Cangrande's Master of Revels

  Massimiliano da Villafranca – Constable of Cangrande’s palace

  ♦ Nicolo da Lozzo – Paduan-born knight, changed sides to join Cangrande

  Niklas Fuchs – German-born companion to Mastino della Scala

  ♦ Passerino Bonaccolsi – Podestà of Mantua, ally to Cangrande

  ◊ Petruchio Bonaventura – Veronese noble, married to Katerina

  ◊ Shalakh – A Jew, Venetian money-lender, father of Jessica

  Tharwat al-Dhaamin – Moorish master astrologer, called the Arūs

  Tullio d'Isola – aged steward, Grand Butler to Cangrande

  ♦ William Montagu – English knight, distant relative of the Montecchi

  ♦ William of Occam – Englishman, Franciscan friar and scholar

  Ziliberto dell’ Angelo – Cangrande’s Master of the Hunt

  

  City of Verona

  

  Piazza dei Signori

  …Patris iam detegam falsi dolos

  Infausta mater. Non diu tellas nefas

  Latere patitur; durat ocultum nichil….

  ‘…Now shall I reveal

  The wiles of your deceitful sire, distraught

  Mother that I am. The earth refuses

  To hide for long a crime. Secrets will out…’

  - The Tragedy of Ecerinis

  Albertino Mussato

  Act One, Scene One, lines 4-6

  Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

  Alone, sh
all come fulfillment to our dreams

  And our desires.

  - Sunday Morning

  Wallace Stevens

  Prologue

  Lyons, France

  1 October 1316

  So red they might have been made of actual flame, the banners snaked out, unfurling with hearty cracks before whipping back under the fury of the mighty wind called the Mistral. Oarsmen swept back and heaved in rhythm with the choir that sang holy songs in both Latin and French – but not Italian. The gentlest hint of things to come.

  The banks of the Rhône were teeming with men, women, and children. It was almost a holiday, an impromptu festival along the river’s edge. Some souls fell in, pushed by those eagerly seeking a better view. When again in their lifetimes could they lay eyes upon Saint Piere’s heir? Especially as there was so much pressure to return the papacy to Rome, making Clement’s transplanting of the Holy See a temporary aberration, a Gallic hiccough in the history of the Church. So French citizens between Lyon and Avignon now flocked to the riverbank to see him pass, that when they prayed they could attach a face to their pleas.

  Not that anyone could see his face. Aboard ship, the throned figure was practically swallowed by his hat and gown, despite their being tailored to him. A gnome of a man, delicate and diminutive. Even the throne itself, high on the pedestal, was cleverly designed to hide the fact that his feet couldn’t reach the floor. A step pretended to be a footrest for the most mighty man in all of Christendom.

  His might was more frightening because as yet no one knew how he planned to wield it. Pope for less than two months, as yet there was no sign of his nature – benevolent or tyrannical. Waiting for some sign, his fellow cardinals were growing uneasy. With the absence of a pope these last two long years, they’d grown used to life without an overlord. Added to that was the unimpressive stature of the new Holy Father, more suited to a foole than a prince.

  Disappointed by the dwarf on the papal throne, several French girls on the shore cast their eyes about the massive barge for a sight more pleasing to their eyes. Almost at once they found a most deserving young man tucked away on the lower level, far from His Holiness. The man’s naturally fair complexion was tanned but not burned, his fashionably long black hair whipping in the wind from beneath his square, feathered cap. Dressed to perfection in demi-cape, high boots, and hose cinched so tight it showed the muscles of his thigh, he was the very ideal of the modern knight. More, his slight air of suffering made him all the more attractive. And the cut of his doublet was so high as to be almost scandalous – just below the richly embroidered hem, girls could see the faintest curve of his firm buttock. How daring! How delightful! How French!

  Had he known he passed for French, he would have been deeply gratified. Nineteen years old now, married for over a year and still yet a virgin (a status which many French maids had attempted to undo), Ser Mariotto Montecchio was the epitome of chivalry. And true chivalry, as everyone knew, began in France.

  A youth stood near him, just twelve years old last July. He was rather plain, with drooping eyes and a face that was still sorting itself out. Dressed in a drab second-hand gonella and floppy cap that was woefully out of style, the lad gazed at Mariotto as if he were a god.

  Summoning his courage, the boy pointed to the girls on the shore. “They’re staring at you.”

  Mari was pleasantly startled. The lad had an Italian accent! Was it Florentine? Too honest to pretend he had not noticed the girls, Mariotto chose to be generous. “Perhaps they’re staring at you.”

  The boy looked ruefully at his poor clothes. “No. You’re like the sun. I’m just a cloud blocking their view.”

  Mariotto felt a curious pity rising in him. “Very poetic. What’s your name?”

  “Francesco. Though I suppose it should be François. We live here, now.”

  “Me too,” said Mari, hiding his sadness behind a smile. He had no inkling how long this noble exile would last.

  Young François surprised Mari by nodding. “I heard the story.” He pointed at the girls on the Rhône’s bank opposite them. “If they heard it, they’d drown themselves like the Donna di Scalotta did for Lancelot du Lac.”

  Mariotto winced. The reference to Lancelot was apt. As Lancelot had betrayed Arthur with Guinevere, so Mariotto had betrayed his closest friend by stealing his betrothed.

  Aloud he said, “That would be a shame, as I’m married.” Though not yet a husband, he reminded himself.

  The boy was continuing to nod wisely. “Some men say you did wrong. I don’t think so.”

  “No?”

  “No! If chivalry is all about the wishes of women, great deeds in their names, hardships for their sakes, you did the right thing. You made her happy by marrying her.”

  But to Mari that argument rang false. “Alas, François, chivalry is about pining from afar, the idea of an unattainable woman. Dante never wed his Beatrice.”

  “Dante is an idiot.”

  The youth pronounced the words so certainly that Mariotto had to laugh. “Be careful! I’m a friend to his son.”

  “And my father is friends with Dante himself.” The twelve year-old shrugged. “I don’t mean to smear his poetry. Just his notion of love as an idea. Love is real, it makes you act. That’s why you married your friend’s betrothed.”

  Mari didn’t want to answer that, so he argued for love. “It’s the relationship between Beatrice and Dante that’s legendary, a love that transcended the physical. Ideally, love and marriage are not meant to be joined. Marriage soils love’s perfection.”

  “So why did you marry her then?” asked the young man with direct simplicity.

  Gazing out at the cheering folk on the shore, Mari was silent. His unspoken answer was equally simple, and eternally shaming. I wanted her. I couldn’t bear to be a great lover, to love from afar. O, Gianozza...

  Yet Fortune had conspired to make theirs a great tale of love after all. Fate, in the guise of the Lord of Verona, had separated them, sending Mari here to the papal court on the very day of his wedding. His exile from his bride made him pine, and long, and dream. From her letters, Gianozza felt the same. Theirs was indeed destined to be a great love, like Dante and Beatrice, Antony and Cleopatra, Odysseus and Penelope.

  “My son isn’t troubling you, is he?” asked a grave man, dressed exactly as young François.

  Mariotto recognized the exiled Florentine as a notary to one of the cardinals. “Not at all, Ser Petracco,” said Mari with a winning smile. “We were debating the nature of chivalry and the love of poets.”

  The notary’s chin lifted as if to remove from his nose a foul smell. At the same moment his son shot a reproachful glance to Mari. With apologies for troubling the Veronese knight, Ser Petracco took his son off, a firm grip on his shoulder. Not an admirer of poetry, mused Mariotto.

  A burly cardinal approached, a smile bursting through his beard. “I know that look. Has little Francesco been reciting verses again?”

  Mari bowed. “Cardinal Orsini. My fault, I’m afraid. We were discussing courtly love.”

  “Ah.” With that polite acknowledgement, Cardinal Orsini took up station beside Mariotto to stare out over the water slipping by.

  Mari knew that most men on this ship thought him a damned romantic fool. During the past year, as he grew more and more worldly at the leaderless papal court, he’d been forced to rebuff – sometimes physically – the attentions of dozens of girls. This drew laughter from many prelates, and earned him a few unwelcome advances from his own sex.

  The only man who had never mocked him was Cardinal Napoleone Orsini. In spirit both the lion and the bear his name indicated, he was a generous, gregarious, and bluntly gracious man. Upon arriving in the summer of 1315, Mariotto had attached himself to Orsini’s party. Back then the cardinal had been rumoured as a favourite for the papacy, and as they spoke nearly the same language (Veronese Italian differed from Roman Italian, but only in dialect), it seemed a natural move. Mariotto had orders to lobby the
new pope in Verona’s favour, and if he had a friendship with that new pope before the office was granted, so much the better.

  The election of Jacques d’Euse had come as quite a shock, and not only to Mari. After two years without a Holy Father, the latest French king had bullied and bribed all the cardinals together and forced them into a castle to do their duty and choose a pontiff. It gave new meaning to the term conclave – con clave, literally, ‘with key’. While they held the key to God’s heir on Earth, Philip V held the key to their freedom.

  Mariotto remembered waiting with so many others outside the castle, watching for the telltale smoke that would signify Orsini’s election. But when the white smoke had come and the doors had opened, it was instead a cordwainer’s son who had mounted St. Peter’s throne. The little man had taken them all by surprise, doing the unthinkable and nominating himself. Trained in both the law and in medicine, his career in the clergy had been mostly spent presiding over the seaside See of Frejus, a pleasurable duty, and in Avignon, providing advice more legal than spiritual. How he had swung them around to vote for him, no one quite said. Certainly Orsini had been mute on the subject. But rather than look displeased, Orsini appeared quite content.

  Now looking out over the water, Orsini softly murmured, “Illyria, I am coming.”

  “Pardon?” said Mariotto.

  Looking abashed, the cardinal rubbed his whiskered chin with the back of his hand. “I have a cousin, prince of a city on the coast of Anatolia. It’s called Dubrovnik, but he has renamed it Illyria.”

  “Illyria? After—?”

  “—Ilium, yes, the fabled city of Helen and Paris.” Orsini smiled smugly. “For all that he’s a good prince, he is a fanciful fellow. He’s rather like you! He pines. O, how he pines! He writes of a young maiden for whom he would eat every apple in the world. Her father is a great man of the city and her brother is one of the handsomest men in the land – by report, he would even rival you,” added the cardinal with a cheerful wink. “Certain that with such men in her life already he would pale in comparison, my cousin has talked himself into loving the lady from afar.”