"Oh, I have no wish to pry, Constable! I should not have presumed to—"
"He is the Milanese ambassador to Florence."
She considered that answer for about four olive trees. "This is a secret?"
"No." The big man's face was less scrutable than some Arabic scrolls she'd found in a castle library once. "No, that is no secret. He's been trying to bribe me to enter the duke's service, and that is no secret either. And Florence is being interminably difficult about giving me the condotta we need, but everyone knows that, too."
"Doesn't it want to employ you?"
"I think so. I hope so. Part of the problem is that the present dieci, the Ten For War, are due to be replaced on March first, and they're trying to spin out the negotiations so that their successors can share in the bribery."
"Oh. According to Hamish, everything in Florence is run by Pietro Marradi. Why don't you just go and talk to him?"
"I did, my lady. I spent all yesterday morning in his waiting room with a very strange collection of sculptors and poets. I was left until almost the last, and then told he was too busy to see me."
She found that very funny, but she must not let her amusement show. "So today you send Hamish on a secret visit to—"
"No. You can't keep a secret in Florence. The Magnificent will know within minutes that Hamish is visiting Abonio. He won't know why, though."
"But you told Hamish to make—"
"That was just for realism. Marradi will know. And he knows Hamish is my closest confidant."
After several more olive trees had gone by, she said, "I see what Hamish meant when he said you weren't straightforward."
"Does that make me straightbackward? Or bentforward?" The cavernous brown eyes were as somber as ever. He must be making fun of her.
She was very little wiser an hour or so later, when he led the way into a farmyard, setting dogs to barking and geese into paroxysms of hissing. She had confirmed that she neither liked the big man nor trusted him and found his reputation for ruthlessness entirely credible. Without a word of explanation, he jumped down from his horse.
"What?" she said, looking around in alarm at the low-roofed buildings, half-buried in vegetation like lurking bears.
"Friends of mine. They make some of the finest wine in all Italy." Two ragged-looking urchins came shrieking out from behind a barn, and chickens flapped away in the opposite direction.
Alarmed, she said, "But I do not wish—" and no more, for Longdirk lifted her off the saddle as if she were a child and set her down. Who did he think he was? Or she was?
The boys jumped at him and hugged him in volleys of Italian. He picked them up by their smocks, one in each hand, and swung them high in the air, their howls of glee totally drowning out his efforts to address them. An obese and ancient peasant woman waddled out of the main hovel, wiping hands on apron, jabbering even faster than the children, and smiling to reveal a very sparse set of teeth. She was motherly enough to calm Lisa's worst fears, but not perceptibly the sort of person she cared to befriend. Longdirk set the boys down and introduced Lisa in his limping Italian to madonna Something.
"Do tell her," Lisa said, "how delighted I am to have met her and how much I regret that we cannot stay." The children had noticed Lisa and were gaping openmouthed at her.
Predictably, Longdirk ignored her wishes and led her into the old woman's lair, with the crone following them, nodding and leering. Lisa found herself expected to sit on a tottery stool at a rough plank table with him beside her. Admittedly the deeply shadowed kitchen was cozy after the wind, nor could she could deny that the smell of baking bread made her mouth water, but there was a baby screaming somewhere nearby and she had no desire to indulge in the wine set before her in a cracked pottery beaker or the curious scraps of food Old Mother What's-her-name began piling on a platter between her and Longdirk — cheese and pastries and dried fruits. The children started stalking these with nefarious intent, ignoring their grandmother's efforts to chase them away.
Nevertheless, Lisa's self-appointed escort was waiting for her to proceed. She took a sip of wine. "Is this what you meant when you said you had something to show me?"
"Partly. Do try some of these treats. The white cheese is good. May I tell monna Agnolella that you like her wine?"
"Tell her anything you want."
"I'll tell her you can't help your manners, then."
"My manners?" Angrily Lisa turned to the crone and went through a dumb show with the wine — smile, nod, smack lips. "Does that satisfy you, Sir Toby? I do hope you're going to eat the food. I can't possibly." She would have to make an effort, though. Perhaps she could slip some to the boys or the smelly dogs around her feet. Why had this annoying man brought her here? Slumming! It would have been fun with Hamish, but Longdirk did not know what the word fun meant. He never smiled.
In response to another of his labored speeches, the old woman bared her gums in a leer even more gruesome than its predecessors, then disappeared into the depths of the house, shooing her wayward brood before her so the visitors could be alone. Mercifully, the baby's yelling stopped.
The pastries were, in fact, delicious. Lisa graciously took a second. "So what exactly am I supposed to be looking at, Constable?"
"Just looking." Longdirk had his back to the solitary window, putting his face in shadow. "I come here quite often. It's a good place to meet people without being disturbed. Or seen. I pay her a few lire for the privilege. Luigi died at Trent, so times are hard for her yet. How old is your mother?"
"I don't see what business that is… If you'd listened to Baron Oreste's story, you would know that. She'll be thirty-three next birthday."
"I did listen. Monna Agnolella is the same age."
"Nonsense! You're serious? You mean that baby I heard…"
"All of them. Twelve sons. Two of them serve in the Company, following in their father's footsteps. One of them's almost as big as me. Agnolella runs the place with the other ten. Nine, I suppose. The baby won't be much help yet."
Lisa took a drink of wine to mask her dismay, but he had seen it and must be secretly laughing at her reaction.
"Looks about seventy, doesn't she?"
"What have her troubles to do with me, sir? Why drag me here just to gloat over a… a… When did she start — eight?"
"Let's see. Niccolò is nineteen — she probably married at thirteen. That's normal. A dozen babies in nineteen years is not unusual, but twelve living is. In a sense she's lucky Luigi died, or she'd have gone on bearing children until one killed her. As to what it means to you…" He folded his enormous hands on the table and stared at them. "My lady, I admit that falling into the Fiend's clutches is a very real danger to you and absolutely the worst thing that could happen. But there are other bad things in life that you don't know much about, and one of them is poverty."
"It is most kind of you to take such an interest in my education, Constable, but I do not see why it need concern you."
"Because Hamish is my friend."
"I understand he is of age. He is certainly articulate."
The big man sighed and began to pop morsels of food in his mouth, continuing to speak as he chewed. "He is also very impressionable where… women are concerned. Honorable within… limits, but very few men are… capable of celibacy for long, no matter how solemn their intentions—"
"You speak from experience, I presume?"
He nodded with his mouth full. "Mm." Swallow. "Get Hamish to tell you about his family."
"He already has." Not deliberately, but in passing Hamish had mentioned ghastly things like sleeping six to a room and not having shoes when there was snow on the ground, but he had not seemed to think any of them remarkable. "I still do not see why this concerns you."