Now was no exception.
“Romeo!” he said, lowering his crossbow after the most atrocious marksmanship yet that morning, “I will lay ear to no more. I am Marescotti. For many years, Siena was run from this very house. Wars were planned in this very atrium. The victory at Montaperti was pronounced from this very tower! These walls speak for themselves!”
Comandante Marescotti, standing as tall in his own courtyard as he would in front of his army, glared at the new fresco and its busy, humming creator, Maestro Ambrogio, still unable to fully appreciate the genius of either. Certainly, the colorful battle scene added a little warmth to the monastic space, and the Marescotti family was handsomely poised and appeared convincingly virtuous. But why did it have to take so bloody long to finish it?
“But Father!”
“No more!” This time, Comandante Marescotti raised his voice. “I will not be associated with that kind of people! Can you not appreciate the fact that we have lived in peace these many years, while all those greedy newcomers, the Tolomeis, the Salimbenis, and the Malavoltis have been slaughtering each other in the streets? Do you want their evil blood to spread to our house? Do you want your brothers and cousins murdered in their cribs?”
From across the courtyard, Maestro Ambrogio could not help but look at the Comandante, who so rarely expressed any emotion. Still taller than his son-but mainly because of his posture-Romeo’s father was one of the most admirable men the Maestro had ever portrayed. Neither his face nor his figure showed any signs of excess; here was a man who only ate as much as his body needed for healthy upkeep, and who only slept for as long as it needed rest. In contrast, his son Romeo ate and drank whatever he felt like, and happily turned night into day with his escapades and day into night with untimely sleep.
Even so, they were so very like each other to look at-both strong and unbending-and despite Romeo’s habit of breaking the house rules, it was a rare sight to have the two of them locked in a verbal duel like this, on tiptoes to make their points.
“But Father!” said Romeo again, and once more, he was ignored.
“And for what? For some woman!” Comandante Marescotti would have rolled his eyes, but he needed them to take aim. This time, the arrow went straight to the heart of the straw puppet. “Some woman, some random woman, when there is a whole city of women out there. As if you did not know!”
“She is no random woman,” said Romeo, calmly contradicting his sire. “She is mine.”
There was a moment’s silence, during which another two arrows hit the target in rapid succession, making the straw puppet dance merrily on its rope like a man at his own hanging. Eventually, Comandante Marescotti drew a deep breath and spoke again, his voice calmer now, the unswerving vessel of reason. “Perhaps, but your lady is the niece of a fool.”
“A powerful fool.”
“If men are not born fools, politics and flattery certainly help them along.”
“I hear he is very generous to family.”
“Is there any left?”
Romeo laughed, well aware that his father had never sought to amuse. “Some, surely,” he said, “now that the peace has been kept for two years.”
“Peace, you call it?” Comandante Marescotti had seen it all before, and vain promises fatigued him even more than blatant falsehoods. “When the ilk of Salimbeni goes back to raiding Tolomei castles and robbing clergy on the high road, mark my words, even this peace is drawing to an end.”
“Then why not secure an alliance now,” insisted Romeo, “with Tolomei?”
“And make an enemy of Salimbeni?” Comandante Marescotti looked at his son with narrowed eyes. “If you had taken in as much intelligence around town as you have wine and women, my son, you would know that Salimbeni has been mobilizing. His aim is not only to step on the neck of Tolomei and rule all banking out of town, but to lay siege to this very city from his strongholds in the country and, if I am not mistaken, seize the reins of our republic.” The Comandante frowned and began pacing up and down. “I know this man, Romeo, I have looked into his eyes, and I have chosen to bar my ears and my door to his ambition. I know not who is worse off, his friends or his foes, and so Marescotti has sworn to be neither. One day, maybe soon, Salimbeni will make a mad push to overthrow the law, and our gutters will run with blood. Foreign soldiers will be brought in, and men will sit in their towers waiting for that knock on the door, regretting the alliances they have made. I will not be one of them.”
“Who says all this misery cannot be prevented?” urged Romeo. “If we were to join forces with Tolomei, other noble houses would follow the Eagle banner, and Salimbeni would soon lose ground. We could hunt down the brigands together and make the roads safe again, and with his money and your dignity, great projects could be undertaken. The new tower in the Campo could be finished within months. The new cathedral could be built within years. And the providence of Marescotti would be in everyone’s prayers.”
“A man should stay out of prayers,” said Comandante Marescotti, and stopped to cock his crossbow, “until he is dead.” The shot went right through the head of the puppet and landed in a pot of rosemary. “Then he may do whatever he wants. The living, my son, should make sure to pursue true glory, not flattery. True glory is between you and God. Flattery is the food of the soulless. Privately, you may rejoice in the fact that you saved that girl’s life, but do not seek acknowledgment or rewards from other men. Vainglory is unbecoming to a nobleman.”
“I do not want a reward,” Romeo said, his manly face giving in to the stubborn squint of boyhood, “I just want her. It moves me little what people know or think. If you do not bless my intention to marry her-”
Comandante Marescotti held up a gloved hand to prevent his son from speaking words that, once heard, could never be unsaid. “Do not threaten me with measures that would hurt you more than me. And let me not see you like this, acting beneath your age, or I shall withdraw my permission for you to ride in the Palio. Even the games of men-nay, especially the games-require the decorum of men. So, too, with marriage. I have never betrothed you to anyone…”
“And for that alone I love my father!”
“… because I traced the outline of your character from the earliest age. Had I been an evil man, with some enemy due for punishment, I might have considered stealing away his only daughter and letting you make worms’ meat out of her heart. But I am not such a man. I have waited with great perseverance for you to shed your inconstant self and be satisfied with one pursuit at a time.”
Romeo looked crestfallen. But the potion of love was still tingling sweet upon his tongue, and a smile could not be restrained long. His joy broke away like a colt from its handlers, and galloped across his face on unfamiliar legs. “But Father, I have!” was his giddy reply. “Constancy is my true nature! I shall never look at another woman for the rest of my days, or rather, I shall look, but they shall be to me like chairs, or tables. Not that I intend to sit, of course, or eat off them, but in the sense that they are but furniture. Or perhaps I should say that they are to her what the moon is to the sun-”
“Do not compare her with the sun,” warned Comandante Marescotti, and walked over to the straw puppet to retrieve his arrows. “You always preferred the company of the moon.”
“Because I was living in eternal night! Surely, the moon must be the sovereign of a wretch who has never beheld the sun. But morning has broken, Father, draped in the golds and reds of marriage, and it is the dawn of my soul!”
“But the sun retires,” reasoned Comandante Marescotti, “every night.”
“And I shall retire, too!” Romeo clenched a fistful of arrows against his heart. “And leave the dark to owls and nightingales. I shall embrace the bright hours with industry, and prey no more on wholesome sleep.”