His mind came inexorably around to progeny, and bastard heirs. One in particular, under this very roof.
Thinking of the boy, Morsicato decided to check on the little scoundrel. Passing his patient's door, he continued on down the hall until he reached Cesco's door. Something was odd, but it took him a moment to realize what was missing. There should have been a guard here. Instead there was a closed door lit only by the moon shining in the casement at the end of the hall.
Something glistened on the tiled floor. Not even a pool. A few drops, nothing more. But he was a doctor. He knew blood when he saw it.
Laying his dish aside, Morsicato glanced about. No weapons hung on the walls because the little imp had proven too successful at prying them down. Morsicato only had the thin knife he used for probing wounds. It would have to do.
Leaning his ear against the door, he heard a rustling, then a whisper. "Where are you, my little puppy? Come out and play."
The voice was playful. The drops on the floor were not. Morsicato wondered how many there were and where they had hidden the body of the guard.
He could try the door. But if he made noise they'd be warned, and he'd have to break it down anyway. And noise was his friend, not theirs. Stepping back, he lowered his left shoulder and ran, bursting the door open with a great rending of wood. Knife ready, Morsicato stumbled into the chamber, looking about quickly.
They had a covered lantern. It was the first thing he saw, and almost the last. A blade came at him and he threw himself aside. The Scaliger would have rolled, or blocked it, or done some dazzling feat of physical prowess. Morsicato barely avoided being gutted, stumbling into a table. He dropped to his rump and ducked under the table as the second blow came. "Aiuto! Aiuto!" he hollered, kicking at his attacker's shins.
There was a shuddering vibration over his head, then the table lifted into the air. Morsicato was struck in the head as the table was tossed aside by a second man. Morsicato threw himself forward and lunged out blindly with his knife. He felt a jolt as his blade met flesh. A kick from the second man jerked his arm, twisting the knife. Someone yelped and fell on him. They struggled while the other man kicked them both.
Morsicato heard footsteps in the distance, many of them, pounding their way towards Cesco's room. He'd awakened the household. Extricating themselves, Morsicato's foes ran to an open window. Morsicato tried to follow, but one of the villains knocked the lantern off its resting place, spilling oil and fire across the floor. Morsicato cringed back from the burst of heat. Grabbing a tapestry off the wall he threw himself down to smother the flames. At once he was engulfed in pitch blackness.
The darkness was brief. Torches from the hallway created flickering shapes on the wall in the room. Then the chamber was filled with armed men — two knights with swords, some servants with chamber pots poised for throwing, a page with a sword much too big for him to wield usefully.
Bailardino appeared, shoving his way to the front. His expression was one of disgust. "What the hell is it? What's he done now?"
"Two men — " gasped Morsicato. "No guard — I tried to — "
Instantly Bailardino changed his tune. "Get a light in here!" The torchlight showed a room that had been thoroughly ransacked. "Bloody hell." Bail issued orders to search the courtyard and the surrounding streets at once. The knights and the page ran out, encountering more men in the hall and recruiting them for the chase. More lamps were lit, and Morsicato tried to assess the damage.
The room was a shambles, and not just from the brief fight. Quiet but determined, the two men had been tearing the room apart, looking for something. Someone.
Trembling, Morsicato reached the child's bed. He was unaware of holding his breath until the air hissed out of him. He glanced over at Bailardino. "Look at this."
"What is it?"
The bedding and mattress of straw were hacked to shreds. No blood. No flesh. No sign of the child.
"Where is he?!" The frantic question came from the door. In her robe, her long tresses released from their coil for the night, Katerina della Scala was a lovely sight. Until one noticed that her face was the colour of day-old ashes. At a run she crossed the room to gaze down upon the ruined bed. Silent tears formed at her eyes. Her hands twitched slightly. "Where is he?"
"This wasn't a kidnapping," her husband said, touching a loose feather floating in the air. "They mistook the pillow for him at first."
His wife had already come to the same conclusion. "Then he was hiding."
Morsicato looked around the room. "If that's true, they hadn't found him by the time I interrupted them. He must still be here."
Their adult eyes scanned the room in the same arc, left to right and back again. They saw no place for a child to hide that had not been ransacked.
"Where could he have gone?" asked Morsicato.
From above, there came a stifled giggle.
As one their eyes traveled up to the rafters. Setting his right foot on the ruined bed, Morsicato gripped the wooden struts of the crossbeam above. With an awkward hop, he pulled himself up. Bail's hands made a cup for the doctor to stand on, lifting the doctor until the forked beard jutted over the massive wooden brace.
Twinkling green eyes flecked with gold gazed back at him. "H'lo."
"Hello, Cesco," replied the doctor with a heartfelt sigh. He sent a look of triumph down to the others, then found himself being used as a ladder by the child. Stepping first on Morsicato's head, then his shoulders, the child dropped lightly onto the bed.
How he got up there they could never afterward discover. But clearly when he'd heard the scuffle outside the door, he'd climbed to a place of safety and waited in complete silence while the intruders searched for him. The timber was wider than his small body, entirely hiding him from view.
From the remains of his bed, two-year-old Cesco grinned up at his foster mother. But for the tear-streaks down his face, he might have been unaffected by the events of the night. "Here I am, m'donna."
She made no move to embrace him. All sign of emotion vanished in the blink of an eye. Her gaze was level, her voice calm. "I've been wondering where you hid when I looked for you. I shall remember to look where only monkeys, not men, may go." The child was momentarily downcast. Katerina held out a hand. "Come. Since you've made a mess of your room, you are being demoted. You shall spend tonight in the nursery."
Cesco's entire face lit up. The nursery was the room where his foster brother slept. The only time one could count on Cesco to be well behaved was when he was with Katerina's young son. Bailardetto. Which meant they were often kept together.
At the door Katerina turned to her husband. "I'll write to Francesco."
"I'm Cesco," said the boy.
"Hush." Katerina led him away, leaving Bail and Morsicato looking around the disorderly chamber.
The doctor said, "She realizes what this means?"
"Not much slips by her. I'd better go find where they hid the guards. I hope they're hurt, not dead."
Morsicato followed Bailardino out of the child's room. "They had accents. I don't know what kind — it wasn't familiar to me."
"Splendid. Now the enemy is hiring mercenaries."
But the doctor's mind had already moved on to imagine what Katerina's note to Cangrande would say.
He might have been surprised at the tone of the letter. She used a code known only to her father's children, of whom only two remained. After describing the evening's events, she added a coda that proved she'd come to the same conclusion as the doctor: