Chapter 40
Fiametta proved she’d been listening. “Him. One man, working alone, and I’m determined to expose him … somehow.”
“Before he kills again, please. Enough time cannot be found for me to plan a wedding and a funeral, especially my own.” Sarcasm could be used as a punctuation mark, and I used it now to both lighten the topic and express how very much this issue needed to be handled.
“Explain and let me lend my intelligence to create a trap to catch this rat.”
“And extinguish him for all the horrors he has visited on those about him.” Fiametta was grim and final.
“I dare no longer stay, for I cannot listen!” Friar Laurence plugged his ears and hurried to his back room. “Whatever you have to say, I cannot know, lest I must intervene and thwart you!”
We three watched him go, and we could hear the rumble of his voice as he instructed Imogene in the uses of the herbs and roots she unwrapped and placed on the shelves.
“Did he just tell us to go ahead and take justice into our own hands?” Fiametta asked.
“Aye, so he did. He’s a monk. He preaches that God must rule from on high, but when His justice needs a shove, Friar Laurence is willing to remain ignorant while we plot.
” Having worked with the good friar for many years, I knew him well.
“He likes not giving last rites. Come hither. Let’s sit by the window and talk.
” Which you might think not a good idea, because the three of us didn’t want to be spotted by the villain himself, who might have perceived he’d been descried.
But Friar Laurence’s windows were small panes, wavy and ill made, and with the fires of an apothecary shop constantly producing fumes, they were smudged with woodsmoke, mottled with all manner of dark miasma, and frost rimed each pane.
We pulled up stools and leaned our heads together.
Fiametta spoke quickly and urgently, and in an undertone. “We’ve been deceived by a master. Everything we assumed is wrong, and once the background is explained …”
“Tell me,” I urged.
“Lord Magno—”
“Magno!” I leaned back. “The oozing pimple of a lesser man. Surely not!”
Chandrika hushed me. “Listen while Fiametta speaks. She’s wise, and she wears her inky cloak to solve riddles that the devil himself poses.”
Startled, I laughed. “Surely not!”
“She has no shame as she dons her costumes and her draperies,” Chandrika added.
“I would have shame if I allowed more murders to happen when I can prevent them.” Fiametta was deathly serious. “If listening and spying is what it takes to cleanse the world of a predator, then I gladly skulk and spy.”
I understood that needs drive, and like Fiametta, I allowed for means that an honorable lord or a devout monk would disdain.
But they were men and used other means, of which I did not approve.
Witness Cal’s trap that caught him a wife.
I still held a grudge. Not a big one, for eventually he gave me a choice, and I chose him, but it niggled that I had been made such a fool for all to know.
Fiametta continued, “Now, Magno has climbed the long ladder of ambition, needing to be something more than the younger brother of your grandfather, the great Lord Montague. Lord Montague has a reputation—has always had a reputation—as the greatest wine master in the modern world. His own father bragged about him. Lord Montague grows grapes and creates wines that sing on the tongue. Kings fight for a taste of his wines. Potentates offer him concubines and riches.”
“Nonno Montague? My grandfather? He never said anything about concubines.”
“He wouldn’t, would he? Your grandmother—”
“Is an inspiration with a carving knife,” I said. “When I was a child visiting the family vineyards, I saw her slice up a steer’s roasted ballocks, taste, and proclaim, ‘Attached or not, man or carne, they taste the same!’”
Chandrika crowed a laugh.
“Did she really?” Fiametta was charmed.
I laughed at the memory. “At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about.” When my family wasn’t busy trying to kill each other, they were great people to have at your back. Sometimes, that was good to remember. “Go on.”
Fiametta picked up the thread of her doubtful tale. “Magno went to Padua University and immediately gained a reputation as a scholar—he’s intelligent—and a shyster. He claimed to be the genius behind the Montague name in wines.”
“That testa di cazzo!” I utilized the same crude expression Friar Laurence had used.
“When it makes no difference to tell the truth or a lie, he tells a lie. He holds a degree in the art of deception. So many lies drip from the font of his lips, both the wary and the credulous believe him.” Fiametta proved her Montague heritage with the poetry of her description and her disdain.
Then, with a return to her straightforward language, she added, “Other students mostly, but professors, too, for they’re all younger sons, and they want to believe falsehoods and taradiddles. ”
“Truth,” I said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be at the university. They’d be managing their family estates.”
“Exactly. Magno does have a talent. No more than any other Montague. Less than you, as you proved last night.”
At the recollection of me trouncing Great-uncle Magno in full view of family, neighbors, and friends, I felt a lovely bliss spread over me.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. He was simply wrong, and he hated that so much, his eyes turned the color of bile and sparks shot from them, as if to set fire to the very stage we sat on.
When I recalled his wicked accusation aimed at Papà and me that we had cheated, and how Papà grabbed him by the nape of the neck and hustled him to the door, the door held open by half a dozen of our loyal servants, who beamed their pleasure at Magno’s exit …
When Papà aimed that final magnificent kick at Magno’s rump with such force it propelled him into the icy street, and he slipped and tried to recover and slipped and …
Magno resembled a child’s toy dancing on two strings.
Ah, those sweet memories would never fade.
Fiametta was not caught in the sweet fog of remembrance that embraced me, and I had to scramble to catch up as she spoke.
“Also what he said, remember? ‘I can tell you what kind of soil cradled the vine, what kind of vine produced the grape, where it was produced. I’m the best of any Montague ever born.’ He’s said it so often he believes it, and no one doubts him, such is his conviction.”
“He is good,” I assured her.
“Yes, and at wine-tasting expositions, he’s built an unassailable reputation, so much so that when he declares a wine is bad, the winemaker has no chance of getting top dollar for his barrels.”
I didn’t have to think hard to figure out Magno’s angle. “If a winemaker wants his seal of approval, that FLAMM that’s branded on the barrels, they have to pay.”
“He has to approve the wine, and then, if they wish to have the brand, they pay.” Fiametta lifted one finger. “Furthermore, now winemakers pay to have him taste their wines. No approval guaranteed.”
I had to unbraid all my suspicions about all the poisonings. “Someone is trying to kill Great-uncle Magno because he gave their wine a bad rating.”
“That would seem like the case.”
I knew by her tone I had drawn the wrong conclusion, the conclusion Magno had presented to me. “Tell me what you know.”
“Since I arrived back in Veneto, I haven’t gone much into any of the cities or into society. Life is not kind to women such as Chandrika and me.” Fiametta gave me the wide-eyed You understand, right?
I didn’t, quite, although I now had an inkling why Papà had said Fiametta was not for Niklaus of Denmark. She was a woman who thought like a man, who had no patience for “a woman’s place,” who loved Chandrika in a physical way?
Chandrika returned her affection, for her wide dark eyes adored Fiametta.
Fiametta continued, “After we arrived at the inn with Chandrika, I admit, I lurked.”
Chandrika had been absolutely still, listening without expression. Now she sighed. “I remained alone in the rooms a great deal, for Fiametta can defend herself, but I am her … What do you call me, Fiametta?”
Fiametta touched her chest over her heart. “The tender place that invites ruin.”
My inkling grew and flourished as quickly as a sword lily in the summer’s heat.
“For Fiametta would die for me.” Chandrika watched Fiametta with admiration and loving pleasure. “She so pledged to my father, and she’s a woman of vows that bind.”
“She’s a Montague,” I assured Chandrika. “Thus we all are.” No wonder Magno hated Fiametta. She scorned him for every reason he thought himself worthy of admiration.
“Then should we not wonder what Magno pledged to himself?” Chandrika’s lyrical voice couldn’t conceal her disquiet as she asked the ominous—and completely accurate—question.