Chapter 48
Magno was naught but a pawn to be moved about the chessboard, and as queen, I would vanquish him.
“Help, help!” I didn’t bother to project, because the only man who would buy into this maidenly distress was Magno, and he was right there, backing me toward the steps and not paying enough attention to his path.
Cal played his part by saying, “Please, Magno, don’t hurt my bride,” and in between that and other insincere protestations, he moved his hand to guide me.
It took only a few stumbles from me to direct Magno where I wished, and when Cal nodded his approval, I grasped Great-uncle Magno’s wrist, shoved myself to the side, pushed the knife point hard at him, and stabbed him in the meat of his shoulder.
He screamed, a lovely sound.
He wrenched the point out of his shoulder.
Keeping my grip on Magno, I used both hands to twist his arm backward and yank up. I wasn’t tall enough or strong enough to dislocate his shoulder, yet I did achieve my objective.
As he swung away from me and crouched to try to escape the pain, he landed hip first on the red-hot brazier.
I let him go and leaped away and into Cal’s waiting arms.
The heat penetrated Magno’s doublet and tights.
He screeched and stumbled, upsetting the brazier and spreading charcoal under his own feet.
His soft courtly shoes smoldered. He tried to run and tripped on his cloak.
He landed on his hands and knees among the coals.
All the while he screamed and cursed me, Prince Escalus, his brother, the vintner who was blackmailing him, the city of Verona. …
Those people who hadn’t fled the palace now returned, attracted by the commotion, to watch the danse macabre. By the time Cal threw the rug on Magno to smother the flames, he was scorched and burned on all imaginable parts.
While Magno sobbed and tore at his smoking clothing, becoming less of a lordly, unrepentant murderer and more of a pitiful specter of upcoming death, the kitchen lad who cared for the fires appeared, gathered up the charcoals before they could set the stage on fire, and disappeared back into the palace.
Our small but adoring audience stood below, and what started as a single person clapping became a small cheer, then louder clapping, and then every person who surrounded the platform lifted their hands over their heads as they clapped and cheered for us while my great-uncle, the ampelographic worm, groveled at our feet.
Cal and I stood alone on the stage, dispensers of justice, as we were and always would be.
The tribute was all the more touching for being spontaneous, the product of our courage and cunning.
Cal put his arm around me, and we smiled and waved, then shivered graphically and indicated everyone should go inside.
For the most part, they did, gossiping and smiling, preparing for the certain celebration that would follow.
A few lingered, of course, mostly women, who sighed in admiration as Cal took his princely I’m a portrait stance, hand on his hip, shapely leg outstretched.
“Beloved Rosie, what would you have me do with Magno?” he asked.
“You don’t want him to die, I trow, but live to suffer. ”
“Yes, please.” Because no matter how hard I tried, I knew never in my life would I forget the sight of my dear friend Lysander in flames as he tried to save me. A tear dripped off my cheek.
Cal brushed it aside with his thumb and cupped my chin. “You must lift this to its usual proud position.”
I nodded and sniffled. I would go to Lysander, although I knew Fiametta could do more and better than me to help Friar Laurence. But first, and in this circumstance, justice took precedence, and my place was beside my prince.
Like a mighty Viking ship breaking through a sea of ice, Niklaus of Denmark made his way through the exiting crowd.
When he reached the edge of the stage, he spoke to the broken, shivering figure of Magno, his accent stern and guttural.
“Lord Magno, I did warn you of the dangerous game you played. A man of your age and diminutive stature cannot expect to thrive when all you are is puffed vanity and crawling malice.” He sounded very much as he had when he spoke to Magno that first time, after Cal had punched Magno in the face, like someone who knew the man well enough to admonish him.
To my disbelief, Magno took one look at Niklaus and tried to sprint away, his burned shoes tearing into shreds.
When Niklaus leaped onto the stage and, with a single huge hand, snatched him by the nape of his neck, Magno howled, “Nooo! I’m innocent!
She’s a witch! I didn’t know it was poison!
” Niklaus knelt beside Magno and secured him while he squirmed and squalled like a poacher caught in his own trap.
“I’m a lord of the Montagues. You have no right to hurt me! ”
Who in truth was Niklaus of Denmark?
Looking up at Cal and me, Niklaus asked, “If I may?”
Cal gestured at him to stand.
As Niklaus stood and bowed with a flourish, he never released Magno but held him like a bitch dog held a puppy.
“I beg you, Prince Escalus, most noble podestà of Verona, and, Princess Rosaline, best of all women and lady of the light, do not end Lord Magno’s miserable life with an execution, no matter how just. Months ago, Klaus of the Vitalian Brotherhood hired me to bring him the greatest ampelographic specialist of all time, for Klaus wishes to be educated in the wines he raids, and he will be taught by no one else.
That person, according to all reports, is Lord Magno Montague. ”
“Him?” I indicated my disbelief with a single gesture at the pompous bag of wind, who even now squalled his disbelief at being taken held accountable after so many murders.
“Such is his fame that he’s known in Denmark and in the Vitalian Brotherhood as the greatest wine taster in all the southlands,” Niklaus said.
I couldn’t believe it. “Him? Great-uncle Magno? His fame is nothing but puffery and nonsense, invented by him and spread by the gullibles, who are ignorant enough to believe in his self-ennoblement!”
Niklaus shrugged. “So I have discovered. But Klaus knows nothing of that, and Klaus will have what Klaus wishes. To fail Klaus is to find one’s life ended by the gradual, terrible removal of precious bits of flesh.”
With renewed vigor, Magno kicked, squirmed, and squealed, but Niklaus shook him like a terrier shook a rat. It was almost as if Magno would rather die than be taken to …
“Where’s the Vitalian Brotherhood?” I asked.
To my surprise, Cal watched Niklaus with rather smug amusement, which boded ill for Magno.
To me, he said, “The Vitalian Brotherhood is a group of pirates who ply the dark, frozen oceans far to the north, above Mecklenburg and Denmark, where the sea monsters lurk and the sun fails to rise all the winter long. The Vitalian Brotherhood raid the harbors and fight wars as mercenaries, and Klaus is their leader … at least until he’s killed. ”
I felt almost obligated to ask the question Cal seemed to want me to ask. “Then what happens?”
“Another takes his place.” Cal smirked. “I’ve heard that all the overthrown leader’s servants are put aboard his sinking ship to be a tribute to him when he dies.”
Magno whimpered, “It wasn’t my goblet. I wasn’t fated to have that goblet.”
I ignored Magno and looked at Niklaus. “Is that true?”
“It is true. If Klaus fails, as inevitably he must, then he must die, and all who serve him die at his side.” Niklaus gathered the rug at our feet, now pocked with holes made by the charcoal, and wrapped Magno in it, subduing his every struggle. “As will you, Magno. It’s an honor deeply felt.”
I couldn’t feel sympathy for Magno, but what a horrifying fate for the people who served the barbarian Klaus.
“No,” Magno moaned. “Not the cold, not the dark, not the death by drowning!”
“Be grateful. The icy seas will be the only thing to still the pain of your burns.” With a salute to us both, Niklaus leaped off the stage, made his way out of the garden with Magno, and disappeared from our lives.
I realized my jaw hung open, and snapped it shut. “Does this mean that Great-uncle Magno managed to create such an awe-inspiring image for himself as an ampelographic specialist that it penetrated the northlands, and he has been seized to train a pirate king in how to taste … wine?”
“Yes.” Cal stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I believe so.”
“He’s been hoist with his own petard.” I nestled my face in his palm. “What will he do when they discover he’s losing his exalted abilities and can be no more good to them than a peasant who swills ale?”
“You must have faith in Magno’s ability to deceive his way to fame.”
“Yes, I must give him credit for that.”
Cal looked around at the stage, where coals had bitten into the wood and bitten into Magno’s flesh. “Remind me never to anger you.”
“I was thinking the same thing about you.” I leaned my head on his chest, and when he put his arms around me, I almost blew over from the gust of romantic sighs from Cal’s admiring fans. I would have liked to remain here, to relax in the safety of his embrace.
Instead I squared my shoulders and prepared to do what must be done. “I must go to Nonna Ursula’s chambers and see how Lysander does.” I didn’t want to. Dear, sweet Mary and Jesus, what a coward I was!
“He’s alive.” Somehow someone had communicated that to Cal.
“Thank you. I can’t imagine what he suffers and what will come in the future.
” What could I say to Lysander, the man who loved me with his whole heart and got left behind in the upheavals of my life, yet had risked his life and future to save me?
What did I say to his family if he failed to survive?
Cal envied Lysander for all the contributions he would make to the future; yet what if Lysander was blinded forever?
What if his brilliant, inventive mind was deprived of that important sense? What would the cost be to the world?
Cal put his hand on the small of my back and escorted me down the steps. “Rosie, we’ll take care of him.”
He didn’t use the royal We; he meant he and I. And in the guilt and tatters of love and remembrances of friendship and selfless defense, I appreciated the assurance even as I dreaded what must come.