The Bronze Crown

«Wait a few moments, boy. I’ll make myself presentable, and I’ll be right with you. Take a seat in one of the chairs along the corridor. I’ll be as quick as I can.»

She styled her hair, put on a sober dress to give her freedom of movement, and soon reached the young man in the corridor.

«Well? What’s going on?»

«The executioner wants you in Piazza della Morte.»

«Why on earth?» replied Lucia outraged. «I made it clear that I would never want to see my handmaiden executed! So why disturb me?»

«There is a problem. The last wish of a condemned person is sacred and must be granted. The executioner cannot proceed until the victim has been satisfied. It is an unwritten law, but for Gerard, our executioner, it is a matter of honor.»

«And what have I to do with it, pray? What is Mira’s last wish?»

«That is the point. Your handmaiden has asked that you be near her on the point of death. You must come.»

«That’s out of the question. I swore to myself that I would never witness a capital execution again.»

«In this case I’ll have to go and wake up Judge Uberti, who won’t be very happy...»

Having understood the antiphon, and knowing that in those days it was better not to make trouble with the authorities of the old guard, Lucia decided to follow the young man in Death’s Square. At the end of the day, a few hours later she would show up at the Government’s palace and would forever give greetings to the old “caryatids”, which would no longer continue to hold public office. So it was better not to start antagonizing Judge and others ahead of time.

Walking along Via delle Botteghe in the dampness of the early dawn, Lucia squeezed herself into her dress, shivering with cold, even though it was already the height of the summer season. She crossed Porta della Rocca, continuing to follow the boy who was leading the way, but when she caught a glimpse of her young handmaiden, her heart leapt, she felt it pulsating in her throat and could not hold back the tears that were trying to gush from her eyes. Mira’s head was already resting on the stump. The executioner was there beside her, with the hood on his head and the sharp axe resting on the ground. He hadn’t even bothered to pick up the condemned woman’s hair in a ponytail or a bun, because the previous day Father Ignazio Amici’s torturers had thought of having it cut almost to nothing. The noblewoman felt the pleading gaze of her handmaiden upon her and could not help but approach her, caressing the back of her neck and bringing her lips closer to the girl’s cheek.

The servant lowered her gaze and turned to her old mistress with a thread of voice.

«Now I can die happy. I have you next door. I know you have spared me a more atrocious torment and I wanted to thank you personally before I die. Pray for me, and commend my soul to the Lord.»

Lucia took Mira’s hand, came closer and whispered words into her ear, so that neither the executioner nor the boy who had accompanied her could hear.

«I would also like to spare you this torment. I have some gold coins with me. I could pay for the silence of these two. I’ll send the boy to the carpenter to ask him to make a chest, saying this was your last wish: to be buried inside a sarcophagus. The executioner won’t kill you, but he’ll tell everyone he did it. I will have him fill the chest with stones, so that it weighs as if it contained your body, and I will have it placed in the basement of the Church of Death. No one’s going to look inside. You will run down the hill and reach the convent of the Poor Clares of the Valley. Dressed as a nun, no one will recognize you. Let some time pass and then get away from Jesi. You can make a new life somewhere else...»

«No, my lady. Death no longer frightens me. My life ends here, today, on this square, on this stump. See that my body is given a proper burial.»

Mira looked at Gerardo, nodding her head. The executioner understood at once. The condemned woman’s wish had been granted. We could proceed. Lucia stepped back, let go of Mira’s hand, as the axe rose. She looked at the executioner’s eyes through the holes drilled in the hood and saw them shiny. But she did not have time to verify the truthfulness of her sensation, because with a sharp blow the instrument fell on the victim’s neck. The head rolled on the pavement, while the rest of the body was shaken by convulsions for a few brief moments, until it stiffened and fell sideways. Blood splashes from the neck grazed Lucia, but not a drop went to soil her clothes.

After a moment of absolute silence, a cock crowed in the distance. It was getting daylight, when the Piazza della Morte was crossed by a prolonged cry, a cry coming from the bowels of Lucia Baldeschi.

«Noooooooooooo...!»

CHAPTER 7

The mounts were fast and didn’t fear the climbs, descents and paths in the bush. So, to avoid the centre of Ancona, Andrea and Gesualdo had crossed the narrow valley between the hills, climbed up the Taglio di Candia and, leaving the Rocca di Montesicuro on their left, descended towards Paterno. From there, they had soon reached the castle of the Torrette, possession of the peaceful Counts Bonarelli. The doors of the castle, as usual, were open, and therefore Gesualdo beckoned his young friend to cross the inner courtyard without stopping to give many explanations.

«Hey, you! Slow down and get off your horses. Don’t you know your manners, you peasant peasants?», a guard apostrophized them, taking an arrow from his quiver and arming his crossbow, while the two knights were raising the dust of the yard and scaring away anyone who was in their way.

Gesualdo lifted the banner with the insignia of the Duke of Montacuto, inviting Andrea to do the same, to make it clear who was meddling in their path. The guard peered at them in doggedness, spat on the ground, but lowered his weapon. In a few moments, the two knights came out of the northern door of the castle and found themselves on the wide dirt road running along the coast up to the mouth of the Esino river.

By now the sun was high, when Gesualdo spoke to Andrea for the first time. The sea, on their right, was crossed by the splendid reflections given by the sun’s rays. Such was the glow that one risked blinding oneself looking at the expanse of water. On the left the hill sloped steeply down to the road, sometimes with rocky ledges, sometimes with the last offshoots of an intricate forest of chestnut oaks, oak and downy oaks.

«Soon we will be at Rocca Priora. It is Jesi’s territory, but I have some friends there. We’ll stop for refreshments and ask about the safety of the route. We know very well that some ugly faces should have passed before us. If they’re smart people, they shouldn’t be noticed. But I had the impression that those two were fools», said Gesulado, pulling the reins and slowing down his brake pad.

Andrea adjusted and the horses went from a fast gallop to a more moderate pace, to a trot that forced the riders to squeeze their knees and follow the animals’ movements.

«Fools and drunks, but no less dangerous for this, on the contrary!» replied Andrea, taking a look at the rock they were approaching. «Look, Gesualdo! Doesn’t that seem strange to you? It’s a border outpost, but there’s no carving on the guard’s walkway.»

He didn’t have time to finish the sentence, and his steed soaring as two arrows had come hissing and had stuck in the ground just a few steps from his legs. Andrea had to hold on tight so as not to be thrown off, but he stayed in the saddle, looked towards his old companion and understood at once what Gesualdo was planning to do. The latter had the horse discarded on the right, until it turned on itself, to give the impression to the enemy that he was beating in retreat. Andrea imitated him, going after him. They turned back for a short stretch on the road, then bent inland and entered the intricate riparian forest, mostly poplars and willows. While the poplars stood high, the willows offered good protection to the two horsemen, who moved with circumspection, trying to make sure that their passage did not shake the treetops more than the wind did, they reached the Esino river, which at that time of the year was rather low, because the season had been dry for some time. They had their horses submerged in water to go on the other bank and reach the Rocca without crossing the bridge they were about to cross when they were attacked.

«Be careful. The other bank is marshy ground. The horses could sink in the mud and we would be forced to abandon them. And it wouldn’t be good to stay on foot. We have to stay in the water. Do you see that channel? It takes the river water to the pass that surrounds the rock. We’ll reach the back of the castle through the moat. I remember there’s a back door there, which won’t be hard to unhinge. It’s a wooden door, which allows you to get into the basement. We don’t know what happened. Maybe our two “friends” have surprised the guards and now they are inside the castle, but I’m not sure. I heard with my own ears that they would be waiting for us at the tower of Montignano, which is a much less protected garrison and is already in the territory of Senigallia.»

«And what do you think happened here?»

«Perhaps the castle, without our knowledge, was the victim of an enemy attack. Perhaps it fell into the hands of the soldiers of Duke Della Rovere. I don’t know, but I’m sure of one thing: whoever threw those arrows at us is inside the fortress. They were not thrown from above, from the guard’s walkways, but from some slits that open between the first and second floor. If we are lucky, we will enter the fortress from the cellars and take these enemies of ours by surprise, which in my opinion should not be numerous.»

«No, Gesualdo, it could be suicide. We don’t know who we’re dealing with, and we don’t know how many men we’ll find in there. Rather we try to slip out the back of the castle and head north.»

«Perhaps you are right, my young friend. I see you have the mind of a skilled strategist, rather than the impulsiveness of an old warrior like myself, who always seeks confrontation at any cost. And that is good.»

Meanwhile, they had reached the moat surrounding the fortress and were now under the strangely lowered drawbridge, despite the hostilities shown from the inside. Always remaining in the water and making as little noise as possible, they circumvented the building, reaching the side overlooking the sea, on which no windows opened, in order not to offer easy access to pirates coming from the Adriatic.

«At this point it should not be risky to leave the rampart», whispered The Mancino, trying to keep the tone of voice as low as possible. «We will find ourselves in the gravelly ground that leads from here to the sea shore.»

In fact, in that area the ground was not marshy, and the debris brought by the river Esino over the centuries had formed a beach of gravel and pebbles, very beautiful to see, as insidious for the hooves and legs of horses. As the animals were dry, the horsemen spurred them on to move away at a fast pace, but the gravelly bottom hindered the movements of the animals, which the more they tried to start, the more they sank among the stones. At a certain point, Gesualdo’s horse bent on its front legs, remaining on its knees: the horseman, unbalanced forward, was thrown from the saddle and found himself on the ground, to get back on his feet with a skilful somersault. He returned to the horse, took up the reins, shouted at him to get up and jumped back into the saddle.

«I see with pleasure that you are still as nimble as a young man, despite your age and despite having the use of only one arm. Congratulations. I was right to want someone like you at my side for this perilous journey!», said Andrea, who despite the situation had not lost his spirit.

But the hustle and bustle, the noise of the horses’ paws on the gravel, the human screams and the equine nitrites, had certainly not gone unnoticed from the inside of the fortress, from which at that moment three knights dressed in armour were coming out, with their hidden tight in their heads and their spears in remains.

«As he wished to prove!», said Gesualdo. «The signs are the Della Rovere’s ones. Let’s run, while there’s still time. I don’t want to be stabbed by their spears. We have a bit of an advantage. And even their horses will have a hard time galloping on the gravel. Let’s put our steeds in the pass and head north along the beach. If we keep our distance, they won’t catch up with us. As soon as possible we’ll jump inland and head towards the village of Monte Marciano. Piccolomini has always remained neutral, both towards Jesi and Senigallia. The Della Rovere thugs will not chase us.»

But a little further on, still on the beach, towards the north, a group of warriors on foot, dressed in coloured tunics, also bearing Della Rovere’s insignia, emerged. A first deaf explosion was heard, accompanied by a cloud of smoke. Andrea heard an object whistling, passing quickly near his ear.

«What was it?» he asked his friend.

«A lead ball. They have firearms. Muzzle-loading rifles. Much less accurate than arrows, but much more deadly if they catch you.»

«We’re in a vice, Gesualdo. What do we do now?»

«There!» replied the latter who, at a glance, had already made a plan. A small grassy strip had conquered a tongue of beach and headed for the hill, a short distance away. «That’s a good escape route.»

While other lead balls whistled near their heads, the horses, as soon as they reached the most stable strip of ground, were satisfied, regaining their strength and briefly gaining the hillside. In the meantime, the three enemy horsemen had also thrown themselves into pursuit, and now what passed near their ears were no longer metal balls, but dangerous arrows with a very sharp tip. Fortunately, Andrea’s and Mancino’s horses were much faster than the others, and were not even weighed down by knights in armour. The two friends pushed the horses up the steep path that climbed towards the village of Monte Marciano. When they reached the top of the hill, with the village already in sight a few leagues away, they turned downwards, and saw that the men of Della Rovere had not ventured beyond a certain point.

«As expected, they did not enter the Piccolomini’s territories. For now, we have saved our lives», said the Left-handed man.

«For now!», was Andrea’s reply.

The two thugs, Amilcare and Matthew, came from a small mountain village in the territory of the Serenissima Republic of Venice. Ponte nelle Alpi was located on the Alemagna road, which continued northwards, beyond the rocky bastions of the Dolomite Mountains, until it reached the Germanic lands. At least once every two months the inhabitants of the village trespassed into the Tyrol to stock up on beer. Some of them had tried to learn the art of distilling barley and hops in order to obtain the good, frothy, amber-coloured liquid, but given the difficulty of understanding the language of their Tyrolean friends, they had never managed to obtain a product as good as the one they were going to buy on the other side of the pass. Amilcare, who was particularly fond of beer, had brought a certain supply of beer, but it was now running low.

«In these areas, I don’t know why, beer becomes undrinkable. We’ve only been riding for an hour and a half and it’s become as hot as piss», said Amilcare, draining the wineskin and burping noisily.