CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?
Admires the jay the insect’s gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
—Alexander Pope
Hungary
1493
The battle was won, and Giovanni Sforza d’Aragona was on his way home to Italy, away from this blood-soaked land and the vicious war, back to Rimini and the warm glow of his castle and his young sons. He had ten ponies taken from the razed stables carrying jewels and trunks of gold and weapons, all recovered from the field.
He would give a small portion of his spoils to his priests, to thank them for their intercessions, a greater portion to the pope, Alexander VI, thus currying favor with the blessed father, and the largest portion to his cousin, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, to expedite the marriage agreements with the Borgias. Giovanni’s first wife had died a couple of years ago, and he wanted Lucrezia to be his second.
It would be an excellent alliance. She was the daughter of the pope, albeit from the wrong side of the bed, and well educated. He’d been told she was interested in many things, and her greatest love: falcons and the hunt.
Giovanni had seen many things, but he’d never forgotten the man he’d met in Hungary, a man who carried the falcon on his fist. His name was Zoltan Szabo, and he’d allied himself with Giovanni, provided him soldiers. He was a pale-skinned man with long black hair. He’d spoken Italian, but with a thick accent, and ate his meat raw and bloody, like his bird. The two men had hunted together, nothing unusual there, but the relationship Zoltan had with the bird had given Giovanni pause. It was an eerie sort of communication, had made Giovanni wonder exactly what the two shared. He’d never spoken of it to Zoltan. He supposed he’d been afraid to. At the memory, Giovanni crossed himself. He hoped Lucrezia’s love of falconry wouldn’t lead her to the unnatural. Or to eating raw meat.
He prayed she would give him many children and hoped the circumstance of her own birth would allow her more easily to accept his sons, born of his mistress, not his wife. The twins would be old enough to ride now. He looked forward to seeing them.
The ride was hard, the days long, and at night, the soldiers would sit around the fire and tell stories. Giovanni was especially fascinated about a tale of a powerful Hungarian prince who drank blood. It was sacrilege to listen to such things, but he couldn’t help himself. He listened long into the night, and when he slept, his dreams were nightmares of men in armor with fangs the size of wolves, who could not be slain, no matter how many times he struck them with his sword. They carried falcons on their fists and spoke with heavy accents.
The next day, unsettled and eager to be gone, Giovanni hurried his groom to saddle his horse. The groom, a lad named Franco, nervous, trying to please his master, left the cinch too loose, and as Giovanni mounted, the saddle pulled to the side, dropping both Giovanni and the saddlebags to the ground. Giovanni was cursing his groom when he saw a book of papers wrapped in a white cloth slide out of the saddlebag.
“Careful, Franco. I’m planning to give it to my new bride when we wed.”
Franco whispered, “I looked at it, sire. It is a fine book. Will she be able to read it?”
“Of course she will. She speaks many languages.”
Franco scuffed his shoes in the dirt, then he leaned close. “Sire, I must tell you, I’ve heard the pages. They speak, at night, from your saddlebags, to me. They tell me to do things.”
Giovanni clouted Franco’s head. “You’ve been drinking the ale again, haven’t you? Do not say such ridiculous things.”
“Sire, forgive me, but truly, the words they speak are not ridiculous.”
What was this all about? Giovanni said, “Don’t say such things to the rest of the men. They might not understand, may decide to drop you off a cliff.”
And Franco bowed his head, nodded.
But that night, when the fire was low, Franco heard the words again, whispers in his head, growing louder and more insistent. He went the saddlebag, put his ear against the worn leather, and the pages spoke.
He couldn’t understand the words, exactly, but the whispers told him many things, including listing the names of the men who were planning to murder his master and steal the treasure for themselves.
Franco took up a sword and went to where three of the men still sat beside the fire. The nearest man was almost too easy to kill, the sword slid through his neck like butter. The second and the third were also easy. The fourth, though, alerted by the crack of a branch under Franco’s foot, jumped to his feet. His death was loud and roused the rest of the camp. The fifth ran from Franco, screaming. The rest of the soldiers wrestled the sword away from Franco. Giovanni, asleep farthest away from the fire, was awakened by the fighting.
Franco was on his knees by the fire, hands bound behind him.
Giovanni looked at the four dead soldiers, then back at Franco. “What have you done?”
Franco raised his eyes to Giovanni’s face. He whispered, “I did as the pages instructed. I killed four of the men who planned to kill you. I was protecting you. The fifth escaped me.” And Franco nodded toward the soldier.
“But my men wouldn’t kill me.” He looked to the fifth, and the man fell to his knees, crying, “They were forcing me, sire. They wanted me to poison your food, but I refused, I would never—”
His words were cut off along with his head, which rolled into the fire.
The soldiers looked on, wondering what magic had come to the groom.
Giovanni raised Franco to his feet and embraced him.
“Thank you for my life. Now, explain to me how you knew about this plot.”
“It was the pages, sire.”
Gradara Castle
Near Venice, Italy
Three Months Later
“Tell me the story again, Papa. The one in the book you brought home about twin brothers who drank blood.”
“One more time, Marco, and then it’s off to sleep with you. Once upon a time, there were two brothers.” Giovanni would never admit to his sons he couldn’t read the book, that it had been Franco, his groom, who’d told him the story of the twin brothers from long ago.
“Like Luciano and me?”
“Sì, like you and Luciano. They shared a womb and were born within minutes of each other. It was soon apparent that one of the brothers was stronger than the other, even though they should have been exactly alike. When the weaker began to sicken and waste, his brother, devastated, searched high and low for a cure.”
Marco whispered, “Like Luciano and me.” But his father didn’t hear him.
“He rode east, to the farthest corner of the earth, and collected strange herbs and the blood of young beasts. He then rode north, as far as he could, where it was light all day, and stayed a summer with a shaman who taught him how to use the herbs and the blood to live forever. He rode west, then, where the women were pale and staring, and collected books that would help expand his brother’s mind. And then he rode south, to his brother’s side, and, together, they experimented.
“They boiled the herbs, and they tasted the flesh of the young animals, and they drank the blood of the women in their village. And they grew strong, together, and the weaker brother wrote everything down in a book so they would never forget.”
The fire crackled, and sparks flew in the air. Giovanni looked pensively into the flames a moment, then turned back to his sons. “Everywhere they went, blood followed. And the brothers saw the villagers they’d spared die after growing old and sick, leaving behind another generation, who grew to maturity, married, created children, and still, the brothers preyed among them, and still, there was no gray in their whiskers. They remained tall and straight and vigorous.
“All of their tales they recorded, how they drank of the necks of virgins under the full moon, how the howls of wolves and bears never struck fear in their hearts. They moved unseen, unknown, until they set upon other young women and girls.”
“The book you brought home, Papa, it is the story of the brothers?”
“It is, young Marco.”
“I want to drink the blood of virgins,” the child whispered, and his father slapped him across the mouth, hard.
His father stood over them, his face suffused with blood and anger.
“I am sorry, Papa,” Marco whispered, wiping the blood from his mouth. “I was only thinking of Luciano, of ways he could be strong again.”
“It is a story, Marco,” Giovanni repeated, praying it was so. “It is not real, only a tale like the ones the bards tell us when they visit. You must swear to me you will never believe this tale or any like it. You must swear you will never act upon anything in this story. Swear to me!”
He shook both Luciano and Marco. Marco, terrified for his brother, yelled, “We swear, Papa, we swear. Let him go, please, let him go. We won’t ask to hear the tale again. Please tell us about the campaign. Tell us about the men you killed in battle.”
Luciano said, “Yes, Papa. Tell us about the campaign. Tell us.”
Marco watched his father draw a deep breath. Still, he kept himself between Luciano and their father, holding his brother’s hand so it wouldn’t shake, and pretended to listen to his father tell of fighting and death and pillage, all those deaths ordained and commended by the priests.
When their father left them and they were alone in their soft feather bed, Marco and Luciano spoke of the tale, of the long-ago brothers, twins, just like them, who lived for generations, and how they were able to do so.
Marco held his brother tight, afraid to say the word aloud, but he did. “Perhaps the blood of a virgin will help give you strength, Luciano, like the brother in the book.”
Luciano, a thoughtful boy, said, “It is possible the blood of another has healing properties. This must be why the physicians bleed us. Perhaps they give our blood to those weaker than us. I agree this may work. Are you going to steal Papa’s book?”
“I need the instructions. Perhaps there are ways to make the blood taste better.”
“You know he keeps the book on the shelf in his outer chambers. He plans to give it to our new mother as a gift for their wedding.”
“Then I must go tonight. I pray he will not catch me.”
“He isn’t in his chambers. He is bedding a chambermaid.”
“How do you know, Luciano?”
His brother’s gray eyes darkened. “I watch, I listen. I feel this strange book may be my savior. Even with it here in the castle, I feel stronger.”
Marco slipped into his father’s rooms, comfortable in the knowledge his father was busy with a chambermaid.
It was easy to find. The book sang out to him. It felt warm in his hands. He opened it and studied the drawings, but he didn’t recognize what they were. And the words on the page were in a strange language he’d never seen—yet somehow they seemed familiar. Several pieces of paper were loose inside the binding. He could see the numbers were out of order.
But the sense of them—Marco didn’t need to read the words to know what they were saying.
They needed blood. The pages needed blood.
He hurried back to his brother, and, by candlelight, they sat with their hands linked, each touching the book. The loose pages held instructions, Marco knew it. He pulled them out. Other pages were bound, so he left them intact. Luciano had to draw on one of the pages, he had to mark it, he said, and it had to be in blood. Marco pricked his arm and Luciano drew a picture in his blood on the page. Luciano had to have the page, had to. One page had a drawing that called to him. He used the edge of his knife to slice out the page. He slid it inside his pillow along with the pages that held the recipes. Marco prepared to return the book to his father’s rooms.
The roar of their father’s voice was nearly enough to blow out the candle. It guttered and flickered, then strengthened again. “What are you doing?”
Giovanni grabbed Marco’s small arm, dragged him upright, and pulled him from the bed. “I know you stole my book! This is a gift for your new mother. How dare you?”
“I’m sorry, Papa, I’m sorry. I thought it called to me, but I was wrong. It is blasphemous. I was bringing it back to you. We don’t want it.”
Giovanni’s heart pounded hard. He said between gritted teeth. “It is merely a book, of no importance at all. Only a book. Go to bed.” And he grabbed the book and left their bedchamber.
Giovanni was frightened. He remembered his young groom Franco was called to kill his compatriots, remembered how he’d told Giovanni about the two brothers, the twins. All along he’d believed the groom was lying, making it up. Ridiculous, but now—Marco had said the pages called to him? Just as his groom had said?
He sat up with the book all night, but he couldn’t understand anything in it. The next morning, he summoned the visiting Jesuit, here to officiate his marriage. He wrapped the book in a white cloth and put it in a box. He called the Jesuit aside. “Father, please take this book away with you. Back to Rome. I no longer want it in my home.”
The Jesuit took the book without a word. “As you wish, my lord. However, I am not to see Rome for quite some time. I travel to England at week’s end. With your blessing, I will take it there, far away from your lands.”
The book left soon after.
Marco and Luciano stood on the ramparts of the castle, watching the priest ride away. They thought they heard the book crying, crying for the parts of it left behind.
Soon, from one of the pages, Luciano found how to get the blood he craved. And how to make it palatable.