Who: Cesare, Chiaro, Tadeo
Why: Looking far into their future...
What: 300 words, taking place in the Autumn of 1503.
***
The kiss is soft, so soft, and
Cesare draws breath like a drowning man
who frantically scrabbles for purchase;
stay, he begs raggedly - it's his last attempt
at chasing the unchaseable
"Taddeo!" Wheeling his horse around, Miguel signals to Volpe who is bringing up the rear. "Taddeo," he repeats, "we have to stop." Rain is pearling down his forehead. He wipes his face with a wet sleeve. "There is no way he'll make it to Nepi."
Taddeo curses and spits. "God's blood, man. It's what, six more miles? We stop here, we're sitting ducks." His handsome features are made ugly by something like... despair? Revulsion? Miguel can't decide. Disappointment, perhaps.
He's disappointed that Cesare should prove mortal, after all. Is that it? "Go look," Miguel says simply, leaning back, gloved hands on the pommel. Here, his body seems to say, this is it. We shall go no further.
Folding back the curtain of the litter, Taddeo bites his lip and holds his breath. "Your Excellency," he says, voice rich and smooth and not cracking a bit.
Hanging back, Miguel watches. Oh, he keeps an eye on the hills, keeps the baggage train rolling, sizes up the terrain. Taddeo is right; if they stop here, they'll be defenseless. No letter of passage, no seal nor Papal writ would save their arses. Miguel watches Taddeo, not so inscrutable now.
Turning, Taddeo squints up at the rain, then back at Miguel. "Fine. Thirty minutes. Then we continue." Miguel can't recall the other man's gaze ever having been so dull. "And get someone to clean him up before we enter town."
Underneath the rash Cesare is as white as a sheet
hair and beard tangled,
eyes sunken deeper than the dead Christ's
lips still parted in a kiss he lost between the sheets
***