Micheletto had instilled a distrust of strangers in Nico from an early age, and he needed no words from his mother to bind an unwary tongue. During the course of the journey they conversed only with one another, and in such low tones that they were certain not to be overheard.
As they traveled through barren highlands and lush pastures, Nico confided to her the Duchess's intention to offer him in service to Philippe de Bourbon after Lucia had given birth, a plan that gained his mother's approval.
"Your father and I could exist only in the shadows, my love. Your destiny is to walk in both the light and the dark. If this man seems worthy of your fealty, offer it to him, but do not do so blindly. A weapon is only as deadly as the man who wields it and you, my son, are a formidable weapon. I would not have you serve an unworthy master. Cesare Borgia, for all his faults, was a worthy man. Seek out one such as he was."
The name sent a thrill of sensation racing down Nico's spine. Cesare Borgia. The threads of his own family and that of the Borgia were inextricably joined, like a silken web tossed in the breeze until it became a single cord. Lucia and the Duchess's father. The lover of his mother. The man whose loss his father never ceased to mourn.
"How do I know who to serve?"
"That is for each man, or woman, to decide. I gave my loyalty to the Borgia family, whom I still serve, though it is from bonds of love, not fealty."
As they neared the end of the journey, they rested for the night in the shade of a mountain pass. The stars shown brightly overhead, their brilliance eclipsed only by the moon. A tiny fire warmed feet grown weary with travel.
A scream that rolled across the hills brought Nico out of a light slumber that had allowed him to rest during the hours of the night while still maintaining watch. Next to him, his mother jerked awake. In the light of the fire, the blade she had clutched in her hand gleamed, reflecting the light of the newly risen moon.
She shook herself, and focused on locating the unearthly sound. Nico pointed to the peak that speared into the sky. Halfway up the incline, he saw a movement
The noise came again.
"A goat?" He guessed, looking to his mother for confirmation.
She nodded, and stood up. "It sounds as though it is injured. Wolves will come, if it is not silenced soon. I will..."
Nico caught his mother's hand as she moved toward the noise. "I will go. Keep watch that you may rouse the soldiers, if there is need." He pointed to the men who accompanied them. The sound of their deep, even breathing was undisturbed despite the frightful noise. The sentry, who rested with his back to a boulder, slumbered in a similar fashion, chin resting on his chest.
She nodded her approval. After taking a smoldering torch that had been left by the fire and kindling it once more to flames, Nico heading toward the source of the noise. He picked his way carefully, knowing that a carelessly placed footfall could signal the end of his journey, if not his life. The moon illuminated his path, casting dappled shadows on the ground. Tufts of wiry grass brushed his ankles.
Another plaintive howl led him to the source of the noise. Resting on it's side, the nanny goat's hugely distended belly swelled and moved as the animal tossed from side to side, alternating between groans of pain and grunts of exhausted labor. Nico jammed the torch into the ground and knelt by it's back legs. The smell of blood was ripe and pungent in the air.
Nico bit back a groan at the sight of the limp head and neck protruding from the goat's hindquarters. The kid that the dame strained to birth had already died, it's life ended before a single breath.
"Shhh,shhh, " he crooned, gently soothing with a caress while his mind raced. He had assisted Piero with difficult births, and he knew that the animal would soon join it's unfortunate offspring if he did not do something to ease her suffering.
A gust of wind that blew down from the mountains abruptly snuffed out his torch, leaving Nico in darkness. The goat lifted her head from the ground, where her exertions had carved a hollow in the soil, and looked at him. Though the light from the moon was faint, it was enough to see liquid, terrified eyes.
Nico blocked everything from his mind but the task at hand. He stripped off his doublet and shirt and touched the kid. A tongue protruded from it's lips, already cold despite the pulsing heat of a mother's body. An image flooded his mind: Piero with his arm buried inside a sheep, face contorting with effort as he guided the animal from its mother's womb.
"Don't pull, for the love of Christ, unless there is no other choice. If you can shift the hooves forward..." The tiny lamb emerged from it's mother with a splat and loosed a warbling cry. Within moments, the lamb had risen from the ground and was tended to by it's mother.
With one hand, Nico lifted the dead kid's head. With the other, he gently pressed inside, feeling his way along the still body while his hand was squeezed by muscular walls.
The goat screamed at the intrusion and tried to rise, body frantic with pain.
"Hush," he whispered, and pressed farther in, reaching , searching for hooves. What he found was an unyielding wall of bone that signaled the end of his hopes to deliver the dead kid easily.
He eased his arm out of the womb. A heaving shook the goat's body, and she tried to push, but it was a pitiful effort. Her strength had been taxed by straining for hours as the baby had died inside of her.
Nico cursed and grabbed the limp neck, pulling in time with the grunts. The screams of the animal increased in intensity, drowning out all sound. When the goat collapsed back he relaxed his hold and tried to see if the kid had slid forward, only to find that it was still wedged tightly inside.
"I'm sorry," Nico whispered, waiting for the next pulsing movement. He stroked his hand down the animal's flanks, finding the texture of the hair coarse and yet smooth. The black and white head lifted from the ground and looked back at him. Grief. He could see it in her eyes, pain and grief that turned her silvery-lit eyes human in the dim light. He would not let her suffer anymore. If he could not free the kid, he would end her life.
Nico braced himself against the ground, and pulled with all of his strength. The nanny screamed, an unearthly sound that echoed across the hills. Pain exploded in Nico's side as he labored, finally pulling the kid free even as a hoof from the spamming mother caught him in the side.
Once the shoulders had been freed, the kid slipped from its mother easily, landing in a heap on the stony ground. Nico straightened and picked up the body, cradling it against his naked chest. Though he knew there was no hope, he shook the body and breathed into its nose, hoping to find some scrap of life remaining.
Nico buried his face in the wet fur, finally realizing that his struggles were in vain. Warmth splashed against his chest. Nico tasted the tears on his lips as they seeped and then flooded from his eyes.
Sorrow howled from him, becoming more than mere regret for the wretched waste of life. He cried for his father, dead too soon and for his mother, who would never laugh with the joy he remembered from his youth. He cried for his sister, about to give birth in an alien land, and for the men that he had killed, the soldiers, the artist, and his cousin.
He cried, holding the tiny, cold body in his arms, the fluid and blood from it's birth staining his skin. He could not remember crying life this in his life. The whole of his body shook with the force of his sobs.
A warm hand touched his shoulder and Nico flinched back. "Oh, my son," his mother whispered.
She took the kid and he collapsed in her arms, crying in a way that he only dimly remembered from his youth, when her touch could mend the hurts of the entire world. She folded gracefully to the ground and he followed her, salting the skin of her neck with a thousand tears as she murmured soothing endearments.
When his grief had burned itself out, his mother turned and allowed him a moment to wipe the moisture from his face. Elizabetta placed the kid on the ground as Nico returned to the nanny, who was struggling to rise. With some coaxing, she rose, and Nico slipped a rope around her neck.
"What do I do?" He asked, gesturing to the weak and trembling dame. "Leave her?"
Elizabetta shook her head. "I am far past making such decisions for you, my son."
Nico turned, surveying the distant hills that leapt with a thousand shadows in the dim light. Below them, along a path he could faintly see etched into the side of the hill, a curl of smoke sluggishly emerged from a tiny stone hovel.
"The screams and the stench of death will bring predators. I will return her there."
She nodded and kissed his cheek, brushing at his tears with a gentle caress. They parted; her to return to the fire and he down the hill, dragging the exhausted goat behind him while cradling the dead in his arms.
The sky had lost a breath of its darkness as he neared the stone dwelling that had been built into the base of the mountain. A dog howled as he approached, and the goat bleated, straining against its rope halter.
"Show yourself!" Growled a voice from the deepest shadows. Exhaustion clouded Nico's senses, and he could not tell the source of the voice.
"I am here," Nico said, voice sounding small and weak even to his own ears. He pulled on the lead, edging the goat forward. In his hands, wrapped in his cloak, he still held the tiny body. "I could not..." His voice trailed off, and he swayed.
There was the sound of footsteps, and strong arms caught Nico as gray descended on his vision. "Eh, eh!" A jug was pressed to his lips, and Nico spluttered as a fiery substance burned down his throat.
"Another," the voice demanded, and Nico took another sip. It cleared his mind, and his vision cleared. Standing before him was a mountain of a man, the largest he had ever seen, with a gray beard and long hair mingling as it flowed over a brown robe.
Nico nodded his thanks and stood, pushing himself from the ground. Embarrassment brought a festering surge of red to his face that he hoped was disguised by the weak light leaking from the hut.
"My thanks," he said, then picked up his cloak, the black wool stained with the russet of dried blood. Unwrapping it, he displayed the dead kid. "I could not save it."
"And I could not find them, though I searched long. God must have guided your footsteps, that you could bring them back to me." Hands as cracked and rough as boulders took Nico's burden and caressed it gently. Under the trembling hands it seemed to have life, with hooves dancing in the wind. Tears sparkled in his eyes, leaking into the edges of the unkempt beard. "Little sparrow, we have marked your passing." The old man took the rope from Nico's hand and motioned him to follow.
The small enclosure that housed the herd was made from sticks pounded into stony ground and woven together, creating a light, flexible wattle fencing that shook in the wind. AS they neared it, the nanny's head rose, and she let out a plaintive noise that soon had a dozen of her kind crowding around. The old man closed the gate and fixed it with a stoat rope, then turned to face Nico.
"It was kindness that you did, helping an old man that all have forgotten. Come, share my fire for a time."
"I should return," Nico protested, though his voice was faint with weariness.
The old man took Nico's elbow. "No," he said. "You will come with me. Your friends will not leave you, and the wolves cry as they come down the mountains. I will not send you from my home after you have shown me such kindness. Come."
The single room of the hut was dominated by an enormous hearth. A pot rested in the embers of the blazing fire. Nico sat on the pressed earth floor and stretched his hands out, warming them in the blaze.
"More wine?" The old man asked.
Nico nodded, and the old man passed him a battered metal cup. Nico turned it in his hands and bit back a curse when a leering, grotesque face peered back at him from the corroded metal.
"Bacchus," the old man said, pointing at the cup. "One of the old gods." He filled another cup, and quaffed an enormous swallow. "It is a night when the old ways seem to walk once more." He closed his eyes, and a sudden rush of sparks threw light through the room, fully illuminating the olds man's face. What Nico had taken for a trick of the light was a burn that covered half of a visage already scarred with age. By the regularity of the burn, Nico knew his host had been tortured with flame.
They drank in silence for a time, allowing the heat of the fire and the wine to drive out the last of the chill from the night, until Nico remembered the dictates of courtesy, and he introduced himself.
His host returned the honor. "You may call me Old Man. I have forgotten my other name, if I ever had one besides that which my animals call me." The brown robe that he wore was stiff, the color Nico recalled from the earth outside. In it, the old man seemed formed from the mountains.
"Are you a priest?" He asked.
"I have been many things, in my day. A priest, a poet, a leader of men. But that was long ago. Days pass here with the speed of a hawk in flight, and I no longer mark their passing."
Nico looked around, seeing the simple food upon a rough table, the bottle of wine, and the pot bubbling as it hung over the fire. "I envy you the simplicity of your life."
The old man laughed until wine trickled from his mouth like blood, staining his beard. "That is the thought of a child, Nico, and you are no child, for all that your years are few."
With a nod, Nico acknowledged the truth of the old mans words.
"Can you spin me a tale, Old Man, that I may sleep this night?"
Eyes that shown with understanding regarded Nico, and in a soft, melodious voice like the finest drink he began to weave tales, wiling away the hours of the night. With the easy, practiced manner of a bard, stories fell from his lips, tales of sacrifice and bravery that Nico dimly remembered from his studies. He spoke of Hector, lost before the gates of a great city, and Hercules, who defeated all enemies save the one that resided in his own breast. He spoke of the love of women that lead men to war, and the love of brothers that sustained them. Rivers as wide as the ocean sprang forth in the warm, close air of the cabin, and lands journeyed to in voyages that tested the hearts of men.
Nico blinked, the smoke from the fire and the wine placing iron weights on his eyelids. He blinked again, and a heavy blanket descended upon his prone form, encasing him in warmth and wool.
"Sleep well, young wanderer," came a gruff voice, and in a haze it sounded from each corner of the hut, enfolding him with tones that seemed both young and old, rough and impossibly wise.
When Nico awoke in the morning his host had already departed, along with the flock. Deciding that he must have taken them to graze in the valley, Nico left a small pile of coins beneath a cup to pay for his lodging and departed, rejoining his party on the road.
His mother welcomed him with a smile, and seemed pleased that his eyes had lost their grief during the course of the night. The men who had slept through to the morning were inclined to grumble over the delay until Nico silenced them with a word.
The remainder of the journey proved uneventful, and they neared the rolling green pastures of the Duchess's chateau as the chill wind of autumn blew colorful leaves in a brilliant profusion from the trees, gold and russet and flaming orange. They sent the soldiers on ahead, and rode together to the large stone house positioned just outside the gates.
A lumbering figure raced to meet them, and his mother uttered a happy noise that turned into a cry as his sister sank to the ground in a faint. He pulled on the reins and slid from the saddle, knowing his feet were swifter than the spent horse.
The dark cloth of her gown formed a puddle of darkness against the stone of the courtyard. His mother's shout brought the servants forth, and they surged, trying to separate him from the prone figure of his sister.
"Who are you?"
"What business have you with this lady?"
"Depart at once!"
When a black robed guard store forward, obviously intending to force them from the estate, Nico drew his swords and waited, light on his feet, for the attack. His glance at the assembled servants showed no force that could remove him from his sister's side. The confidence in his easy stance and flat eyes stayed their approach, and they formed a confused huddle near the open door as Lucia regained her wits. The joyful reunion of mother and daughter ended the tense silence. They were welcome into the house with many words of apology, but the assembled guards still viewed him with a suspicion that Nico did nothing to abate.
As spring approached, his sister grew impossibly large, until she could move from her bed only with difficulty. The arrival of the Duchess at the Chateau, complete with her household and guard, brought an infusion of life to the quiet place. Lucia had greatly changed in the months she had spent in France, and it was plain that she mourned the loss of he who made placed a child in her belly. Only in conversations with their mother and the Duchess did she regain a measure of her former vitality.
The duchess awaited the birth of Lucia's child with eagerness, and showered her sister with expensive gifts she had brought from court. Louise also relished the opportunity to speak with Elizabetta de Corella about her life with the Borgia family. They a formed an unholy triumvirate, his mother, sister, and she who had been his lover.
The Duchess emerged from the first of these discussions with flaming patches of rage decorating her cheeks. She cornered him in the kitchen garden and under the guise of securing his escort back to the chateau, she abused him with the harshest words at her disposal.
"A child! And one that I took my my bed! You have made me a deplorable figure, fit only to sulk about alleyways like those men who prey on..." She spluttered with indignation, reverting to her native tongue and cursing so colorfully that his limited knowledge of the language could not follow the words.
He allowed her to rage on, maintaining deeply mournful expression throughout the short ride and replying only with monosyllables.
"What am I to do with you?" She asked, desperation gleaming in her beautiful golden eyes.
Later, as he relaced his doublet and prepared to leave her chambers, Louise Borgia lifted her tousled head from the bed and rested it on a cupped palm.
"You sit in my veins like poison, Nico," she said, drawing a pattern on the white linen of the bedclothes with a finger. "Though I know it to be wrong, my body yearns for the taste."
Lucia's time came when the tender blooms of spring flowers emerged from fields only recently covered in snow. The midwife was sent for, and each moment became measured by the sounds of his sister's agony.
Nico faced Lucia's confinement with fear as a silent, though constant, companion to his thoughts. For weeks he had overheard whispered conversations about the perils of birth. The memory of what he had witnessed on the mountain haunted him, images of death and gold eyes that seemed, in his memory, to grown ever more similar to his sister's brilliant eyes.
A day and a night passed. The sound of Lucia's screams permeated the stone walls of the house. When he could endure it no longer, he fled, seeking refuge in the forest and down the road while the mists of early morning still clung to the hills. The imagined screams were more terrible than the reality, filled with fear and desperation.
Never, he promised himself, looking back down the road to the house where his sister seemed destined to die. Never would he allow a woman he loved to suffer so. No life was worth such pain.
When his mind felt raw from the agony, he returned to the house as the sun reached its zenith. Though he expected to find the door closed and all in mourning, laughter rang from the halls, filling it to the rafters. Elizabetta, gaunt and hollow eyed as though she had seen death,welcomed him in with a glad cry.
"Come, come!" She said, catching him by the hand and pulling him into the master's chamber, where his sister sat amidst a cloud of snowy white linen, her pale face tired but triumphant. In the corner, he could see the form of the Duchess, asleep on a straw pallet like a kitchen maid.
A swaddled bundle was taken from Lucia's arms and placed in his own. Nico was astonished by its lightness, and the faint, pleasant smell that hung about the newborn in a cloud, reminding him of berries heavy on the vine. A pudgy hand reached out and grasped his fingers. The bluest eyes Nico had ever seen looked out from the cover of an embroidered blanket, innocent trust and wonder shining in the midnight depths.
He almost pulled back from the grip of the babe's fingers, convinced that he would sully her. But his own skin felt cleaner for the touch, like the blood and death that had marred it were lessened.
Nico loved her from that first moment. It was not the same love that he felt for his mother, or the tender admiration he held for his sister, so beautiful and strong. Rather it was the unutterable tenderness of having found something precious that was once believed lost. Fealty and love were opposing sides of the same coin, and he offered it to her, knowing that he would stand before her as guard and protector for the remainder of his life.
When the nightmares came he crept, wraith-like, and stood watch over the baby, and rocked Charlotte in the extraordinary cradle gifted by the duchess until his mind was at peace.
"Nico," Lucia chided, watching Charlotte giggle with delight as Nico lifted her above his head until the bright red hair caught the rays of summer sun from the window, turning them to flame. "You will drop her."
Nico paused, looking at the bright starlight of the laughing face. "I would die before I dropped you, little one."
Charlotte nestled into his chest, and he resumed his story.
"Your Grandfather was Micheletto, little one, and he was skilled with a bladeā¦"
