Thorn Fred Saberhagen (good english books to read .TXT) 📖

      The lackwit groom stuttered and stammered this story again to me, adding that it had never occurred to him to raise an alarm when he saw this. It meant nothing to him, he asserted, that his mistress should have decided to go for an early morning ride. Herein he was mistaken; it meant in fact that I paused to slit his nose for him before I took to the road myself in a frantic effort to pick up my lady’s trail.

      It turned out that there was no trail, at least none that I could find. In a state of rage that grew ever colder and more pure, I rode at a good speed for an hour along the road that led in the opposite direction from Florence, but caught no sight of the one I sought. Nor would any of the folk I questioned in passing admit to having seen Helen ride that way with her secret lover, with that faceless, unidentifiable figure in the groom’s stammered story, a man who would be glad to settle for losing part of his nose when I caught up with him.

      As for what I meant to do to Helen … I do not remember making any specific plan of vengeance then. But it was well for her that morning that I could not find her.

      Of course I might well be pursuing in the wrong direction, and after an hour I turned round. It then naturally took me another hour to get back to our Pisan cottage. I had sent some of the servants I considered most trustworthy to scour the neighborhood in other directions, and these were back before me. They trembled when they announced that they had nothing helpful to report. Their fear was wasted, for when I looked at them I believed that they had really tried.

      What was I to do? Missing spouse or not, honor and wisdom alike forbade me to postpone by so much as half a day the start of my long trek to Bosnia. The king’s orders had been explicit, and the urgency of his need apparent in them.

      I did what little packing I had to do, and concluded the business of closing down the small household. In all this I was surrounded by servants who moved in a desperate, counterproductive hurry. My servants in my homeland had sometimes tended to be that way also. Whenever I glanced at these folk or spoke to them they dropped what they were carrying, or shook so that their fingers could not tie a knot. Matters were not helped by the gurgling moans, drifting in from the stables, of the groom with the runny nose. Once or twice I was on the point of going out to quiet him.

      A quick inventory disclosed that Helen had left behind the greater part of her new wardrobe, including items I had bought to please her, as well as the lavish gifts of the Medici. I directed that the servants should share these out among themselves, which acted as a tonic to their morale. As far as I was able to determine, my fugitive wife had taken with her no money, or very little; and no jewelry or gold of any particular value. There was no telling, of course, what contribution of wealth her mysterious escort might have brought to the escape.

      At last my eye, searching the vacated rooms for any bits of important business left unfinished, fell again upon the painting. My first impulse at that moment was to draw my bloodied dagger and hack the thin panel into splinters. But a moment’s cool thought held me back from any such rash demonstration. Not for a moment had I considered permanently giving up the search for Helen. When eventually I should be free again to look for the woman who had so basely used me (as I then saw the case) and then deserted me when her fortunes had improved, such a close likeness could very well, I thought, prove invaluable.

      So, I delayed the start of my own long journey enough to send the painting back to Piero in Florence. Along with it I dispatched a brief written explanation of what had happened, and a request that he should keep the picture for me until I either returned or sent for it. To this I added a plea that the Medici use all their powers to try to find the woman for me whilst I was away at war; and that, should they succeed, Helen be held in some secure convent against my return. To some degree I shared my king’s misgivings about convents; but given the society we dwelt in, no better alternative was apparent. Also it galled me, as it always has, to have to ask anyone a favor—but again I could see no better course available.

      All this was quickly done. Before midday, a few scant hours after my wife’s desertion, I was on the high road out of Pisa, in the company of a few mercenaries I had recruited locally, still growling oaths into my mustache as I rode.

      My plan was to go overland, passing the Alps before snow flew. I wanted to avoid the uncertainties of taking ship upon the Adriatic at that season. And besides, if it must be admitted, I had then and have now no particular liking for the sea. Unfortunately for my plans, the first snow of the season reached the high passes simultaneously with myself and my small escort; it cost us a slow and dangerous struggle to get through.

      What with one delay and another, I did not reach the scene of the summer’s and autumn’s fighting until almost midwinter, by which tune military operations were nearly at a standstill, King Matthias had withdrawn himself and much of his army to Buda. On the whole, the campaign had gone better than I had expected for the Christian cause. Mohammed II, in personal command of