in the throat of a Christmas goose than a new-dubbed lord. “Murder? How priceless! My father murdered! Perhaps I did it, did I?”
We were silent as he enjoyed his own wit.
“No, I’m afraid I did not, though ofttimes I thought of it.” Niccolò coughed twice to collect himself, and wiped his streaming eyes. “Now, cousin, I am going to give you an object lesson in why I am the intellectual of the family, with an academic education, and you are fit for nothing but wearing out your sandal leather pacing the cloister.”
I felt stung to retort that Brother Guido had read more books than any fellow I had ever met, but Niccolò seemed absorbed in his own rhetoric. He fitted his thumbs in the facings of his gown like an attorney-at-law. “What did my father actually say with his last, unlamented breath?”
Brother Guido shifted his feet. “I told you, he grabbed my cowl, pulled me close, and said, ‘Murder.’ He said it twice, and then said, ‘Follow the light.’ ”
“Murder?” said Niccolò, still playing the lawyer’s part. “Or Muda?”
Brother Guido’s dark eyebrows drew together “It . . . I suppose . . . he may have said that word.”
I hated to agree with Niccolò, but his rendering of his father’s last word did sound more authentic.
“It did sound more like ‘Muda,’ “ I put in. “I mean, I have no English to speak of, unless you count curse words I learned from the merchants I’ve screwed, but . . .” I trailed off.
The cousins still locked eyes as if I had not spoken and Brother Guido filled the silence. “Why would he say ‘Muda’? What does it mean? I have never heard the word.”
Niccolò smiled grimly. “My dear coz. Just because you have not heard a word, does not call its existence into question. It is a word, and a place too. This is the Muda.” He gestured outward and circled his weak wrists to encompass the chamber.
“This room?” Brother Guido’s confusion was apparent.
“This building, this house, this tower in which we stand. It is named the Muda.” A hateful smile played on Niccolò’s lips.
“I don’t understand,” Brother Guido faltered.
Nor did I.
Niccolò flourished his surcoat like an attorney, enjoying himself. “Let me furnish you with a little local history, since you have clearly been gone too long. This tower was the very place where our distant ancestor, Ugolino della Gherardesca, was imprisoned for treason with his two nephews. In this very room they were starved for ninety days, in a state of desperate gnawing hunger.” Niccolò moved closer, his voice heavy with threat. “You must remember the tale, cousin. The eldest of his nephews”—he gave the word a deadly emphasis—“feeling himself near death, begged his uncle to gnaw on his flesh to sustain himself. And so here, in this very room, Ugolino ate his beloved nephew alive.”
There was no mistaking the malice now. I shivered as in my mind’s eye the finery melted away and the tower was once again a cold stone prison where such unspeakable things came to pass. Niccolò’s pale eyes glittered, enjoying the vision, and I felt my friend to be in danger and thanked the stars for the presence of Tok.
But Brother Guido met his cousin’s gaze unwaveringly, with a courage that made me like him even better. “Of course I know of the tale. Ugolino’s atrocity was well documented in the Thirteenth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, when he meets the poet in the seventh circle of hell.” I could have cheered as Brother Guido won the book-learning contest. “I merely did not know that this place was named Muda.”
Niccolò, discomfited, broke his gaze and turned away, and the company relaxed somewhat. “Well, now you do,” he rejoined weakly. “I am glad to have been the instrument for your instruction. And now that you have been enlightened, even a person of your limited faculties must see that my father merely meant that you must come to the tower of Muda to tell me of his passing.”
“And the light?” Brother Guido fought back. “Perhaps in your august knowledge, you have a notion of what my uncle meant by ‘follow the light’?”
Niccolò had lost interest. He waved the question away. “Tok’s torch guided you here, did it not? I don’t know. Now, I have matters to attend to. Fabrizio!”
The black child came back into the room so quickly I knew he had been listening at the door. I regarded him with contempt. An accomplished door-listener, like myself,