one villager believing that the bizarre interloper might just be the Duke of Tuscany.
“Now put down your weapon,” continued Cosimo, “and leave forever this place. You are banished, exiled, hereby forbidden from ever setting foot in this village again. You will find no home or peace in my Tuscany. You will walk south. I catch the Roman in your tongue. You will return to that turgid place from which you came. This is my command and I pity the fate that will befall you should you dare be here tomorrow when I return with my guard.”
Giuseppe felt himself bristle with rage and fear. He had never told anyone that he was from Rome, and the fact that his long-buried accent had been so easily recognized troubled him even more than what the deranged interloper had said. Could it be? he thought to himself. Impossible.
Shoulders back, chest forward, the way a king carries himself, Cosimo strode over to Davido and stood before him, his back to Giuseppe. Taking off his stableman’s waistcoat, he set it over Davido’s shoulders.
“You dare turn your back on me?” Giuseppe yelled.
Cosimo did not reply nor did he turn around. Instead, he put his hands on Davido’s shoulders and helped lift him to his feet.
“You dare turn your back on me?” Giuseppe barked again.
Cosimo ignored Giuseppe as he looked Davido in the eye. “I knew your sister,” he said softly for only Davido to hear, “and I shall not let the same fate befall you.”
No sooner had these unimaginable words landed upon Davido’s ears than he heard the snap of the crossbow and the horrendous sound of an arrow pierce and burst through skin and muscle. Right before Davido’s eyes, the duke’s expression exploded with pain as the hands upon Davido’s shoulders gripped him in anguish.
There was a scream from the crowd. The duke fell forward onto Davido’s naked chest, his hands gripping desperately against Davido’s shoulders as he slowly crumpled to his knees. Looking down, Davido saw the arrow lodged into the duke’s right buttock and blood pouring from the area, drenching his pants leg and turning it crimson.
Giuseppe dropped his crossbow, strode over to the kneeling duke and, with appalling insouciance, stomped him with the sole of his boot between the shoulder blades. The blow smashed the duke into Davido, knocking him backward and the duke face-first to the ground.
“Now,” said Giuseppe as he quickly knelt down and removed his gleaming, ivory-handled dagger from inside his boot, “enough games.” Giuseppe then grabbed Davido by the hair, bent his head back and placed the dagger to his throat. “You will be gone, or you will be dead, and your land is forfeit!”
Splat! Davido heard the screams and felt the blood burst and splatter upon his face, filling his open mouth and blinding his eyes. Though it seemed that everyone in the piazza cried out in unison, he clearly heard the two voices that mattered to him most—Nonno and Mari. I am dead, he thought as Giuseppe’s firm grip upon his hair slackened. Shame of all shames, I am dead. So much I wanted to do …
But in an instant Davido recognized that the taste in his mouth was not blood, but tomato. Opening his eyes, Davido saw Giuseppe, a mere eighteen inches before him; the tyrant looked stunned with the remnants of a tomato pasted across the right side of his face. Giuseppe shook his head to regain his wits, apparently equally stunned by the blow and the notion that someone had the gall to attack him. Slowly, he turned his head in the direction from which the blow came. There, seeming more giant than ever, Giuseppe saw who dare oppose him. It was the Good Padre.
“Benito,” Davido could have sworn he heard Giuseppe mumble, “you failed me.”
Giuseppe now squared his shoulders in the Good Padre’s direction and the crowd fell absolutely silent, petrified with fear. True, the Good Padre was enormous, but Giuseppe had a knife and seemed far more the killer between the two. He took a step forward when suddenly a heartrending moan filled the air and a feebly thrown tomato bounced off Giuseppe’s shoulder. The blow, though harmless, stopped Giuseppe in his tracks.
“You?” Giuseppe said with a wicked crinkle to his lips as he beheld his wife, Mari’s mother, standing on the side of the wagon opposite the Good Padre and already reaching to grab another tomato.
The delay proved just enough. Splat! As if fired by cannon, another tomato blasted into the