tutelage he’d become lethal. He glared at the other tables of condottieri. Those already standing exchanged glances and sat down to their drinks; clearly this was a family matter. For a minute there was no other sound in the piazzetta than the sweet, shrill cries of swallows and the wet, heavy rhythm of Tommaso beating Becket’s face to pulp.
‘Uggeri! Tommaso!’ Sofia shouted from a rooftop overlooking the piazzetta. ‘Flags down.’ Uggeri swore under his breath and watched his teacher nimbly drop from construction hand-holds and windowsills to the ground. As she landed, Levi appeared from a northern alleyway, out of breath.
Uggeri blocked Levi’s way.
‘Stand aside,’ Levi said.
‘Your man took advantage of a Rasenneisi woman. This is justice.’
‘Justice is what your Podesta says it is. Stand aside!’
Uggeri’s flag went up, but Levi had been around Sofia too long to try a sword against a bandieratoro, or let him get any distance. He pushed the arm holding the stick aside and punched Uggeri hard in the face. The other condottieri had taken courage on seeing their leader arrive and now they grabbed Uggeri’s arms as he stumbled back and pinned him to a table.
‘Tommaso, basta!’ Sofia said. The bandieratoro looked up at her, his eyes dull, his face speckled with Becket’s blood, and drew back his fist again. Sofia kicked his exposed ribs and he fell off. She took a mug from a table and knocked back its contents as she walked to the fountain. She filled it with water, turned and poured it on Becket’s head. Enough blood washed off to reveal the landscape of swollen, broken skin.
She walked over to where the condottieri held Uggeri. ‘Let him go.’
They looked to Levi, who nodded.
Uggeri pulled his arms free and faced Sofia.
‘When are you going to get smart?’ she hissed, ‘You’re not just embarrassing yourself, you’re embarrassing Tower Scaligeri – Doc’s tower!’
He was shorter than her, but he raised his chin defiantly. Sofia slapped him with an open palm. It was more noisy than painful, but there was enough boy in Uggeri yet to be shamed by the public admonition. With a glance at Levi, she grabbed Uggeri and led him away.
As Levi took Tommaso Sorrento by the arm, he realised the boy was numbed by what he’d done. He followed Sofia, pausing only to tell his men, ‘Wait for me back at the fortezza. Dio Impestato! You’ve better things to do in the middle of the day than drink!’ But he knew that wasn’t true. Just as he knew that an army without a war will soon invent one.
CHAPTER 24
‘Sure you won’t take some wine? A little glass?’
Donna Soderini was younger than Donna Bombelli, but she didn’t look it. She dressed with the traditional simplicity of a carder’s wife, and had the usual pinched, hungry look. She had been a dyer before she married, and the alum and salt steam had wrought the usual damage on her lungs. She spoke in a breathless whisper. ‘All I ask is that you convince your husband.’
‘About what?’ said Fabbro, coming back into the courtyard of his palazzo.
The two women, who had been sitting at the banco, leapt up. The carder’s wife had the look of a discovered thief. ‘Gonfaloniere!’
‘Please, Donna Soderini – how many years have I known your husband? Call me Fabbro and tell me what problem’s so grave that you must enlist my wife’s help? I must have sinned grievously that you would set her tongue on me.’
His attempt to put the woman at ease failed. Donna Bombelli squeezed her hand and answered for her, ‘It’s simple, amore. Tower Soderini is having difficulty making ends meet on the money you pay.’
‘I pay fairly,’ Fabbro exclaimed. ‘When Pedro Vanzetti sold his wool contracts to me, he made me promise I would continue paying Guild rates. I’m a fair man so I agreed. What’s your complaint?’
The woman took a deep breath before letting the rehearsed words tumble out. ‘You pay what was fair two years ago – even if bread still cost what it used to, now there are twice as many carders and spinners.’
‘And four times as much work! The rain falls on everyone.’
‘But it’s not distributed evenly.’
‘That’s my fault? I give work to those who deliver orders, on time and with good quality. Donna Soderini, your husband’s a good man – a reliable man. But his operation is, frankly, old-fashioned, and other towers win contracts that he might have. There are rewards for ambition.’
The woman’s face darkened at the implication that her