nervous, joined us at the table when I gestured. He was still wrapped in his fine robe. Biscuits and spiced and watered wine were brought, in fine dishes and crystal goblets that were doubtless used ordinarily only as artists' props. I sipped wine, but after all did not feel much like eating. Helen, after days of hunger, was not going to let any opportunity pass. Noting her appetite, I counseled myself that tomorrow I should begin to limit her intake; I had no wish for a fat wife.
Only after my drowsy thoughts had reached this banal conclusion did I realize that I had decided a matter of considerable importance, without ever giving it full conscious thought.
'Why are we waiting here?' Helen asked me, between measured mouthfuls of her second biscuit.
'For some friends to join us.' I wondered how much more to say, and sighed. She was going to have to be told at some point, and the telling really could not be put off much longer. 'Including one who is a priest.'
At that Helen looked bewildered. I glanced meaningfully at Verrocchio, who with apparent relief stood up and left the table and the room. The girl and I were alone with the dim-eyed paintings.
I met her darkly puzzled gaze. 'The priest is coming here to marry us,' I informed her.
Comprehension grew by degrees in Helen's eyes. Never shall I forget how she looked on that first night we were together, sitting at that rude table. (Mina, my beloved, you will understand.) The model's gown, begrimed by use like all the women who had worn it, yet held some glory in its rich brocade. Her hard, small fingers, crumbling a biscuit. Her beaten, hunted, haunted face, so young. Her bare feet worn with the stones of Florence, with the hard roads of half of Europe. Her wild and filthy hair. Leonardo should have been on hand
As understanding grew in Helen's eyes they shifted from mine, to go staring past me at the wall. She raised a dirty hand and bit its thumbnail. Looking for the moment even younger than her years, she slowly began to weep, tears streaking down her cheeks.
Now this was a reaction that I could scarcely take as complimentary. But it was obviously no calculated insult either, and somewhat to my own surprise I was not angry. I had understanding enough to realize that she wept for her whole ruined life, in which my portion was so far quite a minor one. So I only waited, silently, till she should be ready to talk to me again.
At last the tears stopped, and in a little while the silent sobs. Helen's eyes came back to me, and when she spoke again her voice was under good control. 'Matthias allows me no alternative.' Though stated flatly, it was really a question.
I shrugged. 'Of course it is nearly always possible to kill oneself. But I think that if that path held any attraction for you, you would have taken it ere now.' My first wife had in fact traveled the route under discussion, in a fit of madness two years earlier, her point of departure being my castle roof. I thought that I had learned to recognize the signs; I saw them not in Helen.
My blunt comment had made her look at me in a new way again. Now, you must understand that it was not my intention to be cruel. Cruelty I understood; I was, alas, already expert in inflicting pain, as well as undergoing it, and I could have been much more fiendish than that if I had tried. No, my apparent callousness was really intended to be helpful; and I still think it helped her more than if I had tried or pretended to be kind. For Helen I was a hard rock rearing up suddenly out of the treacherous bog of life, a rock that was not going to be put aside for her own purposes. But, on the other hand, this stony intrusion offered firmness and support; she could cling to it, for long enough to catch her breath at least, without fear that it was going to sink. Nor was it going to attack her treacherously; it would never turn harder and crueler than it looked.
Helen's eyes fell to the table, to the bread and wine that had come to her through me. She looked up at the rustic but sturdy roof-poles of the shelter that I had brought her to. She rubbed the chain-sores on her ankle, and pulled the worn and gaudy gown a little more closely round her body. 'What has the king promised you, in return for marrying me?'
'Nothing specific. That I will have an honorable position somewhere is implied, understood between us.' At least I hoped that the king agreed with my understanding on that point.
'And what about me? Am I to be put back into the convent as soon as we are wed? Or what is the arrangement?'
'No convent. And there is no arrangement, except that you are to be my wife.' I looked her over thoughtfully. 'The ceremony will be here. Directly afterwards we will proceed, with some kind of protective escort, to a gracious house not far away. There you will have a bath.' (Bathing, contrary to popular belief in the twentieth century, was as well thought of in that day as in this, at least among the well-to-do.) 'And I expect we will remain in that house for a day or two, being hospitably entertained, if I know anything of our hosts.'
Helen was looking at me with a measure of disbelief. I went on: 'After that—well, what comes after that has yet to be decided. But I can promise that as my wife you will be treated with respect. And I think I can promise that from now on you will be well fed.' There were a few more things, of great importance, that I meant to say to Helen; but I judged that the saying of them could wait till after the ceremony was over.
It was my turn to be judged by her; a king's daughter and a king's sister looked through the grime. 'You are of good birth, then. Yes, I might have known that my brother would not marry me to a churl, whatever else . . . well, my lord Wladislaus the Romanian, or whatever I should name you . . . but that is not a Romanian name, is it? I hope you gain the reward that you are counting on for all these efforts and sacrifices to please my brother.'
Her manner implied her doubt that I would gain much. And the king's sister looked long and boldly into my eyes, trying to puzzle me out. I continued to study her, with the same object. For whatever reason, the feeling grew in me that my decision had been correct. When at last Verrocchio peeked into the room again, I signed to him that we no longer required privacy, and he hesitantly rejoined us.
But before he could cough up any of the questions that must have been troubling him, horses were stamping in the street just outside his door. Presently another dagger-hilt came rapping on the wood. This time I answered the knock myself, and a moment later was joyfully letting in Lorenzo. Helen had been in Florence long enough to recognize the young tycoon on sight, and her eyes widened.
Immediately young Lorenzo, smiling, fresh, and good-natured at an hour that would now be called three in the morning, took me aside and heard from me privately the full story of our escapade. He did not trouble to hide his glee when I came to describe the street fighting; that several of his rivals in business had been pricked with sharp weapons did not grieve him in the least. As soon as this brief confidential talk between the two of us was over, he went back to the street door and opened it again. In a moment we were joined by a sleepy friar, just dismounted and scratching his backside. Ten or a dozen horses were gathered outside the door, and I could hear the low voices of other men; Lorenzo would never have come on such a mission in the dead of night without a good escort.
The friar asked few questions and showed no surprise, being evidently experienced in matters of intrigue. As evidence of Medicean forethought he had come armed with all necessary holy dispensations, civil permits, writs, blessings and the like, enough spiritual and bureaucratic armament to have wed two Barbary apes on short notice had such a union appeared desirable. Only on one point was he in the least anxious, and I hastened to assure him that the formalities of my own conversion from the Eastern to the Roman Rite had been accomplished ere I left Hungary.
The bearded apprentice had managed, somehow, somewhere, to gather an armful of flowers in the middle of the night, and came to present them to Helen. She appeared quite touched. The younger lad had at last found her a pair of respectable shoes that almost fit, for which I thanked him. Verrocchio did not seem to know quite what he ought to do about a wedding gift; if he would keep his mouth shut afterwards, I thought, that would be quite enough. In the end he gave each of us a gold ring, making sure Lorenzo saw the gesture. And so finally my bride and I were standing before the friar, the menials all dismissed, a worried Verrocchio as one witness, and Lorenzo- the-Magnificent-to-be, nodding benignly, as the other.
Helen was taking it all quite well, I noted with cautiously increasing optimism. At least she spoke the required words in a firm, clear voice: 'I, Helen Hunyadi, of the household and family of Matthias, King of Hungary —'
Then it was my turn.
'I, Vlad, son of Vlad Drakulya and of his household, Prince of Wallachia—'
I had surprised Helen one more time. Without taking my gaze from the priest I saw her face turn up to me.
