Ken Hood - Demon Knight

By the fall of 1524, Nevil had conquered all of Europe north of the Alps, but thirteen years of unbroken success had made him grievously overconfident. While he indulged himself in putting down rebellions with the extreme cruelty that had earned his name of the Fiend, he delegated the conquest of Italy to Varnius Schweitzer.

Schweitzer was a competent general and foresaw no difficulty in overcoming the Italian city-states, which had been fighting one another for centuries and seemed incapable of uniting for any reason. He crossed the Alps with about fifty thousand men and was opposed near the city of Trent by a hastily gathered coalition of Italians, Swiss, and Tyroleans. Facing a force less than half the size of his, led by a mercenary soldier he had never heard of, Schweitzer willingly accepted battle and thereupon suffered one of the bloodiest and most lopsided defeats in history. Within days all Europe rang with the name of the young man who had celebrated his own twenty-third birthday by overcoming seemingly impossible odds…

Hamish Campbell was not looking for trouble that fine spring evening and did not expect any. Toby Longdirk attracted trouble like stables drew flies, but Toby had stayed behind in Florence to organize this year's fighting season. Hamish had come to Siena on a quiet little spying mission. If he were caught, he would be tortured and possibly hanged, so he was certainly not looking for trouble.

Lady Lisa, on the other hand… Trouble was not what she had in mind. Adventure would be a better term. But trouble was what she got.

Extraordinary consequences were to result from their meeting. Although it appeared to be due to the merest chance, it was not fortuitous at all. There were demons involved.

Lisa had opened hostilities before noon. "Mother! It is Carnival! How can you possibly resist the opportunity for a little innocent merrymaking?"

Looking up from her embroidery, the Countess of Ely uttered one of her longer-suffering groans. "Very easily. We have not spent two nights under the same roof in the last month. We have just crossed the ocean in the dead of winter, and the last thing I want to do is go out and participate in a public riot. Have you practiced the virginals today?" Maud seemed tired, but then she always seemed tired now. However skilled, her maids could no longer disguise the grooves in her face, and her once-golden hair was quite obviously dyed, not merely touched-up as it had been until last summer. That was no excuse, because people wore masks at Carnival, and the handsome young men would be looking at Lisa, not her mother.

"It was not the ocean, we were never out of sight of land, we were three nights in a row in the horrible inn in Pisa, and before that we were shut up in that awful Savoyard villa leagues from anywhere for months and months, we have been in Italy almost a week, and I have yet to… um, experience any of the culture."

"Then I suggest you try a few madrigals. I saw some sheets beside the virginals."

"Just to look, I mean. Surely a sedate stroll—"

"No, Lisa! This is a very dangerous place for us, as I have repeatedly warned you, and we must remain indoors until safer arrangements—"

"Danger? Mother, you imagine things. You behave as if the Fiend himself were personally hunting you, and that is crazy! Other people do not—"

"Lisa! You are a foolish, ignorant child! And a very ill-mannered one, to yell at your mother so. I have told you a thousand times…" She was still in full bleat when her daughter slammed the door on her.

The countess was haunted by imaginary terrors. For as long as Lisa could remember, the two of them had never remained more than a few months in any one place. Fleeing by night, as often as not. Traipsing from castle to chateau to hunting lodge to obscure city house, she had spent her entire life being dragged around the free nations of Europe. Burgundy, Swabia, Bavaria, Switzerland, Savoy… on and on. How could she ever make friends? Now Italy! Lush, beautiful, romantic Italy, the wellspring of culture. A land renowned for its art and music and sultry-eyed, handsome young men.

What she needed was a selection of sultry-eyed, handsome young men serenading her with lutes under her balcony, and how were they ever to find her if they did not even know she was here?

Not that the cramped, musty-smelling house possessed a balcony, or a garden full of gardenias either. Whoever their current landlord might be — Lisa had not even heard his name, let alone met him — he had very warped notions of the style in which a countess and her daughter ought to be quartered. The only local servant he had provided was a surly, spotty boy who spoke nothing but Italian. Frieda was doing the cooking, so Bavarian sausage, morning, noon, and night. Ugh! Old Jacques, the coachman, had stayed behind in Savoy, worn out by all the years of traipsing. The countess's household was down to four stupid girls and one spotty boy.

Lisa tried again in the afternoon. And again after dark, when the sounds of music and revelry were heartachingly plain in the streets — not the street outside, which was a smelly dead-end alley, but streets just maddeningly out of sight and reach. She made no progress, except that Mother began complaining of a headache. Halfway through dinner, she threw down her napkin, lurched to her feet, and in martyred tones bade Lisa be certain the house was secure before she went to bed. Then she vanished upstairs to lie down.

Lisa gobbled the rest of her meal, inspected both doors and the downstairs windows, and graciously informed Gina that she and the other servants could go off duty as soon as they had cleared the table. She retired to her room. She had already established that the bars were loose on the upstairs corridor window that looked out on the stable roof. All by herself, without any help at all, she donned her best apricot silk gown, the one with the epaulettes, slashed sleeves, and V-necked décolletage. Fortunately her hair was already pinned up, and she had a fetching satin balzo hat that left a little of it exposed in the front — hair as blonde as hers must be extremely rare in Italy. Adding her light blue cloak and a mask fashioned by cutting two eyeholes in a kerchief, she set off to investigate Carnival.

She had her ring. No harm could come to her while she wore that.

The stable roof part was a little trickier than expected. It ripped the hem of her gown, but May could stitch that up so Mother would not notice. The descent into the alley splattered a lot of disgusting mud on the cloak, but once around the corner, she was into Carnival — torches and music and dancing! Before she knew it, a group of laughing youngsters swallowed her up and swept her away. They pressed wine bottles upon her and whirled her around in dances. They laughed at her protests, jabbering cheerfully in Italian. They took her to a huge semicircular piazza full of crowds larger and louder and more riotous than any she had ever known. She was surrounded by people of her own age, being totally ignored by the older folk present. It was more fun than she had dreamed possible.

Suddenly it was terror, heart-stopping, choking terror. She was lost. She felt ill, but that was partly from too much wine. She had never intended to go farther than the corner. The men who had plucked her from there had vanished into the crowd. She had no idea where she was or where she should be and couldn't even ask anyone for directions. She had never been truly alone in her life before. When Mother discovered her absence, she would have no one to send out as a search party.