SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Thirty-Eight
The day passed without the slightest challenge. Each action Duccio set into motion came to fruition.
By the late afternoon, Signore Vitta messengered confirmation that a carriage would be waiting to take us to Rome at seven o’clock in the morning. Letters of credit, an introduction to the Strozzi bank in Rome, and our travel itinerary would be waiting at the inn’s front desk. The trip would take five days if we encountered no challenges, with overnight stops in Montalto di Castro, Tarquinia, Civitavecchia, and Fiumcinio. In each city, the coach company had stables for their driver to acquire fresh horses, and Vitta had designated proper hotels for us to stay.
A seamstress visited our room to take our measurements. Still, with less than a day’s turnaround, she proved capable of merely respectable clothes instead of the fashionable suits Duccio had hoped to wear on our journey. Still, no longer dressed in peasant rags, his mind eased considerably. We’d see to better clothes in Rome, he promised.
“Do you mean for us to stay there long?”
Duccio pondered the question but soon returned with a smirk. “What’s long to you, Esprit? A year?”
“Now that we’re no longer being hunted, wouldn’t it be wiser to go somewhere that presents no danger at all?”
Taking me seriously, his smirk waned.
“It’s a good point,” Duccio said, “and I’d agree with you if that place existed less than six thousand miles away. There are other cities on the continent we could go to, but each poses its own unique risk, and none of them are open to us by land now.”
He reached to kiss me as he had several times throughout that day. Another dashing and romantic gesture of intimacy that I gave myself to completely.
“Let’s go where we can be unknown and alone in the center of everything. Let me show you what Maximo and Gabrielle couldn’t from their countryside tower, caged in by foes on every side.”
“You’re that fond of crazy Romans?”
“I’ve never even been there,” he admitted. “But among our people, Rome remains the seat of power. The Emperor holds court over the whole continent in a way the mortals of this age cannot fathom. He bears an invincibility of strength only ancient humans ever once knew, still alive and vibrant among lycan kind. I would see its inner workings for myself.”
In truth, he could’ve asked anything of me. I’d become so infatuated with the man that my head spun when he looked at me.
Like breakfast and lunch, we took dinner in our room. After two bottles of wine, messenger’d from a restaurant in the Via Magenta, any restraint on Duccio’s part or shyness on mine disappeared altogether. I took him greedily into my mouth several times, overcome by an insatiable need to pleasure him. And each time his seed spilled on my tongue, I lapped it in ecstasy. A sacrament, he called it, and always brought my lips to his afterward to share in it in intimate satisfaction. That night I glimpsed into what my life might be like, its sublime pleasures coupled with the indescribable satisfaction of falling asleep in a lover’s arms.
“It’s time,” Duccio whispered in the morning when a knock at the door signaled the arrival of breakfast. He was already up and dressed as my eyes cracked open to the heavenly aroma from the tray.
He wolfed down toasted bread with butter before heading down to settle with the innkeeper and collect the bank documents promised by Signore Vitti. Not wanting to risk spoiling my clothes, I ate first, taking my fill of the fruit, bacon, and eggs. I thought of all I’d done over the past days; our flight from Dijon, our escape from Genoa, the battle in the vineyard I only heard as Duccio shielded my exhausted lycan body with his wolf.
Duccio returned to the room without making much noise, but I sensed something had changed.
“Listen carefully,” he whispered. “Don’t speak to me with your mind. One of them is outside and headed this way.”
“Are we safe?” I asked with alarm, standing up to face him, almost choking on the food in my mouth.
“No, no—don’t give in to fear. Focus your mind on anything simple. Look at the walls of this room or the table and chairs—anything commonplace. On top of it, let a simple melody play in your mind. Hum it quietly if you must.”
My breathing increased as panic set in, but I tried to do as he said, though I was unsure of his purpose.
“When I left you alone just now, one of them heard you. Just a spark, but enough to draw him here. We can’t risk it happening again until we’re gone. The carriage is waiting, so let’s hear it.”
I tried to think of a song; I knew dozens. I’d written one for Romeo and Juliet. But I couldn’t recall anything about it now. And then one came, something my mother used to hum while she bathed me or cradled me in her arms. It was simple, but I heard her voice.
“Good,” he said. Duccio helped me dress as quickly as he could without agitating my focus. “That’s all. Keep humming it and stare at the texture of the wall plaster. Simple things. Nothing interesting.”
I did as he told me, grateful for his assurance as he drew my new clothes, buttoned the jacket, and helped me with my boots.
“It’s time we’re off then, cousin,” he said. “No need for help. You grab that case, and I’ll grab the other. Simple things, now—don’t let your eyes wander.”
Duccio led the way, and I followed, keeping my eyes on the ground where he stepped or to the walls, Mother’s humming melody playing in my mind.
At the bottom of the stairs, Duccio nodded to the innkeeper, who came out from behind the front desk to open the doors for us.
“Safe travels, signori,” he said, to which I smiled for a moment before returning my eyes to the ground where Duccio’s boots landed.
Outside, Duccio handed his case to the driver and turned to take mine from me. He opened the carriage door for me, and I stepped up to enter and sat on the rear-facing bench.
And then I heard it.
Down the street behind me was a lycan. I didn’t hear his thoughts clearly, but the sound of his thinking was unmistakable.
“Hum the song, cousin,” Duccio whispered as he sat across from me.
I looked into his eyes, feeling a slight panic. If my wolf rose now, it would mean the end of my mental disguise.
“Aloud,” he said. “Let me hear it with your voice.”
I did as he asked, giving a quiet voice to the simple melody. I lowered my eyes to the carriage floor. By this, I realized I was hiding in plain sight. Still, I also heard the deadened sounds of birds chipping quietly in the trees as if we sat in a dense fog.
As the driver set off, the carriage jerked forward, and I sensed us coming closer to the lycan who pursued me. Like the tip of a blade pulled from the back of my head toward my temple, I felt the man’s piercing search. As the carriage passed by him, I couldn’t stop myself from peering out the window to catch a glimpse of him.
A tall man stood on the street, dressed in expensive but unpretentious clothes. I expected him to see himself mirrored in my mind, but he never looked to catch my gaze. Again, my eyes fell to the carriage floor as I hummed. I realized that if the lycan could hear it through the shield of Duccio’s mind, it must have seemed like an insignificant white noise.
“That’s it,” Duccio said gently. “Good.”
Once the carriage was down the hill and away from Capalbio, I felt him soften.
“We’re free of them?” I asked.
Duccio answered only with a smile.
I realize it must read like a ridiculous statement, but the days of our journey to Rome changed my life. Perhaps the start of manhood changes everyone’s life, but falling in love as I did made me feel like I’d been wearing blinders before. Riding alone in a carriage all day with Duccio, listening to his stories about any subject, which he always delivered with a playful affection, and then spending the night in his arms, was something I shall never forget. I became wholly infatuated with him, a blissful intoxication I’d never fathomed was possible. No matter how much I’d yearned for a friend or lover in all my days at the Forteresse de Roussade, I’d never conceived of this breed of pleasure or the satisfaction it produced.
Better than any spirit or wine, our intimacy made me feel alive and desperate for more. Even as Duccio measured his physical affections for me in public, his mind would always lavish them upon me. And those silent affections, drenched in sweet gentleness and carnal demand, became the very definition of addiction for me.
Rome was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Structures of infinite variety built upon one another for miles in every direction, all filled by a sea of people. The city was so overwhelming in its beauty, filth, wealth, and poverty that I came to feel as if I’d seen nothing of the world before.
After checking into the hotel that Signore Vitti sent us to, Duccio established an account for Signore Vincenzo Gallozzi at the Bank of Monte Dei Paschi. He then took us to the finest atelier in the city and ordered full wardrobes for us both, paying extra to ensure delivery in only a week. Once outfitted like gentlemen, like the royalty Duccio espoused with his every step, he visited a rival bank to play the same trick upon the manager to become someone else.
In no time, we moved into a sumptuous new house off the Rampa Mignanelli overlooking the Piazza di Spagna. The baroque-styled “villetta,” ornamented in modern creams, included a roof terrace overlooking the Spanish steps, with the majestic Obelsque of Sallustiano and bell towers of the Church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti rising overhead. It all seemed to happen so fast, as if Duccio were desperate to create something special for us. Workmen were in the house for weeks, upgrading what was already a luxurious home into a marvel of beauty to surround us. And he hired staff to maintain its cleanliness and tend to our every need.
We walked together through the streets every day, taking in each bit of splendor the city offered. And everywhere we went, I absorbed the language as it washed over my mind. The people of Rome were a different breed altogether, madly passionate about every topic, from literature to politics, family to religion, food to sex. Like Duccio, the new baroque architecture that had risen throughout the city dazzled them. At the same time, I could only marvel at the otherworldly beauty of the ancient ruins in all their splendid decay.
By the end of the first month, I spoke the tongue naturally, though I couldn’t hide my French accent. Oddly, as much as I tried to hide it, women often found my sharp intonations charming. In contrast, I found the rhythms of their language to be so melodic in its delivery that my body would sway as I spoke like a dancer. Getting the words out required a subtle symphony of gestures to pronounce correctly.
Despite the telling foundations of the language, I was unprepared to experience the beauty of Roman music. All my life, music had played an unavoidable role in how I connected with the world and people around me. But Rome surrounded me with a form of audible art that somehow eclipsed its endless sculptures and monuments to divinity.
Duccio took me to every private salon, music academy, theatre, or opera in the city. In each, I came away unable to contain myself, humming the music or imitating the ballads, my voice echoing in the night streets as we walked home. Was there any more fantastic sound in all the world than what poured from the intrepid mind of Antonio Vivaldi? There seemed no end to it, this wild and angry music, drenched in a carnal passion that couldn’t be contained. Even from the churches of every neighborhood, each a stoic and grand architectural marvel, rose hypnotic hymns that I listened to in ecstasy.
More impressive to me still, in all these months of exploration, while Duccio and I absorbed every ounce of the city by day, and each other by night, we never once felt the presence of another lycan.