Chiara – Revenge and Triumph by Gian Bordin Read Free Book Online

magniloquus’ rather than ‘magnificentimus’, only to be severely scolded. But he did not betray and shame me. And now I had taken away the joy of sight from an old man.
    Another thought began to gnaw at the edge of my mind. Treasure? There was no treasure hidden on our property. What did he mean? A hidden stash of gold and jewels? Absurd! From where would my father have gotten it and why would he hide it? Unless it had been placed there ages ago, but I had never heard anything of an old treasure. Or could it be a treasure he rescued from confiscation by the French king while he was still with the Knight Templars? The only time I had ever heard my father refer to a treasure was when he proudly showed his library to the older Sanguanero. In fact, he was holding that precious little book that was now in their hands and said: "This is my greatest treasure." But I’m sure that all he meant was that he cherished it more than anything else, and I had deprived him of it and lost it.
    Or did they mean something else, such as a hidden gold mine or a seam of precious stones in the rocks above the castle? Roberto had found small pieces of dark-blue tourmaline and did father not display one as big as a pear on the sill of our hall window, where it caught the rays of the afternoon sun? Then it struck me and tears began to well in my eyes. "Our hall", I murmured. I had forfeited all right to think of it as ‘mine’ or ‘our’. I wished for the comfort of my father. Would I ever see him again? Somehow I doubted it, and that filled me with an even deeper sadness.
    After maybe an hour, I reached the river. It was more like the opening to a large inlet. Its shore soon veered north for a good stretch before turning east again. I had no choice but to follow it.
    Shortly after it turned east, I reached a wide river that emptied from another shallow inlet. If this was the Arno, there was no way to follow it since the same swamps, I had encountered earlier along the beach, bordered the new inlet. Fortunately, the tide, although rising, was still low and I had no difficulty wading across the shallow water that hardly reached my waist.
    There was a hint of dawn on the eastern horizon, as I continued along the inlet, which ended in another small river. A short distance farther in, I finally reached a road. To my surprise it was at least six big steps across and covered by square paving stones. I had never seen such a wide road. I decided to follow it south to the village I had spotted earlier maybe a quarter of a league across the inlet. I approached the houses cautiously. My recent experience had made me apprehensive. Although it was light by then, there was no soul in sight yet. Most of the houses were windowless, clearly not lived in by people. Warehouses, I guessed when saw a wide river mouth between two buildings with half a dozen vessels — several galleys, two merchantmen similar to the Santa Caterina moored at the wooden wharf, and others anchored in the middle of the river. The rising tide was lifting their decks above the wharf.
    I kept to the wall of a warehouse when I reached the wooden planks of the wharf and peered across to the two merchantmen tied up starboard to port, groaning as their sides rubbed against each other. I recognized the distinctive deck lamps swaying gently with the tide. It was the Santa Caterina. In shock, I withdrew. Why did I always have to run into them? I had to get away from here as quickly as possible, no matter how thirsty or hungry I was. And that is what I did, backtracking north on the road I had come from and which, as I was to discover later on, would take me to Pisa.
    By midday I saw its walls and the church towers beyond. But If I had thought that anybody, but particularly a noble maiden, could pass through the gates unhindered, I was sadly mistaken. No, I was turned away, like any vagrant or beggar, told to go back to where I had come from. How naive I had been then in the ways of the world, a