Game Log

Epilogue

Game Date: 03/17/06
After a few tense days, a truce is arranged.

Veldi, Quartus 9, just past 1 AM in the morning

Antonio was very angry with Marco. Not only did his son's unexpected entrance make it look as if Antonio was incapable of defending himself, but he'd dragged Francesca along with him! What was he thinking? Before Francesca could speak up, Marco offered a lame excuse - that he had been afraid to leave her alone in the house, with all of the scheming going on. "So you brought her to a sword fight!" Antonio exclaimed sarcastically, berating his son some more before his family hurried him home to see a doctor. Francesca thanked Marco; he shrugged. He knew that he was already in trouble; no sense in getting her in trouble, too.

They arrived back at the Palazzo just as Salvador was returning from his visit with Maria. At the house, Angelo sprang into action. Giving his brothers only the barest-bones version of the story (which set Cristoforo off; the captain had to be calmed down before he killed Antonio with the man's wives and doctor standing by), Angelo gathered up Tomasso's widow and daughter as well as his own fiancee and left the house with them in a carriage.

Anna was stunned and horrified by Tomasso's death; she explained to Salvador that he'd asked her for a Swords blessing earlier but, angry and annoyed with him, she'd only pretended to give him one, and now he was dead and it was her fault. Salvador consoled her and sent her to get some rest.

Antonio's room was set up almost as a miniature fortress. His wives and his doctor were frequently with him or just outside; his son or one of the house guards he felt were especially loyal to him were posted on the outside. The doctor stitched up Antonio's wounds; they were serious, he said, but he should recover with time.

Veldi, Quartus 9, after sun-up

The next morning, Antonio seemed in good spirits. Gianina proposed that someone should go get Teodora from the country, so she could attend Tomasso's funeral. Antonio agreed and further insisted his own wives remain in the country until after it was over. His other brothers might be finishing what they'd started, and he wanted his wives well away from any bloodshed. Before they departed, Francesca instructed Salvador to get Sero out of the house. The benandanti was packed and ready to go when Salvador showed up with a purse for him.

Angelo brought back the carriage he'd left with the night before; the ladies took that out to the country. Teodora was expecting them; she had of course noticed Tomasso's strands dying. Even in her grief, she pridefully tried to put on a good face in front of the younger women, but it was a pale shadow of her earlier commandeering personality.

When Teodora got back to Monfalcone, she asked to see Antonio but was refused (by Zola, who had come in almost as soon as the wives had left). Not especially feeling that, at this point, she required either his permission or his blessing, she gathered her remaining sons together and informed them all about their Lorenzo heritage. As it turned out, this was news only to Salvador: Cristoforo had known for three years now, and Bernardo and Angelo had been informed a day earlier by Antonio. Antonio's mother, although only a courtesan, had more Lorenzo ancestry than Teodora did. So her husband, Vittorio, had preferred that son to inherit over his others, because of the status it conferred within the family circles. She exhorted her sons to learn more about their secret extended family before doing anything else.

Amordi, Quartus 10

The day was quite as everyone prepared for the funeral.

The funeral was that night at sundown. Angelo's eulogy was exceptional. People who had come, certain they knew what had really happened (and who were, incidentally, more or less correct) came away thinking that Tomasso was a most loving and dedicated man, entirely in harmony with his family, who had died fighting alongside his older brother against a band of cutthroats. But while the eulogy presented Tomasso in a nearly saintly light, Angelo did not try to make Antonio into a villian. He had plans for unifying the family.

Terdi, Quartus 11

Gianina and Francesca returned home the next day to startling news. Antonio was getting worse, not better, since that morning - or so he said. The doctor could find nothing wrong. Speaking frankly with Zola, Francesca got her to recommend two doctors. They were specialists in feminine health, of course, but still generally competent. They and a third doctor were all summoned to examine the man. None could find any evidence of an infection, nor of a poison, nor any other problem, despite Antonio's firm fatalistic conviction that something inside him was gravely wrong and that he was dying. The only thing that one of the pair that Zola recommended could say was that, like a heartbroken man, he had simply lost the will to live. Francesca and Gianina tried to work with that, to give him some reason to live - Gianina going so far as to threaten to flirt with every man in the house! But Antonio was convinced; Theus was calling him home, and he would go with honor and dignity. Among the business he wanted to have finished was Sero, but Francesca told him that Salvador had "taken care of him." Antonio understood a different meaning in her words but was pleased.

As Antonio was preparing to say farewell to his loved ones, Angelo called his brothers together to negotiate a truce. He would get Antonio to swear to keep them informed about these Lorenzo goings-on, and they would all swear to stop plotting his death. How did that sound? Salvador answered that he'd like some sort of advantage... perhaps the viscounty? Cristoforo was suddenly taken with the idea of being a general, although exactly how Antonio could provide such a thing was unclear to everyone - but if it was time for wishes, that was his.

Antonio said his good-byes to Zola and Marco separately; while he was speaking with his son, Gianina tried to come to some understanding with Zola, but the courtesan was too grief-stricken to really attend to her words. Antonio called for his wives, and then for Father Donati to take his confession and give him last rites.

He was unhappily surprised when Salvador came in with Angelo; the matter of the viscounty was put before him and Antonio was convinced that Salvador would do a good job with it. Antonio certainly didn't expect to be around to pursue the matter anymore, so he gave his blessing to the enterprise. Salvador left, and Angelo put the question of the oath to him. Antonio didn't see the entire point of it - "do nothing to hasten his death" when he was already dying? - but wanted to go on to the afterlife with his brothers' goodwill, and so swore. He had no grudge against Gabrielle, he said, and hoped that Angelo and his brothers would similarly not give his wives or son any problems as long as they did not work against the Donati. Angelo admitted his role in setting Antonio up, which Antonio had susepcted; Antonio admitted that, if Tomasso had gone to Montaigne, he wouldn't have been coming back.

The confession went long; it had been thirteen years since Antonio's last. He had never told anyone, not even a priest, what had happened between him and Angela, and if Angelo hadn't pried it out of him in the early hours of Veldi morning, he might have taken his secret to the grave. Now he asked Theus's forgiveness as well as Angelo's. Both were granted, with Antonio's penance being that Pietra should be acknowledged as Angela's daughter (although her paternity could remain hidden, to spare her the ignomy of it) and provided for as a daughter of the Donati family. Antonio agreed to it, and Angelo made to go.

Antonio called him back, agitated, as Last Rites had not yet been given. Instead, Angelo gave him a small vial, saying that, "You don't need them. Your faith has made you well."

Guerdi, Quartus 12

Antonio's recovery was remarkable! He was in excellent spirits the next day. If Angelo's trickery bothered him, the fact that he was reconciled with his brothers apparently made up for it. He called his wives in to tell them something important.

His own mother had been killed because Teodora hadn't been told about the Lorenzo blood and its importance to the family. Too many problems and too much struggle had come from keeping the secret too secret, and so he shared it now with his wives. They were understandably taken aback by it, and Antonio hastened to assure them that the stereotypical Lorenzo penchant for sadism didn't run pure in all their heirs. Why, he himself, as a Lord's Hand, was well-known for his self-control when beating people up for Prince Mondavi! And if they were worried about a conflict with their father's Vestini family, they needn't. Their father knew. Not everyone in the Vestini family was happy with their new prince and his devout Vaticine ways, you see. Gianina seemed to take the news generally better than Francesca, who was suddenly curious about Zola's bloodline. Antonio shook his head at that; he wasn't with Zola because of her ancestry. Neither she nor her son was a threat to anyone in the family - in that way, at least.

Downstairs, the Donati brothers were discussing their new situation when the locked door to Antonio's empty office opened and a strange woman came out. Cristoforo started violently at the intrusion, but Salvador ignored the strangeness of it to ask politely, "Can I help you?"

Looking him up and down, she replied in Montaigne-accented Vodacce, "I certainly hope so."

The visitor eventually introduced herself as an invited guest of Don Antonio: Countess Odessa Blanchard du Rachetisse, Donna Gabrielle's aunt, here to Walk Tomasso and his family back to Montaigne. In between fairly brazen remarks, she managed to offer apparently sincere condolences to the family on their loss when she was told of Tomasso's death. Told by Antonio that her niece was out of the house but would be returning later that day, she required some amusement; Salvador offered a carriage ride to see the sights of Monfalcone, which she found acceptable.

Gianina, upstairs with Antonio when the woman first arrived, saw her husband's main Rods strand suddenly twist from its normal northerly orientation to point downstairs...

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