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And yet, lacking in botanical knowledge, all Fiore himself could find to say about it was, “What are these trees called?”
Which was just about the stupidest sentence that had ever dropt from his lips.
Enzo, however, didn’t seem to think so. The smile he cast down at Fiore grew softer. “Hornbeam.”
“They’re marvelous,” Fiore declared.
Out of sheer habit he withdrew his zibaldone and pencil from his breeches pocket, only realizing what he’d done when he looked up from the blank open pages to find Enzo watching him with undisguised interest.
Fiore hesitated with his pencil poised over the page. “May I?”
“By all means,” Enzo replied and sounded remarkably as though he meant it.
The sketch didn’t take long, just a quick impression of their surroundings, the shafts of light falling into the deep shadows. Fiore didn’t want to linger lest he bore his host.
But when he shut his zibaldone, he glanced up to find Enzo didn’t appear in the least bit bored. On the contrary, his dark eyes held a delighted gleam.
“I’m afraid only the periwinkle is blooming this early,” Enzo said. “If you would consent to return later in the season, we’ll have some resplendent flowers for you to see—and draw, if you’d like.”
Fiore blinked at him. To have been invited here at all was extraordinary. To be invited to return… well. He smiled. “I think I’d like that.”
Enzo beamed.
Fiore offered him his arm again. Enzo accepted it with evident pleasure and led him on through the supposedly “small” garden. Beyond the hornbeam grove lay the periwinkle, blooming just as Enzo had promised and carpeting the edges of the white gravel pathway with a brilliant blue-purple. They continued on to another particular tree.
“Dragon’s blood,” Enzo said as they halted to admire the singular specimen. “So called for its sap. Bright red,” he added in response to Fiore’s inquisitive glance. “Supposedly the first of its kind sprouted up where the blood of a true dragon spilled onto the ground.”
“Bellenos?” Fiore guessed.
“That’s one of the prevailing theories,” Enzo answered. “They don’t grow naturally in Halcyon itself, but the land surrounding the lagoon is rife with them. It’s possible Bellenos seeded the first saplings with his own blood as he wandered through the region before crafting the islands.”
Fiore couldn’t halt his tongue before he heard it ask, “Just his blood?”
Enzo blinked down at him—then turned aside and muffled his throaty laugh in his hand, not meeting Fiore’s gaze again until he’d regained his composure. Good humor brightened his dark eyes. Or at least Fiore hoped it was humor and not the return of a fever. It made his face still more handsome regardless.
“Possibly more than blood,” Enzo conceded with a smile. “The sap itself is certainly more than blood. It dyes wool, varnishes violins, quenches steel… to say nothing of its medicinal properties. It’s both stimulant and coagulant—it halts the flow of blood,” he added at Fiore’s raised eyebrow.
Fiore bit back a grin. Enzo’s features were so well-formed as to never appear anything less than handsome. But as he divulged the tree’s secrets, his passion lit up his whole face with a delightful spark that would leave even the most hardened heart enraptured by his countenance. He revealed the breadth of his knowledge not with the didactic boredom of an aged tutor but as a friend who found the world wondrous and wished to share this wonder with another. Fiore, meanwhile, wondered how Enzo had come to possess all this expertise. What manner of education had he sought to learn so much of chirurgy and botany?
Between his silent enquiries and his admiration of Enzo, Fiore feared he took in very little of what Enzo tried to impart. He’d simply have to ask him about it again later. It would make a charming opportunity for further conversation.
“And then, of course,” Enzo ran on, “there are its alchemical uses, which—”
Whatever the alchemical uses of dragon’s blood might have been, they were cut off as a coughing fit seized Enzo and threatened to choke the life from him.
Fiore froze.
The hound—whose presence Fiore had almost forgotten, for he followed them as dark and silent and close as a shadow—leapt to alarm. Yet while more attentive, there seemed just as little for him to do. He stood beside Enzo in alert posture, ears pricked, head cocked. Even this proved more useful than anything Fiore failed to attempt.
Enzo muffled his coughs in his voluminous sleeve and braced his free hand against the dragon’s blood tree. Each cough came like a thunderclap, a veritable hurricane of ceaseless bolts, one atop the other in a cacophonous cascade.
Fiore found it possible to move at last and rushed all-too-late to Enzo’s side. He half-expected the hound to warn him off. But Vittorio simply stared up at them both with sorrowful concern. Fiore slipped a hand around Enzo’s back to rub between his shoulder blades. The hacking downpour drew off at last, little by little, until there was space enough for both of them to breathe between the outbursts. At length Enzo dropt his arm from his mouth to reveal a wan smile. He fumbled his hand into a pocket of his wrapping-gown and withdrew a handkerchief. This he spat into with more delicacy than most. Despite his grace under the circumstances, he looked deeply ashamed to have done so—though still not even half so ashamed as Fiore felt for failing to do anything to assist him.
“Your pardon,” Enzo croaked.
Fiore, who had all the pardon in the world to beg for, could force nothing past his lips.
Enzo folded the soiled handkerchief and slipped it back into his pocket. His hand emerged again clutching a flask.
