THIRTY

            

 

At midnight Elena was lying rigid, listening for anything over the sound of Dario’s feverish breathing. Matteo had already made two stealthy trips to the councilors’ tents, slipping out in the dark through a slit made with a cloak-pin. She died a hundred times while he was gone, and urged him under her breath to make an escape instead of returning, but he came back. In the pitch-black darkness inside the tent, she felt him lie beside her and work gently at her manacles with some tool she could not see.

His days with Allegreto were rewarded. The iron fell away. Elena watched the thin line of brighter darkness that was the opening of the tent. Dario coughed, a deathly sound. But he was sitting up as well as he could. She had leaned over him and whispered when she gave him water, and he nodded and opened his eyes. He seemed aware enough to understand her, though his forehead blazed with heat. That he had lived so long gave her some hope, but she did not know if he could rise.

Distant bells marked midnight from some village church. Outside, there were still a few voices, a snatch of song from a drunken soldier. Elena clenched her fists.

When it began, she knew instantly.

A noise started, almost below hearing. It was like a trumpet, but playing a note that belonged in hell, an eerie timbre that rose from somewhere far away. She could not tell what direction it was; it seemed to come from everywhere at once, low at first, a wisp of imagination that became real, gathering strength as it echoed through the camp.

She sat up. Matteo leaned beside her. Nimue stood with a growl low in her throat. She barked savagely. And then she sat down and began to howl.

Dogs all over the camp joined her, their mournful voices rising in long uncanny notes, linking with the rising note of the hellish horn.

The guard outside their tent spoke sharply to his comrade. "What is—"

His voice ceased. The other guard cursed and then blessed himself. Elena slipped to the opening and dared to look outside.

Her tent was in a circle that faced the commander’s pavilion. At the entrance to Trie’s tent, she saw a flicker of blue light in the darkness. It became a thing that glowed—a thing, a man—a figure seething with blue radiance. It threw back its head and raised its arms and gave a ghastly roar, a sound like a soul in agony. Vaporous flames shivered up and down its arms. It turned, scanning the tents. With a shock of horror Elena saw the eye-patch that burned in ghostly sapphire across its face.

At the instant that she recognized Franco Pietro, he turned to Trie’s tent. Men were running from out of the dark, but they all came to a dead halt at the sight of him. "Treason!" he howled, a voice that reverberated under the sound of the horn. The dogs moaned in concert. A man’s head appeared at the door of the tent, shouting angry orders.

Franco Pietro’s ghost pointed. "Murder!" it wailed. With a boom and a hollow whoosh of air, the tent exploded in flame.

Elena scrambled to her feet. Screams and shouts rose from the burning tent. One man plunged out, his clothes aflame, another fell and rolled in the burning silk. She stumbled over a body at her feet; realized it was the guard who had cursed only a moment before.

Franco turned, pointing again, and another tent burst into fire. Soldiers began to run, not toward the ghost, but away.

And Allegreto was there, out of the darkness and chaos, with Zafer and men she could barely see. She grabbed his hand without a word, running behind him as he ducked among the tents. They split off from the others, but she had seen Zafer take Matteo, seen Dario on his feet and a glimpse of the councilors running in a cluster from their tents.

All around them, explosions lit the camp. Men were shrieking, sounds of pain and fear and dread. Loose horses bolted, dragging their stakes. Allegreto pulled her behind a tent, holding back for an instant just as a pavilion went up in flames, so close that the heat licked her skin like a white-hot tongue. She caught a glimpse of his face in the burst of reddened light, his features frozen in diabolic beauty.

He gripped her hand and ran, one way and another, avoiding the men who stumbled with sacks and buckets to the fires. At the edge of the camp, he plunged into a black hole, bending low and dragging her with him. Leaves and branches brushed her face, and something soft and weighty bumped against her hair. She realized it was a vineyard, with grapes hanging heavily from the trellis. She could hear others moving around them, crashing through the vines. At the end of the row, she grabbed her skirt and climbed behind Allegreto up onto a bank.

She smelled horses and stale blood. A tiny light shone from a shuttered lantern, just enough to illuminate the door of a stone house.

By threes and fours the others came, a crowd of shadows gathering. From behind, the camp flared with fires, smoke rising in pale gray spires against a black sky.

"Count them, make sure we leave none behind," Allegreto muttered by her ear. "There are horses and mules with the men in the yard. They’ll take you to the city."

Someone opened the door, a sudden square of light spilling onto the ground. In the brief flare, Elena saw that Allegreto’s doublet was soaked in a dark stain, completely covered in it. "You are hurt?" she whispered, reaching for him.

"Nay," he said sharply. He caught her hand, putting it away from him. The door had closed again, the light vanished, but she felt him looking down at her. "Elena—" His voice was strained. He pushed her toward the house. "Go. Make certain they are all there. Hurry."

She obeyed, hastening into the farmhouse. Only a fire was lit in the open hearth, but the illumination seemed to glare in her eyes. Councilmen caught at her hands as she entered, clasping and kissing them. She tore away, pushing through the milling of her councilors and men she had never seen, hushing those who spoke. With a flair of pure relief, she saw Matteo holding Nim’s collar in the corner. She hiked her skirt and stood on a chest, overlooking the crowded room and pulsing shadows in the firelight.

In a low voice she called each of their names. They responded with soft ayes to the roll that she had read at each meeting until she had it memorized. All were there—a miracle. She gave a prayer of thanks and jumped from the chest.

"Signor!" She put her hand on the eldest councilman’s arm. "We have escorts in the yard. Go out the back. See that all have a mount. I will return in a moment."

A path opened for her to the door. She slipped out. Allegreto stepped forward, a silhouette against the flaring skyline of the camp. "They are here," she murmured. "All of them, praise God." She swallowed an uneasiness in her throat, looking up at him. "Allegreto—I saw a thing that looked like—as if Franco had come alive."

"He is alive."

She closed her eyes and let go of a harsh breath. "Did you think I had killed him?" he asked. In the darkness his voice was tense and clipped. "I did not."

"What passed?" She touched his bloodstained doublet.

The faint light glowed along his cheekbones, made his face a sketch of light and shadow. He wet his lips, backing a step from her. "Ask Franco," he said, with a crack in his voice, an anguish that she had never heard before. "Go, Elena. You must leave quickly." He turned from her toward the camp.

She caught his sleeve. "You are not going back?"

"Dario," he said. "He fell behind." Before she could speak, he had vanished into the black night.

 

* * *

 

All the bells of Monteverde had rung without stopping for two days, calling the people of the countryside to shelter within the city gates. The chaos among the condottieri had broken them into groups and factions, leaderless soldiers, angry and frightened by the uncanny assault, by tales of demons and ghosts and blue flame. Some of them had bolted into the mountains, but most of them remained, seething with agitated confusion.

Elena’s head seemed to ring, too, even though the bells had finally stopped. She had not slept since they had escaped to the city. She sat at Dario’s bedside while he fought off fever, receiving messengers and reports, giving directions for the refugees to be fed and housed, watching to make sure the surgeon treated the terrible wound with useful herbs and elixirs and did no more harm.

"The night patrol has just come in, Princess," Franco Pietro said, entering without formal greeting. They had no time or heart for courtesies. In the dim early morning light his hair and eyelashes still glowed in patches from Allegreto’s strange powder.

"What word?" she asked quickly.

The Riata were yet missing five men, Navona three. Zafer had found Dario at the edge of the vineyard at dawn, just beyond a smoldering tent where four men had burned past recognition. Dario’s clothing was singed. He lay insensible and alone.

"We discovered two more bodies, Princess," Franco said.

Elena glanced up in fear.

Franco shook his head. "Not Navona’s, Your Grace. My men." 

She pressed her hands together. "God assoil them. I am sorry." She turned back to watch Dario’s beard-shadowed face. His bones seemed to stand from his skin, making him look years older than the sturdy youth she had met on the island.

"Your Grace, it strains our resource to continue searching," Franco said. "I need what knights and men we can field to patrol the encampment. We cannot let them disperse and raid. While they quarrel among themselves, we have been fortunate, but if they begin to band in large numbers, or find a leader—"

"I know," she said sharply. "Philip is coming. His messenger said he was two day’s march."

"Pray God it is so, Your Grace. This circumstance cannot continue long, and grows more dangerous. I ask your leave to abandon the hunting. I need all men that I have to watch the camp."

She rose suddenly. "Because it is Allegreto!" she exclaimed. "You do not want to find him!" She turned her back. She walked to the basin beside Dario’s bed and began to wring a cloth.

"Your Grace," Franco said in a harsh voice, "if I thought there was a chance that I could find and aid Navona, I would do it."

She twisted the cloth hard in her fists. "There is a chance. He is out there. He is hurt somewhere, or captured."

"We have searched. He never returned to the meeting point. The infidel has been through the camp and every tent in it these two nights past. There are corpses that cannot be recognized." He nodded toward Dario. His voice softened. "This man’s clothes were burned. The compounds that Navona carried—you saw what they could do, princess."

Elena stood, staring down into the basin.

"My lady," Franco said, "do not think I would abandon a search for him lightly. We have been mortal enemies, but he stood with me when the Englishman would have cut me down. I remember that."

"Raymond," she said bitterly. "I cannot comprehend it."

"A fool will do much for gold and dreams. The Visconti know how to twist a man’s heart with promises."

"I never saw it," she whispered. "I trusted him. He was my friend."

Franco grunted. "Sometime it is those who seem most anxious to give compliment and esteem who must be suspected."

She turned. "He was killed in the church? When you fought?"

"Nay, Princess, we were not so kind to him. We took him to Navona’s tower and showed him some of Gian’s mercy."

"Gian’s mercy?" Elena echoed faintly.

The Riata shrugged. He rubbed at his nose beneath the eye-patch and glanced at the faint glow of powder that came away on his fingers. "We needed to know the whole of his scheme. He would have lied. But he did not lie when his arms were torn from their sockets, I promise you, my lady."

Elena put her hands to her cheeks. "Raymond," she whispered.

"Spare no grief for that one," Franco said. "He was a dog, and died as a dog. I might have made him regret his treachery a little longer, but we had no time to spare. Navona slit his throat."

She pressed her hand over her mouth and looked down, thinking of the massive bloodstain on Allegreto’s clothes. Raymond’s blood. Gay, handsome Raymond, with his charming smile. Raymond who had called her a sparkling diamond, an extraordinary woman. She began to shake and could not stop herself.

"I am sorry if I cause you pain, my lady," Franco said brutally, "but it was better so. If Navona had not done it, the task would have been yours."

Elena made a faint sound, nodding. When finally she had swallowed down the nausea and found the ability to look up again, he was standing awkwardly, a slight scowl on his face beneath the patch.

"Va bene," he said gruffly. "I will appoint a pair of men to continue to look for Navona, if you wish it."

"Grant mercy, my lord!" she said. "I fear he is hurt or trapped somehow."

He hesitated, as if he might differ, then compressed his lips and gave a bow. "I beg your leave, Princess. I will make the rounds of the gates now."

She nodded, dismissing him. He walked heavily from the chamber. The guard closed the door behind him.

There was a sound from the bed. Elena turned as Dario struggled to sit up. He winced and held himself on his elbow, panting. "Navona—" He lifted his head a little. "He is hurt?"

"He did not return," she said, kneeling beside the bed. "Do you want water?"

Dario nodded. He took a deep sip from the cup she held to his lips. "He was—with me. In the dark."

"Where?" she asked.

He closed his eyes. He made a grimace and shook his head. "In the dark."

"Outside the camp?"

"Aye," he said hoarsely. "Carried me." He coughed and winced. "There was—fire."

"Fire?" Elena repeated anxiously, but he was fading back into the fever. He sank onto the pillow, his lashes fluttering. With a rasping breath, he turned his head away.

 

* * *

 

By the nighttime, Philip was in the pass to the north, and word had come to Monteverde. The condottieri had heard it, too—there was renewed turmoil in the camp as they found themselves trapped between the lake and the mountains and another force the equal of their own.

Suddenly they sent emissaries and claimed a desire to parley. Elena returned a message with a single word. Go.

But there was nowhere for them to go easily. Philip had divided his company and sent part of it around the mountains, to block the pass to Venice.

The messages became more frantic. They begged the Prima to forgive any trespass. They offered the store of Monteverde’s silver back. They pleaded to join her personal guard. Through the night Franco’s men cut down the soldiers who bolted from the camp, and stories of ghostly visions and angels grew at a rampant pace.

In the dawn Philip’s army was visible from the citadel, like Hannibal marching from the north. Elena sent word to him to halt a league from the city and prepare for battle.

From the ramparts of the great tower she could see the condottiere camp swarm like an anthill kicked open, motion without purpose. She received two of the officers, who claimed to speak for the rest.

They apologized copiously for any crime their dead leaders had committed. They were only simple men, soldiers, who acted under orders. They could see that it had been an ill-advised, impudent plan to meddle in Monteverde’s affairs. They would go, immediately, but for the obstacles in their path.

Elena listened to them. She took them to the western rampart and pointed toward the mountain crags that were already covered in snow. "Every man must swear upon the Lord’s word that he will never raise arms against Monteverde again," she said. "And then you may depart. That way."

To the west. The high, bleak, pathless mountains, where men would have to struggle to even walk, far less gather and fight or destroy what few outposts lay there. And beyond them, for those who made the journey before winter froze the trails...Milan.

Let Milan take back the dregs of what they had wrought, and if the condottieri turned bandit before they reached Visconti lands, then perchance it was God’s judgment on them.

Elena held out her hand and accepted the grateful kisses of the soldiers on their knees. And for nigh a week she stood with Philip in the western reaches of Monteverde’s lands, at a castle— hardly more than a gatehouse—that guarded the remote trails into the mountains. As the condottiere passed one by one through Philip’s ranks, they took their oath to shun any war with Monteverde, relinquished all plunder and weapons but a knife, and received a bag of flour and a flask of olive oil. They were given a cloak and a tinderbox if they did not have one. While Elena watched, one of her bodyguards interviewed each soldier for any news of Allegreto.

There was none. They had seen specters and glowing angels and barking fiends that looked like dogs, but no one had news of a living man with black hair and a comely face, dressed in green-and-silver dyed with blood.

The guard brought a ring to her, discovered in a soldier’s pouch, because it was engraved with Navona’s motto. It had been found on the ground, amid some blackened grasses inside a burned-out tent.

Elena took it from the guard’s hand. The metal was cold in her lingers. In the harsh light of an October frost, she could see that there were letters on the inner curve. Her eyes were not quite clear, they were blurred in the icy air, but she did not need to read it.

She held the ring in her fist until it warmed. Then she thrust it on her left hand, her fingers trembling, forcing it over her knuckle though it was too small to fit.

He would come back. She could not believe he was gone. She would not. She dreamed nightmares of men rolling on the ground in flames.

 

* * *

 

"Your Grace!" At least five councilors were on their feet in objection, but the eldest took advantage of his precedence. "You must not depart on such a scheme! We cannot allow it!"

Christmas and Easter had come and gone, and letters that had wandered astray for months had arrived, informing the bishop of Monteverde that in light of the solemn repentance and offerings made by his worshipful child in God, Allegreto della Navona, the censure of excommunication laid on him would be lifted after he made his penitential offerings and traveled to the Pope for absolution.

"Allow it?" Elena said. Her hands were cold in spite of the white fur that draped over her wrists. "Do you think I am a prisoner here?"

"Nay, Your Grace, certainly not, but—"

"Then I will go."

"Your Grace, we comprehend and share your grief, and understand that you desire the proper observances to be made, but to go to Rome! It is not necessary. Let us send an envoy to carry our respects and reverences, and beg what you will of the Holy Father."

"I will go myself."

The old councilor gave her a reproachful look. "Your Grace has pressing duties here."

"To listen to further debate over who I am to wed? I will not wed. I will go to Rome. I wish for this letter from the Pope to be made public in every corner of Monteverde, so that Allegreto della Navona may hear it and know."

They only looked at her, their familiar sober faces lined down the long table. Since the night of the escape, they had been more gentle, less contentious among themselves. It had united them as brothers, and their devotion to her had grown to stifling proportions.

She saw what they thought. She braced herself, but she was failing, losing her conviction in the days and weeks and months that passed.

"Your Grace," the old man said, with a kindness that cut her to the heart, "it would be wiser to have a mass said for his soul in every church."

She shook her head, refusing.

He looked up and down the table. "Signori, I propose that we gather a sum and cause an epitaph of intercession to be made on behalf of Allegreto Navona, to be placed in some honored spot in the city, so that all who see it will be reminded to say a prayer for his soul. And in tribute to his valiant action in the recovery of the Prima and all of the council, that we request a special mass to be said for him throughout the realm."

"No," Elena said. Her voice rose a little; she heard the high-pitched note in it herself. "I will not have you speak as if he were dead."

The elderly councilor pursed his lips. He lowered his eyes and sat down without calling for a vote.

She sat still and upright in the huge throne-like chair. "I will go to Rome and make certain that his offerings are carried out properly, and that no faults can be found in them, so that his anathema may be absolved."

No one said aloud that it was too late for absolution. They averted their eyes. The great dark chamber echoed with shuffles and aimless shifting.

"It is not your responsibility, Your Grace," a councilor mumbled far down the table.

"It is. It is the least—" Her voice caught. She paused. "It is the least we can do. He saved all of our lives, and Monteverde."

"Franco Pietro did as much, Your Grace."

"Franco did well. But he could not have executed the plan that freed us. He has said so himself. And I will leave him in command of the citadel while I am gone, with Philip under him."

Before the rebellion of the condottieri, they would have gasped in outrage. Now they only murmured, less concerned by the Riata than by fear of her departure. Like parents with a sickly boy child, they dreaded to have her out of their sight. They put forth all of their arguments—she had duties, she would alarm the people, she was acting without thought or prudence. She rubbed her fingers over the ring. They averted their eyes, pretending not to see it, pressing her on and on. Finally she put her face in her hands and ceased to reason with them.

"I must do this!" she cried, her voice echoing from the walls and timbers of the roof. "If it slay me, I must do it!" She lifted her face. "Elect another in my place, if you will, for I cannot give you more."

Twenty shocked faces stared at her.

The elder councilor rose again, pushing himself up with a slow move. "Your Grace, you force me to speak with perfect frankness. It is apparent that you allow your sentiment to outweigh your wisdom. For you to leave the realm on such a foolish and worthless undertaking is unpardonable. If you refuse to put the welfare of Monteverde first, Your Grace—perchance an election should be considered," he said heavily. "Though it rends my heart to speak of it."

"Then do so." She took up the weighty scepter and let it fall on the table before them with a thud. "Haps you will find someone wiser than I to lead you."