The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER TWO

He needed to make a dramatic entrance.

Not far from the secret door he used to come and go from the Septizodium, there was a crack in the wall that opened into a narrow slot. Previously, Fieschi had used it as a makeshift dressing room, exchanging the vestments of his station for a plain wool robe. Now, as the tunnels beneath the Septizodium began to fill with smoke and the cries of the panicked Cardinals, he waited patiently in his hiding spot.

Before squeezing into his secret sanctum, he had gone ahead to the secret door and released the hidden latch. He had pushed it open slightly, just enough for a little air to get in, and for a little smoke to get out. The young messengers had used the door, and while he suspected the two jesters-Colonna and Capocci-had known of its existence prior to the arrival of the intruders, he didn’t want to leave it to Providence that it would be found: he needed witnesses, an audience that would flock to his miraculous appearance.

Fieschi set his shoulders against the back of his niche to get more comfortable. He opened and closed his right hand slowly, keeping the aching paralysis of his recent exertion at bay. Quoniam fortitudo mea et refugium meum es tu, he prayed, et propter nomen tuum deduces me et enutries me.

Fieschi recalled a sermon St. Augustine had delivered on the thirty-first Psalm-in particular, a portion of the homily concerning Abraham. The patriarch was justified by the virtue of his faith; his good works came second. God is my rock and my fortress, and I am unshakeable in my faith. “Exsultabo, et laetabor in misericordia tua,” he whispered, knowing that God would hear him, “quoniam respexisti humilitatem meam; salvasti de necessitatibus animam meum.”

By destroying Somercotes, he had saved the Church. Were such trials not part of God’s love and kindness? Surely God would forgive him of his transgression.

The fire, incendiary agent of Satan, eagerly devoured the combustibles in the narrow room. It had licked the walls and found them wanting, and so it had fallen upon the dead body. Fueled by the cloth and the flesh, it had grown larger, sending out creeping tendrils of fire that wormed their way through the cracks in the walls. It was no longer a single blaze by the time Capocci approached Somercotes’s room but a string of fires, prancing with unholy glee, in a number of the tiny rooms the Cardinals had been using.

Most of the smoke came from Somercotes’s room, rolling off the huddled mass that popped and crackled as the fire joyfully burned fat and flesh off bone. Capocci ducked his head, breathing through his mouth; he knew that smell. Years ago, when he still believed in Gregory IX, he had led papal troops into Viterbo and besieged the citadel of Rispampano. The Roman troops resisted for a few days, hurling everything they could haul up to the battlements down upon his troops, including burning pitch. The screams of dying men and the smell of their burning flesh had only hardened the resolve of his soldiers.

Somercotes’s body lay curled near the center of his room. Not on his bed and not near the door-two places that Capocci would have expected to find the body had the fire been an accident. He pushed aside the inquisitive thoughts that crowed his brain, and waddled slowly into the hot room. His beard crackled as strands of his capacious whiskers began to curl and burn from the heat. Blinking heavily to clear the smoke from his eyes, he reached out with his gloved hand.

Somercotes couldn’t still be alive. The fire danced too merrily along his frame, and the crackling, sizzling sound of burning meat was so loud. And the smell… Capocci grabbed something-an elbow, perhaps-and clenched his teeth as the fire gnawed through the heavy leather of his gloves. He pulled, intending to drag the body out of the inferno, but there was no resistance and he fell back on the floor.

Clutched in his hand, covered in writhing tendrils of fire, was a spitting piece of charred meat. The entire arm.

Spitting out an oath that he would have to beg forgiveness for later, Capocci tried to hurl Somercotes’s arm away, but the fire had fused the meat to the leather of his glove. Orange tongues of flame licked at the cuff of his sleeve. Using his other hand, he stripped the glove off-both of them, in the end-and scrambling backward, he fled from the room and its grisly pyre.

Capocci leaned against the hallway wall, coughing and choking as he tried to catch his breath without inhaling the fouled air. He knew he should check the other rooms. Hopefully they were empty, but what if they weren’t? Would their occupants be any more alive than Somercotes?

He wanted to run away. He wasn’t such a prideful man that he couldn’t admit when he was afraid. Fear was a powerful emotion, and giving himself up to God meant letting go of the fear. But such a sacrifice did not make him invulnerable or fireproof.

It made him cautious.

He had to be sure, though. He had to be sure there was no one else. Only then could he listen to the voice in his head-the one that telling him that Somercotes’s death was not an accident.

Rodrigo had dreamed of a dragon once. It was sinuous and long, and covered in red and brown scales. When it roared, a great billow of black smoke issued from its mouth. There were great furnaces in its belly, stoked by infernal spirits, and in the wake of that smoke came the fire. The brilliant, burning fire.

He ran from that fire. To stand his ground would be to be burned, and while he had faith in God-while he believed that God watched over him and that God’s love was enough to protect him from any such foul denizen of Hell-another part of him was broken and fearful. That part of him fled, dragging the rest of his spirit with him. The rest of his body and mind. Running from the fire…

Rodrigo bashed his hands against rough rock as he tripped. The smoke surrounded him-it was in his mouth, his nose, his eyes-but there was less of it down here next to the rock. He wanted to press his face against the rocky ground, and let the smoke pass over him. Let the dragon’s fire burn the sky overhead. Down here, nestled against the ground, he would escape notice. He could still breathe.

“Get up.” Someone grabbed his robes and dragged him upright. He fought back, his body racked with heaving coughs, but he had no real strength in his arms. He let himself be dragged along until it became clear that whoever was carrying him would continue to do so-more roughly, in fact, he realized as his knees bounced painfully off the ground.

When he had his feet beneath him again, the hand released its hold, and he was free to continue staggering down the endless passage.

As if he was running up the dragon’s throat, trying to escape the burning churn of the infernal fires in its belly.

Then, without warning, he was free. The smoke went upward, a curling black finger rising into the pure serenity of the blue sky, and the walls of the tunnel fell away. He had escaped.

And with the freedom came a sudden rush of clarity, as if much more than smoke was wiped clear of his eyes and throat. He had been in the grips of the fever again, the persistent heat that plagued his soul. It was such a heavy weight to carry that the brief moments when he felt God’s eyes upon him were such a momentous blessing. He felt so… elevated.

He looked behind him at the unadorned outer walls of the Septizodium. He stood in an alley, one of the many unmarked and unmemorable gaps between buildings in Rome. The door through which he had stumbled wasn’t a real door, but a clever panel of stone. Any other time, he would never have noticed it against the mottled background of the surrounding stone, but it hung open now and a column of black smoke spiraled up from it. There were other spires of smoke rising over the rooftop; clearly, there were other exits from the Septizodium. They might not have been plain to those who were sequestered inside, but smoke had a talent for finding a way out.

The tall, elderly Cardinal-Colonna, Rodrigo could remember his name effortlessly now-stood nearby, his chest heaving with a great cough. He spat something foul on the ground, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Are you all right?” he asked, and Rodrigo recognized his voice as the one that had kept shouting at him during his long exodus from the fire-laden darkness.

“Yes,” Rodrigo replied. “Well enough.”

Colonna nodded and made the sign of the cross. “Watch for others,” he said, “I am going to see if anyone… is waiting for us to… escape.” He took a step up the alley, and then seemed to realize he was still cradling a small earthenware jar in his hands. “Hold on to this,” he said, thrusting it toward Rodrigo.

“What is it?”

Colonna cocked his head to one side. “Just… hold it.” Shaking his head, he headed up the alley, leaving Rodrigo to wonder what was on the Cardinal’s mind.

Rodrigo peered at the jar, cradling it tentatively. The stopper was a thick wooden plug surrounded by a layer of wax, and the seal was so tight that if he turned it upside down-like so-the stopper did not come out. He held the jar close to his ear, cautiously listening, but he heard nothing over the groaning rumble of the fire burning deep within the Septizodium.

I am being a fool, he thought. If it is the one thing that Colonna brought out of this prison, then it must be important. That is enough for me. He glanced in the direction the tall Cardinal had gone. We all have our secrets.

Unburdened by the fever, he dispassionately recalled what he had seen at the abandoned farm near Mohi: the slaughtered horses in the barn; the children hiding in the hayloft; their mother, lying on the hearth in the house, her body burned and defiled; the old man pinned to the wall with arrows, forced to watch. He could remember it all clearly, unburdened by the horror and dread he had felt at the time. It was as if he was looking at the pages of an illuminated manuscript, and no matter how badly he desired to close this book and hide these pictures forever, he could not. They were an indelible part of him now, burned into his memory by the fever. By the vision.

He could also remember what Brother Albertus had taught him many years prior. He had been so young, so eager to learn how to worship God, and the older monk had been equally eager to share his newfound knowledge with a bright student. The Ars Notoria, a means by which he would be able to more readily explore his relationship with God. By understanding the language of God, by learning how the tongue and the mind were connected.

Brother Albertus had taught him a prayer. Te quaeso Domine mi illumina conscientiam meam splendore luminis tui. To call upon God to illuminate him with his light so that he would remember what he had seen and heard. Adorna animam meum ut audiendo audiam et audita memoriter teneam.

Bless me, God, so that I may remember.

And he did. He remembered all of it, as clearly as if he was experiencing it for the first time. Was this God’s love? Or, by invoking those names that Brother Albertus had taught him, had he transgressed against the glory of God? Algaros, Theomiros…. The names of angels, according to Brother Albertus, aspects of God that would fill him with the celestial majesty.

He had tried to forget. After covering and burying the dead, he had knelt in prayer before the hearth where the woman had been killed. He had asked God to undo all that had been done to him. He did not want to remember anymore. He wanted to open his eyes and be innocent again.

But God never answered his prayer. His knees aching, the wound in his abdomen slowly weeping down his side, he had refused to quit praying. He would pray until God heard him, or until his soul went to God directly. He wouldn’t stop.

And then the angels had come. First, they were nothing more than beams of light, streaming through the holes in the rough walls of the house. They came swirling and combining into a winged figure that floated over the hearth.

Aperi mititissime animam meam. Mercifully open the dullness of my soul…

Rodrigo clenched Colonna’s earthenware jar tight to this chest. Our secrets, he thought, imagining a great door closing over the part of his memory that refused to fade.

A clatter of metal and the chatter of voices drew him away from that memory and cast him into another. Soldiers, wearing purple and white, were coming toward him and the smoking hole of the secret entrance of the Septizodium. Rodrigo saw them coming, but he also saw-with equal clarity-a sweltering afternoon in a marketplace. Ferenc was there, riding beside him, and there was a girl too. Behind them. Watching them. He had seen her again. Where? In the darkness of the dragon’s belly, before it had been woken from its slumber. Like a tiny bird that had been swallowed, she had fluttered down into their prison. She had brought him something… the ring! Archbishop Csak’s signet ring.

“Father Rodrigo.”

He started, blinking heavily. His vision blurred, swimming with too many distinct images, too many layers overlapping. Eventually, cleared away by a minute wash of tears, all that remained was the concerned faces of Cardinal Colonna and another man whom he recognized but did not know. “Yes?” he said.

Colonna indicated the other man. “This is Master Constable Alatrinus.” His voice was flat. “He and his men are here to ensure our safety…”

The Master Constable nodded. “Please, Father. Let my men escort you.”

“Where?” Rodrigo managed. He was still clenching the jar, and he lowered his arms, though he did not relinquish his burden. He caught sight of a ring on his right thumb, and he stared at the ornate band. The Archbishop had been a large man, much heavier and taller than Rodrigo, and his hands had been enormous.

But that wasn’t why he stared at the ring. He stared because he had no memory of putting it there.

“A safe distance,” the Master Constable said. He put a hand on Rodrigo’s shoulder and squeezed slightly, misinterpreting the priest’s confusion as being caused by inhaling too much smoke.

One of the guards called for the Master Constable’s attention, and the hand disappeared from Rodrigo’s shoulder. Someone else was coming out of the tunnel, a soot-blackened apparition with white hair.

“It’s Capocci,” Colonna breathed with a sigh of relief.

Confusion grew as more guards arrived, overfilling the narrow terminus of the alley. The Master Constable shoved his way through the crowd to Capocci’s side as the white-bearded Cardinal sank to the ground. Rodrigo could not hear the Cardinal’s response to the Master Constable’s question, but the answer was plain to read on the latter’s face as he stood.

“Find out how many they’re pulling out of the courtyard,” he said to one of his men. “Tell them I have three. Get an accurate count.” The man nodded, and brushing past Colonna and Rodrigo, he ran to deliver his message.

As several other soldiers knelt to help Capocci to his feet, the Master Constable gingerly approached the smoking mouth of the tunnel entrance. Was he going to go in? Rodrigo felt a shout rising in his throat; he wanted to warn the Master Constable. How could the man not see that no one could still be alive in there?

“Ho!” the Master Constable shouted. “Is anyone there?”

Rodrigo choked on his words as something moved in the darkness of the door. The Master Constable jumped back, startled by the sudden appearance of a figure. What had he summoned with his words?

A man staggered out of the tunnel, his face and clothes streaked with soot. He fell to the ground at the Master Constable’s feet, gasping for air. With a shaky hand, he grabbed at the soldier’s boot, clutching the leather like a drowning man grabbing a piece of driftwood.

Rodrigo stared, and as the man raised his face, he remembered something else: the last time he had seen Somercotes alive, they had been interrupted by a visitor, who had taken Somercotes away. The hawk-faced man. This man on the ground before him.

Cardinal Fieschi.