The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Ferenc was confident that, given time, he could find his own route to the city walls. But Father Rodrigo had sagely suggested they trust Ocyrhoe’s map instead. She knew the bolt holes, the unmarked alleys, the routes taken by the city watch. The map’s route was easy to follow, more so because the city streets were mostly deserted and, sooner than he expected, they were outside the city walls.

So much easier when the city guard wasn’t chasing them.

Father Rodrigo walked as if he had been hitched to a wagon; each step seemed incredibly laborious, and only after his foot came down did the rest of his body follow.

Ferenc was exhausted as well. The excitement of his reunion with Father Rodrigo and their subsequent escape had worn off. They had little in the way of supplies-one blanket he had grabbed from the room before they had left, a water skin, and his flint, all shoved into a ragged satchel the priest was carrying. In the morning, they would have to find sustenance. In the morning…

Ferenc wondered again why the priest had been so intent on escaping. There was food, a roof over his head, and-if he understood correctly what had transpired-the entirety of the Vatican was at Father Rodrigo’s disposal. Why then the urgent need to slip out of the city? Had they just spent months traveling to the city?

He did not entirely understand Father Rodrigo’s thinking, and since the priest had been in the Septizodium, he had found the man’s attitude and awareness disturbing. It was as if a different man had come out from the one that had gone in. This one-the haggard priest staggering along the moonlit track ahead of him-was almost like a stranger to him.

“We should rest, Father Rodrigo,” he said gently, “though we must not light a fire. We do not want to attract anyone’s attention. But if we bundle ourselves together in the blanket, we may keep warm through the night.”

Father Rodrigo’s response had been a wordless grunt, a reminder of the way they had communicated in the first months after Mohi, when the priest had been terribly sick. But, unlike then, he came willingly when Ferenc led him to the shelter of a tall tree, and he fell asleep almost immediately upon lying down on the ground. Ferenc arranged the blanket as best he could to cover both of them, and he stared up at the night sky, listening to the priest’s breathing.

The weight is gone, Ferenc thought as his eyelids grew heavy. Whatever he carried from Mohi to Rome is no longer with him. There was something else-a lighter burden, but one no less valuable than the message he had carried previously.

With that thought Ferenc fell into a fitful sleep of his own. He dreamed about cavernous tunnels whose openings were covered by red curtains, and of the women who kept disappearing into these tunnels-women who wore long coats of maille. They wore no helms, and their long, unbound hair flowed down their backs, like the manes of horses.

In the morning, there was dew clinging to everything, and even with a flint Ferenc doubted he could have started a fire. They were, as he feared, cold, hungry, and damp. It would be easier to find an outlying village and offer his labor in exchange for breakfast.

“Why did we run away from Rome, Father?” he asked as he stretched, letting his gaze wander about the countryside.

“We did not run away, my son,” said Father Rodrigo simply, as if this was all the answer that Ferenc could possibly need. “We have a task to perform. One that we could not have accomplished inside the city walls.”

“What task is that, Father?”

Father Rodrigo offered him a puzzled expression. “To release the power of the Grail, of course.” He patted the tattered satchel he had brought with them.

Ferenc stuck a finger in his ear and worked it back and forth, as if he could dislodge the words he had just heard. The Grail? He remembered a cup Father Rodrigo had been holding on the ledge above the crowd. It had fallen from his hand when the soldiers had grabbed him. Was that the Grail? But how had that cup found its way back to Rodrigo?

“What… what does it do?” Ferenc asked. He recalled the crowd’s reaction to the cup: astonishment and awe. But he hadn’t seen what had been so remarkable about the cup. It had looked like an old drinking mug, tarnished with age.

“That is not the right question, my son. Instead, consider what it is that the Grail wants us to do,” Father Rodrigo replied with a small smile. “We are but vessels through which it operates. I must show it to the people of Italy, of Germany and France. I must show it to everyone, and the Grail will tell them what it wants from us.”

That was not a promising, or elucidating, answer, and Ferenc eyed Father Rodrigo’s satchel with suspicion. He had packed it himself. He didn’t recall putting a cup in there, nor any opportunity when the priest might have done so. “What did it want yesterday in the marketplace?”

“It wanted me to rouse up the people of Christendom and urge them to shake off the danger of the Mongols. It wanted me to prevent the arrival of a prophecy-to prevent the world from coming to an end.”

Ferenc’s stomach tightened into a knot. His voice leaping up almost an octave as he demanded, “Mongols? The ones from Mohi? Father, you were there. You know what they did, what they can do. We cannot fight them. Even with everyone from the market yesterday. We will be killed!”

“Calm yourself, my son,” Father Rodrigo said. “I am not talking about a marketplace of people descending on an army. I mean we must gather all of Christendom, every man, woman, and child, and all together, as a united front, we will confront them and drive their evil from our land.”

“Everyone?” Ferenc repeated, saying the word with exaggerated care. “Everyone?”

“Everyone.”

Ferenc considered this. “How?” he asked, unable to comprehend such a mass of people.

“God will provide,” Father Rodrigo, a serene calm descending upon his face. The priest stared into the distance, a wry smile on his face.

Ferenc sighed, faced with the entirely reasonable conclusion: however calm and rational Father Rodrigo seemed, he had taken leave of all of his senses. The fever may have finally left him, but it had burned away too much of the priest.

“Excuse me, Father, I need to relieve myself,” Ferenc said. He picked up the blanket and carefully draped it around Father Rodrigo’s shoulders. The priest patted Ferenc’s hand and continued to smile at nothing in particular. Unwilling to look upon the priest’s face any more, Ferenc turned his attention to the nondescript countryside of grass and occasional copses of trees. Then he purposefully began to walk to the east, looking for something in particular.

A hundred paces off, he found it: a view out over a shallow valley, filled with the tent city of Emperor Frederick. Ferenc had suspected they were near it, and his intention the previous night had been to skirt the camp. Now, he decided, the best thing to do was march right into it.

The English Cardinal Somercotes had sent them to the Emperor. Father Rodrigo had liked Somercotes. By association, then, Frederick was probably not a villain, peculiar as he was. Another thing to consider: Ocyrhoe had told him that Frederick cursed a lot. That meant Frederick was not pious. And that meant he was less likely to be seduced by Father Rodrigo’s story. Even if the Grail really did have special powers-which Ferenc doubted-it was probably safer in the hands of an Emperor than those of a raving churchman. It saddened him to think this, for Father Rodrigo was still by far the most beloved living human to him… but he could not ignore the obvious.

With a sigh, he turned back to fetch the priest.

“You’re a woman, can’t you make her speak?” Orsini demanded irritably. Lena turned her calm, subtle gaze from the Senator to the girl.

Ocyrhoe imagined a hand pressed over a mouth, and tried to project this image to Lena. She had had so little training before her other sisters had vanished that she doubted she knew how to communicate properly in this fashion.

“She is not going to say more,” Lena said confidently. She had not even made eye contact with Ocyrhoe. “I believe she is under an oath to somebody and part of that oath requires secrecy. If that is the case, she will never speak. She will die sooner than speak.”

Ocyrhoe tried to keep alarm off her face. She was not under an oath, and she was not willing to die to help Father Rodrigo and Ferenc escape. Had Lena gotten her message, and was she now bluffing on her behalf? If so, it was a clever ploy; if not, then Ocyrhoe feared she was in more danger than she had originally thought.

“Your Eminences,” Lena offered. “I understand your distress over the discovery of this girl in His Holiness’s chambers.” She glared at Fieschi as she said this, and Ocyrhoe wondered how much she had seen of the manner in which Fieschi had dragged her out of the room.

At first she had thought the Cardinal had meant to harm her, but he had simply been trying to snare her-much like the manner in which a cat pounces on a mouse. Fieschi had been angry, ready to strike her, but the sudden appearance of Lena had given him pause.

“Leave her with me,” Lena said. “I will find a way to give you the information you require in a manner that does not break her oath.”

Fieschi grimaced. “I don’t care what sort of ethical justification you want to give it, just as long as we get what we need.” Ocyrhoe noticed that his distaste did not extend to his eyes. He was watching them carefully. Too carefully.

“Fine. Leave. Now.”

Orsini was the more startled of the two by her command, and as he huffed with indignity, she fixed him with a withering stare. Wanting to make himself larger before feeling diminished by letting a woman order him around, but when he noticed Fieschi’s lack of outrage he deflated-slowly-as he departed.

“Speak,” Lena said sharply as soon as they were alone.

Ocyrhoe shrugged. “The priest asked me to help him escape, and Ferenc wanted to go with him. I drew a map for them to get out of the city, and I distracted the guard at the door so they could get out. But once they were out, I was stuck inside, and Fieschi found me.”

Lena made an aggrieved noise. “Why did he want to escape? Why did you help him? Where was he going? How could you possibly consider this appropriate behavior for a Binder?”

Ocyrhoe held her hands up in weak protest. “I was not behaving as a Binder; I was behaving as a friend.”

“Once you become a Binder, you are always a Binder. Especially when your friend is the Pope. Your actions will bring chaos upon the city, little one. You have interfered with matters that you had no right-”

Desperate for justification, Ocyrhoe interrupted, “What if he had employed me as a Binder?”

Lena blinked, surprised. “To do what, exactly?”

“I… I was to carry the message of his departure to the Cardinals. As indeed I did, the moment Fieschi opened the door. I did not even have to tell him verbally; my presence was enough.”

“Such flippancy is dangerous, girl,” she warned, punctuating her words with the same glare she had used on Orsini.

“I truly have no information beyond what I’ve told you,” Ocyrhoe said, less ruffled by the look than Orsini had been. “I don’t know why he left or where he was headed. He said he was a prisoner, and that he shouldn’t be. He asked for my help. Ferenc is my friend, and I wanted to help him. And Ferenc wanted whatever Father Rodrigo wanted. So…”

“So you decided to take matters into your own hands, regardless of how much pain and suffering that might cause others. Is that it?” Lena stared at her. “If he is truly mad, then you have set him loose in the world. Do you understand the folly you’ve committed?” Her voice was softer, though no less stern.

Ocyrhoe looked down, her cheeks flushing. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I’m so very sorry. But there is nothing I can do to help you find him.”

“I know, child.” Lena placed her hands on the sides of Ocyrhoe’s head and kissed her lightly on the crown of her skull. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t know where he has gone.”

Ocyrhoe looked up at Lena. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Lena brushed Ocyrhoe’s hair back from her face. “Which gate did you send them to?”

“Flamina. I thought the sooner he got out of the city, the better.”

“Give them that much,” Lena said.

“What will they do to him if they catch him?” Ocyrhoe asked.

“What do you think they will do?” Lena asked. “He is Pope. Why should he fear the people who serve him?”

Ocyrhoe shook her head. “I think Fieschi wants to kill him.”

“Would you dare say as much to the Senator?” Lena asked. “While the Cardinal was standing next to him, in the same room?”

Ocyrhoe froze. All of a sudden she couldn’t breathe, much less shake her head. The Bear had taken my sisters, she thought frantically. How could Lena have forgotten that?

“You must consider your actions carefully,” Lena said softly, and the woman’s words released Ocyrhoe from the terror that had gripped her. “You must know the repercussions of what you do before you act. Regardless of your concerns about the Cardinal, is the priest not safer here than out in the wilderness where any brigand or ruffian could harm him? He only has Ferenc to watch over him. That may have been enough before, but now Father Rodrigo wants to preach to the people. Is that not dangerous for him in his state?” She stared at Ocyrhoe for a moment, waiting for her to nod in agreement. “When I call in the Cardinal and the Senator, you will tell them which gate. Yes?”

“And then what?” Ocyrhoe asked, panic twisting in her belly. This time she got the words out. “Orsini silenced our sisters. I see how he looks at me. He wants to do the same again.”

Her outburst gave Lena pause. “I will make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

“How can you do that?” Ocyrhoe demanded, trying to stall the inevitable. “He took all of them, even when we realized they were disappearing. He still got everyone except me. They were my family and they could not protect me. How can you assure me otherwise?”

An odd look came across Lena’s face. “Trust me, little one,” she said. Her expression melted into a soft smile. “I will have a talk with the Senator soon. That’s all it will take. Just a little chat.”