The Spirit Ring

Chapter Four

"Papa!" She wouldn't dare let him fall. She might not be able to get him up again. She twisted up under his armpit, and pulled his arm across her shoulders one-handed, juggling the bundled cloak under her other elbow. He was incredibly heavy, draped over her. "We have to keep going. We have to get back to the house." Her throat clotted in panic, more frightened by the weird gray color of his face than by the bravos seeking them through the alleys like a pair of hunting dogs.

"If Ferrante ... takes the castle ... he will take the town. And if he ... takes the town ... our old oak door won't stop his soldiers. Not if they think there's treasure inside. And if he takes . .. the town ... he'll take the duchy. No place to run."

"With fifty men?" said Fiametta.

"Fifty men ... and the moment." He paused. "No. He'll take the town at most. Then he'll wait for reinforcements. Then the rest." His face was furrowed with pain. He hugged his torso and stood bent over, swaying. "You run, Fia-mia. God, don't let them catch you. The blood lust will make them crazy for days. I've seen men ... get like that."

A stone quay served several wooden docks built out into the water. A little fishing boat was just bumping up to the pilings. Its sole, sun-burned occupant tossed a rope around a post to secure his craft, then turned back to his lateen-rigged sail of coarse brown hemp, which he'd half-lowered as he'd coasted in. He straightened its folds and lowered it fully. He climbed out onto the dock and took up the rope to lead his boat around the end to its proper mooring on the lee side.

"The boat," breathed Fiametta. "Come on!"

He squinted at it, beard pointing. "Maybe ..." They stumbled forward.

"Master Boatman," Fiametta called as they came near, "would you please hire us your boat?" She suddenly realized she was carrying no coins. And neither was Master Beneforte.

"Eh?" The peasant stood, and pushed back his straw hat, and stared dully at them.

"My father has taken ill. As you see. I wish ... to take him gently across to Saint Jerome's, and see Brother Mario the healer." She glanced back over her shoulder. "At once."

"Well, I have to unload my fish, Madonna. Maybe then."

"No. At once." At his offended frown, she tore the silver net from her hair and held it out to him. "Here. There are as many pearls in my net as you have fish in yours. I'll trade you even, but don't argue with me."

The astonished boatman took the hairnet. "Well ...! Never before have I pulled pearls from Lake Montefoglia!"

Fiametta moaned in her throat, and coaxed Master Beneforte to sit on the edge of the dock. From there he dropped heavily into the open boat, and motioned urgently to his bundled cloak. She shoved it into his hands and he clutched it to his chest. He looked worse, his mouth open with pain and legs drawing up. She jumped in alter him, fighting her velvet skirts. The boat rocked wildly. Bemusedly, the boatman standing on the dock tossed in the bow rope, and then, after another glance at his handful of pearls, his straw hat as well. It spiraled down into the bottom of the boat. Fiametta squatted and grabbed an oar, heavy in her hands, and used it to shove them hard away from the dock.

A man in Ferrante's livery emerged from the alleys, spotted them, and shouted over his shoulder. He started for the dock. He had a drawn sword in his hand.

Fiametta pointed back toward the shore. "Watch out, Boatman! Those two men who are coming will steal your pearls." And beat out his life as well, she feared, in their frustration, as casually brutal as wolves.

"What?" The peasant wheeled, and stared in panic at the two bravos, who had nearly reached the dock. His hand tightened on his new treasure.

She found the rope to raise the sail, and hung on it, hand-over-hand. The warm afternoon breeze was faint, but steady, and more importantly, from the south, blowing them away from the shore even while she struggled with the sail and had no hand free for the steering oar. They had drifted a good forty feet away from the dock by the time the two shouting bravos reached the end of it.

They shook their swords at Fiametta and cried obscene and violent threats. They were just turning back to wreak lethal vengeance on the poor man who had helped her, when the peasant, who had fallen back and picked up a long oar, charged forward with it like a knight at joust. It struck one sword-waving bravo square in his steel breastplate; with a yell, the man fell backwards into the water and sank. Swinging the oar around like a quarterstaff, the peasant toot the second bravo in the chin with a crack that echoed across the lake. He staggered back, unbalanced, and splashed after his comrade.

By the time the two men had saved themselves from drowning, at the cost of abandoning their heavy metal weapons and armor to the lake bottom, and splashed soddenly back onto the beach, the boatman had thoroughly disappeared. The light spring air filled the little boat's brown sail. The angry figures on the beach shaking their fists and impotently biting their thumbs seemed as tiny and feckless as gnomes.

Master Beneforte, who had been watching over the side with great anxiety, loosened his white-knuckled grip on the gunwale and sighed, sinking back into the bottom of the boat. His face was still very pale, though his breathing seemed a shade less labored. He must be sick and in pain indeed, not to be even offering criticism of her handling of the boat. She almost wished for a scathing remark, just for reassurance. Was it heart-sickness, or Lord Ferrante's evil magic that had laid him so low? Or some pernicious combination of both?

"The pearls in that hairnet were worth more than this entire leaky boat," he said after a moment. But it sounded more of an observation than a complaint. "Let alone the day's catch." The fish in question lay covered in water in a wooden tub in the bow, the drying nets piled beside it.

"Not at that moment," Fiametta pointed out sturdily.

"True," he breathed. "Very true." Wearily, he leaned his head back, adjusting his hat for a pillow.

Fiametta, sitting in the stern with the steering oar, loosened the rope and let the boom swing out a little more squarely to the following breeze. It seemed miraculously calm and peaceful, with only the creak of the ropes, the slap of little wavelets, and the bubbling of the wake astern. It was a day for a picnic, not a ghastly massacre.

It wasn't a very big sail. Nor a fast boat. Nor a strong breeze. A determined horseman or two, paralleling them on the white road along the eastern shore, could outpace them. They had water in abundance, and certainly needed no food—her stomach was still stretched and leaden with the betrothal banquet—but sooner or later they must come to shore. Where hard-faced men would be waiting.... The green shoreline blurred as tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, wet annoying tracks. She ducked her head and rubbed the tracks with her sleeve. There were dots of darkening stain on the red velvet. Blood splashes. Captain Ochs's blood. She couldn't help it; she began to cry in earnest. Despite her weeping she kept the steering oar straight, guiding them between the two shores. Unusually, Master Beneforte did not demand she stop her blubbering or he'd beat her, but just lay and watched her, till she gulped her way back to coherence.

"What did you see happen in the castle, Fiametta?" he asked after a time, still supine. His voice was tired, unhurried now; despite the question, the tone steadied her. As best she could remember, she stammered out an account of the men, words, and blows she'd witnessed.

"Hm." He pursed his lips in thought. "I first guessed it was some long-laid treachery, Lord Ferrante assassinating his host. Take the daughter and the dukedom.... But stupid, for he already had the daughter, and could do murder in secret at his leisure, if that was his mind. But if, as you guess, those strangers brought some slander sufficient to break the betrothal, then Lord Ferrante was hurried into his treachery. And will prove his wit—or lack of it—in the aftermath. He must carry it all the way through, now." He sighed. "Poor Montefoglia." Fiametta wasn't sure if he meant the Duke, or the dukedom.

"What do we do next, Papa? How do we get home?"

His face screwed up in distress, compounded with disgust. "My work in progress—the jewels, the money—all forfeit! My great Perseus! What a woeful day. If in my foolish pride I had not insisted on presenting the saltcellar at that banquet, we might have lain low, let the affairs of princes blow by overhead. Plow under one duke, raise another, as Fortune spins her deadly wheel. Maybe, if Ferrante had secured himself as tyrant of Montefoglia, he would have continued my commissions. Now—now he knows me. I hurt him. I fear that was a grave mistake."

"Maybe," Fiametta floated a cautious hope, "maybe Lord Ferrante will lose the fight. He could be already slain."

"Mm. Or perhaps Monreale really will get little Lord Ascanio out. I would not underestimate Monreale. In that case it's civil war, though. Oh, God save me from the affairs of princes! Yet only the patronage of princes can support great works. My poor Perseus! My life's crown!"

"What about Ruberta and Teseo?"

"They can run away. My statue cannot." He brooded.

"Perhaps—if the soldiers come to our house—they won't notice the Perseus," Fiametta offered, frightened by this agitation, worsening his obvious illness.

"He's seven feet tall, Fiametta! He's a little hard to miss.

"Not so. He's all clothed in his clay, now, and he just looks like a big lump in the courtyard. And he's much too big to carry away. Surely the soldiers will look for gold and jewels, that they can hide in their clothes." But would they take—say—a bronze death mask? That was certainly small and portable.

"And then look for wine," groaned Master Beneforte. "And then get drunk. And then start smashing things. Clay, and my genius, so fragile!" He looked like he was about to cry himself.

"You saved the saltcellar."

"Accursed thing. I've half a mind to pitch it in the lake. Let it bring bad luck to the fish." He didn't move to do so, though, but hugged the bundled cloth tighter to himself.

Fiametta drew up some cold lake water for them both in the fisherman's tin cup she found under the rear seat. Master Beneforte drank, and squinted in the afternoon glare, and scrubbed his wrinkled brow with hooked fingers.

"The sun is troubling you, Papa. Why don't you put on that straw hat, and keep it from your eyes?"

He plucked it up, turned it over, and snorted. "Stinks." But he put it on. It did shade his jutting nose. He rubbed his chest. There was still pain there, a deep ache, Fiametta judged by his awkward movements as he turned on his side, then back again, in a futile quest for ease.

"Why didn't you use magic, to escape the castle, Papa?" She remembered Lord Ferrante raising his fist, and the glaring putti ring. "Or ... or did you? If I had been a trained mage, I would have done something to save the brave captain." Would she have? The confusion and terror of that moment had overwhelmed her. She'd barely been able to save herself from her own skirts.

"Magic in the service of violence is a very perilous thing," Master Beneforte sighed. "I have done magic, and God save me I have done violence, even to murder—I've told you of the time I took vengeance upon a corporal of the Bargello for the death of my poor brother. I was twenty and hot and stupid, then. It was a great sin, though the Pope gave me a pardon for it. But I have never done violence with magic. Even at twenty I wasn't that stupid. I used a poniard."

"But Lord Ferrante's spirit ring—twice I saw him use it to do violence."

"Once, it bit him for his pains." Master Beneforte smiled in his beard, but his smile fell away. "That ring was more evil than I'd feared."

"What is a spirit ring, Papa? You said you'd seen one before, in possession of the lord of Florence, and it wasn't a sin."

"I made the spirit ring now on the hand of Lorenzo d'Medici, child, Master Beneforte confessed with a low sigh. He glanced uneasily at her, from the shadow of the straw brim. "The Church forbids them, and with reason, but I thought, the way we had this one set up, I might cast such a powerful work and yet not be tainted. I don't know.... You see, if a corpse is preserved unshriven and unburied (which is against any law), the new-riven spirit tends to linger by the body. And with proper preparations that ghost can be harnessed to the will of a master."

"Enslaved?" Fiametta frowned. The word had the distaste of iron on her tongue.

"Yes, or ... or bonded. How it came about in Florence was, Lord Lorenzo had a friend, who was dying in great debt. He struck a pact with the man. In exchange for his soul's service to the ring upon his natural death, Lorenzo would care for and look after this man's family. Which oath Lord Lorenzo has kept to this day, as far as I know. Lorenzo also swore to release the spirit if he feels his own death approaching. Ghost magic is immensely powerful. I feel there was no sin in what we did. But if some more narrow-minded inquisitor ruled otherwise, Lorenzo and I could burn at the stake back-to-back. So keep this story to yourself, child." Master Beneforte added reflectively, "We hid the body in an old dry well, beneath some new construction of the d'Medici in the heart of Florence. The ring's power diminishes, when it is taken too great a distance from its old bodily home."

Fiametta shivered. "Did you see the dead baby, when the casket of salt burst open?"

Master Beneforte blew out his breath. "Yes. I saw it"

"That cannot have been ... some little sin."

"No." Master Beneforte's lips compressed. "You saw it closer—was it a girl-child?'

"Yes."

"I greatly fear ... that may have been Lord Ferrante's own still-born daughter. Unnatural...."

"Still-born? Or murdered?" Surely it was only the poor who secretly strangled unwanted daughters.

Master Beneforte bowed his head. "That's the trick of it, you see. A murdered spirit has ... special powers. Special rage. A murdered, unbaptized, unburied infant ..." He shuddered, despite the heat.

"Do you still think nothing in the world could be all black?"

"Mm." He huddled down in the boat "I confess," he whispered, "I begin to have grave doubts of the hue of Uberto Ferrante's heart."

"An infant could not have chosen to bond its spirit. She must be enslaved," said Fiametta, frowning deeply. "Compelled, without knowing why."

One corner of Master Beneforte's mouth curved up. "Not any more. I released it from the ring. It sprang away in that great flash you saw."

Fiametta sat up. "Oh, good Papa! Oh, thank you!"

He raised his brows, bemused by her eager approval, wanned in spite of himself. "Well . .. I'm not so sure how good it will prove. Lord Ferrante must have gone to great lengths, to bind those powers to his will. His rage will be unbounded, to so lose all his trouble in an instant. The burn on his hand will be as nothing, compared to the loss of such a potency. But the burn will remind him. Oh, dear, yes. He will remember me."

"You've always wanted to be remembered."

"Aye," he sighed. "But I fear this fame could be too final."

The afternoon wore on. The southerly breeze pushed the crude boat along at little more than a walking pace, but unfailingly. The shoreline crept through its changes, farms and vines and patches of forest to the right, rubble and scrub and sheer rock faces growing higher and wilder to the left. To Fiametta's relief, Master Beneforte slept for a time; she prayed he would feel better when he woke. And indeed, when his eyes blinked open again in the slanting light of late afternoon, he sat upright for the first time. "How go we?"

"I think we're going to run out of lake and light at about the same time." She almost wished the lake would run north forever. But when the shifting hills had parted around that last curve, they'd revealed not another stretch of lake, but the capping shoreline, with the tiny village of Cecchino huddled on its edge. "As long as we don't run out of wind."

"It's grown more erratic, the last little while," Fiametta admitted. She made another adjustment to the sail.

He stared at the cloudless turquoise bowl of sky, arcing between the hills. "I trust there will be no storm tonight. For becalming, we have oars."

She glanced at the oars with unease. There went her last hope of avoiding the dreaded shore, even if the wind failed, which it seemed inclined to do. Over the next half-hour their progress slowed to a crawl.

The surface of the water grew silken, and the little slap of wind waves against the hull muted to pure silence. The village was still a mile off. She gave up at last, and lowered the sail.

She jiggled the heavy oars into the oar locks, and made to sit on the center bench.

"Give over," Master Beneforte snorted. "Your puny little girl arms won't get us there before nightfall. He evicted her from her place with a wave of his hands, and took it over. With a grunt, he started them forward with powerful sloshing strokes that made whirlpools spiral away from the oar blades into the smooth water. But after two minutes he stopped, his face grown gray again even against the orange glow of sunset. He gave up the oars to her without even arguing, and was very quiet for a time.

It was dusk when Fiametta's last aching pull nosed the bow onto the pebbled beach. Stiff-legged, they stumbled out of the boat and pulled it another foot up onto shore. Master Beneforte let the bow rope drop to the gravel crunching underfoot.

"Will we stay here the night?" Fiametta asked anxiously.

"Not if I can get horses," said Master Beneforte. "This place is too small to hide in. I won't begin to be easy till we're over the border. Hole up somewhere beyond Lord Ferrante's reach, till things sort themselves out."

"Will we ... ever get to go home again?"

He gazed south, over the darkening lake. "My heart stands in my courtyard in Montefoglia, covered with clay. By God and all the saints, I will not be sundered from my heart for long."

Over the course of the next hour, they discovered that fisher-folk were not notable horsemen. Boats, after all, did not require expensive hay and grain. They were handed from one head-shaking peasant to another, less and less hospitably as the night grew darker. At last Fiametta found herself standing with her father in a shed at the end of the village, looking at a fat white nag that was over-at-the-knees, gray-headed, bewhiskered, and venerable.

"Are you sure you don't mean us two to carry him?" Master Beneforte, dismayed, asked the gelding's owner. Fiametta petted its wide velvety nose and listened. She'd never had a horse before.

The villager launched into a lengthy list of the beast's great strengths and manifold virtues, ending with a declaration that the horse was practically one of his family.

"Yes, your grandfather," muttered Master Beneforte in his beard. But after further negotiation, the deal was struck: a jewel and the boat for a horse. Master Beneforte prised a jewel from the hilt of his dagger under the man's suspicious eyes. He drew the line in outrage at the villager's request for a second jewel for a saddle. The subsequent crescendo of argument almost broke the deal again.

Still, the horse trader offered them bread, cheese, and wine. Master Beneforte denied being hungry, though both he and Fiametta drank a little wine. They packed the bread and cheese along.

The rising moon had just cleared the eastern hills when the peasant helped boost Fiametta up behind her father on the horse's warm, wide back. The bare-back's downward curve was practically a saddle in itself. The night was clear, and the moon still near-full, its light sufficient for them to make out the road in front of them. At the speed they were going to be traveling, it would be quite safe. Master Beneforte clucked, and beat the horse's fat sides with his heels, and they ambled off. As they left the environs of the village the horse seemed to perk up at this break from its usual routine, and stepped out ... well, vigorously was too strong a term. Normally, perhaps.

The heavy red wine, combined with the gruesome day just past, made Fiametta's eyelids droop. She laid her head against her father's back and dozed, lulled by the horse's steady rocking clop-a-clop. The horse trader had earnestly warned them of demons abroad in the dark. After today demons seemed homey to Fiametta, compared to men. She didn't fear the dark at all, as long as there were no men in it. ...

Her blood was beating raggedly in her ears as she jerked awake at a sudden jounce of the white horse, under her. Her father was slapping the beast into a trot, hissing. And no, the thrumming noise wasn't inside her head, but outside. Hoofbeats on the road behind them. Jostled and sliding, she clutched Master Beneforte around the waist, and cranked her aching head around to stare over her shoulder.

"How many?" Master Beneforte demanded in a strained voice.

"I . ., I'm not sure." Horsemen, yes, dark shapes on the road behind them, cold light glinting off metal. "More than two. Four."

"I should have bought a black horse. This cursed beast shines like the moon," Master Beneforte groaned. "And this country has no cover worth a whore's spit." Nevertheless, he yanked the horse off the road and headed them across a silver-misted meadow toward a coppice of spindly trees.

It was too late. A shout went up behind them, catcalls and hooting as their pursuers, seeing them, belabored their horses into full gallop.

Three-quarters of the way across the meadow, Master Beneforte pulled the white horse's head back around. He drew his dagger.

"Get down and run for the trees, Fiametta."

"Papa, no!"

"You're more a hindrance than a help. This needs my undivided attention. Run, damn it!"

Fiametta huffed out her breath in protest, but she was half-sliding off the horse's slick back anyway. She fell to her feet and skipped backwards. The four dark horsemen were turning in to the meadow and spreading out in a frontal charge. Actually, not quite a charge; their horses bounced in a hesitant, reined-in canter, as if the idea of attacking a master mage in the dark was beginning to lose its appeal with proximity. They do not know how sick he is, Fiametta thought.

The leader pointed at Fiametta, and shouted to one of his men, who peeled off from the rest and started forward at a much more convincing pace. Fiametta picked up her skirts and sprinted for the trees. The coppice was close-grown; if she reached it first, he would not be able to force his mount in among the lashing branches. If she didn't ... A panicked glance over her shoulder showed the other three closing in on Master Beneforte, who waited for them, dagger raised, the drama of the tableau slightly spoiled by the fat white horse fighting to put its head down and eat grass.

"Pigs!" Master Beneforte's shout echoed in her ears. "Scum! Come and be slaughtered like the vile herd of swine that you are!" Master Beneforte had often maintained that the best defense was a good offense, most men being cowards at heart. But his labored breathing drained much of the threat from his tones. The man detailed to pursue Fiametta was clearly not in the least frightened of her, however. She crashed into the coppice just ahead of him; he made his horse rear to a stop, and dismounted to follow. He didn't even draw his sword. His boots were heavy and his legs were long. She dodged around the tree boles, the ragged ground catching at her light slippers. He loomed closer—with a lunge, he caught her flying skirt, and yanked it up, dumping her on her face. The ground came up like a blow, knocking her teeth painfully. She spat dirt. He landed on top of her, and pressed her to the ground. She twisted around to claw at his eyes. He was winded, but laughing, teeth and eyes gleaming in his shadowed face. He pinioned both her wrists in one hand. Her lungs burned, too breathless to scream. She tried to bite his nose. He jerked his head back barely in time, and cursed.

Methodically, one-handed, he began to pull off her jewelry. Her silver earrings and necklace, of no great value except for their delicate design, he stuffed into his doublet. Luckily the wires gave way before her earlobes tore; her ears stung where they'd twisted free. He had to lie across her chest and use both hands to pry up her thumb and strip it of the lion ring, while her legs kicked, unable to reach a target. He held the ring up to the moonlight, and uttered a "Ha!" of satisfaction at its weight, but then rather absently laid it on the ground. He pushed up on his hands, and looked down her body. The faceted green eyes of the silver snake glinted in the leaf-dappled moonlight.

"Oh, ho!" he said, laid his free hand on the belt, and jerked. The belt held fast. He jerked again, harder, lifting her hips from the ground. Intrigued, his hand left the belt and closed over her crotch, and he pinched her hard through the thick velvet.

The snake's eyes glowed red. The silver head rose, waved once from side to side, curved around, gaped its mouth wide, and sank silver fangs deep into his groping hand.

He screamed like a man damned, a ridiculously high-pitched shriek to come from that big throat. He clutched his hand to his chest and rolled off her, folded into a ball, and kept screaming. The howls became words—"Oh God, I burn, I burn! Black witch! Oh God I burn!"

Fiametta sat bolt upright in the dirt and leaf litter. He was rolling from side to side like a man possessed; his back arched convulsively. She patted the ground all around, groped up her lion ring, stuffed it back on her thumb, scrambled to her feet, and clawed her way through the spring vegetation.

Surely they would expect her to run away. She circled back toward the meadow instead. An opening slashed through the branches of the coppice proved to be from a large old beech tree, fallen slantwise, with its roots ripped up. She burrowed under its shadow into a leaf-filled depression, and went as still and quiet as her heaving chest and raw whistling breath would permit.

She could hear the men shouting to each other, but not Master Beneforte's bellow. The snakebite victim, still howling, finally found his way back to his fellows, and the hideous din dimished. Their hoarse, coarse voices blundered no nearer to her, anyway.

Her command of her own breath returned slowly. Finally, multiple hoofbeats faded into the distance. But had they all departed, or just some of them? She waited, her ears straining, but heard only the whisper of branches, a few insects, and the call of a nightingale. Leaf-shadows wove a brocade with the moon, now at zenith.

With her eyes wide, she picked her way quietly back to tile edge of the meadow. No bravo jumped from ambush. Only the white horse was visible, hallway across, its head down in the milky mist. She could hear its teeth ripping up and grinding the juicy meadow grasses. She crept out into the cold, dew-soaked clumps.

She found her father's body not far from the horse. He lay tumbled, silvered beard pointing upward, open eyes blearing in the moonlight. The Losimon bravos had stripped him of the saltcellar, cloak, gold chain, jeweled poniard and scabbard, and his rings, as she'd expected! They'd also taken his tunic, hat, and shoes, leaving him only his ripped linen shirt and black hose, points half-untied. It was terribly undignified. He looked like an old man overtaken by death on the way to the wardrobe.

Fearfully, she patted him for sword wounds, but found none. She laid her ear to his dew-dampened chest. What could you hear, if a heart had burst? Who would hear hers, if it burst now?

He must have been felled by his own illness before he'd even had a chance to defend himself. Perhaps the efforts had been the final blow. She'd thought the day had drained her of every possible reaction, but apparently she still had tears left. Her face cried on almost without her, as if she were split in two. Her other part methodically dragged his body to the lip of a small gully that drained the meadow. She recaptured the horse—the Losimons had apparently scorned to steal the old nag—led it down and positioned it in the low spot, and dragged Master Beneforte across its swayed back. The abandoned husk of Master Beneforte. Wherever he was, her father certainly was no longer in there.

The horse's fuzzy white ears flicked back and forth, confused by its odd burden. Her father's arms dangled down, and his hair hung lank and strange. She chose to lead the horse from the other side, holding the husk's foot to keep it steadily balanced. Still crying, strangely calm, she coaxed the horse back onto the road and began walking north.