The Spirit Ring

Chapter Seven

They were doing well, till they fell over the sleeping guard.

The man was lying on the ground with a gray blanket wrapped around him, and in the dim moonlight and shadows looked much like a fallen tree trunk. He was positioned in just the lookout spot for which Fiametta naturally headed, a hollow at the edge of the woods with a clear view of the cut field behind the postern gate. Two lanterns burned brightly on the stone wall above the little door, casting a pool of illumination on the green grass. Clearly, the entry was guarded by men wary of night attack. Fiametta was so fixed on her goal, which was so near, so hopeful, so thank-God easily found, she was already in her mind running across the greensward. She didn't even look down till the log she stepped up on for a better view sank squishily, convulsed, and lumbered up cursing. She fell back with a squeak of fear. The ominous scrape of sword steel drawn from a scabbard skirled painfully in her ears. Images of the banquet massacre flooded her mind, shining metal piercing flesh.

Thur dropped his pack and stepped between Fiametta and the swordsman, his grip tightening on the log in his right hand. The swordsman yelled "Losimo! Losimo!" at the top of his lungs, and swung a powerful blow at Thur's neck. Thur caught the blade in the log; it stuck, and he wrenched the sword almost from the man's hand. Then the half-cloven wood broke. Thur leapt within the sword's arc to grapple with the man, his hands clamping around the sword wrist.

The guard kept yelling; he must have comrades nearby. Thur, fighting silently, tried to butt the Losimon's mouth with his forehead. As the two men wrestled, grunting, for advantage, another guard came running from a concealed position at the woods' edge several hundred yards to the south. He carried a crossbow, cranking it as he ran. The rachet clattered like bones. He stopped at near-point-blank range, and loaded it with a heavy short bolt that glittered in the moonlight. Raising the crossbow to aim at Thur, he hesitated for a line of flight that would not risk his comrade. Thur, at Fiametta's scream of warning, saw the crossbow and wrenched the swordsman around between them.

The crossbowman was a hairy fellow, with a bushy scalp and a thick curling black beard. His teeth gleamed in the midst of the thatch as he grimaced for his aim. The only thing Fiametta could think to do was set his beard afire. As he circled the wrestlers to regain his shot, Fiametta began to muster the oft-practiced domestic spell, her eyes squeezed to slits and her hands clenching in concentration against her terror.

Her father's voice whispered in her ear. "No, Fiametta! Tis star ***

Her mouth fell open, and she whirled, but saw nothing, no smoke-form—

Out of the ground in front of the crossbowman, dirt and dust and leaf litter and little sticks arose and became the figure of a man. A whirl of detritus and decayed beech mast formed legs, pleated tunic, a big cloth hat—Papal With an astonished yelp the crossbowman fell back a pace, his trigger released, and his deadly bolt flew wide into the woods.

With a crackling pop of wrist bones, Thur's grip shook the sword from the swordsman's grasp. The swordsman screamed in pain. The crossbowman howled as the leaf-figure dissolved into a cyclone that whirled around his head, casting dirt into his eyes and sticks into his beard. Thur stooped to grab up the dropped sword and sprang back, shoving his man away. The Swiss whipped the sword around in a wild figure eight, inexpert but menacing in its momentum. The crossbowman clutched at his eyes.

"Run!" Master Beneforte's voice came out of nowhere. Fiametta darted forward, grabbed Thur's free hand, and yanked. "Run for the gate!"

Gasping for breath, he nodded. They bounded out of the hollow. His long legs soon had the advantage of her, and she leapt into the air at each stride and let him pull her along. Her shoulder blades cringed with the expectation of the thunk of a crossbow bolt, heavy steel shattering ribs, biting deep into her lungs—It seemed to take forever to reach the postern door, floating in its pool of light like a receding mirage. Fiametta fell on it, pounding, and wheezing "Help!" but her words seemea a whisper and her blows weak as a babe's. Thur's pounding made the oak shake on its hidden iron hinges. "HELP!" he did not disdain to bellow.

"Who goes there?" came a man's growl from overhead.

Fiametta fell back, and craned her neck upwards, but could only make out blurred dark heads, one tonsured, one helmeted, against the bright lantern light. "Help! Sanctuary, for the love of God! We must see Abbot Monreale!"

The helmeted head craned outward in turn. "Why, I know the girl. It's the Duke's goldsmith's daughter. I don't know the man, though."

"His name is Thur Ochs, brother of your Swiss captain," Fiametta called back urgently. "He's come to seek his wounded brother. Oh, let us in, hurry! They'll be after us!"

"We are forbidden by the abbot to open the door," said the tonsured head.

"Then let down a rope," said Thur, in what started out as a reasonable tone, that rose to a yelp on the word rope as a crossbow bolt whanged off the stone a yard from him and ricocheted into the dark. They made beautifully illuminated targets. Thur stepped between Fiametta and the night.

"We could at least let the girl in," said the helmeted head.

"Sinful, to have her in here. Better the man."

"Bah! Your hospice is full of crying women right now, Brother. Don't quibble."

"Don't delay," shrieked Fiametta as another metal bolt whacked into the oaken door and stuck there, vibrating with a deep bass hum.

A knotted rope came curling down at last. Thur boosted her halfway up it; indeed, her puny girl arms could scarcely lift her own weight. But she must climb quickly, so he could climb in turn. Skin scraped from her palms, but she flung herself over the top of the wall on her stomach and rolled across in an awkward bundle of skirts. "Hurry, Thur!"

The soldier and the monk were standing on a mere wooden platform, none too solid, hastily raised to overlook the postern door. The helmeted soldier peered into the night, raised his own crossbow, and with a curse fired a quarrel in return for one that hummed close over his head. "Maybe that will keep the bastards' heads down," he growled, ducking below the stone.

Thur rolled in turn over the top of the wall and fell to the platform, making it shake. The monk yanked the rope up hand-over-hand. The soldier peeked back over the wall, just the top of his helmet and his eyes exposed. Fiametta searched Thur in panicky haste for blood, but none gouted from his back or anywhere else. The crossbowman's eyes must still be half-blinded with dirt; judging from the force of his quarrels' flight, he'd followed them close to the wall.

"I must ... see the abbot," Fiametta panted to the crouched monk. "It's an emergency."

The soldier snorted. "God's bones, that's the truth."

The monk frowned. "Just because we're granted dispensation from our rules of silence doesn't mean we're free to use displeasing language in the cloisters."

"I never took a vow of silence." The monk grimaced; it was evidently an ongoing argument. He turned to Thur. "What does she want to see the abbot for?"

"It's my father," Fiametta answered him. "I'm afraid he's in terrible danger. Spiritual danger. We witnessed Lord Ferrante using black magic."

The soldier crossed himself; the monk looked disturbed. "Well ... tell her to follow me," he said to Thur. He climbed down the platform's triangular braces into the yard below, which proved to be the monastery's cemetery.

"Why don't you tell her? Should I come, too?" asked Thur, sounding confused.

"Yes, yes," said the monk impatiently.

"He's trying not to speak to a woman," Fiametta whispered in explanation.

"Oh." Thur blinked. "Doesn't he trust his abbot's dispensation?"

Fiametta smiled sourly down on the shaved scalp. "Perhaps he's a disobedient monk, in his heart."

The monk looked up and shot her an outright glare, but then looked doubly unsettled. They both followed him, Thur first, helping her jump down safely the last few feet. The monk, silent again, beckoned them through another gate to a corridor, through an even darker room, and out into a cloister-courtyard. He led them up steps to a gallery and knocked on a door. After a moment another monk opened it and stuck his head out. Orange candlelight flowed from the gap. Fiametta was relieved to recognize Abbot Monreale s secretary, Brother Ambrose, a big man with a kindness for cats, rabbits, and other small animals, whom she had met several times in the Abbot-and-Bishop's company.

Old habits dying hard, their guide monk pointed silently to Thur and Fiametta.

"Fiametta Beneforte!" the secretary said in surprise. "Where did you come from?"

"Oh, Brother Ambrose, help me!" Fiametta said. "I must see Abbot Monreale!"

"Come in, come in—thank you, Brother," he dismissed their reticent guide. "You may return to your post."

He ushered them into a small chamber, the abbot's study or office. It was furnished with a scriptorium-style desk with a brace of beeswax candles casting light across a paper and quill the secretary had apparently just put down. Another candelabrum burned brightly on a tiny altar below a small carved wooden crucifix hanging on the opposite wall. Abbot Monreale got up from his knees in front of it as they entered.

He was dressed now in the gray habit of his brothers, the cowl pushed back, only his belt with its keys marking his rank. His craggy face looked weary and worried. Tonsured hair made a gray fringe around his scalp that almost exactly matched his garment. The robes made him look bulkier than he was; his body was burned lean with years of ascetic moderation.

As he turned to them his gray brows shot up in surprise. "Fiametta! You escaped! I'm glad you are unharmed." He came toward her with a warm smile and took her hands; she curtsied and kissed his bishop's ring, "Is your father with you? I could use him now."

"Oh, Father," she began, then her face crumpled with exhausted tears. It was the sudden sense of safety, in Monreale's presence, that unstrung her; she'd done all right in the woods. "He's dead," she gulped.

Monreale, looking shocked, led her over to sit on a bench against the wall. He glanced curiously at Thur, and gestured him to sit also. "What happened, child?"

Fiametta sniffled, and regained control of her voice. "We got out of the castle, before you, I think."

"Yes."

"We fled in a boat. Papa became very ill, suddenly. I think it was a sickness of his heart, brought on by the banquet and the running and the terror."

Monreale nodded understanding. Though not a healer himself, as the regulating supervisor of Montefoglia's healers he was well experienced in both the physical and the spiritual infirmities of men.

"Papa bought a horse in Cecchino, and we rode on it into the night. But some soldiers Lord Ferrante dispatched overtook us on the road. Papa fought them while I hid. I found him in the field, dead— unwounded—I think his heart burst. They'd stripped him. I took his body to an inn, where Thur found me—oh! Ask after your brother, Thur. This is the younger brother of Captain Ochs," Fiametta explained hastily. "He was on his way to Montefoglia, and—ask, Thur!" Hers was not the only mortal anxiety here, though the Swiss had been more patient.

"Have you seen my brother, holy Father?" Thur asked. His voice was steady, though his hands fiddled with the lion ring. "Is he here?"

Monreale turned his whole attention on Thur. "I'm sorry, son. I saw your brother fall, but he was not among those we carried away. I ... thought it was a fatal blow he took, but I was hurried off just then, and can't swear to his last breath. I'm afraid I can't counsel you much hope for his life, though you must hope for soul—he was a very honorable man—if that's a help to you. But ... it's barely possible he may still lie with other wounded in the castle. His body was not returned with the others during yesterday's parley. I— in truth, I have not heard. There's been much to occupy me."

"That's all right," said Thur. He looked a little numb. He'd expected to be freed of his fears one way or another; now, it seemed, he would be forced to bear them further. His shoulders bent, and his right thumb absently stroked the ring. Monreale studied him thoughtfully.

"Parley?" said Fiametta. "What's going on?"

"Ah. Well, Duke Sandrino's remaining guards surrounded us, myself and Lord Ascanio. We fled through the gate, though in hindsight I think we should have stood and fought them there ... speaking militarily. We fought rearguard through the town, and retreated to Saint Jerome. A multitude of refugees have sought sanctuary here since. We're very crowded." He shook his head. "So much bloodshed, so sudden. Like a judgment. I must stop it, before it spreads like a plague from man to man all over Montefoglia."

"What are you doing now?"

"Lord Ferrante also seeks to stop this unlooked-for war. He sent to treat with me, as de facto chancellor to poor little Ascanio. The lad's asleep in my room right now."

"A truce with Lord Ferrante?" Fiametta repeated, appalled.

"I must consider it. We're not in a good position, here. The Duke's guards were a match for Losimo when Sandrino led them, but now they're scattered, demoralized, separated from their commanders."

"Can't you send for help—somewhere?"

Monreale's lips thinned bleakly. "That is precisely the problem. For years, Duke Sandrino walked a very careful line between Milan and Venice. Call either of them in now, to an unmanned dukedom, and gobble! Snap! Montefoglia would be eaten in a trice. Call in the other to eject the first, and Montefoglia becomes a battlefield."

"Would Lord Ferrante really attack the monastery?" said Thur, sounding shocked. "How could he get away with such a deed?

Abbot Monreale shrugged. "Easily. Monasteries have been razed before, by violent men. And if he succeeded—who's to punish him? If he establishes his rule in Montefoglia and Losimo, he'll be too strong to readily dislodge. Except by either Venice or Milan, who would then keep Montefoglia for themselves—what gain to Lord Ascanio in that?"

"What about Papal troops?" said Fiametta, seizing on a hope.

"Too far away. Even if the Gonfalonier would dispatch them, involved as he is now with the troubles in the Romagna."

"But the Duchess Letitia is the granddaughter of a pope!"

"Wrong pope," sighed Monreale. "Perhaps, at the next election, her family's star will rise again, but not under His present Holiness's rule. The Curia will be swayed by arguments of order over right. Why should they spend troops to restore a weak woman and child to me Duchy when, if they do nothing, a strong, experienced man who's a known Guelf will assume the government?"

"Is that your decision too?" Fiametta demanded hotly. "Order over right?"

"It's practical politics, child. I don't know if I can save Ascanio's dukedom, but I think I can save his life. Ferrante treats to send Ascanio, his mother, and sister to exile in Savoy, with a stipend, in exchange for peace. It's more than a minimal offer. In the circumstances, almost generous." Monreale looked like a man biting a lemon compelled by courtesy to pretend it sweet.

"No! That gives Ferrante everything!" Fiametta cried, outraged.

Abbot Monreale frowned at this outburst. "Shall I fight to the last—monk? I'm sorry, Fiametta, but most of my brothers are not ready for such a contest. I would not hesitate to urge the least of them to martyrdom for the sake of the faith, but to sacrifice them to wrath serves no holy purpose. I cede Ferrante nothing he could not—all too readily—take for himself."

"But Lord Ferrante murdered the Duke!"

"You can't expect an ordinary man to not defend himself. When Duke Sandrino attacked him, Ferrante could not help but draw in return."

"Father, I witnessed it. Duke Sandrino flung only words, if bitter ones. Lord Ferrante drew first, and stabbed him outright."

Abbot Monreale's attention was arrested. "That was not the story I was told."

"By Ferrante's emissary? Lady Pia was with me. We both saw. Ask her, if you don't believe me!"

"She's not here. As far as I know, both she and the castellan were taken prisoners along with the Duchess and Lady Julia." Monreale rubbed his neck, as if it ached, walked to the casement window, and stared into the dark. "I don't disbelieve you, child. But it makes little practical difference. The troops from Losimo are on the march, and once they arrive our defying Ferrante will only make the final outcome worse. I've seen sieges, and what they do to men."

"But Lord Ferrante used black magic! Didn't you see the dead baby at the banquet?"

"Didn't I see what?" Monreale, pacing, jerked around as if wasp-stung.

"The baby in the box. Ferrante's footstool, that broke open when Uri kicked it off the dais just before he was stabbed." She tried to cudgel up a precise memory of that chaotic moment. Monreale had been beyond the upturned table, managing Ascanio, his crozier, and a flurry of assailants and helpers, seeking an exit, while retreating over the far side of the platform.

"I saw the footstool. I didn't see it break open."

"I saw. It spilled right across my feet. My skirt was caught under the table's edge. The footstool was full of rock salt, and this horrible dried-up shrivelled infant. Papa said its spirit was enslaved to that ugly silver putti ring Ferrante wore on his right hand. Didn't you sense anything? Ferrante used the ring to blind a man, and he tried to use it on Papa, but Papa did—something—and the ring burned Ferrante instead. Papa said he released the baby's spirit, but I don't know how."

Abbot Monreale turned, agitated, to his secretary. "Brother Ambrose, did you see?"

"I was on the other side of you, Holy Father. A Losimon was trying to hack off your head with his sword, and I was fending him off with a chair. Sorry."

"Don't apologize." Monreale paced. "The ring. The ring! Of course! Damn!—I mean, God bless me. That's what it was."

"Then you did sense something." Fiametta was relieved.

"Yes, but I should have sensed much more! What can Ferrante have done to conceal . .." He headed for his massive bookcase as if drawn by a string, then turned back, shaking his head. "Later. I wish your Papa were here now, Fiametta."

"What did you see in that ring, Father?"

"It appeared to embody a simple spell to ward off lice and fleas, of the sort anyone might carry in an amulet bag in his pocket. I thought it an odd vanity to cast such a humble thing in silver. It felt wrong, though—I thought it poorly cast. But if the vermin-warding spell was masking another, a spell to ward off attention ... then beneath that ... He hissed through his teeth, looking sick. "What did you sense in it, child?"

"Ugliness."

"From the mouths of babes. You humble me." He smiled sadly. "But then, you are your father's daughter."

"That's what I was starting to tell you. Lord Ferrante's men came back, to the inn where I'd sought help with Papa's body—" Quickly, Fiametta described her unpleasant adventures with Innkeeper Catti, his greed, and his smokehouse, the bravos' bizarre theft, and the manifestations of Master Beneforte in smoke and dried leaves. Thur confirmed the details of their journey. Much more hesitantly, Fiametta repeated what Master Beneforte had confided to her of his previous experience with spirit rings, though she concealed the names of Lord Lorenzo and Florence. The Medici must be responsible for his own confession. She explained her sharp fear that Lord Ferrante meant Master Beneforte's ghost for his new and more powerful slave. Abbot Monreale's shoulders sagged as her story piled up.

"Papa called for you," Fiametta finished. "He cried out for help from you. Holy Father, what do we do next?"

Monreale sighed deeply. "Just before you arrived, child, I was on my knees praying for guidance, some sign that my decision to make this truce was correct. That's the most frightening risk you take, with prayer. Sometimes, God answers. He nodded wearily to his secretary. "Tear up the treaty, Brother Ambrose."

Delicately, the big monk picked up the paper on which he'd been working when Fiametta and Thur had entered, and tore it slowly in half. He let the pieces drop to the floor. His eyes met Monreale's in an affirmation tinged with fear. "So much for surrender. Holy Father, what do we do next?"

Monreale squeezed his eyes shut, and rubbed his wrinkled brow. "Temporize, Brother. Return soft answers and temporize." He looked up at Thur and Fiametta. "Take these exhausted youngsters to the hospice, betimes. I'm going to the chapel to meditate, before Lauds. Assuming we've anyone to spare to sing the night psalms." He added under his breath, "At last I realize why the Rule of our Order puts so much emphasis on training monks to do without sleep."

His secretary murmured Amen, picked up a candle, and gestured Fiametta and Thur out of the room ahead of him.

On the way to the hospice, which was situated near the front gate, they passed through a courtyard with a covered well. Even at this late hour, past midnight, two monks, a soldier, and a woman stood waiting to draw up water. A monk had his hand on the crank, but was not turning it.

"How goes it, Brother?" asked Brother Ambrose in passing.

"Not good," the monk at the crank replied. "It's coming up muddy. We're waiting for it to settle between buckets, but it's taking longer and longer."

He began cranking at last, and poured the well bucket out into vessels held by the soldier and the woman. He let the rope down and began waiting again. Brother Ambrose followed after the soldier.

"A water shortage?" asked Thur.

"Unless it rains and refills our cisterns," said Ambrose. "We normally house about seventy brothers. Now we've taken in some fifty or sixty of Duke Sandrino's guards, many of them wounded, their families, others who've fled from the violence in town—there are over two hundred people packed in here right now. The infirmary is overflowing. Abbot Monreale is considering giving the hospice entirety over to the women, and putting the wounded in the chapel, if we get any more."

The water-lugging soldier turned aside as they passed the infirmary. Fiametta peeked after him through the door into a long, stone-arched dormitory. Straw pallets were set between wooden-framed beds, most occupied by blanketed forms. In the dim light of a couple of oil lamps a man's open eyes, glassy and feverish, gleamed in his stubbled face. A hooded monk moved among the beds; toward the end of the row a man in pain moaned continuously, like a cow lowing.

Brother Ambrose guided them through another door and into the area of the hospice proper, ordinarily the only area of the monastery open to visitors. He handed Fiametta off to a tired-looking older woman, dressed in night robes with her gray hair in a braid down her back. Fiametta recognized her as a lay sister from the Cathedral chapter in town. Ambrose took Thur off with him through the visitors' refectory toward the men's sleeping area. Thur glanced back uncertainly over his shoulder at her, as he passed around the corner, and waved a left-handed good-bye.

The women's dormitory was another stone-arched chamber similar to the infirmary, but smaller and more crowded. Again, its original beds were supplemented with woven straw pallets and even hastier piles of loose straw with blankets atop. Some twenty-five or thirty women and perhaps twice that number of children and young girls were bedded down every which way. The older boys were presumably housed with the men.

Fiametta picked her way past the strewn bodies, through a door at the far end of the room to an overworked and odoriferous latrine. She began to realize why the abbot considered holding out through a long siege, even without having to repel attack by Ferrante's infantry reinforcements, a dubious proposition at best. This time last night, she'd imagined that if only she could win through to Monreale, he would somehow fix everything. And it seemed she wasn't the only Montefoglian with that idea. But now ...

When she emerged from the latrine the lay sister guided her to a pile of loose straw, already occupied by two sleeping girls. Fiametta peeled off her ruined shoes and flopped down between them. It was bed enough for now.