Dottore Marina had once told her.
* * *
Silence followed, for some time, while they waited for the sacristan to return with the priest.
The silence was so thick with hostility between the knights and the monks that it could almost have been cut with a knife. The only movement during that time was the slow and painful return of Pappenheim to consciousness, stumbling back onto his feet from the splintered pew where Manfred had sent him. He seemed too dazed to really comprehend what was happening; simply collapsed on another pew, leaning over with his head in his hands. His helmet had apparently come loose in the force of the impact. Kat was a bit amazed that he had no broken bones. Manfred's strength was genuinely incredible. He had not so much tossed the knight into the pew as he had hurled him down upon it.
Finally, the sacristan returned, the priest close on his heels. The priest was a young man; who, like the two bridge-brats, looked as if he could have used a few more meals himself. It was a small church.
He looked in puzzlement at the scene, and then bowed to the abbot. 'I am Father Ugo, and this is my parish. Why have I been called here?'
'We have called you to throw these evil miscreants out. They were defiling your church with satanic practices.'
The little priest blinked, taking in the steel, and the 'miscreants.'
With a start, Kat realized she knew the little man. Of course, he'd been smaller and plumper then.
'Ugo Boldoni?' she said, incredulously.
The priest peered shortsightedly at her; then, gasped. There were some advantages to her distinctive carroty-colored hair, even if it was not fashionable.
'Kat--Milady Katerina! What are you doing here?'
Kat shrugged. 'I was caught in the rain and came in to take shelter.'
'She was practicing satanic rites!' shouted one the monks, waving a threatening finger at her.
'I was sitting on a pew!' she snapped back at him. 'Quietly sitting, getting some shelter from the rain--when you came in--like demons yourselves!--and grabbed those children who were playing up there. They were fooling around with one of the candles. I assumed the sacristan would come out and give them both a clout. Instead this--'
She glared at Sachs. 'This foul man who calls himself an abbot came in and behaved as if they were having a black mass, instead of just fiddling with the candle wax.'
The priest looked puzzled. 'But . . . but where was old Giovanni?'
'They bewitched me into sleep!' said the old man hastily. 'Demonspawn they are. I'm allus chasing them out of the church. Allus up to mischief.'
The big young knight named Manfred snorted. 'Smell his breath! Unless the children magicked him a bottle of wine--and if they could do that, they'd have magicked themselves some food. They don't need questioning. They need a square meal and a place in a household.'
The priest nodded. 'Alas, sir knight. This is a poor parish. There are many such souls.'
Sachs, glaring back at Kat, attempted a commanding sneer. The expression failed of its purpose; seemed more childish than anything else.
'These are mere lies! And the poor you have with you always. It is their souls, not their bodies we must deal with. Now, as your senior in the church I order you to put them out of here, Father--ah--'
The priest's name had obviously escaped him. 'Priest. I will have a word with Bishop Pietro Capuletti, and see you are moved to a more worthy station. We'll have the truth out of them. The Servants of the Trinity have ways of dealing with the most hardened servants of Satan.'
A look of pleasure came into the abbot's hooded eyes. The kind of pleasure that comes to a man when he finds himself back on his own ground after stumbling into a marsh.
Kat shivered. The knights, she suspected, would obey the abbot--however reluctantly--if the priest who had actual authority here denied sanctuary to her and the children. And how could once-fat, timid little Ugo Boldoni stand up to this?
