The Mongoliad: Book Two

exactly?”

It was spectacularly ill-advised to go to Orsini’s home in broad daylight. Fieschi knew that. But he also knew that Robert of Somercotes had let himself into the new priest’s room and blocked the door behind him. He knew from listening at the crack of the door that they were talking, or at least that Somercotes was; the sick priest sounded perhaps delirious again, or at least deeply distracted. Fieschi knew exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew better than to undertake it without first consulting Orsini. Waiting until darkness might be safer-but Somercotes moved fast. There was no way to ensure the Englishman would not have rallied the priest, and by extension the entire swing vote of the College of Cardinals, before sunset. Damn Rinaldo for letting Somercotes steal him, he said to himself for the thirtieth time in an hour. A vital opportunity had been thrown away because de Segni wanted to be the first to get his morning meal. Fool. Selfish, lazy, shortsighted fool. Like all the rest of them.

He decided to risk being recognized. After he stalked away from de Segni’s room, he pulled off his cardinal’s robe and hurled it into his own chamber as he walked past; underneath, he wore a simple priest’s robe, so perhaps he could disappear into the midday market crowds, anonymous. He grabbed the torch outside his room, which demarked the limits of habitation along this particular tunnel.

He walked on into the darkness, to the second empty room along the corridor, which had a broken beam blocking most of the door. With practiced efficiency, he twisted his body and the torch around the beam and slipped into the small chamber. It was empty, but on the far side was a dark gash in the wall. He crossed and moved into this narrow opening; turning sideways for ease of movement, the torch held in his forward hand, he navigated the tight, zigzagging tunnel some thirty paces as it sloped gently upward. Then it opened onto a broader tunnel, which, if Fieschi took to the left, would lead eventually to his convenient freedom.

But above his torch’s hissing, he heard a sound. He stopped moving. He stepped out into the tunnel but saw nothing. He could not tell from which direction the sound had come. Another sound-a voice. Voices. He glanced in the direction of the tunnel egress. If there was anyone between him and the exit, he should be able to see them, at least the faintest trace of them, in the outer reaches of his torchlight. There was nobody there.

So he turned to the right and began a slow trek. Now another voice, and unexpected-a girl’s voice. A girl’s voice.

Could it be the young woman from the marketplace? The one who’d fled on horseback with the wild young man?

He wanted to rush toward the voices but constrained himself. One slow step at a time. The voices continued.

Laughter. He stopped short again, briefly; he knew that laughter. Capocci and Colonna. They leaned toward Castiglione, Somercotes’s choice. Fieschi fought off a sudden, enormous wave of dread. Was Somercotes carrying out a full-sprung conspiracy right under his nose, without Fieschi realizing? Was that toady of the Unholy Roman Emperor truly that efficient?

He saw the light now, coming from around the corner to the right; he hesitated, wondering if he should douse his own torch and try to approach in stealth. That would not work; they’d smell the smoke. And he would be at the mercy of whatever they decided to do with their own torchlight.

Cursing the entire enterprise-especially de Segni, who could have prevented it coming to this-he took a broad stride forward, putting himself in the middle of the tunnel that branched off to the right.

“Good afternoon,” he said loudly. “What an interesting situation we find ourselves in.”

Capocci and Colonna, he recognized, of course. He had not seen the girl or the youth before, but they fit the description from the market very neatly.

All four of them froze and stared at him. He smiled smugly and took a few slow, almost cocky steps toward them. “There is something unsavory about subterranean assignations,” he said, lazing over the words. He directed his words toward the bone-thin girl, memorizing her face with his keen stare. “I hope, young lady, that they are paying you well for these abominations?”

“Not as well as you would, since unlike you, we don’t live in Orsini’s pocket,” Capocci growled.

Suddenly, the two large cardinals, without warning or conference, but in nearly perfect unison, lurched over the debris; Colonna dropped his torch, which was snuffed at once in the damp earth. Each man grabbed one of the newcomers: Colonna almost effortlessly tossed the woman onto his back; Capocci huffed a little from the effort, but he had the young man up and over his broad shoulders in a trice. And then the two of them, again as if it had been rehearsed, turned and fled into the absolute darkness of the tunnels.

Astonished, Fieschi ran after them, with a shout that was as fruitless as it was ignored. Colonna’s laughter bounced off the walls but then evaporated into the darkness.

The moment the youth appeared in the doorway, Somercotes saw a softening come over the stranger’s face, expressing a humanity that he did not know the man had in him. Rodrigo’s eyes opened wide, and his jaw went slack, but he managed to scramble to his feet without assistance. The wild-haired young man stood just inside the doorway, unsure of the situation, and regarded the ailing priest with caninelike devotion.

“Ferenc?” Rodrigo whispered and then automatically switched to a tongue the newcomer seemed to know. He staggered across the stone floor, and the young man leaped to catch him, grabbing him under the arms, both to hold him up and to embrace him. Somercotes had no difficulty imagining some great moment of bonding in their past-a battle, perhaps? He studied the interaction closely.

The youth-Ferenc, Somercotes assumed that was his name-said something to Rodrigo, his tone and body language suggesting that he was rebuking the priest for standing.

Capocci and Colonna, who had brought these strangers to Rodrigo’s chamber, exchanged astonished looks. “What bastard tongue is that?” demanded Capocci.

“It is Magyar, from Mohi,” said the other, a young girl, doubtless a ragged child of Rome. She stared at the two men with a strangely motherly expression. “Ferenc helped Father Rodrigo get to Rome-”

“To deliver a message to the Pope,” Somercotes concluded. He glanced briefly at his fellow cardinals, but they were both agreeably preoccupied with listening to the torrent of words that now came out as the boy- Ferenc, he reminded himself, noting she had said his name as well-solicitously helped the priest return to a sitting position.

“An ugly language,” Capocci observed pleasantly.

“Too many ka’s and shka’s,” Colonna said in agreement.

“What are they saying to each other?” Somercotes asked the girl.

She shook her head. “I don’t know Magyar,” she said.

“Then how do you know the boy’s story?”

“He told me,” she said and lifted her hand, wriggling her fingers without thinking. To their puzzled reaction, she lowered the hand, then pressed her lips closed.

Other than the rapidly muttered conversation between Rodrigo and the boy, there was a pause. Somercotes looked hard at the girl, who pretended not to notice. “Does the young man speak Italian?” he asked. “Latin?”

She glanced away and shook her head.

“Tell me, how do you communicate with him?” Somercotes pressed.

She clearly wished she could take back what she had said, and if Capocci hadn’t been casually blocking the door-though Somercotes knew the wily cardinal was anything but nonchalant-she might have fled the room.

Ferenc answered Somercotes’s question before she could stop him. He finished his conversation with Rodrigo, turned eagerly to the girl, and took her arm. Before she could slap his hand away, he began to squeeze and touch her wrist.

“An unusual way to communicate,” Somercotes said, bemused. She shrank back under his close scrutiny. He took a step and quickly reached to the side of her head. Ferenc’s eyes widened as the cardinal gently took hold of a long lock of the girl’s hair, which had been interwoven with thread into an irregular series of knots. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. He glanced at Ferenc, then back to the girl, and let go of her hair, his fingers curling like snakes and then thrusting out in ones, twos, threes. He looked pointedly at Ferenc-and smiled. “I did not realize males spoke such a language.”

“He doesn’t know it well,” the girl said brusquely, still not meeting his look, “and I don’t know how he learned