The Mongoliad: Book Three

A priest waited at the door, and when Orsini nodded, he pulled the bolt back and opened the door for the Senator. Orsini took a deep breath and assumed his most imposing attitude-shoulders back, gut forward, forehead glowering-as he entered the room.

The woman stood across from the door, quietly dignified, arms folded across her chest. She gave him such a look of knowing expectation that he almost stumbled, even though the floor was smooth and even. The muscles in his legs twitched, an autonomic response to an instinctual nervousness.

“Senator,” she said.

Orsini tried to regain his swagger. “Lady,” he replied, not quite mocking and yet still respectful. He stopped just inside the door, a wider stance than felt quite natural. He mirrored her, mockingly, by crossing his arms across his chest.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” she said. “I am Lena, recently of the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, though I am not bound to his court.”

Orsini sneered, catching the inflection of her words. “You are one of them,” he said. “A Binder.”

“I am,” Lena replied. “And I have come to ask of my sisters who live in Rome.”

Orsini dismissed the sneer from his lips. “What of them?” he shrugged.

“You are the Senator of Rome,” Lena reminded him. “You don’t know your city well enough to know what has happened to my kin-sisters? Or is there a different excuse you would like to offer?”

“I don’t have to offer you anything,” Orsini snapped. “You are an agent of the Holy Roman Emperor, and given his recent attitude toward Rome and the surrounding cities, he has almost declared himself a true enemy of the people.”

“Almost,” Lena said, emphasizing only one of his words. “The resolution of that question may hinge on your answer.”

Orsini chewed on his lower lip, gauging the woman before him. Was she bluffing? Would Frederick dare invade Rome simply to find out what had happened to a few witches, none of whom would truly be missed.

“The Cardinals have elected a new Pope,” she said, changing the subject when it was clear he wasn’t going to answer her question.

“A new Pope,” Orsini said. “Yes, I know. They finally chose one yesterday.”

She shook her head. “No, earlier this morning. Castiglione is their chosen man.”

Orsini glowered a little longer at the woman, and when she was unmoved by his best impression of his namesake, he relented. “Of course he is,” Orsini sighed, wondering how this disaster could have happened. What happened to the crazy priest that would have been so pliable? he wondered, and then his stomach tightened with doubt. Had this been Fieschi’s game all along?

“He has taken the name Celestine IV,” Lena continued.

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Orsini asked, tiring of this woman. “That Castiglione has been elected Pope? What does this matter to me?”

“It matters a great deal,” Lena said with a smile, and Orsini found himself disliking her smile. “My sisters,” she repeated. “Where are they?”

“You don’t belong here,” he snarled at her. “You are a spy for the Holy Roman Emperor. You are an agitator and a witch. I am going to call for my guards. You can join your-” He caught himself, barely in time.

“Ah,” Lena said. “They are still alive. Well, that is fortuitous news.”

Orsini waved his hand at her, no longer interested in hearing what she had to say. At the very least, he thought as he turned away to call for the guard, I can ransom her back to Frederick.

“Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini,” Lena commanded. He found himself stopping and turning back to face her, against his better judgment.

She put her closed hand over her heart. “Senator Orsini,” she said. “I am bound to you with a message from Pope Celestine IV.”

“What nonsense is this?” he demanded, striding toward her. Intending to shut her up-forcefully, if necessary.

“The Pope wishes to inform you that his first act as Pope is to express his displeasure at the treatment of the Cardinals in the Septizodium by ordering that you be excommunicated from the Holy Roman Church.”

She smiled as she finished. Orsini tried to speak, but found he could not even open his mouth. An oak plank smashing him on the head would not have left him more stupefied than this.

Lena, after a polite pause, announced, “Thus delivered of my message, I am like the wind, unbound here but bound elsewhere.”

She paused again, but he could do nothing more than stare at her, stunned. Excommunicated…

“I would expect that the Pope might reconsider his order,” she said pleasantly as she started to walk toward him, “if you were to demonstrate some contrition for your acts of heinous torture against the citizens of Rome. Since the Cardinals are no longer imprisoned in the Septizodium, perhaps you might think of some other poor souls who have been wrongly imprisoned.”

She stopped and looked up at him. “Now, do you remember what happened to my kin-sisters?” she asked.

He found himself nodding dumbly.

“Good,” she said. “I look forward to hearing news of their release. I might even be inclined to beg clemency from His Holiness on your behalf.”

God believes your heart is strong enough.

At first, there had only been tiny pinpricks of light, shards of sun that dazzled as they fell on the leaves. But when they reached the vale of endless tents, the light had grown stronger. When Rodrigo glanced through the open flaps of tents, thinking he would see nothing but shadows, all he saw were glowing faces. Cherubic angels peering out at him, their rotund moon faces swollen with honey-sticky joy. And when he met the Emperor, the man who spoke with the voice of a black bird, he could no longer bear to raise his eyes toward the sky. Even though there was a heavy canvas tent over his head, he could still see the fiery explosions of God’s spinning eyes.

As he grabbed the cup, all the light went away. It was as if there was a vast hole in the bottom of the vessel, a sucking abyss that began to inhale deeply as he squeezed the metal stem in his hand. He could see the light streaming toward the cup. It flowed across the table like water running uphill; it dribbled out of Ferenc’s eyes in fat, squirming tears; it fell from the sparkling wheels in the sky in sheets of fiery rain. The cup continued to inhale, seemingly unperturbed by the quantity of light it was consuming, until there was nothing left but shadows.

In the resonant darkness, the black bird kept shrieking, and Rodrigo heard answering calls, the echoes of all the crows and vultures from the battlefield. Each voice splintered into tinier voices, like the cries of lost children-the orphans of Mohi, of Legnica, of every city the Mongol horde had destroyed in its relentless quest to trample the world.

Make them stop! he pleaded with the darkness. Give them peace. Embrace them. But if God was in the darkness, he did not respond to Rodrigo’s prayer. The priest teetered on the edge of the abyss, the one that had nearly consumed him once before, buffeted by the screams and cries of all the dead birds.

His feet slipped, but he did not plummet into the empty vastness. He hung, dangling over the abyss, one hand wrapped tightly around the stem of the cup, and it did not move. Grunting and straining, he reached up and put both hands on it.

He remembered everything perfectly: his catechisms from the seminary, the holy words of God writ in the Bible, the insights gleaned from Brother Albertus, the last benediction from the Archbishop before the armies of the West were devastated on the plain near Mohi, the words spoken to him by the fair-haired angel at the farm. Signa hodie lumen vultus tui super me… It was only through arduous reflection upon everything he could recall that he could understand God. That he could understand his place in God’s design.

There was still a glimmer of light in the cup. Every muscle in his body groaned as he raised himself so that he could sip from the floating cup. He put his lips against the warm metal, and as his flesh made contact with the Grail, it tipped toward him. A golden streak of light flowed into his open mouth, and he drank it eagerly, accepting it into