Demon Knight

your hand, Little One, and stand at my back lest I fall off?'

Clutching his fingers in a powerful grip, she scrambled up on a stool and then the stone table itself. Evidently she could move as nimbly as a child when she wanted to, and his estimate of her age plummeted. She sat down cross-legged, gave the owl a wrist to step onto, and raised it overhead. Chabi spread her wings and floated away into the night. Sorghaghtani squirmed a few times as if to make herself comfortable on the hard tabletop, then settled the drum on her lap. 'Do they understand that they must not speak, lest they anger the spirits?'

Of course they did not, so Toby passed the word. He stood ready behind the shaman and waited to see what she could do to convince this case-hardened crew of mercenaries.

For a long time she just drummed, but no one protested or made jokes or tried to leave. The rhythms were hypnotic and also restless, seeming to sing back and forth to their own echoes, although normally there were no echoes in the courtyard. To and fro, in and out, the sound went, surging and falling, then stopped abruptly, leaving a silence taut enough to raise the hair on a man's neck. The shaman sat hunched over her drum, motionless. When she spoke, the voice that rang out was female, but not hers.

'Mario! I, Angelica, speak. I need you. The mare foals tonight.'

In the far corner, Mario Chairmontesi cried out.

Then another voice came from Sorghaghtani's throat, and this time Toby knew it, although he had not heard it for almost three years. 'Ramon! Francisca am I. The new casa is ready, but servants… oh, to find servants!'

Wherever the don was standing in the courtyard, he did not comment, or if he did, the sound was lost in another voice: 'Martin, my child! Hilda. So tall you are, so strong! Hilda with Ehingen am.'

At that, Toby really did feel the hairs on his neck prickle, for Ehingen could only be a spirit or tutelary, so the woman who had spoken was dead. But he had no time to wonder what Martin Grossman was thinking before another spoke, and another, faster and jostling, as if the voices were struggling to take their turn in the shaman's mouth — not wives or lovers, only mothers, and more than half of them naming the spirit that now cherished them. Most spoke in Italian, but others used German or French or Spanish. Some, like Hilda, spoke as if to children. One just wailed incoherently, perhaps a wraith with no tutelary to care for it. One said plaintively, 'You never knew me.' The audience was reacting. Men tried to answer, or ask questions, or call back those who had spoken and fallen silent. Others tried to hush them as they waited for their own message. Some merely howled. Many wept as the significance sank in, and the weeping was infectious.

Barely audible through the rising hubbub, the last voice of all spoke very softly in the lilt of Gaelic. 'Meg, Tobias. You do not remember, but I am with you. Proud I am.' He had expected Granny Nan…

With him? None of the others had said that. Oh, spirits! No, no! Never in the years he had been possessed by the hob had he considered that it had been, in its witless, blundering, indifferent fashion, the nearest thing Tyndrum had to a tutelary. Only to the hob could the souls of the dead in Strath Fillan appeal for succor. So had it cherished them? All of them or some of them? When the hob left its haunt and went on its travels in Toby Longdirk, did it in some sense take them with it? He had no time to think of the implications, for the seance was over, and Sorghaghtani toppled backward into his arms.

She weighed nothing. He stood and cradled her as he would a child while his mind scrambled to recall every nuance of those faint words. You do not remember… Of course not, for Meg Campbell had died giving birth to a bastard rape-child, and she had been only a child herself. All around the courtyard, the officers of the Don Ramon Company were shuffling toward the exit — going alone, not in groups, not speaking. But a lot of them seemed to be weeping, and Toby realized that his own cheeks were wet, and his throat ached. Meg Campbell, the mother he had never known…

The shaman mumbled and began to stir. She had proved her skills. She had turned a score of intractable mercenary veterans into sniveling children.

CHAPTER FIVE

Lucrezia Marradi had two brothers. The elder, Pietro — poet, patron of the arts, head of the family bank, and, hence, head of the family — in his spare time ran city and state as a family fief. The younger was illegitimate, but bastardy mattered little in Italy, and he had followed a notable career in spiritualism, rising rapidly in the College until he was one of the senior cardinals, perhaps a future Holy Father. Early in March, Ricciardo Cardinal Marradi paid a visit to his native city, of which he was officially arch-acolyte.

Relieved that he would not have to send Hamish to Rome, Toby wrote asking for a meeting at His Eminence's convenience. He took the precaution of routing the request through the Magnificent. He waited, with growing concern. He asked again. He took the matter to Benozzo's successor, Cecco de' Carisendi, but the old man seemed unable to comprehend the seriousness of the problem — there was very little he did comprehend. It was on the tenth and final day of the cardinal's visitation that the captain-general and his deputy were summoned to the Marradi Palace to meet him. Toby took Hamish along.

He had been hoping and expecting that the meeting would be private, but they were shown into a busy antechamber, teeming with the usual crowd of sycophants and supplicants, and there they were left a long time. The snub itself was disturbing, both because it would soon become common knowledge in Florence and because anyone could guess why the captain-general needed to call upon the cardinal. Even when they were led through into the next high-ceilinged, overdecorated hall, they had not done with waiting. In the center the great man was holding court within about a score of people — mostly acolytes, male and female, but also four or five members of his family, including his brother and sister — and they were all just standing there having a loudly jolly chat, punctuated by much laughter. Clerks and stewards wandered around to no clear purpose.

The don was not noted for his patience. Cooling his heels always made his head hotter, and already he was muttering Castilian things under his breath. Eventually a chancellor arrived to confirm the visitors' identities, as if silver helmets were two-a-penny in Florence. Another wait. Then three of the courtiers kissed the cardinal's ring and departed. Everyone else remained, but now it seemed that the visitors were to have their audience.

Not so. The chancellor led forward a couple of very elderly female acolytes, tottering on canes.

'I see,' the don announced loudly, 'that I am too young to be trusted with important concerns. I prefer to do my aging elsewhere.' He spun on his heel and strode out.

Hamish and Toby exchanged glances that included equal parts of relief and despair. No one else was reacting at all, but that did not mean that the insult had not been noted. It probably cost them another twenty minutes, but eventually they were judged to have suffered enough. Then they were led forward and graciously permitted to kiss the ring. Among the spectators, Lucrezia and the Magnificent watched in silence. Lucrezia was smiling.

Ricciardo Marradi was a plump, satisfied, and yet enigmatic man in his mid-thirties, five years younger than his brother. The Lombardy redness of his hair clashed horribly with his scarlet robes and biretta. His features were paradoxical — a sharp nose and small mouth flanked by brown eyes wide with babyish innocence, set in a soft pink complexion. He wore his power like steel armor, yet his voice was high-pitched and petulant.

'How may we aid your cause, Tobias? You understand that we are about to take our leave and cannot spare you long.'

'The matter concerns the safety of the city, Your Eminence, indeed its very survival.'

'Surely, then, it should be brought to us by Captain-General Signor Ramon de Nunez?'

Years of practice let Toby restrain his temper. 'Yes, it should, Your Eminence. I hoped it would be. But it seems that I shall have to suffice.' For a moment he thought he was going to be dismissed unheard, but then the arch-acolyte gestured with a pudgy hand.

'Be brief.' Accepting a sheaf of papers from a secretary beside him, His Eminence began to flip through them.

'Reports from the north tell of the Fiend preparing to bring his hordes across the Alps, Your Eminence. We expect him within a month or two at most. The brave men of Italy will resist his evil, but flesh and blood and courage are no match for gramarye. Nevil is a demon incarnate and fights with demons. It has long been suspected that he has refrained from trying to add Italy to his dominions only because he fears the righteous powers of the Cardinal College. I come to ask for the spiritual aid that the defenders—'