The Blessed

by Lisa T. Bergren

  He would leave it to the master. The master would appear to them in two days, at the ceremony. There they could present her body to him and ask what to do with it. He would know. He always knew how best to manipulate men. Abramo shivered. How blessed was he to be the chosen one! The man who was destined to control his own empire. He already owned controlling interests in businesses from Paris to Sicily, and many of the men in between. In a decade or so, he would launch his political campaign to own them outright.

  He flung off his overcoat, pulled the long jerkin from his torso, and walked to the mirror. The glass was dim and flecked with black, but he could see his naked form. He was still in his prime, muscled and broad in shoulder, his jaw strong and full of color, even in the dead of winter. Abramo fingered the patch, remembering Daria, her hair flying about her as the storm wind blew through the window. He remembered her whirling, chest heaving, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her fingers, clinging to a bloody piece of glass, the glass that had claimed his eye.

  His hand went to the studded belt, given to him by the cardinal, took the strap, and with a quick move, pulled it another notch tighter. He closed his good eye against the pain, fighting for breath. But in the pain was pleasure, pleasure that equaled what he had experienced upon his master’s altar. He opened his eye and watched as blood streamed down his muscled thigh and down his knee, mingling with the hair and running onward like tiny rivers. And then he laughed.

  He would make each of the Gifted know pain and fear before they knew the release of death. No easy passing would it be for them, nay. They would know his power, know the full extent of his wrath. He would take Gianni—nay, the girl—and he would make Daria watch as he cut her eyes from their sockets. Yes, he sighed. Yes. That would be the retribution he sought. One at a time, he would kill them, leaving Daria last, so that she would know the full force of her poor decision to deceive him, maim him, deny him.

  He laughed again hollowly, running his fingers over the belt. “I shall find you again, Daria,” he whispered, tapping the mirror as if it were her visage before him and no longer his own. “I shall take you and lay you upon my master’s altar and punish you for your wrongdoing. Your loved ones will all be slain. You shall be alone. And I will watch the hope die in your eyes even as the blood drains from your body. It will be a new era. The Gifted, vanquished. And the world, ours. Ours.”

  He pulled on his long shirt and his overcoat again, returning to the window, eyeing the setting sun casting a pale yellow hue upon the Palais de le Pape. “You think you can come here and change the world,” he said with a scoff. “It has already been purchased.”

  Abramo swung the heavy woolen cape around his shoulders and strode to the door. “Fetch Ciro,” he said to the guard in the hall. “Tell him it is time.”

  THE six men and the girl arrived in Avignon, having ridden hard for hours. Hasani eyed the setting sun as they gained entrance through the gates and looked in consternation toward Vito, Ugo, and Gaspare, then Tessa. They had come in through the Porte de l’Oulle gate, near the Palais de le Pape, but were still several streets below it. They could see the mammoth structure, the biggest Vito had seen in many a land—and still under construction from the look of it—rising above the buildings along the Rue Rempart du Rhône. It boasted silver-stoned tower after tower, with crenellations and guards atop it as if it were the keep of a warring king instead of Saint Peter’s distant kin.

  Vito lowered Tessa to the ground near a public well and then dismounted, leading her to the well for a drink. The child drank as if she had just emerged from a desert.

  Vito took the dipper from her, handing it to the woman who tended the well, pulling buckets from the deep in exchange for a small coin. He tossed her a larger coin, pointing to the six horses that already waited at the trough with expectant looks in their eyes.

  Gaspare handed out bread and dried meat to the men, taking in sustenance for the battle ahead while giving Vito room to encourage the girl. He stepped forward and handed a hunk of bread and several slices of jerky to Vito, who pulled off a smaller chunk for Tessa.

  She stuffed a bite in her mouth.

  “Tess, we need direction. Where shall we start?”

  The girl continued to chew, then closed her eyes and lifted one hand out, as if she were touching something animate. Slowly she turned in a half circle, from one wall of the city at her left to the other wall at her right. Several times she paused and moved on.

  When she retraced her steps in an agonizingly slow fashion, as if she were atop a wheel and the rope were being winched back in, Vito had to turn away. They had no time for this! The sun was soon down!

  “THE cardinal would have your decision now,” said the guard from the cell door, turning a key in the squeaky lock and opening the gate.

  “I shall be on my way,” said Josephine.

  “You do not wish to enter the nunnery?” he asked. She could hear the surprise in his voice. Would it not be the answer for any beggar she knew? To have a roof, clothing, food, purpose for her life, all magically provided for her? But she had her purpose. And if she entered the nunnery, she knew it would not last. They would not stomach her talk for long before calling her to face the Lord’s Commissioner. She almost welcomed the idea, relished the challenge. In him she would find a worthy mind, and with God on her side, she just might get him to see her way of thinking. But she would face him in God’s time, and this was clearly not her path.

  “Be at peace, daughters,” she said to the girls. “I shall pray for you each and every day until your release.”

  “And we for you, Josephine.”

  “Remember what we talked about this day. You end this day changed, free. His.”

  “We shall remember,” said the other.

  “Come along,” grumbled the guard. “I want to get home to my stew before it grows as cold as the streets.” He took her arm and pulled her down the passageway, past prison cells that Josephine could feel open like gaping, cold caves. “Stairs,” he said, half a second before she would’ve tripped. They turned left at the top and then right, then went up another staircase before Josephine could smell the city. As foul as it was, it was divine compared to the pit of the dank dungeons below.

  The guard dropped her arm, bent, and put another key in a lock. A massive wooden door opened, and Josephine was free. She turned to say something to the guard, the Lord having given her a word for him, but the door slammed in her face. She heard the lock jam back into place and smiled. “That stew must be quite good.”

  She turned back around, trying to detect where they had released her. She cocked her head and listened, hearing the gentle sounds of the river and the more jarring sound of the sailors and fishermen, crossing even the muffling, massive city wall. The far side of the palais, she decided, but a few steps from Rue Banasterie. It made sense. It was here they saw to the riffraff of the city, fed the poor, ushered prisoners in and out. The front plaza was reserved for honored guests and statesmen, with beggars merely tolerated on the outskirts.

  Josephine lifted her face. The sun had set and darkness was fast descending. Best to get home straight away and find food on the morrow.

  “THERE,” Tessa said, staring straight ahead over her arm, pointing to the palace.

  “The palais? Please tell me you don’t believe she is in there,” Vito said, looking up.

  “Not in it. Beyond it. I can feel her, Vito,” she said, a sudden grin of joy upon her face. “She’s but a few streets away! Let us be about it!”

  “All right, all right, keep your stockings on,” he said. She was running to Hasani’s horse and turned back to wait for him. But then her face stilled and her smile faded.

  Vito turned and he groaned inwardly. Knights of Avignon approached, a patrol retinue, four men strong. They would want to know what the knights of Les Baux were doing here. And it wasn’t likely that they would allow them to charge off to find a woman whom they could not yet even name.

  “Give me the word
s, Lord,” he whispered.

  “Vito!” Tessa cried, her face white. “He is there too! He is nearing her!”

  “Excellent,” Vito mused sarcastically. He looked up to the skies. “A mite of assistance possible, Lord?”

  Two of the knights of the city dismounted, their faces awash in consternation at the girl’s alarming tone.

  Hasani, Gaspare, and Ugo swung up and into their saddles.

  “Halt!” said the captain of the patrol. “You shall remain here a moment longer.”

  “We are on an urgent errand of Count Armand Rieu des Baux,” said Lucien, carrying the count’s banner. “Do not detain us if you care to keep your position.”

  “Let me see your papers,” said the captain. He stood his ground, but the knight’s words unnerved him.

  “We have reason to believe that a friend of the count’s is in grave danger,” Lucien said. “She is an older woman, a beggar to your eyes. But she is much more than that. We must get to her, and get to her now. It is vital.”

  The knight of Les Baux handed the captain his papers, knowing there was an even chance he could read. But that bore the sixteen-point star of Les Baux, anyone could make that out. “The man speaks the truth,” Vito shouted. “Let us be about our task.”

  “Be at peace,” said the captain, handing the papers back to the knight. “Tell me the woman’s name and we shall aid you in finding her.”

  “She is about sixty years of age, with a basket about this wide, full of cloth. A weaver? A seamstress? She resides in this district.”

  “And her name?”

  “Vito,” Tessa whispered. She was as white as a sheet, trembling now. Panting, her eyes wide. Twin tracks of tears ran down her face, dirty still from the dust of the road. “They’re moving away . . .” Hasani reached down and hauled her up in front of him. He looked to Vito, ready to ride without permission if necessary.

  “What ails the girl?” asked the captain, his eyes narrowing. “Is she ill? If she is ill, we must place her immediately in quarantine! And does your African have papers? I must see those as well.”

  CIRO and Amidei tracked the woman as she walked down one street and then the next, moving toward the Université district on the east side of the city. She moved slowly but methodically, as if counting her steps. Surely that was how she maneuvered through the twisting avenues, he thought. Counting.

  “Give me a little room to toy with her,” Amidei whispered to Ciro.

  “As you wish, m’lord.”

  Abramo moved forward, chanting a spell of confusion as he stared hard at the woman in front of him. “Eighteen, twenty-five, ninenty-one, thirty-six,” he said silently, willing the words into her mind. The woman stopped, put a hand to her head, and then slowly turned in a circle, sniffing the air. He inhaled with her and barely stifled a cough at the stench. Here, the streets narrowed. There was barely a path down the center, where rotten meat or refuse or excrement did not lie.

  Somehow the woman managed to avoid it all with each footfall. Was she truly blind? Having found some olfactory landmark, she turned and headed down another street. As darkness crawled through the city, its citizens disappeared within their own doors. Abramo, Ciro, and the woman were three of only eight within sight.

  Again he neared her, this time passing by her. “Forty-five, twenty-one, eighty-four, eighty-eight, eighteen, eight.”

  The woman stopped, dead in her tracks, behind him. “Who are you? Who is there?” She turned in a slow circle. “By the words within me, you are of the dark. Lost . . .” She grasped her chest, as if able to hold her beating heart. “So lost . . .”

  He continued on, not looking back. She was strong, this one. It was good they were removing her now, before she joined the others. With one glance at his towering figure, two men left their perch where they had been sharing a pipe, slamming the door behind them.

  Abramo turned and with a nod, gestured to Ciro to send the others from the street. He immediately turned, grabbed a man and a woman, and shoved them around the nearest corner. The street was suddenly silent but for the old woman, with Abramo and Ciro blocking any escape.

  “HASANI,” Tessa whispered through her tears, her gasping. “There is no more time. We must go to her, now. She has not long. They close in as we speak. I sense her . . . and our enemy. Amidei is not alone.”

  Hasani did not hesitate. He turned his gelding in a tight circle and they were off, with Ugo and Gaspare right behind them. Vito jammed a fist into the jaw of the patrol captain, sending him sprawling, and spooked the next knight’s mare so that he reared, sending him off the back. Both were knocked out cold.

  The third knight on horseback drew his sword, but Matthieu was already upon him, jumping from his horse to the next. Both went to the cobblestones, turning over and over, each landing punches. The Les Baux knight rose, victorious, but bled from his lip.

  Vito tackled the fourth knight on foot, regretting that a third punch was necessary to put him down. He did not want to kill any of them. They simply had to be away. He looked up and saw that Hasani, Tessa, Ugo, and Gaspare were already out of sight. Men and women around the well stared at them as if they were monsters. Slowly they backed away, fear lining their faces.

  Vito sighed and ran toward his horse. “Daria is going to flay me alive,” he muttered, jumping into the stirrup and immediately urging the horse into a gallop in one fluid motion. The Les Baux knights were directly behind him. They rode hard, leaning down behind their horses’ necks, praying they would not slip on the slick cobblestones.

  “TELL me, old woman,” Abramo said, nearing her. The night was falling fast, deliciously fast, and it was cold with the wind off the water. “Do you feel the chill?”

  “I know you,” she said, turning a half step behind him as he circled her like a cat playing with a mouse. “The man with the cardinal. We have no quarrel.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said with a smile, smelling her fear-filled lie. “Our quarrel is vast. But alas, I cannot even tarry to begin our conversation. I must silence your tongue now, this night.”

  “Why? Why me?”

  “You know why it is I hunt you,” he said, stopping at last. “You are one of them. My enemy.” He glanced up. There was a hint of rain upon the wind, and fast-building clouds. A storm?

  “Now I know why it is that I have these words for you . . . ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan!’ ”

  She stepped forward as he fell back from her words. “ ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.’ ” She paused and looked upward. “Nothing shall harm me.”

  He turned away, running into the wall as if thrown, and then slowly faced her, hate racing through his body, his fingertips itching to grab her throat, to rip it apart before she uttered but one more word . . . he would show her harm! She would know harm!

  “God’s remnant shall be pulled from exile to carry out his mission. If I am a part of that mission, so be it. If I am not, if you succeed in killing me this night, I shall die praying for those who will. You, newcomer, shall not be victorious.”

  He rose, eager to watch her die. He took a step forward, but the sound of a sword striking another drew his attention down the narrow street.

  Hasani passed Ciro, who now battled the one named Ugo, and was heading straight for Abramo, his curved blade high in the air.

  The Gifted had arrived. Why had his master not warned him?

  Abramo turned, saw the old woman stumbling away, already eight paces ahead, moving faster than he expected her age or blindness would allow. He must reach her, kill her, then disappear. He leaned down and, using the toehold of a cobblestone, set off after the woman, his left hand on the powder that would help him disappear, his right on the blade of his dagger.

  He pulled the dagger from beneath the fold of his overcoat, lifted it over his right shoulder, taking aim, when a lightning bolt came down from the sky, blowing him backward down a tin
y alleyway. He paused a moment on the ground, momentarily stunned, dimly hearing the scream of Hasani’s horse, the sound of a girl’s cry.

  Abramo shook his head and rose, trying to see after the blinding flash of light. Ciro was still out there, fighting Ugo. There were only two men, the knight and the slave, and the girl was here! They had to take them, lay hold of the child and kill the woman.

  He rose. It was time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HASANI leaped back to his feet, turning only briefly to make sure that Tessa moved. She was crying, but she was moving, rising from the cobblestones. The lightning had startled his horse, sending them both to the ground. He reached for his great, curved sword from the stones and advanced upon the alleyway, now deep with shadow, where he was sure Abramo Amidei had disappeared.

  The old woman had paused down the street, hunched over as if defending herself, ten paces away. He grunted to Tessa, pointing toward the woman with his chin. The girl set off down the street, still crying in fear. “He is in there, Hasani,” she whispered through her tears, edging past, keeping Hasani between her and the alley. “He is in there! He yet lives!”

  Hasani knew it already. He could feel the chill of the alley, in a way that went beyond a normal city’s stone cold feel. The dark was here. He let his eyes slide to the right, where Ciro battled with Ugo and where Gaspare still was on his knees, his arms stretched out to heaven in prayer. It was he who had asked for the lightning bolt, and their God had answered.

  It was here he might find retribution, might find the moment to end his enemy’s life. Hasani would make Abramo Amidei think about each stripe his whip had laid into Hasani’s back, every punishing blow that Daria and Ambrogio and Nico had taken, before he killed him and turned toward Ciro . . .