The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  The camp outside was restless, with men on horses passing up and down the road, distant shouts and arguments. She thought once she heard the voices of her councilors, raised in fury, but then they were silent and she heard them no more.

  The day passed in such terrible waiting, with only Matteo’s wide eyes and Dario’s hoarse breath and the dread that Philip had not made it out of the camp. Her maid and Zafer were gone. Elena stared at the bread and wine they brought her and could not eat it.

  In the late afternoon a guard yanked back the covering on her tent. She recognized the officer who strode inside—Guichard’s second captain, the tall and lanky officer who had so courteously led his guests to their places.

  He looked down at her where she sat on one of her chests. Elena lifted her chin by instinct, refusing to lower her eyes.

  "Your Grace, I am Pierre de Trie," he said with a deep bow, baring his head, as polite as he had been in the evening before. "I’m in command of this company now, under the order of Bernabo Visconti of Milan."

  Elena gazed at him, saying nothing.

  "It grieves me to report that we have sorrowful news from your city—Franco Pietro of the Riata is dead, God spare him."

  Matteo made a small sound. He grabbed Nim and hugged the great dog to him.

  "Your Grace," Trie said, "it seems some disorder has broken out in Monteverde. We ask your permission to enter the gates and quell it."

  She stood up. "What happened to Franco? What death caught him?"

  "We were told it was his enemy, the Navona."

  Dario ceased his harsh breathing and made a sound, a word lost in a groan. She stared at Trie. The condottiere looked back at her, a little bent under the tent-cloth, his thin eyebrows and trimmed beard like ink drawings on his face.

  "Why am I confined?" she asked.

  "For your protection, my lady," he said. "We were sorry you were so imprudent as to try to flee last night."

  She knew what they would do if she allowed them into the city. They would loot and pillage at their will, burn what they would, and worse. Far worse. She had heard of what the Free Companies would do if they ever breached a city’s walls.

  "If I don’t permit you to enter?" she asked coldly. "What then?"

  "Then I will take one of your councilors before the gate, and ask for entry. If I’m not permitted, he will be hung there for the city to see. Each time I ask, and am refused, I will hang another." He glanced at Matteo. "I will begin with the boy."

  She gazed at him, speechless. He smiled a little.

  "You have the night to consider it, Your Grace. My men wish to celebrate their new command this eve, and I will allow them the indulgence. In the morning I will return to hear your decision."

  * * *

  Elena knelt before the little altar in her tent, her hands gripped together as if in prayer. But she was not praying. She was thinking, trying to set aside the horror that wanted to rise up in her throat and choke her.

  She had no surety that Philip had escaped. If he had, there was some hope, some faint hope, but only after a delay that would be too long to save many lives. If she ordered the gates open tomorrow, she might spare Matteo and the councilors—if the condottieri didn’t kill them all anyway after they took the city—but at a cost of destruction that she could not even bear to contemplate. Three thousand armed men among the undefended people of her city—she pressed her fists against her teeth until her knuckles bled.

  Even if everything had gone as she hoped, even if Allegreto and Franco had kept peace, they couldn’t have shielded the city against this. She saw no way to protect it. She could agree to the demand, go before the gates and order no one in the city to fight. Let them loot. Let them burn. But she didn’t trust the condottieri to restrain themselves even if they met no resistance. She’d read of France and Burgundy, where women were raped and children cut to pieces before their father’s eyes for trying to hide a few coins from the brigands.

  It was a cruel jest now, the silver she’d spent on the French company. She had no doubt that Trie had taken his share, and stolen Guichard’s, too. She would have denied them entry, stood before the gates and cried out to her people to fight, told them there was hope of rescue if they could hold out—and let the soldiers hang her for it if they pleased. But she could not live and let them take Matteo first.

  He was very quiet, sitting beside Dario and looking down at his chains with a scowl. Nim lay sprawled beside him, resting her head on his knee. The dog had wandered out on her own in the evening, as the sounds of men drinking and laughing grew louder, and then come back, flopping down beside Matteo as if she had no cares.

  Elena bent her head into her hands in despair. She thought of Allegreto, who had warned her and warned again not to leave the citadel. He might finally have killed Franco, but she had done far worse a crime.

  "Princess," Matteo whispered, without looking up at her. He gazed down, holding the back of one hand in the depths of Nim’s thick white fur.

  He kept his head lowered, turning his arm a little. She saw him fold his hand, twist it, and slowly withdraw it from the shackles. He opened his fingers, gave Nim a long quick stroke, and slipped his hand back into the iron cuff. He lifted his face then and gave Elena an impish smile.

  Her heart lifted with a bound. If Matteo could get himself free...

  But before she could even think of more, he suddenly bent over Nim. He turned her collar, sliding his hand under it, his face intent. He glanced toward the opening of the tent and then back at Elena. With a quick move, he reached out and pressed a rolled slip of parchment into her hand.

  Elena’s pulse began to thud. She held the slip down close in the folds of her skirts and unrolled it.

  Midnight, it said. Be ready.

  FIFTEEN

  At midnight Elena was lying rigid, listening for anything over the sound of Dario’s feverish breathing. Matteo’s days with Allegreto had been rewarded. In the pitch-black darkness inside the tent, she felt the boy lie beside her and work gently at her manacles with some tool she could not see. The iron fell away.

  Dario coughed, a deathly sound. But he was sitting up as well as he could. She had leaned over him and whispered when she gave him water, and he nodded and opened his eyes. He seemed aware enough to understand her, though his forehead blazed with heat. That he had lived so long gave her some hope, but she didn’t know if he could rise.

  Distant bells marked midnight from some village church. Outside, there were still a few voices, a snatch of song from a drunken soldier. Elena clenched her fists.

  When it began, she knew instantly.

  A noise started, almost below hearing. It was like a trumpet, but playing a note that belonged in hell, an eerie timbre that rose from somewhere far away. She couldn’t tell what direction it was; it seemed to come from everywhere at once, low at first, a wisp of imagination that became real, gathering strength as it echoed through the camp.

  She sat up. Matteo leaned beside her. Nimue stood with a growl low in her throat. She barked savagely. And then she sat down and began to howl.

  Dogs all over the camp joined her, their mournful voices rising in long uncanny notes, linking with the rising note of the hellish horn.

  The guard outside their tent spoke sharply to his comrade. "What is—"

  His voice ceased. The other guard cursed and then blessed himself. Elena slipped to the opening and dared to look outside.

  Her tent was in a circle that faced the commander’s pavilion. At the entrance to Trie’s tent, she saw a flicker of blue light in the darkness. It became a thing that glowed—a thing, a man—a figure seething with blue radiance. It threw back its head and raised its arms and gave a ghastly roar, a sound like a soul in agony. Vaporous flames shivered up and down its arms. It turned, scanning the tents. With a shock of horror Elena saw the eye-patch that burned in ghostly sapphire across its face.

  At the instant that she recognized Franco Pietro, he turned to Trie’s tent. Men were running from
out of the dark, but they all came to a dead halt at the sight of him. "Treason!" he howled, a voice that reverberated under the sound of the horn. The dogs moaned in concert. A man’s head appeared at the door of the tent, shouting angry orders.

  Franco Pietro’s ghost pointed. "Murder!" it wailed. With a boom and a hollow whoosh of air, the tent exploded in flame.

  Elena scrambled to her feet. Screams and shouts rose from the burning tent. One man plunged out, his clothes aflame, another fell and rolled in the burning silk. She stumbled over a body at her feet; realized it was the guard who had cursed only a moment before.

  Franco turned, pointing again, and another tent burst into fire. Soldiers began to run, not toward the ghost, but away.

  And Allegreto was there, out of the darkness and chaos, with Zafer and men she could barely see. She grabbed his hand without a word, running behind him as he ducked among the tents. They split off from the others, but she had seen Zafer take Matteo, seen Dario on his feet and a glimpse of the councilors running in a cluster from their tents.

  All around them, explosions lit the camp. Men were shrieking, sounds of pain and fear and dread. Loose horses bolted, dragging their stakes. Allegreto pulled her behind a tent, holding back for an instant just as a pavilion went up in flames, so close that the heat licked her skin like a white-hot tongue. She caught a glimpse of his face in the burst of reddened light, his features frozen in diabolic beauty.

  He gripped her hand and ran, one way and another, avoiding the men who stumbled with sacks and buckets to the fires. At the edge of the camp, he plunged into a black hole, bending low and dragging her with him. Leaves and branches brushed her face, and something soft and weighty bumped against her hair. She realized it was a vineyard, with grapes hanging heavily from the trellis. She could hear others moving around them, crashing through the vines. At the end of the row, she grabbed her skirt and climbed behind Allegreto up onto a bank.

  She smelled horses and stale blood. A tiny light shone from a shuttered lantern, just enough to illuminate the door of a stone house.

  By threes and fours the others came, a crowd of shadows gathering. From behind, the camp flared with fires, smoke rising in pale gray spires against a black sky.

  "Count them, make sure we leave none behind," Allegreto muttered by her ear. "There are horses and mules with the men in the yard. They’ll take you to the city."

  Someone opened the door, a sudden square of light spilling onto the ground. In the brief flare, Elena saw that Allegreto’s doublet was soaked in a dark stain, completely covered in it. "You’re hurt?" she whispered, reaching for him.

  "No," he said sharply. He caught her hand, putting it away from him. The door had closed again, the light vanished, but she felt him looking down at her. "Elena—" His voice was strained. He pushed her toward the house. "Go. Make certain they’re all there. Hurry."

  She obeyed, hastening into the farmhouse. Only a fire was lit in the open hearth, but the illumination seemed to glare in her eyes. Councilmen caught at her hands as she entered, clasping and kissing them. She tore away, pushing through the milling of her councilors and men she had never seen, hushing those who spoke. With a flair of pure relief, she saw Matteo holding Nim’s collar in the corner. She hiked her skirt and stood on a chest, overlooking the crowded room and pulsing shadows in the firelight.

  In a low voice she called each of their names. They responded with soft ayes to the roll that she had read at each meeting until she had it memorized. All were there—a miracle. She gave a prayer of thanks and jumped from the chest.

  "Signor!" She put her hand on the eldest councilman’s arm. "We have escorts in the yard. Go out the back. See that all have a mount. I’ll return in a moment."

  A path opened for her to the door. She slipped out. Allegreto stepped forward, a silhouette against the flaring skyline of the camp. "They’re here," she murmured. "All of them, praise God." She swallowed an uneasiness in her throat, looking up at him. "Allegreto—I saw a thing that looked like—as if Franco had come alive."

  "He is alive."

  She closed her eyes and let go of a harsh breath.

  "Did you think I’d killed him?" he asked. In the darkness his voice was tense and clipped. "I did not."

  "What passed?" She touched his bloodstained doublet.

  The faint light glowed along his cheekbones, made his face a sketch of light and shadow. He wet his lips, backing a step from her. "Ask Franco," he said, with a crack in his voice, an anguish that she had never heard before. "Go, Elena. You must leave quickly." He turned from her toward the camp.

  She caught his sleeve. "You’re not going back?"

  "Dario," he said. "He fell behind." Before she could speak, he had vanished into the black night.

  * * *

  All the bells of Monteverde had rung without stopping for two days, calling the people of the countryside to shelter within the city gates. The chaos among the condottieri had broken them into groups and factions, leaderless soldiers, angry and frightened by the uncanny assault, by tales of demons and ghosts and blue flame. Some of them had bolted into the mountains, but most of them remained, seething with agitated confusion.

  Elena’s head seemed to ring, too, even though the bells had finally stopped. She hadn’t slept since they had escaped to the city. She sat at Dario’s bedside while he fought off fever, receiving messengers and reports, giving directions for the refugees to be fed and housed, watching to make sure the surgeon treated the terrible wound with useful herbs and elixirs and did no more harm.

  "The night patrol has just come in, Princess," Franco Pietro said, entering without formal greeting. They had no time or heart for courtesies. In the dim early morning light his hair and eyelashes still glowed in patches from Allegreto’s strange powder.

  "What word?" she asked quickly.

  The Riata were yet missing five men, Navona three. Zafer had found Dario at the edge of the vineyard at dawn, just beyond a smoldering tent where four men had burned past recognition. Dario’s clothing was badly singed. He lay insensible and alone.

  "We discovered two more bodies, Princess," Franco said.

  Elena glanced up in fear.

  Franco shook his head. "Not Navona’s, Your Grace. My men."

  She pressed her hands together. "God spare them. I’m sorry." She turned back to watch Dario’s beard-shadowed face. His bones seemed to stand from his skin, making him look years older than the sturdy youth she had met on the island.

  "Your Grace, it strains our resource to continue searching," Franco said. "I need what knights and men we can field to patrol the encampment. We can’t let them disperse and raid. While they quarrel among themselves, we’ve been fortunate, but if they begin to band in large numbers, or find a leader—"

  "I know," she said sharply. "Philip is coming. His messenger said he was two day’s march."

  "Pray God it’s so, Your Grace. This circumstance grows more dangerous. I ask your leave to abandon the hunting. I need all the men that I have to watch the camp."

  She rose suddenly. "Because it is Allegreto!" she exclaimed. "You don’t want to find him!" She turned her back. She walked to the basin beside Dario’s bed and began to wring a cloth.

  "Your Grace," Franco said in a harsh voice, "if I thought there was a chance that I could find and aid Navona, I would do it."

  She twisted the cloth hard in her fists. "There is a chance. He’s out there. He’s hurt somewhere, or captured."

  "We’ve searched. He never returned to the meeting point. The infidel has been through the camp and every tent in it these two nights past. There are corpses that can’t be recognized." He nodded toward Dario. His voice softened. "This man’s clothes were burned. The compounds that Navona carried—you saw what they could do, princess."

  Elena stood, staring down into the basin.

  "My lady," Franco said, "don’t think I’d abandon a search for him lightly. We’ve been mortal enemies, but he stood with me when the Englishman would have cut me
down. I remember that."

  "Raymond," she said bitterly. "I cannot comprehend it."

  "A fool will do much for gold and dreams. The Visconti know how to twist a man’s heart with promises."

  "I never saw it," she whispered. "I trusted him. He was my friend."

  Franco grunted. "Sometimes it’s those who seem most anxious to give compliment and esteem who must be suspected."

  She turned. "He was killed in the church? When you fought?"

  "No, Princess, we weren’t so kind to him. We took him to Navona’s tower and showed him some of Gian’s mercy."

  "Gian’s mercy?" Elena echoed faintly.

  The Riata shrugged. He rubbed at his nose beneath the eye-patch and glanced at the faint glow of powder that came away on his fingers. "We needed to know the whole of his scheme. He would have lied. But he didn’t lie when his arms were torn from their sockets, I promise you, my lady."

  Elena put her hands to her cheeks. "Raymond," she whispered.

  "Spare no grief for that one," Franco said. "He was a dog, and died as a dog. I might have made him regret his treachery a little longer, but we had no time to spare. Navona slit his throat."

  She pressed her hand over her mouth and looked down, thinking of the massive bloodstain on Allegreto’s clothes. Raymond’s blood. Gay, handsome Raymond, with his charming smile. Raymond who had called her a sparkling diamond, an extraordinary woman. She began to shake and couldn’t stop herself.

  "I’m sorry if I cause you pain, my lady," Franco said brutally, "but it was better so. If Navona hadn’t done it, the task would have been yours."

  Elena made a faint sound, nodding. When finally she’d swallowed down the nausea and found the ability to look up again, he was standing awkwardly, a slight scowl on his face beneath the patch.

  "Va bene," he said gruffly. "I’ll appoint a pair of men to continue to look for Navona, if you wish it."