Vito pushed Ugo out and sent him running ahead of the guard, recognizing the opportunity. Ugo set off, running past the stunned physicians and beyond, down the stairs, in pursuit of Gianni, Piero, and Daria before they were formally summoned. The important part was that they were summoned. That they arrive before they were expected was part of God's plan.
If an attack was imminent, every minute counted.
Vito watched his brother disappear beyond the physicians, and then grimaced as the physicians again moved, to make way for another group, coming forth.
Amidei. And Cardinal Morano.
Â
“DRESS and come,” Ugo said, throwing open their door without invitation.
He ran on to Piero's door, rapping upon it, then slamming it open as well. “Hurry,” he said.
They gathered in the hallway.
“M'lady, captain, Father,” Ugo panted, “the pope asks for you.”
“For us?” Daria asked.
“For you. The guard shall be here in a moment. We merely overheard the invitation.” He looked at all three of them. “I passed Lord Amidei and Cardinal Morano. They seemed to be en route to the papal chambers.”
“You all remain here,” Piero said calmly. “I beg you to be on your knees in prayer for us, your brother and sister, until we return. More good is done upon your knees, covering us in the Lord's name, than a sword has ever done.”
VITO moved out into the hallway before Lord Amidei, sword drawn. “I am afraid that neither you nor yours shall pass,” he said, pulling his sword to his nose and then pointing it toward Amidei.
Abramo looked upon him with a smile, as if he were expected. “Surely you recognize Cardinal Morano. Do you have a death wish, man?”
“Nay,” Vito allowed, still staring over his sword, pointed at Abramo's neck. “But neither should you, Sorcerer.”
“Get out of the way, before I call for the papal guard.”
“Lord of the Night, you shall remain where you are,” Ambrogio said, staking his place beside Vito.
The cardinal looked to Abramo in confusion.
Â
GIANNI, Piero, and Daria set out running, with Ugo right behind them. They walked in hushed steps down the side hall as priests chanted through Vespers, through the kitchens, with maids washing floors clean of bones and cartilage and fat, through the Consistory Wing toward the Chapel Tower.
They met a confused guard, looking back to the man holding Lord Amidei and Cardinal Morano at bay, to them, those he had been sent to fetch.
“Go and bring back six knights of the papal guard with you,” whispered Piero, moving past the dumbfounded young man. “There is danger in this house,” he said.
With that, the man ran.
The three moved forward, across the hall and around Vito and Ambrogio, who held Lord Amidei and the cardinal from moving any farther inward.
“The pope has invited us to attend him,” Gianni said to Amidei. “Not you. Be gone.”
“I think we shall remain where we are,” returned Amidei.
“Can you maintain your guard?” Gianni asked.
“No problem, Captain,” Vito answered. Ugo joined him, drawing his sword.
They moved forward, opening the door into what they supposed was the papal vestry, then on to the papal chambers.
Daria went in first, but she backed up, into Gianni's arms. Piero paused alongside her.
Piero raised an arm and lifted it, as if against a palpable force. He looked to Gianni. “It is as it was with the young princess. The dark has made inroads here. Go. Return with Gaspare, Hasani, Tessa, and Josephine. All must be present to combat this.”
“Captain?” asked Vito, hopefully. But his captain ignored him in a desperate run down the hall.
Â
“COME,” Abramo said to Vito, appealing to him. “This is the Holy Father's own Cardinal Morano, blessed, well known to be of uncommon faith and valor,” he said.
Ambrogio edged forward, his own sword drawn. Well Abramo knew that he could slice the artist to chunks before him, but he held back, aware that his control of Cardinal Morano was tenuous, in the balance this night. His master emerged from the shadows behind him.
“Hold, my son,” he hissed. “Work at the knight. He is your doorway.”
“Vito, you have fought well on behalf of the Gifted,” Abramo said. He moved to the right, behind Cardinal Morano, and then back, as if unperturbed by the knight's sword, or the captain's departure for reinforcements. “Vast should be your reward. How long has it been since you and your brother drank of your benefactor's wine, supped at her table, rolled gold florins into your own bank account?”
The other knight, Ugo, edged closer to his brother. Amidei could feel them gaining strength, knew he had to act.
He lunged forward, drawing his sword, but rather than drawing Vito's attack upon himself, he watched as Vito drew his sword to the nape of Cardinal Morano's neck. Abramo immediately stilled.
Vito smiled. “Without him, Lord Amidei, it all falls apart, right?”
It was true. Without Gabriel, he had not the power nor the might to seize the papacy. Gabriel Morano alone was the one who could win it.
He looked into Vito's eyes. Honest. True. Unable to kill an innocent.
“You intend to kill a cardinal of the Church?” he whispered in a taunt, feeling the master, just over his left shoulder. “They shall hang you at dawn.”
DARIA moved to the pope as if her feet were encased in mud, looking back to Piero with her medicinal chest. But he had paused over the letters, the copies of their own letter, spread across the pope's desk. Three of them, nine pages each in a row. Three additional pages to their own copy. All in a clearly separate hand, an illuminist's hand that had each drawn a depiction of Daria, of Gianni, of Piero. Copies? Nay? Simultaneous or inclusive prophecy. She could see him lift one against the other, side by side, staring back and forth, measuring symmetry, language, curve of line.
Her attention moved to the Holy Father, to the vials by his bedside. She lifted one after another, smelling of each. He was plainly ill with an ailment of the chest. But there was something more, something more . . . beyond the overwhelming sense of evil here. It was similar to when they entered the young princess's room . . . and yet different. Amidei had been here. But what had he accomplished?
Dear God,
she prayed, bringing her nose back to the second vial, even as her hand reached for the third. She closed her eyes and inhaled again, taking in the subtle garlic-like odor in a bottle labeled LUNGWORTTONIC.
It was not lungwort, which smelled vaguely of alfalfa. This was arsenic.
An assassin,
she said to her Lord.
An assassin within your holy gates, Father. Stop him. Stop him!
She turned to the pope, barely breathing now, and glanced with fear at the steward. Was he to be trusted? Or were they in the room with a man who tried to kill the pope?
Â
THE
Honneur Gard
ran into the Consistory Wing, just as Vito swung his sword from the cardinal's neck to Abramo. Abramo parried his strike and then lunged toward the hated Ambrogio, painter of poisonous plots. He had decided to risk the cardinal's life, upon his master's urging.
The guards, seeing swords drawn, roared and unsheathed their own swords, rushing to block the pope's door. Abramo grimly recognized that by position alone, he appeared as the transgressor on attack.
The Gifted scurried in behind the guards, and although they were blocked as he was, they took up position on their knees to one side, with one arm raised to the pope's chamber wall beside them, as if they could draw out the poison already having its way with the weakened man inside, and one arm raised toward Amidei and Morano, as if they could hold them in place by prayer alone.
Their presence infuriated Abramo more than the knights with swords.
“Forgive me, m'lord, m'lord Cardinal,” said the pope's steward, who had come out of the chambers at the sound of swords. He tore his eyes from the strange sight of the praying people to Amidei and Morano. “No one else is permitted entrance this night.” Abramo abruptly sheathed his sword.
“Surely that does not pertain to us,” Abramo said.
“Sorrowfully all,” returned the steward.
“Upon whose orders?”
“The Holy Father's,” returned the man.
Abramo and his master received the first volley of prayers of the Gifted, taking a staggering step backward, then another. Three papal guards raised their swords toward him, drawn by his odd manner. He grimaced, not having ever sensed such power. They grew more formidable, still. “Come,” he managed to say to the cardinal, “We must return . . . on the morrow.”
Â
DARIA went from her medicinal chest to the pope, again and again, hoping to put together some remedy, some answer, held just beyond her experience, her knowledge. But there was no more that could be done. She had purged the Holy Father's stomach. Filled his mouth with herbs that would complete the task. But still the question plagued her. How long since the poisoning had begun? Had their enemy begun his assault a day ago, a week ago, longer? Was the chest cold part of the enemy's attack or merely the opening he needed to usher in death?
She laid the last of her poultice across the pontiff's chest, and laid atop it steaming Egyptian cotton cloths, prized for their thickness, absorbency. But Daria was more interested in their capacity to hold in the heat, store it, diffusing it in spare, even portions.
If I make it through this, Lord,
she found herself praying,
I shall become a purveyor of Egyptian cloths . . .
She sat beside the pontiff, mayhap sixty years of age, casting back to another scene, another time, in which she watched Piero, struggling for breath after breath . . . .
Breathe, Cornelius,
she prayed, wholly conscious that if the pope died this night, his death would be laid squarely at her feet. At the Gifted's feet.
Surely, Father,
she prayed to her God on High,
you did not bring
us this far to perish before Amidei, leaving us at the mercy of your own courts . . .
Daria leaned down and laid her hands upon the pope, the Father of all Christendom, and felt as his chest rose and fell in a death rattle, just as the elder Count des Baux had done weeks before. She eyed the new branch of horehound upon the fire, the poultice drying across the pontiff's chest, and lent her voice to join her brothers and sisters praying alongside her, just outside the papal chambers and those beyond . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE pope awakened with a start, as if choking, sitting up so suddenly, hand to his chest, that Daria moved away, startled.
Piero sat up straight at the same time, eyes widening in surprise. He had been half-asleep himself.
He stared hard at Cornelius, watching as Daria and his steward went to him, easing him back among the pillows, then closed his eyes in thanks.
You have spared him, Lord. Now please allow him to spare us . . .
“Holy Father, drink this,” Daria said, bringing a green liquid to his lips.
The pontiff obediently sipped it down, studying her as he did so. “You are,” he said between labored breaths, “the very image of the illuminations.”
“Or they are the very image of me,” she said, smiling back into his light brown eyes.
“They are . . . not Pauline,” he said, holding back a cough.
“Does it matter?” she asked. “The text holds with Scripture defined as Pauline. There is nothing blasphemous or heretical about it.”
“Nay,” he said, eyes watering as he held back another cough. “But what are we to do . . . if more letters appear . . . more people arrive . . . convinced they are . . . part of an ancient prophecy?”
Daria lifted a brow and eased back the sheet, squeezing herbs in a pot by her feet and packing them atop his thin chest. “Are you truly concerned that might happen?”
“Templar Knights, Cathars . . . the Church must be vigilant . . . in watching for dangers to our people.”
“Indulgences, priestly vagary, conspiracies among the papal
palais
,” Piero said, rising in the corner. “It seems you have enough to keep straight those already within your gates.”
“Tread carefully,” the pope said, lifting a trembling and weak finger of warning.
He looked back to Daria as she worked. “God nearly called us to his side.” His tone had no question, but his eyes asked if it were true.
“Nearly,” she said. She looked to his steward, who nodded back at the pontiff, confirming her answer.
So he was a friend? They could use every one.
“What did you give us . . . that our own physicians . . . could not?” He reached out and grabbed her hand, his fingers surprisingly strong.
“Why did you call for us?” she returned, staring back at him.
Slowly he released her hand and glanced toward the desk. “We knew . . . We could feel the slow slide. Losing hold. We were getting worse, not better. And, the letters, the uncanny resemblance to you, the priest, the knight . . . Lord Devenue own recovery . . . the princess . . .”
“God saved you,” Daria said, resuming her process of packing the poultice. “I did naught but place yew branches within your hearth, water on to boil and fill the air with steam, and this poultice of sage, fennel, and mint atop your chest,” she said, nodding downward. “Your own physicians gave you hart's-tongue tonic, which I would have done as well. But Your Holiness,” she said, reaching for the bottle of poison. “Someone was also giving you this, before we arrived.”
“What is it?”
“Arsenic, but within a bottle that is labeled lungwort.” She held it to his nose. “Smell of it. Do you detect the garlic-like odor? It burns at your innards.”