The Spirit Ring

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Monreale nodded understanding. Though not a healer himself, as the regulating supervisor of Montefoglia's healers he was well experienced in both the physical and the spiritual infirmities of men.

  "Papa bought a horse in Cecchino, and we rode on it into the night. But some soldiers Lord Ferrante dispatched overtook us on the road. Papa fought them while I hid. I found him in the field, dead—unwounded—I think his heart burst. They'd stripped him. I took his body to an inn, where Thur found me—oh! Ask after your brother, Thur. This is the younger brother of Captain Ochs," Fiametta explained hastily. "He was on his way to Montefoglia, and—ask, Thur!" Hers was not the only mortal anxiety here, though the Swiss had been more patient.

  "Have you seen my brother, Holy Father?" Thur asked. His voice was steady, though his hands fiddled with the lion ring. "Is he here?"

  Monreale turned his whole attention on Thur. "I'm sorry, son. I saw your brother fall, but he was not among those we carried away. I thought it was a fatal blow he took, but I was hurried off just then, and can't swear to his last breath. I'm afraid I can't counsel you much hope for his life, though you must hope for his soul—he was a very honorable man—if that's a help to you. But... it's barely possible he may still lie with other wounded in the castle. His body was not returned with the others during yesterday's parley. I—in truth, I have not heard. There's been much to occupy me,"

  "That's all right," said Thur. He looked a little numb. He'd expected to be freed of his fears one way or another; now, it seemed, he would be forced to bear them further. His shoulders bent, and his right thumb absently stroked the ring. Monreale studied him thoughtfully.

  "Parley?" said Fiametta. "What's going on?"

  "Ah. Well, Duke Sandrino's remaining guards surrounded us, myself and Lord Ascanio. We fled through the gate, though in hindsight I think we should have stood and fought them there... speaking militarily. We fought rearguard through the town and retreated to Saint Jerome. A multitude of refugees have sought sanctuary here since. We're very crowded." He shook his head. "So much bloodshed, so sudden. Like a judgment. I must stop it, before it spreads like a plague from man to man all over Montefoglia."

  "What are you doing now?"

  "Lord Ferrante also seeks to stop this unlooked-for war. He sent to treat with me, as de facto chancellor to poor little Ascanio. The lad's asleep in my room right now."

  "A truce with Lord Ferrante?" Fiametta repeated, appalled.

  "I must consider it. We're not in a good position, here. The Duke's guards were a match for Losimo when Sandrino led them, but now they're scattered, demoralized, separated from their commanders."

  "Can't you send for help—somewhere?"

  Monreale's lips thinned bleakly. "That is precisely the problem. For years, Duke Sandrino walked a very careful line between Milan and Venice. Call either of them in now, to an unmanned dukedom, and gobble! snap! Montefoglia would be eaten in a trice. Call in the other to eject the first, and Montefoglia becomes a battlefield."

  "Would Lord Ferrante really attack the monastery?" said Thur, sounding shocked. "How could he get away with such a deed?'

  Abbot Monreale shrugged. "Easily. Monasteries have been razed before, by violent men. And if he succeeded—who's to punish him? If he establishes his rule in Montefoglia and Losimo, he'll be too strong to readily dislodge. Except by either Venice or Milan, who would then keep Montefoglia for themselves—what gain to Lord Ascanio in that?"

  "What about Papal troops?" said Fiametta, seizing on a hope.

  "Too far away. Even if the Gonfalonier would dispatch them, involved as he is now with the troubles in the Romagna."

  "But the Duchess Letitia is the granddaughter of a pope!"

  "Wrong pope," sighed Monreale. "Perhaps, at the next election, her family's star will rise again, but not under His present Holiness's rule. The Curia will be swayed by arguments of order over right. Why should they spend troops to restore a weak woman and child to the Duchy when, if they do nothing, a strong, experienced man who's a known Guelf will assume the government?"

  "Is that your decision too?" Fiametta demanded hotly. "Order over right?"

  "It's practical politics, child. I don't know if I can save Ascanio's dukedom, but I think I can save his life. Ferrante treats to send Ascanio, his mother, and sister to exile in Savoy, with a stipend, in exchange for peace. It's more than a minimal offer. In the circumstances, almost generous." Monreale looked like a man biting a lemon compelled by courtesy to pretend it sweet.

  "No! That gives Ferrante everything!" Fiametta cried, outraged.

  Abbot Monreale frowned at this outburst. "Shall I fight to the last—monk? I'm sorry, Fiametta, but most of my brothers are not ready for such a contest. I would not hesitate to urge the least of them to martyrdom for the sake of the faith, but to sacrifice them to wrath serves no holy purpose. I cede Ferrante nothing he could not—all too readily—take for himself."

  "But Lord Ferrante murdered the Duke!"

  "You can't expect an ordinary man to not defend himself. When Duke Sandrino attacked him, Ferrante could not help but draw in return."

  "Father, I witnessed it. Duke Sandrino flung only words, if bitter ones. Lord Ferrante drew first, and stabbed him outright."

  Abbot Monreale's attention was arrested. "That was not the story I was told."

  "By Ferrante's emissary? Lady Pia was with me. We both saw. Ask her, if you don't believe me!"

  "She's not here. As far as I know, both she and the castellan were taken prisoners along with the Duchess and Lady Julia." Monreale rubbed his neck, as if it ached, walked to the casement window, and stared into the dark. "I don't disbelieve you, child. But it makes little practical difference. The troops from Losimo are on the march, and once they arrive our defying Ferrante will only make the final outcome worse. I've seen sieges, and what they do to men."

  "But Lord Ferrante used black magic! Didn't you see the dead baby at the banquet?"

  "Didn't I see what?" Monreale, pacing, jerked around as if wasp-stung.

  "The baby in the box. Ferrante's footstool, that broke open when Uri kicked it off the dais just before he was stabbed." She tried to cudgel up a precise memory of that chaotic moment. Monreale had been beyond the upturned table, managing Ascanio, his crozier, and a flurry of assailants and helpers, seeking an exit while retreating over the far side of the platform.

  "I saw the footstool. I didn't see it break open."

  "I saw. It spilled right across my feet. My skirt was caught under the table's edge. The footstool was full of rock salt, and this horrible dried-up shriveled infant. Papa said its spirit was enslaved to that ugly silver putti ring Ferrante wore on his right hand. Didn't you sense anything? Ferrante used the ring to blind a man, and he tried to use it on Papa, but Papa did—something—and the ring burned Ferrante instead. Papa said he released the baby's spirit, but I don't know how."

  Abbot Monreale turned, agitated, to his secretary. "Brother Ambrose, did you see?"

  "I was on the other side of you, Holy Father. A Losimon was trying to hack off your head with his sword, and I was fending him off with a chair. Sorry."

  "Don't apologize." Monreale paced. "The ring. The ring! Of course! Damn!—I mean, God bless me. That's what it was."

  "Then you did sense something." Fiametta was relieved.

  "Yes, but I should have sensed much more! What can Ferrante have done to conceal..." He headed for his massive bookcase as if drawn by a string, then turned back, shaking his head. "Later. I wish your Papa were here now, Fiametta."

  "What did you see in that ring, Father?"

  "It appeared to embody a simple spell to ward off lice and fleas, of the sort anyone might carry in an amulet bag in his pocket. I thought it an odd vanity to cast such a humble thing in silver. It felt wrong, though—I thought it poorly cast. But if the vermin-warding spell was masking another, a spell to ward off attention... then beneath that.... He hissed through his teeth, looking sick. "What did you sense in it, child?"

/>   "Ugliness."

  "From the mouths of babes. You humble me." He smiled sadly. "But then, you are your father's daughter."

  "That's what I was starting to tell you. Lord Ferrante's men came back to the inn where I'd sought help with Papa's body —" Quickly, Fiametta described her unpleasant adventures with Innkeeper Catti, his greed, and his smokehouse, the bravos' bizarre theft, and the manifestations of Master Beneforte in smoke and dried leaves. Thur confirmed the details of their journey. Much more hesitantly, Fiametta repeated what Master Beneforte had confided to her of his previous experience with spirit rings, though she concealed the names of Lord Lorenzo and Florence. The Medici must be responsible for his own confession. She explained her sharp fear that Lord Ferrante meant Master Beneforte's ghost for his new and more powerful slave. Abbot Monreale's shoulders sagged as her story piled up.

  "Papa called for you," Fiametta finished. "He cried out for help from you. Holy Father, what do we do next?"

  Monreale sighed deeply. "Just before you arrived, child, I was on my knees praying for guidance, some sign that my decision to make this truce was correct. That's the most frightening risk you take with prayer. Sometimes, God answers." He nodded wearily to his secretary. "Tear up the treaty, Brother Ambrose."

  Delicately, the big monk picked up the paper on which he'd been working when Fiametta and Thur had entered, and tore it slowly in half. He let the pieces drop to the floor. His eyes met Monreale's in an affirmation tinged with fear. "So much for surrender. Holy Father, what do we do next?"

  Monreale squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his wrinkled brow. "Temporize, Brother. Return soft answers and temporize." He looked up at Thur and Fiametta. "Take these exhausted youngsters to the hospice, betimes. I'm going to the chapel to meditate, before Lauds. Assuming we've anyone to spare to sing the night psalms." He added under his breath, "At last I realize why the Rule of our Order puts so much emphasis on training monks to do without sleep."

  His secretary murmured Amen, picked up a candle, and gestured Fiametta and Thur out of the room ahead of him.

  *****

  On the way to the hospice, which was situated near the front gate, they passed through a courtyard with a covered well. Even at this late hour, past midnight, two monks, a soldier, and a woman stood waiting to draw up water. A monk had his hand on the crank, but was not turning it.

  "How goes it, Brother?" asked Brother Ambrose in passing.

  "Not good," the monk at the crank replied. "It's coming up muddy. We're waiting for it to settle between buckets, but it's taking longer and longer."

  He began cranking at last, and poured the well bucket out into vessels held by the soldier and the woman. He let the rope down to begin waiting again. Brother Ambrose followed after the soldier.

  "A water shortage?" asked Thur.

  "Unless it rains and refills our cisterns,” said Ambrose. "We normally house about seventy brothers. Now we've taken in some fifty or sixty of Duke Sandrino's guards, many of them wounded, their families, others who've fled from the violence in town—there are over two hundred people packed in here right now. The infirmary is overflowing. Abbot Monreale is considering giving the hospice entirely over to the women and putting the wounded in the chapel, if we get any more."

  The water-lugging soldier turned aside as they passed the infirmary. Fiametta peeked after him through the door into a long, stone-arched dormitory. Straw pallets were set between wooden-framed beds, most occupied by blanketed forms. In the dim light of a couple of oil lamps a man's open eyes, glassy and feverish, gleamed in his stubbled face. A hooded monk moved among the beds; toward the end of the row a man in pain moaned continuously, like a cow lowing.

  Brother Ambrose guided them through another door and into the area of the hospice proper, ordinarily the only area of the monastery open to visitors. He handed Fiametta off to a tired-looking older woman dressed in night robes, with her gray hair in a braid down her back. Fiametta recognized her as a lay sister from the Cathedral chapter in town. Ambrose took Thur off with him through the visitors' refectory toward the men's sleeping area. Thur glanced back uncertainly over his shoulder at her as he passed around the corner, and waved a left-handed good-bye.

  The women's dormitory was another stone-arched chamber similar to the infirmary, but smaller and more crowded. Again, its original beds were supplemented with woven straw pallets and even hastier piles of loose straw with blankets atop. Some twenty-five or thirty women and perhaps twice that number of children and young girls were bedded down every which way. The older boys were presumably housed with the men.

  Fiametta picked her way past the strewn bodies, through a door at the far end of the room to an overworked and odoriferous latrine. She began to realize why the abbot considered holding out through a long siege, even without having to repel attack by Ferrante's infantry reinforcements, a dubious proposition at best. This time last night, she'd imagined that if only she could win through to Monreale, he would somehow repair everything. And it seemed she wasn't the only Montefoglian with that idea. But now...

  When she emerged from the latrine the lay sister guided her to a pile of loose straw, already occupied by two sleeping girls. Fiametta peeled off her ruined shoes and flopped down between them. It was bed enough for now.

  Chapter Eight

  Uri. Thur blinked open bleary eyes to see the dim vault of the men's dormitory ceiling. He stretched on the thin bedding, loose straw with a blanket thrown atop. The evil dream from which he'd wakened vanished away like mist even as he tried to remember it. By the aching spots all over his body, the straw had done little to protect him from the stone floor, though to be fair most of the bruises had been administered by that terrifying Losimon swordsman he'd fought last night. How much pain did Uri, far worse than bruised, lie in right now in the prison of his enemies? How much terror? Thur had straw and a blanket and freedom. Perhaps Uri had only bare stone.

  Some men were up and moving, some still slept. Beside Thur, a stubble-faced Montefoglian guard smelling of several days dried sweat squeezed his eyes shut, rolled over taking the blanket with him, farted, and started snoring again. Creaking, Thur rose and went to join the line for the latrine. At least Uri's prison could scarcely be more crowded than this.

  He had no problem getting dressed; he'd slept in his clothes. His only clothes, since he'd lost all his possessions in the fight last night. Well, he fit right in here among the possessionless monks, even though his poverty was accidental rather than vowed. He would dedicate his poverty to God like the brothers, along with a prayer to please make it as brief as possible.

  A monk in the refectory was portioning out brown bread, ale, and watered wine when Thur entered. The servings were not large. It was good bread, but under the circumstances Thur hesitated to ask for more. The ale was a blessing, washing out his gummy night-dry mouth.

  As soon as his voice was his own again, Thur began questioning men who looked like they might have known Uri. They welcomed him with interest for Uri's sake, telling Thur their own gruesome stories of fight and escape, but none of them had any later sight or better guess of their Swiss captain's fate than had Abbot Monreale or Fiametta. The morbid uncertainty made Thur's neck ache.

  There were women in the refectory, but Fiametta was not among them. Their voices were subdued, but for one sharp female whose complaints sounded with nasal clarity, till she sat abruptly on the floor and started crying. Another woman led her away to their dormitory. Thur rubbed the lion ring, wondering if he might approach a woman to ask after Fiametta. But as he was working up his nerve, Brother Ambrose appeared and touched him on the shoulder.

  "Thur Ochs? Abbot Monreale would like to see you."

  Thur licked the last stray crumbs from his fingers, drained his mug, and returned it to the hosteller. He followed Brother Ambrose.

  The secretary-monk led him through a courtyard and corridors, across the cloister, and up first stone and then wooden stairs. They came out on a flat roof above the office wher
e Thur had met the abbot last night. The buttresses of the chapel arched just to the north. A wooden dovecote occupied one end of the roof. Monreale, his hood pushed back, stood next to it. Brother Ambrose paused, signaling Thur to wait.

  A speckled gray dove fluttered uneasily on the abbot's hand. Monreale seemed to be speaking to it; he touched his lips to the bird's head, then held his hand aloft. With a burbling coo and a thrumming of wings like a drum roll, the dove climbed into the sky, circled the chapel twice, then flew away to the south.

  Thur and Brother Ambrose crunched across a light peppering of sun-dried guano toward the abbot, who turned at the sound of their footsteps, smiled briefly at them both, and scanned the sky.

  "Have any returned yet, Father?" Brother Ambrose asked deferentially.

  Monreale sighed and shook his head. "Not one. Not one! I fear for my flock."

  Ambrose nodded appreciation of the double meaning, and they both gazed southward into the pale morning blue, their hands shading their eyes. With a downward fist-closing gesture Monreale at last indicated an end to it, and led them back down the stairs to his office and through another door into an adjoining chamber.

  Thur stared around in fascination. The chamber was well lit from the north through large, high windows, and lined with chests and boxes for books. Shelves held a riot of brass, ceramic, and earthenware jars, colored glass bottles, and mysterious little boxes with labels in Latin. Two big worktables stood, one in the center of the room and one against a wall, strewn with clutter and stacked with papers and well-used cloth-bound notebooks. In one corner a narrow barrel held staves of various woods, and, snout up, the long stiff form of a dried and mummified crocodile, its leathery lips wrinkled back on a jaw half-emptied of teeth. Bags hung from the beams, including one of red silk netting holding a delicate tangle of papery dried shed snake-skins. A corner featured a plastered fireplace. The beehive form of a small furnace, just the size to fit in the fireplace, sat cleaned and ready for use on the slate hearth.