And I, who had been in the hay loft looking down when my master had shown Captain dell’Orte the plans for the construction of the secret chamber, knew where to find Paolo.
He lay curled up like a child in the hidden room. He told us the walls were so thick he had heard nothing. His small stub of a candle had burned out yet he remained there in the dark, as his father had commanded.
Elisabetta sat with him and told him what had happened in the keep.
The news of his father’s death he bore bravely, but when he heard what had befallen his sisters, and how his mother and baby brother had died, he became distraught.
‘My father did not think they would harm a baby, or women,’ he said. ‘He knew he might die fighting, but not that this would happen.’
Paolo looked at me pleadingly from his tear-stained face, imploring me to agree that he had done the right thing. ‘I told my father that I was prepared to die,’ he said. ‘He told me that I was the only man who could live. No one knew of the secret room. He said it was not big enough to hide everyone, and anyway, if he did, then they would wonder where his wife and girls had gone and tear the castle apart to find them.
‘My father forced me to stay hidden. He made me swear on his sword. He told me his honour was in the sword, his life was in the sword, our family name and all he held dear – my mother, my sisters, my brother and myself – he would defend with his sword.
‘My mother, my sisters, my brother.’ Paolo began to sob. ‘My mother, my sisters, my brother.’
Elisabetta and I watched him cry until he could cry no more. Then he stood up and wiped his face. He went to where his father’s body lay and he picked up his sword. ‘With this,’ he declared, ‘I will avenge them.’
Thus violence begets violence and no man can stop it. When war is made all are drawn in and consumed.
‘Paolo,’ said Elisabetta, ‘I must tell you this and beg forgiveness. Had I known where you were hidden I would have told them.’
Paolo went at once and kissed his sister. He drew her by the hand to where Rossana stood. He gathered them both in his arms. ‘I would have gladly given myself up to spare you.’
‘But you would not have spared them,’ I said brutally. ‘These men would have found you, murdered you, then turned their attention to your sisters.’
‘How do you know this, Matteo?’ Elisabetta asked me.
‘I have been living with men such as these for the last weeks. You will not yet have heard what happened at Senigallia, where Il Valentino murdered his captains in cold blood. The Borgia pretended to forgive them and asked them to parley. Then he had them strangled. Afterwards his soldiers rampaged through the town, committing unspeakable atrocities.’
Elisabetta shuddered. ‘Yet these men seemed more like brigands than enlisted soldiers. And they themselves seemed frightened that they had not found what they sought. They said their leader would be angry when they met up with him and had to tell him they had been unsuccessful.’
At her words fear rose in my throat. I knew their leader, and he would have been more ruthless in his search. He would not have left the girls alive. When his men reported back to him he would not be satisfied that a thorough search had been made. He would come himself to look.
And he was only hours behind me on the road.
At that moment, from the top of the tower, came the sound of the corncrake. We ran to the battlements. From this point we could see far beyond the bridge crossing. In the distance a group of horsemen were approaching.
Out in front a lone rider travelled at speed. A sudden tremor seized my body.
It was Sandino.
Chapter Twenty-Four
PAOLO WOULD HAVE rushed outside had I not barred his way.
‘Wait,’ I said. And when he protested I added, ‘Think of your sisters.’
‘Why have they returned?’ asked Elisabetta.
‘Because they did not find what they were looking for?’ suggested Paolo.
‘But we have nothing here, no plate nor silverware, no great jewels.’
Rossana had begun to tremble.
‘We must leave now,’ I said to Paolo, ‘to take your sisters to safety.’
‘Where can we go?’ Elisabetta looked around wildly. ‘There is but one road. They will catch us as we flee.’
‘We will go by another route.’ I already had Rossana by the arm and was hurrying outside the door, with them following me. ‘We must climb down the ravine.’
‘It’s impossible,’ said Paolo. ‘I tried it as a boy and could only get so far.’
By now we were round the side of the keep. There was a narrow lip of land and then the rock fell away at our feet.
‘There is no other way,’ I said. ‘Listen. They are at the door.’
We fell silent. In the clear winter air a voice I recognized:
‘You killed the old man, their father too quickly.’ Sandino was berating his men loudly. ‘He would have given up the boy to save his girls.’
‘What about this secret room you spoke of?’ one of his men asked him. ‘You said he might be hiding there.’
‘I only recently learned that the Borgia has secret rooms built in his fortresses, so that there will always be a place for him to hide if any of his castles fall to siege when he is in them. I don’t know where this one is located. But, no matter, we’ll make camp, and if he’s still here, then hunger will drive him out in time. I can be patient. I’ve waited already. A few more days will make no difference.’
I leaned over and put my mouth to Paolo’s ear. ‘We must go down.’
He shook his head and mouthed the words back to me. ‘We cannot.’
Then Elisabetta spoke in a very quiet but firm voice. ‘There is no other alternative.’
I went first.
I scrambled over and, gripping tightly with my hands, I found holds for my feet. Elisabetta came next. I guided her feet into position while she in turn guided Rossana. Paolo, with his father’s sword fastened to his back, came last.
A little way down we found a ledge to rest on. Elisabetta was shaking all over but Rossana seemed indifferent to her fate. It was the difference between one who wished to live and one who did not care.
‘Let us go on,’ I said.
Elisabetta glanced over the edge and swayed back. ‘Can’t we stay here a little longer?’
‘No,’ I replied, for I thought that if we did we might lose our nerve.
‘This ledge is an overhang, Matteo,’ said Paolo. ‘It will be very difficult for my sisters to climb out and then under.’
‘I know, Paolo. But if we manage it, then we will be out of sight of the keep all the way to the bottom of the ravine.’
I crawled out to the rim of the rock. ‘When you come to me,’ I said to Elisabetta, ‘try not to look down. Just let me guide your step into the right place.’
I pitched myself into the void. The wind buffeted me. My cheek was close to the cliff face. Even in the depth of winter tiny flowers grew in the cracks. A pebble dislodged from above struck my forehead. Someone was standing on the castle wall looking down. I pressed close in. A trickle of water poured past me. It was a man relieving himself. I took new hope from this. They could not think that anyone had escaped this way, otherwise it would be hot pitch, not piss, cascading down on my head.
I waited. After a while I used my dagger to cut some more earth from between the rocks. I scratched with my fingernails. I had stood for so long that my legs juddered in spasm. The thought entered my head that if I fell, then all of them were lost. Having no option but one makes a choice more easy to make.
My hands were slick with sweat, but the sun’s arc in the sky was declining and the light no longer shone into the furthest reaches of the gorge. Half my body was suspended over the drop as I searched for a foothold. I burrowed the toes of my boots until I got some purchase. Now it was the turn of Elisabetta.
I was able to dig out some hollows and expose a stone that protruded enough for her to grasp. She wa
s lighter than me and her body more pliable. She swung herself over and under, and was beside me on the cliff face.
‘Well done,’ I breathed.
Her mouth curved in the semblance of a smile.
There was a sudden flurry of air and a bird flew out next to her head. Elisabetta lost her grip. And started to fall.
Her scream was a whisper, as if she had begun to yell and realized what would happen if she cried out.
‘Mama!’ I heard her moan.
I snatched out at her. And grasped empty air.
But not quite. The unbraided mass of her hair caught in my fingers. I closed on this and clenched my fist.
She ground her teeth in pain. We had only seconds before her body weight ripped her hair from her skull.
‘Grab my waist, Elisabetta!’
‘I cannot reach it,’ she gasped.
‘My legs then. My feet. Anything.’
‘I’ll pull you down with me, Matteo.’ Her voice sounded as if she had given up.
‘You won’t. I am well anchored here. Do it. Now!’ I barked at her as she hesitated.
Small hands round my ankles.
But I had lied. I was not well anchored.
One of the rocks I was holding began to move. Around it the earth crumbled. I heard the patter of small stones.
‘Can you find any place to stand on?’ I asked her.
I heard her feet scrabbling below me.
‘I have a foothold.’ At the same moment her dead weight on me lightened a little. ‘There is a tiny outcrop here, enough for me to rest my feet.’
We stayed like that while I thought what to do.
I knew there was no room for her to put her fingers where my feet were. She must see that too.
Then Paolo’s head appeared just above me. He held out his two hands to me. ‘Give me your hand, Matteo.’
I shook my head. ‘You are bigger and stronger than I am, Paolo. But there are two of us, and we will drag you over.’
‘I have lodged my belt buckle in the cliff face and tied Rossana to it. She has placed her back to the rock behind me and she holds me by my ankles. She will not let go.’
‘If you fail to pull me up then she dies too.’
There was a silence. Then Paolo said, ‘So be it.’
‘I am with Paolo.’ Elisabetta’s voice came from somewhere near my feet. ‘If this fails then we die together, Matteo, as is God’s will.’
I reached my free hand towards Paolo. He stretched as far as he could towards me, and I to him. For any chance of success he would need to grasp my wrists. There were two handspans of space between our fingertips. I heard his sob of disappointment.
‘We must think again,’ I said.
But as we had done this it came to me that there might be another way to beat this overhang. It depended on the courage of Elisabetta. ‘Listen to me,’ I whispered to her. ‘Are your feet secure?’
‘Yes. I’m standing on a tiny ledge.’
‘Elisabetta, I am going to climb over you. When I do this I will move one foot to begin with, then you must put your hand in its place. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Matteo.’
‘I will have to rest that foot upon your shoulder. Do you think you could bear my weight for the moment or two that it takes me to get down beside you onto the ledge?’
‘Yes, Matteo.’ She spoke again, this time more resolutely. I sensed her tensing herself in preparation.
I called softly to Paolo. ‘Paolo, leave your belt lodged in the wall. When Elisabetta and I are on the ledge, Rossana and you can use it to lower yourselves down and we will guide you the rest of the way.’
We gained the valley floor as the sun was setting.
We were near to the part of the keep below the chapel.
Paolo took me to one side. ‘I must go and make sure that my mother and Dario are indeed dead,’ he said.
‘I will come with you.’
Donna Fortunata’s neck had been broken. Baby Dario must have been torn from her grasp as they fell. His body lay a little way off, his head cruelly dashed upon some rocks.
Paolo bent to pick him up.
‘Leave him,’ I said.
‘I would put him with my mother.’
‘If you move him,’ I said, ‘then you let the soldiers above us know that we passed this way.’
He began to weep. ‘Is my mother to be denied any comfort even in death, that she cannot have her child in her arms?’
‘It must be so.’
He bent and kissed his mother on her lips. ‘I will have revenge on whoever caused this to happen to them.’
I drew him away lest he linger too long. I reckoned we had a day, maybe less, before Sandino picked up our trail again. Then he would track us, and he would find us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I USED THE money Felipe had given me to bribe a bargeman who had moored his barge for the night a few miles south on the river.
These were violent times and fugitives were not an uncommon sight upon the roads and rivers. But this man could not help but notice the particular condition of the girls, especially Rossana. I knew even as I paid him that it was not enough money to guarantee his silence. As soon as Sandino and his men began to make enquiries in the vicinity he would talk, either for more money or in fear for his life.
Rossana was frozen. She did not complain, but more and more she looked distracted, as though her mind were disconnected from her body. Did this show as a physical sign within the skull? I wondered. In an examination, would my master discover some part of the brain which had visibly become traumatized?
There was only one place I could think of where I might take them.
So, once again, by night, I knocked on the outer door of the mortuary of the hospital in Averno.
The porter recognized me and admitted us to the courtyard. Word of the Borgia’s most recent deeds ensured that he let me in.
The monk, Father Benedict, was slower to greet me. ‘What is your business here tonight?’ he asked me.
‘Father, we need your help.’
The monk regarded Rossana, Elisabetta and Paolo. His eyes came back to rest upon Rossana.
‘I see that ill has befallen your companions. Who are these people?’
‘The dell’Orte family from Perela. Their parents, with their baby brother, have been most foully murdered.’
Father Benedict spoke to Paolo. ‘I knew your father and mother. Each autumn they sent part of their harvest to the hospital. Your father was a generous patron and your mother a most gracious lady.’
I saw Elisabetta’s lip tremble at the mention of her parents, but Rossana did not appear to understand his words. Father Benedict frowned as he looked at her.
‘What harm has been done to this child?’
No one spoke. Then I said, ‘The soldiers of the Borgia attacked and overcame their father’s keep at Perela. The women sheltered in the chapel but it did not save them.’
‘And now you have come here?’
‘Father,’ I said, ‘I could think of nowhere else to go.’
Before the monk could reply there was a violent battering at the outside door.
‘Open up in there! We are here on business for Il Valentino himself! Open in the name of Cesare Borgia!’
Chapter Twenty-Six
PAOLO DREW HIS father’s sword.
‘At last I’ll face these murderers!’ he cried.
‘Silence!’ Father Benedict said sharply. ‘Put your weapon away. This is a place of God and forgiveness.’
‘I will have my revenge for the wrong done to our family!’
‘They will slaughter you where you stand and not think anything of it.’
‘But I’ll kill one of them before I die!’
‘And what of your sisters?’ demanded Father Benedict. ‘What fate awaits them? And the monks? And the patients in my care? If the soldiers find you here they’re likely to kill everyone inside the hospital.’
The priest beckoned to
the porter to come to him. He spoke rapidly to the man, telling him to delay the soldiers’ entry as long as possible and asking him to declare no one had passed through the door tonight. ‘Those men-at-arms may display the insignia of the Borgia but you must divulge nothing to them.’
The porter’s eyes rolled in his head like those of a terrified horse.
The monk put his hand upon his shoulder. ‘Ercole, it is the right thing to do. I, Father Benedict, am instructing you to tell this lie. The men outside mean these children harm . . . have already done wicked things to them.’ His voice took on a gentler tone. ‘Remember your own life previous to the one you have now. You know how terrible it is to suffer such abuse. We can’t allow this to happen again. You must help me protect these children. It is not given to every man to do a noble thing, but you are being called upon to do one now.’
Father Benedict’s words seemed to calm the porter. The monk held his gaze. Then he raised his hand and, with his thumb, made the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead. ‘Ego te absolvo,’ he said quietly. ‘We all have to die sometime, Ercole. If this is our time, then you will go to meet your Maker with the pure soul of a martyr.’
The man’s face suffused with a strange emotion. He bent his head.
I watched the porter as he shuffled towards the door. Was he prepared to give his own life that we might survive? By his Faith this was his passport to Paradise.
Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Would Ercole’s belief in that single great ordinance overcome the immediate danger he was about to encounter? Perhaps better to have threatened him with the Church’s other promise – of excommunication, hellfire and eternal damnation. To put in his mind a greater terror to outweigh the fear of the Borgia.
Paolo must have been thinking similar thoughts to mine. ‘Tell him I’ll slit his throat if he says a word.’
‘I will not,’ said the monk. ‘Ercole is a true friend of the hospital. I rescued him from a cruel and abusive master many years ago, when he was but a child himself. He will do as I’ve requested.’
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