Molly sat back at this, but with a deepening scowl. Hob cast a sideways glance at her, wondering what she would decide. Molly often called the troupe to a council of war, but only Nemain would think to disagree with her at all, and even Nemain obeyed her in most things, recognizing that the authority was Molly’s and also that she was the wisest of them by far.
Molly was Queen Maeve back in Erin, as Nemain was Queen Nemain, hereditary chieftains of their clan. Their kinfolk had been betrayed and murdered, their clan scattered, and their land usurped by rivals, and she and her granddaughter had fled to England, where they traveled under the guise of musicians, and healers. Maeve began to use the Christian nickname Molly rather than the pagan Maeve, and now only Jack called her Maeve, on those rare occasions—usually moved by passion—when he chose to ignore the pain and difficulty that speech cost him.
Slowly she had begun to accumulate wealth and allies, always with the hope of returning to Erin to regain her position, and to exact revenge. But these plans were known only to a few confidants, and it plainly disturbed her to learn the extent to which da Panzano was aware of her activities. Sir Odinell knew of them, but Hob thought that the knight never would have told the papal agent Molly’s secrets; rather, he would have recommended her for her abilities in hope of securing her another patron, or to blunt any animus the Church might feel toward her. Hob stole another glance at Molly, but her stony visage told him nothing. For this moment, thought the young man, it remained only to determine how much of a threat da Panzano represented, and what path led out of the thicket into which they had stumbled.
“Sit, enjoy my hospitality,” said the priest, “and listen for a short hour. Learn to trust me. I will tell you things of the king that not a handful of people know, and you will understand why you are here, with your people.”
Molly gave a sign of assent, and the papal agent sipped from his cup, and began.
CHAPTER 3
BUT FIRST—LET ME EXPLAIN Sinibaldo,” said da Panzano. “I am a special sort of legatus missus, a ‘sent legate.’ You may think of me as the shadow of His Holiness: I do his bidding, sometimes in the dark places of the world, to exert the Church’s influence, sometimes in ways that may not be done plainly before all men. There are times when I must be wicked to do good. I am the shadow of Innocent III across the earth, and Sinibaldo is the shadow of the shadow.
“I have made many enemies, and many thirst for my blood. Sinibaldo is a man of excellent skills, and he employs them to keep me safe from my enemies. They wish to kill me, and he does not permit that. He is here to fend off attacks; on other occasions he goes forth privily, and reduces the number of my enemies by one and by two. He is my bodyguard and, not to be overnice in my speech, an assassin when such is needed. Come into the light again, my son.”
Sinibaldo came easily to his feet, and moved to stand by da Panzano’s desk, facing Molly’s little troupe. They were ranged in a loose semicircle, seated on the ornately carved chairs produced by the monks of the priory for their own use.
“You could all attack at once, and he could fend you off—he has trained himself to leave his right hand free, and snakes would seem slow beside him. Were he to attack you, you would have no defense against him.”
To Sinibaldo he now said, “Show them the coin-and-cord.” Here he indicated a tall candle alight on the sideboard; it was set in a heavy silver holder. “Use that candle.”
Sinibaldo bowed, and as he straightened, his right hand had acquired a thin cord of gray silk. There was a heavy gold Venetian coin, a hole punched by a square nail in its center; the cord was tied through this hole. Sinibaldo whirled the cord, the coin making glowing circles in the candlelight. He loosened his grip; the coin flew toward the candle, the gray silk slipping quickly through his strong fingers. He gave a clever flirt of the wrist and the coin stalled just past the candle, coiled about the wick, and snuffed the flame. It flew back into Sinibaldo’s palm, and he spun it out again, and it severed an inch of wax and wick from the smoking tip of the candle.
“He could do that to a man’s neck, even so stalwart a man as your Jack here,” said da Panzano, nodding toward the dark man seated between Molly and Nemain.
“He could not,” said Molly quietly; in almost the same breath she said aside, in the lowest of voices, “Nemain.”
Monsignor da Panzano, his urbane and gracious tone slipping just the least bit, said to Sinibaldo, “Do not harm him, but put a loop about his neck.”
The word neck had hardly left his lips when the gold coin flew toward Jack’s throat. A silver flicker passed before Jack’s face and the golden coin thumped against his chest and landed in his lap. Nemain slipped her dagger back into its sheath, and Sinibaldo was left holding a length of limp gray silk cord, now floating down toward the floor, deprived of its stabilizing weight of Venetian gold.
The assassin’s face darkened, a snarl sprang to his lips, and his left hand leapt to retract the fold of his coat, his right darting to the leather strap and grasping the small obscure thing in the topmost loop.
“Lascia stare!” said the monsignor, in a voice like the crack of close-by lightning splitting the air, and the assassin stopped on the instant, as though frozen, but he left his right hand near the fold of his coat, and as ever he was perfectly balanced, feet apart, powerful legs slightly flexed.
Jack Brown took the coin from his lap and stood. He held the coin out, and two steps brought him face-to-face with Sinibaldo. Jack was a tall man, but so powerfully made that the eye, seeking to render him in more ordinary proportions, was often deceived into thinking him shorter than he was. Looming over Sinibaldo, though, in the small office, the threat implicit in being the largest animal in a confined space was made manifest, and over Sinibaldo’s face came an expression, not of fear, but certainly of great wariness. He took a step back and reset his feet, still as balanced as a swordsman before a duel, so that he gave himself a foot of space in which to maneuver. He kept his right hand near the left side of his black linen surcoat and extended his left hand, palm up. Jack dropped the coin into it.
Molly’s lover stood there a moment more, dominating the center of the room, seeming to fill a great portion of it, then stepped back and sat; throughout, his expression had been its usual stolid self, if somewhat less amiable than was its wont.
Da Panzano had watched everything with rapt attention, his glittering dark eyes shifting rapidly between Jack and Sinibaldo, as though gauging to a nicety the shifts of power displayed between the two men.
“I begin to see why Sir Odinell has recommended you,” da Panzano said, his tone smooth, even caressing. “Perhaps we can agree that neither party is to be slighted, and begin again with mutual respect, the better to see where our common interests lie.”
He gestured to the bottle, giving the merest shift of his eyes to Sinibaldo. The assassin removed the stopper and picked up the bottle, again doing everything left-handed, and poured more into each cup, with no least sign of animosity toward the monsignor’s guests, as though nothing had happened between them.
The pope’s agent went on. “Let me tell you of King John and his astonishing apostasy to his religion, his treason to his country. Two years ago, when His Holiness and the king were at each other’s throats, and Philip of France grasping at John’s lands in Normandy, and King John at a loss for money to pay his mercenaries, he determined upon a desperate throw of the dice.”
Sinibaldo settled back in his darkened corner with hardly a sound.
Da Panzano sipped at his cup. “King John sent an embassy to the Emir of Marroch. In this embassy were two knights, Thomas of Herdington and Radulph son of Nicholas, and a priest of ill fame, Master Robert of London. John Lackland charged them to approach the Emir with this offer: that John would swear fealty to the Emir, and further, convert to the faith of the Saracens, and have all England do the same, if the Emir would but support the king against his enemies.”
“Holy Mary!” said Hob, half under his breath; this was
astounding. Molly and Nemain, devotees of the Old Religion, were surprised but not much affected. Jack was silent as ever, although he had looked over at Hob for a moment with an expression of surprise.
“È stupefacente, eh? It is hard to comprehend, evil on so great a scale, is it not? But wait—even the follower of the false prophet Mahomet had more honor than the king. He refused John, saying that one who turned traitor to his faith could never be trusted, and one who would enslave his people for help must be too weak to be a proper ally, and he sent John’s ambassadors away with scorn.”
Molly was watching the legate intently, as though trying to read in the play of candlelight over his features the hidden purpose for which he had summoned them. “I’m thinking ’tis dangerous knowledge you’re just after telling us, and that to no avail, since the king’s plan came to naught, and ourselves all unknowing why we’re here atall.”
“Pazienza, dear madam, patience. King John’s embassy had failed; his ambassadors were at a wharfside inn in the city of Tangier, awaiting passage homeward. In some manner Master Robert, a subtle and accomplished man with no great store of virtue, sought out in that port town one he had heard rumor of, a man of the dark arts, and spent many hours in an upper room of that inn, and in short, they came to some kind of agreement. This sorcerer—for he is that, a man of evil power—this necromancer is the chieftain of a tribe of evil men, blacksmiths and, and—what do you say, in English? We say lupi mannari, men who, with the help of Satan, change into wolves, but these do not change into wolves. They are men of Marroch, but they have sojourned in the far South, in the lands of the Ethiop, where they were universally despised, and where they have contracted the ability to become not wolves, but—you are familiar with the hyena? It is a beast of the far South, below the great deserts that are beneath Marroch and Egypt.”
Jack and Nemain looked blank, but Hob, to everyone’s surprise, said, “Father Athelstan told me of the hyena—he saw it drawn in a bestiary once. He said they were symbols of those who were slaves to luxury and greed, and so could not serve God with a whole heart.”
Molly nodded tentatively, and said, “ ’Tis like a mixture of bear and wolf?”
“With perhaps a bit of the cat as well, no?” said da Panzano. “There are smaller ones, striped hyenas, in Marroch itself, but these I speak of are the great brutes of the South, with spots instead of stripes. I have seen them in a menagerie in Rome, at the Vatican; His Holiness has strange creatures brought from distant lands. That day, it was late in the afternoon, the sun just leaving the windows of the room, a room of stone, and no one else there but myself, and the beasts—remarkably unbeautiful beasts—prowling back and forth behind the bars. Signor Hyena spoke: it was like the gibbering of a demented woman, high, with a”—here the papal legate made a wavering motion with a flat hand—“a trembling in the sound. And then it laughed.”
“Laughed?” said Nemain, startled.
“Such a laugh, daughter, as the demons in Hell must make. My hair, it was—how do you say?—standing on the edges? On the edge . . .? No, no—on end: it was standing on end. A coldness is sweeping along my limbs, although I am safe in the room, the beasts behind thick iron bars.” He gave a little rueful smile, a shake of the head. “The great da Panzano, the pope’s feared right hand! I am ready to run from the room, but I make myself walk. I spoke later with the keepers there. These beasts are not small; at the shoulder they are thus”—here he held his hand out, perhaps a yard above the floor—“and they run in packs, very fierce. They eat carrion, like crows or vultures, but they kill also, and if there are enough of them, and there are no male lions present, they will drive even lionesses away from their feasting, and take the kill for their own. They are very strong in the jaws, and can crush the biggest bones.”
Molly leaned forward, a little of her silver mane peeping from beneath her veil, her gaze fixed on the legate’s face.
“You’re saying that ’tis into such an arracht these men can change themselves?”
Da Panzano, distracted, said, “Arracht?”
Molly gestured impatiently. “A monster, a monster. They change themselves into these beasts?”
“With the Devil’s assistance, I presume,” said the legate. “And, whispers of your abilities having reached me, I thought to seek your help, and to offer you mine.”
He toyed with the little silver cup, swirling the contents about, his well-kept nails tapping against the side of the vessel with little metallic clicks. “There has been communication between the king and this sorcerer, for the past two years. I have managed to intercept one messenger—it may interest you to know that I have lost two of my own agents in this affair—managed, I say, to intercept one of the king’s messengers. We put him to the question, but he revealed only that this sorcerer was to come to England, to do some mischief in the service of the king. Perhaps he knew more, but he perished—a result, I fear, of our methods—before he could tell us of it.”
He sighed. “We know this magus has indeed come to England, and we know that John has some evil purpose for this man to accomplish. We have tried prayer and exorcism against him, to little effect. He is not a follower of Mahomet; he is one of those few who hold to the old beliefs of these people, these Moors, or Berbers, who have dwelt along the southern coasts of the Mediterranean for years that no memory can recall. They are ancient, and most are now followers of Mahomet, although some are good Christians—indeed the holy Saint Augustine was Berber himself—and some are unregenerate pagans, like these lupi mannari. We hear murmurs, that the Ethiops call them bouda, the hyena-men. Among themselves, these devil-men, these beast-men, refer to their group as ‘the Cousins,’ and they are said to have what the Saracens call al-Ain, ‘the eye.’ They can put you to sleep and bring you under their command, just by looking at you three times.”
Da Panzano crossed himself with his right hand and made a warding-off gesture with his left.
“In Venice we call it malocchio, the ‘evil eye.’ It may be that we do not understand these ancient powers as well as we should. You, madam, have certainly done better against this sort of evil than we; you know how disastrously we failed in the exorcism we directed against the vile Sir Tarquin, that Satanist or pagan or what-have-you, and yet you destroyed him. It may be that you are closer to these old practices, and so can aid us as you aided Sir Odinell against Sir Tarquin.”
“And for this you will help us in Erin?” said Molly, still sitting back, her expression unreadable.
“That, and this as well—” Here the legate leaned forward, the changing angle causing a shadow to fall across his face, only his eyes picking up the candlelight, glittering under his brows. “If you help us, you will escape the stake.”
CHAPTER 4
FOR PERHAPS TWO BREATHS, AN appalled silence fell. Then a rusty growl began in Jack’s throat, but Molly put a hand on his thigh and he subsided.
“We can offer no surety that we’ll succeed,” she said.
“I ask only that you try,” said da Panzano, sitting back. A trace of humor crept back into his voice. “If you succeed, I give you my word before Our Father in Heaven that you will be safe from the Church, and even aided by us. If you fail, I suspect that you will be beyond the reach of the stake.”
Molly stood abruptly and stepped to the table. She put one hand to the burnished wood of the tabletop and inclined across it toward Monsignor da Panzano. The priest made an involuntary movement back in his chair. Hob was aware that Sinibaldo had come swiftly to his feet, half-hidden there in the shadows, but keenly attentive, tense and dangerous as a coiled serpent. Molly extended her other hand, palm up, toward the papal agent.
“Would you ever give us your hand to see?” asked Molly.
The priest, somewhat bewildered, held out his right hand, and Molly took it between both of hers. She stood for a long moment, gazing steadily into the legate’s eyes. Then she released his hand and resumed her seat. The priest, with the faintest expression of wary distaste, reached
into his robes and drew out a rough cross—it looked to be made of iron, as far as Hob could tell—kissed it, and tucked it and its iron chain back into the folds of cloth.
There was the slightest rustle from the corner: Sinibaldo resuming his seat.
“There’s no falseness to this offer you’re making us,” she said. “That’s what I’m just after feeling, any road; but past that there’s naught but veils across your heart, and veils across those veils. There are some men whose hearts are like open fields in summer sun; yours is a hidden heart, and it may be ’tis hidden even from you. Certainly ’tis hidden from me, but in this matter, this oath you’re making to us, there’s no lie I can taste in it.”
“But this is what I have asked you, madam; that you learn to trust me.” His left hand produced a white, lace-trimmed cloth from his sleeve; with this he quietly wiped his right hand. He was apparently unaware of his own actions, for he spoke on with no hesitation. “Sinibaldo will come to you with a sufficiency of English coin; in this way you need not concern yourself with how to earn your keep while you act for His Holiness. You will also earn a measure of forgiveness for those acts of unholiness you may be engaged in, that enable you to do these strange things.”
There was a subdued but angry hiss from Nemain, but Molly made a small gesture, down by her side, and Nemain fell silent.
Throne of Darkness: A Novel Page 2
