Hounds of God

by Tarr, Judith

  He gripped her gown again. See!

  With a deep sigh she let him lead her. He was, after all, a witchling. She hoped it was his power that guided him.

  They passed the fountain. They passed the fish-peddler. They passed a goldsmith’s shop, but Cynan would not let her stop.

  The narrow street opened on another somewhat wider and somewhat more crowded. People milled about a long double row of stalls that seemed to offer anything one could ask for. The scent of grilling fish, of spices, of bread just baked, knotted Anna’s stomach with sudden pain.

  Cynan drew her onward. He must have been tiring, although he showed no sign of it.

  At last he stopped. They stood between the baker’s stall and one heaped high with books. That for Anna was another sort of pain, an urge to snatch the first dusty binding and plunge into an ecstasy of words.

  Cynan seemed bent on doing just that, in a completely literal sense. He bounded into the open shop, Anna following perforce, her temper held on a tight leash.

  It was dim within after the brilliance of sunlight. Anna discerned the shadows of books, a scribe’s table, a man bent over it, intent on his work. The bookseller, he would be, vouchsafing Anna one measuring glance before he returned to his page.

  His only patron was mildly startling, a girl younger than Anna and exceedingly pretty, dressed becomingly but very plainly. A basket lay forgotten at her feet, overflowing with the fruits of a day’s marketing, while she leafed through a closely written codex.

  Cynan arrowed straight toward her, gamboling about her, tugging the cloth covering from her basket and tangling himself in it until he could do no more than wriggle and grin.

  The girl left her book before his antics had well begun. When she laughed, the whole crowded space seemed to sparkle. She swept up the bundle Cynan had made of himself and kissed his pointed muzzle, not entirely to his delight.

  “Ah, little monster,” she teased him, “back to torment me again, are you? Or is it the fish in my basket?”

  He struggled. She unwound him and set him down. He returned to Anna, looking extremely pleased with himself. See, he said. Food and a friend. Love me, Anna?

  She shook him. She hugged him. She met the girl’s gaze with one as bold as she could manage, but with a judicious touch of apology. “Your pardon,” she said in Latin, “if this imp has been troubling you.”

  “He’s yours, then?” The stranger took her in without visible distaste, even smiling a little.

  “He’s mine,” answered Anna, “to look after. God help me.”

  The girl laughed. “He’s a terror, isn’t he? He’s beautiful.” She fondled his ears, her eyes on Anna’s face. “Your Latin is marvelous. Can it be that you’re a marvel yourself? An educated woman?”

  “I’m reckoned so,” Anne said slowly.

  “Would you know dialectics? Have you ever read the philosophers? Do you know Aristotle? Plato? Epicurus?” She caught herself, giggling like any featherhead of a girl. “I’m getting above myself! It’s just, hearing you speak Latin, and so well—my wishes ran away with me.”

  Cynan was radiating satisfaction. Witch-brat, Anna thought at him, to no perceptible effect. She discovered that she was smiling. “Anna Chrysolora,” she named herself.

  “Stefania da Ravenna.” Her own smile was radiant. “Would you be Greek? My mother was. My uncle is. If you asked him, he’d call me Stefania Makaria.”

  “I was born in Constantinopolis.”

  “And I in Ravenna. Are you here as a pilgrim? Or do you live here?”

  “A Byzantine pilgrim in Rome?”

  For a moment Stefania’s face darkened. “I know one. I knew—” She shook herself firmly. “Of course not. But if you live here...”

  Anna looked down at her own disarray and up into the clear eyes. They were as blue as evening, as the field of Gwydion’s banner, as the sapphire in his crown. “I don’t live here.” The walls were closing in. Or was it only her sight’s failing? “I have nowhere to rest my head. The world was walled and barred, and he cast me out because I dared to tell the truth. He said—he said my brother was—”

  The rest was a blur. Anna walked, she knew that. Stefania had the basket. Cynan rode on top of it. Wizard-imp; he had plotted this.

  He could not be two months old. He could not be very much more than one.

  Precocious. Maybe she called him that. She was in the street; she was on a stair, struggling not to fall; she was in a warm bright room, facing wrath in the shape of an ancient crone. “Filthy!” it shrilled. “Stinking! Water, Stefania. Soap. Towels. Out of the way, puppy!”

  A bath. Bliss unalloyed. Clean hair, clean body, clean shift somewhat too short, a bed and a blanket, Cynan’s warm full-fed presence, sleep and peace at last. She embraced them all with joyous fervor.

  23.

  Nikki paced from end to end of San Girolamo’s cloister. The monks were singing the Office of Nones, Alf and Father Jehan among them. He had the cloister to himself with its ornate columns and its carefully tended grass, starred with windflowers about the grave of some forgotten abbot.

  Somewhere in the night, his power had come back. He could hear again, if he wished to. At the moment he did not. He was born to silence, to the prison of his mind. His eyes were windows only, granting vision but no understanding.

  Stefania did not know. She could not even guess. Oh, to be sure, he had been clever, keeping her eyes anywhere but on his motionless lips, speaking always and with care in words, never in his private language of face and body and will.

  She thought he was a man like any other. She thought she loved him.

  She loved a lie. The truth would stun her, with disbelief at first, then with fear. Then, and worst of all, with pity. For without the armor of his power he was a poor creature, mute and walled in silence.

  He could read, he could write. He was not without hope.

  He was not a proper man.

  Well? Need she ever know? He had been a fool to seek her out after the enemy’s attack; he had been half out of his wits, he had not known what he did until it was done. He had never wanted any woman as he wanted her. She was made for him; she was perfection. Maybe... it could very well be that he loved her.

  She had by far the keener mind. Not that he had ever pretended to be even a scholar, let alone a philosopher. He learned easily enough, and with Alf for a teacher he could not help but pass for an educated man, but his wits had neither depth nor brilliance. Where she led, he could only follow at a distance.

  She knew that; she did not care. She loved his face and what wit he had and, quite frankly, his body: the totality of him as she knew it.

  She must know. He could not keep up this deception. If he lost her—

  His strides lengthened and quickened. His fingers worked, knotting, unknotting. He was supposed to be hunting for Anna, Thea, the twins. Not sighing after a lovely half-Greek philosopher.

  He stopped short. He would tell her. Now. Today. Maybe it would not matter to her.

  Maybe, by the same miracle, he would learn to speak.

  He turned, and leaped back startled. Prior Giacomo was standing not a yard away, wearing his customary formidable scowl.

  His lips moved; with a wrenching effort Nikki made himself hear. “…troubled. Is there any help I can give you?”

  Nikki stared. He almost laughed. Help? What mortal man could help any of them? A born witch and a made witch and a man mad enough to love them both; this excellent monk could not conceive of the troubles that beset them.

  Prior Giacomo bridled a little. He did not know that he understood Nikki’s wordless speech; he thought he was reading the boy’s face, finding there the despair that was real and the scorn that was his own misunderstanding. “I know I presume,” he said stiffly, “but I can’t help my concern for the welfare of a guest.”

  Nikki shook his head from side to side. His lips were set, locked in silence.

  He could not tell the whole of it for Giacomo’s soul’s sake. Hi
s own small part meant nothing. He was in love, he should not be, he must not be. What was that to the enormities that had brought him here?

  He watched awareness dawn in the Prior’s eyes. “I’ve never heard you speak,” Giacomo muttered. He looked hard at Nikki. “You can’t, can you? And I was demanding answers. I deserve a whipping.”

  Nikki’s power sharpened almost into pain, casting him headlong into Giacomo’s mind. A flood of annoyance and self-recrimination; of interest, and guilt for it; of compassion. Nothing as ghastly as pity. “I don’t suppose you can tell me why.”

  Nikki touched his ear. Giacomo glared. “You aren’t.” He paused. “Maybe. I knew a woman once, a cousin of my mother’s. She went deaf as a child; she taught herself to read lips and faces. It was uncanny, sometimes, how much she could see.”

  He was not comfortable with his discovery, however much he berated himself for a fool. Now they all make me uneasy, he thought just short of speech. He detested uneasiness; it infected his whole spirit. But there was something distinctly odd about these pilgrims who had stayed so long in Rome nor shown any sign of departing.

  His jaw tightened. No use to interrogate the boy. The other lad, the one whose face was taking luminous shape on Oddone’s panels, would be no better, dreamer and mystic that he was, and more than half mad. Which left the monk; and that one, beside those others, was too perfectly sane for belief.

  Nikki edged away. Giacomo took no notice. He was well if not auspiciously distracted.

  oOo

  Brother Jehan was not difficult to find. He was, however, engaged, and not pleasantly from the look of it. One of the Curia’s innumerable functionaries had taken it into his head to call on his uncle the Abbot; having heard the Office with visible impatience and a widely roving eye, he had attached himself to the Norman. They were still in the nave of the chapel, the lion and the tomcat; Archdeacon Giambattista was in full and indignant voice. “But, Brother, I could swear you’re the very image of—”

  Jehan’s courtesy had worn threadbare. “To be sure, sir, all of us Normans look alike.”

  “As like as this? Brother, your very voices are the same.” Giambattista caught sight of Giacomo. “Brother Prior, would you believe it, I know this face as well as I know my own. But the last time I saw it, it belonged to a bishop.”

  “The poor man,” Jehan said with clenched-teeth lightness. “Has he found a cure for it?”

  Giambattista seemed not to have heard. “The voice, the bulk, the nose. The nose is incontestable. Why, I remember the very day it happened, that godless tournament in Milano—”

  “The Abbot will see you now,” Giacomo said abruptly in a tone that brought the babbler up short and drove him into rapid retreat. It seemed to be Giacomo’s day for putting young pups to flight.

  There was a moment of blessed silence. “I confess,” Jehan said at length, “to an appalling lapse in Christian charity.”

  “If I were your confessor, I’d give you prompt absolution. That boy was a pestilence in the cradle.”

  “From which, no doubt, he observed the tournament in Milan.”

  “He’s not that young.” After a moment Giacomo added, “If you’re thinking of the same tournament I am. It can’t have been more than ten years ago.”

  “Eleven. You were there?”

  “I’ve heard about it. From Giambattista. At interminable length. The victor was his first living, breathing hero.”

  Jehan rubbed his battered nose. Catching Giacomo’s eye, he lowered his hand.

  “The victor,” said Giacomo, “was a young giant, a Norman. He won against all hope, and after a blow that shattered a nose almost as imposing as mine. Or so Giambattista has always declared. The knight was also a priest, one of Pope Innocent’s prodigies, guard and friend and messenger and privy secretary all in one. He’s prospered since, I understand. The last I heard, he’d been named Bishop of some unpronounceable see on the edge of the world.”

  “Even the edge of the world may have a thing or two to commend it,” Jehan said.

  “It’s not Rome.” Giacomo clasped his hands within his sleeves, looking up at the expressionless face.

  Its eyes gazed down, ice-blue. Simple monk or anointed bishop, this was not a man to trifle with.

  They walked side by side, Giacomo stretching his strides, Jehan shortening his to an endurable mean. Bright daylight washed them; they turned toward the guesthouse.

  “Amazing,” mused the Prior, “how you knew exactly what the archdeacon meant. I don’t suppose you’d care to speculate further. Imagine a bishop who wants to be looked on as a simple Brother of Saint Jerome. It’s much easier to get about; no one stands in awe of rank or holiness, no one tries to encompass every hour with ceremony. And with luck, no one even guesses the truth.”

  “Interesting,” Jehan conceded, “but why would he want so much not to be recognized?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he has an errand he’d prefer no one knew of. Maybe he has companions who might need a bit of explaining. Maybe he’s simply trying to escape the attention of Giambattista and his ilk.”

  Jehan laughed without effort. “If so, he certainly settled on the wrong place to hide. The story will be all over the Curia in an hour.”

  The door of the guesthouse was ajar, the house empty; at the moment, apart from its most puzzling guests, it sheltered no one. Giacomo accepted a seat by the brazier, glancing about at the room the pilgrims shared. It was scrupulously tidy, uncluttered by any personal possessions except the staffs propped together in a corner and the cloak folded at the foot of the bed, a single small bundle atop it.

  They had traveled light, these oddly assorted companions. Giacomo warmed his hands over the coals. “This time of year I’m always cold.”

  “It’s Lent. Penance is a chilly occupation.”

  “How not, when we’re forced to eat nothing but fish?” Giacomo’s humor was a flicker, swiftly gone. He fixed Jehan with a cool and steady stare. “Mind you,” he said, “I don’t make a practice of invading my guests’ privacy. But sometimes the circumstances would seem to demand it.”

  The Norman loomed like a tower, but with a face of polite attention. His hands were invisible behind him.

  Perhaps they were fists. The Prior went on doggedly. “Your conduct here has been exemplary. I can say truthfully that San Girolamo has been the better—thus far—for your presence in it. As to what may happen later, I admit to some concern. Not that you may be a rather famous and rather exalted lord of the Church; I can believe it, and I can’t censure an honest act of humility. But your friends are beginning to alarm me.”

  “How so?”

  That was not the tone of a humble monk. Giacomo allowed himself a small tight smile. “I can’t prove anything. I can only say that I’m uneasy. A Byzantine and a—Saxon? Boys of an age, it seems, a frail monkish scholar and a bright-eyed worldling, poles apart but as close as brothers. The Saxon is prone to a sort of falling sickness. The Greek is mute and deaf, though he doesn’t seem much the worse for it. Neither has shown the least sign of haunting shrines in search of a miracle.”

  “Because,” said a low clear voice, “the miracle is not to be found among the dusty relics and the sepulchers of saints. I doubt the Church would sanction it at all.”

  Alf came to Jehan’s side, standing shoulder to shoulder. The contrast was not as striking as Giacomo might have expected. The white boy was a shade the shorter with scarce a third the girth, attenuated as a painted angel, and yet he stood like a sword beside a great iron club. Less massive, more subtly lethal.

  “Good day, signore,” Giacomo said calmly.

  Alf bowed his head a precise degree. “Good day. Brother Prior. I regret that our presence troubles you. If you wish, we can find lodgings elsewhere.”

  Giacomo’s head flew up, nostrils flared. “We go to war for insults here, sir pilgrim.”

  “Even before God?” demanded Jehan.

  “Before God we stand on our honor. There’ll be no more
talk of leaving.”

  Alf raised a fine brow. “Are we prisoners?”

  “You know you’re not. All I ask is a simple assurance. If you’re seeking sanctuary, or if you expect to need it, you’ll tell us truthfully. We can give you God’s protection, but only if we’re asked.”

  “Against the very Devil himself?” Alf did not wait for an answer. He seemed to gather himself, to make a sudden painful choice. “Brother Prior, we need no more than we’ve been given, which itself is far more than we ever looked for. Our crime is our plain existence; for that there is no refuge. Our miracle is preeminently earthly and much out of the sphere of your abbey: We have an enemy who hates us with the bitterest of hates. By his strength and our negligence he seized our kin. My sister, my lady; my newborn children.”

  Giacomo was full of words, but not one could fit itself to his tongue.

  “My children,” Alf repeated levelly. “He has taken them; we’ve pursued him as far as this city. He is here, we’re certain of that, but he has hidden himself and his captives beyond our skill to find them. That is the miracle we pray for. That is the cause of my sickness.”

  “Then,” said Giacomo, “it may be I can help. What is this enemy? If he’s a lord or a prince, my family may know him. If he’s a churchman, I think I can find him.”

  Alf shook his head. “No. Thank you, no. The man is mad. If he knows we hunt him, he will certainly destroy his prisoners. He’s already cut down one who tried to stop him, an unarmed child; he’ll have no mercy on women and babes.”

  “They may already be dead. Even if they aren’t, he has to be found and punished.”

  Alf’s eyes burned white-hot. “They live. But not for long if he catches our scent. You’re generous, Brother Prior, and braver than you know, but I beg you to say no more of this. We will find him. We will see that he pays the full and proper price.”

  “Three of you?”

  “Three will be enough, or far too many. Does not one God suffice for all vengeance?”

  “That’s a trifle blasphemous.”