The Blessed (26 page)

He turned then, striding off in long steps. Josephine walked to the bars and leaned her head against the rough, cold texture. Was this her answer? She knew she was called to something bigger, something more. It had been steadily growing in her heart over the last few months, an awareness that something was soon on the horizon that was bigger than she. Had the Lord been calling her toward the Church, to take her vows and serve? But how could she serve a Church she felt called to question? How could she fall into line with priests and bishops and cardinals she felt were more pharisee than disciple?

The two young women were beside her then. One took her hand and laid her stockings in it. The other gently helped her into her woolen overdress. “Forgive us, sister. Forgive us for taking your things.”

Josephine could feel the change in their tone. They feared her now. Feared what she could do to them as a woman of the Church. “Thank you, daughters, for helping me. I was confused for a moment by the cardinal's offer. But I do not seek your fear. I seek your respect. Come, let us sit and talk. I have much to tell you before we part.”

“I think we should remain together,” Daria said for the third time. She grabbed Hasani's horse's bridle and looked up at him and Vito. “If you will give us but another hour, we can all be on our way.”

“Begging your pardon, Duchess, but we can travel faster without you,” Vito said. “Let us go. Ugo, Gaspare, Hasani, and I. We can ride hard and fast through the day and get to Avignon before nightfall.”

Daria sighed in frustration and looked to Gianni as he approached. “Will you tell them? Avignon is a city of thousand upon thousands. They cannot ride in and get right to our prophetess.”

Gianni moved past her to Vito's saddle, reaching low to snug up a leather strap and tuck the end away. “The count says there's but one place in the city that has stones of that size to the walls, and that's by the Palais de le Pape. They know where they're going. God will show them the way to our prophetess.”

He looked up to Vito. “Count Armand is sending Lucien and Matthieu with you. They are fine fighting men. We will follow, arriving on the morrow about noon. Meet us at the bridge.” He reached up and offered his hand. Vito clasped it above his wrist and looked him in the eye. “On the morrow at the bridge at noon. We shall see you there, Captain.”

“You shall need me,” Tessa said, appearing beside Daria, already in her overcoat and a pack over her shoulder. “I can assist you in finding her.”

Vito reached down and took the child by the arm, swinging her behind him, onto the saddle. She wrapped her arms around him. “She's right,” he said to Daria with a shrug. “We need her. If she doesn't sense the prophetess, we know she'll sense Ciro and Amidei.”

“Absolutely not!” Daria cried. “This is madness!”

“Nay, Daria,” Gianni said grimly, “this is battle. We send forth some of our strongest, in an effort to gain an advantage over the enemy and save one of our own. Will you keep them from it?”

Daria stared up at him, then glanced at Hasani, Gaspare, Vito, Ugo, and the two knights who rode up behind them. Father Piero appeared. She'd already tried to get him to agree with her, but he did not. She licked her lips, looked away, and then back to them all. “Go with God, my friends. We shall pray over you, every step of the way.” She took a step toward Vito and tapped him hard on the leg. “And you, you never take your eyes off Tess, you understand? Let her come to harm, and I shall beat you myself.”

Vito pretended to shiver. “My, Duchess, you are fearsome!” He smiled and patted Tessa's small arms, still clinging around his waist. His face softened. “Fear not. I shall give up my life before I allow her out of my sight.”

“That does not make me feel better,” Daria said with a sigh.

“ 'Tis all I can give you, m'lady. Trust us. God has asked us to go. We must follow where he leads.”

“On the morrow at the bridge,” Vito said to Gianni. “After the darkness . . .”

“Light!” shouted the others in farewell. But the six horses were already galloping away, Count Armand's knights carrying a flag bearing his coat of arms in front like an angel of protection.

AMIDEI had sent a messenger to retrieve Ciro from his post and give him a day of rest, having discovered that the woman would be released that evening or taken into the labyrinth of the Church's keep. He fervently hoped she declined Cardinal DuPree's clever offer of sponsorship into a nunnery and emerged on the streets. He toyed with the idea of having Ciro squire her away, making use of her at the ceremony in two nights' time, but then decided against it, knowing it was best to destroy this one before she aided the Gifted in any way.

“Sorry, my dear, you simply must perish,” he whispered with a smile, staring out the wavy glass of the bishop's windows. The thought of watching Ciro take her life made his heart pound with pleasure. Yes, he would go and watch his man take this one. He would aid him in hunting her down, make her know the greatest fear of her life, before her throat was cut. Yes, yes, yes. Would the Gifted feel it, too, when she died? Would they know they had suffered a blow? Or would he deliver her body to their doorstep when they finally dared to enter this city to face their enemies?

He would leave it to the master. The master would appear to them in two days, at the ceremony. There they could present her body to him and ask what to do with it. He would know. He always knew how best to manipulate men. Abramo shivered. How blessed was he to be the chosen one! The man who was destined to control his own empire. He already owned controlling interests in businesses from Paris to Sicily, and many of the men in between. In a decade or so, he would launch his political campaign to own them outright.

He flung off his overcoat, pulled the long jerkin from his torso, and walked to the mirror. The glass was dim and flecked with black, but he could see his naked form. He was still in his prime, muscled and broad in shoulder, his jaw strong and full of color, even in the dead of winter. Abramo fingered the patch, remembering Daria, her hair flying about her as the storm wind blew through the window. He remembered her whirling, chest heaving, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her fingers, clinging to a bloody piece of glass, the glass that had claimed his eye.

His hand went to the studded belt, given to him by the cardinal, took the strap, and with a quick move, pulled it another notch tighter. He closed his good eye against the pain, fighting for breath. But in the pain was pleasure, pleasure that equaled what he had experienced upon his master's altar. He opened his eye and watched as blood streamed down his muscled thigh and down his knee, mingling with the hair and running onward like tiny rivers. And then he laughed.

He would make each of the Gifted know pain and fear before they knew the release of death. No easy passing would it be for them, nay. They would know his power, know the full extent of his wrath. He would take Gianni—nay, the girl—and he would make Daria watch as he cut her eyes from their sockets. Yes, he sighed. Yes. That would be the retribution he sought. One at a time, he would kill them, leaving Daria last, so that she would know the full force of her poor decision to deceive him, maim him, deny him.

He laughed again hollowly, running his fingers over the belt. “I shall find you again, Daria,” he whispered, tapping the mirror as if it were her visage before him and no longer his own. “I shall take you and lay you upon my master's altar and punish you for your wrongdoing. Your loved ones will all be slain. You shall be alone. And I will watch the hope die in your eyes even as the blood drains from your body. It will be a new era. The Gifted, vanquished. And the world, ours.
Ours
.”

He pulled on his long shirt and his overcoat again, returning to the window, eyeing the setting sun casting a pale yellow hue upon the Palais de le Pape. “You think you can come here and change the world,” he said with a scoff. “It has already been purchased.”

Abramo swung the heavy woolen cape around his shoulders and strode to the door. “Fetch Ciro,” he said to the guard in the hall. “Tell him it is time.”

 
THE six men and the girl arrived in Avignon, having ridden hard for hours. Hasani eyed the setting sun as they gained entrance through the gates and looked in consternation toward Vito, Ugo, and Gaspare, then Tessa. They had come in through the Porte de l'Oulle gate, near the Palais de le Pape, but were still several streets below it. They could see the mammoth structure, the biggest Vito had seen in many a land—and still under construction from the look of it—rising above the buildings along the Rue Rempart du Rhône. It boasted silver-stoned tower after tower, with crenellations and guards atop it as if it were the keep of a warring king instead of Saint Peter's distant kin.

Vito lowered Tessa to the ground near a public well and then dismounted, leading her to the well for a drink. The child drank as if she had just emerged from a desert.

Vito took the dipper from her, handing it to the woman who tended the well, pulling buckets from the deep in exchange for a small coin. He tossed her a larger coin, pointing to the six horses that already waited at the trough with expectant looks in their eyes.

Gaspare handed out bread and dried meat to the men, taking in sustenance for the battle ahead while giving Vito room to encourage the girl. He stepped forward and handed a hunk of bread and several slices of jerky to Vito, who pulled off a smaller chunk for Tessa.

She stuffed a bite in her mouth.

“Tess, we need direction. Where shall we start?”

The girl continued to chew, then closed her eyes and lifted one hand out, as if she were touching something animate. Slowly she turned in a half circle, from one wall of the city at her left to the other wall at her right. Several times she paused and moved on.

When she retraced her steps in an agonizingly slow fashion, as if she were atop a wheel and the rope were being winched back in, Vito had to turn away. They had no time for this! The sun was soon down!

 
“THE cardinal would have your decision now,” said the guard from the cell door, turning a key in the squeaky lock and opening the gate.

“I shall be on my way,” said Josephine.

“You do not wish to enter the nunnery?” he asked. She could hear the surprise in his voice. Would it not be the answer for any beggar she knew? To have a roof, clothing, food, purpose for her life, all magically provided for her? But she had her purpose. And if she entered the nunnery, she knew it would not last. They would not stomach her talk for long before calling her to face the Lord's Commissioner. She almost welcomed the idea, relished the challenge. In him she would find a worthy mind, and with God on her side, she just might get him to see her way of thinking. But she would face him in God's time, and this was clearly not her path.

“Be at peace, daughters,” she said to the girls. “I shall pray for you each and every day until your release.”

“And we for you, Josephine.”

“Remember what we talked about this day. You end this day changed, free. His.”

“We shall remember,” said the other.

“Come along,” grumbled the guard. “I want to get home to my stew before it grows as cold as the streets.” He took her arm and pulled her down the passageway, past prison cells that Josephine could feel open like gaping, cold caves. “Stairs,” he said, half a second before she would've tripped. They turned left at the top and then right, then went up another staircase before Josephine could smell the city. As foul as it was, it was divine compared to the pit of the dank dungeons below.

The guard dropped her arm, bent, and put another key in a lock. A massive wooden door opened, and Josephine was free. She turned to say something to the guard, the Lord having given her a word for him, but the door slammed in her face. She heard the lock jam back into place and smiled. “That stew must be quite good.”

She turned back around, trying to detect where they had released her. She cocked her head and listened, hearing the gentle sounds of the river and the more jarring sound of the sailors and fishermen, crossing even the muffling, massive city wall. The far side of the
palais
, she decided, but a few steps from Rue Banasterie. It made sense. It was here they saw to the riffraff of the city, fed the poor, ushered prisoners in and out. The front plaza was reserved for honored guests and statesmen, with beggars merely tolerated on the outskirts.

Josephine lifted her face. The sun had set and darkness was fast descending. Best to get home straight away and find food on the morrow.

 
“THERE,” Tessa said, staring straight ahead over her arm, pointing to the palace.

“The
palais
? Please tell me you don't believe she is in there,” Vito said, looking up.

“Not in it. Beyond it. I can feel her, Vito,” she said, a sudden grin of joy upon her face. “She's but a few streets away! Let us be about it!”

“All right, all right, keep your stockings on,” he said. She was running to Hasani's horse and turned back to wait for him. But then her face stilled and her smile faded.

Vito turned and he groaned inwardly. Knights of Avignon approached, a patrol retinue, four men strong. They would want to know what the knights of Les Baux were doing here. And it wasn't likely that they would allow them to charge off to find a woman whom they could not yet even name.

“Give me the words, Lord,” he whispered.

“Vito!” Tessa cried, her face white. “He is there too!
He
is nearing her!”

“Excellent,” Vito mused sarcastically. He looked up to the skies. “A mite of assistance possible, Lord?”