The Blessed (53 page)

Gianni rested his hands on the saddle horn before him, then looked over his shoulder to the rising dust of thirteen other men coming fast. They might be able to take Ciro and his knights, but if they tarried, Amidei and his men would arrive, just as they wearied. They would all be cut down.

“Look behind us, to the road,” he said to Vito.

The knight turned in his saddle and then eyed the captain. “We cannot battle so many and keep the women and children safe.”

“To San Galgano,” Gianni said, wheeling his horse around. “Daria, you gain us entrance and persuade the monks to lock up the abbey. We shall head off the knights.”

They took off, running madly toward their enemy for a time before arcing left, toward the old abbey rising from an ancient forest. Abramo and Ciro met and joined together, a thundering stampede of horses giving chase. Green hills surrounded them, and Gianni grimly again noted the conical cypress trees. Hasani eyed him over his shoulder, recognizing the landscape, too. So it would end here, now, as Vito wished. But in the manner he wanted?

Gianni looked over his shoulder, watching as Abramo and Ciro gained on them. Then he glanced toward Daria, moving slowly with Josephine. She was afraid to urge the horses past a trot, fearful she might send the older, blind woman sailing behind them. Agata and Gaspare moved at a similar pace.

“Go!” he cried to Daria, encouraging her onward, the children riding hard behind her.

“Stay with her, Hasani!” he cried, and the black man leaned down over his horse's neck, becoming as one with the mare, all muscle and sinew and strength.

 
DARIA clattered into the abbey courtyard, jumping from her horse even before the mare came to a full stop, and running toward the men in robes who looked to her in surprise.

“Lady d'Angelo,” said one, rushing toward her.

“Enemies behind us,” she panted, not bothering to tell the man of her name change. “Please, we need sanctuary! Ask the brothers to bring me and mine in and bar the doors!”

The monk frowned, hesitating over her unorthodox request. His eyes slid to Hasani, tall and silent, menacing in his own right, then to Piero, with the hair of a brother but the clothing of a commoner.

She glanced down, saw his stained fingertips, and grabbed his hand. “Long have the d'Angelos been a friend to this abbey. You are a scribe, entrusted to copy the Holy Writ. Well you know of our common, ancient enemy. I tell you, he lurks. He comes now, behind us.”

He stared at her, then turned and barked orders. “Quickly! Inside, all of you! Prepare to bar the gates as if barbarians are at our door!”

“Oh, and if they were only barbarians,” she whispered, following behind him. She glanced over her shoulder as she helped Josephine and the children from their horses and ushered them inside, with Agata and Gaspare. If they all had made it this far, what were the men behind them encountering?

 
THE men divided into two separate forces, forcing Amidei and Ciro to separate as well. Their plan was to fight off the marauders, then get back to the others inside the abbey, as soon as possible.
With whoever was left
was more like it, thought Gianni.

Gianni led Ambrogio and five of the Sienese knights forward, shouting warning to avoid a straight line, even as an archer took one of them down.

To his right, Vito and Ugo and three other knights rounded a mill and disappeared. Shelter, he thought. With a shield about them, they could avoid being picked off by the archers, and given the opportunity, strike back when possible. Wise, he decided, as he leaned deep into his right stirrup to avoid another arrow. Where could they go?

They rounded a corner and discovered the abbey, with none but riderless horses ambling about. Could they make it inside as well? He looked over his shoulder and saw two knights fall behind him. A third took an arrow to the shoulder but kept his saddle. To remain here, pursued by Abramo and the archers, could only be suicide.

“Stay with me,” he said to Ambrogio, wheeling hard to the right, surprising his pursuers, who took a greater turn. They rode hard for the courtyard.

 
“LET them in!” Daria cried from the second-floor window. “Quickly, let those men in and lock the door behind them!”

Two monks scurried at the bottom of the stair to do as she bid. Gianni, Ambrogio, and one other knight came charging in, turning to slam the heavy wooden doors behind them, even as arrows came singing inward, slicing into the ancient wood. They managed to shut it and bar it even as the men outside came charging against it, falling heavily away.

Gianni reached for her, panting heavily. “Where are the weaknesses?”

She searched her memory of the abbey, a place she had been coming to from the time she was a small child in the company of her grandfather. “It is well fortified. The monks never wished to be held hostage in a nobleman's war.”

“Are there weapons?”

She again thought back. “San Galgano's hall. Where many a nobleman relinquishes his weapons as the blessed saint once did.”

Gianni met Hasani's glance. “Show me,” he said.

They set off at a run, ignoring the impact sound at the back door, the rattling of fortified shutters. The enemy sought to instill fear, wild panic. They would not give him such satisfaction.

Four monks, younger men, ran behind Ambrogio, Piero, Hasani and the knight. Nico, Roberto, and Tessa followed.

They reached the hall and Gianni paused, amazed at the weapons that lined the walls, above those that were amassed in piles below. “It is a tradition of the abbey,” Daria said, nodding toward the chapel ahead. In the center was a large, rounded granite rock with the hilt of a sword sticking out the top. “The younger nobles arrive here and relinquish their weapons in order to serve the Lord.”

“The sword of the saint?” Gianni asked in wonder, staring forward. It was legendary, but many thought it more myth than truth.

She nodded.

A crashing sound drew their attention backward.

“Quickly,” Gianni said, handing a sword to Piero. Hasani was already tucking daggers in his belt as the children gathered bows and arrows. The man grabbed the boys by the nape of their shirts, hauling them up a staircase, presumably to lay siege to the enemy outside.

Gianni hesitated before handing a sword to one of the monks. “Are you certain, brother?”

“I pledged my life to God,” he said, grabbing it from him, “not my death to an enemy who would dare lay siege to a house of God.”

“You fight for God in fighting for us,” Gianni said, holding the sword still. “Know that before you enter the fray.”

The priest nodded soberly, seeming to fully understand, inexplicably, and the others grabbed weapons of choice from the walls and ran to join the others upstairs.

Suddenly Gianni and Daria were alone in the hall.

“We take our stand, here,” he said to her softly, as another boom was heard and monks cried out in fear. Prayer in Latin rose up to the rafters.

“Yes,” she said. Quietly she eased the tattered shield from his shoulder and laid it on the ground. She moved to the side and returned with a sheath of chain mail in her arms. She eased it over his shoulders and settled it around his waist, looking deeply into his eyes. Did he know how much she loved him? How much she longed to see him live?

Daria turned away and lifted metal leg armor, judging the size in her hands. Deciding upon the larger, she turned and knelt before his feet, fastening the plates around his calves, then moving to fasten two others about his thighs.

He stood deadly still, watching her, transfixed. She moved again to the piles and chose a fine breastplate, handing it to him to hold, then moving behind him to fasten it. On his back she placed another, praying all the while. “Father God, protect the man within this armor. Keep him safe. Give him strength. Help him see what he cannot. Hear what he cannot. Make him your warrior, Lord Jesus. Fight off your enemy through this man, Father.”

She reached for the arm plates, but Gianni grabbed her and pulled her to him, kissing her with such fervor that she could do nothing else but kiss him back in equal measure.

A boom sounded against the front door, and all the windows rattled in quick succession. He pulled her away from him, his eyes still closed. Slowly he opened them to stare upon her. “I have always loved you, Daria. Since the first day I saw you, and even more with each day. The loving of you threatens to undo me now.”

“No greater is the love you bear for me than the love I bear for you,” she said softly, turning to lay hold of arm plates. She fastened them on his forearms, then turned to take a belt full of daggers and wrap them around his waist. As she circled him again, she took a sturdy shield from the wall and placed it in his hands.

Daria edged up on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Return to me,” she said.

A terrible cracking sounded behind him, the sound of splintering wood.

The door had been breached.

“Until my last breath,” he said. Then he turned and ran headlong toward battle.

Hasani emerged then behind her, on a dead run with the other young priests, so recently returned to arms, behind him. They filtered past on either side, running to join the knights who fought off the attackers below. The children trailed behind. At the last moment, Daria reached out and held Tessa back.

Nico and Roberto paused, looking over their shoulders, but kept running forward, emulating the ways of men and women beyond their years.

Daria caught sight of Abramo and edged backward into the shadows, even though his attention was solely on Gianni, who struck in savage fashion. She turned to grab a dagger and handed it to Tessa, telling her to hide it in the folds of her dress. Then she took the bow from the girl's shoulder and placed it in her hands, showing her how to aim.

She took another, larger bow and a quiver full of arrows, wishing she had spent more time practicing. They were surprisingly light, and Daria reached for another quiver, stepping slightly ahead of Tessa in an effort to be her shield. The men battled on, shouting and grunting and crying out. Soon, more of Amidei's men poured through the entrance, driving Gianni and his men backward, half toward the chapel, half up the stairs on the far end, where she supposed Agata and Josephine had sought shelter.

Ciro edged through the chapel door, panting and about to turn, when he caught sight of Daria and Tessa at the far end. He grinned and rubbed his glove across his sweaty lip, swinging his sword as if in idle exercise as he moved forward.

Tessa let an arrow fly, and it skittered across the cobblestone floor.

Daria let her own arrow loose, and it sang across the space. But Ciro deflected it with a lazy lift of his shield. “You could well use some lessons from Lord Amidei's archers, ladies,” he said.

Daria let another fly, but he again deflected it. Tessa's arrow went high and to the right. He moved to the windows at the far side of the hall and opened a few as he advanced. “Your men,” he said, “fought valiantly. That is, until we locked them in and set fire to their lair. They roast alive even as we speak. Shh. Do you hear them screaming?”

Nay, Daria thought. Not Vito and Ugo! Not the others sent from the Nine! Not them! It was not even their fight, their cause . . . She caught herself. But it
was
their cause. The cause of all who battled for light, for truth, for God, and against evil. Memory of Gianni, standing right here, filled her mind.
We stand here.

Still, her eyes traveled to the window. Vito and Ugo, their music, their laughter . . . their hearts, loyal and true. So much had the brothers seen the Gifted through!

Ciro paused by the last window. “Come and see, m'lady. Come and say your farewells.”

She centered another arrow on her bow and took aim, refusing to take the bait. But was that smoke she smelled upon the wind? Is that why Vito and Ugo did not burst through the doors behind Ciro, coming to their aid?

CHAPTER FORTY

“M'LADY,” Tessa said in a high whine behind her as Ciro advanced.

Daria's eyes cut to the door when Abramo rammed against the door-frame, then whirled inward. As Ciro had done before him, he paused upon seeing Daria and Tessa, but turned to slice the throat of a monk, complete his rotation, and gain such momentum that he decapitated a knight.

“Oh!” Tessa cried, and Daria pulled her dagger out from her belt at the same time she pulled the girl to her, hiding her face in the bodice of her dress.
Please Lord, intervene! Save us!

Abramo turned and advanced behind Ciro, the two of them making Daria feel very small indeed.

They circled her, one taking either side, and Daria tried to shield the moaning child, rendered almost paralyzed in the face of the Sorcerer and his man. “They are legion, m'lady,” she moaned.

“Yes, we are,” responded Abramo, grinning. He reached for the girl, and Daria sliced at his arm with the dagger, drawing blood.

He eyed her in fury. “Take her,” he said to Ciro.

The man lunged, and Tessa screamed, but Daria was too late. The massive knight had the child, held her by the hair, eyeing her as if she were a tasty bit of meat atop a skewer.

Piero entered the hall, crying out in rage.

“Ah, the defrocked priest,” Abramo said, circling him. “Put down that child's plaything and die with some dignity,” he said, jabbing at Piero's short sword.

The little man glared at him. “God intends for us to
live
.” He lunged forward and surprised Abramo, who narrowly avoided the tip slicing his throat. Surprise turned to anger, and he moved upon the priest, driving him backward with one fierce blow after another. Daria watched in mute fear, then realized she was succumbing, succumbing to exactly what the enemy wished to instill.