This Rough Magic (71 page)

"Good morning. And what is happening here?" De Belmondo enquired with gentle curiosity.

"We've found these illegal entrants hiding here, Your Excellency," said the captain-general. "These men seem set on daring to rebel against legally constituted military authority in a war zone. The penalty for that is death, as you might like to remind them."

Old Grisini bowed respectfully to the governor. "Morning, Your Excellency. We seem to have a problem here about authority. Would you please explain to the captain-general that the Little Arsenal is part of the Arsenal of
Venice
—not part of the military of Corfu. He has no authority here. We explained that to him when he tried to draft us, but he doesn't seem to understand it."

The captain-general looked frigidly at him. "In this case food and shelter intended for the island's people are being wasted on these women."

De Belmondo blinked. "Are these women and children from some other island then?"

"No, but they're not Venetian! They're locals." Tomaselli's tone added the unsaid words:
and thus beneath contempt
.

"I do not recall—as governor of this Venetian possession—anything which abrogates our responsibility for 'locals,' as you put it." The governor's voice was decidedly frosty. "In fact, I wasn't even aware of any such official category of people."

"But they're here illegally!" sputtered the captain-general.

Old Grisini snorted. "Not to make too fine a point of it—so are
you
, Tomaselli. They are in
our
building. They're the wives and children of
our
employees. We'll see to them. We'll see to their appropriate treatment."

The captain-general played his trump card. "Not with the food from the Citadel's stores. They must be put out!"

De Belmondo shook his head. "I cannot allow you to do that. And I don't think your men would be prepared to do something that would have them forever labeled as murderers of women and children. The Senate of the Republic would have my head, and yours."

This plainly hadn't struck Nico Tomaselli. "But we can't just allow them to freeload on the Citadel's stores!"

Umberto cleared his throat. "Excuse me, milords. I have an idea. If we put these women to work for the Republic, they would be entitled to a place as these men are."

The captain-general sneered. "You haven't even got work for yourselves! Besides, what can they do?"

Umberto answered instantly. "Weave sailcloth. We have flax, but the stores of sailcloth are very low."

"And what do we do with sailcloth in a siege?" grumbled Tomaselli, but you could see he was weakening.

"There is life after siege, we hope," said De Belmondo. "And if there isn't . . . well, we shall have no use for anything—never mind sailcloth."

There was no help for it. Maria came and had her name—Elena Commena, she decided—scribed in the book with the other workers' wives. Umberto nearly dropped his quill.

"But why sailcloth? The flax is intended for ropes, Umberto. It's too coarse for good sailcloth," said old Grisini. He'd virtually collapsed when the tension and need went—he was in his late seventies, and it was hard on him.

Umberto paused. Bit his lip trying to think how best to put this to the old man. "Because, master, the captain-general is right. We don't have work for ourselves. That's really the main reason there's fighting and dissatisfaction. So I have been thinking ever since the Teutonic knights arrived here under fire, that we need to be able to strike at the enemy ships. We have everything we need, except brass nails and sailcloth, to build ships ourselves."

The old man blinked at him, confused. "We can't launch ships. And without nails we can't even build them."

Umberto shrugged. "We've got iron nails by the bushel, master. And we can lower smallish craft directly over the walls."

"But what good will that do?" asked Master Grisini, tiredly. "The enemy has some huge carracks out there. And iron nails will just rust."

"If the boats are on fire they can burn craft thirty times their size. And they won't have time for the nails to rust."

"It's a good idea," conceded the old master shipbuilder, after thinking about it for a few moments. "But how are we to convince the military of that? The captain-general would not exactly thank us for military help."

Umberto shrugged. "We will deal with that, like we did with this. When the time comes. In the meanwhile we can give the men work to do. It'll cut down on the fights."

Sophia Tomaselli lay wakeful, trapped in her husband's bed by the sleeping man's leg. She wanted out of here. Out of this boring man's bed, and away from his clumsy and drunken rutting. And "rutting" was the right word, too. She knew perfectly well he was only taking out his frustration with the world by mounting her.

As soon as she could get out of here, Sophia would make her way through the dark streets to her new interest. Now
there
was a man who could teach this husband of hers a thing or two about lovemaking. She felt herself aroused by the very thought of the shameful, exciting lust, the thrill of forbidden pleasuring. And she had some information about the plans for repulsing any attack on the inner wall. He always rewarded her well for these little snippets.

Bianca closed the lid of the chest in her room, after finishing the needed rituals to prevent decay. Fortunately, she didn't need a large chest, nor had the rituals taken much time—in both cases, because the body of the beggar boy was so small.

The corpse would keep, for the moment, under the linens. There'd be no tell-tale traces of putrefaction coming from the chest for at least a month. By then, Bianca would have Saluzzo under her control and would have him dispose of the body in some more permanent manner.

She put that problem out of her mind. Right now, she needed to concentrate on finishing the materials needed for the ritual she'd use to have her "relatives" removed. The beggar boy's blood needed to be mixed properly with the fat she had carved from his internal organs. The very little fat, unfortunately—the beggar boy hadn't been emaciated, exactly, but he'd been scrawny. There had been a little around the liver, the intestines; not as much as she had hoped. She might have to extend it with some of her other unguents, and hope that the principles of contact and similarity would make good the deficiencies.

Gingerly, she fingered her forearm where the boy had punched her, at the end. She thought there'd be a bruise there, by the morning. Little bastard. He'd put up more of a fight than she'd expected, once he realized the arm she'd wrapped around his throat was intended to kill him rather than to hug him.

True, it hadn't been much of contest. Bianca had not yet dared begin the rituals that would eventually provide her with the superhuman strength of her mistress, Countess Bartholdy. But she was still a full-grown woman, well-fed and in good health. Against her murderous resolve, a malnourished five-year-old boy had had no chance at all. She just wished that he had been a little fatter.

She lit the brazier under the bowl containing the blood and fat, and picked up the special instruments carved from human bones. With her right hand, she began stirring slowly; while, with her left, sprinkling into the mix the other ingredients required. All the while, softly chanting the needed phrases and intonations. Some of the words had never been meant to be formed by a human mouth.

As the mixture cooked down, she saw that there was no help for it; she would have to add precious defiled and deconsecrated oils to the recipe, or there would not be enough of it for her purpose. She reached for the vials and added them carefully, drop by drop, watching for some change that would warn her that this addition had "soured" the mix.

But it didn't. In fact, as she added the precious fluids, so difficult to come by and so very expensive, she felt the sullen power in the bowl increasing, and her lips stretched in a little smile of surprise. Well, well, well!

Last of all, she added the ingredients that had been the most difficult of all to obtain; the powdered hair of her "aunt" and "uncle," and allowed the fire to die away beneath the bowl. Finally the mixture ceased to bubble, and she now had, for all of her effort, a little puddle of a thick, black, tarry substance in the bottom of the bowl—black as tar, but not sticky. No, this stuff would be smooth and creamy to the touch, and would swiftly vanish into whatever it was combined with or rubbed on, leaving no outward trace.

And the power contained within it made her laugh aloud.

"We
must
find this monster," hissed Eneko. His hand came up and stroked a brow gone suddenly pale. "I have not sensed such a shriek of pure evil since . . ."

Diego, if anything, looked even more shaken. "At least we finally know the creature's sex. It's got to be a woman. That ritual—done that way, with a child—"

Francis and Pierre were frowning. Neither of them had the depth of knowledge regarding the Black Arts that Eneko and Diego possessed. Francis was a healer, essentially, and while Pierre's talents as a witch-smeller were superb, that was by its nature an applied rather than theoretical skill. They'd sensed the sudden blast of evil magic that had seemed, for a moment, to shake the entire island. But they'd been unable to discern the details.

"A woman?" queried Pierre. "Are you sure?"

Eneko shook his head. "Say a 'female,' rather. That
thing
is no longer human, in any sense of the term that matters."

Commander Leopoldo had chosen to come and see Manfred while the knights were at morning drill, because he could do so while remaining unobtrusive. A party of men—and an officer—would come to do a stock-count at the magazine every Wednesday anyway. Leopoldo did this duty himself sometimes, so his presence while they were drilling in the courtyard was unremarkable. When the knights broke for a rest, it was simplicity itself to walk the few hundred feet under the arcade to the shade where Manfred sat with his watchdogs, and squat down so that he was virtually invisible. He was not a man given to peacocky clothes like Captain-General Tomaselli.

"Milords. I'm looking for some quiet advice. I've little siege experience and some things are worrying me."

Falkenberg grunted. "Not half as much as they worry me. And I have plenty of siege experience."

Manfred grinned at the young Venetian. "What can we help you with, Commander? Be warned. You give Falkenberg here the opening for a word on sieges and he'll give you ten thousand. And redesign your fortress. He's done so at least five times since we got here."

Gino Leopoldo smiled back, a little nervously. "The captain-general has expressly forbidden me to fraternize with you, Milord Prince. So if you don't mind keeping this quiet. . . I want to ask about those moles."

Manfred nodded. "They're creeping closer. Erik destroying the magazine out there stopped the covering fire for nearly twelve days. But ten or twelve more days should see the south one complete. Another day, the north. And Emeric's siegemaster has men on a bucket chain on the south side of the Spianada. You can bet he has a tunnel project going. What are the plans to deal with this lot? The captain-general has decided to keep us in the dark."

The stocky young man grabbed a hank of his hair and tugged at it. He sighed. "We're planning on a sortie from the main gate. With footmen."

"I see," said Manfred, putting a restraining hand on Falkenberg. "Tell me more. Are these pikemen? Or arquebusiers? Or both?

"Arquebusiers. In a tercio. Only . . . the shingle is very narrow. No room for a tercio."

Manfred put another hand on Von Gherens's shoulder. "I see. But there are two moles. How are they to face both?"

"The first tercio will go south. The second north."

"The captain-general is certainly rewriting the science of war," said Manfred, so calmly that he thought Francesca would have been proud of him.

Falkenberg could take it no more. "No preemptive strike to destroy the moles?!"

The young Venetian shook his head.

"No flanking from the posterns?!"

Leopoldo shook his head again.

Von Gherens exploded. "Foot soldiers! Is the man insane? The minute those clumsy tercios try and get out of the gate the Magyar are going to charge from both sides. Without pikemen to allow the arquebusiers to reload they'll annihilate them! And the front gate'll be so packed with fleeing men they'll never close it!"

"Er. Yes. I know."

Manfred's eyes narrowed. "So where are the cavalry supposed to be in all this? Where are
we
supposed to be?"

Leopoldo looked, if possible, even more uncomfortable. "The captain-general wants to prove you're unnecessary. And my cavalry—and I don't have much, to begin with—is going to be kept in reserve for any street-fighting."

He shook his head ruefully at the gaping knights. "I am in charge of the Citadel garrison. But he is in charge of me. There is not a lot I can do."

Falkenberg took a deep breath. "Then I guess it is up to us."

Manfred shook his head. "Let's just remember what Erik and you two have drummed into my head: The minute the first shot is fired the best battle plan in the world comes apart. And then, of course, commanders must act on their own initiative. What can you do?"

The commander shrugged. "All I'd thought of was the cannon. The captain-general has said they're irrelevant because the fighting will be below the walls. I've got about two hundred pikemen he seems to have forgotten in his plans. . . ."

Aldo Morando sat sipping his wine, waiting for Fianelli to come. He had a few interesting snippets, for which Emeric's agent would pay well. These rich, spoiled women—especially Sophia Tomaselli—were proving very effective spies. And now that he'd convinced Sophia that she should try to seduce Prince Manfred . . .

True, Aldo would be surprised if she actually managed the feat. Sophia was attractive enough, but nothing compared to the prince's leman, Francesca de Chevreuse. Still, who knew? Some men—Morando was one of them, himself—enjoyed variety. It was worth a try. If she succeeded, Aldo would possibly gain access to information hitherto locked away. To this point, he'd been able to discover nothing about the inner workings of the Imperial contingent in the Citadel.