Hounds of God (18 page)

He rose with the cat in his arms. It seemed eminently
natural to set the beast down with a courteous pat, to straighten, to relieve
the girl of several of her awkward bundles and packages.

She did not resist him, though she frowned slightly. He was,
after all, a complete stranger. But he smiled and bowed with a flourish,
burdens and all; she melted. “You’re very kind, sir,” she
said.

He shook his head a little, but smiling still, stepping back
to let her pass. She paused to greet the cat, which in its feline fashion was
pleased to see her; her eyes danced aside to meet Nikki’s. Well, and he
was a stranger, but already a friend to Arlecchina; a man could have a worse
patron.

She led him up the stair. Her back was straight, the braid
of her hair swinging thick and long and lovely below the edge of her veil, just
where he would have liked to set his hand.

He stopped almost gratefully as she set her hand to an iron-bound
door. It was latched but not bolted; it opened with ease on a small ill-lit passage
redolent of garlic, age, and cats. She turned there, meaning to thank him
kindly and send him away.

This time he did not smile. He knew what everyone said about
his eyes; he wielded them shamelessly.

She stiffened against them.

Her thoughts were transparent. For all her unchaperoned
solitude, she was neither a whore nor a serving girl, to play the coquette with
a stranger, a pilgrim from who knew where. No doubt with that face he had
encountered many such, charmed them and taken them and left them; and she all
alone, with the neighbors at their work and her uncle at his, and old Bianca
deaf as a post and bedbound with the ague, which was why she had gone to market
alone to begin with. Which, in purest honesty, was why she had gone at all.

She had wanted to go out by herself, to do as she pleased
with no eyes to watch and disapprove. The consequence tightened his grip on her
purchases and raised his brows.

Madonna,
he said in
his clearest mind-voice,
I know what you’re
thinking. I assure you by any saint you care to name that I have no designs on
your virtue. If you will let me bear your burdens the rest of the way, I
promise that I won’t even assault you with a longing look.

His eyes held her; she did not see that his lips never
moved. To her ears his voice was a perfectly ordinary young man’s voice,
speaking in the Roman dialect. She smiled at the words, hardly knowing that she
did, or that her eyes had begun to sparkle.

Her voice made a valiant effort to be stern. “Sir, you
are kind, but I can manage. It’s only a little way, and the servant is
waiting for me.”

Nikki smiled.
My name
is Nikephoros. I’m a pilgrim, as you can see; I lodge with the monks in
San Girolamo down in the Velabro. I’ve never yet seduced a virgin, let
alone raped one; I doubt I’ll begin today. My looks are against me, I
know, but can’t you find it in your heart to trust me? Even a little?

The sparkle was very clear now to see and even to hear. “You
talk exactly the way I was told a young man would before he began his
seduction. As for your looks...” Her cheeks flushed; she bit her lip and
went on a little too quickly, “My name is Stefania. Yours is rather
unusual. Are you Greek?”

He nodded.

“Then why,” she demanded with sudden steel, “are
you a pilgrim to Rome of all unlikely places?”

May not even a
schismatic Byzantine look on the City of Peter? However regrettable
, he
added dryly,
may be the delusions of its
Bishop.

The blade was not so easily returned to its sheath. “Your
accent is not Greek.”

I grew up in Rhiyana.
My teacher was, and is, an Anglian.

“Now that,” she said, “is preposterous
enough to be true. Say something to me in Norman.”

Nikki choked. Even he could not tell whether it was laughter
or horror. He knew Norman, bastard dialect of the
langue d’oeil
that it was; he could read and write it. He
also knew a little Saxon. He did not know if he had an accent in either, since
he had never spoken a word in any mortal tongue.

She was frowning again. He swallowed and tried his best.
Fair lady without mercy, is it thus you try
all who come to your door?

“Only strangers who chase me through it.” She
softened just visibly, though not with repentance. “Have pity on me, sir.
Here you are, a young man, which is danger enough; born a Greek, schismatic and
noted for craftiness—which I should know, being half a Greek myself;
raised by one of a race of conquerors in a country of enchanters. Can you
wonder that I test you?”

If you put it that
way,
he admitted, and once more she heard him in Italian,
no.
He sank to one knee, bundles and
all.
Beautiful lady, may I please come
in? My solemn vow on it: I’ll preach no heresies, play no tricks, and
make no—unwilling—conquests.

“And cast no spells?”

No spells,
he
agreed.

She nodded, gracious as a queen. “Very well. You may
come in.”

oOo

Unappealing though the passage had been, the house proper
was very pleasant. There were two stories to it above the scrivener’s
shop. “Uncle Gregorios doesn’t sell parchment,” she
explained. “He sells what’s written on it. He’s a public
scribe, a notary; he works here when he can, but elsewhere most often, writing
letters and witnessing deeds and the like.”

She did not show her guest into the upper story, where were
the bedchambers and a storeroom. Not merely for the danger of letting a man see
where she slept; Bianca was there, mercifully oblivious to what passed in the
room below.

That was a large one with windows on a courtyard, the
shutters flung wide in the warmth. Behind it lay the kitchen in which, at
Stefania’s command, Nikki had deposited most of his burdens. In it stood
a table and a chair or two, a bench, a chest and a cabinet, and a high slanted
table such as he had seen in the scriptorium of San Girolamo.

A stool was drawn up to the table; a book lay open on it and
a heap of parchment beside that, folded and ruled and ready to write on. Nikki
craned to see. The book to be copied was Greek. He moved closer.

Greek indeed, marked as verse, and a fine ringing sound to
the line or two that met his eye. “Pindar,” Stefania said. “A
pagan poet, very great my uncle says, and very difficult.”

He’s copying the
book for a client?

“No,” she answered almost sharply. “I am.”

Nikki smiled his warmest smile. She looked defiant, and
surprised. He should have been dismayed, if not appalled, to have encountered a
woman who could write. More, a woman who could write Greek.

So can I,
he
pointed out,
which makes me a strange
animal, too.

“You’re a man. You can do as you like. A learned
woman, however,” said Stefania with more than a hint of bitterness, “is
an affront to the vast majority of learned manhood.”

Of course she is. She’s
usually so much better at it.
Nikki perched on the window ledge between
Arlecchina and a great fragrant bowl of herbs, green and growing in the
sunlight; he folded his arms and considered Stefania with distinct pleasure.
I’m inured to such blows. My sister is
no mere scholar; she’s a philosopher.

“No,” Stefania said.

Yes,
he shot back.
She’d be a theologian, too, except
that there’s not much call for the Greek variety on this side of the
world. Besides which, she likes to add, there’s always room for another
natural philosopher; and the world is all too full of bickering theologians.

Stefania laughed. “There’s a woman after my own
heart!”

She had put aside her veil and hung up her cloak. Her dress
was plain to severity, but it was the same deep blue as her eyes; her body in
it was lissome and yet richly curved.

She was very much smaller than himself. When they had stood
face to face, her head came just above his chin. Even little Anna was taller
than that. Yet how tall she stood in the plain comfortable room, her feet firm
on the woven mat, her dress glowing against the whitewashed wall. There was no
doubt of it, she was perfectly to his taste.

In the silence under his steady stare, her assurance
wavered. She moved a little too quickly, spoke in a rush. “Would you like
a cup of wine? It’s very good. One of Uncle’s clients trades in it;
we get a cask every year for wages. It’s Falernian, as in the poets.”

It was strong and red and heavenly fine, served in a glass
cup that must have been the best one, because Stefania herself had one of plain
wood.

She only pretended to drink from it. After a sip or two of
his own, Nikki cradled the goblet in his hands and said,
I’m keeping you from your work.

She did not try to deny it. “I have a page to copy,
and the housekeeping—”

I know how to sweep,
he ventured.
I could learn to scrub.

She stared and laughed, amazed. “You are a natural wonder.
And generous, too, though for nothing. I swept and scrubbed this morning; it’s
our supper I have to think of, and there’s all my plunder to put away,
and if I don’t pay my respects to Bianca soon, she’ll know I’ve
been waylaid in the street.”

He nodded slowly.
May
I come again? Tomorrow, maybe? You shouldn’t go to market alone; and you
know how handy I am at carrying things.

The sparkle had come back to her eyes. “You are
persistent, Messer Nikephoros.”

Do you mind?

She thought about it. “No,” she decided. “I
suppose I don’t.”

He gave her the full court salutation as if she had been the
Queen of Rhiyana, yet his eyes danced. She accepted his obeisance in the same
mirthful earnest. “Why, sir! Have I overstepped myself? Are you after all
a prince in disguise?”

Alas, no. Only a very
minor nobleman and a very callow squire.

She was not at all dismayed to find him even as close to
royalty as that. “Tomorrow,” she said, light and brisk, both
promise and dismissal.

His answer was a smile, swift, joyous, and deadly to her
hard-won composure.

They were torturing Thea. Herself Anna never thought of; she
was fed, she was reasonably warm, she was ignored. Thea was the one who
suffered, bound in alien shape, battling for her will and her sanity, holding
high the shields between her enemy and her children.

That was evil enough. But as the slow hours passed, Simon
began to haunt his prisoners.

The more Anna saw of his face, the less like Alf’s it
seemed. It was heavier; it was coarser; now it was shaven smooth, now it was
stubbled with beard.

Every time she woke, it seemed that he was there, at first
only peering through the grille, but advancing after a time or two into the
room. He was always alone, always habited in white and grey. He always stood
still, staring at Thea or at the children, flat-eyed, expressionless.

Sometimes he left her to her mind’s freedom. Often he
looked and raised his hand, and she sat or stood or lay mute in mind as in
body, able only to curse him with her eyes.

After a moment or an hour, he would turn his back on her and
leave her. She could move then, speak from mind to mind, join in the children’s
playing.

She seemed undaunted, but Anna was afraid for her. Her eyes
burned with a fierce dry heat; her ribs sharpened under the taut hide. When she
was silent, Anna knew she fought the power that held her prisoner. When she
spoke, it was only a new battle in the war, each word calculated to cut her
jailer to the quick. When she slept, which was seldom, she slept like the dead.

During one such sleep, while Anna sat by her, watching over
her, the air in the room changed. Simon stood over them both.

For an instant Anna knew the absolute purity of hate. “Sathanas!”
she hissed. “Get thee behind us.”

He did not move. For him she did not exist. Only Thea was
real, Thea and the children who stared from the shelter of her side.

Slowly he sank to one knee. Anna tensed to leap at him. But
she could not stir. Could barely even breathe for the mighty and unseen hand
that held her fast.

With one tentative finger he touched Thea’s flank. She
flowed; she melted and changed; she lay a woman, unconscious, cradling twin
alaunts.

His eyes were flat no longer, but flint and steel. “Evil,”
he murmured. “Daughter of evil, Lilith, beautiful and damned.”

The same finger traced her cheek, almost stroking it. In her
sleep she stirred, turning toward the touch as to her lover’s caress.

His fist knotted on his thigh. “Beautiful, oh, God in
heaven, you are beautiful, and cursed in your beauty. Dreaming of abominations,
the creatures you bore, begotten in foulness, brought forth in black sorcery by
that one, the son of Hell, the white demon. Monk he was, he, priest of God,
mocker, blasphemer—”

The mask had fallen; his eyes had caught fire. His face was
contorted with hate. “A priest he dared to be, standing before the very
altar of the Lord, mouthing the holy words. Oh, horror, horror…”

He tossed his head, tearing at it with clawed fingers,
raking it, opening long weals. Yet as each opened, it closed again, miraculous,
terrible.

Suddenly he was still. His hands lowered, clasped. His face
calmed. Anna knew then that he was truly and irredeemably mad.

“I am not a priest,” he said. “God’s
servant, I; God’s slave. In His mercy He suffers me. I do not tempt Him
by laying hands on the body of His son.”

“No. Only by slaughtering innocents.” Thea was
awake with all her wits about her, and a fire in her eyes to match that which
smoldered behind his.

“I work God’s will,” he said.

“No doubt King Herod thought he did the same.”

His face tightened. Thea’s body blurred, yet it did
not melt. She was white with strain.