Hounds of God (25 page)

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.

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. His 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.”