Suicide Kings (30 page)

Both sides of the church were covered in wooden and iron scaffolding, towering up from floor to ceiling. Behind each of these platforms, workmen erected elaborate cenotaphs of marble and bronze, commemorating the important dead of the Church in Firenze. Now the workmen were gone, but the scaffolding remained. Behind the iron frame and wooden boards, Diana could see the faces of angels staring back at her from stone. The designs were beautiful and yet frighteningly morbid as always they seemed to be.

Among these masses, Diana could spot none who appeared unduly suspicious or unusual. There were men aplenty and any might be among the assassins laying in wait. None seemed to watch the entrance overly much so however, and most were still too wrapped in coats to see clearly. She would just have to wait until they showed themselves.

Along the left stood the confessional, currently unattended for no priests were officially in audience to provide forgiveness to the sinners. This was their target then, where surely danger awaited her. She nodded to Siobhan, who maintained her post just left of the entrance where she could guard Diana from threats coming from the congregation. Diana held in a deep breath and moved with a brisk pace toward the confessional. The box was an elaborate wooden thing, carved with scenes of heaven on the side for the priest and of hell on the side for the petitioner. Subtlety in message had not been the intent of the designer. Two doors awaited, the closest one for the priest, the furthest for the sinner, the entire contraption meaning to shield those within from view or overhearing.

Diana approached the confessional. She became deaf to the sounds of the penitents around her, their woeful chanting, the recitation of prayers and dirges. She forgot about Siobhan, who stood behind her, hand no doubt on the hilt of her rapier. How many times in a box such as this had she sat in the dark, confessing her sins to an old man who knew her not at all? Could such old men truly impart God’s forgiveness upon her, or had she merely confessed her sins of pride and vanity, deceit and envy upon the voyeuristic inclinations of men isolated from the normal vigor of human life? It had been years now since she had stepped inside such a box. For a while, her mother had beseeched her to return to the fold of the Lord’s confession, then had stopped. The end of her mother’s entreaties must have marked the date of the beginning of her mother’s accord with the Sacred Council.

Her hand reached out, instinctively for the handle that opened upon the penitent’s bench. The fingers trembled, the wrist cramped. If she entered here, what awaited her? A sword thrust through the thin wood of the confessional? A pistol shot to the face as she turned to see her interlocutor? Behind her, how many innocent looking faces in the crowd watched as she stood there, themselves ready to plunge a dagger in her back if she hesitated a moment too long?

Enough! She turned from the penitent door, right hand drawing the pistol from under her coat. She spun to the left and yanked hard on the priest’s door. As it came open, she thrust her pistol into the darkened recess within. Within a figure hunted, intent on the latticed opening between both the priest and penitent’s seats. A corpulent form in the robes of a priest, he looked up in surprise as she pulled free the door. She didn’t recognize him at first, fixating instead on the odd admixture of pigment between the skin on his nose and the rest of his face. In a second, she realized she gazed down on No Nose, Mancini’s henchman who murdered Crispino. Now he held a matchlock pistol against the latticework between the confessional spaces. So it was intended to be a pistol shot to the face!

He grimaced on seeing her and tried to pull his pistol round. Diana didn’t hesitate and fired her own point-blank into the scoundrel’s heart. The shot thundered in her ears, setting them ringing and polluted the confessional with a thick smoke. No Nose coughed up a single spatter of blood and slumped, the pistol clattering to the floor of the confessional.

Even with the ringing in her ears, Diana heard the screams from the congregation. The mass of penitents rose from their seats like a flock of frightened birds and mobbed for the exits. From amidst this mass, several youths emerged, blades pulled from underneath coats and came for her. Siobhan intercepted these men with her own blade and the shimmering and clanging of steel mesmerized Diana for a moment. Diana did not doubt Siobhan’s skill with a sword, but against three of these assassins, she could not hope to hold out for long. Diana reached into the confessional and retrieved No Nose’s pistol.

“Siobhan!” she shouted, and when the other girl turned, hurled the pistol through the air on a careful arc, grip down. Siobhan swiped at one youth who lunged in clumsily and caught him across the jaw. As he yelped and leapt back, Siobhan snatched the pistol from the air and spun round just as a second youth moved in, blade intent on her heart. Siobhan discharged the pistol into the ruffian’s face, his visage disappearing into a mask of gristle and blood. The odds thusly evened, Siobhan set herself to using the church pews to her advantage, keeping the remaining two assassins from surrounding her.

If she could just keep them at bay, Diana could reload her pistol and pick them off one by one. She set to this task at once, shaking hands attending to the delicate task. She just completed it and began her aim when movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Upon the scaffolding across the church a man stood, dressed in black, a long object cradled in his arms. A smoldering ember, lit like a match, glowed near his ear. Diana realized the danger just as that match came down and the harquebus he aimed for her head fired forth a funnel of flame. Diana retreated behind the confessional just as an immense chunk of its fine wood came apart, the splinters stinging her face and catching in her hair.

His shot missed, and he was disarmed now! Diana returned to her former spot, pistol at the ready, but found that the man in black had retreated slightly, taking refuge behind a marble angel from which to reload his gun. From her position, only the luckiest of shots had any hope to hit him. So be it. Diana would mount the scaffolding on her own side of the church, from which her aim would be better, so long as he didn’t reload his own weapon first!

Diana sped past the clanging and ringing forms of Siobhan and the two assassins, and pulled herself up the small iron ladder to the first level of the scaffolding. Here a great bronze sarcophagus presumably held the mortal remains of some unfortunate soul long since moved on to the hereafter. Of better value, the sarcophagus afforded her some protection from gunshots. Here she steadied herself and took her aim. The man in black rammed home the metal rod down into his gun, finishing the reload of his weapon. As of yet, he seemed unaware she had changed her position. Diana lined up the barrel of her pistol on the struggling form and fired, temporarily blinded by the cloud of fire and smoke. She heard the shot strike home however, the wet sound of lead sinking into flesh.

A moment of elation swept through her and she strained forward through the smoke, better to see how her shot had taken its mark. As it cleared she saw the man still stood, the harquebus leveled, match glowing aside his ear. With a scream she retreated back behind the sarcophagus, all but falling into place. The harquebus erupted, and instantaneously her left hand felt split asunder in the most shocking pain. Like a fool, she had left it supporting herself atop the tomb. Now, too late, she pulled it back and regarded the damage done. The last finger looked like little more than a mound of ground meat, the tip shot clean away, the rest coated in blood. For a warrior, a most insignificant wound, she tried to tell herself, but, oh God, how it hurt! And all that much worse for being too much the fool to remember to hide all of herself behind the bronze.

She pulled her left hand into a fist, the only thing that eased the pain. Rivulets of blood ran out from between her fingers onto her coat. She breathed through her teeth, trying to control the worst of the agony. She didn’t have time to indulge the hurt; more would soon follow if she didn’t return to action.

Now the figure in black clamored up a ladder, seeming to move higher up the scaffolding. He favored his left leg, and she could see that her own shot had taken him in the thigh. Better to lose a finger than take a shot such as that, she reasoned. Diana could guess whoever held the higher spot, seized the advantage. Still, now they were both disarmed and Diana decided to reload her weapon first before seeking a higher spot from which to shoot. Reloading was made harder by her injured hand. She curled the last two fingers of her left hand into the palm as the torment would not allow her to use them. The rest of the hand ran slick with blood, her grip now both clumsy and slippery. Still, she worked with care and diligence. As she put powder and lead into her gun, she hazarded to look down to assess the status of her comrade. Below, Siobhan remained a vortex of steel and rage, at once the measure of her two opponents, but unable to quite get the advantage.

Diana took a calculated risk and, with the gun reloaded, maintained her current spot, steadying her pistol over her left arm. She studied the two youths accosting Siobhan, tried to judge the patterns of their movements. Finally as one lunged in toward Siobhan’s back, she discharged her weapon just as the scoundrel moved into her sights, and by such divine fortune scattered the man’s brains about the floor of the church. Siobhan glanced up with a grin and a brief wave before setting upon the last youth; that contest now so much more in her favor.

Diana chanced to look up toward the man in black just as the match came down on the harquebus. With a squeal of fear she dove back behind the bronze tomb, remembering to bring all of her this time. A shot rang against the bronze, but this time no searing pain followed it. Diana worked furiously to reload her weapon. Her wounded hand dropped the shot and it threatened to roll away before she caught it and rammed it home in the barrel. Then she peered up above her cover, pistol held steady over her left forearm.

The man in black pulled the long rod out of his barrel, having completed his own reload. Now he hoisted the long harquebus against his shoulder. He had the advantage of height. Diana would find it harder to hide now behind the bronze sarcophagus. She closed her left eye and took careful aim. She might not get another chance. She put pressure on the trigger, careful not to yank too hard and throw off her aim. She fought against the urge to close her eyes. Better to get some stinging powder in them than take another shot. She pulled the trigger back against the pistol and felt the hammer slam home, the wheellock spinning within and sending sparks flying into the pan.

The gun fired, Diana’s vision once again obscured by the resultant cloud of acrid smoke. She flinched, squeezing her eyes tight against the shot she expected to greet her soon if her aim had been errant. No shot came and a second later, she heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor of the cathedral after a substantial fall.

By God’s grace, she’d got him. She waved her hand in front of her face, dispelling the fumes from the gun and saw below the man in black spread-eagled on the floor, twitching ever so slightly. The sight of his fall distracted the last swordsman so Siobhan found her opening and ran him through the heart. Their enemies vanquished, all fell silent and, for the moment they were alone in the church with their fallen opponents.

Diana hurried down the scaffolding, a difficult task with her wounded hand.

“Diana,” Siobhan exclaimed upon seeing her, “you’ve been hurt!”

“Bastard shot my finger off!” she cursed, and felt shame at the tears of pain running down both cheeks. She paid Siobhan little mind though and quickened to the man in black. Now that he lay in clearer light she could see his face and as expected, found him to be none other than Mancini. The last moments of life slipped through his fingers. Though his eyes were open and he watched her, he appeared unable to move his limbs, and with each intake of breath he coughed back up a spray of crimson blood. A hole in the right side of his chest made a sucking sound as he tried to breathe. Diana speculated she’d gotten him in the lung. Death would come soon.

As he saw her he smiled, blood spreading across his teeth and collecting against his gums. “How many dead you have behind you, lady?” he wheezed, his voice barely a whisper. “I should be proud to call you my daughter, were you my own.”

“Tell me who hired you to kill my mother. You’ve nothing to lose now, and I’ve earned the right to know.”

His eyes glimmered. “That you have, but I have never once lied to you. I never knew who hired me to kill her, or later to kill you.” He hacked up a sorrowed laugh, spraying blood through his lips as he did so. “I’ll see you soon enough in Hell. We’ll share a toast together then, won’t we?” And with that last his eyes went gray, the sucking sound in his chest ceased and Mancini, who seemed for so long to be the shadow around every corner, went on to his final judgment. May God have mercy on his black soul.

“Damn!” Diana exclaimed, feeling yet another door slam shut in her face. “Even in death, Mancini is useless to me.”

“At least he is dead,” Siobhan observed. “The Sacred Council will have to act on their own now. Made up of fattened citizens as I am sure they are, I fear them far less than a veteran such as Mancini.”

A cohort of gendarmes rushed in through the door of the church, swords drawn. “You there!” shouted their leader, a youth of fair complexion and build. “What manner of calamity has struck this church?”

Diana placed her pistol in its holster lest miscommunications do their worst. She withdrew instead the warrant given her by Savonarola and passed it to the youth. “We have struck down these assassins of Milano by the authority of Friar Savonarola,” Diana explained wearily.

The youth read the warrant with raised eyebrows before handing it back. “You’ve slain five scoundrels? Two women?”

From the tone of his voice she guessed she might well have told him she’d just reached up into the sky and plucked down the moon as if it were an apple from a tree.