It was a hot, sticky afternoon, and she and Ferenc wandered over to the shade of a nearby tree. Several of the other soldiers were amused by her indifference to them, and they took it upon themselves to join her and Ferenc in the shade. They remained standing, while she and Ferenc sat, maintaining the illusion that the pair were under guard.
Ocyrhoe didn’t much care what they thought, as long as they left her alone. She found a comfortable crook in the roots of the tree. Someone would come from the soldiers’ camp soon enough. And as Ferenc and the soldiers watched over her, she fell into a light slumber. What else could she do at this point?
The sun had softened, and the shade of the tree was much longer when she woke. There were more people gathered around the tree—additional soldiers and a young man no older than Ferenc who, in much better Italian, asked them to follow him. Accompanied by a group of soldiers, she and Ferenc let themselves be led across the sparse countryside to a covert village of canvas tents that were hidden behind a narrow wood of dense trees.
A full-fledged Binder would not stare. A full-fledged Binder would not even appear to be interested in what was around her, Ocyrhoe told herself, so focused would she be on completing her task. But the tent village of the Holy Roman Empire was the strangest environment she had ever seen.
She saw almost no women; most of the men and boys were coiffed, shod, and dressed alike; and although the village appeared to be a mobile community—with livestock, ovens, latrines, even a chapel—the sounds and sights were all wrong: there were no cries of street peddlers, no shouting children, no banners advertising wares, no open stalls of a marketplace. It was a stolid, unfriendly place.
But she did not ogle. And neither, she was pleased to see, did Ferenc. The moment they’d gotten out of the city, he had relaxed in a way she had not seen before, and even now, he seemed far more at home than she felt.
The two youths to whom they had been entrusted—one before them, one behind—marched them between two rows of low-slung sleeping tents, and then turned left directly into a much larger, higher tent. Ocyrhoe squinted in the diminished light.
Despite the heat, the walls of the tent were pegged down, preventing any breeze from cooling the stuffy air within. There were three-legged stools scattered at one end of the enclosed space, around a low table with an unlit lamp on it. The soldier behind them tied back the tent flap, which let in sunlight but very little air. He saluted his fellow soldier and then departed.
Ocyrhoe and Ferenc exchanged looks. Ferenc, probably intending to show her that he trusted her, smiled again and shrugged. She wished he would not do that; it made him look doltish in front of the soldiers.
His smile faded suddenly and his head moved slightly toward the open tent flap. He held up three fingers, and then he imitated the stance of the young man guarding them. Reflexively, Ocyrhoe did likewise.
A moment later, three silhouettes appeared at the tent flap. Ocyrhoe tried to look at them with respectful casual confidence—but then she saw one of them was a slender dark-haired woman with familiar knots tied into one lock of her hair. Ocyrhoe felt her eyes open wide and her jaw drop, despite herself. Stop that, she ordered her facial muscles, refusing to let them break out into a smile of relief.
A Binder.
The woman was older than any of the kin-sisters Ocyrhoe knew, maybe older, even, than Auntie. She was with two men—the second youth who had led them here, and a man who must be the commander of the soldiers’ unit. The commander’s face looked chiseled out of marble; his eyes were so pale Ocyrhoe wondered how he could bear the Roman sunlight. He stared at her unblinkingly. “Yes?” he said, expectantly.
The woman made a subtle noise, which immediately commanded his attention. She had a stateliness to her that suggested a noble upbringing, but she was dressed almost like a servant, and she was barefoot. “We understand you are bound to us with a message,” she said, directing the words at the man as much as to Ocyrhoe. She spoke Italian with a lilting accent, as if her own tongue was much more fluid. She looked concerned, though, and almost as humorless as the commander.
Of course: most people in power, or who served power, knew about the Binders, but few ever had occasion to interact with them directly; they were not common messengers for hire. It made sense that the Emperor would have Binders in his service, but of course not all of his military commanders would know what to do with them.
“We understand... you are bound to us with a message,” she repeated, more forcefully.
Ocyrhoe gaped at the woman, then not knowing what else to do, put her fist over her heart. “I am bound to you with a message,” she echoed hurriedly. “From Robert of Somercotes, Cardinal of the Church, to His Imperial Majesty Frederick.”