“What do you want?” Fieschi snarled.
“How was your visit with the Holy Roman Emperor?” Léna asked, oblivious to his agitation. “I don’t see the girl with you. Were you able to successfully negotiate the return of your missing priest?”
Fieschi grabbed the front of Léna’s cloak and drew her to him. “I know you are working with the Emperor, Binder, in a way that violates your precepts.”
Léna remained unruffled. Up close, he could see there was no fear in her eyes. Only a steadiness of resolve that gave him pause. “You know nothing about me or my sisters, Cardinal Fieschi,” she said quietly. Her eyes flicked down at his clenched fists. “Your hands, Your Eminence,” she pointed out. “Are you sure you want to dirty them again? So soon after the last time?”
Fieschi released her, a very un-Cardinal-like oath threatening to spill out of his mouth. “You are not welcome here,” he said, forcing the profane words aside. “You and your sisters. If I see any of you or hear word that you are in my city, you will be marked as spies and treated accordingly.”
“Your city?” Léna noted.
“Yes,” Fieschi snapped. “My city.” He gestured at the buildings around them, especially the rounded dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. “My church.”
“Of course it is,” Léna said, a mixture of admiration and revulsion in her voice. “I will be sure to tell my sisters they are no longer welcome here. When they are released from wherever the Senator has them imprisoned, that is.” She offered the Cardinal a hard smile. “It would be disappointing if we were not allowed the freedom to meet your demand that the Binders quit Rome.”
“Take them,” Fieschi said. “Take all of them with you. I left one with the Emperor already.”
“Yes,” Léna said. “Good. I appreciate you taking her to Frederick. That was very helpful.”
“Helpful?” Fieschi choked, instantly disliking the idea that he had been, in any way, helpful to this woman.
Léna reached up and extracted a tiny chain from beneath her cloak. She closed her hand over whatever was suspended from the end of the silver loop and broke the chain with a sharp jerk of her hand. She laid her still-closed hand over her heart. “Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi, I am bound to you with a message.”
“What nonsense is this?” Fieschi sputtered.
“A message from Pope Gregory IX,” she finished. She opened her hand and held it out to him. Resting on her palm was a small gold ring. A Greek letter, broken in half, was stamped on its surface. “He wanted this ring delivered to his successor.”
His heart pounding, Fieschi reached for the ring, but Léna closed her hand suddenly.
“Thus delivered of my message, I am like the fox,” she said, “unbound here and everywhere. Do you agree, Cardinal Fieschi? I will deliver your late Pope’s message because that is what a Binder does, but in doing so, I am freed. Unencumbered by all.”
“Yes,” Cardinal Fieschi said. “Yes. Give it to me.”
Léna closed her eyes briefly and then opened her hand. “And so it is done,” she said softly. The ring fell into Fieschi’s outstretched hand, and he closed his fingers quickly, before she changed her mind.
“Ho, porter,” she called to the ostiarius standing nearby. “Is that carriage available?”
“My apologies, Lady,” the priest said. “It belongs to the Church.”
“Of course it does,” she said. “But I am sure the Church would put it at my disposal, wouldn’t it, Cardinal Fieschi?”
He started at the sound of her voice. The ring was heavy in his hand, and he wanted to look at it. He wanted to put it on.
But not in her presence.
“What?” he said. “Oh, yes. The carriage.” He waved his other hand at the ostiarius. “Let her have it. Get her out of my sight. Out of Rome.”
Léna curtsied, and the ostiarius hurried to assist her aboard the carriage. As the drover snapped his whip at the horses, Fieschi turned away and hurried up the steps. When he reached the top and passed into the shadow of the broad arch of the doorway, he opened his hand and looked at the ring.
The sigil was two fasces—the staves carried by Roman legates in the time before the Church—but they had been bent so that they appeared to form halves of a sundered omega. The ring had been given to him and not to Castiglione. Gregory IX’s successor. The one who would truly carry on in the spirit of the previous Pope.
Celestine IV will not rule long, Fieschi thought. The ring fit snugly on the small finger of his right hand. And then it will be my turn.
He closed his hand and looked at the ring.
My church.