And leave her behind? Where was he supposed to go? What was the message they were supposed to deliver? The old man in the Septizodium—the one with the kind face and the presence—had sent them out of the city on a secret mission, but he had described that mission only in the language Ocyrhoe knew. If Ferenc kept climbing, he would be leaving Ocyrhoe behind, and that meant abandoning the mission.
Ocyrhoe swung her free hand up and managed to grab a loose brick. The brick slid sideways but held. The guard, just a few feet below her, let loose a stream of frustrated curses.
The boy gauged the distance between Ocyrhoe and her pursuer, who had given up trying to grab her from the ground and had started climbing the wall himself.
She flattened against the wall, sucking in a breath, then planted her feet and resumed her climb, as quickly as the crumbling wall allowed. She was a good climber, but she didn’t have Ferenc’s experience or the guard’s strength.
The guard’s searching hand was now just inches below her heel. She wasn’t going to make it.
Ferenc shuffled laterally to his right. Just a little farther. He glanced down, checking his position, and then took a deep breath. Ocyrhoe looked up and to the left, her face screwed up in panic and confusion as she tried to figure out what he was doing.
He met her gaze and nodded once. Without you, there is no mission.
Ferenc let go of the wall.
*
Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he whispered the seventh Psalm. “...Iudica me, Domine, secundum iustitiam meam et secundum innocentiam meam, quae est in me...” The rope burned across his palm and his knuckles ached, but he could not let his grip loosen. Not yet. “...Consumatur nequitia peccatorum; et iustem confirma; scrutans corda et renes Deus iustus...”
The body trapped in the rope—already he was no longer thinking about it as a living person—had stopped thrashing and clawing. As Fieschi continued to pray, he felt the man’s hands loosen and the deadweight increase. God strengthens my armor, he thought, for I am virtuous and upright in my heart. He heard a rattling noise, like sand being scattered across a stone floor, and the muscles in his hands cramped from exertion.
His prayer was cut short by a sound that escaped from his chest—part sob, part exclamation—and his hands opened without his willing the action. It was as if one of God’s angels had touched his wrists, and the ethereal touch of the divine messenger had broken his grip. He fell back and sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath. A weight lay against his legs. A heavy, still weight.
When he finally noticed the stink of death—the expelled shit and piss from the dead man’s bowels, mixed with the faint tang of blood—he opened his eyes. He shuddered slightly at the sight of Somercotes’s face—the bulging eyes decorated with a lacework of blood; the tongue protruding from the agonized mouth, a copious smear of blood across his lips and beard from his broken nose; dark shadows around the cardinal’s neck, a rope burn under his jaw.
“Convertetur dolor eius in caput eius,” Fieschi whispered, making the sign of the cross, “et in verticem ipsius iniquitas eius descendet.” He brought it upon himself.
He pushed Somercotes’s body away and, legs trembling, got to his feet. His hands ached, and his right palm was raw from the rope, but he was standing, he was alive. Somercotes was not. The distinction was very clear in Fieschi’s mind, uncluttered by remorse or guilt.
This was not his victory, his personal triumph. By garroting this heretic, he had saved the Holy Roman Church.
The ring. He remembered what they had been arguing about before the Will of God—Deus iudex iustus—had flowed into him and guided his hand. The ring that supposedly belonged to that charlatan—a cardinal’s ring. It was a symbol that would allow him to participate in the election of the next Bishop of Rome—a potentially key vote. He had to find that ring.
He crouched over Somercotes’s body and, trying to ignore the stench, pulled and poked through the simple robes, feeling for the ring. There were few places to hide anything in the cardinal’s garment, but he checked the seams for unusual bulges or gathers that would suggest a hidden pocket; after a few minutes of fruitless searching, he turned his attention to the dead man’s shoes. Without Somercotes’s feet in them, they were just old leather scraps—worn thin in the heels, the stitching unraveling along the outer edges.
Would he have hidden the ring in his chamber? Fieschi crawled toward one corner to begin, on his knees, feeling the stones in the wall for fit, trying to shift or pry each one out to reveal a hiding place. No success. He then stood and ripped the heavy mattress cloth, flinging away handfuls of the straw stuffing. From the pegs on the wall, he ripped down Somercotes’s cloak and extra robe, pawing through the cloth for the hard shape of a ring. He even tore apart the cardinal’s damaged Bible, though part of his brain knew there was no way to hide a ring within the pages of the book.
Nothing.
Fieschi glared at the body. Even in death, the man confounded him. Could he have secured it somewhere in the tunnels? No, that would be even more risky than hiding it in the room; he would have to keep it where he could find it quickly, and such a place would have to be nearby, familiar. Somercotes’s chamber was the only place where he could be afforded some privacy, where he could be assured he would not be disturbed while he hid the ring or retrieved it.
Did he even have it? Fieschi had to admit the possibility that Somercotes had been lying to him. His breath caught in his throat as he recalled the conversation he had overheard between Somercotes and the messengers. They had brought the ring back to the mad priest. He had heard them talking about it; he could distinctly remember the tone of Somercotes’s voice as he had examined it. An Archbishop’s ring...