Father Rodrigo’s horse, used to hours and days of the priest as near deadweight, seemed spooked at his unexpected shifting in the saddle and sidestepped irritably. If his horse grew any more agitated, Father Rodrigo would surely be thrown. The priest claimed his god watched over fools and idiots, but he’d also said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Ferenc had seen enough men thrown from their horses on the plain near Mohi to know what would happen. He nudged his mount toward the priest’s and leaned over, patting the horse’s flank. Sweaty—and now twitchy. Which made his own exhausted mount suddenly twitchy too. They’d been pushing the horses too hard, and the animals were becoming choleric. It wouldn’t take much for both of them to bolt.
Me too, Ferenc thought. He settled his weight in his saddle, quieting his own horse with a firm hand on the shoulder and soft words. They had gotten these horses just inland from Venice, in the flat plains of the western Veneto; they were spindly-legged nags, not at all suitable for climbing mountains. They didn’t understand Ferenc’s Magyar, but they understood his voice. They knew his tone. As he spoke to them, they calmed.
Father Rodrigo hadn’t noticed the moment of unrest. The city held him enraptured. “There,” he said, pointing. “Santa Maria Maggiore. That tall spire there. That is where I received my confirmation.” He expelled a sharp laugh. “Twenty years now, I’ve been gone for twenty years.” He moved his hand slightly, referencing another landmark that Ferenc could not separate out from the forest of towers and domes. “Over there is the Basilica of St. Peter’s. Across the river, Ferenc. Do you see the house of holy light?”
But the light is shining on all of them, Ferenc thought, although he kept his tongue still. The priest seemed to be shaking off some of the malaise that had bound his bones. For a while now, perhaps as long as it would take them to descend this hill and join the flow of travelers entering the city, Father Rodrigo might remain lucid. Perhaps even long enough for them to reach the river. Perhaps.
“Come,” the priest said, rapping his heels against his horse. “We have a little farther to travel.” The horse snorted and picked its way downslope, toward the broad, paved track of the road.
Ferenc remained for a moment, idly rubbing the itching skin on the front of his left shoulder. Most of their nicks and cuts from last spring had healed, nothing more than thin, pink lines of new skin on their sun-darkened faces and arms. The most grievous of his wounds had been an arrow to the shoulder, and it was the last to heal. Fortunately, the enemy archer had been very strong and Ferenc’s gambeson had not been very thick. The arrowhead had gone through, missing the bone; it had been simple to break the shaft and draw the two pieces out. Simple, yes, but taking the arrow out had hurt worse than getting shot. At least the wound had been clean—easily dressed and cared for.
He’d also cleaned and bound Father Rodrigo’s wounds, and cleaned and rebound them often during their journey from the death fields at Mohi. But the Father’s infection ran too deep for Ferenc’s skill. They needed to reach the sanctuary of which Father Rodrigo spoke so longingly. Here they would find more priests and also, Ferenc assumed, healers—men who could save Father Rodrigo both from his infection and his madness. Ferenc did not quite understand what was in this great basilica of Father Rodrigo’s—this house of holy light—but he imagined it as a gleaming fortress of strength, beauty, and an omnipotent magic born of pure faith.
Ferenc nudged his horse forward, following Father Rodrigo’s. As they wound their way toward the bottom of the narrow hill, the sounds of civilization rose up to meet his ears: voices calling out, metal ringing against metal, the groan and creak of an old wagon as it rumbled down the dusty track, and in the distance, the steadily growing buzz of the city. They had avoided settled areas for so long that all these noises, the cacophony of city life, created an undifferentiated tumult in Ferenc’s ears. It reminded him not of his childhood memories of Buda but of the sound that had swept across the fields of Mohi shortly before dawn on that ghastly spring morning months ago. That crackling noise of men’s fear. The sound of thousands of men babbling to themselves as they waited for their turn to die.
Ferenc hunched his shoulders, ignoring the twinge below his clavicle, trying instinctively to protect his head, to shelter his ears from possible screams and wails—sounds he was more likely to hear in his mind.
This morning, on the open road to Rome, he had heard only the sounds of travelers: children laughing or singing tunelessly, oxen lowing as they pulled carts toward the city, men calling hesitant greetings to one another. While these travelers were aware of the presence of a nearby army, they did not have the same fear. No one fretted whether or not they were going to be the first to die. Of all the people on the roads to Rome, only Ferenc—and Father Rodrigo too, judging by the tension in his jaw and the faraway look in his eye—were haunted by the distant disaster that had befallen Christendom on the banks of the Sajó River.
The harbingers of the Apocalypse—horse riders from the East—had come to Christendom. Those who survived the horrifying battle at Mohi—who were to bear witness to the rest of the West—were forever marked.
*
Ferenc’s resolve failed when they reached the market. He had girded himself for the sensory onslaught, but the noise still buffeted him like the winter wind screaming through the rough passes in the Carpathians. He was surrounded by the clucking cries of distraught poultry, the bleating of terrified pigs, the cacophony of vendors shouting and arguing with customers over the prices of their wares, the whistling din of pipes as musicians tried to play loud enough for street performers to dance. And always the smell of unwashed bodies, rotten fruit, pig shit, cow shit. The turgid atmosphere of too many people living in too small a space.