“Is it from the Emperor or Orsini?” Somercotes asked. He used an either-or inflection that confused Rodrigo, so Rodrigo ignored the question.
But then he sat up a little straighter as a thought struck him. “I want to meet the two candidates,” he announced. Surely given the momentous message he carried, the unspeakable significance of it, the angry angels from Mohi would show him which was meant to be the true Bishop of Rome, and he could unburden himself at once, without waiting for the technicalities of investiture. There was no time for such trivial rituals now.
Somercotes cleared his throat. “The candidates themselves are mere men. What matters is the values they embody, their devotion to the divine Will.”
Rodrigo nodded, his eyes suddenly clearing. “That’s why I must meet them,” he said. “I must see which one the divine Will has chosen.”
Somercotes opened his mouth to argue with the logic of this, then shut it again quickly. “How can you see that before it has happened?” he asked, trying a different tactic.
Suddenly, finally, Rodrigo met his gaze. “I will be able to see it. You cannot imagine what I...see.”
Somercotes relented. “Very well,” he said. “Afterward, perhaps, you can tell me more of your message and how you came to be here.”
“Perhaps,” Rodrigo whispered. And then his eyes turned away again, the glassiness returning.
*
Ocyrhoe always kept a stub of candle rolled in her belt, but she had no way to light it, so the first hundred yards or so had been in total blackness. Now that they had finally descended the steep stairway—thirty-two steps, she counted—it was a little easier. They had gripped hands, harder than they needed to, and with Ferenc in front, they felt their way along the left-hand rock wall, cool and musty.
He stopped suddenly where a passage opened up. The air moved slightly toward them, and his sharp nose picked up human scents. He let go of Ocyrhoe’s hand, grabbed her wrist, and signaled, “This way.” They grasped hands again and, still in absolute darkness and silence, moved slowly forward.
Ocyrhoe wondered if Ferenc realized how unprepared she was for this so-called rescue attempt. She hoped he was not relying on her to know some secret trick. She had none. He now knew as much as she did about where they were—more, perhaps, with his tracking skills. She knew only the myths and hearsay of the city and of history; he knew what his heightened senses told him, and she trusted them more than the whispered rumors of ignorant locals.
After some twenty paces, Ferenc stopped suddenly and released her hand, only to take her wrist and move swift fingers over her skin. She had difficulty counting the fingers in the dark, but context supplied some of the words. “Two men ahead,” he informed her. She was surprised; she could not hear a thing. “Around the corner. Light.”
She jerked her head aside to look past him and saw the slightest, faintest hint of a blackness less absolute than the blackness they’d been walking through. “Follow,” Ferenc signed, then took her fingers again. She followed him, step for step, ashamed to be relieved he was in front of her.
As they sidled forward along the wall, the patch ahead grew gray, and then a grayish amber. Soon she could hear sounds, but not voices. The sounds confused her; they were the blunt noises of construction, or perhaps of mining, a rhythmic, soft percussive sound, like someone digging. And then voices, but not speaking—the occasional grunt of effort, a heavy sigh.
Soon it was clear to her what Ferenc must have realized when he first stopped: just ahead of them, on the right side of this tunnel, there was a corner turning off to another tunnel, and it was from there the sound and soft light came. Ferenc paused again and then let go of the wall, pulling her gently over toward the far side of the subterranean corridor. She reached out her free hand until it touched the rock to her right—but here it was not rock. It smelled earthier and felt more like hard-packed clay or soil. Again, she followed Ferenc step for step as they approached the corner.
He stopped just before they reached it and turned toward her. She could barely make out his silhouette as the light from down the tunnel spilled out weakly behind him. He resumed signing along her wrist. “Two men. Large. Not young. Twenty-five paces away,” he spelled out laboriously. “Dangerous?”
Now she took his wrist. “I don’t know,” she replied. She felt him stiffen. He must be realizing only now that, despite her impetuosity, she was not the expert here. “Maybe priest prisoners,” she signed. “Maybe.”
After a hesitation, he fingered, “Let’s go,” and turned back toward the corner.
He stepped around it. She followed him.
Ahead of them were two large men in ragged cloaks or gowns—ruined finery, she guessed, so possibly two of the imprisoned cardinals. The burlier one, with a huge beard, was attacking the wall. At the moment she saw him, he seemed to have just shoved a spike into the compacted earth, and then he dropped the spike and began to claw his way into the small hole it had made with his bare hands so that flakes and clumps of dirt fell away. He stood on a pile of debris that rose above his ankles. The other man, thinner but taller, stood on the far side of him, holding the torch. His face was more visible than the bearded man’s; he looked not only relaxed but actually delighted by his partner’s progress.
“Go?” Ferenc asked on Ocyrhoe’s wrist.
She had no idea; she was almost annoyed with him for making her decide. “Yes,” she tapped back finally. They were here to find the priest; they would not find him by avoiding people who probably knew where he was.
Ocyrhoe and Ferenc were both so soft of foot, and the two men ahead of them so intent on their activity, that they crept very close before the one holding the torch glanced up and noticed them. They froze. He blinked, frowned in confusion, and then grinned.