Capocci and Colonna, he recognized, of course. He had not seen the girl or the youth before, but they fit the description from the market very neatly.
All four of them froze and stared at him. He smiled smugly and took a few slow, almost cocky steps toward them. “There is something unsavory about subterranean assignations,” he said, lazing over the words. He directed his words toward the bone-thin girl, memorizing her face with his keen stare. “I hope, young lady, that they are paying you well for these abominations?”
“Not as well as you would, since unlike you, we don’t live in Orsini’s pocket,” Capocci growled.
Suddenly, the two large cardinals, without warning or conference, but in nearly perfect unison, lurched over the debris; Colonna dropped his torch, which was snuffed at once in the damp earth. Each man grabbed one of the newcomers: Colonna almost effortlessly tossed the woman onto his back; Capocci huffed a little from the effort, but he had the young man up and over his broad shoulders in a trice. And then the two of them, again as if it had been rehearsed, turned and fled into the absolute darkness of the tunnels.
Astonished, Fieschi ran after them, with a shout that was as fruitless as it was ignored. Colonna’s laughter bounced off the walls but then evaporated into the darkness.
*
The moment the youth appeared in the doorway, Somercotes saw a softening come over the stranger’s face, expressing a humanity that he did not know the man had in him. Rodrigo’s eyes opened wide, and his jaw went slack, but he managed to scramble to his feet without assistance. The wild-haired young man stood just inside the doorway, unsure of the situation, and regarded the ailing priest with caninelike devotion.
“Ferenc?” Rodrigo whispered and then automatically switched to a tongue the newcomer seemed to know. He staggered across the stone floor, and the young man leaped to catch him, grabbing him under the arms, both to hold him up and to embrace him. Somercotes had no difficulty imagining some great moment of bonding in their past—a battle, perhaps? He studied the interaction closely.
The youth—Ferenc, Somercotes assumed that was his name—said something to Rodrigo, his tone and body language suggesting that he was rebuking the priest for standing.
Capocci and Colonna, who had brought these strangers to Rodrigo’s chamber, exchanged astonished looks. “What bastard tongue is that?” demanded Capocci.
“It is Magyar, from Mohi,” said the other, a young girl, doubtless a ragged child of Rome. She stared at the two men with a strangely motherly expression. “Ferenc helped Father Rodrigo get to Rome—”
“To deliver a message to the Pope,” Somercotes concluded. He glanced briefly at his fellow cardinals, but they were both agreeably preoccupied with listening to the torrent of words that now came out as the boy—Ferenc, he reminded himself, noting she had said his name as well—solicitously helped the priest return to a sitting position.
“An ugly language,” Capocci observed pleasantly.
“Too many ka’s and shka’s,” Colonna said in agreement.
“What are they saying to each other?” Somercotes asked the girl.
She shook her head. “I don’t know Magyar,” she said.
“Then how do you know the boy’s story?”
“He told me,” she said and lifted her hand, wriggling her fingers without thinking. To their puzzled reaction, she lowered the hand, then pressed her lips closed.
Other than the rapidly muttered conversation between Rodrigo and the boy, there was a pause. Somercotes looked hard at the girl, who pretended not to notice. “Does the young man speak Italian?” he asked. “Latin?”
She glanced away and shook her head.
“Tell me, how do you communicate with him?” Somercotes pressed.
She clearly wished she could take back what she had said, and if Capocci hadn’t been casually blocking the door—though Somercotes knew the wily cardinal was anything but nonchalant—she might have fled the room.
Ferenc answered Somercotes’s question before she could stop him. He finished his conversation with Rodrigo, turned eagerly to the girl, and took her arm. Before she could slap his hand away, he began to squeeze and touch her wrist.
“An unusual way to communicate,” Somercotes said, bemused. She shrank back under his close scrutiny. He took a step and quickly reached to the side of her head. Ferenc’s eyes widened as the cardinal gently took hold of a long lock of the girl’s hair, which had been interwoven with thread into an irregular series of knots. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. He glanced at Ferenc, then back to the girl, and let go of her hair, his fingers curling like snakes and then thrusting out in ones, twos, threes. He looked pointedly at Ferenc—and smiled. “I did not realize males spoke such a language.”
“He doesn’t know it well,” the girl said brusquely, still not meeting his look, “and I don’t know how he learned it.”
Somercotes took a deep breath and let it out slowly. By keeping these two intruders here in secret, he could quite possibly ferret out more information about this Father Rodrigo, something more definite than the muddling ravings the priest supplied in plenty. But Somercotes felt certain he knew what the girl was and might learn soon enough who had sent her—and with that knowledge, he could think of far better uses for her.
Before he could speak, Ferenc let out a cry of delight and reached for a small bag hanging from his belt. He began to jabber away again in his native tongue, and Rodrigo—who had again slumped into a glassy-eyed stare—suddenly sat up straighter, blinked, and looked alert. As Somercotes watched, the boy reached into his satchel and pulled out a small metal object—a ring. A signet ring. An ecclesiastic signet ring—which meant the delirious priest really was a cardinal.
Ferenc handed it to Rodrigo, who took it between thumb and forefinger, staring at it as if he could not understand its significance.
The three cardinals exchanged looks; even Capocci understood now that this was serious.