gold hit the street he fired. The coin still plummeting, Hegel knew he had acted too hastily, his shot off the mark. At the twang of his bow, however, the girl instinctively jumped to the side and caught the bolt in the nape of her neck.
The coin bounced and the girl spun against the wall, hair swirling around her head, and to Hegel’s amazement her face was gone, replaced with that of Brennen—the murdered son of Heinrich the turnip farmer. Momentum propelled her into the wall and she slid down it, rolling to face Hegel. Brennen’s face had fled back over the mountains to his grave, her features still bulging but again unfamiliar and feminine. The head of the arrow shone at him under her raised chin before she slipped forward. Bubbles rose around her ears as she drowned in the widening pool of her own blood. The bells were almost upon them. Snatching up his dropped coin, Hegel descended the ladder and slid the bar back into place. Holding his breath, he scrambled down into darkness.
The return took even longer, the children having stolen Rodrigo’s candle. In perfect darkness they picked their way back, Manfried taking the lead and Hegel assisting Rodrigo. They went back up the chute and into the glow of Barousse’s chambers, the man himself seated before the Virgin, eager for news. None were given to idle chatter, and the captain’s mood turned as acerbic as their odor. All three went to the bath in their wing that Barousse had prudently ordered for them. Despite going to bed immediately after their bath, each stayed up long into the night thinking of women—Rodrigo intent on the Virgin and how she might intercede on behalf of his dead brother, Manfried mulling on the so-called Nix’s song, and Hegel unable to free his mind of the girl he had ruthlessly murdered.
The result of their nocturnal meditations was that none rose with the sun; instead all were roused later in the morning by the clamor of Barousse yelling in the foyer. Eighteen men waited outside the gate for admittance, men Barousse had no intention of letting in. The doge, a cardinal directly from Avignon, a chevalier from north of there, and fifteen of the doge’s guards waited impatiently, their words and the words of Barousse’s mercenaries rising to shouts. Rodrigo hurried outside after his captain while the Grossbarts made for the kitchen, disgusted their tugging at the bell rope had not summoned breakfast.
The doge, whose name, despite common usage, was certainly not the Italian term for prostitute, smiled at the approaching Barousse, Cardinal Buñuel ineffectively counseling him against rashness. At his holy toady’s insistence, the doge had withdrawn the archers he had ordered to snipe from the rooftops, although usually the doge was anything but obedient to the Church. Times change, however, as they are wont to do, and doge and cardinal both hoped Venezia’s strained relations with the Papacy might be eased for their mutual benefit.
Sir Jean Gosney sweated under his visor, not for the first time internally bemoaning the dictates of formality that forced him into his iron shell. The cardinal dismounted from his horse and stepped toward the gate, and the doge and the knight silently did the same.
The pikemen bunched up on either side, their three betters standing before the gate with reins in hand to enter as gentlemen. Instead of ordering the gate opened, Barousse stopped before it and belched. The cardinal winced, the doge scowled, and the knight wrinkled his upturned nose.
“What do I owe the pleasure, with my fast hardly broke?” Barousse asked.
“Listen, Alexius,” the doge began, “you know why we’ve come, and any pretensions that you don’t will be seen as admission of guilt.”
“It is Captain Barousse, if you do not mind, Doge Strafa—Doge,” Barousse said, flashing a smile at the cardinal. “And who are your guests?”
“I am Cardinal Buñuel,” the red-frocked man said sharply.
“And I am Sir Jean Gosney of Meaux.” The armored man bowed. “A chevalier in the service of the cardinal.”
“Now that we’re acquainted, it’s time you turned over to us those whom, for the sake of this city’s honor as well as your own, we are willing to assume you were incarcerating on our behalf.” The doge clicked his boots together.
“The Grossbarts.” Barousse’s smile widened. “And the priest who sought sanctuary here, yes?”
“He is no longer a priest.” Cardinal Buñuel wiped sweat from his brow.
The Grossbarts found Martyn in the kitchen wolfing down cold bacon with his left