“What task is that, Father?”
Father Rodrigo offered him a puzzled expression. “To release the power of the Grail, of course.” He patted the tattered satchel he had brought with them.
Ferenc stuck a finger in his ear and worked it back and forth, as if he could dislodge the words he had just heard. The Grail? He remembered a cup Father Rodrigo had been holding on the ledge above the crowd. It had fallen from his hand when the soldiers had grabbed him. Was that the Grail? But how had that cup found its way back to Rodrigo?
“What… what does it do?” Ferenc asked. He recalled the crowd’s reaction to the cup: astonishment and awe. But he hadn’t seen what had been so remarkable about the cup. It had looked like an old drinking mug, tarnished with age.
“That is not the right question, my son. Instead, consider what it is that the Grail wants us to do,” Father Rodrigo replied with a small smile. “We are but vessels through which it operates. I must show it to the people of Italy, of Germany and France. I must show it to everyone, and the Grail will tell them what it wants from us.”
That was not a promising, or elucidating, answer, and Ferenc eyed Father Rodrigo’s satchel with suspicion. He had packed it himself. He didn’t recall putting a cup in there, nor any opportunity when the priest might have done so. “What did it want yesterday in the marketplace?”
“It wanted me to rouse up the people of Christendom and urge them to shake off the danger of the Mongols. It wanted me to prevent the arrival of a prophecy-to prevent the world from coming to an end.”
Ferenc’s stomach tightened into a knot. His voice leaping up almost an octave as he demanded, “Mongols? The ones from Mohi? Father, you were there. You know what they did, what they can do. We cannot fight them. Even with everyone from the market yesterday. We will be killed!”
“Calm yourself, my son,” Father Rodrigo said. “I am not talking about a marketplace of people descending on an army. I mean we must gather all of Christendom, every man, woman, and child, and all together, as a united front, we will confront them and drive their evil from our land.”
“Everyone?” Ferenc repeated, saying the word with exaggerated care. “Everyone?”
“Everyone.”
Ferenc considered this. “How?” he asked, unable to comprehend such a mass of people.
“God will provide,” Father Rodrigo, a serene calm descending upon his face. The priest stared into the distance, a wry smile on his face.
Ferenc sighed, faced with the entirely reasonable conclusion: however calm and rational Father Rodrigo seemed, he had taken leave of all of his senses. The fever may have finally left him, but it had burned away too much of the priest.
“Excuse me, Father, I need to relieve myself,” Ferenc said. He picked up the blanket and carefully draped it around Father Rodrigo’s shoulders. The priest patted Ferenc’s hand and continued to smile at nothing in particular. Unwilling to look upon the priest’s face any more, Ferenc turned his attention to the nondescript countryside of grass and occasional copses of trees. Then he purposefully began to walk to the east, looking for something in particular.
A hundred paces off, he found it: a view out over a shallow valley, filled with the tent city of Emperor Frederick. Ferenc had suspected they were near it, and his intention the previous night had been to skirt the camp. Now, he decided, the best thing to do was march right into it.
The English Cardinal Somercotes had sent them to the Emperor. Father Rodrigo had liked Somercotes. By association, then, Frederick was probably not a villain, peculiar as he was. Another thing to consider: Ocyrhoe had told him that Frederick cursed a lot. That meant Frederick was not pious. And that meant he was less likely to be seduced by Father Rodrigo’s story. Even if the Grail really did have special powers-which Ferenc doubted-it was probably safer in the hands of an Emperor than those of a raving churchman. It saddened him to think this, for Father Rodrigo was still by far the most beloved living human to him… but he could not ignore the obvious.
With a sigh, he turned back to fetch the priest.
“You’re a woman, can’t you make her speak?” Orsini demanded irritably. Lena turned her calm, subtle gaze from the Senator to the girl.
Ocyrhoe imagined a hand pressed over a mouth, and tried to project this image to Lena. She had had so little training before her other sisters had vanished that she doubted she knew how to communicate properly in this fashion.
“She is not going to say more,” Lena said confidently. She had not even made eye contact with Ocyrhoe. “I believe she is under an oath to somebody and part of that oath requires secrecy. If that is the case, she will never speak. She will die sooner than speak.”
Ocyrhoe tried to keep alarm off her face. She was not under an oath, and she was not willing to die to help Father Rodrigo and Ferenc escape. Had Lena gotten her message, and was she now bluffing on her behalf? If so, it was a clever ploy; if not, then Ocyrhoe feared she was in more danger than she had originally thought.
“Your Eminences,” Lena offered. “I understand your distress over the discovery of this girl in His Holiness’s chambers.” She glared at Fieschi as she said this, and Ocyrhoe wondered how much she had seen of the manner in which Fieschi had dragged her out of the room.
At first she had thought the Cardinal had meant to harm her, but he had simply been trying to snare her-much like the manner in which a cat pounces on a mouse. Fieschi had been angry, ready to strike her, but the sudden appearance of Lena had given him pause.
“Leave her with me,” Lena said. “I will find a way to give you the information you require in a manner that does not break her oath.”
Fieschi grimaced. “I don’t care what sort of ethical justification you want to give it, just as long as we get what we need.” Ocyrhoe noticed that his distaste did not extend to his eyes. He was watching them carefully. Too carefully.
“Fine. Leave. Now.”
Orsini was the more startled of the two by her command, and as he huffed with indignity, she fixed him with a withering stare. Wanting to make himself larger before feeling diminished by letting a woman order him around, but when he noticed Fieschi’s lack of outrage he deflated-slowly-as he departed.
“Speak,” Lena said sharply as soon as they were alone.
Ocyrhoe shrugged. “The priest asked me to help him escape, and Ferenc wanted to go with him. I drew a map for them to get out of the city, and I distracted the guard at the door so they could get out. But once they were out, I was stuck inside, and Fieschi found me.”
Lena made an aggrieved noise. “Why did he want to escape? Why did you help him? Where was he going? How could you possibly consider this appropriate behavior for a Binder?”
Ocyrhoe held her hands up in weak protest. “I was not behaving as a Binder; I was behaving as a friend.”
“Once you become a Binder, you are always a Binder. Especially when your friend is the Pope. Your actions will bring chaos upon the city, little one. You have interfered with matters that you had no right-”
Desperate for justification, Ocyrhoe interrupted, “What if he had employed me as a Binder?”
Lena blinked, surprised. “To do what, exactly?”
“I… I was to carry the message of his departure to the Cardinals. As indeed I did, the moment Fieschi opened the door. I did not even have to tell him verbally; my presence was enough.”
“Such flippancy is dangerous, girl,” she warned, punctuating her words with the same glare she had used on Orsini.
“I truly have no information beyond what I’ve told you,” Ocyrhoe said, less ruffled by the look than Orsini had been. “I don’t know why he left or where he was headed. He said he was a prisoner, and that he shouldn’t be. He asked for my help. Ferenc is my friend, and I wanted to help him. And Ferenc wanted whatever Father Rodrigo wanted. So…”