Monferrato closed his eyes a moment, as if hoping to open them to a different, saner reality. “He is preaching a Crusade. He is telling these people to rise up and defend Christendom against the Mongols.”
“I hear what he’s saying as well as you,” Ocyrhoe said. The man’s face pinked. He puffed and looked outraged that she had dared to address him so abruptly. Out of the corner of her eye, Ocyrhoe saw Lena frown. “He was very ill when they arrived here, both physically and mentally,” Ocyrhoe said quickly, trying to find some explanation that the Cardinal would find suitable.
Monferrato blinked owlishly at her, and she shrugged, not sure what else to tell him. She had no idea why the priest was exhorting the crowd to launch a Crusade against the Mongols. It seemed so unlike the kindly-albeit somewhat dazed man-she had met in the Septizodium.
Beside them, Helmuth was translating Rodrigo’s rant to Ferenc, who looked as if he were watching eels do circus tricks. Ocyrhoe felt somewhat mollified; Ferenc couldn’t believe what Father Rodrigo was saying either. He replied to Helmuth in a tone that Ocyrhoe took to be a defense of the priest, and used the word Mohi several times.
Lena started upon hearing the name. She snapped her fingers in front of Ferenc’s face to get his attention and repeated, “Mohi?”
When Ferenc nodded, she turned her attention to Helmuth. “What was he saying?” she demanded.
The Emperor’s guard shuffled nervously, his face pale. “He talks of the battle at Mohi, as if he and the priest were there.” He said something to Ferenc in Magyar, and Ferenc nodded tersely in reply. “They didn’t just witness it,” Helmuth continued. “They were on the battlefield.”
“You poor boy,” Lena said softly. She touched his arm, her fingers dancing lightly across his skin, and Ocyrhoe was surprised when Ferenc pulled away from Lena’s touch.
Lena hesitated for a moment, and then she turned to the others. “The priest and this young man were present at one of the most atrocious battles Christendom has ever witnessed. It was a battle no one should have had to witness-least of all a man of God-and what the priest saw must have driven him mad.” She indicated Ferenc. “With what sanity he had left, he must have asked this boy to bring him back to Rome, perhaps to seek redemption-or whatever peace might be left for him. But now it would appear that his madness has consumed him, and he is infecting the rest of the city.”
She listened intently to Father Rodrigo’s sermon, as if hearing him differently now. She had the same expression on her face that Ocyrhoe had seen previously-her attention both intent and distant.
Privately, Ocyrhoe thought Father Rodrigo looked much healthier than she had ever seen him. And he spoke with a great deal of verve. His words were clear and direct. He spoke without hesitation or confusion, as if the message he was delivering to his rapt audience was one that he knew quite well.
It was a strange message, one she did not understand fully. He spoke of trees-cedars-being cut down and the darkening of stars. He spoke both of the need for faith and the end of the Church, and when she glanced over her shoulder at Lena, she noted that the Binder woman was mouthing words almost in concert with Father Rodrigo.
A disturbance rippled through the crowd and further discussion as to the sanity of Father Rodrigo was cut short by the arrival of other figures on the makeshift pulpit. From around the side of the mound of rubble came a young boy and half a dozen men dressed in white uniforms, each with an image of crossed keys emblazoned on their chests. Three of the men carried pikes, and were already pointing their tips down toward the crowd. The other three men rushed Father Rodrigo and brandished swords close to his face. He gave them a curious glance, then returned his attention to the crowd, calling upon them again to take up arms, to drive the darkness back to the East, whence it had come.
The guards looked disgusted and reluctantly sheathed their swords. One of them circled from behind and grabbed Father Rodrigo around the neck, while the other two lifted his legs and tied his ankles. They then tossed him like a pig carcass, pulled back his arms, and used a length of rope to bind his wrists behind him. The cup he had been holding fell clanging to the stones. The guards, still manhandling the unresisting priest, did not notice. Ocyrhoe did, and when she glanced at Ferenc, he nodded, indicating he had seen the cup fall too.
Behind her, she heard Lena draw in a sharp breath.
The crowd, released from the spell of the priest’s prophetic ranting, turned ugly. Swiftly, a chain of possession from the vendors’ carts materialized, and the angry citizens began to pelt the soldiers with vegetables.
The soldiers ignored the fusillade of vegetables. One even reached out and intercepted a flying cabbage, giving the crowd a brief bow and a crooked grin. Within a few heartbeats, they had efficiently draped Father Rodrigo over the largest man’s shoulder and departed in the direction from which they had come.
The crowd growled and surged to the left, as if it would move, in one unit, around the ruins and follow the soldiers and the trussed up priest. But as quickly as it moved forward, it fell back again like a wave on a beach meeting a sea wall. A phalanx of uniformed, helmeted men equipped with yet more pikes erupted into view. The crowd’s shouts of protest twisted into cries of alarm, then pain, and the mass swayed sideways and back to get away from the prodding, jabbing weapons.
Without another word, the five travelers grabbed each others’ hands and shoulders and fled down a small street that led south, away from the market. After a score of paces, they stopped and stood in a circle, staring at each other, husking out frightened breaths.
“What just happened?” Cardinal Monferrato demanded.
“Guards… from the Vatican,” Ocyrhoe said. “They wore different uniforms from the men who serve the Bear-Senator Orsini. They will likely take this priest to Saint Peter’s or the Castel Sant’Angelo. We should go there, not to the Septizodium.”
“Why? Isn’t the Septizodium where the Cardinals are being held?” Helmuth shook his head. “The Emperor does not care about this priest friend of yours, and neither do I. He wants us to go to the Septizodium.”
“Those soldiers take their orders from the College of Cardinals,” Ocyrhoe argued. “How could the Cardinals be commanding them if they were still imprisoned in the Septizodium? How would they even know-”
“Child,” Lena said sternly, and Ocyrhoe silenced herself at once. “What was the message you were given to deliver, by the English Cardinal?”
Ocyrhoe already understood the point of this lesson. “It was to bring the Emperor’s men back to the Septizodium,” she said in a resigned tone.
“You are under oath,” Lena said simply. “Does a Binder interpret the message that has been given to her or does she simply deliver it?”
Ocyrhoe lowered her eyes. “She delivers it,” she said. “But I think it is a waste of time to go there.”
“What you think matters less than what you are sworn to do,” Lena said, not unkindly. “It is a characteristic that many rely on with the Binders.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice, which caused Ocyrhoe to raise her head, but Lena, seeming to anticipate Ocyrhoe’s gaze, was already looking away. “Let us continue with what we came here to do,” she said softly.
Ferenc had been watching them all with increasing impatience, and at this lull in the conversation he grabbed Ocyrhoe’s arm and urgently pointed back in the direction Father Rodrigo had been taken. It took no translator for her to understand what he wanted. She gave Helmuth a plaintive look, and the German soldier brusquely translated to Ferenc what had just passed between the two Binders.