Ferenc squirmed and flung up his arms in frustration, then grabbed her forearm. She wanted to pull away-he could not possibly understand-but he did not. Lie to them about where we are going, he signed.
At that, she snatched her arm from his fingers as if she’d been burned. “No!” she said angrily, and shook her head. “Never. Never!”
“You obviously have no control over anything that is happening,” said Senator Orsini furiously. “How are you of the slightest value to me? I should demand payment for all the choice viands you have supped upon at this table. I might as well have thrown them to my dogs. At least I know their loyalty is solid.”
Cardinal Fieschi seethed and twitched with frustration. “Total control is impossible, and not even useful. There has been a hiccup in our plan, but don’t you see it has allowed things to unfold in a way that can be even more fruitful?”
“No,” said Orsini. “I don’t see that at all, nor do I care for your inference that I am too stupid to understand your clever plan. In fact, I am so unmoved by your cleverness-”
“Orsini, what is it we want?” Fieschi demanded. “We want a Pope we can control, do we not? One who will repel the advances of the Emperor.”
“We would have had that in Bonaventura. And it is your fault Bonaventura is not now the Pope.”
“If anything, it is to my credit he is not,” Fieschi shot back. “But even if I’d voted for him this last round, he would not have won. Do you understand that? It would have been another deadlock. Unless Frederick were to release one of the Cardinals he holds hostage, and allow that man to come back to Rome, it would always be a deadlock. Even after removing one of Castiglione’s supporters from the equation entirely, there was no way to avoid deadlock.”
“Deadlock is better than chaos,” Orsini huffed. “Currently we have chaos. I should never have trusted you to steer anything. I will remember that when we really do have a Pope in power. The Bishop of Rome and the Senator of Rome will have plenty to talk about, but you have lost your place at that table.”
Fieschi could feel the heat rise in his face so intensely he wondered if even his eyeballs had turned red. You imbecile, he wanted to shout at Orsini. Are you really so blind you do not see how much more is at stake? Rome means nothing compared to the world that the Church commands. You are nothing but a convenient tool, and you are rapidly becoming inconvenient.
Instead, he forced a tight smile and said, with tempered condescension, “If you will listen to me for but a moment, you will realize that I have actually helped to set that table. We have the Pope in a room a half mile from here. The citizens of Rome have already heard him speak and they were mesmerized by his rhetoric. We will be able to steer him in any direction we desire, and the masses will eagerly follow. He offers us power that would be unimaginable if Bonaventura had been elected.” He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms, looking up at the Bear smugly.
Orsini made a dismissive face. “What do we care what the masses do?” he snorted. “They have no power.”
Fieschi altered his tight smile into a sympathetic one. “Come with me to the Vatican compound and you may change your mind. It took me two hours to get here because the mob was so thick. There is something hypnotic about that priest. Come with me and see for yourself, and then dismiss the masses-if you dare.”
Orsini shook his head stubbornly. “If he has that kind of power and he’s a madman, then he is extremely dangerous and must be killed immediately.”
“But he is pliable,” Fieschi insisted calmly. “I saw Somercotes win him over easily. If we stage the next few days carefully, I am confident that I can make him my creature. And then all that power is ours to use as we want.”
“And if you fail?” Orsini said. “I do not share your confidence in your abilities.”
“If I fail, then get rid of him, and we’re back to where we were before,” Fieschi said. “A deadlocked College of Cardinals and no Pope.”
Orsini thought about this for a few moments. Fieschi watched him, and was careful not to make a sound or indulge in even the slightest movement lest he trigger Orsini into some truculent response.
Finally Orsini asked, grimly, “What are the other Cardinals doing about all this?”
Fieschi made a dismissive gesture. “Some of them are poring over old codices of canonical law trying to establish if we may…” He lifted his hands. “Annul the election? Force a resignation? I doubt they will find any definitive answer or procedure, but the longer we stay here, the more time they have to create an argument against keeping him.”
“Are you the only Cardinal who wants to see him remain the Pope?”
Fieschi shrugged. “The only one who counts,” he said firmly. “I have two unlikely colleagues, but they are mostly interested in entertaining themselves. They’re not taking any action, they are just sitting back to watch what unfolds.”
“Is one of them Colonna?” Orsini asked in a disgusted voice.
Fieschi sat upright and said sharply, “Do not refuse this course simply because you don’t want to agree with Colonna. That is childish. The entire Colonna-Orsini feud is childish. Do you even remember what your ancestors first argued about?”
Orsini made a dismissive gesture. “If you genuinely believe that you can bring this man under your sway, so that he will be my tool, then I will consider-but only consider-ensuring that all civic authority in the city is dedicated to carrying out his enthronement.”
“That is the only sane way to persevere in this,” Fieschi said, feeling a wave of relief that he was careful not to show. Let Orsini think Father Rodrigo was to be Orsini’s tool.
He knew better.
A dried, charred smell wafted toward the five as they approached the alley that ran behind the Septizodium. “We turn left here,” Ocyrhoe announced. “There is a hidden entrance that only Ferenc can find.” Ferenc glanced at her and smiled with sheepish pride, knowing what she was telling them. “Then there is a series of dark passages. We will need at least a candle. Do you still have the candle from this morning?” she asked Monferrato. “The one you used to irritate the Emperor?”
Every time she spoke to him, he seemed startled and slightly annoyed. She wondered how many girls other than servants ever spoke to him, Cardinal as he was. “That was part of the excommunication ritual,” he said. “I gave it to my colleague.”
“Well, we’ll need to get a candle from somewhere else, then, or a lantern,” she said. “But first we’ll show you the doorway. It’s just… Oh!”
They had turned the corner as she spoke. The charred smell hit their faces, wafting on languid curls of smoke that emanated from a large, ragged opening in the rock face, a few dozen paces away.
This was the secret entrance to the Septizodium, but it stood wide open-in fact, the hinged rock that served as the actual door had been lifted away, as if by the hand of God, and lay in the street. Amazed, she turned to Ferenc, who was already staring at her.
“That’s the entrance. Something has happened,” she said, as calmly as she could.
“I think there has been a fire,” the Cardinal said in a concerned voice. Ocyrhoe rolled her eyes. She was not prone to sarcasm, but this man was just too easy a target.
“Let’s take a closer look,” Lena calmly intervened.
“Yes, absolutely,” Helmuth said, so quickly that Ocyrhoe suspected he was embarrassed he was not the first to suggest it.
They walked toward the entrance. Ocyrhoe glanced up at the surrounding rooftops but saw no guards-no one at all. The alley was deserted. As they approached the entrance, preparing to enter with Ocyrhoe in the lead, an echoing, percussive sound issued from the darkness. And then, softer, the sounds of footfall, coming closer to them.