Once the messengers had departed the confines of the Septizodium tunnels, shutting the secret panel and sealing Colonna in darkness once more, he had returned to the haunts of the captive cardinals. Capocci had not been that hard to find; Colonna suspected he knew what the other man was up to.
Capocci was seated in a dusty antechamber, a narrow room with tall arched doorways. Of the four thresholds, three were filled with rubble, hiding whatever grand hall this chamber abutted, and the fourth led back to the rest of the areas more commonly used by the cardinals. A pair of small lanterns kept the seated cardinal company, along with a few other objects.
The heavily bearded cardinal glanced up when he heard Colonna’s voice. “Most children know better than to play with poisonous insects.” His beard seemed to flap like a bird’s wing as he smiled. Something small squirmed in his leather-clad grip, and he dropped it into a clay jar sitting on the floor in front of him. “You may be right, however. This new hobby may qualify as infantile behavior, but for something so infantile, I must say I’m pretty good at it.” His smile broadened, his bearded wings lifting. “Want to try it?” He gestured to a wooden box beside him; out of the tiny airholes in the top came the furtive scratching of half a dozen furious scorpions, clawing and crawling over one another. “There is another glove.” A heavy leather gauntlet, left-handed, lay on the floor beside the box.
Colonna shook his head as he lowered himself to the floor. He leaned back against the wall of the dusty chamber. “I rest content merely abetting your follies, without actually participating.”
“Follies!” Capocci cried out in mock outrage. “I do not consider this a folly! In a den of vipers, it is a marvelous thing to have all possible tricks up one’s sleeve.” He slid open the lid of the box-just enough-and thrust his hand inside. After a moment of concentrated groping, he grinned with satisfaction and drew his hand out. Quickly, in a motion that ran counter to his air of relaxed insouciance, his bare left hand slid the lid home again.
Pinched between his right thumb and forefinger, an angry scorpion wriggled. “Hello, my little angel of death,” Capocci cooed. “I am the great and powerful Cardinal Capocci, and I offer you a chance at redemption. Will you mend your ways and become a harmless plaything? Will you cast off your poison and be born again in the name of Christ? What’s that?” He lowered his head and nodded as if he understood the clicks and snaps of the scorpion’s pincers-the secret language of arachnids. “Yes, you say? Oh, blessed by the Lord on high! Well then, let me assist you in your resurrection.” Adjusting his grip on the squirming scorpion, Capocci reached for the stinger with his bare left hand. “This won’t hurt a bit, my innocent child.”
Colonna, despite himself, leaned closer to watch. This was not the first time he had seen Capocci perform this trick, and as much as he pretended otherwise, he could not help but be fascinated by what came next.
With a magnificent finesse of movement that one would have not thought possible in a man with such thick and rough fingers, Capocci expertly gripped the stinger-at the base of the last of the six segments that made up the tail-and gave it a quick, firm jerk. Though he knew it was a fanciful notion, Colonna imagined he could hear a yowl of outrage from the scorpion as it was parted from its deadly weapon.
Capocci held up the tiny dagger, squinting at it for a moment in the dim light of the lanterns, and then he smiled at Colonna. “Sing Hosanna,” he told the scorpion and dropped this one too into the clay pot.
“Are they well away?” he asked Colonna, referring not to the scorpions but to the others most recently in their care.
Colonna nodded. “They are.”
Capocci sighed. “What do you think of Robert’s plan, then?”
“As good as any. Naught will come of it, I fear. Or at the worst, we will emerge from this purgatory to find a city filled with corpses-Orsini and Frederick having killed themselves and everyone else in their frenzy to keep us safe. What sort of world will we thrust the next Bishop of Rome into?”
“God only knows, my dear Giovanni,” Capocci sighed. “God only knows.”
“Speaking of God, He will forgive me-I hope-when I say this, but I like your idea of dropping them on Fieschi in his sleep.” Colonna leaned forward to peer into the clay jar. “Though, I am not sure the fellow ever actually does sleep. He’s out most nights-all night-at Orsini’s, and he has never, to my watchful eye, dozed off once during the daylight hours.”
“De Segni, then,” Capocci said offhandedly. “Or Bonaventura!”
Colonna grinned. “A marvelous choice. The good man will shit himself, probably in front of us. Ho, he will surely lose some votes that way.” He laughed until a thought struck him. “Or when they appear to sting him, and then he doesn’t die, Fieschi will use that to imply Bonaventura is some sort of holy man.”
“Ah, excellent point. That sort of foolishness would clinch the election. Some of the others are rather prone to such superstitious nonsense.” Capocci deftly retrieved another scorpion. “In that case, perhaps we suggest to Somercotes that he use them on Castiglione, to the same end.”
Colonna shook his head ruefully. “Fieschi is well practiced in law and rhetoric, remember? He will use this as the basis for an argument that Castiglione is an agent of the Devil, as is clearly demonstrated by his unnatural affinity to the demonic sort of creatures that scorpions are.”
“That’s true,” Capocci sighed. He plucked the stinger from the scorpion, then dropped the angered arachnid into the clay jar and flicked the now useless stinger into the room’s far shadows. “Let’s just throw them on Fieschi anyway. For the fun of it. God will forgive us this infantile transgression, don’t you think?”
Colonna leaned his head back against the cool stone wall. “I would think so, my friend. He has had little enough to say these past years about an endless parade of monstrous cruelties.”
* * *
The chaos in the marketplace at the Porta Tiburtina confirmed Ocyrhoe’s fears. Wagons were lined up for the gate, but none of them would be moving anytime soon. A dense mob swirled and surged around the wagons like surf raging upon broken rocks. Ocyrhoe spotted a lanky thief boldly lifting a crate of fruit off the back of a sagging wagon, then darting away with his prize-no one the wiser. Most of the merchants had already packed up their stalls, even the farmers who wouldn’t be able to get out of the city until the guards decided to start letting people through. It was better to have their wares and goods safely stowed than stolen or ruined in the crush.
A line of guards, pole-axes lowered and wavering in the general direction of the mob, like the rippling ridge of hairs on the back of a nervous caterpillar, stood fast before the gate. More than a few looked distinctly unhappy-nervous, fearful. They didn’t know how long they were supposed to stand there or under what circumstances they could begin allowing people to pass through the gate.
Once Ocyrhoe realized she and Ferenc couldn’t simply walk out of the city, she examined the mob and the guards more carefully, listening and looking for some opening, a gap, a weakness through which they might pass. Not out. Not through…ah, yes…
“We can use this,” she signed to Ferenc, dragging him away from the edge of the mob. They slipped into the back alleys, winding ever closer to the wall of Rome itself. Gradually, the district became more and more residential, more quiet and deserted, but the guards who might otherwise have been patrolling were absent-no doubt called to the gate as reinforcements against the riot that would eventually erupt. Whatever had stricken the marketplace near the Coliseum would sweep through the crowd at the gate, sooner rather than later. Judging by the number of guards and their somewhat fearful presentation, they were well aware of the oncoming storm.
Eventually, she found what she was looking for-the wall itself. Maybe three stories high, the wall around Rome had been built to keep people out, not in. In some places, it was possible to clamber to the top by way of dirt that had been piled against the inner side. They weren’t so lucky here, and they didn’t have the time to find such an easy method of escape. The wall was made of rough volcanic rock, knotted and twisted with all manner of hand and toeholds. It shouldn’t be too hard to climb-as long as they weren’t seen.