A monk in the refectory was portioning out brown bread, ale, and watered wine when Thur entered. The servings were not large. It was good bread, but under the circumstances Thur hesitated to ask for more. The ale was a blessing, washing out his gummy night-dry mouth.
As soon as his voice was his own again, Thur began questioning men who looked like they might have known Uri. They welcomed him with interest for Uri's sake, and told Thur their own gruesome stories of fight and escape, but none of them had any later sight or better guess of their Swiss captain's fate than had Abbot Monreale or Fiametta. The morbid uncertainty made Thur's neck ache.
There were women in the refectory, but Fiametta was not among them. Their voices were subdued, but for one sharp female whose complaints sounded with nasal clarity, till she sat abruptly on the floor and started crying. Another woman led her away to their dormitory. Thur rubbed the lion ring, and wondered if he might approach a woman to ask after Fiametta. But as he was working up his nerve, Brother Ambrose appeared and touched him on the shoulder.
"Thur Ochs? Abbot Monreale would like to see you."
Thur licked the last stray crumbs from his fingers, drained his mug, and returned it to the hosteller. He followed Brother Ambrose.
The secretary-monk led him through a courtyard and corridors, across the cloister, and up first stone and then wooden stairs. They came out on a flat roof above the office where Thur had met the abbot last night. The buttresses of the chapel arched just to the north. A wooden dovecote occupied one end of the roof. Monreale, his hood pushed back, stood next to it. Brother Ambrose paused, signalling Thur to wait.
A speckled gray dove fluttered uneasily on the abbot's hand. Monreale seemed to be speaking to it; he touched his lips to the bird's head, then held his hand aloft. With a burbling coo and a thrumming of wings like a drumroll, the dove climbed into the sky, circled the chapel twice, then flew away to the south.
Thur and Brother Ambrose crunched across a light peppering of sun-dried guano toward the abbot, who turned at the sound of their footsteps, smiled briefly at them both, and scanned the sky.
"Have any returned yet, Father?" Brother Ambrose asked deferentially.
Monreale sighed, and shook his head. "Not one. Not one! I fear for my flock."
Ambrose nodded appreciation of the double meaning, and they both gazed southward into the pale morning blue, their hands shading their eyes. With a downward fist-closing gesture Monreale at last indicated an end to it, and led them back down the stairs to his office and through another door into an adjoining chamber.
Thur stared around in fascination. The chamber was well lit from the north through large high windows, and lined with chests and boxes for books. Shelves held a riot of brass, ceramic, and earthenware jars, colored glass bottles, and mysterious little boxes with labels in Latin. Two big worktables stood, one in the center of the room and one against a wall, strewn with clutter and stacked with papers and well-used cloth-bound notebooks. In one corner a narrow barrel held staves of various woods, and, snout up, the long stiff form of a dried and mummified crocodile, its leathery lips wrinkled back on a jaw half-emptied of teeth. Bags hung from the beams, including one of red silk netting holding a delicate tangle of papery dried shed snake-skins. A corner featured a plastered fireplace. The beehive form of a small furnace, just the size to fit in the fireplace, sat cleaned and ready for use on the slate hearth.
Brother Ambrose took a round mirror the size of a platter, framed in wood, from a cupboard and set it on the center table. Beside it he placed a small round tambourine of stretched pale parchment. Monreale cleared away clutter and placed bunches of dried herbs at the cardinal points around the two objects, murmuring under his breath in Latin. Brother Ambrose closed the window shutters, making the plaster-walled room cool and dim. Ambrose gestured Thur, hanging back in a mixture of politeness and caution, to step up to the table and watch, but put a finger to his lips to enjoin silence.
From a little blue glass flask, Monreale let one drop of a clear fluid fall to the middle of the mirror; it expanded in a bright blink to tile edges. Monreale blew on the surface, and the mirror began to glow with a light that was no reflection of anything in the room. Thur craned his neck to see, barely breathing.
A dizzy, jerky whirl of colors danced in the glass. Thur squinted, trying to make sense of what appeared at first to be yellow and orange confetti. Then he realized he was looking at tile roofs—looking down from above upon a town. The town turned in the mirror with the inhuman speed of a bird's flight. Yellow stone and brick castle walls arced into view. With a dipping swoop the view sped to the top of a castle tower men, blessedly, stopped for a moment. Thur, engrossed, swallowed a slight nausea. He caught a jerky look down into a courtyard with an elaborate marble staircase, then the tower's twin was framed in the glass.
Atop it two crossbowmen were cranking their winches, and a thin, dark, clean-shaved man in a red robe leaned on the crenellated yellow brick and pointed. Thur had to quell a startled fear that they were looking straight at him. The slight man shouted, and the cross-bowmen took aim and fired. The view jerked, turning again. Another crossbowman, behind the bird on the first tower, was much closer. Thur saw and heard his strings twang with the force of his quarrel's release, then the view in the mirror flared and went dark. Thur realized suddenly that the sound had actually come from the tambourine, but somehow his mind had attached it to the images in the mirror. Monreale grunted, like a man struck in the stomach.
"No, not another one," groaned Brother Ambrose.
Monreale's fists clenched, leaning on the tabletop. His lips pinched on words that did not sound quite like prayers. "They were waiting. They were set up and waiting," he said angrily. "Somehow, they must be able to tell my birds from the others." He turned and paced the room with an impatient stride. "Tonight I shall try bats after all. Not even Ferrante has a bowman so quick he can take a bat out of the air in the dark."
"We'll see little ourselves, in the dark," said Brother Ambrose dubiously.
"But hear better."
"Snores, mostly."
"Mostly. But if Lord Ferrante is indeed as far up to his neck in black magic as he is accused, night in the castle may be a busier time than we think."
Brother Ambrose made a wry face, crossed himself, and nodded. He went to open the shutters again.
Abbot Monreale straightened his sagging shoulders and turned to Thur with a forced smile. Monreale's face was pale and lined, the skin beneath his eyes puffy with fatigue. Thur had slept on straw and stone, and found it a penance. He began to suspect Monreale had not slept at all, and decided not to complain about his bedding.
"You've plunged me into a real dilemma, boy. You and Fiametta," Monreale observed. "Neither prayer nor reason have yet shown me the way out of it. So I pray more, and seek to give my poor weary reason some new premise to work upon. But as you see, my birds do not come back to me."
"They are magic spies?" Thur asked. The mirror reflected only the beamed ceiling now.
"They are supposed to be. They seem to be meeting the fate of spies discovered, certainly." He rubbed the deep crease between his eyes. "Ambrose, did you recognize that man in the red robe on the tower?"
"No, Father. Did you?"
"No ... that is, I feel I do. But I can't put a name to him. Perhaps I met him in a crowd, or long ago. Ah, well, it will come to me. My poor doves." Monreale turned to Thur. "I need a subtler spy. A human one. I need a volunteer. Someone whose face is not known in Montefoglia."
Thur glanced around the room. No one here but himself and Ambrose, and somehow he didn't think the abbot was addressing Ambrose.