"No." He looked away from her, into the brightness. Out on the lawn, a very young kitchen cat was stalking the doves. It had big ears, gray and black striped fur, and somewhat outsized white paws. Its whiskers cocked forward and its eyes almost crossed with the intensity of its gaze. It crouched, hindquarters wriggling in earnest preparation.
Marriage. The heated softness of this girl, all his to possess? But what if ... surely Abbot Monreale would have said something if ... He blurted, "Madonna Beneforte, you're not betrothed already, are you?"
She drew back, and gave him an unsettled look. "No. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," he gabbled.
"Good," she said in a rather faint tone. She rustled to her feet and retreated around the bench. "I must go to the chapel now. Good-bye." She skittered away, out the end of the cloister.
In the grass, the cat pounced and missed. The dove burst away in a flurry of wings. The cat stared upward, tail lashing and teeth chattering, till all hope vanished over the rooftops. The cat padded off stiffly, embarrassed, and came and plunked down by Thur's feet. It looked up at him and emitted a loud and piteous meow, as if Thur could produce flightless pigeons from his pockets on demand, like a magician at a fair. Thur felt very far from being any kind of a magician at all, right now.
He picked up the cat and scratched its ears. "What would you do if you caught it, anyway, catkin, hm? The bird is bigger than you are." The cat purred ecstatically, and butted its head against Thur's hand. "There are birds in my mountains that would make a meal of you. You must grow up some more." Thur sighed.
Thur spent the rest of the morning offering minor assistances to the harried monks. He cranked the well windlass, carried water to the guards on the walls, and helped set up the trestle tables for the noon meal and take them down again afterwards.
He thought he would be too tense to sleep, but in deference to the abbot lay down on his straw bed anyway. The dormitory was cool and quiet in the warm afternoon. The next thing he knew, a monk was shaking him awake from another sweaty dream he was just as thankful not to remember. The last red rays of the sun touching the western hills fingered straightly through the window slits, orange dust motes dancing in their beams.
After an evening meal consisting mainly of fried bread with a thin sprinkling of cheese and garlic, Brother Ambrose led Thur on to the laundry to try on some clothes. They found a short padded tan jacket and real knitted hose dyed red that were large enough to fit. The clothes were not new, but had been washed fairly recently. Thur had never owned a pair of hose before, only the bias-cut leggings his mother made "loose for room to grow." He stared down at his red thighs in unease, feeling gaudy and exposed. A round red cap topped it all.
They left the laundry and passed through the maze of the monastery. Brother Ambrose paused when they came out in luminous twilight into a small courtyard at the foot of the chapel's belltower. A monk, his robe tucked up into his belt and his white legs scrambling, was clambering awkwardly down the thick ivy growing up the tower's side. He clutched a large linen bag in his teeth. Ambrose caught his breath as one sandaled foot slipped, but the climbing monk caught himselfmand completed his descent safely.
Gasping from his exertion, the monk straightened his robe and thrust the lumpy bag at Ambrose. The lumps were moving. "Here's your bag of bats. Now may I go eat?"
"Thank you, brother. That wasn't so hard, was it?"
The monk shot him a look of unbrotherly unlove. "Next time," he wheezed, "you try it. I was almost killed grabbing for them, and two bit me." He displayed minute wounds upon his fingers, squeezing them for blood to prove his assertion. "
"Sing the song, you said, 'and they'll fly right into the bag.' Ha! They did not!"
"You have to sing the spell with true loving kindness," Brother Ambrose reproved.
"For bats?" The monk's lips screwed up in outrage.
"For any of God's creatures."
"Right!" The monk sketched him a mocking salute.
"I'm going to get my supper—if there's any left— before the abbot decides he wants a bucket of centipedes." He marched away.
Brother Ambrose held the wriggling bag carefully, and led on.
Abbot Monreale's workroom was candle-lit. Fiametta sat on an upturned barrel by the center table, resting on her elbows. Thur regarded her anxiously. She looked tired, but not unhappy. The abbot paced.
"Ah. Good," he said as Ambrose and Thur entered. "Thur. I want you to look around the room and see if you notice anything new."
Baffled but willing, Thur walked around the table. The dried crocodile still grinned from its corner; if Monreale had moved his clutter about, Thur couldn't tell. "No, Father."
Monreale smiled rather triumphantly at Ambrose. "What was sitting on the table in front of Fiametta? Don't look!"
"Uh ... a tray."
"And what was on the tray?"
"I ... I can't say."
"Good." Monreale passed his hand over Thur's eyes. Thur immediately looked again.
Arranged on the tray were a dozen tiny white parchment tambourines, small enough to fit in a palm. Thur could have sworn they hadn't been there a moment ago. "Did you make them invisible, Father?" Thur picked one up and turned it over.
"No. I wish I could have. Or made them smaller, or disguised them as some other common thing. Prospero Beneforte would have thought of something cleverer, I'm sure." Monreale sighed regret. "We ran out of time for experiment. But at least they are very hard to notice. Nevertheless, when you place them, try to place them out of sight. With nothing touching or damping the membrane. They must be free to vibrate."
"What do they do?"
"They are little ears. Ears and mouths, in sympathetic pairs. What each ear hears in Montefoglia castle, its mouth will speak to a listening monk here at Saint Jerome. Since each mouth takes a monk to maintain, please try to put them where something important is likely to be said, eh?"
"I'll try, Father. How long do they last?"
"Only a day or so. I must seek some way to make this spell less volatile. So don't activate them until you actually place them. This is a variation of the scrying spell I use with my birds, but I've never heard of anyone attempting it without a live creature at the other end. I considered cockroaches, but they tend to scuttle away, unless they are crippled, and then they tend to die."
And Thur had thought that remark about the centipedes was a joke.
"I wonder if anyone has tried this before, and failed, or part-succeeded and kept it secret ... There is too much secrecy in this work. If all sorcerers pooled their knowledge for the common good, instead of each hugging his secrets to himself, what practical advances might be made! Even in the Church, pride and fear divide us. I've been mulling this notion for a time, but until it was suggested today to exfoliate the parchment and divide the twinned halves between ear and mouth, to harness their natural congruency, I had not solved the problem of how to get an ear to hear with life on only one side. But now the two are one, or the one is two."
"Shouldn't I carry a mouth for you to speak to me?"
"Alas, I wish you could. But you are no trained mage, to continually enspell it to speak loud enough to hear." He frowned in worry. "I hope they will span the distance. We could only try it across the cloister. I pray it will be strong enough to carry from Montefoglia Castle to Saint Jerome."
Monreale began placing half the tambourines in an old canvas carry-bag, nestled in a pile of clothes and other oddments that a foundryman looking for work might own. Gently, Ambrose hung his linen bag from a ceiling beam. Thur spoke to Fiametta.