She stared at the little circles, willing them to speech. Three had come to life today, two in the afternoon and one at dusk, when she'd been gone to supper. Initiate brothers had taken each one off to their cells, where they sat with quills and paper ready to take note of important secrets. She trusted the brothers were all staying awake, too. But anyway, Thur had still been alive and free at dusk.
She stifled a yawn; if Monreale glanced in and saw her fading, he would send her to bed, and she might miss the next word from Thur. Why didn't the big fool think to speak into the ear-tambourines when he activated them and report on himself? She gritted her teeth on her next yawn. The white parchment circles swam before her eyes.
Then, without other warning, one—flared, Fiametta supposed she must describe it, though it was not an effect she saw with her eyes. She took a deep breath of anticipation and sat up straight. Thur's voice, whispering his badly accented Latin, drifted up from the tambourine to her straining ear. Talk to me, Thur! But there followed only a scraping sound, as of a jar shoved across a shelf. Footsteps crossed a stone floor, then a sad, meditative silence fell. Desperately, Fiametta tried to generate a picture in her mind from the mere sound. Stone floor, harsh echoes: a stone chamber? Rock walls—the Duke's dungeon? True intuition, or self-delusion? Her hand pulled at the thong around her neck, drew the lion ring from its warm hiding place between her breasts, and closed over it. What was Thur seeing? Talk, you Swiss lout!
But the deep buzz of a voice that came suddenly from the tambourine was not Thur's. She could not make out words. A tenor laugh followed, then a muffled clatter, hasty steps, a clunk and a clack. Words rang in her mind that did not come through her ear— Down, boy! She stiffened in panic. Papa? The sound of a door opening, then, and a stranger's light voice: "Do you smell hot wax, my lord?"
My lord? Where was Thur? Had he fled? Her heart hammered.
"From your lantern, Niccolo." The bored bass voice was Lord Ferrante's; his Romagnan accent was distinctive.
She heard an odd muffled thunk, as of something heavy being placed on a wooden table. "I think not, returned—Niccolo's?—voice. "These candles are warm." Then, "Ow!" A scuffle of slippers, as of a sudden recoil.
"Did you do that, Niccolo?" asked Ferrante in an interested tone.
"No!"
Ferrante laughed unkindly. "Beneforte is playing his little tricks again." His voice went mocking; Fiametta's imagination supplied a sweeping, ironic bow. "Thank you, my servant, for lighting my way."
A sucking sound—burned fingers being licked? "He's not our servant yet," growled Niccolo.
"Abbot Monreale," Fiametta whispered frantically, then reminded herself that sound only flowed one way through the little ear-and-mouth sets—could that be altered?—"Father Monreale!" she shouted. "Come quick! It's Lord Ferrante himself!"
Monreale hurried through the door from his adjoining office, followed, after a scrape and crash of a chair falling and being righted again, by Brother Ambrose, still clutching his inky quill. They bent over the tray of tambourines.
"Are you sure?" asked Monreale.
"I remember his voice from the banquet. I don't know the other man's voice, though. Ferrante calls him Niccolo. I think they are in a chamber beneath the castle."
"Ambrose, take over." Monreale nodded toward the mouth-tambourine.
I can enspell it as well as he can, Father! Fiametta, wrenched, held her tongue, and passed the spell-keeping to Ambrose. His lips moved silently a moment, then he settled in.
Ferrante's voice asked, "How much more dare we strengthen him, then, before I do control him?"
Niccolo replied grumpily, "He must be fed. And the very feeding brings him nearer to us. It's under control. I admit, I wish we could find his own damned notes on spirit rings. We could catch him by his own magic most finely. But he can't know that much more than I do. Well have him under our thumb soon enough."
"None too soon for me. I've had about enough of this midnight skulking." Ferrante spat, eloquently.
"Great works require some sacrifices, my lord. Hang the three bags on those hooks. Take care with the leather one."
"To be sure."
Rustling noises followed, as the two men arranged whatever mysterious burdens they had been carrying. Abbot Monreale's eyes narrowed, and his lips parted in concentration, like Fiametta trying to guess' at actions from their sounds. "Talk some more, blast you," he muttered under his breath.
"Oh, for a dove now," mourned Ambrose.
"They would not fly in the dark. And there's no time to launch a bat, nor could it see or hear much more than this. Sh!" Monreale waved him to silence as the tambourine spoke again.
"Well," said Ferrante's voice. "Shall we conjure Beneforte now, and compel him to tell us the secret of this saltcellar of his?"
"I'm certain I understand the secret of the salt, my lord. Our trials with the animals and the prisoner were most convincing. Alone, its ability to detect poison would make it a treasure for your table, but its ability to purify as well—pure genius!"
"Fine and good. But I do not understand the secret of the pepper. And I am not inclined to trust my life to something that holds secrets from me. Salt is white and pepper is black. What more logical than that the salt embodies a white magic and the pepper a black?"
"Slander!" Fiametta hissed. "Fool! Does he think Papa would—" Monreale's hand on her shoulder tightened, and she swallowed her outrage.
"Possibly," allowed Niccolo. "Beneforte would have had to smuggle it past inspection by that prig Monreale, though."
"Monreale should have been an Inquisitor. He has the long nose for it."
"He lacks the stomach for it."
"So he would have men believe," said Ferrante sourly.
"I know that voice," muttered Monreale by Fiametta's ear. "Niccolo. Niccolo what?"
Ambrose offered, "Lord Ferrante has a secretary named Niccolo Vitelli, Father. He's said to be Ferrante's shadow. I was told he's been in Ferrante's employ for about four years. Ferrante's men are wary of him—I thought it was for his slyness, but now it seems there's more to it."
Monreale shook his head. "That's not what I ... But I suppose this Vitelli could be the reason that Ferrante, who was never rumored to have any use for magic in his condottiere days, seems to be up to his ears in it now.
"The pepper did no harm to the animals." Lord Ferrante's voice came persuasively from the parchment.
"Of course not," Fiametta muttered. "They have no power of speech."
"—and the spell engraved on the bottom of the saltcellar worked fine for the salt," Ferrante continued. "The second one must work for the pepper. I think we should try it again, upon a subject more capable of reporting subtle effects than Lady Julia's lap dog."
"We?" said Vitelli in a suspicious tone.
"I will speak the spell," said Lord Ferrante, "and you shall place the pepper on your tongue. But don't swallow it."
"I see." An unenthusiastic silence was followed by a "very well. Let's get it over with. There are more urgent tasks waiting tonight."
Now Fiametta could picture the chinks and thunks as Ferrante squinting at the bottom of her father's saltcellar by candlelight, returning it to its ebony base, and installing a bit of pepper in the little Greek temple under the golden goddess's hand. In a rapid whisper, she interpreted the sounds for Monreale and Ambrose. Sure enough, Ferrante's voice soon intoned the Latin prayer of the pepper-spell.