"I'd rather have the Swiss anyway," Ferrante remarked in a brighter tone. "He's not such a tricksy weasel as the Florentine. As a soldier, he will doubtless understand obedience better."
"Perhaps I should keep the mage's ring, then," suggested Vitelli, in a casual tone that did not quite hide an eager quaver. "There are two rings, two of us—it would be difficult for you to manage both."
Said Lord Ferrante distantly, "No, I don't think so."
The silence after that was distinctly sticky, till Vitelli broke it with a curt, "Let us be done. If you will take down the leather bag with the adder, my lord."
The next noises were very hard to interpret, until Vitelli said, "Are you quite certain you have the head end pinned through the leather this time, my lord?"
"Yes," snapped Ferrante impatiently. "Open the bag and reach in. Or would you rather I did?"
"I—well, if you wish, my lord. I'll get the knot."
"Ah ... ha! Got him. Right behind the head. See him grin for you, Niccolo? Heh-heh."
"Ah—not so close, if you don't mind, my lord. His venom would be wasted on me. Come along. We're almost done for tonight, and I am weary to the bone."
Ferrante grunted reluctant agreement. A clattering sound, like pine boards being wrestled about, was followed by actions Fiametta couldn't even guess at, plus more of Vitelli's Latin, sprinkled with some Hebrew, or perhaps it was outright gibberish. Fiametta could scarcely tell.
"What are they doing now?" she asked Monreale.
"I believe it is a spell based upon the principle of contrarity." Monreale listened intently. "It seems to be quite original.... I believe they are forcing the puff adder to, er ... I'm sorry, Fiametta—bite the corpse, or the corpses. It seems to be part of the preservation spell."
More rattling about, and then, suddenly, a shout: "Watch out! It lashes—"
"Don't drop—" The rapid scuttling of feet, "Catch it!"
"You catch it!"
"It's going under the table!"
A brief silence.
"You have boots on, my lord," said Vitelli suggestively.
"They will not protect my arms, reaching under there in the dark, if that is what you are implying," said Ferrante coldly. "You reach under there for it. Or enspell it out. My little mage."
"I am exhausted with spells." Vitelli's voice sounded like it, low and slow.
Ferrante spat again, but did not deny this. After a pause he said, "Come back and clean this place up in the morning. When you can see better. Catch it then. Or perhaps by then it will have escaped, slithered under the door. Come down from there, now."
"Yes ... my lord," said Vitelli wearily.
A careful thump—Vitelli letting himself down from a tabletop?—was followed at length by a bit more rustling and rattling, footsteps, a door closing, and the grating of a key in an iron lock. Then unbroken quiet. When a nightingale warbled from outside Monreale's own workroom windows, Fiametta jumped. The candle guttered low.
Ambrose shook himself from his concentration, and went to light new candles from the old before it went out. The added illumination seemed to bring everyone back to the present. Monreale rubbed his face, grooved deep. Fiametta stretched muscles gone rigid with tension. The tambourine spoke no more; surely Thur must have somehow escaped the chamber before Ferrante and his pet sorcerer had entered. Fiametta could only be glad he could not have witnessed the dreadful abuse of his brother's corpse and spirit.
"Papa resisted that horrible offering Ferrante made ,.. didn't he, Father Monreale?"
Monreale made no immediate answer, though he gave her a small strained smile. "The two necromancers thought their effort a success," he said at last. "But they could be mistaken. Self-delusion is a common fault of those who dabble in the black arts."
Fiametta judged this weak reassurance to be the desire to comfort her, warring with honesty; Monreale being Monreale, honesty had the edge. In a way, she was glad.
Ambrose drew up a wooden chair for the abbot, and a stool for himself, and sat heavily, his brow channeled with dismay. "Who is Jacopo Sprenger, Father? Besides, apparently, Niccolo Vitelli the clerk."
Monreale settled back wearily, looking deeply disturbed. "For a moment, I thought he must be a demon himself. Till more natural explanations occurred to me.
"About ten years ago, the Order sent me to study advanced spiritual thaumaturgy at the University of Bologna, under Cardinal Cardini, that the Church might qualify me to issue licenses to such master mages as your father, Fiametta. In my college at that time was a brilliant young student from Milan named Jacopo Sprenger. He was of humble origins, but had completed his bachelor's work in the seven liberal arts, and was close to being qualified as one of the youngest doctors of theology and thaumaturgy ever. Too young, in my opinion. Brilliant, but not ... wise. That happens, sometimes." Monreale sighed.
"He was training to be an Inquisitor. Again, too heavy a burden for his age, though I fear his intellectual pride was such that he would have been the last to recognize it. He was drawn into a deep study of black witchcraft, ostensibly to aid the Inquisition as a specialist witch-smeller, to stamp out the evil of witches perverted by the service of demons. He was working on a treatise, which he meant to dedicate to the Pope, that he'd titled "The Hammer of Witches." The subject excited him greatly. Too greatly, we finally recognized—too late. He fell into the temptations of the object of his study, as wizards sometimes do; he began to actually experiment with demonology, and it soon got out of hand. Who shall guard the guardians?" Monreale stared into the candle flames, and rubbed his exhaustion-numbed face with tired hands.
"I fear I had not a little to do with the discovery of his, er, after-dark career. He was expelled, and brought to trial very quietly, so as not to damage the reputation of the school. I testified against him. But before the verdict was issued, he suicided in his cell. Swallowed a poisonous sublimate smuggled in to him—or so I was told. Now I think his body must have been carried out still alive, counterfeiting death through some combination of medical and magical means,
"A committee consisting of Cardinal Cardini, myself, and a doctor from the college of law took up the problem of his papers. Cardinal Cardini thought at first merely to put his book on the Index, until we examined it more closely. Sprenger had a hungry mind and a phenomenal memory—his accumulation of spells, anecdotes, folklore and hearsay could have filled ten volumes. But he had no sense. His style was facile, even compelling, but his scholarship was weak, his credulity unlimited, his practical understanding of real courts—the doctor of law threw up his hands. Sprenger seriously recommended that accused black witches be compelled under torture to name accomplices! I know the tortures the Holy Inquisition uses, and the sort of men that apply them—can you imagine the spate of wild accusations that would result, each triggering more arrests, more accusations—why, in a little time an entire district would be in an absolute uproar! It was all incendiary to the point of hysteria, I think it represented Sprenger—the daytime Sprenger—struggling desperately against his night-self. I recommended the book and all his notes be burned."
Ambrose, himself a scholar in a minor way, winced. Monreale spread his hands. "What would you have? Better to burn the book than the poor old hedge-witches, who in my experience—yours too, you've worked in the country districts—are nine times out of ten either mumbling old women with foggy minds, or the malice of a neighbor trying to fix blame for the death of her maltreated cow or for some perfectly natural event like a hailstorm. And the book was bad theology, to boot, ignoring the power of the name of Christ ... tremendously dangerous. We burned it all. Cardinal Cardini was not so sure, but I felt like a surgeon who had successfully stopped a gangrene through a timely amputation.