Never, you bastard. "If I work steadily through the day, my lord, I might have the furnace built by sundown. Then it must be lined with clay, and the clay dried and fired."
"Could you do that tonight?"
"I could, but to fire it while still damp risks cracking."
"Mm. Risk it," Ferrante ordered, with a quick glance at the sun. Time bit at his heels too, it seemed.
"There's still the bombast mold to make, my lord. The furnace may as well dry slowly while that's being done."
"Ah. Yes." Ferrante frowned at the brickwork, his face abstracted. Was he seeing, in his mind's eye, his bombast battering down the walls of Saint Jerome? And then what? The breach in the wall fought for, taken; monks and Sandrino's soldiers slain. Women—Fiametta, God!—tormented, refugees chased from corners, put to the sword while crying futilely for sanctuary in the chapel? Would Fiametta be among them? Surely she would fight like a cat, and be killed for it, not prettily. Thur did not think Fiametta had the knack of surrendering. A frightened Ascanio dragged out from under the prior's bed to have his throat slit ... like Pica's boy. Though neither guards nor stone walls had defended Zilio. Not that it seemed to alter the end result.
Killing them would do it.
Thur was alone beside Ferrante. His knife in its sheath on his belt pressed against the small of his back like a compelling hand. What more chance do you want than this? Ferrante wore mail, true, but his neck was bare as ... as a boy's. But could Thur escape, afterwards? Over the stable gate, say, out through the entry court, before the alarm went up? An image of the black-mouthed cavalryman's lance driving between his shoulder blades as he fled down the road made Thur's muscles stiffen. He did not want to die, on this bright morning. Maybe Ferrante did not want to the either. This isn't my calling. I came to Montefoglia to make beautiful things out of metal, not corpses out of living men. Oh, God.
Thur stood up.
But Ferrante had already turned away, and was striding back to the Duchess. Another chance lost. Right or wrong? Did angels weep, or devils gnash their teeth? Thur bent and worked around his brick pile to keep Ferrante in sight, straining his ears to catch the next words.
"We can yet arrange things, my lady, in good public form," Ferrante continued to the Duchess, his voice and temper controlled again. "Sandrino's death was an accident. He fell on the knife in a scuffling fall. We had both drunk too much unwatered wine at the banquet. My lieutenant misunderstood the situation."
"We all know those are lies," said Letitia flatly.
"But we are the only ones who know," Ferrante argued smoothly, after a glance at Lady Pia's stone face apparently convinced him denial would be fruitless. "If we all say otherwise, why then, so it will be, as far as any outsiders know. You can save your family's honor and position, in this awkward event. If I wed Julia, and become Ascanio's guardian, why, it will be clear to all that Sandrino's unfortunate death was an accident. You lose nothing, not even your home, and gain a protector in me."
"So you can go on to cheat my son out of his patrimony? So you can murder him at your leisure?"
"I could murder him at my pleasure right now!" Ferrante snapped. "Give me credit! I am trying to save you all!"
"You are merely trying to save yourself. From the just retribution that must fall on your head, if God has not abandoned the world altogether!"
Ferrante's nostrils flared, but he reaffixed the smile that had slid from his face. "I'm not inhuman. I desire your goodwill. See, I have even brought you your rosary that you asked for. My men and I are not the thieves you accuse us of being." He pulled a string of polished black beads from his purse, and held them out just beyond her reach.
Letitia Mined pale, controlled her hand in mid-snatch, and accepted the gift with a small curtsey. "Thank you, my lord," she stammered. "You can't know what these mean to me."
"I think I do," smiled Ferrante. She drew the beads through her soft white hands, came to the end—a black bead stopped with a gold flange—hastily reversed the string, and came to tine other end, also a plain black bead. Her face came up, wide-eyed with anger, as Ferrante held up a small carved ivory ball between his thumb and finger. "Do you seek this?" he inquired sweetly.
"Give me—" Letitia surged forward in a hiss of silk, then stood still, hands clenched to her sides.
"A very interesting object, this. I've had Vitelli examine it thoroughly."
Lady Pia crossed her crocus-sleeved arms tightly under her breasts, but remained standing sturdily behind the Duchess.
"A fascinating spell," Ferrante went on, hugely ironic. "A way for a woman to kill a man many times stronger than herself. A poison that is neither food nor drink, against which my saltcellar would be quite useless. The woman holds the poison locked in this little ivory ball, under her tongue. Then she induces the man who is her enemy to kiss her. Was that task to be yours, or Julia's? Or Lady Pia's, here? A pretty scene, to be seducing me while her husband lies imprisoned below her very feet. She whispers the word which unlocks the ball, and breathes into her unsuspecting lover's mouth. The poison flows into him in the form of a snake made of smoke. He dies strangled, unable to breathe. I suppose she must take care not to inhale while this operation is in progress, eh?" His fist closed around the ivory sphere.
"If ever a man deserved such a death, it is you," hissed Lady Pia.
"Oh, were you to have been my executioner?" purred Ferrante. "I'll remember that. But no. When you add this to the evidence of a very curious painted cabinet, kept locked in your boudoir, my lady Letitia, it seems to me a very convincing charge of black witchcraft and poisoning might be got up against you. Think on that."
"By you? You hypocrite! God cleave your lying tongue!'
"One would think God is your personal bravo, the way you call on him," snarled Ferrante sarcastically. "You keep your secrets well. I had no hint before this that you had a talent for the black arts. But this," he rolled the little ball between his fingers, "is quite a pretty piece of work."
"I didn't make it," denied Letitia.
"Then however did you come by it?"
"I had it from a girl who burned for it. She had it from a Moorish magician in Venice. She had used it to kill her unfaithful lover. I visited her in her cell, the night before her execution, for mercy and our Lord Jesus's sake. The Inquisitor himself, for all his hot irons, never found out how she did it, but she confessed it to me. She gave it to me. I kept it for ... a curiosity. To make such a thing is quite beyond my power." Letitia pressed her lips tightly together.
"You must of course say so. But look at it from my point of view. A man who has his mother-in-law privately strangled must expect harsh social disapproval from her numerous cousins, however much envious men may secretly applaud the deed. But a pious fellow who has her publicly burned for black witchcraft against his life can only gain solemn sympathy."
"Judicial murder," said Letitia frozenly, "is murder still." Lady Pia was pale, breathless.
"But my hands wUl not be stained with it, eh? And hasn't there been enough murder in Montefoglia? Come, my lady. Let us cry peace. Today, I ask humbly, and grant you the dignity of free compliance." Ferrante s effort at goodwill was brightly strained.
Letitia turned Tier face away. ' I have the headache. You have kept me too long in the sun."
Ferrante's voice hardened. "Tomorrow I shall have the means to compel cooperation. And you'll wish you'd struck your best bargain while you could."