She realized her affection for him went deeper than the simple love one had for an attentive pet.
When they finished eating, the page boys took away all the dishes, and they were left alone with a guard standing outside the tent. Dimly Ocyrhoe could hear the joyless sounds of camp life going on around them, and the light outside the open tent flap finally softened to an amber tint. A page boy came in and lit the lantern, and a hint of cool air began to circulate through the tent.
“Lena?” Ferenc asked and Ocyrhoe almost jumped; he had been silent so long.
“She wanted to find a Magyar speaker,” she said, and then signed on his arm. “She wants to talk to you.”
“About my mother,” Ferenc signed back, and gave her a questioning look. When she nodded, he signed, “My mother is dead.”
Ocyrhoe grimaced and patted the back of his hand. “Mine too,” she sighed.
“She was killed by the invaders,” Ferenc added.
Ocyrhoe snapped out of her maudlin remembrance of Auntie coaching her on how to use the needle and thread. “The invaders,” she signed. “The invaders who also made your priest body-sick and mind-sick.”
Ferenc nodded.
Her life, her focus, had always been about the city of Rome. She knew there were lands beyond; Auntie had taken her to another woman’s house on occasion to look at maps, and Auntie had wanted her to memorize them, but she had always found it so hard to make sense of the jagged lines. She knew that Binders were sent to other places, like the ones named on these maps, but she was a child of Rome, and there was always so much happening there. Her attention had never had occasion to wander far, and recent events seemed so enormously significant: the death of the Pope, the incarceration of the Cardinals, the destruction of the Binder network, the Emperor’s blockade of the city. What could possibly be more significant? Even the worried murmurs in the marketplaces about vicious, keen-eyed invaders from the East seemed so distant and so… unimportant. The threat of these Mongols was only something that strangers visiting from far-off places concerned themselves with.
But the Mongols had destroyed Ferenc’s life, and Ferenc was not a stranger.
Ferenc touched her cheek, and she started. “You are staring at me,” he signed, a self-conscious, slightly lopsided smile tugging at his mouth.
“Sorry,” she signed hurriedly. “I am sad for you.”
At that moment, there was a movement by the tent flap, and they both scrambled to their feet. Ferenc looked embarrassed, and she thought it was not entirely because he hadn’t noticed the approach of all the people who were streaming into the tent.
First two heavily armed young men entered, wearing livery that featured a black eagle with widespread wings on the chest. After them came Lena and the commander. They were followed by a striking-looking man who was pale-skinned, pale-eyed, and nearly bald. The hair he did have-which covered much of his face and his bare arms-was a vivid reddish color. His tunic was far more ornate than those of the other men, and the entire front of it was covered with an image of the same black eagle, which gleamed with iridescence. After him came several more well-dressed men, all ruddy and tall, and all with the eagle insignia somewhere on their person; these were followed by two more armed guards.
The group, a dozen in all, entered formally, and took a seemingly ceremonial stance just inside the tent flap. Lena stepped forward and gestured for them to come closer. Ocyrhoe stepped forward cautiously, Ferenc behind her, a protective and reassuring hand resting on her narrow shoulder.
Ocyrhoe wondered who the man with the red hair was. He was ugly, in part because he was squinting, as if he could not see well. He looked stern, but not cruel. She had already met the commander; perhaps he was a general? Would he be leading the soldiers back to the Septizodium when they went?
“Ocyrhoe,” Lena said, “I have the honor of presenting you to the Wonder of the World, Frederick Hohenstaufen, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and King of Germany, Burgundy, and Sicily.”
Ocyrhoe recovered from her surprise, and gazed upon the man with respect, which she was sure he could tell from her gaze. But Lena said sharply, “You are to bow to him.”
Ocyrhoe hurriedly did so, and felt Ferenc do likewise behind her. “Your Majesty,” Ocyrhoe said. Ferenc made an earnest attempt to imitate the sounds of her address, but ended up mumbling nonsense syllables.
Frederick chuckled. “You are the first goddamned Roman who has bowed to me in months,” he said to the top of Ocyrhoe’s head; he spoke with a heavy accent, but she could understand him clearly. There was a pause, during which nobody spoke or moved. “It’s all right, you may stand up now,” he said at last, still to the top of her head.
Ocyrhoe straightened. “It is an honor to meet Your Majesty,” she said, wondering if his cursing was intended to frighten or intimidate her. Ferenc, behind her, had straightened as well; she was grateful that he made no attempt to imitate her words again.
“I have heard Somercotes’s message,” Frederick said.
Wanting to demonstrate her professionalism, Ocyrhoe quickly put her hand to her heart and declared, “Thus delivered of my message, I am like the fox, here unbound and unencumbered.”
Lena’s lips tugged back in an almost motherly smile. Frederick, as if he had not heard her, continued on, “Lena has informed me of what has transpired in your city, and it saddens me that Senator Orsini-what did you call him? The Bear? Yes, it saddens me that the Bear has treated his innocent people so monstrously. Whatever grievance you have with the Senator, I too share.”
Binders bear no grudges, she heard Varinia’s voice recite in her mind. Binders bear nothing but messages and knowledge. She opened her mouth to say it aloud, but Frederick seemed to not require a response from her. “Jesus Christ. I am sure you’d take as much satisfaction as I would in my men destroying that goddamned Orsini and tearing down his whole goddamned palace, but I cannot indulge the impulse. Why are you gaping at me?”
Ocyrhoe blinked, and looked at the ground to recover her composure. He spoke like the other children who ran wild in the alleys and tumbledown hovels of Rome. She’d never heard anyone in good clothing use such foul language-and he did it so casually. She had never wasted much imagination anticipating how an Emperor might behave, but she assumed his demeanor should resemble the Pope’s, and Frederick’s most certainly did not.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” she said, and looked up again. “I am to return with your response to my message, and I am uncertain of…” She found herself struggling to find the right words. He isn’t a street rat; think of the ways Auntie and Melia taught you to speak. “I only wish to be certain of your reply.”
“Oh, I’ll reply,” Frederick said with a huff of bitter laughter. “You better damn well believe I’ll reply. But not the way he asked me to. If I send soldiers in there to storm the Septizodium, the Church will accuse me of all sorts of goddamned abominations, and as soon as they’ve gotten their new false idol on the throne of Saint Peter, he’ll only continue to blather at me the same way his predecessor did. Perhaps, instead of simply excommunicating me, they’ll put my entire empire under interdiction.” He started to pace about the tent, and his attendants shuffled closer to the canvas walls to give him space. “Not that I give a shit about that, of course, but my nobles tend to twist their hands like frantic ladies when the subject of eternal damnation comes up. They are like pustules on my ass, even when things are going well.”