The moment the youth appeared in the doorway, Somercotes saw a softening come over the stranger’s face, expressing a humanity that he did not know the man had in him. Rodrigo’s eyes opened wide, and his jaw went slack, but he managed to scramble to his feet without assistance. The wild-haired young man stood just inside the doorway, unsure of the situation, and regarded the ailing priest with caninelike devotion.
“Ferenc?” Rodrigo whispered and then automatically switched to a tongue the newcomer seemed to know. He staggered across the stone floor, and the young man leaped to catch him, grabbing him under the arms, both to hold him up and to embrace him. Somercotes had no difficulty imagining some great moment of bonding in their past-a battle, perhaps? He studied the interaction closely.
The youth-Ferenc, Somercotes assumed that was his name-said something to Rodrigo, his tone and body language suggesting that he was rebuking the priest for standing.
Capocci and Colonna, who had brought these strangers to Rodrigo’s chamber, exchanged astonished looks. “What bastard tongue is that?” demanded Capocci.
“It is Magyar, from Mohi,” said the other, a young girl, doubtless a ragged child of Rome. She stared at the two men with a strangely motherly expression. “Ferenc helped Father Rodrigo get to Rome-”
“To deliver a message to the Pope,” Somercotes concluded. He glanced briefly at his fellow cardinals, but they were both agreeably preoccupied with listening to the torrent of words that now came out as the boy-Ferenc, he reminded himself, noting she had said his name as well-solicitously helped the priest return to a sitting position.
“An ugly language,” Capocci observed pleasantly.
“Too many ka’s and shka’s,” Colonna said in agreement.
“What are they saying to each other?” Somercotes asked the girl.
She shook her head. “I don’t know Magyar,” she said.
“Then how do you know the boy’s story?”
“He told me,” she said and lifted her hand, wriggling her fingers without thinking. To their puzzled reaction, she lowered the hand, then pressed her lips closed.
Other than the rapidly muttered conversation between Rodrigo and the boy, there was a pause. Somercotes looked hard at the girl, who pretended not to notice. “Does the young man speak Italian?” he asked. “Latin?”
She glanced away and shook her head.
“Tell me, how do you communicate with him?” Somercotes pressed.
She clearly wished she could take back what she had said, and if Capocci hadn’t been casually blocking the door-though Somercotes knew the wily cardinal was anything but nonchalant-she might have fled the room.
Ferenc answered Somercotes’s question before she could stop him. He finished his conversation with Rodrigo, turned eagerly to the girl, and took her arm. Before she could slap his hand away, he began to squeeze and touch her wrist.
“An unusual way to communicate,” Somercotes said, bemused. She shrank back under his close scrutiny. He took a step and quickly reached to the side of her head. Ferenc’s eyes widened as the cardinal gently took hold of a long lock of the girl’s hair, which had been interwoven with thread into an irregular series of knots. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. He glanced at Ferenc, then back to the girl, and let go of her hair, his fingers curling like snakes and then thrusting out in ones, twos, threes. He looked pointedly at Ferenc-and smiled. “I did not realize males spoke such a language.”
“He doesn’t know it well,” the girl said brusquely, still not meeting his look, “and I don’t know how he learned it.”
Somercotes took a deep breath and let it out slowly. By keeping these two intruders here in secret, he could quite possibly ferret out more information about this Father Rodrigo, something more definite than the muddling ravings the priest supplied in plenty. But Somercotes felt certain he knew what the girl was and might learn soon enough who had sent her-and with that knowledge, he could think of far better uses for her.
Before he could speak, Ferenc let out a cry of delight and reached for a small bag hanging from his belt. He began to jabber away again in his native tongue, and Rodrigo-who had again slumped into a glassy-eyed stare-suddenly sat up straighter, blinked, and looked alert. As Somercotes watched, the boy reached into his satchel and pulled out a small metal object-a ring. A signet ring. An ecclesiastic signet ring-which meant the delirious priest really was a cardinal.
Ferenc handed it to Rodrigo, who took it between thumb and forefinger, staring at it as if he could not understand its significance.
The three cardinals exchanged looks; even Capocci understood now that this was serious.
“May I see that?” Somercotes asked Rodrigo, holding out his hand.
Rodrigo, confused, held it up toward Somercotes without relinquishing his hold of it.
“That is not a cardinal’s ring,” Somercotes announced, examining it. He made this pronouncement in a pleasant, casual voice, as if complimenting Rodrigo, but the words were meant for Colonna and Capocci, who nodded sagely as if they already knew this wisdom. “It is an Archbishop’s ring,” he added. “There is some story here, no doubt fascinating. Perhaps”-and here he straightened and peered at the girl again-“perhaps you can help us by filling in the details by signing to your friend there in Rankalba.”
The girl was plainly shaken by the fact he knew the esoteric name, and her instinct to flee was plain on her face, but to her credit, she mastered her fear and nodded. “He has already told me everything he knows,” she replied. “He does not know very much.”
“Tell me what he does know,” Somercotes persisted, smiling at her in a way he thought might inflict a small chill. “Something significant, worthy of an Archbishop’s ring.”
The girl swallowed hard. “Only that the priest has a message to deliver.”
“Of course, there is nobody to deliver it to,” Rodrigo said, speaking in Italian for the first time since the foursome had pounded on the door for entrance. “I am a word lost in the empty air. I am a seed thrown on stones.”
“Ah,” Somercotes said appreciatively. “A messenger stuck forever with his message and no one to receive it.”
Somercotes turned his attention back to the pale, narrow-shouldered girl. “Speaking of messengers…” he said and lifted his eyebrows. The girl looked away, then back, with a faint but noticeable spark of defiance. In reward for this show of character, he gave her a reassuring smile. “If you are what I think you are,” he said in a low, confident tone, “then I have an assignment for you. A true message to deliver. A message that will definitely be heard.”
She lowered her gaze. Somercotes waited patiently for her to answer.
“Give me the message,” she said finally, looking him squarely in the eye.
Capocci and Colonna watched them both with mild curiosity. Ferenc’s attention was on Rodrigo, who was slipping once again into a fog of confusion. “The word who spins in the air, the dove who is a buzzard who is a dove…” Rodrigo muttered. “The flies that buzz God’s song, mosquitoes humming along…”
“The recipient of this message,” Somercotes said delicately, crossing himself, “is His Majesty King Frederick, the Holy Roman Emperor. If you cannot gain an audience, you may deliver it to any commander in his army, which is camped just outside the walls of Rome.”
The girl kept her face calm. “And what is the message?” she asked.
“The message is quite literally this,” Somercotes said, with a sweeping gesture all around them. “This place. The fact of this imprisonment by Senator Orsini, the location of the Septizodium. Whatever route you took to break in here, show someone, and bring them back here with you.”