Monreale nodded, and bent his head close. The voice rilled on until Thur appeared with a stiff, gauze-swathed shape, on a makeshift bier that looked like the lid of a pine crate. Monreale blessed the rain-shape, then turned to duplicate the rites upon the not-quite-abandoned body.
Fiametta crept to the rain man's side, and asked tremulously, "Did we cast it well, Papa? Your great Perseus?"
"An awful risk, for a couple of beginners—" he began, then stopped his critique in mid-word. He tilted his hat down at her, curiously, as if he were really seeing her for the first time, and half-smiled. "Well enough."
Only well enough? Well ... that was Papa.
He added, "Marry the Swiss boy if you will, he's an honest young lout who will not betray you. You will not do better for any money. Speaking of money, Ruberta is to be given one hundred ducats, it is listed in my will, Lorenzetti the notary has it. Good-bye, be good—" His form wavered as the dark mannikin raged within. "And Fiametta, if you can't be good, at least be more careful!"
He turned to Monreale. "Father, your sermon is wearing off. Speed us. While I can still will to hold him."
"Go with God, my friend," whispered Monreale, and made the last sign of blessing.
The rain fell. And then there was nothing there at all.
Thur raised his hands in supplication to Monreale. "Father. Spare a blessing for Uri? My brother?"
Monreale blinked, and seemed to come back to himself. "Of course, boy." He turned awkwardly, almost stumbling; Thur caught his arm. Together, they inspected the statue. It was solidified in the pose in which it had first been cast, but the tiny glimmer of intelligence yet lingered, dimming, in its eyes. What sensations did that metal body bear him? The very heat that animated it made it impossible for Uri to embrace his brother, or kiss Fiametta good-bye.
Fiametta, on her knees, prayed for strength, and murmured "Piro!" one last time. Only the bronze lips flushed dark red.
"Father, bless me, for I have sinned," the hollow voice whispered like the faintest flute. "Though not nearly as much as I would have liked."
The corner of Monreale's mouth flicked up, but he murmured, "Don't joke. It wastes your little time."
"All my little time was wasted, Father," the fading voice sighed.
Monreale bent his head in acknowledgement. "Tis a fair complete confession. Do not despair, for it is a sin. Hope, boy."
"Shall I hope to rest? I am so tired...."
"You shall rest most perfectly." By the time Monreale's hands had passed, nothing stood before them but a lifeless casting.
Not quite as it was first cast, Fiametta realized, looking up. The bland Greek face had not returned. Instead Uri's own distinct, alert, imperfect features were stamped permanently upon the bronze. There was even a touch of humor about the curve of the lips, most alien to the classic original.
And, she saw with a shiver, the Medusa's face too had changed. Black-browed Vitelli had the immortality he'd craved. Of a sort.
Chapter Nineteen
Thur held his palm near the statue's face. The bronze, though no longer glowing with its own light, was still too hot to touch. But Uri was no longer there to touch even if Thur could. The streaming rain would cool the metal soon enough. Thur raised his face to the sky, and let the cold drops mix with the hot ones from his eyes, disguising his grief before all these strangers. Their world would know Uri no more, would soon forget that he'd ever lived or laughed. But I swear I will remember.
When he'd blinked his vision clear, Thur saw that soldiers, Montefoglian soldiers, were arriving through the ruined gates. A couple of them pointed at the statue in startled recognition of their late captain's features, but then hurried about their work. Fiametta stood in the scintillating rain looking small, and exhausted, and very wet, her crinkly black curls escaping her braid only to be plastered flat to her skin. Thur wanted to offer her a cloak, but he himself possessed only the sodden old robe turned down around his loins. He rucked it back up over his shoulders and stood barefoot in the puddles and shivered, partly from cold, partly from reaction.
Fiametta turned her wan face to Monreale. "How did you come here, Father? When they carried you off to the infirmary at Saint Jerome under Vitelli's spell, you were lying almost as pale and still as a dead man yourself. Brother Mario wouldn't let me see you."
Monreale hung on his crozier, his sandaled feet apart. He tore his pensive gaze from the cooling bronze. "The spell was broken late yesterday evening. Was that your doing, Thur?"
"I ... think it may have been, Father. I did not know for sure what spell was broken, but it distracted Vitelli when I swept a spell-set from the table. It was just before I escaped from the castle dungeon with my brother's body."
"Indeed," said Monreale. "I woke, but I was very sick. Hie healers kept me abed until morning, when I finally regained enough strength to ride over them. It was not until afternoon that I discovered you were gone from Saint Jerome, Fiametta, and no one seemed to know for how long. I sent out my birds, but could learn little except that Vitelli and Ferrante were not abroad, and Thur was not yet hanging by his neck from the castle tower.
"Sandrino's officers and I agreed we must attack, try as we'd planned yesterday. But I decided I must close the distance before attempting to grapple again with Vitelli. His powers had clearly grown to an extraordinary degree. We made ready, settling on a night assault to disguise our thin numbers." Wearily, he rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes narrowed and glinted with the press of these recent memories.
"We sallied out at dark, and had a sharp fight with the besiegers that delayed us again. We finally broke through, and made for town. The soldiers needed the few horses we had, but a brother found that white one wandering among our sheep. Our remaining sheep. Is that the beast your Papa bought in Ceccnino, Fiametta? He was robbed. Well ... it saved my strength, I suppose.
"But when we all came up to the town gates, expecting a desperate battle, the Losimons were gone from them, pulled out by a mob of townsmen. So instead of leading the populace to the castle, we followed them. I had by then gained the idea that you were mounting some sort of magical attack, Fiametta, and I rode ahead as fast as I could, in great fear that Vitelli's demonic powers might indeed have grown so transcendent as to conquer death. And so it proved." Monreale vented a depressed sigh. "Not that this second-rate old man imagined himself a match for that dark power."
"Yet you came anyway," said Thur.
"Father, we would have been destroyed without you. In fact," Fiametta's brows drew down, puzzling this out, "none of us alone was a match for Vitelli. I could release Papa, but I could not hold Vitelli. Papa could hold Vitelli, but could not exorcise him. You could speed him to banishment, which thing neither Papa nor I were capable of ... but only if he were held. And we could never have entered in here at all without Uri, who would not have been made without Thur. We may all of us be lesser folk, but we were a first-rate company together."
"Huh. Monreale smiled slowly, his eyes half-lidded. "Could that be the lesson God had been trying to teach me, all this time? From the mouths of babes."
"I am not a babe," said Fiametta with some determination.
"Child, from the vantage of my half-century, you all look like babes." Monreale pulled himself up by his crozier, straightening painfully. He gazed a moment more at the bronze statue, "No. You are not a babe. And so you stand in a grown woman's danger."