Page 57

Seventeen

S anchia was sitting on the steps of the chapel, her head resting back against the stone wall, when Damari rode into the courtyard.

The setting sun was behind him, and at first he appeared only as a squat, dark figure against the blood-red orb. Then, as he drew closer, she recognized him, but oddly felt not the least surprised. It seemed fitting that he should be here in this place of death and sorrow.

“Ah, Sanchia, how pleasant it is to see you.” Damari swung down from his horse. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t come any closer. It’s only wise to take certain precautions. Tell me, do you have the disease as yet?”

“Probably.” Sanchia shook her head wearily. “I don’t know.”

“And the Lady Caterina?”

“Dead. Yesterday.” She paused. “I think it was yesterday. They’re all dead. Marco, Bianca…Piero.”

He nodded. “Excellent. I was hoping the lady had been taken. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business inside the castle, I’ll rejoin you shortly.”

He crossed the courtyard and went briskly up the stone steps and into the castle.

Sanchia leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.

She should probably go back down to the piazza and see if any more victims had been brought to the cathedral.

She would go soon, but it was comforting to sit there next to the chapel.

She didn’t feel so alone when she was this close to Caterina and Piero.

“Wake up and bid me good-bye, Sanchia.”

She opened her eyes to see Damari tying a familiar mahogany chest on the hindquarters of his stallion. The Wind Dancer.

“You see I have it again. I told you I’d get it back.”

He seemed absurdly pleased, she thought with vague surprise. Did he think the loss of the statue mattered now?

“You didn’t believe me, did you?” He glanced up as he tightened the rope. “I’m truly glad you’re here to see my triumph. I was afraid there would be no one left alive to appreciate my cleverness.”

“No one is alive.”

“Well, you’re half alive. That will do.” He smiled. “Tell me, did the boy die at once? I thought he was ill when my men put him in the wagon.”

Piero. He was talking about Piero. “Not right away.” She managed to focus on what he was saying. “It was you who took Piero?”

“One of my men, actually. It was truly a brilliant plan. It had come to my ears that the plague had attacked a tiny coastal village not far from Solinari and it was only necessary that we spread the disease here. Now who would make a better carrier than the child you had taken to your bosom? My informant had already told me that both you and the child were here at the castle. We had only to steal the child, smuggle him out of the city, and transport him to Fontana. We kept him in the charnel house there for two days, making sure he was properly exposed to the disease.”

It was Damari who was the monster of death. The horror of his words pierced her apathy and exhaustion. She gasped. “How could anyone do such an evil thing?”

“Of course, it was necessary to conduct the plan with the most exquisite precision and timing,” Damari went on calmly.

“I returned to Pisa to raid Andreas’s shipyard and draw him and a goodly portion of his men from Mandara.

Then I sent two of my men with the wagon and orders to abandon it a few miles from the city gates.

After the raid I had to bring my men back here to stop those who were fleeing the city. ”

“Fleeing…”

“But of course. The disease couldn’t be allowed to spread.

Borgia and His Holiness were afraid there would be an outcry if the disease were carried into another city.

” He smiled. “I assured them that wouldn’t happen, so I waited in the hills and when the scared rabbits came streaming out of the city we eliminated them with a barrage of arrows.

I had to be careful to keep my men at a distance.

Those who I find it necessary to bring close to the plague will also have to be eliminated. ”

“But you’re here now.”

“Ah, but I’m not afraid of the disease.” He rubbed his pitted cheek.

“If I was meant to die of any disease, the pox would have gotten me when I was a child and that Lady bitch persuaded her husband to send my mother and me away from Mandara to a pox-ridden village. No, I was spared to do great things, to lead armies, to create kingdoms.”

Sanchia shook her head. “You’ll die here, like all the rest. Everyone dies here.”

For a moment an expression of uneasiness crossed Damari’s face because of the certainty in her tone. “Not me. I have another fate awaiting me.” He gave a final tug to the rope and swung onto the saddle. “Do you smell the smoke yet?”

“No.”

“I do.” He lifted his head and sniffed. “I set fire to the castle and to the gardens. My men are torching the city now. Another precaution His Holiness insisted on my taking. Naturally, we torched the village of Fontana after we took the boy from the charnel house.”

“Lion…”

“You’re wondering why I let Andreas leave when he too might have become infected?

” He shrugged. “I had to accept the risk. I had to draw his forces away so I could be sure of walking into the castle unopposed. If he does carry the plague elsewhere, we’ll merely put out a story that he fled in terror from the disease and it was his fault the sickness was brought to more innocents.

” He smiled. “I will, of course, now proceed back to Solinari and dispose of him at my leisure.”

As he gazed down at her a flicker of regret passed over his face.

“I’d really like to take you with me. I quite enjoyed our time together in the dungeon.

It’s not often that one runs across a woman with the courage and endurance you possess.

I had promised myself another such experience after Andreas took you from me.

” He shook his head. “Too bad. But Borgia would be most irate if he learned I’d let anyone live who knew of his and his father’s involvement. ”

“You’re going to kill me?”

“I’ve already Killed you,” Damari said. “I was merely considering resurrecting you for a few day’s amusement. Good-bye, Sanchia. If you’re fortunate, the fire may end your life before the plague does. I hear the plague gives a very painful death.”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes again, trying not to see the pictures his words brought to mind. “Yes, it’s very painful.”

She heard the clatter of Damari’s horse’s hooves on the flagstones as he left the courtyard. A moment later the first acrid wisp of smoke drifted to her nostrils.

They came upon the first dead seven miles from Mandara.

Lion looked down at the body of a child of perhaps eight years crumpled in the road beside a wagon. An arrow had pierced her narrow chest, pinning her to the wood of the wagon wheel.

Lorenzo reined in beside him. “A man, a woman, and two more children are lying farther down the road.”

“Arrows?”

Lorenzo nodded. “The wagon is piled high with furniture and household goods. It looks as though everything was tossed into the wagon with great speed. They obviously left the city in a hurry with no intention of returning.”

“And were waylaid and murdered.” Lion looked away from the child lying against the wagon wheel. “Women and children too. Nothing appears to have been stolen. Why would they have been murdered?”

“Shall I order them buried?”

“No.” Lion turned his horse. “Later. We have to find out why they were running from Mandara. Hurry.”

They came upon two more bodies a mile down the road and then an entire family butchered a quarter of a mile farther. After that, Lion stopped counting the dead that littered the road and gullies and spurred on toward Mandara.

They first saw the glow lighting the night sky as they left the foothills.

Lion heard Lorenzo’s harsh imprecation but couldn’t tear his gaze from the macabre, obscene beauty of the sight before him.

“Mandara.” Lorenzo gazed stonily at the burning city in the distance.

Lion heard the shocked murmur of the men riding behind him. They had wives, friends, families in that inferno just as he did, he thought dully. Sanchia, his mother, Marco, Bianca…

“Caterina,” Lorenzo said hoarsely. “There have to be prisoners.”

Lion felt a spring of hope. Lorenzo was right. None of them had to be in the burning city. He spurred forward and put Tabron into a dead run.

“Lion,” Lorenzo shouted above the thunder of the horse’s hooves. “If it was Damari, where’s the condotti?”

The same thing was bothering Lion. On this level plain the torches and movement of an attacking army should clearly be visible. There was nothing. No army. No horses. No catapults or other war machines. Nothing.

Nothing but Mandara being devoured by flames.

Lion saw Sanchia when they were within three miles of the city.

She was plodding slowly, blindly down the road and, if the illumination from the burning Mandara had not lit the countryside with unusual clarity, the troop would have ridden her into the ground.

“Sanchia!” Lion held up his hand to halt the troop and reined in Tabron. “Dio , what’s happened here?”

She didn’t seem to hear him. She Kept walking, her gaze fixed on something he couldn’t see. Her brown velvet gown was torn, filthy, her hair a wild tangle of grease and soot.

“Sanchia.” Lion dismounted and strode toward her. “Are you hurt?”

She kept plodding forward.

Lion stopped before her and grasped her shoulders. “Santa Maria , answer me. Are you hurt?”

Her blank gaze finally focused on his face. “Lion?” she whispered. “I thought you were dead. I thought everyone was dead but Damari. It’s not right that he should live, you know. He shouldn’t be allowed to live when everyone else in the world is dead.”

“Everyone isn’t dead, Sanchia. You’re alive.”

She looked at him in wonder. “No, I’m not. Damari killed me just as he did everyone else. Caterina, Marco, Piero, Bianca.”

Agony tore through him as his gaze went over her head to Mandara. “All dead?”

“Of course,” she said, surprised that he should ask. “Everyone is dead.”