"Count Simon!" Simon recognized the crackling voice of the contessa.
She was wearing a floor-length gown of deep purple velvet. She held up a
disk-shaped bronze medallion on a silver chain.
"Please take this, my young paladino. Wear it into battle for me."
Simon went to her, his steel-shod feet echoing in the hallway. All his
movements felt slow and clumsy in the mail shirt that hung to his thighs
and the mail breeches that protected him from waist to ankle.
Embossed on the medallion was a mounted knight driving his lance into a
coiling bat-winged dragon baring huge fangs in rage. Where the lance
pierced the scales was set a tiny, teardrop-shaped ruby.
"Thank you, Donna Elvira," he breathed, full of admiration for the
workmanship. "It is most beautiful."
She reached up and put it around his neck. He could feel its weight
through his mail shirt.
"San Giorgio. It was my husband's, and I have kept it locked away in my
jewel casket since the day the puzzolenti Filippeschi murdered him. It
is yours now. San Giorgio will give you victory." She raised her thin
body on tiptoe and he felt her dry lips press against his cheek.
"I will never forget this moment, Madonna." He touched her yellow cheeks
with his fingertips to brush away her tears.
He did not want her to know that this was his first--his very
first--battle.
* * * * *
Climbing the spiral stairs to the tower, his legs ached as he pushed his
mailed weight upward, and his neck felt strained under his mail hood and
steel helmet. It had been weeks since he had worn his mail, days since
he had practiced his sword drill. He swore at himself.
He emerged through a trapdoor onto a square platform paved with
flagstone. Three helmeted heads turned to him: De Puys, his head covered
with tight-laced mail leaving only a circle for his eyes, nose, and
mustached mouth; Teodoro, capitano of Simon's Venetian crossbowmen,
wearing a bowl-shaped helmet; and de Verceuil, whose tall helmet was
painted bright red and shaped like a cardinal's mitre covering his
entire face with the stem of a gold cross running up the center and the
arms of the cross spread over the eyeholes.
Dressed for war, de Verceuil looked more like a cardinal than he usually
did, Simon thought ironically.
Of the four men on the tower platform, de Verceuil wore the most
elaborate armor with steel plates over his mail at his shoulders, knees,
and shins. Hanging from a broad belt at his side was a mace, an iron
ball on the end of a steel handle a foot long. This was, Simon knew, the
proper weapon for a clergyman, who was not supposed to shed blood.
Over his mail shirt de Verceuil wore a long crimson surcoat sewn with
cloth-of-gold Maltese crosses. De Puys, like Simon, wore a purple
surcoat on which the three gold crowns of Gobignon were embroidered over
and over again. Teodoro's simple breastplate of hardened leather was
reinforced with steel plates.
Leaning into a crenel between two square merlons, Simon took a deep
breath of the mild spring air. It would be a pleasant evening, did he
not know that many men were going to die.
He watched the last wagons bringing in casks of water and wine, loads of
hay and sacks of grain and beans--supplies in case the fighting dragged
on--over the drawbridge through the rear gate. Water, especially, was in
short supply in the city on the rock. The palace had its own spring, but
it did not produce enough water to supply the whole establishment. Simon
remembered Sophia drinking from his hands in the garden.
He stopped short at the thought of her to whisper a little prayer for
her safety. But she was in no danger. No one was threatening Cardinal
Ugolini.
Simon had ordered that every cask of water available in Orvieto be
bought and every vessel filled. The attackers would surely use fire as a
weapon. He had also sent for a supply of rocks from a quarry outside
the city, extra ammunition for the stone casters mounted on the roof.
He recalled that Sordello had said the Filippeschi intended a surprise
attack. They were certain to learn of these preparations and realize
that the Monaldeschi had discovered their plan. What if they did not
come at all?
If the fact that the Monaldeschi were ready was enough to prevent the
attack, that would be the best possible outcome. But Simon realized with
a pang that if the Filippeschi did not come, he would be terribly
disappointed.
He shook his head at his own madness.
Sunset reddened the tile roofs surrounding the Monaldeschi palace. From
up there Simon could see the tall campaniles of Orvieto's five churches
and the towers of the other palaces--all battlements square, because
this was a Guelfo city. A green flag, too small from this distance to
make out the device on it, flew over a tower on the southwest side of
the city, the palace of the Filippeschi.
He went to the other side of the tower to look at the city wall. Orange
and green Monaldeschi banners flew there. He had assigned twenty
Monaldeschi archers, all he dared subtract from the defenders of the
palace, to secure the nearest section of the wall. He had wanted to
station men in the houses near the palace as well, but de Puys persuaded
him that such outposts would surely be overrun and the men speedily
lost. Better to concentrate his forces in the palace itself.
He could not make out Cardinal Ugolini's house, somewhere to the
southeast of him. It had no tower to distinguish it. But he thought
again of Sophia. How lovely it would be to be with her sitting and
chatting instead of up in this tower awaiting a deadly onslaught. How
wonderful if his only worry were whether or not she would accept his
marriage proposal.
He stared out over the city and thought, somewhere out there was another
enemy. Even if, as Sordello reported, Cardinal Ugolini were not behind
this attack, there might be someone behind both the Filippeschi and
Cardinal Ugolini. Ever since he had come to Orvieto, Simon had sensed
the presence in this city of a hidden enemy. An enemy who knew him and
watched him, but whom he did not know. The one--Simon was sure of
it--who had killed Alain.
_I am waiting for you_, he said, gripping the red bricks of the
battlements.
* * * * *
Every old soldier Simon had ever talked to had said that war consisted
more of waiting than of fighting. Simon found the combination of boredom
and fear well nigh unbearable.
De Puys sat with his back against the battlements and dozed like a large
cat. De Verceuil also sat, his helmet on the tower floor beside him,
reading from a small leather-bound book, whispering the Latin words.
Simon supposed it must be his office, the prayers every priest was
required to say every day. The cardinal would have to get today's office
read quickly; the light was fading fast.
Capitano Teodoro preferred to be busy. He kept shuttling back and forth
between the tower and rooftop two stories below, where his men were
deployed. Teodoro would make a circuit of the tower battlements,
frowning down at his company of archers. Then he would go down and order
six or so men to change position. He would inspect everyone's weapons.
He inspected the bows of even the eight Armenians, in their bright red
surcoats, who would fight beside the Venetians. The friction between the
Armenians and the Venetians, Simon had noticed, had lessened
considerably after he promoted Teodoro. He was a good leader. At the
contessa's request Teodoro inspected the Monaldeschi men-at-arms, who
were mostly stationed at the two gates and in the hallways and apartment
windows.
After each inspection tour, Teodoro would come back up, study the
situation, then go down and rearrange the men, likely as not returning
them to their earlier positions.
But staying busy made sense. It kept everyone alert.
Simon left the tower once to visit his four knights on the rooftop, each
one stationed, with six men-at-arms, by a stone caster at a corner of
the roof. So that their missiles would clear the screening he had built
over the battlements, the long-armed machines were set well back from
the edge of the roof. The knights did not like supervising the stone
casters. They wanted, they told him, a chance to charge the enemy during
the attack. Simon tried to be good-humored about insisting that they
remain within the palace, but it was hard giving orders to men who were
older than himself and combat veterans. He missed Alain, realizing only
now how much he had relied on his young friend as a go-between for
himself and the other knights.
Returning to the tower roof, Simon kept pacing from one corner to the
other. He fingered the jeweled hilt of his scimitar. He tried to divert
himself by thinking of Sophia, by imagining how he would phrase his
marriage proposal to her. He dreaded the fighting, but wished it would
start.
Like a rising tide the shadows spread and deepened, swallowing up the
hills beyond the city, then the city walls, then the towers. The four
men stood in darkness, no torchlight up here to make them an easy
target. The only light on the roof below was the shimmer of charcoals
burning in four braziers for fire arrows.
An orange glow appeared over the hills to the east, the moon starting to
rise.
Simon heard distant shouting. Battle cries.
"Filippeschi!" It was Teodoro's voice.
Simon saw flickering red light dancing on house walls coming toward
them, converging from front, sides, and rear. The streets were too
narrow to permit sight of the advancing bravos and their torches.
_So, even though they know we are ready for them, they have come._
From the street directly opposite the main entrance to the palace a
long, dark shape emerged, like a gigantic tortoise. Similar shapes
issued from other streets opening on the piazza. The tortoises were big
enough to shelter at least a dozen men. There were six of them, crawling
across the open space.
"Use the fire arrows!" Simon shouted. Teodoro repeated the order to his
men. On the roof below, men raced from the battlements to the braziers
and back again, and streaks of light arced from the rooftop at the
tortoise shapes.
Simon could hear the burning arrows sizzle on the wet wooden frameworks
and wet hides. The hides did not burn, but the light from the arrows
made it easier for the crossbowmen shooting from the battlements to see
their targets. Teodoro was down on the roof directing their fire. The
archers volleyed at the closest tortoise. The steel bolts tore right
through the skins, piercing the men beneath. Simon heard the thump of
thirty bolts striking a tortoise at once, then screams. The framework
stopped moving, and Simon saw men crawling from under it. Some ran
frantically back to the shelter of the side streets; others crept a few
paces and collapsed.
Something whizzed past Simon's head and struck the brick merlon beside
him. A shower of chips clattered on his mail. One stung his cheek.
"Shooting back," said Teodoro. "From the sides."
Torchlight flickered from behind wooden mantlets at the mouths of the
streets approaching the palace from the north and south. The rectangles
of wood filled the street from side to side. From this height Simon
could see the crowds of men behind each mantlet.
Fire arrows from mantlets and tortoises hissed overhead and fell,
trailing sparks, into the atrium of the palace. Simon heard splashes as
servants threw water on the trees.
"Put more of your men on the sides," he said to Teodoro, who hurried
down the stairs inside the tower.
The moon was now a red oval low in the eastern sky. The light would help
the Filippeschi target the defenders on the rooftop, but it would not
expose them in the streets.
A loud crash startled Simon, and he felt the tower floor shake. Another
crash and another. Stone casters. The stones were coming from all
directions, and Simon could hear screams.