Fires of the Faithful (24 page)

“Cross yourself,” she whispered, so I did.

She went around the rest of the circle. When she finished, the bread was gone, but there was still liquid in the chalice. “Dam d’go’el,” she said. “May the blood of the Redeemer bring life and purity to the earth that God created,” and poured the rest of the water onto the ground at the center of our circle.

We danced and chanted a bit more, then we each knelt to touch the ground and she spoke a few words of blessing. “Go, the Mass is ended,” she said.

“Thanks be to God,” said Rafi, next to me, and I muttered the words a heartbeat late, again.

The group dispersed quickly, Rafi lingering with Lucia and me.

“What did you think?” Lucia asked, and her eyes sparkled.

“I don’t know much of the Old Tongue,” I hedged.

“You’ll need to learn, sooner or later … but the Mass?”

“It was …” Watching Lucia lead the Mass was like watching my priestly brother in church. “The music is beautiful.”

Her eyes showed no disappointment, so I must have said something close to what she wanted to hear. Rafi squeezed my shoulder again; he understood. “It will make
more sense as you learn,” Rafi said. “I think you were meant for playing, not for dancing.”

“So,” Lucia said to Rafi. “Were we going to take Eliana to watch Giovanni at work?”

Rafi raised his eyebrows. “If you think it’s wise.” He turned to me. “Would you like to go watch Giovanni?”

Watch him do what? “I’d love to,” I said. There was no way I was letting Giovanni get away with thinking that he scared me. Not a chance.

G
iovanni’s training ground was mostly concealed by two of the highest walls anywhere in Ravenna. It had probably once been the corner of a blacksmith’s shop; I could see the remnants of the furnace. The two open sides were screened by a couple of taller tents. I couldn’t believe that Teleso didn’t know this was here, but maybe it served some purpose for him, like riots and Old Way rituals.

It was a cramped space to use for physical training. A half dozen skinny young men stood pressed against one of the walls, watching as Giovanni shouted at a seventh.

“Severo! You’re holding it wrong. It’s a
sword
, you turnip, not a hoe. No, not like that! How can you be so stupid?” Dropping his guard, Giovanni strode over and readjusted the boy’s grip on the wooden stick he held. “Left hand here, right hand here. This isn’t that hard, you idiot. Now, defend yourself!” The boy swung the stick up, holding it clumsily at one end, trying to mimic Giovanni’s stance. Giovanni also wielded a wooden weapon, carved a
little more artfully. “No! Not like that! Oh, you’re hopeless. Give it to Michel. Michel! It’s your turn.”

Severo returned to the wall with obvious relief, passing the stick to Michel.

“No!” Giovanni howled. “You just handed him the blade, you idiot! Michel, give it back to him. Severo!
This
is the hilt.
That
is the blade.”

“That’s a stick,” I said.

“You
stay out of this
,” Giovanni snapped without turning; he must have noticed us as soon as we came in.

I fell silent for a moment, then turned to Lucia. “What is he doing?”

“Training them to fight with a sword,” she said.

“Where are they going to get real swords?” I asked. Lucia shrugged. “Giovanni! Why are you training them on swords?”

“What business is it of yours?” he said, but Michel, grateful for any distraction, had dropped his guard and was waiting with interest for the answer. “What other weapon would I train them on? Crossbow?”

“You were a university student, weren’t you?” I said to Giovanni. Dueling was something of a gentleman’s art; conservatory students were warned about this in passing during the lectures on courtly etiquette. Young men from that class were tutored in fencing from an early age; even the physician at the conservatory had a sword, though he seldom carried it.

I stepped onto the training ground. Michel was about the same age as my eldest brother Agrippo had been when I left home. Agrippo was the brother who brawled over the girl and wound up with the cracked head. At least, he was the first of my brothers to brawl over a girl and wind up with a cracked head. I gave Michel a tentative smile and he smiled warmly back.

“Give me your ‘sword’ a moment, Giovanni,” I said.

“Get out of here!” he said. “What right do you have, coming in here like—”

I held out my hand stubbornly. He reversed his grip to pass me the “hilt” with a sullen glare. “Thank you,” I said. “Now Michel. You’re holding a stick. Let’s see if you know how to use it.” I slapped the “blade” into my opposite palm and swung the staff at Michel.

Giula and Bella and the other girls at the conservatory could probably not have done this, especially after five years of sheltered conservatory life. But I had grown up with seven brothers, and Donato had taught me to fight.

Michel grabbed his stick like a stick and deflected my swing effortlessly; his grin grew wider. “You swing a staff like a girl.”

“In your dreams, big brother,” I said, returning the grin. I hooked his staff with mine and nearly jerked it out of his hand. He swung the stick to knock my wind out but I dodged aside.

“Lovely,” Giovanni said. “But the soldiers he’ll be fighting won’t be swinging sticks.”

“Fine, then,” I said, and handed the “sword” back to Giovanni, hilt first. “Michel, show Giovanni how you’d deal with a sword.”

Michel was still grinning; he dodged Giovanni’s first two thrusts, then hooked the sword and sent it flying. He swung the staff again, to clip Giovanni across the head. I had a feeling that Michel had put up with quite a few smacks on the head from Giovanni’s sword. Giovanni stumbled back a step and then snapped, “Hold.” He turned around to glare at Michel and the other six boys. “Out,” he ordered, and they left gladly, still grinning. He turned on me.

“I’ll thank you,” he said icily, “to stay out of the way during training exercises.”

“What are you trying to do?” I demanded. “They aren’t university students. They aren’t gentlemen. You’re trying to teach them to fight, aren’t you? Don’t you want them to win?”

“I suppose
you
think I should be teaching them to swing plows and pitchforks,” Giovanni said. “I’m teaching them to fight with real weapons.”

“A real weapon,” I said, “is the one you know how to use.” I turned to Lucia. “Let’s go, Lucia,” I said. “I think I’ve seen plenty.” Besides, I’d had the last word, and I wasn’t sure I could come up with another retort.

“Don’t come back here!” Giovanni shouted as we left. “Don’t you
dare
come back here!”

“You’re right,” Lucia said, once we were out of earshot. “Why make them learn to fight with swords when they already know how to use another weapon?”

“Lucia,” I said. “Is Giovanni planning to train six boys at a time until the whole camp knows how to fight? We’ll be dead of old age before he’s half done.”

Lucia sighed. “Beneto and Jesca don’t have much faith in the arms training—that’s why they put Giovanni in charge of it. Our real strength is our sheer numbers. There are thousands of refugees here, and only 122 soldiers. If we decided to
walk
out tomorrow, they’d run out of crossbow bolts before they could kill all of us.”

“So why don’t we? I suppose they could kill a fair number of us.”

“Yes. And so many people have lost hope … Beneto thinks that our best chance is to wait until people are really angry, then try to direct their anger. We could tear the crossbows from the soldiers’ hands and use them
against them, and only a handful of Ravenessi would die. We just have to get people angry enough.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Lucia.”

“Beneto’s convinced we could make it work. But we’d need an incident, first.”

“What about the massacres Rafi referred to? Those must have involved ‘incidents.’ ”

“Yes. And yet here we are. Beneto thinks that
next
time, he can make it work.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m angry already. I bet other people here are, too. If he
organized
people—trained them
properly—
”

“So tell Beneto. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

As the sun neared the horizon, Lucia and I got into the line for dinner. As we waited, I heard a voice rasp behind me. “Signora,” the voice said, and I felt someone tugging at my sleeve. “Signora!”

I turned and sucked in my breath. It was the madman from the road. “Welcome, signora,” he said, gravely.

Lucia turned. “Amedeo,” she greeted him. “Is this the one you spoke of?”

The madman looked offended. “Have there been any
other
musicians who’ve arrived this month?”

“No—”

“Then she’s
her
. Don’t be ridiculous.” He turned to me. “The tune of the piece is not going quite as you expected, is it?” I tried to stare him down, but he refused to look away, grinning at me broadly. “Don’t worry. We know what we’re doing.”

“Piss off,” I said, shakily.

He laughed. “Welcome, signora. Enjoy your stay in Cuore.” He wandered off down the line of people, weaving and stumbling like a drunk.

“So,” Lucia said. “That’s Amedeo.”

“I’ve met him before,” I said.

“He gets around. Like Rafi said, the Light is too bright … he’s cracked.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Well, he’s a nuisance,” she said. “It’s even worse that some of what he says is inspired. You actually have to pay attention to his ravings. And fret about them.”

The line inched up. We had barely moved, although more people had joined the line behind us. “What did he mean, ‘enjoy your stay in Cuore’?”

Lucia shrugged. “Who knows? He might have meant that you’re going to go to Cuore sometime. Or maybe he meant that in some sense, this is Cuore. Or maybe he was just raving.” She shook her head. “You never know with Amedeo.”

“Lucia. Eliana.” We turned; this time it was Beneto and Jesca who’d come up behind us. “How did today go?” Beneto asked Lucia.

“Well, I think,” Lucia said.

Beneto took Lucia aside to confer with her in a low voice, and Jesca gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I heard about your confrontation with Giovanni.” Jesca squeezed my shoulder. “Good for you.”

“So what do you think?” I asked. “About training peasants in the weapons of the gentry?”

Jesca shook her head. “It doesn’t matter all that much. Our strength is in our numbers, if we could only …” She shrugged. Her voice was crisp and chill, like a bell through evening mist. “Sooner or later, Teleso will make a mistake. When people are angry enough, they won’t need weapons. They’ll fight the soldiers with their bare hands, grab the crossbows away, and tear the keep to the ground. It
will
happen.”

I shivered.

Beneto was done with his conference with Lucia, and Beneto and Jesca moved off down the line. They spoke briefly with almost everyone, squeezing peoples’ hands or shoulders, offering commiseration and comfort. They reminded me of the priest and priestess back at the conservatory.

We took our gruel back to Rafi’s tent. Giovanni was there. I hadn’t seen him join the food line, but he’d gotten his gruel somewhere and beaten us back to the tent. He moved over to make room for us, but it was clear he wasn’t happy about it.

“So,” Rafi said. “Did you have a nice day?” He sounded just like my mother, and I started laughing, then crying, and Giovanni stared at me like I had gone completely mad.

The next morning, Beneto took me aside after breakfast. “I heard what happened at the training ground yesterday.”

“Uh-huh?” I said.

“I’d appreciate it if, in the future, you left Giovanni to his own devices there. That’s his territory.”

I felt my face grow hot. “Jesca said—”

“Jesca is my lieutenant. I am the Generale here.”

“Ah,” I said, and looked down.

“Think of it this way,” Beneto said placatingly. “If you were conducting a musical ensemble, and Giovanni came up and started complaining about the way you were going about it, how would you feel?”

I looked up. Beneto was searching my face with his eyes. He
really
wanted to convince me that he was right, which was strange to me; if he was “Generale,” why did he care what I thought? “Beneto,” I said, “there are many different ways to conduct an orchestra. However, any conductor who started off by making the brass players take up violin would be
replaced
. By his superiors.”

“Ah,” Beneto said, and now he flushed. “Well, you know, this military training—”

“Is just to keep Giovanni busy,” I finished. “Irrelevant in the larger scheme because once people get angry enough, they’ll break out by sheer force of numbers. Doesn’t it seem to you that more of us will
survive
this breakout if we’ve learned a bit about fighting
together
first?” Beneto wasn’t listening—I could tell—and I grabbed his arm. “Everyone comes to the conservatory knowing how to play an instrument. And most of the men here—and quite a few of the women—know how to fight, even if it’s just brawling or fending off wolves with a bow. But just as conservatory students must learn how to play in an
ensemble
, the people here need to learn to fight as an
army
. Isn’t that what you want?”

Beneto extracted himself from my grip gently, the smile never leaving his face. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “For now, leave Giovanni alone. That’s an order.”

My jaw dropped as he walked away, and I ducked back into Rafi’s tent. Giovanni was long gone, but Lucia sat drinking some of Rafi’s “tea.”

“I never signed on to your movement,” I said. “Why does Beneto think I take orders from him?”

Rafi glanced at Lucia. “Told you,” he said to her. He turned back to me. “Right then.
I’ll
tell you to stay out of Giovanni’s way when he’s training. You’ll do it because you sleep in my tent, and I want some peace under my roof, even if it’s a cloth one.” He gave me a menacing glare, but I could see the glint of amusement in his eyes.