Ten minutes later, soaked to the bone but flushed with the warmth of the ride, I knew I must be close to catching the cardinal. I slowed to a canter, not wishing to come on them by surprise and find myself accidentally impaled on a halberd before I could declare my intentions . . . or rather declare my lies, since my actual intentions would very likely see me impaled on purpose.
I nearly missed the horse, standing as it was off in the margins of the road amid the pouring rain. A lone dark horse, head down, back against the fringes of a small wood not far from the roadside. I’ve always had an eye for horse-flesh and this piece seemed familiar. Looking around I saw one spot among the shingle that seemed darker than the rest . . . perhaps stained with blood. I rode closer to the horse. It cantered off, skittish, but I saw enough to feel more certain it was the beast the messenger who passed us had been riding.
“An assassin?” I spoke the words aloud though there was nobody to hear and the rain overwrote them.
I turned Murder back to the road and continued at a slower pace, perplexed.
It didn’t take long to reach the column’s rearguard, shadowy in the rain, their halberds across their shoulders, swaying to the rhythm of the march.
“Traveller, coming through!” I thought it best to keep my anonymity as long as possible. At first none of them gave any sign of hearing me. “Traveller, coming through!” I shouted again, and as one they all stopped. Without a head turning my way, the rearguard, some two dozen men in all, stepped to the roadside.
“Coming through . . .” I walked Murder past their ranks—eight lines of three, none of them glancing as I drew level, all with the blank-faces that soldiers on household duty often affect, affording the illusion of privacy to those they watch over.
The sedan chair was a large one, big enough to hold six people if they were squeezed side by side. Lanterns hung from each corner of the rectangular roof, but none were lit. Cardinal Gertrude would be travelling with a personal secretary, an aide and a couple of priests at a minimum. Hopefully no space had been found for the inquisition.
“I’ll pay my respect to the cardinal . . .” I spoke loud enough to be heard above the thunder of rain on the tarred black roof of the enclosed chair. Properly the captain of her guard should have presented himself by now and demanded my credentials. Instead the whole column just stood there, ignoring me. “Now, look here . . .” The bluster ran out of my voice as still not one face turned my way. Icy water ran down my back along with the surety that something was badly wrong here.
I turned Murder on the spot, a fancy move the stallion had been well trained in. With both legs clamped tight to his sides I could feel the nervous play of his muscles—the horse was scared, and given that he got his name from his normal response to threat . . . that made me scared too. I looked at the sedan’s black and shiny door, the papal order blazoned there, beaded with water above the crown and scythe of Hemmalung. The bearers stood without motion, heads down, dripping, and suddenly no part of me wanted that door open.
As I watched, it seemed that the water pattering down beneath the door was darker than it should be, as if stained.
“I . . . uh . . . forgot something.” I bumped my heels against Murder’s ribs. “Sorry, my mistake.”
The sedan’s door began to open, slowly, as if the wind might have caught its edge and started to pull it wide. Some cold and ethereal hand sunk its fingers into my chest, lacing them between my rib bones and closing, tight.
A gust took hold and threw the door full open, slamming back against the sedan’s wall. What light remained to the day proved insufficient challenge to the darkness within, revealing only one thing—a white enamel mask such as a rich man might wear to a masquerade. The eyes behind that slit remained invisible, but they cut like broken glass even so. The mask from the Vermillion Opera!
I slammed both heels into Murder’s sides and he took off like a bolt loosed from a crossbow. The Unborn Prince left the cardinal’s sedan with sufficient violence that splintered fragments of it winged past my ear as I bent to the gallop. He came after us with a rushing like a great wind tearing through a forest. A wet ripping sound chased us down the road. The halberdiers turned as we thundered by, trying to bring their weapons into play but they proved slow and strangely uncoordinated, even for guardsmen of the more ceremonial variety. I had to duck low to avoid the blades of the last two halberds, and then we were free and clear, Murder and me against the darkness and the rain.
Glancing back is seldom advisable, especially when in full flight from danger. What are you going to do, run faster? It didn’t work out well for Lot’s wife and although I’ve learned few lessons from the bible, that one I should have hung on to. At least I hung onto my horse, though just barely. Perhaps the darkness saved me, concealing enough of the detail to preserve my sanity. As the Unborn Prince tore past the guardsmen, cardinal’s robes flapping, each man ripped open in a red butchery of tattered flesh and white bones. The contents of their bodies vomited out toward the prince and where they struck they stuck, flowing, reorganizing, so that stride by stride he grew and changed.