Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

MADONNA

by Bruce McAllister

Many have asked how the Child Pope and I, boys that we

were at the beginning of it all, first met the Sienese girl
Caterina, that she might become our companion and friend on

the long journey to that cold, northern lake. After all, had she
not joined us, we would not have had the power to defeat the

Drinkers of Blood on that lake’s shores and, by our victory, end
their dark communion before it reached all of Christendom.

The Oldest Drinker—born on the same night as our Lord fifteen
centuries ago, his first drink not milk but blood—and living

even then in the shadows of Rome—would certainly have
prevailed.

The minstrel who found me on the wharf one night in my

fishing village, carrying word from the father I had never seen,

certainly did not mention a girl. He said only that I must find
the Child Pope Bonifacio, who had been hidden on the windy

Island of Elba by his uncle, the Cardinal Vocassini; and that
from this boy no older than I obtain the holiest water in the

land. I was, the minstrel insisted, the emissary of La
Compassione’s spirit to the world, whether I knew it or not;

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and, as my body changed to serve her, I was essential to any
hope for the Drinkers’ defeat. I would (he explained) need the

holy water not only for what would occur at that lake but also
to save those who mattered to me most on my hurried journey

to the lake’s icy waters.

I did as I was told. I took what the minstrel gave me: the

pouch of florins, the tiny glass vials for the holy water, and on
its leather cord the tooth of a great beast. I also took my

beloved dog Stappo—big and ugly though he was. At Elba’s
abandoned monastery the Child Pope Bonifacio and I barely

escaped a monstrous Drinker that had once been a priest,
reaching the mainland again only by the blessings and winds of

La Compassione.

We did not know what to do next. If we traveled north at

night, the Drinkers would find us. Surely they sensed our
importance to their fate. Would my rash, and the light that

turned my skin into a blinding sun when a Drinker was near,
be enough to save us from more than one Drinker? Yet if we

traveled by day, we might be captured by the soldiers of the
Medici, whose territory this was, or by the interloping

mercenaries of the Venetian Doge, who wanted Bonifacio for
his own political machinations.

When, as we headed north in sunlight, we were nearly

captured by the Doge’s men, we turned south instead, and,

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hiding in olive groves, culverts, and tall wheat, began toward
Siena—whose walls, we told ourselves, might protect us from

both the Drinkers and the soldati of two states while we re-
thought our journey north.

Had we not turned south that day we would not have met

Caterina.

* * *

When we reached Siena’s great walls at last, we sat down

on the earth far from the main road and caught our breath.
Before too many minutes had passed, Stappo appeared with

the moldiest piece of bread we had ever seen. Bonifacio closed
his eyes as if to escape an alimentary nightmare, and I sighed,

but we both praised Stappo and took the bread. Hunger was
hunger, and weakness was not a blessing for any human on the

run.

Despite the crowds on the road entering Siena, the night

passed without boot steps or inhuman wailing in the darkness
around us. Whether the latter was because of the vials of holy

water within whose circle we slept, Stappo with us, or simply
that the Drinkers had not found us yet, we did not know; nor

did it, for the moment, matter. What mattered was that we
lived to arise the next morning at first light, gather up the vials,

eat the remaining bread (spitting out green pieces that tasted
like metal), take two drinks from a spring near a gully and

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prepare to enter the city along with the teeming hordes arriving
for the races.

“I have never seen a dirtier pope,” I said to my new friend.

He was indeed dirty. Bonifacio had abandoned his satin gowns

on Elba and donned a camicia, a vest and red leggings that
made him, chubby as he was, look like an odd fruit. His hands

belied his clothes. They were, even with earth smeared on
them, as pink as his cheeks. Nor did his imperious scowl,

something he had adopted from the adults of his world—the
cardinals and tutors, not a single woman among them—fit the

paesano he needed to be.

“And I have never seen a dirtier emissary,” he answered

pompously, feigning insult. “Though of course neither of us has
seen more than one of the other.”

Stappo for some reason looked clean, which made us feel

even dirtier.

“Dogs have useful tongues,” Bonifacio pointed out, “while

human beings need to bathe.”

“Our dirt will help us, I think,” I said.
“I certainly hope so.”

We indeed fitted into the crowds at the gate. It was Palio,

after all, and travelers were filling the roads into the city, riding

on horses and carts or simply walking to the city’s iron gates.
As we joined the crowd, no one looked at us in curiosity, as if to

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say, “Why were those boys walking by the wall instead of the
road?” Many had already imbibed enough celebratory uva to

paralyze a horse, and people either nodded at us with bleary
looks or ignored us completely. Who would imagine that two

boys and a dog were going to the Palio to hide from the soldiers
of two city-states, and, worse, from inhuman creatures few

people this far from Rome believed even existed.

* * *

The Palio—the horse race in honor of the Madonna of

Provenzano—was a fourteen-day affair. If our calculations were

right, this should be the twelfth day and the fourth of the
qualifying races. The seventeen neighborhoods of the city—the

“quarters,” the contrade—would be celebrating. The ten
neighborhoods chosen to compete this year would be

celebrating with particular enthusiasm and would be the best
to hide in. People would be eating day in and day out in the

open. The horses would be receiving the official blessing of
priests. The standard-bearers that represented each quarter

would be practicing their tricks, tossing their great flags with
their neighborhoods’ emblems into the air and catching them

until they got it right. The race itself, in which even a horse that
had lost its rider could win, would be in two days.

“What day should we leave?” Bonifacio asked when no one

could hear.

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“I am not sure, Bonifacio. If we leave before the final race,

the roads will be empty and we may look suspicious. We should

leave when everyone else is leaving.”

“Do the celebrants leave all at once?”

“I do not know. There are of course festivities after the

race, and much drunkenness, according to our village priest,

Father Tamillo, who does not approve of excessive drinking but
cannot disapprove of a race in honor of the Madonna of

Provenzano. But to answer your question, there may be a time
when more leave than not. We will have to watch for it.”

“We will be safe in the neighborhood we choose to hide

in?”

“We will have to be careful, Your Holiness. Father Tamillo

told us that sometimes neighborhoods try to poison one

another’s horses—even the riders—and we do not want to be
taken for poisoners or spies. We must be pretend to be, I would

think, relatives of a family in the quarter we choose.”

“Yes, that would be sensible. You say each neighborhood

has a design. Perhaps we should carry that design on our
persons and act exceedingly passionate about it.”

“We may have to steal those designs.”
“God will forgive us.”

“You are certain?”
“Yes, I am certain.”

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“You are the pope.”
“Yes, I am the pope, but He would forgive you just the

same.”

“That makes me happy.”

“If you are afraid of God at the moment, it is only that you

are tired. We both need sleep. And where will we do that,

Emissary?”

“That could be tricky, Bonifacio. Sleeping in the Piazza di

Campo will not work because that is where the soldiers, and
any townspeople working for them, would look. That is where

those not from the neighborhoods—from outside the city—
would sleep on the clay the horses run on, or on hay placed

there for both horses and travelers. Sleeping on the street
within a quarter would make us too visible. And we do not

know anyone we might stay with—inside a home—in any of the
neighborhoods.”

“Then perhaps we need to meet someone—someone with a

home.”

“I was thinking that exact thing myself, Bonifacio, and,

since Stappo always knows what it is that we are supposed to

do, I imagine that he, ugly though he is, was too.”

I had never seen so many people, and certainly not so

many drunk and happy people. The streets and alleys were full
of them. The Piazza di Campo overflowed with them.

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Everywhere was food, drink, dancing, hugging, drunk men and
women falling down, slightly less drunk friends picking them

up and laughing, children running, dogs barking. Most of these
of course were the carefree spectators, those who had come

from distant towns for the race and for whom the only serious
matter was the betting. The contrade were celebrating, too, but

would be doing it in the neighborhoods themselves, not out in
the Piazza or main streets; and they would, drunk or not, be

much more serious. There was much at stake. The honor and
pride of each quarter. The year-long blessing of the Madonna

to the quarter that won. The pride of the entire city, whose
horse race was in fact called “the portrait of the Madonna.”

Some of the most serious men might indeed poison a horse or
cripple a rider for such rewards, even if no Madonna could

possibly condone it.

“How will we know what neighborhood to choose?”

Bonifacio asked as we jostled our way through the crowd.

“If Stappo fails to tell us, we will still know.”

It was true. As we passed from the Tortoise Neighborhood

—with its central fountain and its marble tortoise spewing

water from its gaping beak—a different emblem appeared on
doorways, and we stopped. Stappo, at my side, was whining.

The new emblem was a seashell. A scallop. A pettine. And

there, to our right, above the fountain in this new

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neighborhood’s square, was the same seashell but as big as a
shield, carved from white marble. Water flowed from the shell,

filling the fountain, and the shell’s rays were like a sunrise, one
that might save the world if the world would only let it.

The rash on my arms and legs was tingling, but not in the

way it did when a Drinker was near. I did not understand, but I

knew I should listen. La Compassione, I had learned, had so
many ways of speaking, though never with words.

I couldn’t look away from the scallop.
“This one,” I said.

Bonifacio laughed. “Why am I not surprised, Emissary?”
“What do you mean?”

“A divine sign, is it not?”
He was, I knew, thinking of his seashell collection—the one

he’d shown me proudly on Elba—though a scallop was a clam,
and clams were not snails, and his collection was rare “left-

handed” snails, which he loved because (he explained) they
were as different from others of their kind as he often felt from

other boys. “Have you not always felt this way, too, Emilio?” I
had nodded.

“Yes,” I answered.
Bonifacio beamed. “A pope who collects mollusks and an

emissary from a fishing village whose skin has always been

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irritated by salt water. What a pair of travelers! And how
perfect a scallop is for them!”

I was nodding. Bonifacio was saying, “That fountain’s

water is not salty,” and before I knew it I had walked through

the crowd to the fountain, climbed in, and was sitting in the
cool water, my burning skin murmuring its gratitude.

Soon I was in a dream. People in the square had stopped

and were gawking at me, but I was no longer there, in an old

city called Siena. I was in a great, cold lake, swimming, my skin
cool, no longer tingling, blue sky and snow-covered peaks

above me. My father was close by, calling to me with a
cornamusa, a little bagpipe just like the one the minstrel had

played on the wharf to call me to him. I was swimming with
other great creatures like me, and there were other men playing

cornamuse on the shore, calling them as well. I was happy to
be there at last. I was happy to see my father’s face on the shore

and know he loved me.

“Emilio!” a voice called from somewhere.

The cold lake water parted around me like a song as I

swam.

“Emissary!” the voice said again, anxious, stern. I could

hear other voices too, shouting too, unhappy, hostile.

When I opened my eyes, the little square was packed with

people, everyone staring at me disapprovingly, some heckling

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with Sienese epithets, others calling for the city’s guards to
remove me from their fountain.

A horse snuffled.
I could not but blink. There, only a few strides away from

me, was a horse and rider, both decorated with the blue and
white silk of the scallop emblem. The rider was a boy perhaps a

year or two older than I, the horse a beautiful brown creature.
The boy gazed down at me while attendants, decorated with the

same emblem, fussed at the flanks of the horse, and behind
them stretched the citizens of this contrada in a procession

that had now come to a complete standstill.

I could not tell whether the rider was smiling or frowning.

There was an odd expression—though not an unkind one—on
his face, and his riding cap, which would keep his hair from his

eyes when he raced, seemed large, too big for his head.

He stared at me, head cocked as if in a question, but said

nothing.

I looked down at my arms and legs and saw what I had not

expected: Though my rash, reddish blue and scaly as it always
was, was no longer itching, there was more of it—much more.

It had spread on my arms and legs even as I sat in the fountain
dreaming.

A tall man rushed toward me from the procession.

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“What is the meaning of this?” he shouted, spittle on his

lower lip. “This is desecration!”

A priest followed behind the man; but rather than

shouting along with him about desecration and other offenses,

he simply looked back and forth between Bonifacio and me, as
if trying to understand something.

“Call the city’s guardie!” the tall man was saying. He

grabbed my arm.

As he did, the patches of rash on my arm grew hot again

and the man jerked back as if burnt. But because this made no

sense to him—that a boy’s skin might burn him—-he responded
in the only way he could:

“This boy is ill!” he cried. “Look at his skin! He defiles our

fountain!”

The priest had stepped forward to stand between me and

the tall man and three other men who had joined him, all of

them quite incensed. The priest was of course looking at me
but also at the rider, as if more interested in what the rider was

feeling than anything else.

Who was this rider—that a priest would be so interested in

a boy’s reaction?

The rider was dismounting. He was a thin boy, a little

taller than both Bonifacio and I, with a sharp nose, and hair in
the Tuscan style, almost to his shoulders. His hands, though

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roughened by a rider’s training, had long delicate fingers; and
there was something odd about him, I thought, though when I

looked at Bonifacio I saw nothing in his manner that suggested
he agreed.

The four angry men parted to let the rider approach the

fountain. When he reached it, he looked down at me with the

same expression—neither frown nor smile—and said simply,
“We would ask that you remove yourself from our fountain.”

The rider’s voice had cracked once as he spoke, and

sounded low for one his age. Perhaps, I told myself, he was

older than he seemed and was simply becoming a man. A boy’s
voice must change.

I obeyed, inspecting again at the new rash on my arms and

legs.

“Are you ill?” the rider asked matter-of-factly, glancing at

the priest. The priest looked back without expression.

“No,” I answered, feeling my face grow hot as I did. “It is

only an irritation. Fresh water relieves the discomfort.”

“Enough talk!” the tall man said. “Summon the guardia.

These boys are not Nicchio. They may be Tartaruga or

Leopardo. How are we to know? If they so willingly despoil our
fountain, they might just as easily despoil our food.”

“I am certain it does,” the rider was saying to me, ignoring

the man, “but does your fresh water have to be our fountain?”

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“No. I am sorry.”
A guard from the Piazza was approaching.

The rider, who had, I felt certain, almost smiled at me, was

looking again at the priest, who had been listening intently and

now stood by the rider and whispering in the boy’s ear.

The rider nodded, turned to the four irate men, and said:

“That will not be necessary, Tomaso. Father Salemi has
recognized these two boys as fourth cousins of the Borsinis.

They are from Terranova and of no threat, even though their
behavior be rude.”

The four men grumbled, deprived of their mission. The

rest of the procession was losing interest and moving back to

their apartments to prepare for the next neighborhood event.

“The procession,” the rider said, turning back to me, “is

over for the day, ragazzo, and our horse has been blessed.” He
was looking at Bonifacio now.

The priest whispered again into his ear.
“Our priest, who is rarely wrong, feels that I approve of

you,” the rider said quietly to Bonifacio and me, “and his
feeling is right.” Again, the boy’s voice cracked, as if he were

struggling with it; and again, I felt an oddness from him. “He is
right because when I first saw you both I felt you posed no

threat to our contrada; and so we must, if we are to behave as
the Madonna would have us behave—especially at this time of

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the year—welcome you as guests. I did utter a falsehood to
those who would remain suspicious and less than hospitable,

but you are indeed our cousins in spirit if not in physical fact.
You may stay with my father and me. Our abode is down that

alley.”

Why had the boy lied to the procession—to the citizens of

his neighborhood? Why had the priest collaborated in the lie?
And why would a priest care so much about what the boy felt?

There was, I knew, more than one thing the rider was not

telling us, but to press for it, I also knew, would not become the

guests of any contrada.

* * *

The apartment was much bigger and brighter than the one

I had grown up in with my mother, whose evening visitors—

unmarried or unfaithful men of the village—had made it seem
even smaller. While Bonifacio followed the rider into it, Stappo

and I stopped at the doorway and waited.

The rider looked back at us, stopping too.

“Thank you for the courtesy,” the rider said. “I am afraid

your dog must remain outside. My father is sick, and dogs

upset him even when he is well. He was bitten when he was a
boy and, because he lives now more in his childhood than in

the present, he fears dogs as much as a child would. We also

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need a good guard dog for our alley, and yours certainly has the
weight and teeth for it, does he not?”

The rider looked at Bonifacio for a moment.
“Were you bitten by a dog, too? You step away when the

dog nears you. It is a subtle thing—something that most would
not notice—but my father, when he could still walk, did the

same thing.”

“Yes,” Bonifacio answered, his own voice cracking a little,

too. “I was bitten when I was five years of age. I still carry the
scars.” He rolled up his sleeve to show what the four longest

teeth had done to his forearm.

This clearly surprised the rider—not that Bonifacio had

scars but that he was so willing to show his body to a stranger.
The rider looked at Bonifacio and said slowly: “How painful it

must have been.”

“At the time, yes. They do not bother me now.”

The rider was nodding with the faintest of smiles, amused

as he probably was by the forthrightness of this boy who looked

so silly in his leggings and did not act or sound like a peasant at
all.

Bonifacio did not seem bothered by the smile. He liked the

attention, I knew.

“Thank you,” the rider said at last. “This helps me

understand better my father’s fear.”

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I told Stappo to remain outside, and when he had lain

down, I entered the apartment and shut the door.

As I turned to face the rider, he said: “My name is Gian

Felice Rottini. I have ridden in the Palio for five years now, and

I was the winner for the city’s Madonna the last two years,
finishing last year with an arm broken in two places and the

year before that with a broken collarbone.”

He pulled his sleeve up, and there was the bony protrusion

proving it.

“But none of this should surprise you, cugini. As you must

know, all Sienese are willing to suffer such travails of flesh and
bone, not to mention mind and spirit, for the Madonna and for

the honor of our neighborhoods and families and city.”

The rider’s tone was not bragadoccio but only what he felt

we should know, guests that we were.

“My father rode when he was younger, and his father and

his two uncles before him. We have always known good horses
and good riders, our family, as you will see if you look at the list

posted in the Piazza. I had a sister, too....”

The rider paused, and I thought it odd—mentioning a

sister suddenly, out of the blue.

“She ran away with a young man from Capperchio, and

who knows where they are. It was a sad thing, but the human

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heart, when it is not in the service of God, does many sad
things....”

The rider had become contemplative, even wistful. What a

strange boy this was. Bonifacio was staring at him, too.

Something about the words “in the service of God” had made
him look at the rider hard. Did Bonifacio, because he was pope,

hear more in those words than I could?

“But our neighborhood, Il Nicchio, does not pass judgment

on the children of God, for that is for God to do, though God, in
his love, passes judgment not at all, leaving—”

“—leaving,” Bonifacio interrupted suddenly, as if quoting

someone, “mortals to judge themselves and make of those

judgments ‘sins’ which God, in His eternal compassion, need
not forgive—for they are not real. For ‘sin’ is but a mistake

which—”

“—the truth,” the rider finished for him, “can correct

simply by being the truth, if mortals will forgive both God and
themselves....”

It was the rider’s turn to stare now. Who was this dirty boy

who quoted heretical teologia too? I wished Bonifacio had

remained silent.

And yet what the rider himself had said was not, I knew,

what a boy from Siena, a rider in the Palio, or any boy from any
city—except perhaps a Child Pope—would say either.

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Who was this rider?
“You are not,” he said suddenly, using the plural you, “who

you appear to be—either of you.”

I said nothing. Bonifacio remained silent.

“And that is exactly what I felt when I first saw you.”
Stepping to Bonifacio so suddenly that the Child Pope

startled, he took Bonifacio’s arm and held it out for us to see.

“This is not the skin of a commoner,” the rider said. “These

hands have never dug dirt or hammered iron or fished. And
you, his friend, have both the hair of the devil—though I do not

believe in such superstitions—and a rash that makes you need
to sit in fountains to feel relief. You are not going to tell me who

you are—of that I am certain—but you can at least tell me your
given names, so that I might feel your truths within them.”

Feel your truths within them? What did this mean?
“I am Bonifacio,” Bonifacio said with a sigh, because he

knew he must. The rider was still holding his arm, and
Bonifacio did not wish a struggle.

“And I am Emilio.”
“You are fleeing from someone?” the rider asked.

“Yes,” I answered.
“May I ask from whom?”

“Soldiers.”

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“I would, were this an ordinary day and you ordinary boys,

answer that of course you are fleeing soldiers, or guards, or

property owners—someone—because you have no doubt stolen
something or injured someone. But not when your friend’s skin

is so white and smooth, and he walks like a prince....”

“We have committed no crime,” I answered. “They simply

wish to capture us.”

The rider laughed. “You might be better off if they did. A

city can be cruel.”

Bonifacio was scowling. All of this, I knew, would have

been insulting to him. To expect a pope to be good at stealing
or farming or living on the streets—what offense! Bonifacio

looked at me and I looked back, and we both knew he could not
afford to complain. The rider was not being unkind. He was

stating fact.

There was a strange look in the boy’s eyes now, eyes which

were almost closed, as if he were listening to something beyond
the room...and hearing it.

“There is more,” the rider said, and his voice was strange.

It was higher now, not cracking, not the voice of a boy-

becoming-a-man at all.

“Yes,” I answered, wondering why I had.

“But you do not feel comfortable telling me or anyone.”

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“That is true, Master Rottini,” I said. “It would also be

better for you perhaps if you did not know.”

“That may be true,” he said distractedly, still listening.
His eyes cleared, and he returned to us.

“Perhaps,” I heard myself say, “we should ask who you

are?”

The rider looked at me, then away, as he said, “My father

lies in one of the other two rooms of this appartamento. You

will hear his coughing. His lungs are full of fluid, and no one
can help him. How much longer he will live, we do not know,

but his illness is not the kind that sickens others. We have
blankets for you to sleep on in this room so that his coughing

will not interrupt your sleep. If you are hungry—which I can
tell you are—and because this is Palio, there is no shortage of

food anywhere in the city, including our home. So please
conduct yourselves not only as our guests, but as our family,

which you are as well.”

The rider turned and walked toward the room where

coughing had started up suddenly.

When he was gone, Bonifacio started to speak, but I put

my finger to my lips. “Are you not hungry, Bonifacio? And
thirsty?”

“Yes. Very.”

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“Then let us act in that spirit only, as members of this

hospitable family.”

* * *

As Bonifacio and I sat at the table eating bread and stew

from a pot that seemed to have been placed there for us, and
drinking all of the water we wanted from a beautiful Sienese

pitcher, the rider’s head poked around the corner.

“My father is sleeping now, and I must go to the Piazza to

the city this day—that you wait until the race itself two days
from now—but you have your own intuitions to guide you in

such matters, I am sure, and do not need mine. If you do leave
the apartment and have not returned by night, I will assume

that you have left the city on your own or been captured by
those you attempt to elude. I would hate to think the latter,

Emilio and Bonifacio, but I would have no choice....”

It was the strangest declaration of caring that I had ever

heard, but perhaps the Sienese spoke this way—roundabout
and formally.

Bonifacio was astonished, too, and not doing well at hiding

it.

“We...thank you,” he was saying.
“The gratitude is ours,” the rider answered.

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The Sienese were definitely an odd people.
When the rider was gone, a puzzled Bonifacio said, “I have

no reason to want to leave this apartment.”

“Neither do I,” I answered, and at that moment the

coughing started up again in the other room. We were silent,
expecting it to calm on its own accord and the father to fall

back asleep. It did not. It worsened. And though we tried to
distract ourselves with both talk and an inspection of the

apartment, nothing helped.

Without saying a word, we both headed for the father’s

room.

* * *

There, on a pallet of burlap, straw, and woolen blankets,

lay a small, thin man whose eyes stared at the ceiling and

whose body was far too frail to stop the terrible wracking of its
own coughs. He did not seem to be aware of us, but he did open

his mouth to say, “Caterina! Dove stai?” Catherine! Where are
you?

That night the man’s coughing grew even worse, and

Bonifacio and I could not help but lie on our blankets listening.

The rider was in the father’s room, of course, and spoke
tenderly to him throughout the night. It was a gentle, consoling

voice, one I would have indeed wanted to hear had I been ill,
but even the voice left me confused: who was this rider, and

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why did it feel as if he were hiding just as much as Bonifacio
and I? What would a Palio rider have to hide?

As Bonifacio and I stared at the dark ceiling and listened to

the coughing grow more violent and ragged—until our own

bodies hurt to hear it—we heard footsteps leave the father’s
room and, a moment later, a voice standing over us barely

holding back tears and saying, “He has made a turn for the
worse. I believe he is dying. I must bring the doctor!”

“We will sit with him,” I said.
“Yes, we will sit with him,” Bonifacio echoed.

“Thank you.” The rider composed himself. It was not

becoming a Palio competitor to cry. . “Give him sips of water if

he asks for them, but not too much. He cannot sit up. He may
ask for food, but do not give him any. Sometimes a hand on his

forehead is enough to calm the coughing, but tonight I doubt
that will be enough.”

Bonifacio and I rose as the footsteps left us and the front

door opened but did not close.

“Your dog is here,” the rider said, and we heard Stappo’s

feet coming toward us. “Keep him from my father, please.” The

door closed at last.

“Stappo!” I whispered, leaning down, finding him with my

hands and scratching him behind the ears. He whined a happy
whine.

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Bonifacio and I headed through the darkness to the

father’s room, where the candlelight was faint but did let us see

a little.

The coughing was terrible. A part of me wanted to leave, to

get away from it, and the room, and the entire city, but another
part knew I needed to stay.

It is important, a voice whispered.
What that meant, I did not know, but I could not leave.

Bonifacio was kneeling in the candlelight beside the father,

who sounded even frailer now, and whose chin glistened red

and wet.

“He is not going to survive the night, Emissary,” Bonifacio

said.

“You have seen men die like this?”

“Two. A Cardinal and a Bishop. They, too, coughed up

blood.”

“You helped them die? I mean, did you—”
“Yes. When a Cardinal, Archbishop or Bishop dies, it

should be the pope from whom they receive last rites. I have
given these rites sixty-seven times in my brief life, Emissary.”

What an amazing thing, I thought. To be a boy and yet to

have helped sixty-seven men die, helped their souls pass from

flesh to God’s grace.

“Can we wait for the doctor to arrive?”

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“The doctor is not a priest. We do not know whether the

rider will bring the priest as well.”

“No, we do not. Do you have what you need, Your

Holiness?”

“Not exactly. I do not have oil and will have to use holy

water. You have the vials in your pouch. Please give me one.

Once we open its wax seal, we should use it all. We can use the
rest of it to bless this house and the rider tomorrow morning.

We might even bless the rider, his horse and the race.”

When—fumbling in the dark like a blind man—I finally

produced a vial, Bonifacio was saying, “He is not able to
request absolution; he cannot perform Penance. I must

proceed to the Anointing and then the Viaticum. But if he is the
rider’s father, he is certainly a man of contrition, and I can give

him the forgiveness he believes he needs.”

“Though he does not...need it,” I heard myself say.

I could feel Bonifacio’s eyes on me in the dim light.
“I was listening to the heresy, Bonifacio, the rider’s....”

“And mine.”
“Yes. And I have always thought the same—about God and

‘sin’....”

“I am not surprised, Emissary,” he answered, and I could

not tell whether it was the boy or the pope speaking.

I handed him the vial.

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“In nomine clementiae patris inunctio te,” Bonifacio

began, making a cross with a wet finger on the man’s forehead.

I could barely hear the Latin over the coughing, and almost as
soon as Bonifacio began, the man began to squirm, as if to say,

Do not give up on me! Do not give me the last rites when I am
not dying! Allow me to fight a little longer!

Bonifacio stopped, looked at me again, but I had no advice

to give. Bonifacio was pope. He should know.

As if hearing my thought, Bonifacio said:
“I believe he is dying, and as pope I must trust what the

Holy Spirit tells me. Yet I do not want to help dispatch a man
prematurely from his body by the very words I might utter....”

There was a sound behind us, a familiar one. A dog’s paws

on a floor. But how had Stappo gotten in?

Then there was another sound, and I turned. A figure

stood in the doorway to the room, Stappo at its feet, and the

figure was saying, “The doctor is nowhere to be found. They say
he has gone to Valverde to minister to a cousin, and I—”

The voice stopped. Even in the dim light I could see the

rider’s eyes open wide as they took in the scene in the room: A

chubby boy with pale skin—who was not a commoner but was
fleeing from someone—kneeling on the floor by the rider’s

father and reciting Latin no boy should know. Reciting it with

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power and authority, one hand on the man’s forehead and in
his other a glass vial that glinted in the candle’s light.

The rider took a step. Still Bonifacio did not turn from the

father. The work at hand, which only he could do, had made

him deaf.

I looked at the rider and the rider looked back at me. The

boy, whose features looked even softer now in the dim light,
appeared to be fighting tears again. Stappo remained perfectly

still.

Then the father indeed began to die. The death rattle that

people always spoke of but that I had only witnessed once,
when my grandmother had died on a pallet in our church,

began as a raspy word that was not a word.

When I saw the expression on the face of the rider, the

sadness and yet the acceptance, I felt something move through
my body.

It was not an itch I felt, though indeed the feeling came

from the rash. It was a coldness and yet a warmth; and it was a

word, one I could have uttered with my lips, but one so
important that it was also a light I could not speak. It was the

light that had moved through me that night in Bonifacio’s room
on Elba when the Drinker had nearly taken him from me, but

even more of that light would be needed now. Stappo was
whining—

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—because light was beginning to fill the room. The light

was coming from me, as it had before, but this time it would be

different, I knew. It would bring something back, rather than
send something away. That is what the light was saying, and

the voice within it, and the spirit whose emissary I was and
would remain until my journey was over.

Bonifacio looked up now. He stood up and stepped back to

give me room, my light reflecting in his eyes as if it were bright

morning through a window.

Behind us, in the doorway, the rider made no sound.

I placed my hands on the father’s chest and, as I did, the

room was filled with such light that it was no longer a room,

and the five bodies in the room were no longer bodies. There
was only Truth and the beauty of it. These were all that was

needed. There was a singing now, too, a sound like a great
cornamusa, like a great body swimming toward what needed

to be done.

* * *

When I woke, I was standing over the father in the

candlelit darkness, the light gone. Bonifacio was speaking Latin

again, though calmly, and the rider was kneeling on the floor,
touching his father, wiping blood gently from the man’s chin.

The father was no longer coughing but instead breathed

steadily, eyes open and aware. I was looking at Bonifacio, and

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Bonifacio was looking back at me. The rider looked up at me
then, too, and in a voice that no longer cracked, that was high

and sounded happy to be what it was, finally said:

“You are the Emissary we have heard of....”

“Yes,” Bonifacio answered for me. “He is.”
“And you—” the rider said to Bonifacio. “You are—”

“I am Pope Boniface the Ninth. Il Papino.”
“Grazia alla Madonna!” the rider exclaimed, removing his

cap and pulling even more hair from underneath it, so that it
was longer than any boy’s should have been. Still kneeling, the

rider—who was not a boy at all, I could see—added in Latin, “In
nomine Clementiae mundus salvus semper est....” In the name

of La Compassione the world is forever saved....

At seeing the rider in truth a girl, I felt my knees turn to

water, and I collapsed into darkness.

* * *

When I woke again, I was looking up into a face which,

belonging as it now did to a girl, was much prettier than it had

been when it belonged to a boy. It was more than that,
however. The face was more willing to smile now, and to be as

soft as in truth it was. And when the face spoke, it relinquished
all pretense of a voice other than its own—a relief to my ears

and certainly to Bonifacio’s as well.

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“Are you all right, Emissary?” the girl asked, concerned but

happy. I was embarrassed, of course. This was a girl, after all,

and my head was in her lap—but I did not wish to move. I felt
like a child, in the caring presence of my mother, whom I did

miss, though I had not thought of her in days.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“If he speaks,” Bonifacio said from somewhere, “he must

be all right.”

Bonifacio’s voice carried an odd tone, one I had not heard

before. Getting up on one elbow, I looked at my friend. Could it

be? Bonifacio was standing by the doorway as if ready to leave,
and there appeared to be a pout on his lips.

“Where are you going, Bonifacio?”
“I am not needed here. I am going to the kitchen.”

Did I hear jealousy? A pope jealous of a girl’s attention?

As I thought about it, I understood: I had saved the girl’s

father; the girl was grateful; she was worried about me, and
was attending to me. Bonifacio, though a pope, was suddenly

not very important.

A boy-pope had as much right to be boy as pope, did he

not?

“You are indeed needed here. I can barely get up on one

elbow. I may need last rites at any moment.”

“You tease me.”

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“Yes, Your Holiness. That is what friends are for, is it not?”
Bonifacio nodded despite himself.

To the girl I said, “I am fine. Thank you—” I started to

address her by her real name, but did not know it.

“Caterina,” she said. “Caterina Rottini.”
“That is the name your father called out in his illness,”

Bonifacio said gruffly.

I had stood and was helping the girl up. Her long fingers

felt cool in my hand, and I did not want to let them go; but
Bonifacio, poor Bonifacio, was watching, and, even if no one

were, I would have grown embarrassed holding her hand too
long.

Bonifacio, I saw with relief, had moved from the doorway

and was standing beside me now.

“How is your father?” I asked her.
“He is sleeping. His lungs sound free of fluid.” She was

looking at me, and it seemed that her eyelashes were suddenly
longer, which was of course impossible. Her gaze made me

uncomfortable, especially in Bonifacio’s presence, but what
could I do?

“Yes,” I said, stepping to the sleeping man. “He looks

much better.”

“Thank you, Emissary.”

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“Please,” I answered. “I am Emilio. And now it is your

turn, wouldn’t you say, to tell us who you really are.”

* * *

“My twin brother’s name was Giovanni,” she began. We sat

at the apartment’s one table eating bread and sausage. “He was
the truly blessed rider, and, though a boy, better than most

men. Three years ago he was injured in the race—a terrible
injury to his head—and we took him home to be attended by

the Nicchio’s doctor. Nothing could be done for him; and when
he passed from this world, the families of the Nicchio—who

knew that I, too, rode well, though never in the Palio, and
wished the Madonna’s blessing of our neighborhood and city to

continue—swore our doctor to secrecy about my brother’s
death, the same secrecy to which they themselves swore.

I was dressed up to look like my brother, kept my face

dirty, put a little scar on it where my brother had had a scar,

and wore a cap (so our story went) to cover the much worse
scar on my head and the skin there that was so sensitive to

sunlight. Who the rider is in the Palio does not matter—it is the
horse who wins, not the rider; even a horse who has lost his

rider may win—but we knew that the Governors of the Race
would not allow a girl to compete. Our priest prayed to the

Signora to ensure that our pretense would not be an offense to

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her, and she appeared to him one night to bless both our plan
and our contrada....”

I looked at Bonifacio again and saw from my friend’s

expression that he was thinking the same: All of this might be

true—and probably was—but it could not be the entire truth.
We could both feel it in her words. For reasons only she knew,

Caterina Rottini was choosing not to tell us everything.

Bonifacio, bold as he often was in such matters (and

wishing, as any boy would, to be important), went ahead and
asked it: “That is all?”

“That is enough,” the girl answered just as boldly, but

averting her eyes, too. What a strange girl, I thought to myself.

So strong, confident and even brash, and yet gentle and
humble. How could one be all of these at once?

I stared at her; and as if sensing my look, she turned to

look at me, too. The instant our gazes met, I felt my heart jump

once, then again, and did not know why. Why did her look
make my body jump? How could eyes do that? And why was it

hard for me to look away?

There was a silence.

“How will you conceal your father’s recovery from the

Nicchio?” I asked.

“I will not need to.”

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“I do not understand,” Bonifacio said. “The miracle of his

healing must point somewhere, and we are the logical

direction.”

“They will know,” she answered, “that he was healed, but

not that—not that Emilio healed him.”

Bonifacio frowned and glanced at me. I shrugged. I did not

understand either.

“We still do not understand,” Bonifacio said.

The girl had gotten up, was tucking some of her hair under

her cap again and heading toward the front door with no

intention of explaining. At the doorway she turned.

“I have preparations to make—one more qualifying race

and then the race itself, which I wish you could attend—”

How strange, I thought. She was certain that she would be

in the final race. Everything—even her father’s recovery—she
seemed to take for granted.

“—but I would indeed be grateful if you would instead

watch over my father while I am gone. He will be hungry—

anyone who has returned from death is—and he may be able to
eat bread softened with broth, or broth alone, if he seems

weak.” She paused again, and when she spoke, it was with a
smile: “And when I return, it will be time for you both to tell

me whom a Child Pope and an Emissary of La Compassione
would, with their considerable authority, need to flee from?”

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Not knowing what else to do, we nodded; and as I turned

to look down at the girl’s father, who was muttering in his

sleep, something changed in the room. In the corner of my eye
Caterina was not a girl. Though it was impossible, there was a

woman in Caterina’s place, one wearing something in her hair,
her hair as bright as daylight. When I jerked my gaze back to

the doorway, however, it was Caterina again, her back to us as
she stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

* * *

“Did you see a woman?” I asked a moment later.

“I have seen many women, Emissary,” Bonifacio answered.
“You are sounding pompous, Bonifacio.”

“I will try to improve. What woman?”
“I am tired and imagining things. Forget that I asked....”

* * *

When the father woke at last, we had been sitting in his

room on stools carried in from the kitchen and were so nearly
asleep sitting on those stools that we startled when he said:

“Where is Caterina and who are you? And why is there a dog in
this room?”

Bonifacio and I both started at the man, who was up on

one arm and looking surprisingly well for one who should be

dead.

Bonifacio could not find the words.

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“We are friends of your daughter, Signore Rottini,” I said.

“When you experienced what could only be termed a

miraculous recovery, she told us her story and asked us to
remain and care for you while she went to the qualifying race. I

am Emilio Musetti and that is Bonifacio—Bonifacio....”

“Bonifacio da Grossacio,” Bonifacio completed for me, and

I thought the invention quite sonorous.

“And you do not need to fear our dog,” I added. “He will

protect you as he protects us.”

The man stared at Stappo for a moment, and then, with a

trusting if exhausted sigh, lay back on his pallet of blankets. “I
should have known it would happen.”

Was the man referring to his own miraculous healing or

something else?

“That what would happen, Signore?”
“That she would be able to do it.”

“What, Signore?” I asked just as Bonifacio asked, “Who,

Signore?” We sounded like a Commedia troupe, trying to get

laughs on the street for our daily bread.

“Heal me,” the man said impatiently. “Caterina, my

daughter. That she would heal me.”

Bonifacio and I looked at each other. We were doing this

frequently. The world held too many surprises for us not to.

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“You do not know who she is?” the man asked, puzzled

now. “You said she told you.”

“We met her only yesterday, Signore,” I explained. “We

have had only one talk with her, and she told us only a little.

We are new to Siena.”

When suspicion fell over the man’s face, I added quickly,

“Your priest felt your daughter’s approval of us, and so he
approved of us as well.” I was not sure what it meant exactly—

to phrase it this way—but this was how the people of this city,
or this neighborhood at least, put things, so why not put it this

way for a confused Nicchiaiolo who had just returned from the
dead?

“I see....” the man said.
“And so,” Bonifacio added, “all we really know about her is

that she is a remarkable horse rider—”

“And,” I continued, “that she took her twin brother’s place

—your son’s place, God rest his soul.”

“My son?”

“Yes, the one you lost to a terrible injury to his head in the

Palio three years ago.”

The man was speechless. A frown had taken over his face,

and all he seemed able to do was stare at us. I added, “At which

point your kind and dutiful daughter, with the blessing of your
priest and the Madonna of this city, adopted the identity of her

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twin brother and began to race successfully for your quarter
and for the Blessed Madonna, just as your blessed son did....”

The man’s expression did not change, nor did he speak.

Was he having a seizure?

“At least,” Bonifacio said, “that is what your daughter told

us.”

The frown changed into something else. The man was

looking at us now as if we were crazy. When he finally spoke, it

was to say: “I do not know why Caterina told you such a story,
but it is not true. If you are in our home and have the priest’s

blessing, and hers, which I do believe you have, then you are
welcome; and I thank you for attending to me in my illness. But

Caterina has not told you the truth. Her brother ran away with
a girl from Capo Montalbero. The entire Nicchio, at our priest’s

suggestion, kept it a secret and advised Caterina to take his
place. Her brother did not die of a terrible head wound.”

It was my turn to be speechless, though Bonifacio was

somehow able to say, “Why did your priest advise her thus?”

“Because....” The man hesitated, but then, as if finding

something in our faces that made him trust us, proceeded:

“Because we all believe—and have for many years now—that
she is the incarnation of the Madonna of Provenzano.

“Had she not approved of you,” the man went on, “the

priest would certainly not have done so, and you would not be

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sitting with me now.” He had gotten up easily on his own from
the pallet, and the three of us were now seated in the kitchen,

at the table, where he wolfed down bread and jerky and stew
like a starving animal. “Father Salemi,” the man went on, “once

told me that he would not be surprised if she showed an ability
to heal others, and so it has come to pass.”

I knew what Bonifacio was thinking. I remembered

Caterina’s strange words, too: The Nicchio will know that he

was healed, but not how....

“Even when she was little, she seemed able to foresee the

future, even to guide the events of the present to better ends
than they should have reached on their own. This gift had also

belonged, they say, to the Madonna of Provenzano. Father
Salemi saw it when Caterina was very young, and more than

one member of our quarter has seen the visage of the Madonna
in Caterina’s face, for a passing moment at least, and even the

Madonna’s figure walking beside her. This has only become
more pronounced as she has grown older. The Madonna

herself, people say, has appeared before Father Salemi to
confirm this....”

Having spent himself with words, the little man looked at

us silently, spoon in hand, stew dripping from it, and took a

deep breath.

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“I do not know why Caterina did not confess this to you

when she trusted you enough to let you both minister to me.

Why instead she told you a disturbing story about her brother,
whose departure from us was foolish but not so tragic, I have

no idea. She must have had a reason. Someone who can see the
future usually has reason....”

“Perhaps,” I said, “she is simply humble.”
The father snorted. “Some would say so, but others would

claim she is as obstreperous and rebellious as the boy she
pretends to be. I suspect, however, that you are right. She is

humble when it comes to matters of the spirit...at least when
the Madonna is guiding her.”

Silence fell again in the kitchen, so that all we could hear

was the revelers in the street below, and it lasted until Caterina

burst suddenly through the door, dirty and sweaty. She said,
“You are looking healthy, Father, and no longer hungry!”

“Yes, Caterina.”
“I qualified!”

“Of course you did,” her father said.
Of course she would, if she were the incarnation of the

Madonna and could foresee the future.

Turning to me, she said, “I must ask Emilio to be present

tomorrow for the race, even if there is risk of discovery for him.
Will you do this for me, Emilio?”

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Bonifacio was too stunned to look hurt or jealous. His

mouth popped open and remained that way until I said: “Of

course.”

* * *

Bonifacio and I—and Stappo, too, since the father was

unafraid of him—spent the night in the main room, while

Caterina slept as always on the floor not far from him.

Try as I would, I could not sleep. There was a question that

kept my eyes open, but what was it?

I had wanted, out of vanity, to think Caterina had chosen

me over Bonifacio to be at the Palio tomorrow because...well,
just because. Perhaps she thought me handsome. Perhaps she

could barely contain her gratitude for what I had done for her
father and so wanted me near her. Perhaps it was vanity on her

part, too, and she wanted me to be impressed with her prowess
in the race. Perhaps....

But this was not how a Madonna thought, I knew. Even a

mortal girl who could, at times at least, see the future might

have another reason.

* * *

When I woke on my own pallet, it was to a voice; and I was

certain an angel or something worse was standing over me.

From the look on Bonifacio’s face, he feared the same. But it
was only Caterina silhouetted by bright morning light through

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the room’s window. She had woken before us and dressed for
the race, and was again the boy she needed to be.

“You should rise now, too,” she said to us both. “I will

return in a few minutes.” Then she was gone, the door closing

quietly behind her.

What she meant by this, I had no idea, and neither did

Bonifacio.

As the father stumbled into the kitchen—no less steady

than anyone his age would be upon waking—he grumbled
“Buona mattina, ragazzi!” and began to prepare bread and

butter for himself.

“You have awakened a monster with your healing,”

Bonifacio whispered, short-changed on his holy rest and
irritable as a consequence.

“No wonder the son ran away—” I joked back, stopping

when the father glanced at us from the kitchen table.

Bonifacio stifled a laugh. The father was looking at us.
Just as we sat down with him in the kitchen, buttering our

own bread, the front door opened again and instead of one
figure—Caterina’s—two entered.

The Nicchio priest was with her. Why? Were our secrets

not to be kept?

“Do not be angry with me,” she began. “I have brought

Father Salemi, and for good reason. He is the one person I have

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told about the miracle of my father’s healing and your
identities, and I have done so because there is a need. He has

asked to meet you. I have agreed, but in return have asked a
favor of him.”

“Your Holiness,” the priest said, and he was so agitated,

his face so red, that I feared for a moment his heart might

explode. He knelt before the chubby Bonifacio, who looked
about as holy as a piglet, but who, of the two boys standing

before the priest, was obviously il Papino. Had the Child Pope
possessed orange hair, as I did, Rome would certainly have

spoken both tirelessly and tiresomely of it.

Bonifacio straightened, took on the bearing he had grown

up with—the boy-man who had given last rights to cardinals,
archbishops and bishops—and with sincerity and compassion

said: “Grazia a Lei, Father Salemi. May the blessings of the
Lord be upon you.”

The girl’s father, poor man, was struck dumb, the last

piece of bread he had put in his mouth still there, the chewing

of it ceased, the mouth open, the eyes darting from Bonifacio to
the priest to Caterina to me and back to Bonifacio again.

“Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te,” the priest and

Bonifacio said together.

Caterina, solemn now, continued: “And this is Emilio

Musetti, the one by whose light my father was healed.”

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At this the father choked and the bread flew at last from

his mouth. His hand, horrified by what his mouth had done,

reached out wildly to grab the piece in midair but had no luck.
The morsel of bread fell to the floor not far from my left foot,

and there it lay until Stappo, wondering at the silliness of
humans, found it and ate it.

“Emilio is the emissary,” she went on, “we have heard

rumors of, even as we have heard rumors of the Drinkers of

Blood and chosen foolishly not to believe them. His light
healed my father, and that he carries such light is evidence not

only that he is emissary, but that the rumors are true: the
Drinkers do exist. They have, as we have heard, taken Rome,

turning five hundreds priests in the Holy City to their immortal
devices. And the hideous figures of the night that those priests

have become now travel throughout Christendom to bring
about its fall as well.”

The priest was nodding. His kneeling had become

awkward for everyone. I stepped to him and offered him a

hand. He hesitated, staring at my hand.

“It will not burn you,” I said.

He took it, rose and, with a tremble in his voice, said:

“Thank you for blessing us with your presence, Emissary.”

The girls’ father was up, too, and was trying to speak.

“Caterina. What is happening here? “

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“Father,” she answered lovingly but firmly. “You will tell

no one in the Nicchio what you have heard and seen and heard

in these rooms. I wished you to know the truth, so that you
might join me in giving thanks to the one who returned your

life to you and you to me.”

“But you are the Madonna!”

“I do not know who I am, Father; and if I do not, no one

does.” She paused, then looked at me. “Except perhaps the

Emissary....”

I thought that Bonifacio might frown, feeling slighted, but

he did not. He simply stared at her.

“We have a race to race today,” she said, “and I must leave

soon for the Piazza. I have asked Father Salemi to come here
this morning to meet you both. It is important for reasons that

will become clear. He will also lead you to the Piazza at the
right time, so that you do not get lost.”

Again, her tone was matter-of-fact, but beyond it, as

always, something else whispered too. Something not at all

matter-of-fact. Something immense and important.

Feeling like children, Bonifacio and I nodded and said, “Of

course.”

* * *

The Piazza di Campo was pure madness. Whether those

present were inebriated or merely enthusiastic mattered not,

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for either of those taken to an extreme produced madness. I
had seen this at the Carnevale in Viarreggio, south of our

village, on the two occasions my mother had taken me there:
men and women pummeling each other with leather batons.

Whether it was passion or wine or both that numbed their pain
had not been clear to me. In their madness they had laughed,

kissed, grabbed, fondled, slapped, pummeled, bled, and then
laughed even more.

But there was something especially insane about the Palio.

While the richest of the city readied themselves to watch the

race from windows high in the buildings around the piazza, the
rest were packed like over-heated cattle into its center, the race

course a circle of empty earth around them. The poor were
elbow-to-elbow with no room to stretch and only stale air to

breathe. How the crowd resisted panic, I did not know, but I
was starting to panic myself just looking at them from where

we stood by the track. Bonifacio looked even worse. We had
somehow made our way through the crowd at the piazza’s

center and were now pressed against the wooden barriers that
kept the revelers from the course.

Perhaps if this were your city—if you had grown up here

and in your father’s arms had watched every race from the year

you were born—if the Madonna of Provenzano, for whom this

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race was always run, was your Madonna—the insanity of the
crowd would not feel insane but instead beautiful?

“Are you going to faint, Bonifacio?”
“I am not sure, Emissary,” Bonifacio called over the din of

the crowd, looking somewhat green of face. “I have not been in
such circumstances before.”

“Nor have I.”
“Perhaps it is the Sienese. It is in their blood and they love

living like this. Perhaps they all sleep together as children in
little apartments, and Siena is one great family to them and

they prefer this to vast, empty piazze with endless elbowroom.
Perhaps they even die of loneliness in piazzas where is too

much—”

“You are starting to babble, Bonifacio.”

“Yes, but, if I speak, there is less chance I will faint.”
“Then please speak. I would hate to have to—”

A bell sounded from the great tower. Bonifacio and I

jumped, but the noise had absolutely no effect on anyone

around us. These simply continued with their yelling, their
affectionate or ill-tempered insults, their bad breath and

belches, and, of course, their wagers. “Twenty on Draco
because I love you, cugino!” “Tartaruga wins or your children

will be born with horns. Fifty on Tartaruga!” “Thirty on il

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Nicchio! The Madonna will deliver!” “Eighteen to your thirty—
the Madonna wants speed, not a porker!”

And then the horses tore by the barrier beside us in a cloud

of red dust, bright contrada colors and little clubs with which

the riders beat each other with determination.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

“I saw one long horse with forty-eight legs and twelve

riders.”

“They will spread out more, will they not?”
“Perhaps, but the race is only three laps. We only have two

more chances to see her.”

Before the horses could circle the course again, we heard a

cry go up from the crowd. Something had happened.

The crowd, I could see, was breaking through the low

wooden barriers at the other end of the piazza.

As I stood there, I sensed it was Caterina the cries were

about. A strange light was filling the piazza, one the crowd
seemed not to notice.

I squinted at it—the light. I did not know at first what was

making it, but then I saw it.

Where the light was brightest, a figure hovered in the air

high above the crowd.

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Even at this distance, I recognized the figure. I had seen

her in Caterina’s apartment, confusing her with Caterina

herself, but had assumed she was but imagination.

As she drifted closer, she looked at me in silence, and I

could see her face—the moon of it, her hair beautiful, a halo for
that moon. She was dressed in the finest gown, white and the

palest blue and the yellow of the smallest flowers on the hills
above my village in spring.

“Do you see her now, Bonifacio?” I asked, barely able to

speak.

Bonifacio looked around. “Who, Emissary?”
“Her. Over there.” I pointed above the crowd to the exact

place where she floated.

“Now you are babbling, my friend. Do you feel faint?”

I ignored him. I started pushing my way toward the

commotion. My legs wanted to run, but the bodies around me

would not let them. All I could do was push and keep pushing.

“Bonifacio,” I called back. “Caterina has been hurt! The

Madonna has come for her!”

As I pushed, the figure floated near me. It did not leave.

* * *

When I reached the far barrier, which the crowd had easily

toppled, I scrambled over it and was on the race course itself
now, earth not cobbles.

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The figure floated above me. It had been my guide.
I looked around, coughing from the dust, and there, in

front of me, was what I had most feared.

Caterina was lying on the earth unmoving, as if asleep. Her

horse was upright, apparently uninjured, its muzzle lowered to
her, pushing at her shoulder, trying to get her to rise.

I felt more fear than I could bear. Do not take her from us,

Nostra Signora—from her contrada—from her father and her

people—from Bonifacio and me—please!

I looked up and the light was gone. The figure was gone.

I looked down at Caterina again and saw what I’d

somehow known I would see: A wound on her head, the blood

seeping into the earth as if the soil were a rag.

This was why Caterina had wanted me to be here.

This was why she had insisted.
She had known this would happen, but why had she not

stopped it? She was the incarnation of our Lady, was she not?

She wanted you to be here with her when she died, but

why?

When I knelt by her side, no one tried to stop me. Those

standing on the track simply stared. She was still a boy to them.
Clothes and cap and hair of a boy. The boy who had won two

races for the Nicchio.

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The Madonna was there again, hovering high above us,

waiting, and that could mean only one thing: That I needed to

tell Caterina goodbye.

I could hear footsteps running toward us, but they were

not important. I sat down beside her, leaned over her, moved
her shoulders so that I could put her head gently in my lap,

held her head with both of my hands, and whispered to her,
“Thank you for being who you are, Caterina. For being in my

life even if briefly.”

“No!” a voice whispered hoarsely.

In astonishment I watched as one of Caterina’s eyes, the

one that was not so bloody, opened, and she whispered again:

“It is not time...”
I nodded, wondering whether I had fainted and was

dreaming, or we were both dead and in another world.
Someone with a wound like hers could not be speaking, could

not be thinking so clearly.

The footsteps were louder now, voices with them, and

Bonifacio knelt beside me.

“We must give her rites,” he was saying.

“No.”
“What do you mean ‘No’? She is dying if not already dead!”

“Help me carry her,” I said to him, to give him something

to do, to calm his frantic hands, to keep the Latin she did not

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want from his lips. But then others arrived, and they were the
civil guards of the Nicchio contrada. It was their arms that

began to lift her up and away.

“No one can live with a wound like that,” one man said.

I wanted to argue, but how could I?

* * *

As the men carried her back to the contrada, I stayed by

her side, and Bonifacio stayed by mine. Father Salemi was with

us, too, hurrying beside the guards.

“Why isn’t Father Salemi giving the rites to her, Emilio?”

“I do not know, Bonifacio.”
“Please do not let her die without them, Emissary.”

I could not find words with which to answer.

* * *

At the apartment the guards rushed the girl to her father’s

room. The priest was shouting, “Here, here! Put her here!”

When the men obeyed, placing her on the floor where her
father had lain so recently, the priest shouted, “Now leave!

Please!” The men stepped back, blinking, and confused.

“Leave!” the priest insisted.

Now he will try to give her the rites. I must stop him!
But the priest did not kneel beside her. No Latin came

from his lips.

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Caterina’s father was there now, standing behind Bonifacio

and me. Without a word he stepped to Father Salemi’s side.

Both of them just stood there looking at me, waiting.

“Father, please!” Bonifacio cried out. “If you do not give

her last rites, I will have to.”

“It is too late for that,” the priest said. “She died in the

piazza before I could reach her—even before you could reach
her, Your Holiness.”

I thought I might be sick there on the floor. How could she

have been dead on the track? I had heard her voice.

“Bring her back to us,” the priest said to me then.
“Yes, Emissary. Return her to us,” her father said.

I stared at them both. If the Madonna could not bring her

back to life, how could I? How could the spirit of La

Compassione, if the Madonna could not? This was not a
Drinker that only needed to be filled with fear. This was not a

father ill and dying on the floor. This was a girl, a wonderful
girl, and she was dead, her flesh already returning to the earth.

Even Bonifacio was looking at me, waiting.
“I cannot,” I said. “The Madonna will come for her. She

will take Caterina’s soul to a life beyond....”

The priest said: “No, the Madonna will not. That is not

why the Madonna was here, Emissary. Caterina foretold all of
this.”

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Then a voice—one without lips or throat or words—said:
Bring me back, Emissary.

I started to shake. I thought I would fall to the floor.
Bring me back, Emissary, the voice said again, and it was

Caterina’s voice, and a woman’s too. Only you can do what
must be done today. It is the only way you will become the

instrument of La Compassione the world needs you to be.

At her words, though for a moment I refused them, my

body began to change. My rash became a fire, just as it had
with the girl’s father, but now my arms began to glow like coals

as room brightened like the sun.

I stepped to Caterina’s body, knelt down, placed my right

hand upon her brow, and saw that my hand was no longer a
hand but something else, something a creature might need to

swim with—and something of fire that could both give life and
take it away, as it would soon on the blood-washed shores of a

distant lake.

Caterina’s face became the Madonna’s, and then a girl’s

again, because they were indeed the same. There was no blood
now on her head because tears—or the waters of a great lake—

had washed it away, so that her flesh might heal. The boy
inside me was crying, of course, but that meant nothing.

Mortals weep in the face of Truth, its beauty and the grace it is.

* * *

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When I opened my eyes, I was still kneeling, the light was

gone, my rash no longer hurt, my cheeks were still wet from

mortal tears.

Caterina was different. There was no blood on her. The

wound by her eye was gone, the gash in her skull had smoothed
over, and her skin was perfect once more. And she was

sleeping.

I stood up and looked from Bonifacio to the priest to the

father. Their faces looked as exhausted as those of soldiers after
a battle. What they had seen while I had dreamed a dream I

could not remember, I did not know.

* * *

“The story is complete,” the priest said.
I did not know what he meant, but then I did: The story

Caterina had first told us, the odd lie about her brother. How
he had died from a terrible head injury in a race two years ago

and how she, disguised as a boy, had taken his place because
she was a good rider, too.

“She knew this day would come,” I said.
“Yes, Emissary. And so it has happened, and now the

people of Siena will believe her brother died, just as she told
you he did, and in a race, while the sister will now run off with

a boy for the sake of love.”

“But the people of the Nicchio will know,” I said.

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“They will know only that she was brought back from

death. They will assume it was by the grace of the Madonna,

out of love for her daughter. Which is as it should be, Emissary,
if your presence here is to be kept a secret, and you are to

continue your journey.” The priest paused. “It is also, as you
might imagine, a gift to this contrada—to any contrada in this

city—for it to believe that the Madonna performed such a
miracle for those who love her.”

“We are all instruments of La Compassione, Father,” I

found myself saying. “The Madonna was present, overseeing it

all, I assure you. I saw her at the campo. She led me to
Caterina. I think I saw her in this room as well....”

The priest bowed his head. “Of course.”
We watched Caterina struggle up on one elbow. She was

not in pain. She was smiling, as if amused, and she was looking
at me. I blushed.

“What will you do now, Caterina?” Bonifacio asked, seeing

my reddening face.

“I will travel, as a boy, with you and Emilio to Assisi,”

Caterina answered, and in that tone we had heard before—one

that said no argument would be tolerated. “That is where you
must travel next, Emissary, if you are to elude those who seek

your capture.”

“You have seen it?” I asked.

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“I have.”
I was no longer surprised.

“This was your plan all along,” I said.
“Yes, Emilio. To make of our story the great circle it should

be.”

“But what will the Nicchio do now? Who will ride for

them?”

The priest answered for her. “There is a boy, Iacopo, who

is blessed by the Madonna. You can see it in his eyes. He was
too young to race three years ago when Caterina began riding

for us. He is old enough now, and he is gifted. It is his time...or
so the Madonna told me in a dream a year ago.”

“He will win next year,” Caterina said quietly. “He will win

for four years,” she went on, “and then another young man will

begin to ride for the Nicchio. He will be tall and loud, but a
good rider, and he will dream of the Madonna every night, as

we all do in Siena, whether we know it or not....”

I could only stare.

* * *

When we parted Siena the next morning, the road to Assisi

was packed with travelers, many of them bleary-eyed and
uncoordinated in their steps from the previous night’s

carousing, and more than a few quite irritable about the work
they needed to resume in the grain fields and mills and

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vineyards. As a consequence, few were in any condition to pay
attention to our little troupe—three boys and a dog—pretty as

one boy was, pink-cheeked as another, and rash-decorated as
the third.

Just before Montepulciano we heard the hooves of horses,

and a group of fifteen soldiers road by. Whether they were

looking for Bonifacio and me, there was no way to know. Later,
in Cittapieve, and after stopping to eat and drink, thanks to the

florins that remained in my pouch, we found ourselves exposed
in front of a church as another complement of soldiers road by;

but, again, we were not noticed. Was La Compassione
watching over us, or was it simply not our time?

Assisi lay before us—Caterina had seen it—but what lay

beyond Assisi’s pink-marble face remained a journey of fog and

doubt whose footsteps we could not see even as they took us
inexorably to the shores of a distant lake and the future of the

world.

Read Comments on this Story

on the BCS Website

Bruce McAllister’s science fiction and fantasy stories have

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

appeared over the years in the field’s major magazines and
many “year’s best” volumes (like Best American Short Stories

2007, Stephen King ed.). His short story “Kin” was a finalist
for the Hugo Award; his novelette “Dream Baby” was a

finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards; his novelette “The
Crying Child” was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award.

He is the author of three novels: Humanity Prime, a chronicle
of humanity on a water planet in the far future; Dream Baby,

an ESP-in-war tale; and 2013’s The Village Sang to the Sea: A
Memoir of Magic. His short stories have been collected in the

career-spanning The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other
Stories. He lives in Orange County, California, with his wife,

choreographer Amelie Hunter, and works as a writer, writing
coach, and book and screenplay consultant.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

Y BRENIN

by C. Allegra Hawksmoor

An eagle turned in a low gyre over the battlefield. The red

and cloying earth churned with rain and blood, turning
everything to ochre in the light of a late summer. The sound of

a hundred tiny battles between life and death caught in the
arms of the valley.

The knight pressed through the crush of the fighting and

the fallen. He fought as sunset swept unminded towards

evening. Until the air itself seemed to thicken every sound and
movement. And still the Red King did not yield.

Some long-forgotten blow had sheared the dulled gold

armour of the Red King’s cuisse, black blood boiling through

torn metal embossed with golden flowers. He stumbled in the
red mud like a dying calf. And still he did not yield.

The knight bulled forwards with his shield, stubbornness

and momentum overawing the Red King’s footing and

throwing him over the body of a dying horse. The knight drew
his sword back to make the killing blow. It took him some time

to realise that his arm would not obey. He stood still as a golem

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shaped from blood-red clay. Only moving to draw deep gulps of
air into his lungs.

The Red King’s sword fell from his hand, and he fumbled

with shaking fingers at the catches of his helm. His hair and

beard were the colour of polished mahogany, but his eyes were
pupiless, bottomless black.

“What are your orders?” he said. “What does my brother

say is to be done with me, Ser....”

“Mercher.”
The knight removed his own helm. His thoughts ached for

the dirty scrap of paper secured behind his breastplate. He
knew its words by heart, but the touch of the paper against his

skin gave him comfort.

“The Edling of the North would have me kill you,” the

knight said.

And take everything from the towns, his lord’s message

ordered. Empty their stores. The North must eat.

The eithin aur on the Red King’s armour caught the last of

the day’s light, gold petals of hammered metal glinting. The
knight’s hand reached involuntarily for its mirror-image,

shaped into his own breastplate. The eagle felt its way through
the blue emptiness above them, with a mind as clear as

polished glass held up before the sun.

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The knight was a creature forged of the same base

elements: his flesh and his bones, the blade in his hand, all

birthed out of the belly of the same earth. The same clarity of
purpose hammered clean through him.

He seized the Red King’s shoulder and wrenched him to

his feet.

“Begin walking,” he said, turning towards the ancient

forest that rolled over the foothills, beyond the slow quiet

seeping out into the battlefield.

* * *

They stopped quite close to morning, beside an ancient

trackway that had led them to a clearing by the river. The path

curved over a huge slab of grey stone that spanned the water,
pitted and worn with a thousand years of feet and wheels and

weather beneath the moss and lichen. On the other side, the
track cut up over the bank and disappeared back into the

woods.

The knight knelt beside the stream and washed the sweat

and dirt out of his hair while his courser drank deeply beside
him. He spread his hands and submerged them in the river

until bloody trails of red earth streamed from the knuckles of
his gauntlets. The sky glanced blue through sunburned leaves,

and early light caught on the metal in the water.

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“It is a dangerous thing for a knight to defy his lord,” the

Red King said from the shadow of a great old elm. He worked

an arrowhead from his armour and lashed it onto a straight
arm of fallen wood. “Aren’t you afraid of what my brother will

do when he finds out that I am still alive?”

Red water dripped from the knight’s hands and dissolved

into the current. “And why should I be afraid of Edling Gwyn
when I have the Red King at my back?”

“The Red King? It has been a long time since any

northerner has called me that, boy. Who are your family?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the knight said. “I never had any.”
The Red King took a limping step towards him, blood

oozing from the torn metal on his thigh. When he came out
from under the elm, he flinched and raised a hand to the sky.

Tears spilled over his lashes and quickened down his cheeks.

He cannot stand the light, the knight thought. Something

is wrong with his eyes. His lips parted to form a question, but
the question never came.

The Red King cursed the sun and turned away, snatching

up the arrow-headed spear and sliding down the bank into the

shallows under the shadow of the tree.

The knight set his gauntlets down. “Are you going to try to

kill me with that, Goch?”

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“I was going to try and eat.” The Red King tugged at the

knots holding the arrowhead in place. “Unless you would

rather that I starve. Where are you taking me? Do you even
know?”

The knight unfastened the catches of his breastplate and

laid his armour in the sun. Beneath it, his arming jacket was

sweat-yellow and blood-black. “To Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth.”

“Through the mountains?” The Red King drove the point

of his spear into the water. “Taking North Road with the rest of
your army would be safer.”

“The rest of my army want you dead.” The knight took his

courser’s bridle and untied the barding from around her neck.

“And every town and village we passed through would rather
free you. That does not sound as though it fits my definition of

‘safer’.”

The Red King crouched down in the water and clamped

the thrashing salmon between his hands as it died on the point
of his spear. He pulled it free and threw it up onto the bank.

Far enough out of the water to suffocate.

“And what will you do with me when we reach the city, Ser

Mercher?”

“I will bring you to the Edling of the North.”

The salmon spasmed once and gaped for air. The Red King

pulled himself up onto the bank and shelled its eyes into his

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mouth with his thumb. He pressed them between his teeth
until they burst and nodded to the curl of parchment stowed in

the hollow curve of the knight’s breastplate. “It seems to me as
though my brother would much rather you killed me,” he said.

“And pillaged my towns to feed his army.”

“You should not have read it,” the knight snapped, tugging

too sharply at his courser’s girth. The horse stamped and
flashed the whites of her eyes.

“And when would I have done that? I didn’t have to read it.

I know my brother, Ser Mercher. Better than you do.”

“You don’t know anything,” the knight growled, hauling

the saddle off.

“I know that he would very much like to murder me and

leave the south to ruin. I know that he expected you to break

open our grain stores and find them overflowing with all the
crops and livestock that we’ve taken, and that when he finds

that they are bare, his cities will starve for the sake of his army
just the same as mine.”

“What else could he do?” the knight demanded. “Your

people have been attacking our villages for months now. Why

haven’t you sent word of the blight to Dinas Pair?”

The Red King laughed and laid his hand upon the eithin

aur forged into his armour. “You think that when my brother
hears about the blight, he’ll open his granaries and forget about

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this precious war of his? No, he will notice that we are weak. If
he is smart, he will seize his chance to strike.”

“Gwyn doesn’t understand,” the knight said. “You’ve given

him no choice. When I bring him to you, you will tell him. Then

he can decide what he wants to do with you.”

He frowned and stared into the current. Then he can

decide what he wants to do with both of us.

The Red King cut the salmon with the point of his

makeshift spear and emptied out its innards. “Gwyn, is it
now?” he said. “Tell me, Ser Mercher, just how familiar are you

with my brother?”

“You should still your tongue,” the knight spat, his aching

shoulders bowstring-tight. “You may need it when we reach the
capital, but you do not need your fingers.”

The Red King sat back against the elm and linked his

hands behind his head. Metal intertwined with flesh.

“If you are so certain that all of this is a terrible

misunderstanding,” the Red King said at last, “then why have

you brought me all the way out here without so much as
sending him word?”

The knight glanced up at the tessellated sky, clear blue

behind the shifting leaves, and did not answer.

* * *

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Through much of the next two days the Red King sat

astride the knight’s warhorse, raising his hand to block the sky

from his black eyes while the knight walked along beside him.
The wound on his leg stopped bleeding when they made camp,

but overnight the flesh around it turned an ugly red.

On the second afternoon, it rained, starting in a few large

drops that resounded on the knight’s armour and pinged off
into the grass and soon pouring straight down in the windless

air.

They pressed on for almost an hour before the knight

relented, pulling up beside a ring of stones perched over the old
trackway—narrow shards of mountain slate projecting

outwards like a crown of purple thorns. The knight tethered his
horse to a twisted hawthorn that looked as though it had stood

there for a thousand years. The only part of it left alive was a
corona of dark green leaves clinging to its branches. The

courser twisted her head to tug at them, rainwater plastering
her mane against her neck.

The knight pulled the Red King from the saddle and set

about removing the mare’s caparison—a stained length of white

cloth emblazoned with a thousand golden flowers. “We’ll use
the stone circle for cover.”

“That isn’t a circle.” The Red King retrieved the body of the

young hare they had snared the night before from behind the

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saddle. “It’s a cairn. A group of farmers from Dirneb dug it up
when I was a boy. It was full of ash and bones. Human and

animal, all mixed in together.”

The knight shivered and stared into the centre of the

circle: a round and gaping mouth ringed with broken teeth and
half-smothered by low cloud. “Help me with this.”

The Red King took the edge of the caparison, and between

them they dragged it to the cairn and struggled to spread the

cloth over two of the leaning spears of stone as the rain
drummed down a steady cold. The knight drove his sword into

the ground to make a third hitch for the canopy and crawled
beneath.

The Red King stooped out of the rain to sit beside him. “Do

you even know where we are?”

The knight tried to make out the shapes of the dark

mountains drifting in and out of the cloud beyond the edge of

the caparison. “Heading north.”

“You realise that most of the Drysau are between us and

Dinas Pair,” the Red King said calmly. “Do you know these
mountains well, Ser Mercher? Because Gwyn and I grew up in

them. And, if he were here now....” He turned the limp, furry
body of the hare over in his hands. “He would be telling you the

same as me.”

The knight looked at him sidelong. “And what is that?”

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“That if you keep following this track....” The Red King

sawed the hare open on the edge of the impaled sword. “Then

you shall have to go over the shoulder of Y Brenin before you
reach Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth. He would tell you that between us

and that mountain, there is a valley at the foot of Caer Pwyll
filled with nothing but reeds and marsh that is difficult to cross

even on a fine day. For a horse, and two men in armour....”

The Red King held his hand out into the rain pouring off of

the caparison and rolled his shoulders in a shrug. The knight
wrapped his arms around himself, but wet metal-against-metal

brought him little comfort.

“And what would you suggest?”

“Take the east fork in the road, half a day from here.”
“Through Bannik and Gerwester?”

The Red King nodded.
“Through two villages sympathetic to you, and a stone’s

throw away from the North Road?” the knight asked stonily.
He shook his head. “We go north.”

The Red King sighed and spread his hands in frustration.

He studied them for a few moments, smeared with blood and

rain, then began to strip the fur away from the dead hare in his
lap. “You know,” he said, peeling the muscle away from the

bone and biting into the slick red meat. “I’m certain that I
recognise you.”

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The knight watched the Red King suck down raw flesh and

fought against a knot of nausea. The Red King chewed

methodically, staring out into the rain. This close, the knight
could see that his strange black eyes weren’t pupiless at all, but

rather that the pupils were so swollen that the brown of his
irises was almost swallowed up...

“Is there something that you want to ask, Ser Mercher?”

the Red King said.

The knight hugged himself little tighter and looked away.

“Caer Isel,” he said under his breath. “You wanted to know

where you’ve seen me before? You appointed me, and five
other guardsmen, to keep watch over Edling Gwyn when you

consigned him to live and die in that tower.”

“You’re the traitor.” The hard bark of a laugh lodged

somewhere in the Red King’s throat. He swallowed another
sliver of raw meat and shook his head. “The one who helped my

brother to escape and take the north from me. And Gwyn
knighted you for your trouble, did he? Well then, I suppose that

it turned out well enough for you.”

Well enough? the knight thought. It has ended in nothing

but war and blight and famine. It has broken this land more
deeply than you ever managed to alone.

“So, tell me.” The Red King wiped some of the bloodied fur

off of his hands. “I’ve heard that you sleep beside Gwyn. On the

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floor, like a trained dog. And that the two of you have spent the
last two summers bathing in the Ysprid together like a pair of

newly-weds. So, I’m intrigued. Does my brother fuck you well
enough to compensate you for all the trouble you have put

yourself through for his sake?”

The knight clamped down on the plume of rage and

embarrassment and watched the rivulets of rain catching on
blade of his sword. “You don’t know a damned thing about

me!”

Something quirked at the corner of the Red King’s mouth.

“I see. He hasn’t had you yet, then. Do you think that’s because
he’s ignorant of your feelings, or because he simply doesn’t

care?”

The knight swept to his feet, tearing the caparison aside

and drawing his sword out of the earth. The Red King watched
him calmly and did not move to stand. His lips and chin were

smeared with hare’s blood and water.

A gust of wind surged up the side of the mountain and

whistled between the leaning stones, turning the low cloud into
unformed shapes that hurried through the cairn. The knight

shivered and sheathed his sword at his side.

“Mount up, Goch,” he said. “If you freeze to death, I’ll

leave you for the crows.”

* * *

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“This is madness!” the Red King shouted from the saddle

as they crested the wide green saddle of Caer Pwyll and

descended down into the marsh, raising his hand to block out
the light. “We must turn back.”

They had abandoned most of their armour not long after

the cairn, but the sky was still grey and thunderous, and the

knight’s feet sank up to the ankle as the track became a stretch
of churned-up mud then petered out entirely.

The Red King dug his feet into the stirrups. “Mercher!”
The knight ignored him, leading the courser by the bridle

towards the mountain in the east: a low black tangle of granite
looming in grey sky. If I can reach that mountain, he thought.

Then perhaps the way will be a little easier over its feet.

After an hour, the knight’s legs burned. His courser’s feet

dragged in the stagnant water. And they had come less than
half a mile.

The knight stopped to swipe the sweat off of his brow, and

his courser’s feet bubbled down into the fluid earth.

“You’ll have to dismount,” the knight said, trying not to

draw too hard for breath.

The Red King eased his injured leg over the mare’s back

and lowered himself out of the saddle. Moss and marsh gave

way like flesh under his feet.

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“Lovely,” he said. “You know that you’ll kill us both before

we reach the city, don’t you?” The Red King checked the empty

waterskin on his belt, knelt, and drank from the grey mire with
cupped hands.

The knight grabbed the back of the Red King’s shirt and

hauled him to his feet. “You certainly will be if you insist on

eating every raw dead thing and drinking from every stagnant
pool between here and Dinas Pair,” he said. “What’s wrong

with you? Keep walking.”

The knight took another step towards the mountain, but

his courser was sunk almost up to her hindquarters. She
whickered with panic when she realised that she couldn’t move,

and the knight took her bridle in both hands to calm her. As
soon as she stopped fighting him, they pulled. Straining against

the air together, the mare occasionally freeing a foreleg only to
slap it back down into the swamp. Then the strength was out of

her and she just stood there, panting hard.

“Gather as many of these reeds as you can,” the Red King

said. “Give her something to stand on.”

The knight muttered a few half-believed words of

reassurance to her and did as he was bade. He’d only walked a
few heavy, aching steps when he came upon the bodies.

They were three, he thought. Two adults, and a child. But

it was difficult to tell. The marsh had turned them grey. Their

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faces were bloated and fly-blown. Flesh wrinkled like the skin
of an elbow, and open eyes turned to the milk-white of cut

quartz. By his reckoning, they had been dead about a week.

The knight tried to remember how to breathe. “We are not

the first ones to try this way,” he said.

The Red King waded through needles of marsh grass to his

side. “Southerners,” he said. “Farmers, most likely. The blight
has driven most of them out of their homes. Since your great

and noble master has been turning back any refugees on the
North Road, most of them try the old paths through the hills in

the hope of better fortune.”

“Do you expect to make me pity these people?” the knight

demanded. “To turn my back on Gwyn?”

“No.” The Red King stood. “I don’t.”

They worked in silence after that, laying out whatever they

could find around the courser. Somewhere far away a peal of

thunder trembled in the mountains. When they had done all
that they could, the Red King put his palms to the mare’s

hindquarters and the knight took up her bridle. She was tired
now, and without her help they were soon sweating and

breathless.

“You never answered my question.” The Red King stood

back and rubbed his watering eyes.

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The knight gave one last pull, raised both hands in defeat,

and sank down to his haunches. “What do you want now,

Goch?”

“Where are you from?” the Red King asked. “Who were

you, before you became a bloody bane in my side and set my
brother back upon the north?”

“I was no one,” the knight said. “Just another unwanted

bastard weaned in an orphanage in the wildwood. A farmer

paid them for me when I was ten.” The courser slumped down
defeated, stretching her neck out until her nostrils were barely

above the water.

“Old enough to work,” the Red King said.

The knight made a soft sound of agreement. He put his

hand under the courser’s jaw, lifting her head enough to

breathe. “He wasn’t a cruel man,” he said. “But he wanted his
money’s worth from me. Worked me like a draught horse for

six years before I managed to slip away and enlist with your
guard. Six summers of the sun on my back and the breath of

the wind in me. Six winters digging in those blasted, frozen
fields.”

“Do you miss it?”
The knight looked towards the southern horizon.

“Sometimes.”

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“Let’s try again. Come here, maybe you can push better

than I can. Use those shoulders of yours, plough boy.”

The knight put the flats of his hands to her hindquarters

and pushed until his muscles shook. The courser shrieked and

thrashed at the pulled grass until she finally found footing.
Then she heaved forwards, screaming and kicking out with her

powerful back legs. As she came free, one of her shod hooves
slammed into the knight’s chest like cannonshot.

Concussion rang in his ears, and the marsh reached out to

catch him as he fell. He found that he was looking down on his

own body—his chest imploded, ribs dashed into the hollow
space of his lungs, and the whole marsh shifting and surging

underneath him like a wave.

An explosion of coughing pain brought him back into

himself. He strained for a breath that wouldn’t come, but the
front of his shirt was drenched with marshwater instead of

blood, and when he put his hand to the ache in his chest his
ribs did not feel broken. The Red King offered down his hand,

and the knight took it, pulling himself back up.

He followed the grim look on the Red King’s face to where

his courser stood, three-footed. One of her hind legs was
snapped at an impossible angle below the knee, bone

puncturing bay fur and blood dripping from her hoof.

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A deep calm drove down into the knight’s fingertips, and

he forced his voice to soften as he took her head up in both his

hands. He let the steadiness of his body pass into hers and
bowed his head until it touched her muzzle.

“Gwyn gave her to me,” he said softly, his voice twisted out

of shape. “I had her from a yearling.”

“Mercher....”
“Be quiet.”

The knight drew his sword slowly so as not to startle her. A

murmur of metal against leather, a few more gentle words, and

one sharp, deep thrust that drove the blade up to the hilt in her
chest. Her howl filled up the whole valley as she wrenched

away, overbalanced, and fell hard onto her side. A huge flower
of dark blood blossomed out into the grey water. The knight

knelt and put his hand on her neck. Her eyes rolled white. She
sucked down a lungful of mashwater, spasmed, and fell still.

“I’m sorry,” he said, catching his tongue between his teeth.

“I’m so sorry.”

He grasped the bloody hilt of his sword and worked the

blade out of her body.

“Come here,” he told the Red King. “I’ll need your help to

butcher her.”

* * *

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Y Brenin rose out of the valley like the arched back of a

fish: a high ridge of bare jagged granite sculpted by time and

weather into a host of peaks, buttresses, and gulleys. More a
wall than a mountain, dividing the southern high places from

rich northern lowlands with a serrated ridge of bare granite.
They approached it swathed in the fog of a grey morning,

rounding a scree slope that sank down into a high valley filled
with a crooked finger of black lake. A heron raised its head on

the far shore, poised between the worlds of fog and water,
looking more a spirit than any living thing.

The knight raised his eyes, tracing line from the quiet of

the water to the mountain looming in the cloud. His breath

tangled in his throat and a shiver of recognition cut through
him as an indistinct figure all but crawled over the ridge behind

him. Until he saw the colour of the hair and the blackness of
the eyes, the knight was certain that it was not the Red King

that walked towards him out of the mist but his lord.

“He looks fierce from down here, doesn’t he?” the Red

King said, the fog smothering the sound of his voice. “From the
north, Y Brenin’s as smooth as glazed ceramic and blue-grey as

a thundercloud. But the sun never touches the south face, and
so it’s gouged by ice and wind and water. Nothing more than an

accident of circumstance, when you think on it.”

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“You talk too much, Goch,” the knight said, his voice harsh

with dehydration and his tongue so swollen that he could

barely speak.

He shrugged the Red King’s hand away and glissaded

through the scree to the waterside, boots sliding in great strides
through loose sharp stones.

The water was smooth as jet, and when his fingers broke

the surface it was cold enough to hurt. He knelt and drank his

fill, until his stomach and his throat burned with cold and his
hands were white-numb.

The Red King slid down behind him, favouring his good

leg. “We shall have to go over the eastern slope,” he said.

“There’s a shepherd’s track that cuts down into the valley on
the other side. It’s steep, yes, but passable.”

The knight splashed the dark water into his face and stood.

“Do you not understand what it means to be a man’s prisoner,

Goch?”

“Someone may have tried to explain it to me once,” the

Red King said. “But I’m not sure I listened. I tend to forget
these things rather quickly when my captor seems determined

to lead us both into a certain, painful death. Or would you
rather ignore me and die the same way as your horse?”

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The knight turned around too quickly and grabbed the Red

King’s shoulder. “I’ve had my fill of you,” he growled, clenching

his jaw to stop his teeth from shivering.

“Why?” the Red King asked. “Because I am right and you

cannot bear to admit it? Or because I sound too much like my
brother, and you are afraid that you might fall pathetically in

love with me?”

The knight’s grip tightened until his arm shook.

“Tell me,” the Red King said. “When all of this is over and I

am returned to my throne, do you think that Gwyn will give up

his lands and his riches to live out his days with some ignorant
little plough boy? Until he is old and bitter and you must nurse

him to his death? Or do you think that he will continue
ordering you around like a kicked dog? Sending you off into

every pointless battle that he wages against me in the hopes
that one day you just don’t come back?”

“You think that I care?” the knight spat. “So long as I get to

stand at his side on the morning that they hang you?”

The Red King shrugged. “If you wanted me dead, then you

should have killed me on the battlefield and had your fill of it.

My brother might even have been grateful enough to let you up
into his lap for the night.” He frowned for a moment and made

a small, amused sound. “Only you don’t really care if I hang, do
you, Mercher? It isn’t me that you are in a rage with, it’s

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yourself. My brother might forgive you if you beg and grovel at
his feet for long enough, but it will all taste like ashes in your

mouth. You know that you’ve failed him by refusing to carry
out his order on that battlefield, and you shall always know it.

It will haunt you in the dark quiet of the night between now
and the day that you die.”

The knight seized the Red King’s shirt and found his lord

looking back at him accusingly.

His curled fist slammed into the Red King’s jaw. It would

have thrown the Red King from his feet if the knight hadn’t

gripped him by the hair and kissed him hard and full on the
mouth.

The Red King tensed in response. His body curling like a

windless flag, and his fingers running over the clinging

thinness of the knight’s shirt to the hilt of the knight’s sword.
Metal rasped on leather, and he broke away to draw the blade

into his hand. His laughter sang off of the south face of Y
Brenin.

A surge of humiliation snarled through the knight,

bleeding into the love and hate, loyalty, and the fury at his own

stupidity.

Then the edge of his own sword was coming for him.

Instinct pulled his body out of the way of the blow. His feet

touched the lake, and a deep quiet smoothed all his thoughts

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down into nothing. He reached for the shield slung across his
back and trusted his feet to keep him out of the way for long

enough to fasten the enarmes.

When another strike came, the knight was prepared. He

brought his shield out to block, and the sound of metal-against-
metal burst in his ears. The next swing was swift and terrible,

and the knight had no choice but to turn away to catch it. He
twisted fully, kicking up stones and water and drove the point

of his shield hard into the Red King’s belly.

The Red King laughed and heaved for breath, wiping the

blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and leaving a
long black streak up the length of his arm. “Do you expect to

beat me?” he said, stepping out and forcing the water to the
knight’s back.

“You’re half-crippled with that wound, half-crazed with the

infection, and I’ve already beaten you once,” the knight

retorted, crouching down to scoop up a handful of small wet
stones. “So yes, I rather rate my chances.”

The Red King feinted left then swung around hard right.

The knight brought his shield out to cover his flank, too late.

He barely noticed the notched sword tear through his hip but
felt the sudden weakness in his leg.

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Quick blood ran down his body into the water, and the Red

King touched the black wound on his own thigh. “Evened

things out a little, wouldn’t you say?”

The knight gritted his teeth and rolled his shoulders into a

shrug. “Only seemed fair, the way you’re flailing that sword
around,” he said. “It was either let you land a blow, or give up

my shield and see if you could fare any better against an
unarmed man.”

The Red King laughed, and when the knight thrust

forwards he stepped carelessly aside. “You have a quick tongue

on you, boy,” he said.

“And you have the eyes of a cave-dwelling rat. Shall we see

how well a rat fights blind?”

The knight moved to make another blow, but when the

Red King brought up his sword, he threw the handful of scree
and dirt into his face, then struck him with the shield’s edge.

The Red King crumpled down into the lake. His red hair drifted
into black water, and when he made to regain his feet the

knight straddled him and pressed the top edge of his shield
against the Red King’s throat. In response, the tip of the sword

pressed into the soft flesh under the knight’s jaw.

In the sudden quiet, their breath echoed off Y Brenin and

came back to them out of the fog.

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“I could lay your throat open,” the Red King said, spitting

water. “Leave you here to bleed to death.”

“The edge on that is as blunt as a tourney sword,” the

knight said calmly. “Do you think that I would die before I

broke your neck?”

“You need me,” the Red King insisted. “You’ve nearly

killed us both out here. You’ll die from exposure, like those
poor bastards in the marsh.”

“And you will be dead from infection long before you

manage to drag yourself back into the south.”

“I thought you meant to bring me before my brother alive.”
“Maybe,” the knight said. “Perhaps it would be easier to

carry out my lord’s will, rather than allow the disloyalty to...
what was it? ‘Haunt me in the dark quiet of the night between

now and the day that I die’?”

The Red King made a short, sharp sound that started as a

laugh but which quickly descended into coughs. “What are your
terms?”

The knight relaxed the pressure on the Red King’s throat,

although he noticed that point of the sword stayed firmly where

it was. “Show me the path around Y Brenin,” he said. “I’ll bring
you before Edling Gwyn and vouch for you. Ask him to spare

your life so that this war can end. For all of us.”

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“You had better hope that Gwyn has allies to the north

with deep grain stores and deeper pockets, little knight,” the

Red King said. “Nothing short of the goddess herself will save
this land from ruin now.”

The knight stared down over the silver flex of his shield

and pressed a little harder.

“What faith can I place in the word of a plough boy?” the

Red King complained. “Tell me, is my brother in the habit of

giving you everything you want, Ser Mercher?”

“I do not often ask,” the knight said quietly. “But he hasn’t

yet refused me.”

He drew back and offered down his hand. When the Red

King let go of the sword, the knight pulled him to his feet. They
stood together, shivering and bleeding, waiting for the other to

move.

Finally, the knight knelt for his sword—resting on the

black bottom of the lake, looking as though suspended in the
dark.

“Start walking,” the Red King said, turning towards the

mountain. “The path is treacherous by day, but deadly on a

moonless night. We need to be on the valley floor before the
sun sets. With us both limping like old men, it shall not be an

easy climb.”

* * *

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Across the lowland vale spread out beyond the foothills,

the city of Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth boiled with smoke and flame.

Voices rose from its cauldron and radiated into the morning
fog, while behind its curtain wall a dozen thatched roofs oozed

ugly smoke. Others were reduced to bones of blackened timber.

The knight and the Red King stood on a hillside swathed in

the yellow flowers of the eithin aur which rolled out into deep
folds of low pasture and bleating sheep. At their backs, Y

Brenin pierced the blue morning like smoked glass.

“You are at war, Ser Mercher,” the Red King said.

“Do you have a second army that you’ve sent north to lay

siege?” the knight said, trying to stop some unnamed thread

from tightening in his chest. “No. There is no war. The city has
fallen in upon itself. There is nothing to eat, and the guards

cannot keep order. The situation was bad when we marched
south. Now the vassal lords have returned with nothing to

show for all their battles. No relief, no salvation. Just the
coming winter, and the famine.”

The Red King tried vainly to keep the rising sun out of his

face, his black eyes watering painfully. “You can’t take me down

there,” he said. “That city is at war with itself. If you were to
bring the Red King into the middle it, you and he would both

be dead before we reach the keep.”

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The knight’s shirt clung to him, mottled with sweat and

dirt, marshwater, and blood. A low ache radiated out from his

hip, and his left leg trembled when he tried to put his weight on
it. But now they were out of the mountains, the ground was

more solid under his feet than it had been since he stayed his
blow on the battlefield. A shadow passed over their heads—was

that an eagle, gliding north towards the city?

The knight watched it go, and realised what he had to do.

“You must leave,” he said, very quietly.
The Red King frowned but did not turn his head. “Why

now? Why listen to me now, when you have spent the last week
ignoring every word I’ve said?”

“Give me your parole,” the knight said. “Return to this

place a year and a day from now to parley. Offer your word,

Goch, then follow the North Road until you find a village, and
take a cart back down into the south where you belong.”

The Red King rubbed his watering eyes. “And why would I

keep my word?” he asked. “Hasn’t Gwyn told you I don’t have a

shred of honour? What’s to stop me mustering whatever people
I have left and marching back along this road to give my

brother what he deserves?”

The knight studied the Red King. For the first time, he saw

the whole of him: the set of the Red King’s jaw that was so
much like his lord’s, and the same curl to his hair, but the

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narrowness of his black and watering eyes and the thinness of
his mouth that set him apart as something other.

The knight smiled. “What happened to your eyes?” he

asked.

The same smile twisted the corner of the Red King’s

mouth. He nodded and placed a hand on the knight’s shoulder.

“You aren’t as stupid as you look. For a plough boy.” The

Red King turned away. “A year and a day, then. For what it’s

worth, you have my word.”

* * *

The knight’s hands were sweating, and he could barely

hear the screaming of the crowd or the crack of burning houses

over the roaring in his ears as he climbed the stairs of the keep.

Three years ago, he had freed his lord from a tower much

like this one, one cold clear night at the very cusp of winter.
The guardsmen had feasted on soulcakes spiced with cinnamon

and made as offerings to the dead, while the crows croaked to
one another and the knight ascended the stairs of Caer Isel

with a key clutched in his gauntlet.

Now the crows had come to Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth as the

city collapsed into a heap of smoking timbers. This time the
knight did not hold the key in his hand but felt it in his chest as

he climbed. His fingers clenched and crept to the hilt of his

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sword. All of it evaporated the moment that he opened the door
to see his lord standing before the window.

The white light streamed in through thick glass, catching

in the silver strands of his lord’s dark hair and on the golden

flower of the eithin aur embroidered onto his surcoat.
Unnoticed, the door craned slowly shut, and the whole room

seemed to fill with an impenetrable silence.

The knight closed the space between them to kneel,

although his left knee buckled more than it folded.

“This is not the first time you have come when all my heart

has gone to ruin,” his lord said. “To deliver me from following
it.”

The knight drew his sword with clumsy hands and laid it

on the flagstones. “And I will always come, my Lord.”

His lord stared out into white light and warped glass.

“Where is my brother?”

Breath knotted in the knight’s throat. He forced it to come

slow and even. “I let him go.”

The crack of his lord’s palm against the stone sill was like

the sound of breaking bone. “Then you have cursed us all. I

trusted you. With my most important duty. And you have
betrayed me.”

“This city was cursed the moment that we sued for war,

when we should have been petitioning our allies for aid,” the

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knight said. “I have done everything you’ve asked... But that... I
couldn’t do that, Gwyn. And I could not bring him here. It

would have undone everything.

“The south is blighted. Even if I had killed your brother,

taken his lands, done everything you’d asked of me, all you
would have to show for it would be more dead bodies when the

snows come. There has to be a better way, Gwyn. A better way
than more suffering and death.”

“And who are you to decide what’s best for this land?”
The knight clenched his jaw. “You are alive now because of

me. Because of the night I freed you. But all that helping you to
escape has brought this kingdom is more pain. You are a better

man than that, Gwyn. If I didn’t believe it, I would have left us
both to rot up in that tower.”

“You have disobeyed my orders, and disappeared into the

mountains while my whole kingdom falls apart. I have not

known this last week whether you even lived.”

“I....” The knight ran his tongue over his lips and looked

back down at the floor. “I did not know the matter was of any
importance to you, my Lord.”

“You take my bastard brother captive and drag him off into

the hills, then set him free, and you don’t think that matter is of

importance to me?”

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“Of course,” the knight corrected quickly. “I should have

sent word. I’m sorry. That is....”

“Enough.” His lord’s expression creased with pain. On the

other side of the glass, a raven with gloss-black feathers

perched on the ledge and looked down into the burning city
dispassionately. His lord watched the raven watching the

kingdom burn and pushed his hand through his hair. “What
shall I do, love?”

“We have to leave this city,” the knight said.
His lord nodded slowly and drew a breath. “We can go

north,” he said. “Lady Freuddwyd has long been our ally. She
will give us sanctuary.”

Pain roared in the knight’s hip as he pushed himself to his

feet, but he gritted his teeth against it. “Her lands are three

weeks’ hard ride from here, Gwyn. We cannot go so far, not
while people are starving. Not while our homeland is on fire.”

“You would have me stay in my lands and die here?”
“I would have us stay and live, Gwyn.”

“You think I haven’t tried to seek aid?” his lord snapped.

“Every eagle that comes back from our so-called allies bears

nothing but excuses and apologies. Lord Michael is too sick to
care, and Cardington too greedy....”

“Then we can go south. Beyond Y Brenin,” the knight said.

“Into your brother’s own lands.

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“You know more about the things that grow in this country

than anyone I’ve ever met, Gwyn. We can stay on the road,

move from village to village and teach the people which things
they can take from the land to feed their families. Which ones

they can use for medicine. You and I can help this kingdom and
its people to recover, from what you and your brother have

done to it. You have a knack for healing, Gwyn. I’ve seen you do
it. I... I know you.”

“It’s suicide,” his lord whispered. “You want us to go into

his lands alone? My brother will throw everything he has after

us. I’ll not go back into that tower, Mercher. I can’t.”

The knight felt the weight of the memory more than he

saw it. A high place shaped from grey stone and hard wind. The
crows upon the battlements. The warmth of the key in his

hand.

“Edling Goch has given his sworn word to meet us a year

and a day from today,” the knight said. “To parley.”

“Parley?” His lord’s voice curled with anger. “Have you lost

your senses? You think that I will beg for scraps from the table
of the man who poisoned this land in the first place?”

“You shall have to, Gwyn,” the knight said, pushing the

window open. “Or all you shall get is more of this.”

The old-bonfire smell came first, then the sounds of raised

voices, breaking glass, and screams.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

Guilt and pain tore through his lord’s face, and he turned

aside too late to hide it. The knight reached out for his hand.

Fine bone china against hard skin, dried blood, and calluses.

“I will protect you, Gwyn,” the knight swore. “I freed you

from Caer Isel and I shall free you from this. But you must trust
me. If I am right, this land will eat again. Its people will

recover. They will thrive. Even flourish.”

His lord pressed his tongue against his teeth. “And if you

are wrong?”

“Then they shall have to sever every fighting part of me

before they harm you.”

His lord tried to smile. “It is a long road south. And if the

southern lands are blighted, then those furthest from here will
need our help the most,” he said, the white silence pierced by

the mounting certainty in his voice. “You’ll need your wound
tended. Fresh armour. A whetstone for your blade. If we can

last until a year from now, surely we will have earned this land
some peace. Although.... Although I shall have to re-learn

how.”

“In all the years I have known you, I have never once seen

you fail at something, once you have set your mind to it,” the
knight said, saluting with a closed fist to his heart. “It will be

done. By your will, my Lord.”

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

“We shall have to pray that we will be alive to see it. The

North Road is not safe for two men travelling alone. Let alone

for you and I.” His lord watched the raven rise through the
smoke towards the dim disk of the sun, lips pressed together

into a bloodless line. “If something happened... before I could
do anything to fix this....”

“The North Road is not the only way into the south,” the

knight said, tightening his grip on his lord’s hand. “There is a

path beyond Y Brenin, through the marshes and the
mountains.

“I know where it lies, Gwyn. I will show you its way.”

Read Comments on this Story

on the BCS Website

C. Allegra Hawksmoor is a writer, activist, and publisher

based in North Wales in the UK. She has a particular love of
fantasy, science fiction, social activism, gender-fluidity, post-

civilised environmentalism, and otherwise using fantastical
worlds to reflect on the injuries to this one. She is currently

serving as Fiction Editor at SteamPunk Magazine and as
editor-in-chief at micro-press of post-civilised Romanticism,

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

Vagrants Among Ruins. She can be found online on Facebook
and Twitter and

www.hawksmoorsbazaar.net

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

COVER ART

“Floating Town,” by Takeshi Oga

Takeshi Oga is a Japanese concept artist and illustrator. He
has worked on games including Siren 2, Siren: New

Translation, Final Fantasy IX Wings Of The Goddess, Final
Fantasy XIV, and Gravity Rush. View more of his work at his

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

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