Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Read online

  “In God’s name, why?” Albrecht rested sword on shoulder, puzzled and apprehensive both at once. “I thought these envoys were sent in connection with…” He didn’t say the name aloud, but jerked his head towards the East, and Russia.

  “They were; at least that’s Father Giacchetti’s only reason to be here. But from what Brother Gottfried overheard, His Holiness isn’t convinced the military Orders are as obedient in the matter of magic as they claim. Where the Templars are concerned, he may be right. They’re very much a power unto themselves, and it hasn’t endeared them to the Pope – or to the Emperor.”

  That didn’t surprise Albrecht in the slightest. Emperor Friedrich’s reluctant crusade had managed to regain Jerusalem and the Holy Places by a treaty with the Saracens, something that Templar swords had failed to do for many years. The Master of the Templars had been so enraged by what he perceived as an insult to himself and his Order that he had written to the Saracen Sultan Kamil, suggesting it would be an easy matter to assassinate the Emperor as he returned from Jerusalem to Acre. Kamil, more a gentleman than some of the Christians who opposed him, had instead warned the intended victim and the upheaval of accusations, denials, seizures of some properties and expulsions from others, had plainly not died down yet.

  “Gottfried saw a Templar knight in the Lateran Palace,” said von Salza. “He was the one who suggested that if his Order was to be investigated, so should all the others. Particularly the Order no longer interested in protecting the Holy Land from the infidel…”

  “Charming,” said Albrecht between his teeth. He was glad the Grand Master had chosen weapon-practice for this conversation, because he badly wanted to hit something. “So even though the Pope stands to benefit from what we do, we’ll need the approval of a thing like Arnald for how we do it.”

  “Shield higher – yes, like that. Now cut to left leg.”

  Von Düsberg’s sword lashed out a good deal faster than von Salza was expecting, and only a hasty sidestep preserved him from a nasty crack across the kneecap when the interposed shield proved nothing like enough to stop so forceful a cut. His eyebrows shot up and he stared at his plump, perspiring Treasurer with the beginnings of new respect.

  “The sergeants should make you angry more often, Albrecht my friend. They might have a different view of your ability.” He raised his own sword shoulder-high, then barked “Left flank!” His shield boomed under the impact of another heavy stroke. “Right flank!”

  Albrecht’s sword whirled about and slashed in again from a different angle, deflected this time in clangourous impact by the Grand Master’s own blade. It whipped around and down, swept the incoming cut off-line then returned to its ready position with such a lack of effort that it seemed almost weightless.

  “Ward now.” As he spoke, Hermann von Salza started a crabwise move to the right and shifted the position of his own sword and shield ever so slightly. Albrecht rotated slowly on the spot, shield-rim up to the bridge of his nose, and watched that poised sword for the first warning of movement.

  “Left shoulder!”

  The shield kicked on Albrecht’s forearm as it met the cut, but something else entirely rasped across the angle where arm met shoulder with a thump that stunned his muscles. A sword glissading over mail-rings makes a metallic rasping screech like no other sound in all the world and Albrecht heard it now, far too close for comfort. He jerked backwards from the Grand Master, slashing his own sword in a horizontal arc through the space between them to buy himself more room.

  “Hold fast,” said von Salza. “Enough.” To Albrecht’s surprise, he was breathing hard. “You’re an unusual one, Brother Treasurer. When you lose your temper, you gain…I was about to say skill, but call it unexpected competence instead. With most knights, it’s the other way around.”

  “I dislike interference from outside, Grand Master.”

  “It shows. You should school your expression somewhat, because what you think is like a banner on your face. But where Father Arnald is concerned, I agree without reservation. Without his approval nothing gets done, but he probably has less notion of what he’ll be asked to consider than the average louse. Lice at least go to war, if only because some knights regard cleanliness as decadent.” He quirked one eyebrow at Albrecht, but forbore to pursue the subject.

  “And one matter in particular was set in train well before the question of approval was raised. Dieter Balke made a little foray into Russia on my behalf, looking for a sorcerer. He found one. He’s on his way back to Burg Thorn even as we speak.”

  “Jesu!” Von Düsberg tried without success to believe that the shudder trembling on his skin was just because of the cold. He crossed himself, an awkward business with sword in one hand and shield in the other, but managed it without doing himself mischief. There would be mischief enough if the Landmeister of Livonia was involved in this affair.

  He had met Balke no more than five times in the Holy Land, and after the third time and the carnage in the marketplace at Acre when he had seen what Dieter Balke was capable of doing, he had tried to avoid him whenever possible. The man terrified him, with a cold, gut-clenching terror that had little to do with fear in battle and a great deal to do with revulsion. When Balke was sent in presumed disgrace to the shores of the Baltic to fight against the heathen Livonians, Albrecht had said a great many prayers of gratitude to the Virgin. They had plainly not been enough.

  “Grand Master, Dieter Balke is a butcher. He makes war like a savage. He—”

  “—Is no gentleman?” said von Salza in a clipped voice that put a sudden end to Albrecht’s protests. “Maybe not. But he is a man who is cunning, energetic, and brutal, the sort I need for tasks where a gentleman would refuse to soil his lily-white hands. Balke obeys my commands without question. That should be enough for you, my worthy Brother Treasurer, because it’s more than enough for me.”

  “But to bring Balke – and a sorcerer – here! Why?”

  The Grand Master lowered his own sword and regarded Albrecht blandly. “Why what, Brother Albrecht? Be more specific.”

  “Why didn’t you wait?”

  “The sooner this Rus sorcerer starts doing our bidding, the sooner the Rus will be at war and tearing each other apart, and the sooner the Knights of the Order can move in to pick up the pieces and reshape them as seems best – and most profitable.”

  “What if Father Arnald withholds imprimatur? Have you considered that, Grand Master?”

  “I’m sure,” von Salza raised his sword and swatted snowflakes with its blade, “that the good Father-Inquisitor can be persuaded to our way of thinking. One way or another.” The sword slithered back into its scabbard. “Enough of this. I see no reason to conjecture in the freezing outdoors when facts can be learnt in warmth and comfort. Of course,” he glanced one last time towards the three monks by the chapel, “our guests will almost certainly consider warmth and comfort to be just one step removed from sinful luxury. Can you stand the strain of so much pious disapproval?”

  Albrecht, no longer entirely certain that he still had toes to call his own, decided in short order that he could stand any amount of piety, and said so.

  *

  There was more said later, and by no means all of it came from Treasurer von Düsberg. For one thing, Grand Master von Salza had been quite right about what the Papal envoys would think of his personal residence in the upper fortress. Sinful luxury was in fact the least of the things he was accused of, and none of it softened by diplomatic euphemism.

  “…Unseemly and iniquitous,” mumbled Father Giacchetti on his third circuit of the room, poking with his staff at the mats of woven rushes which covered the floor. “Highly improper. Such ostentation. Like a sultan’s seraglio.”

  “Have you ever,” said von Salza mildly, ‘seen a sultan’s seraglio?”

  “Heaven preserve me from such a sight!” Father Giacchetti crossed himself in horror at the prospect.

  “Have you, Grand Master?” Father Arnald’s voice was h
eavy with a disinterest that fooled neither Hermann von Salza nor any of the other knights seated with him.

  “If I have, then when, where, and under what circumstances? That was the rest of your question, yes?” The Dominican inquisitor smiled slightly but said nothing. “The answer to the first part is, no, I haven’t. Even for a knight sworn to chastity the cost of admission is too high.” Von Salza grinned a small grin that had barely stretched his thin lips before it was gone again. “But I can assure all of you, and the Pope himself, that rushes on the floor aren’t part of a seraglio’s furnishings. Not even rushes sinfully woven into mats, rather than strewn loose ‘as God intended’.”

  Expressionless, Arnald stared at him for several minutes. “The intentions of God with regard to the Teutonic Order are something that need to be discussed at a later date, Grand Master,” he said at last. “For the present, we should restrain ourselves to what venerable Father Giacchetti has to say. He speaks,” the warning edge in Arnald’s voice was barely hidden, “with the voice and the authority of the Pope.”

  Or at least, thought von Salza after a few minutes, in the same wearisome style as the Pontiff. He had been in audience with Pope Gregory on two occasions, and his droning monotone hadn’t been a voice of much authority. Giacchetti sounded just like him; looked like him, too, for the Pope had been over eighty when he was elected, and that was seven years ago. A church whose principals were well-connected antiques. Hermann von Salza heaved a gusty sigh that he hoped didn’t sound too much like a yawn, and tried to pay attention.

  “That the Knights of the Teutonic Order desire to extend their influence and that of Holy Mother Church into the pagan lands of the East is most laudable,” mumbled Father Giacchetti, still translating in monstrously accented High German from the scroll held up in front of his nose. “That they should desire to do so alone and unaided is of the one part more laudable still, but of the other part a matter of sadness to Us in that it betrays the sin of pride.”

  Von Salza glanced from side to side, at von Düsberg the Treasurer, at von Buxhövden the Hauskomtur of Castle Thorn, and at von Jülich his steward. All three knights had the same look on their faces, more or less concealed from someone who didn’t know them as well as their Grand Master. It was a look that suggested accusations of pride were misplaced when coming from the incumbent of an office which claimed that Popes could never make mistakes. It was a look that betrayed heresy, since that too had been laid down: ‘Whoever does not agree with the Apostolic See is without doubt a heretic.’

  That made every one of the Order’s officers a heretic. There wasn’t a single man among them who at some time or other hadn’t thought at least one of the commands and edicts emanating from Rome to be, at the very least, worthy of question by the brains God had given his human creations. And that was before the useful art of sorcery had been added to the equation…

  Then the Grand Master sat bolt upright, no longer finding any difficulty in giving Giacchetti’s words his full attention. The envoy had reached the Papal conditions of approval for von Salza’s venture into Russia, and those conditions were impossible to ignore.

  “As penance for this pridefulness,” read the old Benedictine, so buried in his scroll that he didn’t see the effect of his words, “and as demonstration to the newly converted heathen that Christian knights have no intent to lay up treasures on Earth, We therefore command our beloved son Hermann von Salza that one-third of all items of value seized during the first year of the crusade be transported to Rome for the benefit of Mother Church and Her servants the clergy.”

  It was only the iron-bound discipline of the Order – and a swift glare from his Grand Master – that kept Kuno von Buxhövden in his seat and silent. A passionate man, better suited to being a secular knight than a warrior monk, the brawny castellan’s talent for ill-timed outburst had been von Salza’s only worry. Albrecht von Düsberg he had trusted to keep his own council until instructed otherwise. That trust had been borne out by Albrecht’s immobility, and the steward Wilhelm von Jülich was junior enough that he would do nothing without the lead of his superiors.

  “One-third?” von Salza echoed, keeping his voice calm with an effort. Knowing that Father-Inquisitor Arnald’s eyes were on him helped considerably. “Instead of or additional to the usual tithe of goods?”

  “Um.” When Tommaso Giacchetti had to search for the answer it warned von Salza that whatever questions the envoys had been expecting, simple requests for information weren’t among them. It was hard to be certain, but Arnald the Inquisitor looked slightly vexed. “Here it is.” Father Giacchetti tapped at his parchment. “Instead of the tithe, for the first year only. Thereafter, one-tenth as is customary.”

  “Anything else?”

  Giacchetti ran a finger down the scroll, squinting slightly as his lips shaped the words. “The Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Office must be permitted immediate access to newly pacified areas. Nothing more.”

  “Indeed?” Hermann von Salza stared deliberately at the two Dominicans and raised one eyebrow. “I should have said that was quite enough. The well-renowned activities of the Inquisition will do little to keep pacified areas that way for long.”

  “Heretics and those lapsed pagans who feigned their conversion to the Faith must be removed before their influence can spread.” Father Arnald spoke in a flat, dispassionate voice whose only emotion was a slight tinge of regret at what needed done to make the new territories safe for the Church. It was a voice that made von Salza shiver slightly, and he wasn’t a man given to shivering.

  Ferocity he understood, and used if necessary: Dieter Balke was a case in point. The stranger lusts of the flesh, those that required pain for pleasure, were also no surprise, and as for faith, he had seen the bestiality men could visit on one another in the names of their God. But this cool sadness was entirely new, and terrifying in its implications. Whatever Father Arnald did or caused to be done to suspected heretics, he would do with that serene clarity of conscience that in more normal circumstances accompanied acts of kindness – except that to Arnald and his fellow inquisitors, the hot irons and the pincers and the stake were a kindness, for the preservation of the soul if not the body.

  “Thank you, Father Giacchetti,” he said, and held out his hand for the seal-heavy parchment. “Kuno, please fetch my strongbox.”

  “The strongbox? But it’s…”

  “Now.”

  “At your command, Grand Master.” Kuno von Buxhövden struck fist to chest in salute, then did as he was told.

  Heads turned to follow him and more than one eyebrow was raised when their owners saw where he was going. The Papal envoys had evidently expected something as massive as they might have seen in the Lateran Palace, and were sorely disappointed. Hermann von Salza’s strongbox was sitting in plain view on a cedar-wood clothes chest, and the heavy wooden chest looked ten times more secure than the metal box. Instead of riveted steel and complicated padlocks, it was merely a handsome little casket with the dimensions and decoration of a reliquary.

  Just over a foot long, it was no more than six inches deep and the same high so that if it had once contained a holy relic, that relic couldn’t have been very big. Nails from the True Cross, perhaps, or a vial of Christ’s Blood, but certainly nothing as big as the thighbone of St Peter that the Emperor occasionally displayed on holy days if he was in good humour. Its decoration was Byzantine, and several centuries old: the many precious and semi-precious stones that studded its surface like grapes were simply polished, not faceted in the new fashion, and thin straps of filigreed gold made frames for embossed and enamelled images of strange birds and beasts.

  Von Buxhövden picked it up, and that was when disappointment became surprise in all the watchers. The big Hauskomtur used both hands on that little box and, by the sound of the grunt that lifting it forced from his barrel chest, he needed them. He actually staggered under a weight that shouldn’t have given trouble to someone with his muscles unless the casket was made an
d filled with pure gold. Blond beard bristling and face going as red with effort as it had earlier gone red with wrath, he heaved the strongbox across the room and set it down before the Grand Master, making the table boom like a castle door struck by a battering-ram.

  “Thank you, Kuno.” As von Buxhövden sagged panting back into his seat, Hermann von Salza opened the ornamental upper lid to reveal the casket’s locking mechanism. It was in its way just as much a work of art as the decorated exterior, not a keyhole with a lock behind it but a puzzle of small irregularly shaped plaques of steel that had to be arranged a certain way before the box would open.

  “Most original.” Father Arnald leaned forward for a closer look. “But surely not as secure as a key and an iron lock?”

  “More so.” Von Salza tapped the lid, making the steel puzzle pieces clink faintly. “It does have a lock, and a keyhole. Under here. The trick lies in finding it.” His fingers began to move with astonishing rapidity, sliding bits of metal up, down and side to side along grooves cut for that purpose into the surface of the lid. Occasionally part of a keyhole could be glimpsed between the flicker of fingers and polished steel, but never the whole thing and strangely, never in the same place. Arnald watched for a few moments, not bothering to conceal how he was trying to memorize the puzzle’s solution, then sat back in defeat.

  “Have you ever worked the shell game with three cups and a bean?” he asked, and the question itself was something of an insult when addressed to the Grand Master of a military Order.

  “I use them for practice.” Suddenly the keyhole was in the middle of the lid as if it had been there all the time, a deep star-shaped depression with twelve rays of differing length and shape radiating from it. The Grand Master fished inside the neck of his tunic for a moment, extracted a thin chain from which hung a simple monastic cross and a small rod of dull, dark iron.