Vaughn Heppner: Assassin of the Damned

She looked scared, and upset. “The lady is…particular, signor, and she’s powerful enough so it matters. It would be a foolish thing for you to steal my dead.”

The strange dream earlier asserted itself. It had seemed more than a dream. The lady in it had hit me and given me orders. I objected to both. And the thought occurred that if the lady could plague me with strange dreams she might continue to do so. No. It was the Baglioni way to attack trouble, not run from it. This wagon of corpses, I think it headed to the place where my coin had tugged me. According to many minstrels’ tales, one way to break an enchantment was to slay the sorcerer or sorceress. I would not permit anyone to bewitch me or plague my dreams.

I glanced at the dead lout on the road. Despite the right of self-defense, it had not been my intent to kill Ox. I hefted him and laid his corpse in the wagon. I noticed shovels on the sides, two of them. Clods were scattered in the wagon. Wet clay clung to each shovel-blade.

Did Ofelia rob graveyards? Why would anyone want corpses that badly? Were there any good reasons? Pope John XXII had issued a prohibition against alchemy in the year 1317. Surely, that ban included sorcerous experiments on the dead.

I climbed onto the buckboard with Ofelia. The mules eyed me. The bigger one twitched its ears. I had the feeling they distrusted me. Ofelia shook the reins and the mules lurched into movement.

It galled me I couldn’t remember more. Erasmo and I had waded into a swamp called Avernus as we’d searched for deathbane. Unfortunately, I could no longer remember the reason why I had done this. The swamp had an evil reputation and it lay in Tuscany. More than that…. I think the awful spear wound and later the sorcery practiced on me had locked away much of my memory.

The coin felt heavy in my belt then. It seemed to whisper to me, telling me I could regain my memories from the lady. The idea made me thoughtful.

Ofelia watched me sidelong for much of the ride. Presently, the wagon creaked past oak trees and up and down gently rolling hills. This fruitful region lay in the western curve of the Apennines Mountains from Salerno north to La Spezia. The Pontine Marshes were to our south. We rode where the low coastal plains began to merge into the higher pastures and hills of Tuscany and Umbria. A lantern swayed from a post and cast an eerie light around us. Ofelia licked her lips and drew a breath. Before she could speak-if she had been about to-a horn faintly blared in the distance. She sat straighter and listened carefully.

I heard distant baying of a discordant kind. Ofelia must have too. Her dirt-caked hands tightened on the reins. She muttered a curse, and she worried her lower lip.

“There’s a reason you cart your corpses at night,” I said.

“These are bad times, signor.”

“Who sounds the hunting horn?” I asked.

“No one hunts me,” she said.

“Not yet, you mean.”

“If you must know, signor,” she said, baring her teeth. “There are…brigands out there as nasty as you. Only they have swords, horses and hounds.”

I thought about Erasmo. “Who’s their lord?”

Ofelia glanced at me with speculation. “You’re a knight or a mercenary. What say I hire you?”

I scowled, tired of her presumptions.

“Hire your sword,” she said. “By the moon, you’re prickly.”

I snapped around. “Why do you curse by the moon?”

She shifted her legs, maybe so she could spring away. “Are you one of them?” she asked tiredly. She shook her head. “You’re a fool to think you can slip into the castle like this and kill her.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her shifty look returned-then suspicion. I felt as if she fanned options like tarots. Finally, she turned her head and spat, and glanced at me. “That’s what I think about Old Father Night.”

How did she know the name of the one the lady in my dream had spoken about? For reasons I couldn’t explain, the name seemed linked with the cloaked man medallion I’d seen last night. This was yet more sorcery, more intrigue. I grew thoughtful.

“You chose this delivery-night for a reason,” I said.

Ofelia worried her lower lip and glanced at me sidelong.

“I met a man with a golden medallion,” I said. “Some mercenaries had caught him.”

Her head whipped about. “What happened to him? Tell me!”

I scowled at her presumption, but I felt elated that perhaps I could learn now what occurred. I told her what had happened between the White Company mercenaries, the staked man and me.

“The cur!” she cried, startling me. Her eyes blazed like a rat cheated of booty. “I knew he’d get greedy. He can never just do a task. He always has to try to milk more.” She rapped a fist against her forehead, shook her head and asked in a quieter voice, “He killed the other one, though? Tell me you know he killed that one.”

Yes, there had been two of them. One slumped in death at his stake, with his throat cut. Then the import of her words hit home. “You hired White Company mercenaries?” I asked. She, a grave robber had done this?

She shrugged. “I believe in buying excellence over cheaper shoddy goods. At least, I thought they were the best killers around. I suspected the captain was a braggart.”

“The big red-bearded one?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s the captain. Da Canale. He calls himself an Englishmen, but I know his mother was born in Pisa.”

“Why did you want the man with the medallion killed?”

“Magi Filippo?” she asked, and she bared her teeth. “If you punch him like you did Ox, I’ll give you a thousand florins.”

Where did a grave robber acquire such amounts? Instead of unraveling mysteries, I gained new ones. “Why do you want this Filippo killed?” I asked.

Ofelia’s features hardened. “…I knew him once. He was my papa’s apprentice. My papa was an eel-fisher. That was before the dying, before everything began changing. Magi Filippo he calls himself now. Ha! He wears his medal, his magician’s badge. He’s set himself against honest laborers. He stops those he can from reaching the castle, me for one. Does he begrudge me florins? He used to seek my favors freely enough in the old days.”

This was an old wound, it seemed.

“Lord High and Mighty Filippo says his master set him the task,” Ofelia sneered. “He fancies himself the master around here. The things he’s done with that pendant-bah! I knew that despite his newfound power that Filippo was always careless. Papa said it all the time, and he always beat Filippo for it. People say the English soldiers are swift. That’s how they storm castles and the smaller walled towns, and how they capture over-confident nobles and merchants. I convinced the captain he could ambush Filippo unawares. It’s good they slew the other one and cut his throat. In some ways he was even worse than Filippo.”

She shot me a venomous glance. “The captain had him tied, you say. Filippo was as good as dead then until you showed up. You spoiled everything. My only joy is that Filippo will kill you or worse before he finishes with me.”

I gave her a vicious grin. I’d seen this Filippo run screaming from me. As long as I kept from looking at his evil medallion, I had no fear of him.

Ofelia rubbed her chin. “I’m intent on hiring your sword, signor.”

This grave robber had gall, but she also had courage. I liked that, and I could use the florins. My rusty mail-could I trust it? Even with the mail, I was woefully under-armored. The crossbow earlier had proven that. Normally, over the mail, I buckled on a chest plate and a skirt of linked hoops. I needed arm and leg plate, and a ten-pound helmet with visor. Then I needed an armored warhorse, a heavy lance, several battle swords and a good axe. One poet had called us knights, “A terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” The “worm” implied how we devoured everything in our path, more in our search of money than actual fire and mayhem. These days, knights, squires and men-at-arms marched in a prince’s host less because of feudal obligations than for pay in florins. Hence, someone as lowly as this grave robber could believe her coins would purchase my aid. Yet there was a singular problem.