The Palace (57 page)

The crowd slowly fell silent, and some of their number dropped to their knees
to pray. The rising sun touched la Piazza della Signoria at last, shedding
impartial splendor on heretic and citizen alike.

"Fiorenzeni!" Savonarola shouted out suddenly. "Behold your triumph! This
day, at last, the ungodly are cast out!" His voice was harsh and it echoed down
the narrow streets and over the waiting people. He waited while the susurrus of
voices faded before going on, savoring the moment. "See here? See what becomes
of those who will not put their trust in God!" He pointed at the figures chained
to stakes, surrounded by waiting fagots.

Ragoczy moved through the crowd, his magnificent white clothes and foreign
grandeur making him a path. He stayed away from the front ranks of people, not
willing to expose himself until the last possible instant. Demetrice was badly
placed, being on one of the inner platforms. That would mean carrying her body
through the narrow gap between two other pyres, which by then would be burning.
His eyes narrowed as he calculated the best route. There was only one way that
would be safe, and it would mean crossing Savonarola's platform and going east,
toward the familiar bulk of Santa Croce.

There was another disruption as the ox cart from Sacro Infante forced its way
through the crowd and stopped near Savonarola's platform. Five of the
white-habited nuns got out, one of them wearing a deep frown. The crowd hissed
and rustled in anticipation, for one of the nuns was Suor Estasia del Mistero
degli Angeli.

Suor Merzede pulled at Suor Estasia's arm as they neared the platform. "You
don't have to do this, my Sister. If you are too distressed, I will take you
home."

Suor Estasia turned dreamy hazel eyes on her Superiora. "I am fine, Suor
Merzede. Truly I am. I feel my soul yearning for glory. God will enter me today,
He will inspire me, giving me fulfillment I have never experienced." Fasting had
made her painfully thin and her smile was a skull's grimace. She lifted her
rosary and kissed the crucifix. "It will be glorious today, Suor Merzede."

Savonarola had seen the arrival of the party from Sacro Infante and smiled
sourly. He motioned to Suor Estasia del Mistero degli Angeli to mount the
platform with him. Then he turned back to the crowd. "Today, good Fiorenzeni, we
celebrate the Feast of the Forty Martyrs. Today our thoughts must be on those
valiant Roman soldiers, who, for their faith and the Love of God, died on the
ice while their heathen leaders tempted them to recant with fires. Think of
those men, bound together, naked, the lake around them, the night blowing with
snow and their comrades in arms watching with fear. Think of them standing in
that freezing night, on the ice-covered lake. Think of how their flesh was hurt,
and then was numb as God released them and welcomed them to His triumph."

Suor Estasia knelt beside him and bent to kiss his feet. "I am come, dear
master. You have called me and I am here." She looked up into his eyes and
crossed herself, her face as rapt as if she saw God Himself.

For a moment Savonarola turned his attention away from the crowd and looked
down at Suor Estasia. He made the Sign of the Cross over her, then shot an angry
glance at Suor Merzede, who stood at the other end of the platform. Their eyes
locked; then Savonarola turned back to the crowd.

"Think, now, of these loathsome heretics!" He held his arms up to the pitiful
figures chained to stakes. "Think of their atrocious sins! Think of how they are
like the fires that tempted the Forty Martyrs, and how their temptations will
shortly consume them."

Ragoczy was closer to Savonarola's platform now, but still far enough away
not to attract the monk's attention. He touched one man on the shoulder and
moved nearer the front of the gathered crowd.

One of the heretics, a man with dislocated shoulders, turned his pain-crazed
eyes toward Savonarola and in a cracked voice shouted, "You're the temptation!
You're the heretic! You're excommunicated! You have no authority to do this!" He
stopped, coughed up blood and slumped in his chains.

A young man in the drab guarnacca of the Militia Christi climbed onto that
heretic's platform and gave him a blow in the face with a short cudgel. This was
greeted with cheers and he jumped down grinning.

At the far end of la piazza, where the sunlight gave a golden glow in the
walls, Ezechiele Aureliano stood with two other members of the Militia Christi.
Beside them were short torches, the heads covered with rags stiff with pitch.
Next to them stood a brazier in which a charcoal fire burned. Aureliano reached
for one of the torches and thrust it into the brazier. In a moment it flared to
life and he held it up, wishing that it would shine more brightly against the
sunlight.

On the platform Suor Estasia began to sway rhythmically, making a strange,
low moaning in her throat as she moved. Her eyes were rolled back in her head
and the lids only half-closed over them. The crowd began to take up her swaying,
all of them intent on her. She stood up suddenly, nearly falling over with the
violence of her motion. Her arms extended, her bandaged hands giving her the
look of a large white bird about to fly. When her breath came through her teeth
in sharp gasps she lifted her arms higher, crying out incoherently. Then she
shouted, "O God! O God! Why won't You speak to me?"

Savonarola and Suor Merzede exchanged glances, his worried, hers significant.
He started toward Suor Estasia, but by then the visionary nun was speaking
again.

"Is it that so much sin is here, that You remain hidden from me? You are like
light behind a cloud. Shine forth! Shine that we may be guided by your light to
the Mercy Seat!"

The crowd groaned in sympathy with Suor Estasia. There were strangled sobs
now from some who watched, and the murmur of prayers was stronger, a
countermelody to the words from the platform.

"Do not desert us! See, we offer You these creatures, heretics all, and purge
ourselves at the same time we give them to You in sacrifice for the expiation of
our sins!" Suor Estasia dropped to her knees once more, sobbing hysterically.

Savonarola knew the moment. He shouted out to Ezechiele Aureliano, "It is
time!"

Aureliano grinned broadly and handed the lighted torch to the nearest member
of the Militia Christi. "The wind is from the south. Start in the north.
Otherwise you'll work in smoke."

The outbreak of shoutings, of wailings and prayers, was unbelievable. The
cacophony drowned out the rush of flames as the torches were thrust in among the
fagots at the foot of each stake.

Ragoczy moved quickly. Taking advantage of the confusion, he pushed through
the crowd and broke out into la piazza. The light of the fires caught the
diamonds on his white silk tunic and for a moment they blazed red as rubies. He
glanced quickly around him, and then rushed toward the stakes in the center of
the platforms.

There was a cry from one of the Militia Christi, but the noise of the crowd
was too great. Only one man heard the shout, one of the builders who had made
the stakes and platforms and stood as near as he dared, watching the pyres flare
into life. He saw where the young man had pointed, and he ran toward the
white-clad stranger.

Ragoczy was almost between the first stakes when the builder's hand closed on
his shoulder. At another time caution would have stopped Ragoczy before he used
his remarkable strength while so many could see, but seconds were too precious
for this circumspection. He reached back for the hand that held him, and with a
sudden jerk flung the man into the air and over him. The builder crashed to the
ground and shouted as his hands touched burning wood. He rolled away, then
reached for the leg of the stranger. The black-heeled boot came down full force
on his hand and the builder screamed. He was still screaming when two small
hands fastened on his arms and lifted him to his feet. Dark, penetrating eyes
glared into his, and in that moment before he was thrust back into the flames
greedily consuming the nearest heap of fagots, Lodovico recognized the
foreigner. "You're
Francesco
Ragoczy," he said in wonder before the
searing pain claimed him.

Although the fight with Lodovico had taken little more than a minute, it was
enough time for two youths in the guarnacca of the Militia Christi to run into
the center of the stakes, six of which were now burning. One held a short sword
and the other a torch, and both were determined to drive him into the flames.

Ragoczy stepped back, but only to get more room. When he had distance enough
he came out of his crouch, kicking upward at the young man holding the torch.
His foot caught the other's jaw, snapping his head back and tossing him half his
body length, to land against one of the unlighted pyres.

The other young man took a wild swing with the short sword, but instead of
moving aside, Ragoczy let the sword pass him, then stepped squarely up to the
young man and forced his arm back even farther than his slice could carry it.
Slowly, inexorably his arm was borne back until there was a terrible grating
snap and the arm hung down, the bone splintered at the shoulder.

Now all the pyres were blazing and Ragoczy could feel the heat pull at him,
insinuating itself around him, anxious to feed on his clothes and his body.

A great cloud of dark, greasy smoke rolled skyward, and the brightness of the
dawn was dimmed by it. The rush and cackle of the fires masked the screams of
those they consumed.

Ragoczy ran the few steps that separated him from Demetrice's stake, and then
leaped upward to land on the platform beside her. He saw that the ends of her
hair were beginning to burn and he pulled a knife from his boot, gathered her
hair at the nape of the neck and swiftly cut it away. Her chains were terribly
hot, but he took them and pulled at them until they broke.

In the crowd there were shouts now as the wind blew the smoke away. People
pointed, shrieked, screamed as the foreigner lifted the naked body of Demetrice
Volandrai free of the chains and the stake.

On his platform Savonarola heard the new, strange commotion, and fear stabbed
at him. He could not see through the smoke to the various pyres, but he knew
something was going wrong. Quickly he ran to the end of the platform where Suor
Merzede stood in furious silence. He glared at her, as if accusing her of this
disruption. "What is happening?" he demanded.

"I cannot see, good Prior. I don't know." The nun's face, framed by her white
coif and gorget, seemed unreal but her hostility burned as hot as the flames at
the stakes.

With an impatient oath, Savonarola moved away from her and tried again,
futilely, to see through the smoke. This was impossible, and so he motioned for
one of the Militia Christi, but the smoke hid them as well, and shouts were
useless over the deafening noise of the crowd, the fires, the dying heretics.

It was no easy thing to balance Demetrice over his shoulder, but Ragoczy
managed it. He could smell burning flesh and the sweaty stench of the crowd. His
feet were getting hot, and he knew if he were to keep his protective earth in
his boots, he must get away from the flames immediately. One last adjustment of
Demetrice's weight and he jumped from the pyre onto the flagging of la Piazza
della Signoria.

Landing between the fiercely burning pyres was hellish, and Ragoczy forced
himself not to look at the holocaust around him. There was one break in the
flames, and one break only. It led to Savonarola's platform, where Suor Estasia
stood, her hands extended toward the flames as if in benediction.

Savonarola was still at the other end of the platform when a hideous
apparition appeared out of the roiling smoke in front of Suor Estasia. It took
him a moment to realize that what he thought was a visitation of demons was in
reality a man in blemished white carrying a body across his shoulder. He started
toward them, and froze as Suor Estasia screamed, a long, shuddering sound that
cut through the rush of the fires and the sound of the crowd.

Ragoczy had just gained the platform as he saw Suor Estasia. He saw the
recognition in her eyes and for a moment could not move. He held Demetrice's
body more firmly and met Estasia's tormented hazel eyes. "Estasia," he said as
gently as he could.

"Francesco." She reached out her covered hands to him, seeing him as she saw
her visions. "Is it me you carry? Where do you take me?"

Ragoczy swallowed once, and searched for an escape. With his free hand, he
touched Estasia's half-open lips. "Don't betray me, diletto mio. Don't. Prego."

She stared at him, at the whiteness of his clothes, not seeing the soot that
clung to them, watching the fire flash in the diamonds on his chest. "No," she
whispered as she touched her lips where his fingers had been.

He nodded, and turned, moving toward the end of the platform away from
Savonarola.

Estasia watched him, the same somnambulistic glaze to her eyes that she
sometimes wore in trances. "No," she repeated to herself. "I won't betray you."
Slowly, methodically she began to tear at her habit, first pulling off the coif
so that her close-clipped chestnut hair came into view. "Won't betray you," she
repeated as she ripped the wrappings off her hands with her teeth.

At the far end of the platform, Savonarola watched with horror as Suor
Estasia pulled away her garments. Behind him Suor Merzede began a steady,
anguished weeping.

Many in the crowd saw Suor Estasia as she gradually shed her garments, and
they watched in fascination as the nun stepped along the platform, her hands
moving over her emaciated body. Her face was transfixed as she prayed. "O God,
Who sent me this messenger to show me Your love, forgive me. I was blind to Your
caresses." She lifted her shrunken breasts and massaged the nipples. "See how my
flesh warms to You. O God, possess me! I am Your handmaiden, I long for Your
embraces, I offer my body to Your pleasure, to Your delight."