Marco thought of Angelina. The thought was enough to get him moving up to the slippery coppo tiles. Benito was already walking up the rickety stairs that had given them such an easy descent. The roof was an easy jump and haul from there. Marco sighed. It wasn’t the roof walking as much as the looking down that worried him.
* * *
Benito peered over the roof edge. They’d have to descend here again. Then he put out a hand to stop Marco. There were two people coming out of a sotoportego into the broad Calle dei Fabbri below. To discourage cutpurses and cutthroats, there were oil lamps burning in niches there. You could see the two men clearly, just for a moment.
They were both tall, and one of them very large. The large one was dark-haired; the other blond. The dark-haired man moved with a sort of solid determination, the blond with catlike grace.
“Knights of the Holy Trinity. Even if they’re not in uniform,” whispered Benito. “I saw both of them . . .” His voice trailed off.
An errant night-breeze stirred the mist and brought a snatch of conversation up from below.
” . . . shouldn’t have come. This is my affair, Manfred.”
A snort. “I think I owe her more for ‘services’ than you do, Erik.”
The two stopped outside a building with long Moorish-style arched windows, and knocked.
Benito gave a low whistle. “Well, well, well. Who would have thought it?” He chuckled. “So much for their holiness.”
Marco looked. It seemed a fairly innocuous if moderately well-to-do three-story building. “What is it?”
Benito looked startled. “Sorry. I forget that you lived in the marshes for so long. That’s the Casa Louise. It’s . . . um, a place where wealthy merchants and some of the Case Vecchie maintain their mistresses. I guess you could call it a bordello, but it’s as high-class as it gets.”
Benito studied the two knights below, squinting a bit. “It’s funny, though. I wouldna thought knights—not that young, anyway—could’ve afforded the women in this place.”
Marco shook his head. His brother’s knowledge of vice worried him. He supposed that, having lived in town for all these years, the boy would have more knowledge of things like that than he did.
Chapter 26
“Oh, my—” Kat stood in the doorway wide-eyed at the sight of Francesca’s new suite of rooms. Francesca smiled wryly.
“Don’t be too impressed, my dear,” she said. “Remember how this is all paid for. My five current patrons are all over fifty, two are fat, one is bald and has a nose the size of a melon, and the last, poor man, needs—” She considered for a moment how to phrase what she wanted to say delicately. “—a great deal of encouragement to achieve his desires.”
Kat blushed a charming color of pink.
Francesca’s smile widened. “However, things may be on the verge of improvement. In one respect, at least. Do you recall that very large knight who was one of your rescuers at the church?” Seeing Kat’s nod, Francesca cheerfully related the incident where she had provided Manfred and Erik with a means of escape from an ambush—sparing no details at all.
Kat blushed a charming color of scarlet.
Francesca laughed. “Don’t be so innocent! That young knight certainly isn’t—the large, young one, I mean. In fact, he and his blond friend visited just yesterday evening. To tender their thanks, they said. Which I have no doubt is all the blond one intended, but not large young Manfred.” Her smile was now almost seraphic. “So I do believe I shall be acquiring a new patron, and very soon. He’ll tire me out more, of course, but it’ll still be a nice change of pace.”
Kat’s blush was beginning to fade; all the faster, as her face was creased by a frown of puzzlement. “I wouldn’t have thought that a young knight could afford you in the first place, even if—” She stumbled over the next words, trying to avoid offense.
“—even if his morals were scandalous for someone supposedly devoted to holy orders?” finished Francesca, grinning. “Such an innocent! Kat, one of my existing patrons is quite high-ranked in the Church—and no temporary confrere knight, either.”