right. The one the captain called San Pietro in Montorio. But why bomb an empty church?"
Sitting up and hugging his knees, Sandor squints hard at the horizon. "There is no sense to it. It can't be practice firing—too many days late for that. They must do it for a reason. It almost seems they want that we stay away from that church." He rocks reflectively in place, then adds, "That church has significance for them."
Even after the French cannons cease, Sandor remains in the grip of this thought for a long time. It really is strange. What might they be intending the church—or the ruins of the church—for? When he feels he can't bear lying there awake anymore, he climbs out of the empty basin. In amidst of what remains of the Garibaldi line between the church and Villa Spada—a trench in which a line of small night fires flicker—he thinks he can see several darting shadows. He hurries back to Goffredo.
"Whoever they are, they're trying to move in," he whisperes, shaking his friend awake. "But first they must go round our trenches. Being on this side, we can get to the church before them. We will choose a hiding place and see who they are and what they want."
"Sandor, wait a minute. Do we really want to do this?" Goffredo rubs his eyes. "I heard talk yesterday. There are noble Roman families selling antiques and masterpieces to strange characters called collectionists who come here from abroad. Maybe they're just vultures of this sort, no?"
Sandor's hand gives Goffredo's shoulder a firm, commanding slap. "No. They wouldn't bomb the church. These are soldiers. Enemies. Maybe spies."
Half an hour later, while the two of them are crouching inside one of the last curtained confessionals left in Rome, their patience is rewarded: three men with an oil lamp come bursting into the church with the tremendous echo there always is. Goffredo moves ever so slightly the red velvet in front of his and Sandor's faces. There's a short French officer with a moustache, a short French soldier with glasses, and—carrying the lantern—a big, portly Frenchman with an ugly birthmark on his cheek, in well-cut civilian clothes. As the lantern splashes light on the piled debris in the nave, on the pink-marble walls, on the gaping hole in the transept, on the two bronze angels between two columns lifting a suffering saint, on a dazzling white man in beard and gown reclining on a white sarcophagus, Sandor wonders why the enemy would expose themselves to the fire of their own troops in this way. Sandor hears the officer call the soldier "Foucher" and command him to use his spade on the tomb on the wall between the second and third side chapels. Foucher in turn barks at the civilian—"DesMoulins"—to hold the lantern up. The tomb is an odd flat black obelisk, topped by a tiny onion cap and mounted on two bronze turtles, under which there are the shelled marble fragments of a dedication plaque. Foucher shifts the debris with his hands and then with the spade. The officer at his side helps him extract a long white sack, covered in a powder of dust, which immediately splits open, spilling bones to the floor and with them a skull. Foucher obstinately reinserts the spade in the wall and stabs the space to the left and to the right; when DesMoulins cries, Voilà!, he pulls out a small red pouch. With DesMoulins hovering over him with the lantern, Foucher walks to the center of the nave and opens it. Sandor and Goffredo see a distinct yellow glimmer. Foucher holds up the golden object. It seems to be a medallion, a bit bigger than a horse's eye.
The officer beckons to him to hand it over. He says that it is property of the French government and he must take it back to Paris personally. And it's time to hurry because it's close to dawn.
"No, Audéoud, ça va pas!" DesMoulins slaps his chest, communicating that he will carry it back.
From the dark shadows under the fallen crucifix to left of the altar comes a male voice groaning in pain, a call for help in Italian. Sandor and Goffredo look at each other in alarm—they had believed the church empty. The three Frenchmen leap-frog their way over segments of the blasted communion rail, in the direction of the rasping body. Sandor and Goffredo see DesMoulins raise his light over what must be the wounded man's face. The growth on the Frenchman's cheek looks in the lamplight like a big black leech. Sandor hears him say that he doesn't want any witnesses, and he whispers this to Goffredo. DesMoulins and Audéoud stare each other down, then Audéoud orders Foucher to draw his bayonet, and inside the confessional Sandor nudges Goffredo with his elbow. The two react with the exchange of signals that they've used all month: Sandor will aim for the officer and Goffredo for the soldier—and whoever finishes first will capture the civilian. They charge out of their wooden box with their pistols, yelling at the top of their lungs. A moment of non-response and then Audéoud fires at them through the smoke. Before he manages a second shot, Sandor has shot him in the head. Goffredo trains his gun on his moving blue and gold target—Foucher's arm and the medallion—and when he's put a bullet through the Frenchman's chest, he sees DesMoulins escape empty-handed through the sacristy side door.
More moans and a feeble call come from the altar. Goffredo knees down next to the dust-covered figure in black—not a garibaldino but a severely wounded priest.
"Padre, is this your church?"
The priest groans at Goffredo, his mouth full of blood. Goffredo looks around for Sandor. He is bending over Foucher's body. The Frenchman is lying on his side, the medallion in a closed hand. Sandor pulls the medallion free by its chain. Engraved on one side is a creature—a fanciful lion of some sort. He flips it over and blinks at a grid of arching lines.
"Sandor," Goffredo calls. "He's a priest. He's dying."
"What does he say?"
Goffredo wipes the priest's mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. The priest's lips utter words.
"He says it's important to keep the treasure safe, not let it fall into the wrong hands."
"I'm coming."
Sandor goes only a few steps; the red pouch that Foucher pulled out of the wall tomb is suddenly lying at his feet. He stoops for it, noting its sort of embossed gold stem. Inside he finds a strange dark vial and an equally strange small gold instrument, v-shaped and with two pointed tips. These must go with the medallion. They are too puzzling to be anything but important. He deducts that by shelling the church at length the French believed they could be sure that no one was left alive inside, and they could take all the time they needed to locate their booty unobserved.
Goffredo has his ear over the priest's mouth, catching his last thick, slurred words. He thinks he catches 'If you're in mortal danger, show it to those where the Norman kings are buried.' The priest pats Goffredo's red shirt in an evident display of affection for the makeshift uniform. Goffredo and Sandor emerge from the church when the priest is dead and the sun is rising.
"What do you think he meant?" Goffredo asks.
"Norman kings were French," Sandor answers.
"Maybe a cemetery in France?"
Sandor frowns sceptically but doesn't speak.
The first round of rifle fire has just sounded for the day, and is followed now by the French cannons in new attempts to make a breach. The closest position along the Republican front line is by the Janiculum walls, and when the first platoon and officer come into sight, Sandor—without a word to Goffredo—makes right for them. Indeed, he approaches the officer as if he were an answer to a problem.
"Can I please have those for a minute?" he asks, pointing at the other's set of field glasses. His look is so urgent and commanding that the weary officer thrusts them his way.
After panning the French line and camp, he says to Goffredo, "Look quick, there's DesMoulins."
"You're joking." Goffredo takes the glasses and brings the hefty Frenchman into focus. "He's walking right by the French High Command without going in," he murmurs. "Very strange. There's a carriage waiting for him, he's getting in." Goffredo lowers the field glasses. He frowns like Sandor. "So it wasn't a military operation after all."
"That's right."
Sandor returns the glasses to the officer with a salute that betrays a bit of excitement.
"And if they weren't spies for Oudinot?" wonders Goffredo as they walk away.
"It means, my friend, they are working for someone else."