Monaldeschi men-at-arms standing at the embrasures with crossbows kept their backs turned to Simon as he hurried past. An odor of damp stone pervaded the still air. Simon noted that as he had ordered, buckets of water had been placed along the corridor to douse fires.
The kitchen was on the north side of the building. It was dark as a cave. The cooking fire in the great fireplace, big enough for a man to walk into it, had been put out. They passed empty cauldrons, piles of full sacks, rows of barrels, all barely visible in the light of a half-consumed taper in a candlestick on a table. A large water cask surrounded by buckets and pots stood in the center of the kitchen.
Attackers could be hiding here. But Simon knew he did not have enough men to search. He must get to the Tartars and stay with them.
The pantry where the contessa kept her costly stock of spices imported from the East was below ground. Stefan lifted a heavy trapdoor, and one by one they climbed down a narrow flight of wooden steps without a banister. Grigor, bringing up the rear, held a candle to light their way.
A door of rough oaken planks bound together with iron straps stood before him. He felt his stomach knot as he walked up to it. What if he were too late?
Simon had ordered that the square black iron lock set in the door be left unlocked in the case the Tartars should have to escape. He pulled on the handle. The door was bolted from the inside, of course, with a bolt he had only that afternoon ordered the Monaldeschi carpenter to install. From the other side a voice asked a half-audible question.
"It is Count Simon," he said. "Let us in." Friar Mathieu added a few words in the Tartar tongue.
The bolt slid back and the door opened inward. Simon stepped forward to see how his charges had fared.
The storeroom was dimly lit by a small oil lantern. The two Armenians within had risen from chairs. They had their bows in their hands, arrows nocked. They stood in front of the Tartars. John, the white-haired Tartar, and Philip, the black-haired one, sat on cushions on the floor, leaning back against the shelves of spice jars that covered three walls of the room. Their bows were on the table and their curving swords, in scabbards, lay in their laps.
Simon was pleased to see that they looked alert. It must be maddening to sit down here in semidarkness and do nothing while a battle raged above.