Baffled, he bit his lower lip. What demon had inspired de Gobignon to come down from the battlements and join the Tartars just at this moment? Now he could not get to the pantry door without being seen and having to fight the two Armenians outside. That would alert those inside, and the door was bolted from within. He took deep breaths to clear his head of frustration.
He would have to change his plan of attack.
To get into the Monaldeschi palace he had used a peasant's cloak and high boots like those he had worn last summer when he'd landed at Manfredonia. It had been an easy matter paying a few silver denari to a farmer and then helping with the loading and unloading of sacks of rice being delivered to the Monaldeschi. Once inside the palace courtyard it had been the work of a moment to slip away from the carts and hide himself in the maze of dark rooms on the ground floor of the palace. There he had shed the peasant costume, leaving his black Hashishiyya garb, and he'd pulled the hood and mask over his head.
But the very thing that made it easy for him to get into the palace with that cartload of rice left him shocked and uneasy. The Monaldeschi were preparing for a siege. He had seen screens against fire arrows being set up on the roof and householders in the neighborhood locking their doors and fleeing.
Someone had warned the Monaldeschi. When the Filippeschi came tonight, their hereditary enemies would be ready for them.
Heart pounding, he pondered. What if the Filippeschi called off the attack? He tried to tell himself that it would not matter. Even the expectation of a siege would so distract the Tartars' protectors that he would be able to get at them.
And, he promised himself, if he came out alive, he would search out and repay whoever had betrayed him.
He had rechecked his weapons—the strangling cord, the Scorpion, the tiny vessel of Greek fire in its padded pouch, the disk of Hindustan and a dagger, its blade painted black. After nightfall he would seek out the Tartars' apartment, which he knew was on the third floor of the palace, where the best rooms were. In the meantime, he had hidden in a corner of the kitchen behind a large water cask. He had squatted there and waited, taut as a bowstring, to find out whether the Filippeschi would attack.
When he heard the first battle shouts through the narrow embrasures on the ground floor, he let out a little sigh of relief. Of course Marco di Filippeschi would go through with the attack. Even without surprise, he was doubtless better prepared tonight to fight the Monaldeschi than ever before in his life. And Marco was not the sort of man who, once committed to a course, would turn back.