I lunged forward and caught the redheaded boy by the arm. “Are you hurt? Where did he hit you?” My heart thudded. Dio, to lose this chance for a boy’s rashness—

“I’m not hit,” Bartolomeo gasped, still reeling. His face was linen white in the dark. “Sweet Jesu, I stabbed him—”

I dove for Marco Santini then, finding his limp form. I had a blade in my fist, ready if he made a move for me, but the big cook lay limp under my searching hand. “Not dead,” I called, making my examination by touch. I felt the stickiness of blood on his shirt, but the wide chest rose and fell raggedly. “You caught him in the gut with the knife, but he’s alive.” I felt my way over the fallen form, finding a swelling knot under the curly hair. “Knocked his head on the ground when he fell, it seems.”

Bartolomeo’s voice quivered with relief. “I didn’t kill him?”

“No.” Soundly unconscious, at least for now, but the knife wound—you could never be sure about wounds to the gut. I thumbed through calculations. Marco had recognized us, or at least Bartolomeo. If he died . . .

“What if he dies?” Bartolomeo echoed my thoughts, but almost certainly not for the same reasons. He gave a gulp of the foul night air, his hand stealing unconsciously to the wooden cross about his neck. He was a good boy, after all; he went to Mass weekly and did penance for his small sins with good cheer. He hadn’t wanted murder on his conscience, because of course he found the thought appalling—as I no longer did. “I didn’t mean—I never meant to stab Maestro Santini. I was only trying to get the knife away from him, but it twisted in his hand and I got it from him and he came at me—”

“He drew the blade on you, when you were unarmed and looking only to avenge a woman’s honor with your fists. I’d say your conscience is clear.” I rose, rubbing the cook’s blood off on my breeches. “On your feet, now. Come along before we lose il Duche altogether.”

“We can’t—” Bartolomeo stared at me through the dark, hardly more than a black shape. “I’m not leaving an unconscious man to bleed to death!”

“He sold your girl to be raped by a madman,” I said. “I’d leave him.” Better if he died in the street, rather than lived to identify Bartolomeo as having any part in tonight’s work.