Spira Mirabilis (57 page)

The water coiled up the surface of the glass and then poured in a balloon-like form over the lip and onto the table. Iscanno’s eyes went wide with fear, but before he could cry out, her hand
covered his mouth. The water left an oily trail across the table as it flowed gloopously into the garden.

In the baptistery’s perennial twilight, Carmella grasped the rim of the font and glanced into the garden to confirm no one was watching. She slowly put her hand out and rested it on the surface, so gently that she barely caused a ripple. She pulled her hand back. Something –
someone
– had touched her hand. The gold ceiling and the sword were reflected on the water’s surface, but that was an illusion. The water was not water; it was a window into another space. There was a boy at the other side. A fighter even in death, Uggeri was fighting to return to her – to tell her that he was not angry about what she had done. That he was grateful – she had set him free.

She leaned in and as soon as her lips touched the water, she tasted it.

It was
foul
, but before she could pull away, Maddalena’s hands were pushing her head under.

As Carmella fought back, her eyes opened under water. She saw the boy looking up at her: not Uggeri but someone else, a pale boy with an ox-like brow, a frowning jaw and eyes with no pity.

Maddalena held her until the thrashing had stopped, then pulled her out. Her body flopped listlessly to the ground beside the bawling baby. Maddalena picked him up and held him to her breast as she examined the font suspiciously. She warily scooped a handful of water and sprinkled it over the baby. ‘Now, Fabbro, let’s find Father.’

*

Geta was curled up in an earthen tunnel scarcely a brachia wide and holding his breath. The horrors of the
sottosuolo
were beyond comprehension: rats big as cats, and –
Dio!
– the stink … How the Tartaruchi had managed it for so long was beyond him. He’d chosen this tunnel expressly for his last stand and it
was not likely to be glorious. It was a dead end that could only be reached by wading through a deep pool, and right now
something
was wading towards him. He watched the lumbering shadow approaching and at the last moment, he thrust with his knife – then pulled back in surprise. ‘Maddalena?’

She was shivering uncontrollably, and her lips were blue. ‘Oh, my love. It’s so cold. Take him from me.’

He took the baby – it was close to frozen too. ‘But whose is it?’

Maddalena’s stubborn anger had not left her. ‘He’s
not
the Contessa’s! She has too much. He’s my Little Fabbro returned. We’re going to be a family again.’

‘I see.’ He rocked the baby thoughtfully. ‘How did you find me down in this maze?’

‘The water showed me the way. It wants us to be together.’ She stumbled, and her head went under momentarily. She reached out a hand, but Geta did not take it.

She rested it against his leg. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘I’m famous for my discretion,
amore
.’

‘There’s something
hungry
in the baptistery. That’s why I fled. It wants to harm my little Fabbro!’

‘Well, we can’t have that, can we?’

It was Pedro who found Maddalena and dragged her from the underworld. Costanzo embraced her lifeless body, crying, ‘Oh my sweet sister, forgive me!’

Sofia backed away in horror and ran to the only place that offered any refuge. Maddalena was just one more casualty of her own ineptitude. She been warned, after all –Befana had told her what was waiting:

‘Once before, the Darkness had a tool as terrible as Bernoulli – a wicked king who tried to quench the light. The Lord sent a flood to destroy the wicked race who had crowned such a king. The deep rivers of the world would have drowned the world, had not a few worthy men begged for mercy. The Lord relented and He swore never to loose again the Waters, and the men swore to choose better kings. Man has broken the covenant, but the light will not suffer itself to be quenched. If Iscanno dies before the appointed hour, if his blood is wasted and it’s a choice between giving the world to Darkness and starting anew – then every hidden river and sea will overspill. Nor will the flood stop at Concord: the world will be washed clean.’

She stood by the Irenicon, looking at the ruins of Giovanni’s bridge. The rubble sat in piles, making islands in the river. The Irenicon was unseasonably high and fast. In the absence of a body to mourn, the bridge had been the closest thing she had to a memorial. This was desecration: just one more thing taken from her.

She walked into the water. The cold made her gasp. A few braccia from where she stood, a mound of water swelled up on
the river’s surface, indifferent to the current. As she continued to wade in until she was waist-deep, the water approached her.

The bridge had been a place where deals were made: that was why she was here. The buio stood looking at her. Before she could ask
Is that you?
she heard the answer unreeling in her head:

He is here amongst us, but not … as you knew him
.

‘I want you to pass on a message. Can you do that?’

Speak
.

‘You made me Handmaid to protect Iscanno, and I’ve failed. I know now I should have leaped from some high place in the desert with my boy in my arms. I know now that Bernoulli has been running to
lose
. He led us on – he left his armies overexposed, he gave us our victories to draw us – to draw
me
– close to him. He threw the fight and vain fool that I am, I fell for it. I brought Iscanno to Etruria – I practically laid him on the altar. I can’t be your Handmaid any more …’

*

Every inch of Monte Nero’s summit was thronged with the fanciulli except for the shallow lake of liquid black from which the needle projected. The tripod overshadowed all. Its legs met two-thirds of the way up the needle, and were so darned with glow-globes that it looked a structure of permeable light rather than of stone, a momentary thing that did not pretend to permanence. Since the needle’s erection, the turbulence around the mount had spread until it overhung all Concord, and wherever its bloated shadow fell, it dulled men and made them brutish.

For want of a pulpit, the First Apprentice stood on the shattered base of the Angel of Reason, one foot on each fragment. ‘We shall show these pretended Crusaders the extent of our devotion,’ he cried, ‘for no Crusader could be more worthy than we, God’s own children. But look into your heart before ye drink, for only the righteous may consume of His blood and live.’

He pointed to a golden-haired girl who was grinding her teeth.
‘You, Sister! You must not drink if in your heart there is any doubt.’

‘I have no doubt!’ she cried and ran to the edge of the pool. She squatted like a dog and began lapping up the filthy stuff. The fanciulli waited in silence until she sat bolt-upright. She turned around with her face covered in the noxious black juice. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. ‘O, it is delicious!’ she cried.

At that, the mob pushed forward like thirsty cattle in summer, clamouring and tearing at each other, pushing, even drowning each other, to get a pint, a mouthful, a drop …

*

The children of Concord might be united, but their elders were irrevocably divided. The inner rotunda of the Collegio was empty, but the vestibule outside was full of nervous consuls waiting for the First Apprentice’s address. Numitor Fuscus and Malapert Omodeo had brought their factions together, but there was small comfort in numbers. The Grand Legion billeted outside the city, the legionaries General Spinther had brought – unconstitutionally – inside the walls, the approaching armies, the rising waters, the ceaseless rain and the fanciulli’s predictions of imminent destruction – these things had made them timorous. They could not decide with whom they were more outraged: the First Apprentice, who ignored them, or General Spinther, who sought their support in deposing said Apprentice in such a vulgar fashion. Whispered conspiracy might be integral to Concordian politics, but the art was best practised in shady taverns; it was not done to debate such matters in the vestibule of the Collegio itself.

Consul Fuscus was not scared, but he too was divided: he was elated that his revolution was at hand, but was anxious to keep the general in a subordinate position, lest they be ‘accidentally’ dispatched along with the Apprentice. ‘You had no authority to offer terms to the League,’ he said pompously.

Leto had no time for stately intrigues. Girolamo Bernoulli had
unleashed two Waves upon his enemies, and now like Nemeses, two vast armies were descending upon the city he had made glorious. He exposed the blade of his sword. ‘What is this if not authority? You charged me to use it in the defence of Concord. Do not blame me if you did not realise what you were doing.’

‘We gave you that sword to tame Etruria, something you have signally failed to do.’

‘I was forced to march into the worst territory at the worst time, while desperately-needed iron went into that architectural atrocity that defaces fair Monte Nero. Tell him, Omodeo: your gallant nephew is dead because the Grand Legion was stabbed in the back.’

‘It’s true.’ The financier was still in shock after learning that young Horatius had fallen at the Volturno.

‘Have you forgotten,’ one consul groaned, his head in his hand, ‘what happened to Corvis?’

‘Hardly: I was the one who flayed him,’ Leto said. ‘Has the First Apprentice addled your brains along with the fanciulli? Courage, Consuls! You sound like a school of cardinals. I’m here because your leaders asked for my help. If we do this, there can be no half-measures. He is mortal. Everyone here was trained by Grand Selector Flaccus too. We can take him.’

‘That’s hardly a mathematical certainty,’ said Omodeo gloomily.

‘Yes, you’re right. There is another possibility: that he survives. What of it? We’ll be dead if we do nothing.’ Leto saw they all needed stiffening, ‘Nothing is certain when you pick up a sword: I learned that on the northern front in my father’s camp. My father told me, “You cannot succeed without knowing your enemy,” so I asked him who were our enemies, that I might learn. “Barbarians,” said he. I knew he used certain Frankish tribes – who wore rank furs and spoke poor Etrurian – as auxiliaries, but to me they seemed no more barbaric than our own legionaries.
My father brought me to a funeral of the chief of a tribe allied to us. They lived up to expectations, getting blind drunk at the feast before lighting the chief’s pyre. They threw his weapons into the flames, then his cattle, then his slaves and finally his wives. My father held me close enough that I could smell the cooking flesh. “This is barbarism,” he said. I never forgot it. When he was killed – by his own officers – I learned that even he did not know his true enemy. I learned that your enemy may speak your own dialect, salute the same flag. And such enemies are deadliest of all.’ Leto looked around. ‘The First Apprentice must die. The question is: must we throw ourselves on the fire with him? A wise man once told me never to take counsel from fear, for it chases away opportunity and leads nowhere. There is no certainty but that, Consuls. The rules are the same as they were in the Guild Hall. Strike first or die first.’

*

The oppressive atmosphere of impending storm encased the San-grail. Enervated air built up on the needle’s skin until it was repelled in thunderous charges that created turbulence even as the lower pressure sucked in more air. A vortex as vast and terrible as Charybdis was churning the sky.

‘O faithless generation, not one of you was worthy.’ The First Apprentice leaped down from his pulpit and walked over the bodies of his congregation. Most of the fanciulli were lying still, but some were twitching like legless insects or vomiting endless bile into the pool they had so recently supped from.

The girl who’d drunk first was stronger than most. She grabbed his ankles as he passed and spat out, ‘Poison!’

He knelt beside her and rubbed her golden hair tenderly. ‘Oh no, Child. It was Judgement. And you must not say that you were harshly judged – you must not say anything again. Your tongues will cleave to the roof of your mouths to ensure that. You will have to find other ways to express your love.’

The tavern was a braccia deep in foul water, and it was rising. Bottles floated between the legs of the customers, along with an occasional cloaca rat. Madame Filangeiri hadn’t planned to spend her final years with those whose ruin she had facilitated, but life is full of surprises, few of them pleasant. Since the Dolore Ostello had burned down, she had become a great customer of the Rule and Compass, along with many of her former clientele.

Empty bottles formed a little wall between her and her neighbour.

‘You’re something resembling a woman, Madame,’ said a disembodied voice behind the glass wall. ‘Why, pray tell, would a loving mother want to scare her child? Mine used to tell awful stories about wolves and buio and the barbarians of the north.’

She sipped her pint of gin thoughtfully. ‘It’s no puzzle, Lord Geta. Youngsters love a scare, simple as that.’

‘Some perhaps’ – he reached for her hand so suddenly that his barricade of bottles collapsed and revealed a basket on his table – ‘but I always liked the parts where the beast gets to do his worst.’

Madame Filangeiri might not be a procuress any more, but she still knew a guilty conscience when she heard one. ‘What’s troubling you, ducky?’

‘I have been’ – he flicked a finger at his glass to make it ring – ‘debating my course since my return. I am fixing to attain a new low.’

She pulled her hand free. ‘Well, practise makes perfect.’

‘I’m selling,’ he confessed, tilting the basket towards her.

‘Oh, isn’t he a lovely little fella. With a smile like that, he’ll fetch a good price.’

‘I have not shocked you?’

Madame Filangeiri had trafficked in depravity and was skilled in the sophistry of tolerance. ‘People do anything when they’re starving.’

‘I am not starving, Madame,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t
want
to do it, but I can’t seem to stop myself.