Tears of the Salamander (17 page)

Alfredo had thought of going down to the town, hoping to find some friend to talk to, or at least a priest to whom he might confess his suspicions and terrors. But he guessed Uncle Giorgio wouldn’t have allowed it, and besides, who would dare lift a finger against the Master of the Mountain?

“I thought I’d climb the mountain again,” he said. “I’ll ask Annetta for some food. I promise you I won’t sing.”

“Excellent. But do not go far beyond the shade of the woods, or tire yourself, or stay too long in the sun. Take one of the mules to ride. It would in any case be best if you were elsewhere today. I will also send Annetta and her idiot son away.”

Alfredo hesitated, then seized his chance.

“They could come with me,” he said. “I need Toni, really. I don’t think I can manage a mule by myself.”

“If you wish for such company. Send Annetta to me and I will give her instructions.”

They climbed through the wood in silence, Toni leading the mule. Alfredo had wanted to dismount as soon as they were well away from the house, but Annetta had pushed him back into the saddle, shaking her head emphatically. She had been given her orders and she was going to obey them. It was still too early to eat by the time they came out of the trees, so they settled down for a rest, Annetta moving a little way off with Toni so as not to intrude on the gentry. It made no difference to her that Alfredo had come every evening to her kitchen and tempered her oven for her
and chatted, nor that she had borne Uncle Giorgio a son. She was still, in her own mind, a servant, and knew her place, and did what she was told. Now Alfredo was going to try to persuade her not merely to disobey her master, but to help destroy him.

He watched them covertly. Toni was lying on his stomach, poking his finger into a tussock and peering with wonder at whatever it was he’d found there. Annetta was sitting bolt upright on a boulder, motionless, staring at nothing, her strong, proud face lined with the long endurance of grief. After a while Alfredo fetched his recorder from the saddlebag and started to play.

Annetta didn’t stir, but Toni instantly looked up. Alfredo beckoned to him and he rose and scampered across, drawing his recorder from inside his smock as he came. Alfredo patted the rock beside him, and Toni sat and took up the tune. Annetta was staring at them now, her normally expressionless features filled with astonishment.

They played on. The mule fidgeted, swishing at flies. Crickets shrilled. Otherwise it seemed that not a leaf or blade was stirring. Alfredo could feel the presence of the mountain behind and beneath him, the whole vast, churning inward mass of it stilled for the moment by their playing. It wasn’t something he was doing on his own—not even mainly his doing. It was the two of them together, here and for this short while come into their own, Masters of the Mountain.

Then Toni decided to switch to a tune that Alfredo had taught him and they’d played several times before. It was one of the rollicking airs that everyone used to dance to
during the great Shrove Tuesday festival, waving their colored banners as they snaked in gaudy lines through the crowded streets. After a few bars Annetta rose, moved to a patch of ground where the slope eased almost level, raised her arms above her head and started to dance, twirling her skirt out and stamping to the rhythm of the tune. Alfredo almost stopped playing in amazement as she threw back her head and laughed with the joy of the dance. Her movements were quick, easy, definite, graceful. Every time she turned, her eyes came back to Toni. This was what life should be about, she seemed to be telling him, not drudgery, not fear, not power, not vengeance, but joy, the joy of being alive.

After a while Toni stopped playing, put his recorder down, rose and took a hesitant step toward her. Still dancing, she held out her hands to him. He walked across and took them and tried to copy the movements of her feet, clumsily at first, but then well enough for it to count as dancing. She linked arms with him and they whirled round each other, or she spun beneath his upstretched hand. Gradually Alfredo quickened the tune and they tried to keep pace, faster and faster, until they got into a tangle and collapsed and lay laughing and panting on the ground, while Alfredo applauded their performance and joined their laughter.

Before he’d even recovered his breath Toni came crawling back for his recorder, obviously ready to play on all day. He gave a disappointed shrug when Alfredo shook his head and rose, but then settled down and started to play softly to himself. Annetta was sitting up, watching him.
This looked like as good a moment as any. She rose as Alfredo crossed toward her and pointed at her son with a gesture of questioning wonder. Toni was already improvising his own variations on the tune they’d been dancing to.

“He’s really good at it, isn’t he?” said Alfredo. “Much better than I am. …Annetta, there’s something I’ve got to talk to you about. …I think my uncle is planning to kill Toni.”

She jerked with the shock and stood rigid, then gently nodded her head three or four times. She had been startled by his saying it but not by what he’d said. She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s going to take a long time,” he said. “Shall we have our lunch while I tell you?”

She fetched the saddlebag and opened the food she’d brought and laid it out on its wrappings, then settled opposite him. Toni joined them and ate with his usual intentness, but Alfredo did so in snatches, chewing while he put the next bit of his story in order. Annetta took only a few unnoticing mouthfuls.

He started right back at the beginning with his uncle’s name-day gift, pulling it out from under his shirt and showing it to her. He left nothing out. Now for the first time he told her of the strange and wonderful moment when the Angel of Fire had appeared before Toni in the rose garden and affirmed his right to be numbered among the di Salas, and to inherit, when the time came, their long Mastership of the Mountain. He finished with his decision to talk to her now. The only things he left out were his own half-formulated plans.

“I’ll know a bit more after tomorrow,” he said, “when I’ve seen what happens in this test. And then with luck I’ll know if I’ve got to try and fix it so that I can’t help him on Monday—that’s why I wanted those leaves you gave me. I don’t think I can do anything unless I’ve got the mountain on my side—mine and Toni’s—and the best way of doing that is to get the salamander back where it belongs. I don’t know why—I just know. It’s a bit like knowing when your fire’s out of balance. But what I really want to know now is whether you’ll let Toni help me. It’s a risk, a terrible risk. If my uncle finds out…Look what he did to the
Bonaventura.
”

She glanced at Toni, once again intent on his tussock, and then sat with her head bowed, rubbing one hand slowly over the back of the other. She straightened and nodded decisively. There were tears on her cheeks.

“Have you got a spare key to the furnace room?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You mean there’s just the one my uncle wears round his neck? Then we’re going to have to break down the door. I can’t do it alone—I’m not strong enough.”

She shook her head decisively and made a that’s-no-good gesture with her hands.

“You mean the door’s too strong? Or there’s something else—a spell or something?”

She nodded. That was bad news. Perhaps there was a way to undo a spell like that—he could ask the salamanders. But it might be one of the things they didn’t know, like they didn’t know what was going to happen. In which
case…could he burn the door down somehow? There was probably a spell against that too. …

After a while he gave up trying to think of answers and went and fetched his recorder. Toni instantly leapt up and hurried over to join him. They spent the whole afternoon in the quiet shade, playing and resting and playing again, and only went back down through the wood when the sun began to move behind the mountain.

“Eat well,” said Uncle Giorgio as they sat down to supper. “There will be no breakfast tomorrow. We fast until the rite is over. Come to my office as soon as you are dressed.”

He seemed even edgier than he had that morning, and said nothing else throughout the meal. Nor did he read, but simply ate, silent and preoccupied, and left without another word. Alfredo had felt too nervous to eat much, but he dutifully filled his plate and then found he was hungry after his day on the mountain and polished it off without noticing. When he’d finished he went up to his room and sat in his window trying to read until it became too dark for that, then went to bed, but lay awake far into the night turning his problems uselessly over and over.

H
E WOKE FEELING HAGGARD AND EXHAUSTED
, dressed and went downstairs. Uncle Giorgio was in his study, and rose as Alfredo entered the room.

“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling. It was answered by an angry chatter, and Alfredo saw that the brazier beneath its cage was gone and the other starling had now been brought down from upstairs and its cage was standing on the floor where the brazier had been. Uncle Giorgio ignored them both.

“Good,” he said. “First we must robe.”

He handed Alfredo a yellow garment stitched with red and green symbols. Alfredo put it on over his head and found that it reached almost to the floor. The sleeves were long too, with a tassel at the end. Uncle Giorgio’s robe was an even more elaborate version of Alfredo’s, and he wore a tall golden hat rising to a point and with a stiff upturned brim. Alfredo was bare-headed.

Uncle Giorgio picked up a crystal decanter and poured a little pale yellow liquid into two silver goblets. He spread
his fingers over them, muttered briefly and handed one to Alfredo.

“Do as I do,” he said. “What we are about to attempt is only a test, but involves mighty powers and must be performed with due solemnity. Now, first, three sips, and then three sips, and then three sips to finish the cup. Say the words after me. This is the First Purification. We begin.”

He intoned a few syllables and waited for Alfredo to repeat them. The words were strange but sounded Persian, like those of the chant. A longer pause and he raised his goblet to his lips. Alfredo did the same. The liquid was intensely sweet in the mouth but fiery in the throat. Alfredo managed to judge his sips right and finished his goblet on the last one.

“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “Bring the other bird and follow me.”

Holding the cage high in front of him and moving as solemnly as a priest at Mass, he led the way along the corridor, round and down to the furnace room. He unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. The room had changed. The table beside the furnace where Uncle Giorgio kept his implements had been moved back to the wall, and some other objects had been shifted aside, leaving a clear space at whose center stood the brazier from upstairs. It was empty. Beneath it was a large tray spread with an even layer of fine sand, in which a single continuous groove had been scooped, making a five-pointed star enclosing the brazier. There was a lit lantern on a shelf beside the door.

Uncle Giorgio placed his cage on the lid of the furnace
and took the other one from Alfredo. He opened its door, reached in, caught the shrieking bird, withdrew it and handed the cage back to Alfredo, pointing to show him he was to put it down against the wall. By the time Alfredo turned back Uncle Giorgio was holding the bird in a grip that caused it to gape upward. He picked up a small dropper, dipped it into a bowl and squeezed a single drop of liquid into the bird’s throat. He then put it into the cage on the furnace, caught and took out the first bird and did the same, and put it back in the cage with the other one. The two birds, which had screeched at each other almost continuously till this moment, fell silent. Uncle Giorgio picked up the cage and balanced it on the brazier, then took Alfredo by the shoulder, led him across to a point about three paces from the brazier and turned him to face it.