The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (52 page)

Becket and the other condottiere held their manacled prisoner by his forearms, pulling him along like a rabid dog to the steps of the Signoria. Geta held one end of the rope that was tied in a noose around his neck – naturally, the Concordian had taken charge. At any other time, Fabbro would have feared for the soldiers’ lives – even chained, the blacksmith was capable of pummelling them – but when Geta turned and grabbed Jacques’ arm, he flinched.

‘Behold the man, Gonfaloniere.’

Fabbro ran down the steps. Bruises, cuts and burns covered Jacques’ face and body, evidence of the great damage a few drunken soldiers could do in a few hours. ‘Lord Geta, there’s been a terrible mistake. Jacques
made
the lion.’

‘Infanticide’s not unheard of. We have it from his own tongue.’

‘A man will confess anything if he’s tortured.’ Yuri was angry at Geta for commandeering his men, and at his men for their willingness to follow someone who allowed them to give in to their worse impulses. ‘You’re just looking for a goat-scraper!’

‘If I were, would I pick a man like this? I assure you, he didn’t start out this docile.’

‘Then why?’

‘Testimony. If you think women are jealous, try artists. His own apprentice informed on him.’

‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘Believe it! He spat in your face; now he’s laughing at you.’ Geta snatched off Jacques’ hat. His ears were cropped, and there was an ugly circular scar incised into the flesh around his skull. ‘Believe now? These are old scars. The man’s a communard.’

‘We don’t know that!’

‘I admit it, Bombelli,’ Jacques growled.

‘Good boy. Now tell the nice man where you got those scars.’

Fabbro knew Jacques’ Herculean strength, but this task seemed too much for him. At last Jacques met his eye and he started back from the hate he saw there.

‘You asked me once if I remembered the market of Champaign. Of course I remember it! All Europa was there. We were happy and prosperous. We would have caught up with Etruria, if not for princes and kings. First they spoiled our coinage to pay for their endless wars with the Anglish – but even that wasn’t enough. They needed more, more,
more
. They taxed the market out of existence.’

‘They were your betters,’ said Geta, as if that settled everything.

Jacques cowered and went silent – then some ancient anger took him and he looked directly at Fabbro. ‘So we should let ourselves be ruined by them? We rebelled! That was just what the king’s men wanted, and they fell on us like wolves, filched our
purses, spat in our faces and called us rebels. They set me to work in my own forge, fashioning crowns for the ringleaders. And as they crowned us, each in turn, they hailed us: Jacques le Roi! The rest died, there and then. Me, they locked away until—’

‘I don’t care about that,’ Fabbro shouted. ‘Why hurt the lion? I
paid
you—’

‘You lied!’ Jacques said with venom. ‘I came here because you told me Rasenna was free, a town with no kings. But you’re just a new kind of king.’

Fabbro struck him. ‘How dare you! Take this fool away.’

‘What shall we do with him?’

Fabbro looked up the steps of the Signoria, where the farmer and his peers stood looking down, judging him as he gave judgment. He wheeled around suddenly. ‘I tried to give Rasenna a symbol to unite behind. It’s going to get one.’

‘We’re behind you, Gonfaloniere,’ said the brewer stoutly.

Only Yuri protested. ‘Bombelli, you’ll make it worse. Jacques’ popular—’

‘Fine talk from a solider!’ Geta interrupted. ‘How do you punish insubordination, Russ? A spanking? Gonfaloniere, take the advice of one who’s learned the hard way: you’ll win nothing with kindness but contempt.’

Two dozen smiths, the so-called Guild of Fire, bolstered by the same mob that had protested the salt-tax, were spilling onto the bridge.

‘It’s always northsiders,’ Fabbro said disgustedly. The Morello had taught the southern towers the habit of obedience, but Bardini’s unruly spirit still possessed the north.

Whatever his misgivings, giving into the mob would be worse. Yuri ordered his condottieri to push the men back.

‘Hang the foreign dog!’ the brewer shouted.

Jacques’ head was bowed, as if he was not aware of the mania growing about him.

Fabbro looked down on the man. Jacques had betrayed him, but he took no pleasure in the thought of revenge. He was about to give the order when Geta tugged his sleeve and whispered, ‘Perhaps a degree of clemency
would
be wise?’

Fabbro looked at the Concordian with gratitude. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, and ignored the jeering crowd, ordering them to take the prisoner to the stables. Jacques didn’t struggle, even as the harness was fastened to his face.

The condottieri waited for Geta’s order. Geta looked to Fabbro. ‘You did the right thing, Gonfaloniere, but listen to that mob. If you spare his life, you must ensure he won’t be able to spread any more mischief.’

‘Do what you have to,’ Fabbro said in a dead voice.

Jacques’ bottom lip was clamped so that his jaw could be lowered with a screw. Now his tongue was grabbed between a pair of tongs and yanked forward. The small spiked lever turned, forcing his jaw shut again, and Jacques groaned as his tongue was pierced, thick blood spluttering from his lips.

The mess made Fabbro queasy, but the baying crowds were making it hard for him to concentrate; all he could think of was the humiliation, the
ingratitude
. ‘It wasn’t his tongue that destroyed the lion,’ he said at last. ‘This fellow’s no orator.’

Geta laughed. ‘That’s the idea!’

At last Jacques fought as he realised what they intended, and condottieri piled on top of him, hanging onto his limbs while others tightened the chains until he was too trussed-up to struggle.

‘Let’s do it properly,’ said Geta, and started heating a blade, ready to cauterise the wound.

Geta asked for volunteers to wield the blade, and when Becket at once backed away, muttering, ‘Not I – my life would be worthless!’ Geta realised everyone was fearful of revenge during the dark nights to come.

‘Podesta!’ he cried, ‘this is your honour.’

‘Yuri! Yuri!’ they called, in a paroxysm of relief.

Yuri took the axe in silence, as if he himself were the condemned man. Jacques started up at him, proffering his neck, his eyes eloquent:
Kill me, but do not do this
.

Silently pleading too, Yuri looked at Fabbro, but like the priors behind him, his jaw was set. The axe struck the ground with a ringing note and sparks flew, dying, hissing, in the heat of the blood. Before Yuri raised the axe a second time Jacques had passed out.

Geta expertly sealed and wrapped the wounds as the smell of cooking flesh filled the cell. He looked up at Yuri with a friendly wink. ‘Clean work, Podesta.’

Before the second millennium was a century old, Jerusalem was wrested from Infidel hands. Until we appreciate this achievement we cannot appreciate why the crusaders’ children consider themselves a chosen people. Consider the Radinate as a whole, enveloping the Middle Sea in a great crescent, from the harbour of Alexandria to the redoubt of Byzant
.
²⁹

True, it was beset by rivalry, but what empire is not? The scepticism of cosmopolitan Ebionites can be well imagined when the strange soldiers of a strange sect came rudely claiming Jerusalem as their birthright. This amusement turned to horror when they saw the Crusaders fight. The Curia had schooled the crusaders in Water Style,
³⁰
an art the Ebionites had no means, initially, of combating
.
³¹

The Crusaders promptly founded a kingdom, stretching initially from Jaffa to Bayrut, called Oltremare.
³²
Its official capital was Jerusalem, but Akka,
with its magnificent harbour, was its true heart. The military invasion was followed by one of civilians: Ariminumese merchants travelled from Akka
³³
into Ebionite territory and beyond to the bejewelled cities of Asia, trading wool and saffron
³⁴
for silks and precious stones.
³⁵
Trade and the drudge of administrating their patchwork kingdom doused Crusader fanaticism, but the sectarian spark soon found other fuel – the people they had enslaved
.

Usually Sofia rose with the sun, but it took a screeching gull at the window to wake her on this morning. She had been too exhausted last night even to look around her chamber; she did so now. The window opened onto a balcony, covered by a long lace curtain that trailed onto the coloured marble floor, reminding her of the wedding dress she had never worn. All the furnishings were made from the same rich, oily wood as Fabbro Bombelli’s banco, and carved in the most intricate shapes – Akka did not lack for labour; that was obvious. She wondered first what hope her mission had, and then what species of a sin it was to try to draw this prosperous realm into a distant war. Perhaps it was hypocrisy to pretend that she had fled for some reason other than saving her own skin.

Clothes had been laid out for her on a red cabinet beside the bed. Sofia didn’t care about fashion, but she knew the importance others placed on it. Donna Bombelli, and Levi, too, had often counselled that matters of form were not trivial in diplomacy. Sofia picked up first a headdress and veil, then the flowing, pale-coloured silks, looking at each with equal scepticism. She disliked the foreign style, but her old clothes had exhausted their powers of expansion.

‘Courage, Sofia,’ she told herself, and went to work. After she had donned the pieces in roughly the right order and the right way round, she stepped in front of the long mirror – she hadn’t seen one since Ariminum – to examine herself. The change just
a few weeks had wrought elicited an involuntary gasp. No silks, however flowing, could conceal her condition now.

Plaintive bird cries drew her away from her terrifying reflection and she pulled the curtain aside and looked upon Akka, its bay, its churches, its high walls … The city was built from a pale yellow stone that intensified and reflected the sea’s harsh light into nooks and alleyways, places that ought to be veiled in a decent darkness. Rather than tolling bells, a clacking like an army of crickets sprang up from the white-domed churches, calling the Marian faithful to prayer.

Unlike Ariminum’s cramped but efficiently organised harbour, Akka’s chaotic sprawl had room to expand indefinitely. Some of the ships were fat-bottomed merchant haulers along the lines of Ezra’s old cog but there were strange small galleys with protruding mizzens and narrow hulls that narrowed into dangerously long bowsprits. With their slanted lanteen sails, they looked fast and predatory besides the staid Europan boats. Smaller vessels along similar lines, flimsy but elegant, manoeuvred among them like swallows around towers, and little tugs towed heavier ships into their allotted places like boys leading truculent bulls around. There were a few galleys in the
Tancred
’s class, though not quite as big; they docked further out and small skiffs ferried their passengers to and from shore. Akka had been the Oltremarine Empire’s temporary capital, until they abandoned all pretence of rebuilding Jerusalem and that status became official. As the Oltremarines started serving their own interests and not Europa’s, Akka blossomed like a deep-smelling steam-house orchid.

Sofia opened the door and found a blank-faced Ebionite servant standing there. As he silently bowed, she wondered if he had been there all night. She walked down the winding marble staircase, feeling the cool stone through her silk slippers, into a long, spacious corridor that felt more like a crypt.
The walls were decorated with geometric patterns, interrupted intermittently by huge slabs of marble that rippled with dark veins like a shroud. On slender plinths in the middle of these slabs stood white ovals that Sofia at first assumed were marble portrait busts. It was only as she came closer that she realised with a sudden chill what they were: this was an Ancestor Room. The Akkans had preserved traditions that had long since died out in Etruria. The rows of peaceful faces looking down were the death-masks of Queen Catrina’s predecessors. The names and dates inscribed beside bold Etruscan mottos on the plinths were unnecessary: the progression was obvious.

The men, to begin with, were muscular, brutish Normans, with scars and broken jaws and a commanding intensity that survived even sudden death. The women were Ebionites with aquiline noses and docile, intelligent expressions: slaves with haunted, youth-frozen faces who had lived hard lives quickly. As Sofia progressed through the generations, she saw the ruder, softer characteristics being weaned out: the men became less brutish and died younger while the women became less docile and lived longer. They gradually mingled to the type Sofia had seen perfected last night in the cold, superior face of Queen Catrina. This panoply of ghosts had probably watched Catrina’s first uneven steps, had seen her fall down the stairs a dozen times. She must have learned early on that there was no sympathy from this audience. Now those same empty eyes glared coldly at Sofia, interrogating her motives.