by Jo Walton
“They just kept on doing it,” Dolly says, beaming, indicating a door scroll of dolphins and lilies. “It just kept on being the Renaissance forever here.”
“People must have been so sad when it stopped, in your world,” Miranda says. She is dressed this morning in dark purple with silver trim, and is carrying an ebony staff carved with a snake’s head. “It must have been terrible. Was it a barbarian invasion, like the fall of Rome?”
“No. In fact, I’m not sure how it did stop,” Tish admits.
“Progress,” Ficino says, frowning as he steps aside from the tide of running children. He is dressed exactly as he was the day before, they may even be the same clothes, for he may not have slept. “Though I’m beginning to think there’s something to be said for it.”
Then they come out of the narrow street into the Piazza della Signoria, and see something they have never seen before: the Palazzo Vecchio in its true colours. The stone is a mellow gold. The castle has a slim off-centre tower, and in the embrasures below the battlements are painted brightly coloured shields. The effect is delicate and solid at once, charming, like a child’s toy or a sandcastle made suddenly lasting and life-size. Dolly and Tish both stop to look at it, and Miranda and Ficino have to come back to wait for them.
“But this was exactly the same in Firenze, surely you’re used to it?” Ficino asks.
“They painted it white, the vandals,” Dolly says, vehemently.
Ficino tries to take this information with Platonic calmness, but can’t help wincing a little.
They begin walking again, and cross the busy square. The Loggia dei Lanzi, the pillared colonnade that provides shade and a meeting place for the city, is full of people doing business, or just sitting talking. The statues in it and in front of the Palazzo Vecchio are a mix of familiar and unfamiliar. Michelangelo’s David is missing from beside the steps, and so is Cellini’s Perseus from the Loggia. In place of the David is a comparably sized heroic marble statue of Pico, about to make his sacrifice. In place of the Perseus is a bronze statue of Aeneas carrying Anchises so beautiful that Dolly can’t help stopping to look at it, so he has to scuttle to catch up and runs up the stairs behind the others, to arrive at the great entrance doors on the right.
The doors are watched by two guards with long pikes. Their surcoats bear the device of a gold unicorn’s head on blue, quartered with a blood red rose on white above three diagonal red stripes. Tish thinks the guard on the left may be a woman in disguise, but she takes Giulia’s last piece of advice and says nothing. The pikes are lowered before them, but in a desultory way, as the guards clearly recognise Miranda and Ficino. “Master Ficino and party to see Duke Orsino, we are expected,” Miranda says crisply. A servant comes, in the same livery. They follow him across a frescoed courtyard full of statues and up a flight of very steep stairs into a very beautiful room, painted a clear pale blue and hung with paintings in intricate gold frames, Abraham and Isaac, a Crucifixion, Venus and Adonis, and another representation of Pico’s Triumph—a man standing before a curved classical portico, holding a knife to his breast. There are wooden Savonarola chairs with tapestry cushions, and a fire burning brightly in the marble fireplace. The cushions have the heraldic device of the unicorn’s head, which is again quartered in stone above the fireplace with the rose.
Before Dolly can ask about the coat of arms, the door opens again, and in comes an elegant willowy woman, in an ornately elegant flame-coloured dress with elaborate puffed sleeves over a long cream tunic with a straight skirt. “Sebastian,” Ficino says, with every appearance of delight.
“I never fool you for an instant,” Sebastian says. “Nine people out of ten would have greeted me as my sister.” He comes forward and kisses Ficino on both cheeks.
“Her Grace the Duchess Viola never wears women’s attire in the morning,” Ficino says.
Sebastian laughs, then shakes hands with Miranda. “How are you, mother-in-law?”
“My son may be married to your sister, but I don’t know that this makes me your mother-in-law,” Miranda says, looking at him sourly.
“Letizio Petranero and Adolfo Tornabuoni, visitors from another world,” Ficino says, presenting them. Sebastian takes Tish’s proffered hand and kisses it, and before she can say anything he does exactly the same to Dolly. They look at each other in consternation, unsure whether this is a custom here or audacity. Sebastian laughs, letting them know it is the second.
“And this is Sebastian of Messene, a law unto himself,” Miranda says, rolling her eyes.
“We need to speak to Orsino urgently on a grave matter,” Ficino says.
“Yes, you sent word. He’ll be here presently. He’s been up all night with a mare giving birth.”
It somehow isn’t what Tish expected to hear of a duke doing. Just then Orsino comes in. He is dressed in the fashion they expect from a duke, that is, a Shakespearean duke. He is wearing a deep purple cloak over black-and-silver doublet and hose. Tish is surprised that he seems older than his mother—she would have guessed Miranda to be thirty and Orsino to be fifty (he is showing the effects of his sleepless night), although she knows they are both hundreds of years old, and Miranda is at least twenty years older than her son. It seems very strange to her that Miranda from The Tempest should be the mother of Orsino from Twelfth Night, but strangest of all to be talking to them, as if she had entered into a play she hadn’t read and doesn’t know her lines.
“Mother,” Orsino says, bowing, looking from Miranda to Ficino as if for an explanation. “Master Ficino.”
“Your Grace,” Miranda says, and the others echo her. Dolly wonders what it does for family relationships to live for centuries at essentially the same age, but still be mother and son.
“I have very bad news,” Ficino says. “But first, let me present Adolfo Tornabuoni and Letizio Petranero.”
“Children from another world,” Miranda glosses.
Orsino, who had been inclining his head politely as the others bowed to him, jerks immediately upright. “From Pico’s world?” he asks Ficino.
Ficino nods.
“Then the gods are moving?”
“Yes. But that is not my bad news, or not the worst of it. Shall we sit down?”
Orsino gestures towards chairs, and they sit. A servant offers them marzipan fruits. Tish pops her exquisite little marzipan apple into her mouth, then sees that everyone else is nibbling theirs in tiny bites.
When the last of them (Miranda) has finished their sweetmeat and wiped their fingers on napkins so beautifully embroidered that to Tish and Dolly it seems a shame to use them for their intended purpose, the servant withdraws. When she has gone, Orsino turns to Ficino. “You said your apprentice had been killed.”
“Yes. Last night,” Ficino says. “This is very serious and private business.”
“Should I absent myself?” Sebastian asks, leaning back in his chair bonelessly, with the demeanor of one making a pro forma objection that he expects to be denied.
“Perhaps that would be best,” Miranda says. Sebastian’s eyebrows rise up to his hair, and he looks at Orsino, as if hoping to be asked to stay. The Duke says nothing, so Sebastian bows individually and elaborately to everyone and leaves, closing the door very slowly and gently behind him. Dolly notices that the door is intarsia, different shades of wood arranged like a mosaic into a picture, in this case a portrait of a heavy man with a toolbox surrounded by woodworking tools, rendered almost three dimensionally.
“Three things, your grace,” Ficino says, when the door has finally closed. “First, the gods are moving outside the world to affect the world again, as we can see by the presence of these strangers. Second, Geryon’s father is free, and came here last night and spoke to me, accidentally killing my apprentice Giulia. Third, the Antean intends to free Geryon. I persuaded him to wait for three days so I could speak to you.”
Orsino looks grimmer and grimmer as Ficino speaks. “Three days!” he says.
“He would have come here
last night directly from my house,” Ficino says.
Orsino nods. “You bought what time you could with what coin you had. Thank you. But what good does it do? My brother will kill me if he is released. What I have done to him can never be forgiven.”
“Yes,” Ficino agrees at once. “But if his father comes here and destroys the castle from beneath, you will die, your brother will be free, and a great many other people may also die in the process.”
“I have given thought to recapturing Caliban,” Miranda says. “He didn’t see me last night. He is unlikely to know I’m here. But I don’t think the trick you played last time could work again. He came then because he trusted me, and I betrayed him with roses. He’ll suspect at once if there are any roses in the marsh. And there’s no way I can see of tricking him off the ground.”
Orsino nods again, decisively. “Betrayal never works twice.” He sighs. “I have spent much time strengthening the floors beneath this castle with structures and spells.”
“Enough to keep out an Antean?” Ficino asks dubiously.
“There is a whole patterned layer of thorns. My defences haven’t been tested against an Antean, but I have hope they would hold,” Orsino says. “I am very sorry he came to your house that had no such defences.”
“He did much worse than material damage,” Ficino says. “Giulia is dead.”
“And that might be just the beginning,” Orsino says, and sighs heavily. “I am very sorry that you lost your apprentice.”
“Caliban is sorry too, but such sorrow sets nothing straight,” Ficino says.
“Would you trust me so far as to look and see whether I think the thorns would hold Caliban?” Miranda asks abruptly.
“I’d be grateful if you would, Mother,” Orsino says.
Miranda closes her eyes and folds her hands over her staff. After a moment she opens them again. “I think it might well be enough to stop him, but it wouldn’t recapture him.”
“Stopping him is enough,” Orsino says, leaning back with a sigh of relief.
“No it isn’t!” Ficino objects. “You just apologised to me for the death of Giulia. How many more deaths among the ordinary citizens of Thalia would Caliban cause if he took it into his head to plough up the undefended city that lies around your safe palazzo? How many if he harmed the city while actually intending death to the Thalian people? You could sit here under siege while everything around you becomes a desert.”
“What alternative do I have?” Orsino leans forward.
Ficino looks at him directly. “You could offer your brother a deal. You could take turns to rule for three hundred years each. You could let him bind you and blind you. I would undertake to restore his sight now, and yours afterwards.”
“After three hundred years? I have a nine-year-old daughter!”
“Now it is my turn to say in futility that I am sorry,” Ficino says. “But the gods are taking an interest. I don’t know how much they can affect things from outside, but they have already overturned this arrangement.”
Orsino looks at Dolly, and then at Tish. They meet his eyes. Tish finds herself feeling very sorry for him. He looks back to Ficino. “I’m not sure I could live for three hundred years like that, even knowing I’d be released at the end of it,” he says. “I don’t know how Geryon has kept himself alive. He’s mad, you know.”
“I’m not surprised. Most people would be.”
“Most people would choose to die!” Orsino bursts out.
“That is always a choice we all have,” Miranda says.
Orsino collects himself. “How long exactly can we count on?” he asks. “Before Caliban returns?”
“Until noon on the day after tomorrow,” Ficino says.
“I need to speak to my counsellors, and then I will speak with you again, late tonight or tomorrow morning. I assume the funeral will be this afternoon.”
“This afternoon at the church of Hermes Psychopomp,” Ficino says. “I have spoken to her family and it is all arranged.”
“We will all be there to show our respect,” Orsino says. “And if you will, come back tomorrow morning, and let us speak some more.”
Ficino glances at Miranda, who nods. “That we can do.”
Orsino gets up and goes to Dolly, looking closely at him, and then at Tish. “Why did you come?” he asks.
“It was no doing of ours, and it seems to us a strange chance,” Dolly says.
Orsino ponders that for a moment. “Do you know anything from your world of this matter?” he asks.
“Very little,” Tish says. “We have a play—two plays—but they don’t go on as far as this. One ends with Caliban on the island and Miranda coming here to marry your father, and the other … the other concerns your marriage.”
“Ah, the scandal of my marriage,” Orsino says, sounding cheered. “I wish I could see that played. It must be a grand comedy. But you know nothing about my half brother?”
Tish shakes her head. “I think what you did to him is horrible,” she says.
Orsino frowns, and she remembers that he is the duke and could have her executed or imprisoned for speaking to him like that. But he sighs. “Yes, it is horrible. But so was standing at his elbow seeing him make a fool of himself and beggar Thalia in his ineptitude. And that could have gone on for centuries too. I am the last heir, you know, the last person to be brought up in expectation of inheriting a kingdom in a reasonable time only to have it snatched from me by the end of death.”
“Nonsense, there were a whole generation of heirs like you,” Ficino says.
“And not all of them deceived their brothers into imprisonment, it’s true,” Orsino says.
“Dukes deposing their brothers is a well-worn theme,” Miranda says. She stands up and takes a step towards her son. They are exactly the same height. “But keeping him imprisoned all this time—”
“I have refused your applications to visit him not because I did not trust your honesty but because I could not trust your pity,” Orsino says. “He is very pitiful, as he is now. But he was a terrible duke, and he would be worse now, mad. It might well be better for Thalia to endure an Antean attack than have him back on the throne.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Miranda asks.
“He could die any time if he wanted to,” Orsino says. “And he’s my brother, and was my friend. Killing him now … is one of my options, isn’t it?”
Ficino frowns, but Miranda and Orsino are staring at each other. Tish and Dolly exchange uncomfortable looks.
“Death is so very final,” Orsino says. “It closes all the doors. And so I didn’t kill him, and you didn’t kill Caliban. And this is what matters in life, death and love and peace and war and time. I’ve bought Thalia peace and time, as best I could. And if some say it was ambition, well, there was some of that too. But I could not see my city spilled away in carelessness and waste, or watch somebody else depose my brother and take his place.”
18
ON A PALE HORSE
I am not human, whatever I am, and my experience of death and grief is fundamentally different from the human. But even with human death, there is a vast range. If you think about the difference between Ficino’s experience of death and Tish and Dolly’s experience of it, and see how that is different from your own and that of your friends, then set that difference against Giulia or Sebastian who have rarely met death, and only by human will. And if you can, compare it to Sylvia’s grief for Idris, or before that, for her grandfather Harrison who died when she was ten, her grandmother Harrison who died when she was thirteen, or her father who died when she was twenty-two.
The ceremony held for Giulia’s funeral encompasses the whole city. Shops close, bells ring, the entire population of Thalia come out into the streets. The coffin is carved and painted. Giulia’s parents look stunned. Ficino speaks, briefly and movingly. Many of her friends speak. Dolly, as the person Giulia was trying to rescue, has a starring role—and he can’t help thinking of the whole funeral as a per
formance, even though the tears are so clearly real.
Priests read from the Bible, and Tish and Dolly are confused at how they seem to mix up pagan gods and angels, and invoke the protection of St Michael, St John, and St Proserpina. The procession moves from the church of St Hermes the Bearer of Souls to Santa Croce, where Thalian heroes are buried. Dolly and Tish walk in the procession, with everyone, but do not join in the singing of unfamiliar hymns, or the mourning, which seems to them almost hysterically excessive, even though they had both liked Giulia. Between them, they have been to more funerals than anyone in the crowd who is younger than three hundred and fifty years old. The generational divide between people who were alive before Pico’s triumph over death, like Ficino, Miranda, and Orsino, and those who grew up after it, like Olivia, Viola, Sebastian, Giulia, and most of the present population of Illyria, is huge, and visible. And if you think of your own experience of death and grief, and I hope for your own sake that you have very little of it, then you’ll understand why this funeral is so huge, why the procession is so dramatic, and why Giulia’s grandmother (the one who wasn’t a hundred yet, and had six children, and yet never lost anyone she was close to before) weeps so uncontrollably.
Those who are older have experienced the change from a world where death is a guest at every feast to one where he is a very rare visitor indeed. Dolly, who is in the process of undergoing that experience, looks across at Duke Orsino and his family—Olivia looking regal, Sebastian and Viola looking identical in men’s attire (which means it would be polite to address Viola as Cesario, although nobody does), and the daughter, nine-year-old Drusilla, looking pale and shocked in clothes that are miniatures of those Olivia is wearing. He starts to consider what it means to live without unwilled death, and what that means for the poor, mad half-Antean brother on top of the tower. Another long hymn begins.
