Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  Lisa Giocondo said, ‘If what you ask me can help uncover the truth, then I’ll answer as truthfully as I’m able.’

  ‘Does your husband know of your friendship with Raphael?’

  ‘He does not approve, but he…tolerates it. He is an old man, signor, caught up in the affairs of state, and I am his third wife. Our marriage was never one made from love, although you must believe me that there is love, and since our only child died we have been apart more than I would have wished.’

  ‘And his honour, signora. Does he worry about that?’

  ‘He would worry about his position, but that is secure. A man raised up as he is, as you will know, Signor Machiavegli, is subject to many attacks, including rumours about my…conduct. He takes them without hurt.’

  ‘But there is some truth to these rumours, or you would not be here.’

  ‘I am at your mercy, Signor Machiavegli.’

  Niccolò pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. It was his characteristic gesture while he was thinking. After a moment he said, ‘Your husband was instrumental in arranging the Pope’s embassy. In fact, he has many contacts in Rome.’

  ‘He would not interfere with the affairs of the Republic because of personal matters.’

  ‘Not directly, of course. But was Raphael invited by your husband?’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Perhaps to arrange that Raphael be humiliated.’

  ‘An interesting idea, Signor Machiavegli, but I believe that it was the Pope himself who sent Raphael as an ambassador.’

  ‘The Pope himself, and not Giulio de’ Medici?’

  For the first time, Lisa Giocondo looked perturbed. She said, ‘I have it from Raphael that it was the Pope himself. I believe him, Signor Machiavegli.’

  ‘As is your right, signora. I think, for now, that I have asked enough. I see that you glance out of the window, and worry about the passing of time. Of course you must do your duty to your husband. I would not keep you from him.’

  Lisa Giocondo rose. She was a tall woman, as tall as Pasquale. She dropped a small bag on the writing-table and said, ‘You will no doubt incur expenses in your investigations, Signor Machiavegli. I would not wish to see you out of pocket.’

  Niccolò got to his feet with Pasquale’s help, apologizing that he had already been hurt in his investigations, a trifling wound but a nuisance even so. ‘I had not thought to serve the Republic again, signora. May I ask, if my inquiries should lead to your husband…?’

  ‘I also am interested in the truth. You will, I trust, keep me informed.’

  When she had gone, Pasquale could finally whistle. He said, ‘I hadn’t realized the depth of your hate, Niccolò.’

  Niccolò said, ‘Francesco del Giocondo is a good silk merchant, a competent secretary, and a bad poet with an inflated opinion of his worth.’

  ‘You imitate Michelangelo’s opinion of Raphael.’

  ‘It is a matter of fact, not opinion. What is your judgement of Signora Giocondo?’

  ‘In the tender soul of a woman there dwells prudence and a courageous spirit.’

  ‘Indeed. And a most determined one.’

  ‘And generous,’ Pasquale said, spilling half a dozen florins from the small bag, which was heavy with Signora Giocondo’s musky scent.

  ‘We are embarked on a voyage over deep and dangerous waters. Those may help speed our passage. Do you know how our lady became Raphael’s mistress?’

  ‘Until now I didn’t even know she was his mistress. I am only a painter, after all.’

  Niccolò smiled. ‘Raphael painted a portrait of her, but not at her husband’s commission. It was her lover at the time, Giulio de’ Medici, who set Raphael to the task, while our Florentine secretary and his wife were on embassy to Rome.’

  ‘So you think that perhaps Giulio de’ Medici sent Raphael here, into certain danger?’

  ‘Signora Giocondo certainly believes it may be possible, and more, that perhaps her husband was involved in Romano’s murder, although she hopes otherwise.’

  ‘Yet what we saw at Giustiniani’s villa would suggest that Romano was involved in a plot of his own.’

  ‘Or lured into a plot,’ Niccolò said spryly, ‘although that would be a very complicated way of performing a simple task.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her of Giustiniani.’

  ‘She did not pay for that. Let her wonder and worry. She may be moved to tell us more, although I doubt it. She has a core of iron. Now, hand me the money, young Pasquale. We will have need of it before the night is out. We will make inquiries, and this may buy answers to our questions.’

  3

  When Pasquale and Niccolò left the apartment building it had just turned night, with three stars pricking the patch of blue-black sky between the roofs above the courtyard. Pasquale tacked his likeness of Signora Ambrogini to her door, saying that now she would know he was an artist, and Niccolò drily remarked that Pasquale shouldn’t count on public opinion.

  Dusk usually drove most honest citizens indoors, but that night the city was embraced by the carnival begun by the entry of the Pope. Florentines loved carnivals and festivals, and any anniversary or occasion of state was an excuse for celebration and holiday. The streets were lit as much by the lanterns and flaming brands carried by parties of costumed men tramping here and there as by the infrequent acetylene lamps. Groups of youths serenaded favoured girls who sat at their lighted windows. One gang strode along on stilts that doubled their height. Music and singing and cheering sounded from near and far, but Niccolò led Pasquale away from the celebrations, into the maze of narrow passages and courts behind the imposing façades of the buildings that lined the main streets. Always, Florence’s private lives turned inward, hiding from public gaze, breeding vendettas and dark plots behind high walls and narrow barred windows.

  Niccolò was still limping badly, leaning on a stick of ashwood tipped with iron at either end, and the way was difficult, over slick flagstones or rutted earth, lit only by infrequent shafts of light leaking from high shuttered windows. Pasquale was nervous, and kept his hand on his knife. This was just the kind of place where people imagined that cutthroats and robbers lurked—although because of that, any robbers would have a poor time of it, and were no doubt lurking elsewhere.

  After a little while, Pasquale asked, ‘Who are we looking for?’

  ‘A certain physician of ill repute. A man who goes by the name of Dr Pretorious. It is not his real name, of course, and as far as I know he has never been examined for his doctorate, although he has been thrown out of at least a dozen different universities in five different countries. But none of his kind use their real names, in case demons learn them. He was put in jail in Venice for trafficking in dead bodies, although he had some influence that meant he was not put to the question but instead served his sentence on the galleys. There were rumours that he was trying to construct a woman, a new Venus or Bride of the Sea, from parts of corpses, and planned to animate this patchwork construction by substitution of an arcane liquor for blood.’

  ‘Another black magician, then? Venice seems to breed them.’

  ‘Do you know, Pasquale, I’m not quite sure where Pretorious was born, but it was certainly never Venice. As for black magic, he does not call it that. He calls himself a physician, and it is true he has done some good amongst the ciompi shanties, where he holds a clinic and takes whatever people will pay in return for treatment. His clients are in love with him. There were rumours some years ago that he was associated with the disappearance of children, but to his credit the ciompi did not believe them.’

  ‘And you think he is an associate of this other magician, this Giustiniani.’

  ‘Ah, because both have fled the city by the sea, for the same reason! All I can say now is that it is likely that Pretorious may be able to shed some light on the business of Paolo Giustiniani, for they move, if not in the same circles, in circles which intersect. Moreover, Dr Pretorious is a collector of fa
cts. He hoards them until such time as the right buyer comes along. Meanwhile, Pasquale, we must be rigorous in our examination of the facts we have collected, and in the conclusion we draw from them.’

  ‘As rigorous as the artificers?’

  ‘Well put,’ Niccolò said with a smile. ‘Down here.’

  The tavern they were seeking was in a dark courtyard bounded on three sides by tall houses, on the fourth by a reeking stream that gurgled throatily in the darkness. Pasquale had to half pull, half lift Niccolò up the steep arch of the bridge which crossed this Stygian waterway.

  Just as they reached the far side of the bridge, fireworks burst overhead, and the courtyard began to throb to the solemn tolling of the cathedral bells. The mass in honour of the Pope was over, and he was departing for the feast at the Palazzo della Signoria. By the brief light of star-shells, Pasquale caught a clear glimpse across the courtyard, and saw a bundle of twigs crooked over a doorway masked with sacking, and scattered tables where figures hunched over bowls or flagons. Little lamps, wicks floating in saucers of oil, cast faint reddish lights. Someone was playing the bagpipes, and doing it badly.

  Pasquale said, remembering the dive where he had taken wine with Niccolò after witnessing the murder scene, ‘You know many interesting places.’

  ‘Not all business is transacted on high, and besides, news always falls from high to low, just as water seeks the lowest place.’

  ‘This Dr Pretorious must have fallen far.’

  ‘He doesn’t believe so,’ Niccolò said. ‘Listen carefully, Pasquale. Pretorious is as subtle and poisonous as a serpent. Be careful. In particular, be very careful what you say to him. He’ll use any unguarded remark as a way into your soul.’

  ‘You make him sound like the devil.’

  ‘He is,’ Niccolò said, and pushed aside the sacking at the door.

  Dr Pretorious sat at a corner table, playing single-handed tarot whist. A tall white-haired old man, he was thin to the point of emaciation, fastidiously dressed in a russet tunic with puffed sleeves and a white shirt trimmed with Flemish lace, and seemed quite oblivious to the dirty straw on the floor and the mice that scuttled to and fro. Exuding a brittle charm, he stood and bowed to Niccolò and Pasquale, and called to the landlord for his very best wine. His servant, a hulking Savage with a square scarred face and a helmet of coarse glossy black hair, sat beside him, a knife as big as an ordinary man’s sword laid across his thighs.

  The wine served was as bad as anything Pasquale had ever tasted, although Niccolò sipped it without complaint, and Dr Pretorious seemed to relish it. He said, ‘I have not seen you for a long time, Niccolò. I had hoped it would be longer.’

  ‘You have been quiet, or if not quiet at least careful.’

  ‘I’ve been working,’ Dr Pretorious said. His eyes looked black in the flickering light of the rush-lamps, like deep caves under the overhang of his craggy brow. ‘And with great success, too.’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about your work, or anything else you’ve done. In fact, I’d rather not hear about it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry! It is, you might say, the antithesis of my previous research. Instead of subverting death, I attempt to subvert life itself, to short-circuit the Great Chain of Being. I have made mannequins, small as mice, and infused them with a spark of life. How my children dance and sing!’ There was a measured silence. The gloating way he said children chilled Pasquale’s blood. Dr Pretorious added, ‘Well, you’ll know all about it soon enough. Everyone will.’

  Niccolò said, ‘I’ve come about the business at Paolo Giustiniani’s villa.’

  Dr Pretorious started to gather together his tarot cards. He had long white fingers, and yellow nails trimmed close and square. He licked his bloodless lips with a tongue as pointed as a lizard’s. ‘Ah, so you were involved. I had heard as much.’

  ‘From Giustiniani’s men?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dr Pretorious said carelessly, and folded the cards together and wrapped them in a square of black silk.

  ‘I don’t think so. If Giustiniani knew I was involved, then he would have come straight away to my room.’

  Dr Pretorious shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps I heard it somewhere else. At a time like this, there are many stories. You know that my sources are as various as those of the Nile.’

  ‘You did not welcome the Pope.’

  ‘I have no cause to celebrate. After all, he is only the Pope, you know. Not the one we hoped for.’ Dr Pretorious looked directly at Pasquale for the first time. ‘You’ve brought an artist along, I see.’

  Pasquale felt a queer compulsion to say something. Light lived deep in Dr Pretorious’s dark eyes, floating and faint. He said, ‘Who were you hoping for?’

  Dr Pretorious said, ‘We live in the time before the end times. The Great Year has come and gone, and soon the black pope, the antipope, will rise. Then the Millennium will begin, but it will not be what most fools believe it to be, young man. Tell me, did you see the entry of the Pope into this foul city? Did you see him enter the square in the shadow of that ridiculously high tower of the so-called Great Engineer?’

  ‘I was…otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Then perhaps I have something you would like to know. I wonder now, what it would be worth.’

  Niccolò said sharply, ‘Remember that we have serious business here, Pasquale.’

  Dr Pretorious smiled, cruel as a knife. ‘Ah, this would not of course be a social call. It never is. I suppose that is why you did not introduce your catamite here. From the country, by his accent, although he has taken pains to disguise it. Fiesole I would say, a town well known for its quaint rural ways—they favour goats over women there, I believe.’

  ‘Sit!’ Niccolò pressed down on Pasquale’s shoulder as he started to rise.

  Pasquale subsided, anger a thick taste in his mouth. The Savage smiled broadly at him: his front teeth were gone, and his incisors had been sharpened to points and capped with gold. Pasquale returned the big man’s yellow gaze, but he had to lock his hands between his thighs to keep himself from shaking.

  Niccolò said, ‘He is here to help me, should I need help.’

  ‘Times must be bad for you,’ Dr Pretorious said, with a bright smile. ‘And of course, they’ll shortly be worse still for all artists, if the Great Engineer’s new invention proves as popular as it deserves. I sympathize.’

  ‘I need your help,’ Niccolò said. ‘Times are bad enough for that, at least.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I wondered when that debt would be called in. What shall we say…three questions? I’ll need paying, too, of course. My debt to you isn’t that great.’

  Niccolò drank down his wine, and Dr Pretorious quickly poured him some more. Niccolò drank that too, and said, ‘You always liked playing games. This will be payment enough.’ He set the little bag of florins on the table.

  Dr Pretorious breathed deeply through his nose and said, ‘From a woman—a rich one, too. Well. There are rules you are not even aware of, my friend. Perhaps to you what I do seems a game. It is not. Ask away. You have my attention.’

  ‘What interest does Paolo Giustiniani have in the painter Raphael?’

  ‘So you are involved in that sordid little business. Fascinating.’

  ‘I asked the question.’

  ‘Oh, he has no interest, at present.’

  ‘If I may say so, that is not a very full answer.’

  ‘It is the truth. Aren’t you satisfied with that?’

  ‘Perhaps that depends upon the answer to the next question.’

  ‘Press on, my friend,’ Dr Pretorious said, with a knife-edged smile.

  ‘On what Great Work is Giustiniani engaged?’

  ‘I can tell you what little I know, so it cannot be a full answer.’

  ‘You are an honourable man.’

  ‘I take this more seriously than you because I know about the consequences of error, dear Niccolò.’

  ‘Then tell me what you know. As full an answer as you are able.�
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  ‘I believe he is either engaged in enlisting into his service a great prince and his army of lesser demons, or invoking one of those who serve the celestial throne.’

  ‘These are hardly small matters,’ Niccolò said. He was sweating, Pasquale saw, a dew gathered just below his receding hairline.

  ‘It depends on how you go about it,’ Dr Pretorious said carelessly. ‘Giustiniani is using the worst kind of necromancy, the kind of thing that hedge-wizards long ago abandoned. I hardly think he’ll succeed. He is an amateur, you know. He even uses his real name. Most likely, he’ll succeed in consigning himself to Hell. That kind always do.’

  ‘And you hope to evade it?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Dr Pretorious said. His sudden smile was bright and generous—it was then that Pasquale realized that the man was quite insane. There was a chill in the air, as if somewhere near by a door had opened on to the hyperborean regions, radiating anti-heat.

  ‘There are always ways of avoiding the attention of Hell, for those who know,’ Dr Pretorious said. ‘Of course, my friend, I know that you don’t think Hell such a bad place. I’ve read your play on the matter, where a demon discovers that matrimony is in truth a living hell, and Hell itself is a corner of Heaven ruled not by the Fallen One, but by rich Pluto. Who is rich, of course, because in the end death claims all, and rules not over eternal torment but over a garden where those whose deeds or intellect exclude them from Heaven, the heroes and philosophers, converse. A place that you, foolish Niccolò, perhaps yearn for. Perhaps you should examine your own soul, my friend. Lapses like that are hooks for the claws of demons.’

  Pasquale was almost hypnotized by Dr Pretorious’s mellifluous voice. The noise of the other patrons of the low tavern had receded, as if Dr Pretorious had created a world within a world, where each was intimately connected to each by words. Then Niccolò laughed, and the spell was broken.

  ‘You read too much into my fantasies,’ he said. ‘Although I am flattered, you shouldn’t misunderstand my interest in Hell. If one is to find the way to Paradise, one should first learn the road to Hell, so that it can be avoided. Without temptation, there can be no Fall, and so no redemption.’