Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  As for the brute who held Niccolò suspended, and the ruffian who had taken charge of Pasquale, it didn’t matter what they were, loyal Savonarolistas or hired muscle. More likely the latter: both had a Prussian rather than Spanish look. They were landsknechts perhaps—there were plenty of those looking for work after Luther had been caught and tried and hanged by the forces of Rome—but whatever they were really didn’t matter, because they were there simply to hurt Pasquale and Niccolò until they talked. It was their job.

  ‘All we have to do is tickle these two,’ Salai said. ‘Why make such a fuss about it?’

  ‘What is important is the liberation of the Holy City,’ Fra Perlata said. ‘The hour is at hand. We must observe the proper form.’

  ‘A few ciompi are not God’s Holy Army,’ Salai said with scorn.

  ‘We’re not to say how God’s will is manifested,’ the friar said.

  ‘He seems to be moving in mysterious ways,’ Salai said, popping another sugar-dusted square into his mouth and masticating loudly. ‘Certainly if He is using this oaf of a painter as His vehicle for returning what’s rightly ours, and an ape as the agent of our misfortune. Rosso, what do you say? Should I kill that flea-ridden brute of yours? I mean the ape, of course, not your pupil.’

  Rosso, who had regained something of his swagger, said, ‘Forgive it, Lord. It does not know what it has done.’

  The ape sat on its bottom beside him, arms folded over the top of its head, peeking from beneath the angle of its elbows at Pasquale like a child. Pasquale smiled back at it, remembering how he had taught it to steal the grapes from the choice vines of the garden of the friars of Sante Croce. Ferdinand was an intelligent animal, and would not have forgotten. But he could not make the signs to it because his hands were tied behind his back.

  Salai said, ‘In Prussia they burn dogs whose barking has been judged to cause thunderstorms.’

  Rosso said, ‘God save us that we are not in Prussia.’

  Fra Perlata said to Pasquale, ‘You know what we want. Where is it?’

  ‘Signor Taddei has it.’

  ‘Bad news for you if he has,’ Salai said.

  Fra Perlata said, ‘Please be quiet. I’ll attend to this.’ He stood up, dusting the skirt of his robe, and told the brute to raise Niccolò higher.

  Niccolò made a terrible sound as he was raised: he didn’t sound like a man at all. Pasquale cried out too, then flinched when Fra Perlata put a hand on his shoulder.

  The friar said, ‘Your friend has hung there long enough, don’t you think? Much longer and he’ll be a cripple for life. He won’t ever be able to write again. Help him. Tell us the truth, and be sure you do. We have a man in Signor Taddei’s household, and all the worse for your friend if you lie.’

  Pasquale said, ‘If you mean the signaller, then he was arrested.’

  ‘I know of the signaller, but he was never privy to our cause. How would we have known where you were being taken for ransom, Pasquale, if we had not been told? Now think carefully, and speak the truth.’

  Pasquale said quickly, ‘Signor Taddei took the box. He has it. I’m sorry, Niccolò, I had to tell them. Forgive me.’

  Niccolò shook his head from side to side. ‘No more,’ he said.

  Salai giggled. ‘Box? You think we’d worry about a trifle like that? It was good for making dirty pictures, but not for waging war.’

  Fra Perlata said, ‘Hold, signor! We’ll put him to the drop before we question him.’

  Salai said, ‘I tell you the drop is not great enough. Peasants do not make their holes well enough to lend them to torture—in fact, I’m surprised that the roof-beam hasn’t split in two by now. If you really want to hurt them, then hang on to their legs. It is the weight that does it, you see. We grow heavier in the moment that we stop falling, something the old man once explained to me. Better still, I’ll carve a few slices from them, eh? Maybe trim the boy’s fingers joint by joint. A painter loves his hands as much as a musician.’

  Fra Perlata said, ‘You will put away your knife. We are on God’s business here.’

  Salai said, ‘This little blade? Why, it isn’t really what you’d call a weapon.’

  Pasquale said, ‘You’d best kill me, because if it is not the box that you want, I have nothing.’

  ‘Oh, but you have,’ Salai said. ‘The flying device. You took it from Romano’s corpse, in the signal-tower.’

  Niccolò laughed.

  ‘Be still!’ Fra Perlata said, his voice ringing under the low ceiling. The ape Ferdinand looked at him with momentary interest, then yawned, showing a ribbed liver-coloured throat behind strong yellow teeth.

  Salai said lazily, ‘Don’t threaten me, monk. We’re on the same side, and I want to help you. Believe me, I’ve had experience in these matters, and the strappado will not work here. Besides, even if it made them talk, they might not speak the truth. I did not, after all.’

  Pasquale said, ‘It’s the toy you want? I can take you straight to where I left it!’ He could see it, for a moment, on Niccolò Machiavegli’s cluttered writing-table, sitting on a pile of manuscript leaves, faintly luminous in the shadowy room.

  Niccolò said, ‘No more, Pasquale. They’ll kill us anyway.’

  Salai smiled and said, ‘Well done, painter. But no one will believe you until you’re put to the test. We must have our fun, after all.’

  ‘Leave off this,’ Rosso said. ‘Leave it off! I’d know if he’s lying, and I tell you now that he speaks the truth.’

  Salai turned on him with a snarl. ‘You know nothing of the kind. Your ape lost us the fucking thing in the first place.’

  Suddenly, Pasquale knew what had killed Giulio Romano, knew how his body could have been found in a locked room atop a tower climbable by no man. He and Niccolò had been straining after the answer and now it had been placed into his hands and it was worthless, so that he must laugh.

  Salai said, ‘You see how he mocks us! A little blood will let out the truth. Are you afraid of blood, monk?’

  ‘You know that I am trained in medicine. But I will do this the proper way.’

  ‘Perhaps you mean the scientific way? Even torture has its artificers. Better the pain of the knife. It is slow, exquisite. Unlike the strappado, it does not stop. It works cut by cut, mounting by degrees. He’s a pretty enough boy, so perhaps I should cut away one of his ears, piece by piece, eh?’

  Niccolò said, ‘Hold your tongue, Salai.’ He had to draw his lips back from his teeth to speak, and took little breaths that broke his sentences. ‘I think you’re no more, no more than an idle boaster. Not even a good one. If you want to hurt me, try flaying.’

  ‘Let him down,’ Salai said coldly, ‘and we’ll see. No, monk. We’ll try my way first.’

  Niccolò said, ‘You don’t dare, Salai,’ but stiffened when Salai laid the blade of his knife flat against his bandaged thigh, where he had been wounded by a pistol-ball.

  Rosso said with a trembling edge to his voice, ‘Tell them what they want, Pasquale. It can’t hurt you, and will save your friend.’

  Pasquale, for a moment the centre of attention, felt an odd sense of control. He looked directly at Salai and said, ‘I’ve already told you I have the toy, in a safe place. Cut him, and I’ll tell you no more.’

  ‘But I think you will,’ Salai said, and jabbed the tip of the knife into the tensed muscle of Niccolò’s thigh. ‘Tell me the truth, painter.’

  Rosso cried out, ‘For the love of God, Salai! Let Pasquale speak.’

  Pasquale bit the inside of his lips to stop himself from crying out too, and the taste of his own warm salt blood filled his mouth. He spat on the straw, and the ruffian cuffed his head.

  Niccolò grinned down at Salai: a death’s-head grin. ‘That’s the best you can do?’

  ‘Worse, far worse,’ Salai said, and thrust again, laughing.

  ‘Leave him be!’

  ‘Stay your hand!’

  First Rosso, then Fra Perlata, had spoken. Rosso had dra
wn his knife. The ape dragged against its master’s grip, intently watching Pasquale.

  Salai laughed again, stepping back so that everyone in the room could see him. He showed the bloody knife and licked its blade, grinning around it.

  Niccolò groaned, and said, ‘Kill me for the truth. You know the boy doesn’t lie.’

  Salai shrugged and raised his knife. Rosso shrieked and the ape wrenched free from his grip and with an odd sideways bound threw itself on the ruffian who held Pasquale. Man and ape went sprawling, and then Niccolò fell as the brute hireling let go of the rope, plucked the ape from his compatriot by an arm and a leg and threw it across the room before it could fasten its teeth on him. The ape jumped up, chattering with rage and flailing straw with its hands and its hand-like feet. Fra Perlata told Rosso to keep it quiet and bent over Niccolò and quickly examined his wounds.

  Salai screamed insults at Rosso. His curly hair shook around his mottled jowly face. When he ran out of breath, Fra Perlata said, ‘You’ve done enough harm. This isn’t one of your games.’

  Rosso said, ‘None of this is necessary. None of it.’

  Salai laughed and said, ‘I’ll kill you, Rosso. I swear it.’

  Fra Perlata turned and said quietly, ‘This is God’s business. You must all understand what we’re about. These are the End Times, bringing distress as bitter as a dish of borage, and change as relentless as a mill grinding out the flour of wisdom. Florence is at the centre of Italy through God’s plan, as will shortly be revealed. It must be ruled by the Holy Word, or a sword will fall upon it. It must repent while there is still time. It must clothe itself in the white garments of purification, but must not wait, for soon there will be no time for repentance. Do you all understand?’

  ‘You still need me,’ Salai said. ‘Don’t forget it.’

  ‘I forget nothing,’ the friar said. He told the brute hireling to attend to Niccolò and crossed the room and bent his round face close to Pasquale’s. His breath stank of onions. ‘I forget nothing, and by God’s grace I see what I need to see. Look at me straight, boy, and tell me, or we will continue what we have started.’

  Pasquale saw Niccolò’s blood pooling under his wounded leg and gathering around the fingers of his bound hands, which were twisted behind his back. Fra Perlata pinched his cheeks between sharp-nailed fingers, so that Pasquale had to meet his eyes.

  Pasquale said, ‘I have what you need. I can lead you straight to it.’

  The brute hireling washed Niccolò’s wounds with salt water and bound them with cloth torn from his shirt. Fra Perlata inspected this work and told Niccolò that it was God’s will if he lived or died now, and then ordered Rosso to quiet the ape. Salai said he knew a quick way, and was told to be quiet in turn. The Savonarolista friar was making the best of it that he could, Pasquale saw, masking his anger with decision and action. Niccolò was bound by the rope from which he had hung, turned four times around his body and tied tight, and then the bonds at his ankles were cut and he and Pasquale were walked outside and down a foul alley to where a horse-drawn carriage waited.

  The ride was not long, but every jounce of the carriage hurt Niccolò’s leg and drew a stifled cry from him. He lay across one of the carriage’s benches: Pasquale sat on the other between Fra Perlata and Salai, who was cleaning his immaculate nails with the tip of his knife, careless of the jolting ride. The two hirelings and Rosso and the ape rode up with the driver. The curtains were drawn across the carriage’s windows, so Pasquale could not tell which direction they were taking, but at one point the noise of a mob rose ahead and passed by and subsided behind, and he knew they would not cross the Arno by any bridge.

  All too soon he was proved right. The carriage halted and he and Niccolò were bundled out by the hirelings. They were at the edge of the new docks. The brute slung Niccolò across his shoulders like a sack of meal, and Fra Perlata gripped Pasquale’s elbow and marched him down a stone slipway to the ferry which rocked on the dark water of the river.

  The Savonarolistas had taken it. There was a dead man on the decking, lying in a pool of his own blood, and the crew was muffled in scarves.

  The ferry got under way at once. Steam billowed from the vents of its burner-pipes and with a laborious flexing of the wooden beams the paddle-wheel churned water into a creamy froth. It moved at an angle against the current, driving towards the far end of the complex series of weirs and steps that controlled the flow of the channelled river.

  It was bitterly cold. Downstream, beyond the new docks, where the ocean-crossing maona loomed above lesser vessels, the waterway ribboned away across the dark flood-plain under a sky crowded with crisp bright stars. Upstream, Florence lay under a mantle of smoke: not the fumes of the manufactories, but the smoke of many burnings. Fire still illuminated the arch of the Ponte Vecchio, and fires burned along the bank which the ferry had just quit. Otherwise the city was dark and still, save for the winking of signal-lights. Pasquale heard the bells of the public clock in the tower of the church of Santa Trinità toll the hour of four.

  He sat with Niccolò Machiavegli, massaging the journalist’s arms. T had never thought to have to bear the rope again,’ Niccolò said wryly, ‘yet I am pleased that I could bear it straightforwardly. A million thanks, Pasquale, I do feel something in my hands again, where you move the blood into them. Blood is the conduit for pain it seems, for it always hurts us to spill it, and now it hurts when it returns to its natural place.’

  ‘I wish I could mend the wound that Salai gave you.’

  ‘It hurts no worse for his attentions than it did when the ball of the pistol first struck it.’

  ‘How did you come there, Niccolò? Did the Savonarolistas kidnap you at the Palazzo?’

  ‘Not at all. It was the work of Giustiniani’s men. I knew them by their white masks, and the vapours they used. They put me in a carriage, but it was stopped at a bridge and they were overpowered. I thought I was saved, but I was placed in another carriage and delivered to the attentions of Perlata and Salai.’

  ‘Then Giustiniani and the Savonarolistas are at each other’s throats, although they work for the same master.’

  ‘Giustiniani does not work for Spain, Pasquale, but for what money he can gain by selling the device. The Savonarolistas do it to overthrow the government of Florence and save us all for the love of God. And you, Pasquale?’

  ‘It was in precisely the opposite way. I was betrayed by Signor Taddei, who received an anonymous note asking that I be delivered in exchange for Raphael’s body.’

  ‘Raphael’s body was taken? I wonder for what end?’

  ‘If the body is not returned, then there will be war between Florence and Rome.’

  ‘Ah, I see. And Spain will be the victor.’

  ‘That’s what Signor Taddei said.’

  ‘He is a patriot.’

  Pasquale said bitterly, ‘He is foremost a business man.’

  ‘The two go hand in hand. And what was taken—I won’t speak of it here—is wanted by both Giustiniani and the Savonarolistas. One would sell it to Spain, and one would give it.’

  Pasquale explained what Rosso had told him about Giustiniani’s role as agent for the dissident artists, and Niccolò laughed and said that now he understood why what was sought was sought so eagerly by all.

  ‘But there are also the pictures made by the Great Engineer’s device, which Giulio Romano used to copy the Great Engineer’s notes about his flying toy. It is a device that captures light, Niccolò, and fixes it precisely. The blackened glass I had from Baverio was one such, and the picture I rescued from Giustiniani’s fireplace another.’

  ‘Do you not remember the signal-tower, Pasquale? Think. What did you see beside the body?’

  ‘The open window.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘Glass, below it.’

  ‘Yes. Yet the window was unbroken, and besides, the glass was black.’

  Pasquale remembered the glass plate that Baverio had given him, blackened from its
exposure to light, and understood. The glass had been the remains of pictures of the Great Engineer’s notes. Only the model remained. He said, ‘What will happen to us, Niccolò?’

  ‘The Savonarolistas aren’t known for killing without reason. If they are given what they want they may let us go. They believe, after all, that they are working God’s will. If they win, then once again it will be as it was during the brief reign of Savonarola. Blessed bands of children will roam the streets of Florence, singing hymns and seeking out every vanity from rouge-pots to paintings, from chess-boards to every kind of artificer’s device, and throwing stones at those not yet virtuous. There will be fasting and religious pageants and great bonfires of vanities. The Savonarolistas dream of a pure and simple world, Pasquale, in which all men turn entirely to Christ whether they like it or not. Yet their plans are founded on the certainty that God speaks directly to Savonarola, and I am not persuaded of that, for all that many in Florence once believed it.’

  ‘Yes, but I do not trust Salai. I would kill him if I could.’

  ‘Many have tried, yet he lives. Don’t underestimate him, Pasquale.’

  Fra Perlata was talking to one of the Savonarolistas who had captured the ferry. Pasquale caught a few of their words, brought to him on the bitter wind that blew past the labouring ferry. Something about fire, and the last times, and justice. No doubt that was what the Savonarolistas promised the ciompi, Heaven’s justice here and now on Earth, but it seemed to Pasquale that even justice in Heaven was a remote possibility, and he said as much to Niccolò.

  ‘It’s true that we are enveloped in the laces of sin, but we must always hope, Pasquale. Without hope there is only despair, and with despair, evil. If we are to have God as a friend, we must hope for redemption. The Savonarolistas promise it, but it is not theirs to give. Ah, we are making for the shore now.’