Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  They had emerged about a hundred braccia from the verge of the road which ran along one side of the villa’s wall. Inside the wall, fire made a welter of orange light and red shadow. The villa was ablaze from end to end, and those trees nearest it had caught fire too, tossing harvest after harvest of sparks into the black air. Near at hand, blue flames of Greek fire clung to the ruins of the gate. The lights of the Great Engineer’s devices, on the far side of the burning villa, dimmed by the blaze, crossed and recrossed in the sky, while the noise of the automatic drumming came and went on the hot wind, mixed with the fainter shouts of the beleaguered mercenaries. Suddenly, a great red smoke rose within the walls. As it rose it grew into the shape of a leering demon, but then air rushing to feed the fires took it and tore it apart.

  ‘Just about the last trick,’ the servant remarked. ‘You gentlemen may run along. I’ve one loose end to deal with, and for that I’d like my pistol back.’

  Niccolò said grimly, ‘I would be quite glad to let you go, signor, except that you were a witness to what happened. We shall need you as proof of the schemes of Giustiniani, and of the fate of Raphael’s body. On that still hangs a war.’

  The red-headed servant stood. ‘Why, signor, that’s hardly enough to hold me. The corpse is your concern, not mine. As for being a witness, you forget that I was responsible for Raphael’s death. I’ll not be a witness to my own execution warrant.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to be a witness,’ Niccolò said grimly. ‘You have been a willing accomplice to this devilry, signor. Hanging is the least of it. We burn witches in this city, and will burn you if you do not co-operate.’

  ‘I’ve already survived one attempt to burn me,’ the servant said, ‘so you’ll excuse me if I do not tempt fate and put myself forward for a second go-round.’

  He stepped forward, and only smiled more widely when Niccolò raised the pistol. Then he reached out, and Niccolò snarled and pulled the trigger. There was only a dry click. The servant moved in a rush, turned Niccolò around and jerked his arm up behind his back so that he had to let go of the weapon.

  Pasquale managed to land a blow on the servant’s head that sent him staggering, but when he pressed his attack a swipe of the pistol clipped him on the corner of a cheek. Pasquale reeled back, and the servant sprang upon the flat rock. He flipped off the pistol’s empty pan, jammed on a new one, and fired once into the air.

  Pasquale and Niccolò exchanged a look. Pasquale’s own warm blood coursed down the side of his jaw and dripped from his chin. The wound was just beginning to hurt.

  Pasquale said, ‘The game’s not worth our lives, Niccolò. Leave him.’

  The servant bowed mockingly, then raised a slim whistle, the kind the municipal swineherds used to summon their charges from roaming the city cloaca. He blew a single piercing note. A man stepped from a clump of trees that stood on a rise off towards the olive-grove through which Pasquale and Taddei’s men had approached the villa. He made his way towards them slowly, and before he was halfway there, Pasquale recognized the Spanish envoy.

  ‘That’s far enough I think,’ the servant called, and raised the pistol.

  Pasquale saw the envoy’s expression change to astonishment. He reached for something in the pouch at his belt and as he brought his hand up the servant shot him three times in rapid succession. The envoy sat down with a sudden rush. The servant took careful aim and fired again. The envoy’s head snapped back and he fell over, and with his last moment of life he set free the thing he’d taken from his pouch.

  It was the device. Pasquale saw it quite clearly as it rose into the night, even imagined he could hear the whir of its bands unwinding—but that was impossible, for the drums, the drums, the drums were still beating off in the distance and the fires were roaring, and the magician’s mercenaries were shouting and shooting at the shadow-show.

  The servant ran out across the heath, leaping and snatching at the device as it fluttered higher, suddenly not borne by its flexing wings but by the wind that fed the fires. It flew sideways, on a rising curve. For a moment it seemed that it would rise above the flames which clung to the ruined gateway, but then the gust of air failed, and the device dipped and instantly kindled. A burning scrap made lighter by its burning, it rose again, a feather on the breath of God whirling high above the destruction. And went out.

  The servant had reached the margin of the road, and was staring up at where the device had vanished, as if it might suddenly reappear like the phoenix. As he turned towards Pasquale and Niccolò there was a flat crack and he stumbled and pitched forward.

  At first Pasquale supposed he had tripped, but when he did not rise Pasquale knew that he had been shot. He tugged Niccolò’s sleeve and made him crouch in the dubious cover of a clump of wiry grasses. A figure was making its way along the road to where the servant had fallen. Suddenly, Pasquale realized who it must be, for no one else would have brought the ape. He stood up and waved and shouted, for all that Niccolò cursed him as a fool, telling him that Taddei would as soon have both of them dead.

  But the person on the road had already turned to them. Pasquale ran forward. It was a woman. It was Pelashil.

  13

  Pasquale, Pelashil and Niccolò Machiavegli made a long way of it back towards the river. They did not trust the road, for Pelashil said that men were waiting there for any who escaped—she had seen them take a fat man in red, which must be Salai, and force him into a carriage. Pasquale asked if one was a priest, or wore robes, and Pelashil said, ‘Yes, and a hood, and a big cross, here.’ She placed a hand between her small breasts.

  ‘It’s as I thought,’ Pasquale said. ‘Cardano is the Savonarolistas’ man.’

  Niccolò said, ‘Then Fra Perlata escaped. I wasn’t sure in the confusion, when the ferry struck the shore and Giustiniani’s men swarmed aboard.’

  Pasquale dabbed at his bloody cheek with his sleeve. ‘Once they find that Salai doesn’t have the device, they’ll be looking for us. We can’t stay here.’

  They stumbled across the heath with the burning villa at their backs and the tower of the church of Santo Spirito rising against the scattered lights of the city ahead of them. Pelashil went arm in arm with Pasquale. The long hunting-rifle was slung over her shoulder, its octagonal barrel rising a full braccio above her head. She knew he would need help, she said: Piero had seen it in a dream, and so she had brought the ape, intending to break into the grounds and use him as a distraction. But when the ape had seen the lights and the fire, and heard the strange noises, he had broken his chain and jumped the wall.

  ‘He found me anyway,’ Pasquale said, and told her how Ferdinand had died.

  There was more to the story, Pelashil said. She had seen a broadsheet with Pasquale’s likeness upon it, and Piero had told her what it meant. It seemed that Pasquale was wanted for the murder of his master, Giovanni Battista Rosso. ‘But that matters not in the least,’ Pelashil said cheerfully. ‘You are set on the right road at last.’

  Pasquale walked on in silence. He was numb. It didn’t stop, was all he could think. It was not like the chivalric stories of heroes who slew monsters and brutes or sought the Grail, and after they succeeded there was an end to their labours, and a reward. A woman’s hand and rightful ascension to the throne, the Grail found, and Heaven with it.

  ‘Taddei will be behind it,’ Niccolò remarked. ‘The last of the scandal has been diverted upon your head, Pasquale. Of course, he did not expect you to survive this holocaust, and so you would not be an inconvenient witness at your own trial.’

  ‘So I thought,’ Pasquale said at last. He turned to Pelashil. ‘Perhaps you will come with me. I was trying to tell you before that there may be a way—’

  ‘I already have a master—’

  ‘After this? You are your own master, or mistress, it would seem. Pelashil, I can take you back to your home. Piero hardly knows you are there. He wants to be alone. That is his fear: fear of the other. Thunder, crowds, anything not inside
his head. He is even frightened of me, and I would be his pupil if he would allow it.’

  ‘I have my life here,’ Pelashil said. ‘Piero took me in, and taught me when my own people would not. I look after him. He teaches me, so that I will be a mara’akame. Is that simple enough for you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t steal you from him. I ask only because I don’t believe that you are his slave.’

  Pelashil let go of his hand and said angrily, ‘Why do men understand nothing? I stay with him because I want to. No one owns me. I am not his slave, nor his wife. I look after him because I want to. Yes, he’s frightened of me, of many things, but he is a great and skilful mara’akame, and a better painter than you will ever be. There is a reason, if you need one.’

  ‘I’m frightened of you, too,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you could shoot.’

  ‘The old man taught me. In my country, before I came here. Before he came back to this terrible city.’

  Pasquale discovered that he did not want to know, as he had often wanted to ask, whether she had ever slept with Piero. He said, ‘All I know has died in the city. What hold has it on me now? Rosso was right after all. If I had agreed to go to Spain with him he would be alive, and so many others too.’

  Niccolò had prudently walked a little way ahead of them while they argued, but now he stopped and they caught up with him. He said, ‘You may have your wish. Or rather, it may be that Spain will come to you.’

  They had reached the crest of the slope. A road ran downhill, gathering houses around it as it descended towards the docks. The city spread on either side, and in every part of the city green and red sparks were making small precise movements.

  Pasquale asked Niccolò, ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘If you’re patient, perhaps I’ll be able to tell you in a moment. They are all sending the same message, in plain talk…Well,’ Niccolò said flatly, ‘it is to be war. What a comedy of errors, eh, Pasquale?’

  ‘So we did nothing in the end, except what we thought was right.’ It did not seem unexpected. Pasquale found that he felt nothing, not even disappointment.

  Niccolò said kindly, ‘Perhaps we made a difference, although we should not know it. It would be gross egotism to imagine otherwise. Only princes affect the course of history, Pasquale, and with your pardon, I do not believe any of us are that.’

  ‘Except the Great Engineer.’

  ‘He was once a prince, perhaps. But even princes have their day, and I think he had his long ago, in the war against Rome. His devices won that, but someone else must win this.’

  Pasquale saw lights move on the river. The great ocean-going maona was preparing to warp out of its dock, a bank of lights looming beyond the prickly masts of the smaller vessels, supplemented by the small, luminous comma of the churning wake of a paddle-wheel tug.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I only have this one chance,’ and started to run. And as he ran, gathering exhilaration lifted his heart. It didn’t matter if his plea had been delivered by Jacopo or not, or even if it had been answered. All that mattered was the hope, the chase. He stopped at the bottom of the hill, breathing like a Hero’s engine, and when Niccolò and Pelashil caught up he led them on down to the river, following a muddy path between the tall chandlers’ shops and warehouses that looked out over the docks.

  People crowded the floating stage of the dock. The ship lay a little way beyond. The tug was laboriously turning it towards the lock that would let it gain the channel of the Grand Canal. As Pasquale fought his way through the crowd, he saw a flash of silver above the packed heads of the crowd. It was the polished armour of the Great Engineer’s servant, Jacopo, who was standing on the roof of a carriage and looking this way and that.

  When Pasquale, with Pelashil and Niccolò following, won through to the carriage, Jacopo jumped down from its roof and opened its door. ‘She would speak with you,’ he told Pasquale, smiling.

  ‘And I hope with me,’ Niccolò said.

  Lisa Giocondo was waiting inside, her face glimmering in the light of a scented taper—the only light in the carriage, for its window-shades were drawn. Pasquale and Niccolò sat opposite her on the plush bench, but Pelashil paused at the door, shook her head and turned away.

  Niccolò said, ‘No doubt you would hear all that has fallen out since we last spoke.’

  Lisa Giocondo folded her long fingers together. Her heavy musk filled the little carriage; as before, she wore a net veil, lifted up from her face. She said, ‘No doubt you would enjoy telling me all, Signor Machiavegli, but there is little enough time for that now. All I would know is whether my husband was involved.’

  ‘It was the Venetian magician Paolo Giustiniani who killed Raphael,’ Pasquale said. ‘Signor Taddei has evidence that it was a servant of Giustiniani who administered the poison, and he will find the body of that servant by the gate of Giustiniani’s villa.’

  Lisa Giocondo made a breathy sigh. She said, ‘Then I am in your debt.’

  ‘As to that,’ Niccolò said, smiling his slight, closed smile, ‘I would have words with your innocent husband, signora. I have seen the declaration of war made from every signal-tower in the city, and would seek to serve as I once served.’

  ‘I will do what I can, but you must understand that I have only a little influence with my husband. You must convince him of your worth.’

  ‘Readily,’ Niccolò said eagerly.

  Lisa Giocondo pressed a docket into Pasquale’s hands, telling him that two places had been reserved as promised. ‘Although it cost me dear. This may be the last ship to leave before war breaks out. Did I see a woman outside—your wife, perhaps?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Pasquale said, blushing. ‘Perhaps never. She still has a duty here. Niccolò, unless you will come with me, I must make my farewell.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about me,’ Niccolò said. ‘The broadsheets will all be closed, but the Signoria will need an experienced voice to calm the populace. War is a way of life, Pasquale. There has been war, there is war, there will be war again, as long as there are states which strive against each other. War is but another kind of politics, or perhaps its purest expression, for it springs fully armed from the cardinal vice of ambition. All states desire peace, but any state which renounces war will at once find itself besieged by its neighbours. So I do not fear it, just as I do not fear the weather.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, Niccolò. You are comforted by the strangest things.’

  Niccolò laid a finger alongside his nose. ‘Florence is ready for war, and that is the first necessary thing on the road to victory. And unlike Spain, the citizens control the military, which is the second. The Republic will survive, and grow greater.’

  Lisa Giocondo smiled at this, and Pasquale told the journalist, ‘You’re already writing the propaganda, Niccolò. Just say farewell.’

  Niccolò grasped Pasquale’s shoulders and kissed him like a brother, and said with a quick smile, ‘We won’t meet again, Pasquale, but I hope that I will hear of your adventures. Go now. You have a ship to catch.’

  Pelashil and Jacopo were waiting outside. Pasquale told Jacopo, ‘Your master will be pleased that the device is no more.’

  ‘I’ll tell him. And Salai?’

  ‘The Savonarolistas have him. Taddei’s astrologer, Cardano, is one of their number, and turned the attack on Giustiniani to their advantage. It was only by a stroke of fortune that the flying device was destroyed before it could fall into their hands.’

  ‘The news will break my master’s heart, but in my opinion he’s well rid of the little shit.’ Jacopo looked past Pasquale’s shoulder at Pelashil. ‘This is the woman you’re taking?’

  Pasquale blushed again. ‘She is staying.’

  Jacopo said, ‘I suppose I should be surprised that there are limits to your powers of persuasion. My master asks me to give this to you. You’ll need to buy wine and provisions for the voyage. You can do that at Livorno, although you’ll
have to pay through the nose.

  Pasquale weighed the small bag of coins. ‘I wish I could thank your master.’

  ‘He is safely in his tower, thinking of ways to deal with Salai. He is a fool for a pretty face, Pasquale. I’m glad you won’t be around to abuse his notion that you are some kind of angel. This way now, quickly.’

  ‘But the ship—’

  ‘What would you do, swim to it? Signora Giocondo has arranged a ferry for you, at no little expense. I won’t ask what favour she is returning—it must be considerable.’

  A small landing-stage floated on the river’s flood beyond the berths of the large ships, guarded by two men-at-arms. A small boat was tied up at its end. Its master sat with his back against a mooring-post that slanted above his head. He was an old man, whiskery and wrinkled, one eye white-capped and half-hidden by a drooping eyebrow. He was wrapped in a blanket against the chill of the water, and smoking a cigarette which he pinched between two fingers and stowed behind his ear before clambering aboard his craft.

  Before he boarded this leaky shell, Pasquale dared to hug Pelashil, who after a moment unbent to return his embrace.

  She said into his ear, ‘You know that my people are the Wixarika, that they live in the mountains to the north and west of the empire of the Mexica. It is difficult to reach, Pasquale, for there are many canyons and other deep places, but if you follow your path you will find small villages of round houses, each with a kalihue where the mara’akate dance, and fields of maize all around.’

  ‘Pelashil, I’ve heard Piero talk about this a hundred times.’

  ‘Yes, and how much do you believe?’

  ‘I’ll believe what I see.’

  ‘We say that one day all will be as we see it in Wirikuta, in the place we go to hunt the híkuri. The First People will come back and the sun will grow dimmer and the moon brighter, until there is no difference. All will be one. Until then, we stand between the world of the sun and the dreams of the moon. Remember that, Pasquale.’