Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “The answer, Miss Morgenstern, is very simple. We believe this is one of the access points to the Roman water system. That you still have water here is confirmation of that. Now, if you would care to translate a portion of text.” Thaler took the book from Ullmann and sat down on the steps so that he could balance it on his knees.

  He leafed through the pages, and Sophia held her lantern so that he could see what he was doing. Pages of closely written Hebrew characters passed under his fingers. Then he turned one final page, and there in the margin was a drawing that looked a lot like the mikveh.

  “Here.” He turned the book around and looked expectant.

  “How did you find this? Out of all the books in the library?” She bent forward, tracing the lines of script.

  “As Mr Ullmann said, none of the librarians have had any sleep. We must have checked several hundred books until we found mention of this one. Then we had to find it. And when we’d found it, I had to look through it, while other stout-hearted gentlemen went even further back into the past, to the very founding of the town.”

  “You worked all through the night. And you’re still working this morning.”

  “There’s much at stake, Miss Morgenstern. But we’re in company, and I can’t elaborate. So if you please?” Thaler pointed to the book.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” She read. “Once the site for the mikveh had been established, work began. Joshua ben Cohen gave his blessing and … how old is this book?”

  “We believe it to be at least six hundred years old.”

  “This doesn’t tell us why they chose this location, though.” As Thaler’s face fell, she turned back one page. “A conduit passed in a line from Scale Square north-north-west to vomit … no, vent into the river west of the boatmaker’s yard. Such living water as is passed through the conduit is by the Halakha suitable for a mikveh, and therefore determines its place.”

  “Which is exactly what we wanted, Miss Morgenstern.” He turned around to address the men behind him. “Gentlemen? You may proceed.”

  The three guildsmen jumped down into the waist-deep water, one after another.

  “Gods, this is cold!” one of them exclaimed, before reaching up for the chisel-tipped iron bar proffered by a librarian.

  “What … what are you doing?” Sophia turned from the book to the men in the sacred pool, who were tapping at the stonework and looking up to orient themselves. “Mr Thaler, what’s going on?”

  “It should be self-evident, Miss Morgenstern. We need to break our way through.”

  “Break? You can’t do that.”

  “Sorry, miss. Prince’s orders,” said the guildsman with the wrecking bar. He drove the point between two pieces of stone and heaved. The sound of rock grating on rock echoed up the shaft.

  “I thought you were just going to look.” Sophia stared wide-eyed at Thaler. “You can’t do this.”

  “My dear, we’ll make good any damage we do. But you have to understand, this is the only clue we have.”

  “You can’t do this to me. Frederik, you have to get them to stop.” It felt like she was in that ice-cold water too. Numbing. Bone-chilling.

  The first lump of masonry fell into the pool, and Thaler quickly closed the book to keep it dry. “We have to get the water working again, Sophia. I’m trying to help your community.”

  “This is the heart of our community, Frederik, and you’re ripping it out.” A second, larger stone came free, and the guildsmen stepped back as it crashed down, sending a wave up the steps that engulfed Sophia’s shoes. “You don’t understand what this means.”

  Even as she watched, a guildsman gave a cry of discovery – “More light. More light!” – and started to hack hard at whatever lay beyond the gaping hole he’d already created.

  Thaler passed the book back up the line for safe keeping. “Sophia, calm yourself.”

  “I will not calm myself, you stupid man; you’ve desecrated the mikveh. No one can get married. No one can be buried. No one can have children.” A gush of water from the wall sluiced into the pool, and the level rose as far as her shins. “And no one will ever forgive me for bringing you here.”

  She looked down into the ruined structure, at the rubble lying on the bottom of it and the hole hacked in the wall. The gout had become a trickle, enough to allow the guildsman to crawl head-first into the gap. The light from the lantern he thrust ahead of him cast dancing shadows against the walls.

  “Gods,” he said. “It’s huge.”

  And Thaler, distracted by the shout, was clearly more interested in what was beyond the mikveh than in her hurt, than the fact he’d betrayed her and destroyed her reputation so completely it could never recover.

  “Get out of my way.” She pushed past first Thaler, then the librarians, almost sending several of them spinning into the water below.

  She raced outside. The rabbi’s wife was there, her hand over her mouth. How much had she seen? How much had she heard?

  Enough to condemn her, for certain.

  She fled back down Jews’ Alley, all the way home, and slammed the door shut behind her.

  34

  He watched her go – furious and lost at the same time – and he still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done. Yes, this was their ceremonial baths, but really: it was no more than a rough-and-ready stone-lined hole in the ground through which a river flowed. And hadn’t he said he’d repair it? Whatever blessing their rabbi needed to perform to bring it back into use couldn’t take that long.

  All he wanted to do was borrow it so he could map out the underground passages, and hopefully they’d find a more convenient access point. The mikveh was at the bottom of a shaft with narrow stairs and, unsurprisingly, kept filling with water. Hardly what they wanted at all.

  “Mr Thaler? Take a look for yourself.” The stonemason’s guildsman handed him the lantern, and there was nothing for it but to wade into the water after him. He found out for himself just how cold it was – a bitter, stinging cold like wet snow.

  “Gods, that’s…”

  “Bit on the chilly side, Mr Thaler?” The man shivered. “That it is.”

  Thaler tiptoed to the hole in the wall and looked inside. He was startled: he hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t an arched passage, white with lime, tall enough to stand in. It stretched away into the black distance both ways, with the water running in a trough along the floor.

  The mikveh’s water supply was achieved by doing nothing more complicated than placing an angled brick in the channel, so that some of the water diverted into a pipe while the rest of it carried on.

  “The river is that way, yes?” He pointed downstream.

  “It looks like it. What do you think of the construction, Mr Thaler? It’s in a remarkable state of preservation.”

  “Nothing for it, Master Prauss, but to investigate further. If you’ll so kindly assist me … ”

  The guildsmen, all three, heaved Thaler up into the gap. He barked his knees, grazed his hands and managed to bang his head on the curved roof, but he was in.

  “The floor’s very smooth,” he said. His feet were wedged at the junctions of the wall so they wouldn’t slip any further. “It’s manageable, though. I suggest we head upstream and see what we can find.”

  Prauss scrambled up, followed by Emser and Schussig, who Messinger had assured him could fabricate anything made of wood or metal better than any man in Juvavum.

  Then Ullmann poked his head through. “Room for one more, Mr Thaler?”

  “I do believe there is, Mr Ullmann. Bring a lantern, and some spare candles. And a flint. I wouldn’t want a sudden gust to plunge us into darkness and leave us with no hope of finding our way back.” Thaler looked down the opalescent tunnel. “That’d be most foolish.”

  He slithered a little way onwards to make room and, with nothing to prevent him, kept on going. It was difficult, but not impossible. The air was cold, his wet clothes colder, but his curiosity warmed him. He inspected the walls and t
he roof as he went, moving his lantern from side to side.

  “I don’t see how this feeds the house plumbing,” he said. His voice boomed in the enclosed space. “This is just a tunnel.”

  “We need to go further, then,” said Prauss, behind him. “This is dwarvish work, I’d swear it.”

  “Begging your pardon, but dwarves? Mr Thaler said this was Roman.” Ullmann braced his feet and shouldered the bag that was passed up to him.

  “The Romans are supposed to have had a dwarvish legion, drawn from Schwyz.” Thaler waved his lantern and started upstream again. “The Legio Ferus, they called it. If it’s true, perhaps they had dwarvish masons.”

  The tunnel widened, and the channel cut in the floor branched into two. To the right, it seemed that the way was blocked with a single fallen block of stone. To the left, the tunnel stretched on. Thaler frowned. Perhaps things weren’t as complete as he hoped.

  Prauss came up behind him, and held his lantern high.

  “Gods,” he said. “Look at the size of that thing.”

  Thaler struggled to understand his meaning. “What?” But Prauss was already past him and slapping his hand on the curved wet stone.

  “It’s a wheel. A water wheel.” He looked up the other tunnel. “There has to be a way to access the headworks.”

  The guildsman splashed off up the passage with Thaler and the others in pursuit.

  “Careful, man,” Thaler called. “We must be careful.”

  Then Prauss’s lantern went out ahead. No clatter or crash, it just winked out. Thaler spread his arms wide, and everyone skidded to a halt.

  “Master Prauss? Master Prauss! Are you all right?”

  A reply, of sorts, hollow and distorted, rumbled back down towards them. It sounded like a man’s voice, but Thaler couldn’t make out any words.

  “Slowly, then.” They had no weapons, which was possibly a mistake. He thought he was right that there were no magical beasts left, but all the same, they could meet something down there that they hadn’t planned for.

  It was nothing more terrifying than a ladder of staples set into the wall, its rungs thick with the same white deposit that covered every surface. Thaler looked up, and Prauss looked down from the ledge above.

  “It’s even better than I thought,” he said.

  Thaler wasn’t in the mood. “Really, Master Prauss. We must stay together: the party must not be split under any circumstances.”

  “Come up, Mr Thaler. You’ll see why I’m so excited.”

  Thaler climbed up the first few rungs, then discovered he could slide his lantern onto the ledge. It was easier after that, and when he’d made it safely up, he shone his lantern around, adding its light to Prauss’s.

  It was the top of the wheel – what it was, now obvious – its hoppers white, its metalwork invisible. And it was huge, twice Thaler’s height and easily twice his width.

  “Very impressive, but what’s its purpose?”

  “Where are we?” asked Prauss, enigmatically.

  “Master Prauss, I’m cold and wet, it’s dark, and we have important business to attend to. No guessing games, please.”

  “We’re under the fountain in the town square, just north of the irminsul.” Prauss pointed at the ceiling. “This can’t be a coincidence.”

  Thaler looked behind him. Emser, the carpenter, was climbing up to the higher level. Beyond him there was a ledge in the tunnel. Water would either run over the ledge, and fall down, or along the sluice and into the wheel.

  “If this worked the fountain, then how?”

  “There must be machinery…”

  “Which has long since decayed away.” Thaler finished for him.

  Emser was looking thoughtfully at the wheel. “If that was made of stone, it would never turn.”

  “So we have an impossible stone waterwheel that powers a vanished device.” The librarian’s shoulders dropped. “Gentlemen, we’re nine hundred years too late to save any of this.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Prauss. He pulled out a small hammer from his belt, and got down on his knees in the mill race. He reached out for the wheel and gave it an exploratory tap with his hammer.

  The sound was dull. If it had been solid rock, it would have rung.

  “Aha,” he said. He took a bigger swing, and shards of white flew off like tiny stinging insects. “Sorry.”

  He leant closer, and turned back to Thaler, grinning. “Wood. Preserved wood. Under this coating, the wheel’s intact.”

  Thaler felt his spine straighten. “Then what about the fountain-maker?”

  “We need to check the walls.” Prauss set to with his little hammer, listening to the timbre of each impact. Emser and Thaler were left to rap their knuckles against the smooth surfaces, while Schussig and Ullmann made their way up to see for themselves, in lieu of any cogent explanation.

  After a few minutes’ fruitless searching, Thaler stood back and considered matters. If the turning wheel provided some sort of mechanical force, it would be transmitted through the axle. So the device used to push water through the fountain above – assuming Prauss was right – had to be attached to it.

  The wheel itself was set into the channel so that the water would fill each section of the wheel in turn. The side of the channel which butted onto the parallel tunnel was too narrow to be anything but solid stone. But the other, where the dressed stone would have been laid next to the rough tunnel wall …

  Thaler put down his lantern. “Master Prauss, your hammer a moment, if you please.” He held out his hand for the tool, and gingerly stepped out onto the top of the wheel.

  “Be careful, Mr Thaler,” called Ullmann. “We don’t want to be carrying you out of here on a stretcher.”

  It was slippery and damp, balanced on the circumference of the wheel. He felt across the wall, and on feeling a particularly lumpy part, took aim with the hammer.

  Inevitably, he fell, though only as far as the hopper. The impact jarred his feet and ankles, and he cried out with a gasp.

  The wheel trembled slightly, and it gave a high-pitched creak.

  Thaler held his breath and steadied himself. When he looked up again, there was a small rectangular crack marking out a patch on the otherwise-featureless wall, and where he’d hit, the stone had peeled away to reveal the rusted end of a latch.

  “You’ve found something there, Mr Thaler.”

  “Yes, my boy. Yes, I have.” He was ankle deep in milky liquid, and he accepted the hands offered to him to extricate himself and get him back on the ledge. While he emptied his boots, Prauss hammered all the way around the crack, and watched satisfied as the veneer of white stone chipped away in large flakes.

  The door was exposed. It was narrow – Thaler was going to find ingress difficult – and the hinges were corroded. He didn’t really expect much to happen when Prauss lifted the latch and pulled, but after some initial resistance, the door juddered open, its hinges sounding like whips. It was dark beyond, and the guildsman called for his lantern.

  “Gods,” his muffled voice reported. “You need to see this.”

  Thaler was on his feet, and as Prauss eased into the gap, he started to squeeze through himself, holding on to the door frame and trying to make his stomach as small as possible. His size had never really been an issue before, but then again, he’d never been tramping around thousand-year-old tunnels before. Neither did he think he’d do it again in a hurry, but perhaps a little more walking and a little less sausage might help in more situations than this.

  When he was certain he wasn’t going to get stuck, he edged his feet through and released his death-grip on the stonework.

  It was as if he’d stepped into a treasure room. All around him was the dull shine of metal: brass, copper, bronze and silver. Pipes and cylinders were plumbed in orderly rows against one long wall, and on the opposite side, a single set of wider tubes was connected to a fat brass vessel, itself at the centre of a wheel-and-cog arrangement.

  “Well, Mr Prauss,
I take it back. I take it all back.” Thaler savoured the view for a moment, before asking: “Do you have any idea what all this does?”

  Prauss was running his hands over the equipment, exploring and touching. “This is what we’ve been looking for. Extraordinary. This will move water, not just along, but uphill.” He turned to the librarian, his eyes wide and bright. “If I could just take one of these apart…”

  “Later, and at your leisure, Mr Prauss. If these pipes can indeed push water into our houses and restart our fountains, we must supply the wheel with a sufficient flow of water, which we clearly lack. Upstream, good sir, upstream!”

  Back out in the main tunnel, they continued slithering their way deeper into the system. Another branch angled away to their left, down towards the river through a different part of town. Prauss wanted to investigate, but Thaler thought it more important to press on.

  A short way further, there was a branch to their right that seemed to head towards the library. Thaler looked more wistfully at that one, thinking of the fountain in the square opposite the pantheon, but he steeled himself.

  “That’s right, Mr Thaler. We’re making good progress,” said Ullmann. “On to the end, wherever it takes us.”

  The young man was as cold and wet as he was, and yet he was undeniably enjoying himself. And Thaler had to concede it was all rather an adventure.

  Even Ullmann couldn’t prepare himself for the extraordinary sights they found under the fortress. Prauss was in the lead; he simply stopped dead, and everyone else, still concentrating on keeping their footing, clattered into each other’s backs before looking up.

  The roof was lost in darkness it was so high, and the water channels split into three separate sluices, each with their own mighty wheel. More delights waited for them when they climbed out and onto the ledge. Machinery, both installed and lying loose. Chains hanging from points out of sight that passed through pulleys and blocks. Pipes as fat as one of Thaler’s legs heading down as-yet-uncharted corridors. Stairs, heading upwards.