by Rob Swigart
“Of course! He’s too eager by far. So I asked for a discreet inquiry, and I’ve been stringing him along waiting for your report.”
“It took time.”
“Of course it did! But I didn’t expect you to come yourself, Usignuolo.”
“I had to. There’s great danger.”
Bruno was a Neapolitan and quick to anger, with a reputation for pugnacity, constantly fighting with all he considered pedants and fools. As a result he had spent the past decades running from one small position to another, a short step ahead of his growing list of enemies.
Now he smacked the table with his palm and the inkwell tipped. He reached out and caught it without looking. “Damn him!”
He was also quick to forgive, though, and with sudden calm vaguely waved away this mythical danger, after which he seemed to forget his visitor and to fall into deep contemplation of his small window. A vertical snow of imperfect pellets hard as ice hissed incessantly on the roof and obscured the dark forest behind a white veil. Certainly not a bridal veil, he thought, and smiled. “Ironic, don’t you think?” he murmured, still gazing at the window. “This, the coldest winter in memory, while in the future, my future, I think I feel flames… Well, we won’t discuss that.” He lapsed once more into silence.
Finally he shook himself and looked mournfully at Usignuolo. “You spoke with Tonetti?” Bruno had conjured up the old man’s crowded set of bleak, squalid rooms swarming with an uncountable brood of women and brats in the tenements of the gheto vecchio, the old ghetto in the Cannaregio district of Venice. He could see the old man, bent of back, peering out of a terrific squint. Yet the old Jew also had an endless fund of intelligence and good humor. Some thought he played the fool, and indeed he did, which was what made him one of Bruno’s best informers.
Usignuolo shifted in his chair. “I assigned him the task, yes.”
“He knows everyone,” Bruno agreed. “He’ll talk to anyone, from the docks to the doge, in or out of prison, high and low. And what does our Tonetti tell us of Mocenigo?”
“He confirms your fears.”
“Mocenigo is an agent of the Inquisition.”
“It’s a trap, Bruno.”
“Yes. Thank you, Usignuolo. This is not a surprise to me. He doesn’t want the arts of memory, he wants magic and all the dark, hermetic secrets. He wants to conjure and command. He will bring me back to Venice and there find ways to betray me. I shall lead him down a difficult path, but in the end….”
“You’re not going.” The giant didn’t want it to be a question.
Bruno pursed his lips and looked once more at the window. By now it had grown dark, and there was nothing to see beyond their reflections in imperfect glass. “I have always valued your council.” The bitterness showed only for a moment. “But I must go,” he murmured gently.
The fireplace was small, and the meager flames cast little warmth. Usignuolo pulled his coat closed at his chin and hunched forward. “You can’t.”
Bruno reached across the table and gripped the big man’s forearm. “I will accept the invitation. I’ve made most of the arrangements, only one more thing to write. I’ll give it to you in the morning. Take it to Paris and give it to my successor. You know where to go. I’m handing everything over before I leave.”
“Please, don’t ask this of me. We’ve been together more than twenty years…”
“You’ll be Usignuolo for him. You will speak for him when he requires it. You will sing. You are the nightingale, my friend.”
The big man threw this aside with a splayed hand. “They’ll take you. Torture. You’ll die.”
“I want them to take me. It’s the only way I can reach the Pope. If I fail, the future will be dark indeed. Already they’ve assassinated Henri, a king of cultivation and taste, who would have soothed the world’s ills.” He shook his head dolefully. “1589 will go down in infamy, Usignuolo. Can it have been only three years ago? And now I see a similar end for his successor, already at the center of endless scheming in these religious wars that bedevil us. I fear for him. I fear greatly.” More softly he repeated, looking up with a smile that was almost serene, “So you see, there is no real choice. It is good to know the truth, and be prepared. Now, go downstairs and have some supper, drink a tankard, take a wench. I’ll have a package for you in the morning.”
When the giant had gone he blew on his hands to warm them. After long moments in contemplation he sighed and picked up the bronze device. There were letters inscribed around the rim. An inner disk set into it was also so inscribed.
He idly rotated the disks, one inside the other. They made no sound and there was something strangely fluid about the way the metal moved, as if it were somehow alive.
The device had come down directly from its creator, the great Leon Battista Alberti, dead this past century and more. Its existence had remained a closely guarded secret by the organization that Bruno now headed. It would remain secret for a long time to come, perhaps forever.
This was only the third time Bruno and Usignuolo had used the cipher to send secret messages. They had used it once when Bruno was in England spying for the Protestant Queen, and they had used it once before when he had had to flee Calvinist Geneva.
The third time now would be his last. Tomorrow he would regretfully part with the precious disk along with his last message to the future. In the long run, he didn’t doubt that he would part with his life.
Even on the surface Mocenigo’s invitation had been tempting: to return to his native land after all these years! A dream, but a dangerous one. The Inquisition had a long arm and a longer memory. They never ceased trying to take him, to put him to the question about his dangerous ideas – the ones the world knew about, and the far more dangerous one about which the world knew nothing.
He blew on his fingers again and pulled the sheet toward himself. He wrote for an hour, with long pauses to consider his words.
When he had finished, he carefully enciphered his text, using the disk. He wrote the cipher in a small, neat hand on the sheet of precious parchment, and sealed it in paper, folded and waxed. His successor would have it within the week. If intercepted, it would be unreadable. If it arrived safely, it would remain sealed for a long time as it was for someone in the distant future. No one now would understand, even if they could decipher it.
He hefted the light package in his hands. Then he carefully placed the sheet of paper holding the plain text on the coals in the small fireplace and watched it turn to ash. His smile, as he watched, was more poignant than bitter. Mocenigo was bringing him to Venice, and Venice, though fiercely independent, was far too close to Rome. If the Inquisition caught and condemned him, he faced the stake.
The blackened paper crumbled away and the embers gradually took on an ashen cloak. He nodded, satisfied, and prepared himself for sleep.
He lay back, clasped his hands behind his head, and looked up into the darkness. “Thank you, Usignuolo, my nightingale. My fate, and that of our world, are now in the hands of the Infinite.”
The vision ended as abruptly as it began and she shook herself.
Steve was staring at her. “What happened?”
“I saw… never mind. How long?”
“Two or three minutes. Is that what your fugues are like?”
“No, this was different. I knew who I was, where I was, but I was somewhere else at the same time.”
“Where?”
“I was watching Bruno write this letter.” She held it up to the light, feeling calm and firmly in control for the first time since she had been approached on the platform of Corvisart so long ago. She started to read as if nothing extraordinary had happened at all.
Now in the year 1589 at temporary peace near the town of Helmstedt, I, Giordano Bruno, called the Nolan, philosopher, excommunicated by Churches both Catholic and Lutheran, write this on clean parchment using the Alberti cipher disk, which I will transfer to the Pythos who follows me in case my plan does not succeed, which I forese
e. Though my bowels weaken at the thought of the fire, for my imagination is strong, yet it is still worth the trying, for if I succeed in reaching the Pope I may yet change what is coming and spare the world much of the violence begat of what ignorant and prideful men, overturning all reason and giving way to base passions, call religion, for which see the Apocalypse of Thomas. Wars there will be between the Roman Church and those who seek to reform her, or to think for themselves, or to believe as they would; between those who believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who died under torture and those who follow the prophet of Arabia; and so in ever-widening circles of rage and despair, all this I foresee. Many centuries will come and go before these horrors fade, and then only in the face of a more terrible calamity bred of Man’s reckless profligacy. When at last the world is one small globe among the infinities, humankind will come too late to understand its place.
This would be the first time a Pythos attempts to intervene directly. Some who follow me will call it reckless, foolish, prideful, perhaps possessed, but I must return to Venice and give myself unto the Inquisition, and so attempt to convince the Holy Father through reason, though it may lead only to my death. If I fail, my successors will continue our great work. I have determined that this one time I am compelled to break the rule of secrecy. It is the least I can do. Our universe is an infinity of infinite worlds, and God is in all. This we know from the secret writings, Hermetic philosophers, and the long tradition of the Pythos before and after the closing of the Oracle at Delphi.
Now I must speak to the Founding Document, the spring from which we have drawn these twelve hundred years: it lay in the heart of Empire, in Rome herself, until it was recovered from its precise location, which was illuminated by the oculus of the Pantheon on a date foretold and at such and such a time, &c. As it was not possible for me to go myself my designated successor retrieved it and delivered it to me in Paris in the year 1577. Its whereabouts are safe in the City of God until need arises once again. When that day comes the Pythos will know.
Should I succeed, of course all history is changed, and nothing that was written will stand. Vale.
“He didn’t make it, did he?” Steve was pacing restlessly from one end of the room to the other. It seemed to have grown smaller.
“First he spied for England, and then he tried the Pope directly.” Lisa frowned at the document and set it down.
Steve went on. “They burned him at the stake around Ash Wednesday, 1600. He must have noted the irony, since his most famous work was called The Ash Wednesday Supper. He was one of the greatest minds of his time and they killed him.”
“He expected it; he saw it coming.”
“But think of the suffering that could have been avoided if he had succeeded! Religious wars, all the witches and Protestants and other heretics burned, all the dead in places like Ireland, the Middle East, even the bloody conflicts between Hindus and Moslems, suicide bombings and wars and terror. If only he could have convinced the Pope to suppress the intolerance…”
“I don’t think it would have worked even if he had reached the Pope.” She sat on the couch and crossed her legs.
“But he tried anyway, knowing he probably would die! What incredible courage. Nine years of Inquisition torture, prison, silence. Nine years of unspeakable suffering just on the infinitesimally small chance he could succeed.”
“He was a brave man, Steve. He was also an aggressive, arrogant man who happened to be the Pythos. That meant he was giving answers to governments who never knew his name. He was supposed to keep it that way, but he went too far.”
“Don’t you care? Think of what might have been, what he might have accomplished had he succeeded.”
“It’s no good, Steve; it didn’t happen. Please. I have to think now of what will be, not what could have been.”
He sank down beside her. “I know, I know. But damn it all, how can they continue with this folly. How could this Order, these people, how could they do this, burn, kill, torture in the name of God?”
“They’re believers, Steve. I can see it clearly. Can’t you? I see it just as I saw Bruno writing….” She paused, as if hearing a distant voice. “Listen, I’ve spent my life since college studying what people wrote about their daily lives, the oppressions they suffered, the hopes they had. Small things. I buried myself in their lives because they were long gone, their stories were written, finished, delivered to me from the sands of Egypt. They were safe, those people. I lost myself in them. Even though Raimond told me over and over my fugue states were a blessing and not a curse, I was always afraid I could never have a husband, friends, family, a life. Now I’m certain of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bruno had no family. Raimond Foix had no family. If I’m the Pythia, I’m doomed to solitude as well.”
“Not necess…”
“Never mind, forget it.” A tear made its way down her cheek. She brushed it away impatiently. “Now I’m supposed to worry about the whole fucking world. I look at this message from Giordano Bruno and I don’t think I have what it takes. He failed and died. What’s the point? The oracle always answered a client with a sentence or two. Almost always they misunderstood. The Pythos understood they would do something stupid, anticipated it, used it. It was that way when the Pythia spoke from Delphi. It’s probably been that way ever since Hypatia.”
She fell silent.
Finally he said, “If there ever was a need for the Founding Document, it’s now.”
She tried a smile. “What are you, some kind of prophet?”
“So where is this Founding Document?” Steve asked. “Bruno didn’t say.”
“‘Its whereabouts are safe in the city of God.’” Lisa stroked her lower lip with her thumb. “What did he mean by that? The city of… Oh.”
“What?”
“Augustine!”
“Yes?”
“Raimond had a copy of it, a Jenson! It’s missing.”
“I thought he was talking about the religious wars. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre was a recent memory. In the near future Henri III and Henri IV would both be assassinated for their tolerance of Protestants.”
Lisa was impatient. “Yes, yes. But he meant Augustine’s book.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I feel it. And if Raimond had a copy, that copy was important. The nun stole it.”
Steve raised his eyebrows. “If it points to the Founding Document, we have to get it back.”
“What if she knows the clue was in it?”
He frowned. “I don’t see how she could. You just figured it out.”
“You’re right,” she murmured, stifling a yawn. “We need it.”
The sensation of her hand on his chest, his scent and the feel of his palm against her remained in her skin’s memory, like the echo of light just after sunset. It was a fragile moment that she had tucked away, assuming he had done the same. That moment of mutual contact was the last thing that passed through her mind before, still seated on the couch, sleep overcame her.
43.
There was something different about the darkness, something palpable. She could feel panic lapping at the edges of her mind like a cold, dense liquid. She sat up.
Who was she? The feeling was a familiar old friend she could never quite trust. This had happened before.
She moved her hands. She wanted to touch something. Or someone. But she touched nothing, and the panic rose higher, threatening to drown her in darkness. She gasped for breath, struggling to pull air into her lungs. Air.
She let herself go, a softness spreading down her legs, her arms, her belly. You will learn who you are, just draw the air in slowly, slowly, release it the same way, let it go. Don’t give in to the panic. Let it come, the name, the self, the story, the life. Let it come.
She could see a shape as if through smoke, smoky light, red-lit. Blood swimming behind her eyes. Sparks in the air, flame.
Familiar flame sprouting from a roof; it had
happened recently, fire leaping, receding behind her. Ahead she saw blue, sky, air, emptiness. No form gathered into a familiar shape, no voice spoke. She fell into a sky slowly fading to black.
Hands pulled at her, tore her down, and roughly carried her along. She was looking upward again into the starless night, angry voices shouting all around her. She recognized Greek, Coptic, Latin. The voices spoke of killing and the panic was there, an old friend, leaning over her shoulder, telling her to let go, to give in, to scream. She opened her mouth. She drew in a breath and almost let go.
But she stopped herself, breathed in again, and out. Fingers pinched at her flesh, hands twisted her limbs. Such anger masked fear, she knew that, and that fear would kill her, would end her story, her life. The world would go dark and she would simply cease.
Somehow that was a comfort. It would end the pain. Someone was cutting at her feet, sending searing heat up her leg. She heard the wet sound of a bone breaking and her leg went numb.
I don’t like dying without knowing who I am.
They were opening the skin up the legs, along her side, stripping it away, peeling it from her body. The shouting never stopped, the angry words, the cruelty. The broken leg was numb, yet pain seared her. She was going blind with it.
She breathed in, breathed out. She did not cry out. She said nothing, only wondered who they were. Why were they killing her? What could she say to them? What made them fear her so? They would not stop. They were going to erase her, obliterate her, as if she never had been.
Did it matter?
The pain faded, faded, was gone.
Whoever she was, she ceased to exist…
“Lisa!”
She was wild, staring sightlessly. The room was white and blue and dim. Shadows had collected in all the corners. She was naked, standing at the elevator door, her fingers hooked under the handle; she was going out. Her eyes drifted down and saw red lines that traced her body, down her legs, her arms. These puckered lines were ancient scars. They slowly faded. She lifted her eyes to the man who had spoken. “Who?”
