Spira Mirabilis

by Aidan Harte

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider a bribe?’

  ‘Don’t suppose I would.’ Ferruccio threw the rope over the branch and dropped the noose around Geta’s head just as a horn followed by a volley of gunshot announced the arrival of Leto’s rescue party.

  ‘Hark!’ exclaimed Geta, ‘looks like you have a choice, Doctor. You can stay to see the job done, or you can save your life.’

  Ferruccio lassoed the other end of the rope round a handy stump. ‘Another overestimation. It don’t take that long for a man to strangle.’ So saying, he hauled on the rope and Geta was yanked unceremoniously into the air and immediately began to choke. Musketballs sank into the wet mud beside Ferruccio as he coolly looped the slack around the stump, all the while keeping the rope taut.

  As Ferruccio rode off, the Concordians arrived. Geta finally got his hands free and dropped his knife in his rush to release the pressure.

  Leto studied Geta hanging there, desperately holding on to the noose around his neck and wildly kicking his legs. ‘See where your recklessness led you.’

  Geta wheezed painfully, ‘Cut me down – acck – then lecture me, if you would.’

  Leto dismissed his guard and then drew his sword. ‘Back in Rasenna, you claimed you knew my father.’

  ‘Yes!’

  He cut him down. ‘Tell me about him.’

  Geta lay on his side panting for a minute, then he pulled himself up and rubbed the ripped skin on his neck. ‘Your plan worked a treat, by the way. We gave chase, but the bastards had their retreat lined with bolos and tripwire. I had managed to cut Arête free before they came—’

  ‘Geta …’ Leto still held his sword ready. ‘If you are lying, you’re going back up.’

  ‘My first posting was on the Francia Major frontier. You weren’t born then and he wasn’t a general. We weren’t friends – he never drank, never gambled – but he taught me what it is to be a soldier.’

  ‘I thought you studied in Rasenna.’

  ‘I only learned to fight there.’

  ‘I’m surprised you know the distinction. He was like me, then?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t moderate in all things. In battle he threw himself into the fray – and men loved him for it. I asked him once if he was ever afraid. He asked if I was afraid when I gambled, and then he told me that was how it was for him when the drums pounded, when our banners unfurled from the carroccio, when the Franks sounded their great horns. I’ll never forget it. He said, “I set myself on fire, but my enemies burn”.’ Geta smiled at the memory.

  ‘Times have changed,’ Leto said, ‘and, if you recall, my father didn’t die on the battlefield. His fellow officers – nobles like you – assassinated him.’

  ‘I’d received my first command by then. In the East. I grieved when I heard the news.’

  ‘You’d have been in that circle had you been there …’

  No point to deny the obvious. ‘They wanted him to declare against Filippo Argenti and march on Concord and when he refused to take part, they had no choice but to kill him – he was too close to the Engineers.’ He looked up with sudden inspiration. ‘That’s why you became one, isn’t it?’ He slapped his thigh and laughed. ‘You learned the wrong lesson, son—’

  Leto held his sword under Geta’s chin; blood started to trickle over the razor-sharp edge. ‘Never call me that again.’

  ‘All right, all right. Don’t be touchy. So, what now?’

  ‘Now we’ll see how good Veii’s defences are.’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘No. Good or bad, it’s irrelevant. I just need their attention to be elsewhere when the Moor attacks.’

  *

  The Veian captains saw them coming and formed a defensive line across the harbour mouth. The line was impressive, but the variety of craft – from bulky cargo ships to puny fishing vessels, from three-tiered galleys to ungainly catamarans – meant the tactic was doomed. Few of the ships were properly armed – small, antiquated table-cannon with fixed bearing and unimpressive range made up the greater part of the naval artillery – but worse than that, the gun crews were undrilled and undermanned, more used to whipping slaves than fighting free men.

  The Ariminumese captains saw the uneven lines and heard the amateur rhythm of their bombard and their high spirits rose higher. At the Moor’s signal, the Golden Fleet broke into two columns, presenting the smallest possible target, and sailed along the north and south sides of the harbour – which gave the stationary Veians in the centre nothing to shoot at. They were lame dogs, and the Ariminumese the wolves bearing down on them. The Bellicose, the galley the Moor had placed at the forefront of the south column, was aptly named. As her drums urged the rowers on to attack-speed, she sprang forward with bow chasers locked upon the Veian galley ahead.

  Her fire was accurate and sustained, while the Veians made plenty of smoke and noise but with little result. Scarcely a shot got off without one of the gun crews getting injured by a recoiling gun, rope burn or powder-flash, and whenever someone fell, the rest made a great hue and cry and were deathly slow replacing them. On the few occasions that their aim might have been true, shaky hands spilling powder and spume-doused wicks ensured that they missed most opportunities to fight back.

  The Moor took all this in with glee. The San Barabaso was heading the northern column and his crew were artists with a collective consciousness of the ship’s pitch and roll. When the moment came to fire, not only had they far more practise, they had the technical edge – their guns were better cast, with clean bores, the powder was better, and dry; the wicks burned slower and more effectively – and there was a new Concordian locking mechanism that minimised misfires.

  The Veians prepared to be rammed, but at the last moment, the Barabaso turned parallel, its action precisely mirrored by the Bellicose on the other side of the harbour, and each sailed majestically towards the centre, steadily peppering the Veian line. Their broadside cannons had no great range, but this close they had wonderfully destructive powers – and whilst they themselves were equally exposed to close-range retaliatory fire, the Veians were in no position to deliver it, for they were being simultaneously raked with fire from swinging siphons fore and aft of the lead galleys. The Barabaso and the Bellicose were followed by two more galleys performing exactly the same manoeuvre, denying them any respite.

  As they passed each other in the middle of the harbour, the Moor called over the thunder, ‘Fine hunting, eh?’

  Scaevola declined to respond. He was taking his first command very seriously.

  It was the sheer volume of shot that broke the Veian line more than accuracy. After each ship had traversed the line, it spat a final shot from the stern, then turned and turned again to meet in the middle. Coming parallel once more and facing the centre of the fractured line, they surged forward at ramming speed, breaking through like a spear-thrust, and the battle, till now a stately pavane, became a free-for-all. Even through the thick smoke that hung over the estuary, the Golden Fleet could see vessels breaking ranks and trying to flee. The worthless fishing boats they chased down and sank; others – those vessels that might have some worth – they took as prizes, including one large cargo ship after the crew mutinied and ran up a flag of surrender.

  The wharfs of Veii were chaotic as ships docked wherever they could and the crews fled back to the city. Some of those who had not been part of the defensive line now broke their mooring ropes attempting to flee, and the Moor’s captains, loath to let even any reasonable prize escape, followed them out of the harbour.

  Scaevola put his ship alongside the San Barabaso and ordered the Moor to stop them, but the admiral laughed at the notion. ‘These are the fruits of victory!’ he shouted back.

  Those captains who neither fled nor fought but waited for the battle to decide paid the price for their lethargy when a new order came through from the duke, who commanded they scupper their ships rather than let them fall into Ariminumese hands.

  The Moor cursed to see so many prizes b
urn, and now it was Scaevola’s turn to chide him. ‘Cheer up, Admiral. Tomorrow, we’ll have a whole city to enjoy.’

  CHAPTER 42

  ‘I told her—’

  …

  ‘—the midwife, cretino—!’

  …

  ‘—about the Furies of course. Madonna, you don’t listen any more. I told her how they rattle my window frame and snap the flags outside so I can’t sleep. She just laughed and said it was the Tramontane. She also assures me that nightmares are perfectly normal for new mothers. Everything is normal with her. An excess of choler, she said.’ Maddalena smiled slyly. ‘I didn’t tell her what I dream about. She wouldn’t say that’s normal.’

  …

  ‘Of course I’ll tell you. There’s a wedding feast in the piazza but – oh, it’s so dull – no one’s dancing. And the dancers outside the walls hear the music and want to get in and one of my enemies opens the gates and they burst into the city and the music is everywhere, and they’re after me. They scream, “Come and dance, Maddalena, or we’ll tell everyone what you did!” and I say “Not so loud!”’

  The infant in her arms writhed peevishly – the servants despaired at how roughly she handled the sickly creature. ‘Hush! I’m talking to your grandpapa.’

  …

  ‘His grip? Weak but, between you and me, I suspect the midwife botched it. That hag was always jealous of Mama, wasn’t she? All she was interested in was bleeding me. I told her I’d bled quite enough, but still she insisted.’

  …

  ‘No, you’re quite right. Normally I wouldn’t take orders from the likes of her, but she did rather have me at a disadvantage. Ha!’

  The gleam in Maddalena’s eyes and the shine on her skin were not the healthy glow of a new mother. Her child had come early and with a great deal of pain, and she had been bedbound since with a fever – which had apparently finally broken this morning. Her servants, who had been assiduously keeping knives and hairpins away from her, now risked the Midnight Road to cross the Irenicon. They followed her to the Palazzo Bombelli, which they had abandoned so many months before. Now they sat quietly watching their mistress talking to an empty seat behind the banco in the overgrown courtyard and realised that the fever had merely entered a more dangerous phase.

  ‘Oh, don’t be squeamish! You saw your fair share of blood when Mama was around. Well, I wrote to my absent husband, telling him that the child looks nothing like him and that people are saying I put horns on him.’

  …

  ‘Bah, don’t be so pious – he’ll laugh at that. But I told him another thing he won’t like. He wanted me to call the child after one of his illustrious ancestors but I told him – I said no. The very idea! A Concordian name? I said we’re going to name him after Papa!’ She threw the squealing child into the air again. ‘My little Fabbro – shall we weigh you? Yes, let’s do that!’

  She attempted to put the child onto the scales, but the servant restrained her.

  ‘Get away, you harpies! He’s mine!’

  She clawed them away with one hand and held the child to her bosom with the other, whispering, ‘See how they treat me, Papa? They nag and interfere and whisper. They whisper that— Oh no, I can’t tell you that. You’ll never forgive me,’ and she spun and spun through the desolate courtyard until she sprawled across the floor of the banco. She sat up suddenly, staring at the servants. ‘Why are you just standing there, fools? Let’s go, or we’ll be late for the baptism.’

  *

  The baptistery’s roof had suffered some damage in the fire, but the formidable bronze doorway had remained intact.

  ‘All right now. Places everyone!’ Maddalena said strictly. ‘No, not like that – like this, see? You here, and you here. And when I come out, you applaud me.’

  The women exchanged worried glances, but they made the guard of honour as their mistress instructed. Once she was inside the baptistery, she whipped out the letter knife she had taken from Fabbro’s banco. ‘Keep back!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Please, mistress, don’t—’

  With a shrill giggle, she rammed her shoulder against the door and bolted it shut.

  The interior was dim and cool, and water puddles fed by the leaking roof reflected what remained of the ceiling’s golden mosaic. She solemnly approached the font, her steps slowing as she got nearer. The small painted panels round the base showed terrible scenes – scenes from the dreams that plagued her: Herod’s soldiers tearing babies from their mothers’ arms and dashing their brains out on pillars. She darted a guilty glance at the sword hanging over the child shivering in her arms.

  She placed the knife on the edge of the font before bending to put him on the cold stone floor, ignoring his wails of discomfort. She dipped her hand in the font and made the sign of the Sword and blessed herself, then dipped and again blessed herself, then once more. She began washing each finger separately, staring all the while at the vengeful hanging blade. With a sudden groan she stumbled back from the font, narrowly avoiding treading on the bawling baby, and fell to her knees before the Madonna of Rasenna.

  ‘Hear my confession, gracious Lady. I have sinned. I’ve been – oh, the usual: proud, wrathful, envious—’

  …

  ‘What? No. Who told you that? I did nothing of the sort. Oh, we talked about it – I was angry! – but I never thought we’d go through with it. Why does everyone blame me? All I wanted is to be respected and loved, like the Contessa. Is that too much to ask? You’re a fine one to judge – you never let a man get away with beating you!’

  Locked in her reverie, Maddalena didn’t hear the hands pounding on the door. She picked up her child and hugged him so tightly that he screamed. ‘Oh, my little Fabbro, Mama was foolish! But it’s not too late. We can wash ourselves clean.’

  She lifted him to the font and gently dipped the crown of his head into the icy water. As she did so, strong hands came from behind and held her in a tight embrace. Lips at her ear whispered, ‘Murderer.’

  Maddalena screamed helplessly as her child slid into the font, its face, body and finally its legs kicking against her. The letter knife was inches away from her fingers – a great gulf. A stream of bubbles troubled the surface.

  ‘You betrayed Rasenna like you betrayed me. Admit it: you killed Fabbro.’

  ‘Uggeri, stop—’

  ‘Confess.’

  ‘You don’t understand—’

  ‘Confess!’

  ‘I confess—!’

  ‘Bene. This is your penance.’ And he pushed her face close to the water. She screamed, writhed, howled until the little legs stopped kicking. A single bubble trembled on the surface and was gone. Uggeri released her and stepped back, breathing hard.

  Maddalena picked up the knife. ‘Dogs eat cats and cats eat mice and you won’t enter paradise.’ She pointed it slowly at him, ‘Burn the candle. Ring the bell. Uggeri’s going straight to hell.’

  Something about her crazy certainty made his flesh crawl. ‘That’s rich coming from a woman who murdered her father.’

  ‘Straight to hell. That wasn’t Geta’s son.’

  ‘Then you’re a bigger whore than I thought. Whose was it?’

  ‘Yours.’

  Uggeri threw the blade and her aside. She struck her head as she fell. He ripped the little pink body from the water. ‘Oh, oh – Oh Dio – I didn’t know.’ He embraced the body and stared up at the Herod’s Sword glistening over the font. ‘Don’t do this to me – don’t! I’ve lost too much—’

  The knife slipped neatly into his throat, puncturing the artery. Uggeri placed his son’s body gently on the edge of the font and turned around. He put one hand to his neck to staunch the flow and the other went instinctively to his assailant’s neck.

  He found himself looking into Carmella’s eyes and the knife’s edge prodding his ribs.

  ‘We loved you, and this is how you repay us?’ Uggeri’s grip, always so strong, was weak as a babe’s. She rammed it in to the hilt. ‘This is how Herod was
repaid.’ She pulled the blade out. Blood followed like watered wine.

  He fell back against the font, watching Carmella drop the blade and kneel beside Maddalena. He was so thirsty. He turned to scoop a cool handful from the font, but before he could drink, the darkness swallowed him.

  Whatever battle Maddalena had been fighting against the Furies was lost the moment she woke to see her child and her lover dead. She scrambled for the knife, but Carmella restrained her in an embrace and crooned the Virgin’s Song. Maddalena tried to look away from the Herod’s Sword, but it was reflected in the blood seeping from the font towards her and she screamed – for herself, for her baby, for Uggeri, for Rasenna, for the innocent and guilty alike.

  She screamed.

  CHAPTER 43

  In the second year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Veian haruspices persuaded Jupiter to relocate using the Evocato ritual. Without its protector, Rome swiftly fell. The kings of Veii swiftly repudiated their promise of eternal fidelity, and the Roman deity, homeless and without worshippers, drowned himself in the Albula …

  The Etruscan Annals

  The shell spun in a lazy arc over the harbour, seemed to pause in mid-air like some low-hanging celestial body, and then plunged screaming towards Veii. First a small dust cloud blossomed on the distant wall, then came the muted crash of shattered masonry.

  Leto looked up from the chessboard and shouted up at the lookout, ‘Well?’

  ‘Just shy, general.’

  ‘Adjust five points east.’

  The bombardier made the corrections with a spring-line attached to a windlass and varied the amount of charge.

  The Moor stalked the deck, sighing anew each time he caught a glimpse of the anchors keeping his ship pinned fore and aft. After the excitement of battle, this was crushingly dull. He loved the straightforward destruction rendered by the ships’ cannons, the drama of the fire-siphons, but mortars were sneaky, oblique things, Engineers’ weapons, not for seamen.

  ‘Sure I can’t give you a game, Azizi? We can play for gold.’