by Aidan Harte
‘You’ll catch your death standing in a puddle all day,’ said Varro, emerging from behind a column. ‘I’d thought you’d have enough of it after that accident with the Confession Box.’
Torbidda stepped away from the statue as the old selector shuffled towards him. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Flaccus thinks he’s the only one who knows about this place. Ha! I know every secret. I roam these vaults with the ghosts and listen to the echo of the great days.’ Torbidda watched with mild nausea as Varro stripped the shroud from the statue and ran his hand, hungry as a blind man’s, over the form of the shy maiden.
‘The Madonna. Oh, I’m sure that you were thinking of someone else – a sister, a mother, a sweetheart – but the sculpture represents your enemy. The snake at Her feet? That’s us. That’s why She hates us. We would dispel the darkness of ignorance. Curiosity is the only sure path to wisdom.’
‘I’m not a lamb any more,’ Torbidda said. ‘The Madonna’s a myth.’
‘Oh, she’s real.’
‘She lived – but two thousand years ago. She’s dust now, like the Curia and its fancies. Engineers build with stone and iron.’ Although Torbidda did not respect Flaccus, by now he had little for Varro either.
‘Engineers require imaginary numbers to solve certain equations, do they not?’ Varro said equably. ‘Without them, certain truths would remain inaccessible.’
‘That’s different,’ Torbidda said impatiently. ‘They’re … useful fictions.’
‘We know that now, but someone somewhere once took a chance. Different problems require different tools, and faith can be useful as logic.’
‘Logic’s a tool for preserving truth. Its first law is that nothing true can be derived from false principles.’
‘Yet every law has exceptions. I’ve extracted nobility from base metals. Torture can compel truth from liars. Kings have been born in mangers.’
‘Selector, these are false analogies.’
Torbidda’s polite response was wasted effort. Varro wasn’t listening; he was lovingly caressing the statue’s curves. Torbidda cleared his throat and the old man leered at him knowingly. ‘I was a mason, you know, before the Re-Formation. I might even have carved her. I don’t remember. Our work was uniform. These days every craftsman’s striving to be original and the result is cacophony. We strove then to forget ourselves, to let ourselves be God’s hands. All Bernoulli had to do was insert himself in God’s place to acquire an army of devoted slaves.’
Although quick to criticise Flaccus and his coterie, Varro usually limited himself to bland generalities when discussing Bernoulli. Curiosity compelled Torbidda to ask, ‘What was he like, really? Tell me, no one’s listening.’
Varro smiled conspiratorially. ‘He had an eye for talent. I came to his notice on the building site of St Eco’s, as we called it then. I was always good at uncovering secrets, and bad at hiding them. When I realised he wasn’t building an ordinary cathedral he could have killed me. Instead, he told me his real secret and sent me out into the world to learn more. I wandered on his behalf and met other wanderers, older and more powerful, and when I returned, he showed me the Confession Box. He no longer had to search for secrets; they came to him and whispered the history of tomorrow. He told me one would come to destroy his work, and afterwards, another would come to complete it. I waited for so long that in my eagerness I mistook the signs! I thought his grandson, Giovanni, was that man.’ His fingers tightened around the statue’s throat. ‘How wrong I was.’
Torbidda said nothing.
‘You’re studying deep things down here in the dark. Flaccus lacks the wisdom to enlighten you.’
‘Can you?’
Varro walked across the puddle. Torbidda noticed that he did not disturb the surface. ‘Follow me.’
The Alchemistry Hall echoed with the sound of crashing waves. The pool was already drained. Below, a pseudonaiad stalked up and down, flowing over the curved walls, crashing against them and then reforming. When Torbidda approached the edge, the restless movement ceased.
‘See: it remembers you.’
Though it was eyeless and faceless, Torbidda felt it looking at him. ‘I can’t get in there. It’ll kill me.’
Varro pulled the ladder up. ‘If you don’t face your fears, I promise that you’ll die in Conclave. You know that Flaccus has been secretly training Agrippina. Do you think she’ll hesitate?’
‘Is that why you want to help me? To spite Flaccus? Perhaps Agrippina is willing to lower herself to simony, but if I win the yellow I won’t be a pawn.’
‘Precisely why it must be you,’ Varro said high-mindedly. ‘Girolamo Bernoulli wanted the best to climb the mountain. In this faithless time I remain his last faithful servant.’
Torbidda didn’t give much credence to that, but he was out of options; that was undeniable. With a silent prayer, he leapt down. As soon as his feet touched the ground the water rushed for him. His reflexes were considerably better now, and he dodged it – but only just. He backed away, but there was no escape in the cylindrical prison. The elemental hurled itself at him again, and again he rolled out of the way at the last moment.
‘Varro!’ This was foolish. ‘In the name of sanity, lower the ladder!’
‘No,’ Varro said simply.
Torbidda’s Water Style was sophisticated enough now that he could sense the water’s will, and he could anticipate its attacks. But no entirely defensive strategy could win here: the water never lagged, it never got tired or gave him space; it just kept coming. Eventually he’d make a slip, and then—
Soon he was up against the wall again.
Varro yelled, ‘You need to attack!’
Torbidda knew he was right, and in desperation, he threw a punch. His fist sank into the column, where liquid entrails gripped his fingers, pulled his hand in and swallowed his wrist, his arm — Torbidda leapt, kicked both feet against the wall and pushed himself into the pseudonaiad. He landed on the other side, thoroughly soaked, but free.
He gulped for air. ‘Damn you, Varro! How can I hurt what I can’t hit?’
‘Think, boy! It’s water – only water. You’re that and more.’
Torbidda’s mind worked desperately: water, air – could he harness air the way he harnessed water? Surely that was impossible. Water was in him, in his blood, saturating his matter. Air was outside. How could he control that? But with nothing to lose, he threw another punch, this time stopping scant inches before the column’s surface. The focused blast of air burst through the elemental and it reeled back, looking like a tattered flag, then reformed.
‘That’s it, attack! Attack! Don’t let it rest.’
Torbidda didn’t need to be told now. Another blow, and another: he had it now. The elemental fell back from the pneumatic onslaught shedding water from liquid wounds. He herded it back against the wall and, eyes shut, fists together, struck mercilessly, pushing air into it like a hammer, inflating it …
The explosion drenched him. He opened his eyes. to find himself standing in a cloud of mist. Around his feet small, trembling puddles were desperately combining. It wasn’t dead – it couldn’t die – but he had bested it.
Varro dropped the ladder and held out his hand. Torbidda climbed up and stood beside the selector, watching the pseudonaiad reforming. It moves sluggishly, punch-drunk.
‘Now you are ready.’
‘Varro,’ Torbidda gasped, ‘I’m grateful for what you did, but, please, tell me the truth. I know there’s more.’
Varro smiled proudly. ‘I can’t fool you. When the water recognised you, I knew you would be the perfect vessel. That’s all the Apprentices are – red, orange, yellow, they’re all just potential vessels. Like a thief in the night, the master will return – at what hour, no one can say, but it is imminent. One Apprentice must sacrifice himself so that Bernoulli can live again, and it must be the most worthy vessel. My dear boy, I think that honour is yours! You have all the requisite qualities.’
‘
What if I don’t want this honour?’
Varro’s shoulders began to shake with mirth.
‘What if I refuse?’
‘Oh, poor boy, your wishes are irrelevant.’ Varro’s face creased in hysterical laughter. ‘You think your will could withstand Bernoulli’s? Your fate was sealed the day you entered the Guild Halls – AAHHhh!’
Crrackk
The selector landed badly. He had not expected the push. The distinctive egg-white colour of fresh bone glistened from his shin. The water sensed him.
‘Take your reward,’ said Torbidda, covering the pool with its shroud, ‘O good and faithful servant.’
CHAPTER 16
The Molè’s construction continued apace after the Re-Formation, to the chagrin of many. Nobles found on the Curia’s register of donors were still expected to pay. A graduated income tax supplied the rest; the engineers’ efficiency extended to money-gathering. Even the prostitutes were levied.
from The Bernoullian Reforms by
Count Titus Tremellius Pomptinus
Torbidda crept from the Halls down to Old Town wrapped in a long cloak. It was an indirect route, but one that would not be noticed. He requisitioned a horse from the heralds’ livery and rode across the Ponte Bernoulliana. The guards at the gate stood under the empty gibbets and studied him. Torbidda gave them a brusque salute, which allowed them to see his yellow armband. ‘Guild business,’ he muttered. One advantage of being a Candidate was the fear it inspired. The dark green gates rippled open and, for the first time in his life, Torbidda left the city of Concord.
To what end he knew not.
For all his doubts, as soon as he was outside the walls he felt invisible chains drop away: he had escaped a malign will that had directed every step of his life. He rode a mile or two before a gruesome spectacle slowed him to a walk. The procession of mendicants he had observed the other day had become a trail of bodies, tended by buzzing flies and crows. He rode on warily until he came to a neatly stacked mound. One Fraticelli was living still, and he was piling bodies by the light of a small fire.
He turned with the contented smile of a farmer completing his harvest and Torbidda flinched when he looked into the pits where the Fraticelli’s eyes should be. Agrippina had told him the Fraticelli rejoiced in poverty; they never washed, and wore their habits until the cloth fell, rotting, from their bodies. If this was true, then here surely was their king. His shapeless, filthy rags were the grey of a donkey’s pelt, and looked as if they had been made from matted tail hairs.
‘Where goes’t thou, Brother?’ The blind man’s voice was like a sharp quill scratching rough parchment.
‘No idea,’ Torbidda said, carefully keeping the revulsion from his voice. He had worked on emaciated specimens in the Anatomy Halls, but he had never before seen such desiccation in living flesh. The blind man was all knee and knuckle: his limbs were bones covered with an uneven layer of thin, bruised skin, burned the same angry pink as the bodies on his pile. The bone of his skull showed clear through his bald pate. His mouth was large, and crowded with yellow teeth, perhaps four or six too many, and his smiling lips were chapped and broken.
‘If you don’t know where you’re going, no one is waiting for you, so what hurry? Rest a while.’
Torbidda couldn’t fault his logic, but he looked back at Concord anxiously.
The Fraticelli laughed. ‘Ah, you’re running! These poor pilgrims, they thought to run too. They believed they’d be safe if they reached the world’s centre.’
‘They didn’t get far,’ Torbidda remarked.
‘They got as far as they were meant to. Each star is given a path and may not choose another. Men are no different. The day Men are free to choose their own path, that day History ends. But these fools understood nothing of Astronomy. They fell into the thrall of yonder city. Some said it was punishment; some said they were not worthy to see Jerusalem. Others, mad with the sun, said Concord was the new Jerusalem!’
‘I don’t know what Concord is,’ Torbidda said, and dismounted, ‘but it’s not that. Had they no guide?’
The Fraticelli’s head tilted like a bird. ‘Perhaps they thought I was their guide.’ He scratched his chin-stubble and giggled. ‘Perhaps I was.’
‘Why did they perish?’
‘There’s little else to do in the desert. Three paltry revolutions and they started dropping. A blind man makes a poor guide,’ he confessed, ‘but I’ll try to be a better host.’ He took a fiery brand from his campfire and threw it onto the pile of bodies. The dry clothes caught quickly and soon the crackle of skin peeling, fat sizzling and bones snapping filled the air.
‘That’s better. So, how shall we pass the time? A story! Have you one to tell? I see you’re shy. I’ll start. There once was a town besieged by condottieri. The thing went on till every larder in town was empty. The magnates got together and decided that there were simply too many mouths to feed, so they evicted the Small People. Well, you can imagine that when the condottieri saw this army of beggars coming towards them, they didn’t like the look of all those hungry mouths either. So they persuaded the beggars not to advance further – arrows, pikes and swords made their case – and the beggars fled back to the town. But the gates remained closed. “We know ye not,” the magnates said, and cast down stones and darts on their heads.’
‘Was the siege successful?’
‘The show of unity against the Small People proved to each side they had much in common. A deal was struck, money changed hands and the keep marched out, flags up, honour intact, between the skeletons of the beggars and beggars’ wives and beggars’ children, and if that was not success, I don’t know what is.’
Torbidda felt the story’s moral was somehow dubious, but lately he’d found such distinctions impossibly difficult. ‘Are you a pilgrim too?’
‘I was, but now I wait in this wilderness to make ready for the king.’
‘Ours just died,’ Torbidda said wryly.
‘Permit me to contradict you, Child. The First Apprentice is merely a steward. He keeps the lamp burning and awaits his king’s return. See—?’ He pointed to the city.
‘I see nothing,’ Torbidda began, but just then the lantern atop the Molè lit up, its glow taking its place amongst the stars.
‘Behold! A star in the east. It burns for you.’
Torbidda watched it for a long time. ‘If I go back, I’ll have to do a wicked thing.’
‘You have no experience in this area?’
‘Nothing like this. I fear my penance for it will be to become a sacrificial lamb.’
‘Who told you so? We all have parts to play: handmaid, king, wise man, fool – but you’re no lamb. I see better than most – you’re a wolf! And a wolf must wolf. These pilgrims chose to run; you see how Fortune rewarded their cowardice. Choose life and fight, or stay here and fuel my fire.’
The fat-fuelled fire burned frantically, the Fraticelli’s voice was a drone like a sated fly and Torbidda felt sleep creeping up on him. ‘And how do you know my part?’
The blind man looked heavenwards. ‘I read it,’ he said, then laughed as if he saw Torbidda’s look of scepticism. ‘Oh, not there! The stars are one book, but I prefer another.’ He moved to the side. A little away from both fires lay an old man’s body, abdomen open, entrails exposed. Torbidda gagged, even though he was an experienced dissectionist – this looked like the work of a ravening beast. The blind man reached over and held up some trailing guts. ‘Here’s the honest part of a man. That fellow was the pilgrims’ guide. He led them to me, and he told me’ – he shook the entrails like prayer beads – ‘to wait here for my king.’ The seared air between them warped and twisted tiresomely. Before his eyes shut, Torbidda heard him say, ‘Turn, Majesty! Turn and be a wolf.’
Torbidda awoke with his horse nuzzling him. He sat up and turned into a swollen, unblinking Cyclopean sun. It blinded him momentarily and robbed heat from his vision so that he saw the world in tones of blue. He did not recognise it. There was
no sign of the Fraticelli, nor the charnel mound, only a few scattered bones the sun had been obviously been parching for years. The wind doused him with foul dust. He wrapped a scarf around his face and rode back to the city, to take whatever Fortune had in store for Cadet Number LX.
CHAPTER 17
On the Origins of Concordian Gothic
The Opera del Duomo wasted lifetimes in procrastination, wasted them as waves beating on the rocks are wasted, before it was dismissed in disgrace. In the Twenties, when a young Girolamo Bernoulli was making his name, the embarrassment of Concord’s unfinished cathedral was compounded by the triumphant completion of Rasenna’s. The subsequent appointment of an unconventional and relatively untested young man as capomaestro (St Eco’s youngest-ever) was either an inspired choice or a sign of how desperate the Curia had become.
Far from letting this task overawe him, Bernoulli caused a minor scandal by scathingly dismissing the Curia’s unrealised designs.6 He described St Eco’s walls as ‘squat, sober and thrifty, like a merchant’s wife, and just as ugly.’ The dome that had defeated generations of brilliant architects he pronounced ‘unambitious’.7 Before he would place a single brick atop another, he insisted on knocking down the walls that had stood for decades. That he was allowed to do so is revealing of the Curia’s desperation.8
CHAPTER 18
He had climbed for hours, and each hour the wind grew more outraged and assailed him more wildly. It screamed abuse as it whipped between the ragged peaks, so intent on hurtling him down that he had to hug the steps until his fingertips fused with the cold rock. He did not feel his skin coming away as he ripped them off the freezing stone.
He was numb: best to be numb when there is nothing left to feel but pain. He had not even bothered to justify the morning’s events to himself. His conscience must be numb too – perhaps it had atrophied. It was certainly superfluous at this altitude. Take nothing that will slow you down. Agrippina told him that before the ascent began. He remembered seeing emptiness rush into her eyes as the hate disappeared. He remembered the perfunctory applause as he limped out of the Conclave. He remembered Grand Selector Flaccus’ confusion as he shook his bloody hand and dazedly pointed to the steps.
