by Aidan Harte
Sofia said, ‘I don’t read squiggle.’
‘We must rectify that. What about you, Levi?’
Levi had obviously been pretending to sleep too but he sat up and yawned ostentatiously before reading where Ezra pointed, ‘J–A–H’
‘You see! His Name is all around, if only we look for it.’
‘Since when do you read Ebionite?’ Sofia asked.
‘Condottieri pick up more than exotic rashes in their travels,’ Levi said defensively. ‘What’s that supposed to prove, old man? With enough letters you can spell anything.’
‘Each letter is connected to every other. On Sinai for a golden moment Moses saw all connections. When diligent readers relink the letters, the words rejoice. They dance and ecstatically couple and new meaning is born.’
‘Immediately, or nine months later? Come on, old man,’ Levi said, ‘no race can beat the Eebees at fooling themselves. Torah’s out of date. You think the scribes who wrote it knew anything about Natural Philosophy?’
‘The Concordians say there are atoms and the void and nothing else – a useful philosophy for burrowing rodents. It’s true that the scribes were ignorant as we of tomorrow. What of it? I do not care about tomorrow or yesterday. I study to understand today. To one who understands this moment, all vistas – past, present and future – are open. He is free, free even to disagree with God.’
Sofia had only been half-listening, but here her heart skipped. ‘God can be overruled?’
‘I told you even God must study. Torah belongs to all. No one has the final word. Scholars argue to become wise, and when two sincere students differ in their interpretations, their dispute is a journey to truth.’
The wind was turning against them, so Levi lowered the sail and secured it against the lifting yard. He yawned, and lay down. ‘Madonna, it’s too early for philosophising. Wake me up when the sun’s over the yard-arm.’
‘You want a bedtime story too?’ said Sofia.
‘Sure, why not? How about it, old man? Any good stories in there?’
CHAPTER 63
The Acts of the Wrongly Guided Apostle
5
Now at this time the Etruscans were besieging Jerusalem and all Judea was in uproar.
2
Mary’s fame had spread until even a tent-maker from Tarsus knew Her name. This Saul was a Jew and also an Etruscan citizen. His countrymen’s eagerness to join the revolt amused him. Why, he asked, do the Jews always wait for prophets? Can prophecy enrich a man? If this prophetess is true, her prophesy will come to pass; if she is false, it will not. Since most prophets come to grief, it is better to have nothing to do with them. Thus meditating, Saul rode to Damascus with his wares.
3
He was worried about encountering bandits in the desert, but he considered the market worth the risk. Perhaps the road to Damascus was bad, perhaps the horse, perhaps the rider, perhaps all three – Saul fell and was injured. His horse ran away, taking Saul’s purse and waterskin with it. Saul lay there roundly cursing his fortune until some riders came along: it was a tax collector and his servant, and a centurion with a pair of soldiers.
4
Saul begged the tax collector’s help, saying, Brother, I am a fellow citizen. The Etruscan laughed at him, saying, Jew, what have I to do with thee? Saul wished to curse him, but stayed his tongue – the tax collector’s servant had a rude look. The centurion rebuffed Saul also, saying, Jew, the Emperor is far from here.
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The party rode on laughing, but the tax collector’s servant tarried to give Saul water. He said unto him, Brother, despair not. Trust in the Lord and He shall deliver thee.
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Weeping, Saul thanked the servant and asked his name, That I might remember thee in my prayers. As the servant rode away, Paul wiped his tears, drank deep and pondered. He knew the servant’s name, but knew not how.
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As the sun grew higher, Saul’s water grew lower. It was gone by the time another rider approached, a merchant from Jerusalem. Saul cried aloud, Help me, for are we not Jews and brothers? The Jerusalemite said, If I tarry I will miss the market and if I miss the market I will go hungry. Surely thou wouldst not wish thy brother to go hungry? And so saying he passed on.
8
Presently another Jerusalemite, a priest, came along. When Saul begged for water, the priest refused, saying, Away thou sinner! The Lord God sees all. He would not permit a good man to fall as low as thou hast fallen.
9
Saul wept.
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He watched the Jinn turning in the distance, and cursed Jerusalem and its citizens and priests. Presently Saul bethought he saw a babe drifting across the sand on the wind, with swaddling bandages flowing behind. And he heard a voice that said Saul, Saul, Why dost thou doubt Me?
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Now, Saul spoke Greek as well as Etruscan and could therefore reason. This vision was obviously a fever brought on by the heat. He buried his dry lips under his robe and only when the sun was low did he lift his head.
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He saw a rider coming from Damascus. As the rider drew closer, Saul saw that it was the tax collector’s servant.
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The servant was alone. He dismounted. He did not speak, neither did he seem to see Saul. He quickly lit a fire and baked bread, and as he did so, Saul studied him. His loincloth was torn and marked with blood. When the bread was baked, the servant looked at Saul and said, Forgive my ignorance. I am no philosopher. How can a Jew be a Jew and a citizen of the Etruscan Empire? Surely no man can serve two masters?
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Though the question was politely asked, Saul was sore afraid, for he knew the custom of the desert: that the servant had not offered bread because he was considering killing him.
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Saul summoned all his eloquence, and said unto him, My friend, just as all men are born stained by Adam’s sin, so I was born a citizen of that Idolatrous Empire. My father was a usurer who in accordance with the Law lent only to Etruscan soldiers. They are, thou must know, filth who think nothing of cheating a Jew. My father believed that Etruscan Law was like our Law, fair and blind. He purchased citizenship so that he might prosecute defaulters in Etruscan courts; a vain hope. It is well said that the sins of the father are visited on the children. My people think me a traitor and the Etruscans think me a fool; thou sawest how thy companions mocked me.
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They will not trouble thee again, said the servant.
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Now Saul remembered where he had heard the servant’s name: this Barabbas was one of the notorious disciples of Mary the Galilean. So Saul informed Barabbas of his vision, gilding it and claiming that the babe said, Arise Saul, and persecute those who persecute me!
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Barabbas was much impressed, saying, You must be he that my Mistress sent me to find. She said I would find an eloquent man on this road who would help spread the Word. Rarely have I heard a man who could lie so skilfully.
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Then Barabbas gave Saul water to drink and bread to eat, and went to sleep with his hand on his dagger.
CHAPTER 64
Levi had caught enough fish the previous day, and Sofia found she hardly had to touch the sails, so with nothing better to do they partook of the peace of the Sabbath. The wind carried them onwards as Ezra read. Sofia half-listened, thinking of the wind-racked city and the startling idea that one might gainsay God. Next morning, Ezra was back at the tiller, and his tireless adjustments to the sail were justified in the speed and distance travelled that day. It was evening when Sofia noticed something amiss.
Ezra was standing still, though the sail was flapping, bleeding wind. Levi was merrily murdering a condottieri song – something about stealing a dead comrade’s boots – when suddenly Ezra turned about. The look on his face made Levi fall silent.
Ezra mumbled something as he took in the sail and the wind abruptly ceased, then he turned back to the water.
Sof
ia said quietly, ‘What is it?’
He put his fingers to his lips and whispered, ‘We’re hunted.’
Sofia and Levi looked behind them – if the Moor was following, then surely they should sail for the nearest shore, and quickly? But Ezra was looking down, into the cold depths of the wine-dark sea. Abruptly he pointed, his finger travelling slowly over the surface.
‘I don’t see anything,’ said Levi, but Sofia felt her skin crawl as the foul shadow of something, a great fish or worm, crossed their path below, followed by a wafting stench of dead, sodden flesh, worse even than the burning sheep mound near Gubbio. A minute passed before the wind took up again.
Ezra quietly raised the sail. ‘It’s gone, but we must be on guard.’
Levi announced that in his considered opinion, Ezra and Sofia were sun-touched, and he was going to take a nap.
Sofia found Ezra looking at her. ‘You’ve tangled with that old fellow before?’ he asked.
‘Only in dreams. This is the real world—’
‘There are places where they are one. We’re in the sea’s hands now. The dark place that fellow came from wants to keep you from your destination.’
‘Those tales you read us yesterday – you believe them? That Mary’s son could have made everything better for ever?’
‘Oh, not so long as that,’ Ezra said. ‘Even Messiah is not once and for all. Messiah is the spring that must come when the earth has grown old. For hundreds of thousands of years the seasons of Man have rotated: after summer comes winter, the heat retreats from the land, rivers dry up, the deserts grow, the earth shrinks. Good deeds become rare, charity a myth, cynicism prevails. And then, at the darkest hour, a new voice cries out and all who hear it remember there were once such things as honour and love, and all the wickedness of the world loses courage and retreats into the Darkness.’
‘But God let Herod kill him.’
‘Who told you God is master of this world? The disaster that befell the Madonna was His disaster as much as ours. Her grief is everyone’s. We see its results all round us – corruption and deceit, revolution and civil war spreading like plague until all hope is gone.’
Pedro escaped Ariminum before the alarm went up. On the way back to Rasenna he halted briefly near Gubbio. Where the burning sheep mound had been was a black patch of grassless earth that stank like a wound. The men were gone, the tree empty. Hereabouts Giovanni had died, and hereabouts a second Giovanni had been born. The carrion was too decayed even for scavengers, and the rot in the air made it hard to think clearly. He hurried home.
His first stop in Rasenna was the baptistery. He remembered visiting Giovanni here after he’d almost drowned – had Giovanni himself begun to suspect then? In the light of Sofia’s revelation, Pedro felt duty-bound to re-examine all his assumptions. His initial reaction had been doubt. Engineers were sceptical of theory and faithful to experience, but Giovanni hadn’t been an ordinary engineer; and his grandfather certainly wasn’t. The Concordians had pulled the mechanical arts to a frontier where it was not measurable phenomena like Gravity or Friction that mattered but the unquantifiable: Faith and Love. Pedro had helped to create the transmission that had stopped the Wave during the siege, so he knew the mathematics it was based on, backwards and forwards. It was as solid as a gear-shank.
As he tied up his horse, the unfinished orphanage next to the baptistery seemed to reproach him. Inside, he circled the cool interior looking up at the stages of the Madonna’s life. The fanciful story was familiar, of course, but its meaning had always been remote. He had never even considered that it might be taken seriously, let alone literally.
‘Do you believe in Her?’
Pedro turned and found Isabella standing at the doorway.
‘I believe in things I see.’
‘You saw the Wave.’
‘That’s no more miracle than a flag is. It’s a weapon made by men.’
‘Understand a thing and it ceases to be miraculous?’
‘I suppose. The Wave was created by amplifying a particular harmonic sequence. We stopped the Wave by creating a signal that was its counterpoint.’
Isabella glanced at the aged Madonna of Rasenna in a corner niche. ‘Like throwing a cloak over Rasenna.’
Pedro said nothing; the image from the old Rasenneisi prayer was eerily apt. Perhaps his failure was one of language – call it ‘Love’ and an engineer is suspicious but call it ‘Harmony‘ and it can be measured and amplified, dissected and destroyed.
‘Sofia told me everything. She told me that Giovanni was one of them – a buio …’
Isabella didn’t even pretend to be surprised. ‘Is she safe?’
‘More than she ever could be in Etruria. She’s on the way to Oltremare.’
‘Grazie Madonna!’ Isabella sighed in relief, then looked at him. ‘That wasn’t all she told you, was it?’
Pedro looked around in embarrassment. ‘I don’t know what to believe. Nothing generates spontaneously, especially life. There must be a cause—’
‘There is, and someday you’ll understand that miracle too. Right now all that matters is that you helped her escape.’
The tiered circles ground against each other pitilessly and the echo of the tortured metal was amplified by the pit. The beast carried on its excruciating revolutions, though now it was a prison with only one prisoner.
Fra Norcino scrambled to the compartment before it closed and grabbed the bowl. He threw the food in the corner impatiently and placed the bowl under a drip. His shit-bucket was under another drip, and it was getting fuller. He listened merrily to the tapping, and when the bowl was filled he poured it into the bucket. The water was still below the brim.
‘Nuh!’ he grunted, unsatisfied.
He stood astride the bucket and made up the missing inch with a steaming stream of greenish-amber piss. He fell to his knees like a worshipper and inhaled the textured vapours of the noxious brew with delectation. ‘Perfect,’ he said, blowing upon the surface.
After Pedro left, Isabella stood on tip-toe, looking down into the cool water of the font.
‘Come out, Carmella.’
The older novice appeared from the dark corner of the baptistery where she’d been hiding. ‘I’m sorry, Reverend Mother. I was cleaning when the young engineer came in …’ She stopped, seeing that Isabella didn’t believe the lie. Carefully, she said, ‘What he said about the Contessa – is she really—?’
‘—I expect your discretion.’
‘How long have you been hiding her sins?’
‘You heard nothing, and you will repeat nothing, Carmella. I would be alone now.’
‘I— Yes, Reverend Mother.’
The novice left hurriedly. Isabella waited for her composure to return and studied the still cold water below. Her mind drifted, and she let it, leaving behind her frail body – it was too heavy for where she needed to be. She was a bird, travelling through the soft froth of clouds, seeing the white feathers of her outstretched wings, making minute adjustments, the better to catch the wind. She felt the bird’s hunger, and sensed the change in temperature as it travelled beyond the land, where the air chilled still further. In the calm sea below her she saw a tiny skiff. A tremor passed on the distant surface below; electrical tension in the air; drops of unseen rain danced on the water of the font.
Sofia watched Ezra warily. The old man had been surveying the sky for an hour now, though she could see nothing of interest but a single seagull. Ezra sniffed suspiciously as the sails filled with wind, and the breeze, gentle till now, suddenly grew stronger.
Levi woke with a start, like Sofia, gagging at the foul stench that suddenly surrounded them.
‘Damn you, not here!’ Ezra cried as the skiff suddenly lurched to the side.
Mumbling through his cracked lips, Fra Norcino stirred the foulness clockwise, and it kept spinning when he removed his finger. Far below his cell, in the lake at the bottom of the pit, the water’s surface was alive with changing forms, cubes and
cylinders and disproportionate disembodied limbs that clawed the air and fell apart.
A sudden wind blew the dust through Rasenna’s streets and burst the baptistery doors open. ‘You have no right!’ Isabella screamed, seeing – feeling – the maelstrom growing in the Holy Water.
‘We’re being tugged from below!’ Levi shouted. ‘Ezra, what is it?’
‘The current,’ Sofia said. She could feel it in her bones.
Ezra was shaking his fists at the black clouds that had eclipsed the insipid sun. ‘You may not harm her. You can only point the way!’ His voice was small against the howling wind.
Norcino’s cackle echoed in his cell. ‘You broke the Law first by helping her flee. No prohibitions bind us now.’
‘Who the hell’s he talking to?’ Levi asked. ‘Old man, you need to get us out of here!’
‘I’m sorry, Levi,’ Ezra said with terrible regret. ‘We cannot outrun this.’
Isabella plunged her hand into the font and pushed against the current, but it wriggled between her fingers.
Suddenly the boat shifted as whatever had been dragging them released its grip, and they were carried forward by the wind. The spiralling motions of the sea slowed and then the maelstrom collapsed into a dozen smaller counter-twisting currents. The skiff wandered drunkenly between them.
Ezra’s smile was manic. ‘Thank you, little sister!’
‘What—?’ Norcino began as he felt the water stop turning. ‘What amateur work is this?’ Giggling, he plunged his hand back into the bucket.
Isabella screamed as the blind man grabbed her hand and pulled her down towards the water. Her feet left the ground, her arm sank in up to the shoulder and she struggled to keep her head from following it by grasping the side of the font.
