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.