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.
Take nothing.
When he reached the summit of Monte Nero he found himself standing between two rows: men and women in long black gowns on the right, soldiers on the left, consuls and praetorians. The plain was utterly flat, as if some giant sword had cut the stone with a clean swipe. The cathedral occupied most of it but there would have been space enough for a legion to assemble if such a thing were legal: the only soldiers allowed up here were senior officers and praetorians. At the end of the path was the Molè. Steep steps led to the great Doors of History, and there, flanked by Castrucco, the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, stood a figure whose orange robes whipped about him like the last leaves of winter.
Torbidda paused to catch his breath. The consul on his right, a short, genial-looking fellow with a V-shaped smile and small twinkling eyes like a doll’s, leaned forward and said, ‘A little further, Cadet. Walk tall!’
He stumbled through the guard of honor, vaguely recognising a few Collegio members, and, thanks to Leto’s tuition, guessing the identity of others. He tried to keep his head high, but his body trembled and he feared his legs would not carry him. At the top of the steps, the Second Apprentice waited, wearing the orange and a triumphant smile. Torbidda stopped at the first step, waiting for instructions.
The new Second Apprentice was adolescent, but he still had a boyish quality. Torbidda knew his name, of course – Pulcher was something of a Guild Hall legend, a first-blood who’d actually lived up to his promise. The chief viper of a generation of vipers, he represented the logical end of Bernoulli’s revolution. Naturalism, Empiricism, questions of right or wrong, historic destiny; none of these abstractions troubled Pulcher. He was a kite in the wind, turning whatever way was expedient, with all his thought bent to one ambition: to wear the red. He had a weak chin and watery eyes, and his youthful face was dominated entirely by a cumbersome nose. Everything receded from the prominent tip, which he thrust forward aggressively with menacing curiosity. He clapped his hands once and the rows came alive. The consuls filed up the steps past Torbidda and disappeared into the darkness. When Torbidda took a step to follow, the Second Apprentice snapped, ‘Halt! No Cadet may enter here. Those are the clothes of a Cadet.’
Torbidda realised immediately what was intended: another shearing. Again he saw beyond the game to its intention. He stripped and stood shivering in the snow.
‘Who are you?’ Pulcher asked imperiously. He at least was enjoying his part in the ritual.
‘I am the Third Apprentice!’ said Torbidda through chattering teeth.
Pulcher laughed, ‘I see a naked lamb.’ He nodded to the praetorian prefect. ‘There is no charity here.’
The door closed and the icy silence of the night surrounded Torbidda. He looked into the sky, trying to see beyond the falling snow to the stars. They fell together, impossible to tell apart. The world was crumbling, unequal to the stress it bore. The drifting snow was a constantly collapsing curtain in front of the colossal door, a masterpiece of an earlier era. The antique style suggested its creator was Curia-trained. If so, he had paid the Curia back with a parody of the traditional schematic of the hereafter. The Re-Formation infected everything. The cressets were so placed that the light only illuminated the bottom half. Heaven was dominated by a gentle figure of the Madonna. With surprise and shame Torbidda looked on the compassionate face he had spent so many hours contemplating when he ought to have been fighting.
‘You, here?’ he whispered, tears trickled down his face. He wondered whom he was mourning, Agrippina or himself? For, truly, he was dead as she.
The Virgin looked on in rhapsody at the figures playing amongst the surrounding clouds. They carried trumpets and long horns and lyres and harps. Plump cherubs chased each another, and these She regarded with special tenderness.
Her gaze led Torbidda’s eyes to a particular angel soaring with arms stretched skywards in praise – or … was he screaming as he fell? The change was so subtle one could not say where it began. This winged creature was not a saint but a carrion-feeding demon; that singer, a screaming soul. That babe shyly turning was a sly black imp. Cherubs rushed to impale themselves on the long pikes of Hell’s black-armoured infantry, and so it went, up and up, until one entered another space where soft clouds became jagged stone and twisted metal. The architecture of Hell was eye-cutting desolation. The inverted spires of the ruined temples were the first clue that the World’s orientation had changed. Soaring angels became falling souls, and those who survived the spikes and hooks fell into the gaping maw of the swinish creature with greedy, bulging eyes that squatted in the murksome darkness. The door was executed in high relief, but here the goldsmith had excelled himself. The black goddess was wreathed in shadows that nearly obscured her vile drooping teats, dripping snout, curled and broken tusks, her hairy grasping limbs, her sharp hoofs that crushed the damned underneath and her roving hungry eyes—
They fell on him.
Torbidda fell back with a yelp as the door opened. He was unsure whether hours or moments had passed. Behind the row of praetorians he glimpsed the consuls lining the circumference of the crossing under the dome. In the centre was a treelike pillar of glass and beside it was a colossal statue of an angel, thrusting a sword heavenwards. The praetorians parted and the Second Apprentice advanced until he stood in the same position and asked again, ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Sixty.’
‘A Cadet’s name. Yet you wear no uniform. Who are you truly?’
‘My name is …’ He tried to dredge it up, but it would not come. He had lost it somewhere in the darkness – that place where Agrippina’s dying eyes were staring, making him dumb.
‘Wait, I think I know you – are you not called Torbidda?’
This time he knew the response with certainty. ‘Torbidda is dead.’
‘I have not invited you in,’ Pulcher said as Torbidda began to climb the steps.
‘This house belongs not to you but to him we are Apprenticed to: Girolamo Bernoulli.’
‘Proto Magister, now and forever,’ said Pulcher, breaking into a smile. ‘Then welcome, Third Apprentice! Dress and follow me.’
A consul came forward, taking tiny steps – the same twinkling-eyed fellow who had whispered encouragement. As he handed Torbidda a yellow bundle, he leaned in. ‘Well done! Usually this routine goes on for an age. Took Pulcher half the night to figure out he didn’t need permission to enter.’
Torbidda said nothing as he dressed. It felt strange; he had expected some great revelation when he finally took the yellow, but the numbness remained.
The consul stood back appraisingly. ‘The colour suits you. I’m Corvis, by the way. We’ll be working together soon. Follow me.’
In the centre of the nave-crossing, the Second Apprentice stood, apparently suspended on air, in an opening in the glass column. Torbidda felt the consuls’ eyes upon him. It was like being back in the Halls. Did they envy him? Despise him? Most likely both – as below, so above, as the late Selector Varro used to say.
As Torbidda approached, the mighty bronze angel loomed clearer and he saw that the sculptor was a more advanced creature than the primitive responsible for the hellish door. All of this titan’s forms were noble. It occupied space with the same right any living thing did, and it represented a promise: here was the man of tomorrow, unfettered by defunct morality or doubt or guilt. For a moment Torbidda’s spirits lifted – then he read the motto carved in massive Etruscan characters at its base – Although changed, I shall arise the same – and found a mocking echo of his own thoughts. These consuls, the smug, smiling Pulcher, they imagined they had evolved beyond antique notions like sin and punishment, and yet Torbidda knew a great abyss lay waiting below their feet.
‘Come on. The man in red is waiting,’ Pulcher whined with youthful impatience as Torbidda joined him in the confines of the capsule with trepidation. ‘Sorry about all that stuff. The First Apprentice takes matters of form very seriously’ – a sharp intake of breath – ‘as you shall presently see.’
Torbidda felt his stomach sink as a surge from below pushed the capsule skywards.
‘Hell on the stomach, isn’t it?’
The circle of consuls dwindled as the floor rushed away below their feet. ‘It’s marvellous,’ he managed.
Pulcher’s lip curled. ‘I hope you’re not another devotee of Saint Bernoulli. Reverence is proper in a Cadet, but you’ve made it now; it’s time to put away childish things. We’re not supposed to say old Bernoulli died a madman, yet it’s true. Even a mind that has reached the greatest heights can fall to the worst depths – and Bonnacio’s on the same path, if you ask me.’ When Torbidda made no reply, Pulcher cleared his throat. ‘What was the honourable consul whispering to you? Oh, you don’t have to tell me – but watch out, though. Corvis will make a protégé of you if you’re not careful. Since Argenti’s death he’s been all deferential, but take my word, he’s no friend of ours. His great aim is to make Apprenticeship purely ceremonial. Your star’s rising, Torbidda. Stick with me and it need never fall.’
So it begins, Torbidda thought wearily. First Corvis, now Pulcher. There was no graduation from the competition. The politicking never ended; only the faces changed: as below, so above.
The coffin carried them up into the grasp of the first dome, which was decorated with a more conventional depiction of the Last Judgement. They passed through the mural and emerged into the second dome, and Torbidda realised with dismay that it wasn’t slowing. He had yearned to explore the treasures of the great library, but he did not have long to take it in – though its disarray surprised him – before they left it behind too.
‘When we get up there, wait for me to introduce you. Like I said, he’s a stickler.’
‘I’ve heard he spends every night guarding the lantern. What’s he looking for?’
‘Madonna knows. The Curia thought the world was the universe’s foundation stone, and when they looked heavenwards they were comforted by a divine melody that only existed in their imagination. I think Bonnacio still strives to hear it.’
‘If you’re trying to set me against him, forget it.’
‘Madonna! Who said anything about that?’ Pulcher pointed his great nose at Torbidda. ‘You intrigue me a little. What are you anyway, Empiricist or Naturalist?’
‘Neither. The party system is a corruption of what Bernoulli wanted.’
‘Which was what? Universal love?’
‘Just the opposite: every man at every other’s throat, all alliances temporary.’
Pulcher laughed dryly. ‘Oh, you’ll go far.’
The mistral ceaselessly threw fugitive scraps of alpine snow at the First Apprentice. His red robes tumbled about him like a fire too weak to consume itself. The melancholy wind soiled the pristine marble of New City with the dust of the Wastes that fell on the wise and foolish together and maddened both. So long as the wind kept the night sky free of clouds, Bonnacio did not begrudge its blowing. The stars were a book, and he was eager to reach the dénouement. Could He be out there somewhere, born already? No, surely not; the stars would have warned him.
They had whispered to Bonnacio long before he became a Cadet: Climb higher, we have something wonderful to tell. So he climbed. And when he finally reached the summit of that mountain of bodies, he realised that the stars didn’t whisper: they roared! The Dark Ones who sheltered in the light of a billion turbulent Hells looked upon this chaste blue jewel of water and air as a traitor. Its fidelity to the Old One was contemptible to them. There must be no exemptions from Time’s torment. The world must take its place in the universal fire. Bonnacio watched giant Orion stalk stealthily across the horizon. The three kings of the hunter’s belt were weak sparks, trembling like a candle harassed by the wind. Some greater mistral assailed the stars and kept their fire from consuming the world altogether. Its source was Him, the Old One.
Bonnacio had seen enough. He retreated below, nimbly navigating the precarious shifting clockwork that served for a staircase from lantern to engine room. The great pendulum and its swooping revolutions circulated the hot, stagnant air. He approached the slate reverently and studied his old calculations, then, with a hiss of disdain, impatiently rubbed them away with his sleeve and began to make new notations, seeking to compare the numbers he saw in the stars with a number he had in his mind. The song was weak yet, but he still perceived its warning.
Behind him the pod slowed and opened with a hiss. Torbidda attempted to step out, but Pulcher restrained him.
From the darkness, Torbidda heard a grating unmusical voice: ‘Who is this stranger?’
Pulcher rolled his eyes, but answered with formality, ‘No stranger. Your master is my master.’
‘Then come forth, Brother.’
Pulcher turned to Torbidda and hissed, ‘Stay here till I call you,’ before exiting the pod. Torbidda watched him walk towards the great air-slicing pendulum that bisected the long, narrow chamber. Its passage was the rasping breath of a slumbering dragon. A waft of warm, oily air poured over him.
‘I hear whispers, First Apprentice,’ Pulcher said. ‘Corvis is turning the Collegio dei Consoli against us.’
Bonnacio didn’t look around. ‘Our enemies are outside Concord.’
This dismissal annoyed Pulcher, who was standing now between two massive tables, one covered with maps of Etruria and Europa, the other with nautical charts of the Tyrrhenian Sea. He picked up one of variously coloured markers and threw it down, scattering a collection that represented an army. ‘Etruria is a land of small cities run by small men. Concord is more than that now: we are an empire. Europa’s waiting for a race that knows how to exploit it. Every year we have gone further, gained more land, more rivers, more coal, more iron.’
‘Every year but this one. General Luparelli’s bogged down.’
‘Luparelli’s too dull to make use of a legion like the Ninth. New leadership would shake things up. The son of the ill-fated Manius Spinther, he’s only a second-year, but I’ve heard good things.’
‘As it happens, I do have another job in mind for Luparelli, but I shouldn’t wonder that the Candidate for Third Apprentice – it’s his suggestion, I presume – wants to promote young Spinther. They’re dear friends.’
‘… ah.’
‘Yes, “Ah”. Young men must learn patience. If one is hasty, it is easy to overlook the salient details. My predecessor’s fixation on Europa gave the states that once composed the Southern League a reprieve. It would take just one city to raise its flag and we’d be facing a two-front war.’
‘What city?’ Pulcher said mockingly. ‘If you studied politics as deeply as you study the firmament you’d know that the only Etrurian city with a semblance of stable government is Ariminum, and we can buy them off easily enough.’
‘Fortune’s wheel turns fast. John Acuto is assembling an alliance.’
‘He won’t get far with those squabbling fools,’ Pulcher said wearily.
‘Perhaps, but I’m sending the Twelfth Legion on a progress as a precaution. Luparelli may be a blundering fool but the work I have in mind does not require an Alexander. We shall wipe out the last of the condottieri companies, then harry the South and break down the walls of her cities, bring them as low as Rasenna or Gubbio.’
‘There’s more to this strategy, isn’t there?’ said Pulcher, walking away and approaching the slate. An undulating curve rose and fell between a forest of equations.
‘You’re a decent mathematician, Pulcher. Follow the steps. We’re here’ – he pointed – ‘and descending now faster than ever. The Wave is about to trough. Everything will change in a moment and if we’re unready, all this, all Bernoulli’s preparation, will be for naught.’
‘Why don’t you just cut up a lamb and be done with it? This isn’t philosophy, it’s augury.’
Bonnacio looked critically at the slate. ‘Argenti doubted me too. He thought the hollow trappings of power were real. I let him die under your knife for that reason. He would have held back from the sacrifice we must make. Don’t forget that the height we have attained only gives us further to fall. All that bears us up is a wind that is about to change. We are but vessels.’
‘Better king for a moment than slave for a lifetime, eh?’ Pulcher said without conviction, then, ‘Speaking of vessels – First Apprentice, may I present a poor Candidate in a state of darkness?’
‘Let the Brother be brought into the Light.’
‘Come forth, Candidate,’ said Pulcher portentously as he walked back towards the pod. Torbidda stepped out and reeled as the floor pitched, but he managed to keep his footing. As they intersected, Pulcher grabbed him and hissed, ‘Didn’t think to mention that Spinther’s an old chum?’
‘He has the requisite skills.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he’s another wonder boy, but it never hurts to have a general in your pocket.’ Pulcher released him and sighed dramatically. ‘So now I have you to watch out for too?’
Torbidda said, ‘I don’t want what you want.’
‘I’ve heard this tune already; Bonnacio sings it better – he actually convinced me, too. I did all the knifework and he got the red. Let’s see what he gets out of you.’
Torbidda watched as the pod’s doors closed and it descended. Panic gathered around him, but with no retreat left, he walked reluctantly onwards, constantly adjusting his step to the tilting surface. He passed between the two massive maps, then had to dart forwards to slip past the whoosh of the pendulum.
The First Apprentice still stood facing the great slate board which was dense with chalk notation. The red of his robe was uncannily vivid in the gloom. It was the smouldering colour of summer dusk, fresh poppies, oxygenated blood, Agrippina’s lips.
The first thing Torbidda noticed when Bonnacio turned around was the fearsome-looking pair of compasses he was holding, and he suppressed a shudder as he remembered how Leto had dispatched the Fuscus girl.
‘Behold the man. Come closer.’
‘Yes, First Apprentice.’
Bonnacio was as pale and remote as the stars he worshipped. ‘Hold out your hand, Brother,’ he said softly, and when Torbidda submitted he said, ‘Good; the first rule is obedience.’ His expression remained wistful as he suddenly grabbed Torbidda’s wrist. Holding it tightly, he pricked Torbidda’s small finger with the compass needle. As the blood pooled around the point he asked, ‘Do you solemnly swear to obey the Master, without secret evasion of mind; binding yourself under no less a penalty than that of having your body severed in twain, your bowels taken thence, burned to ashes, and the ashes thereof scattered to the four winds of Heaven, that there might remain neither track, trace nor remembrance among man of so vile and perjured a wretch as you should be, should you ever violate this solemn obligation?’
The vice tightened as Bonnacio waited for Torbidda’s response. ‘I swear!’
At once Bonnacio released Torbidda’s hand, turned back to the board and traced a new circle with the compass. When he turned back, his manner was more businesslike. ‘You’ll spend the next month in the second dome: the library needs urgent cataloguing. Count Tremellius has several useful talents, but organisation, alas, is not amongst them.’
Torbidda responded cautiously, ‘With respect, First Apprentice, I didn’t come here to be a librarian’s assistant.’
‘You misunderstand. That’s an order. Tests and riddles, all that is done. Now you must work. As you ascended, the Second Apprentice asked you to spy on me, did he not? Promised you things? It’s all right, you don’t have to answer. I remember when I took the yellow how I yearned to wear the orange and then the red. Ambition doesn’t merely blind Man, it deafens him. It took time to realise why Bernoulli wanted us segregated from the rest of the Guild, why he built so high. It’s so we can hear – the stars, they speak to us. I listened until I learned what my unfortunate predecessor could never understand: the Master’s return is at hand!’
Torbidda was hot and uncomfortable under Bonnacio’s hollow gaze. He said the test was over, but that might be another, more subtle test. Bonnacio was remote, but Torbidda knew that otherworldly manner concealed a mind worldly enough to manipulate Pulcher’s feral ambition. He attempted a more servile tack. ‘You are my master, First Apprentice.’
‘Child, we are but vessels. The vessel was once the man called Girolamo Bernoulli, and now it is his Molè. A time is coming when the Molè will be no more. It’s not accidental that you’re here and not some other Candidate; the hour calls forth the man, his steps ordained by necessity. My astronomy, Pulcher’s warcraft, your architecture: men believe they are free, but nothing’s free: everything’s written and History is a problem to be solved by exegesis. Its treasure belongs to the most penetrating reader. That’s why you must go to the library. You must solve the Molè.’
Torbidda was perplexed: a building wasn’t an equation. After a minute went by, the First Apprentice happened to glance around. He was obviously surprised to find Torbidda still standing there and dismissed him with a waved hand. ‘Attend to it.’