CHAPTER 28
‘Bombelli, you scoundrel! Catch!’
Fabbro deftly caught the purse. ‘Well?’ the street seller said.
‘I’m hungover!’ Fabbro protested.
‘Don’t give me that. No amount of drink can make Fabbro Bombelli miscount.’
He bounced it in his hands. ‘Thirty-two?’
‘Bravo! You’ve still got it.’
Fabbro grinned proudly and threw back the purse. ‘Years over a scale, my friend.’
‘So, where’ve you been?’
‘Book keeping keeps me locked away. Speaking of which, I should get back …’
They chatted for a while before Fabbro left, greeting other merchants as he went. The market never failed to lift a black mood; he missed its gladiatorial badinage. By the time he reached Piazza Stella he was jolly again. He stopped beside the third lion and looked up at the empty plinth. Instead of heading back to his palazzo, he abruptly turned right and walked along the Irenicon’s northern bank.
The northeast of town was traditionally the tanners’ quarter. It was under-populated even before the Wave struck; now it was a jumble of squat houses and sudden towers, apparently built overnight with bricks of coal. A dark cloud hung low over these structures and the river was gauzed in smoke. Fabbro covered his mouth using his hood as a scarf, engineer-fashion. Other fire-working trades had been drawn to the area to the point where it had become a kingdom itself; its cantankerous denizens called it Tartarus. Rasenna once had small need of blacksmiths – masons for towers and weavers for flags answered all the requirements of defence and offence – but of late it had become a pilgrimage destination for metal-workers, just as Concord had twenty years ago. Their ranks swelled further when the Hawk’s Company arrived; armourers and sword-makers follow armies as devotedly as whores. These noisy and noisome trades had been herded together so the filth they produced didn’t pass through town. The last few empty spaces were filled with the factories of the engineers.
From a distance the factories were a sight to make Rasenneisi blood run cold; closer up, it was clear that the towers were only chimneys billowing steam. Driving northern winds carried the steam and smoke of the tanners and smiths over the city walls, where the whir of mills and the clatter and putter of paddle-powered contraptions competed with the roaring Irenicon. Before the river was permitted to leave town, it was filtered through a mechanical gauntlet – several rows of variously sized paddles, coupled with belts and chains. To Fabbro this combined assault on the senses was beautiful: Rasenna was growing, and every inch was a victory for common sense, a defeat for the turbulent. He entered the foundry yard whistling.
Jacques’ was covered in the same black grime as all the other foundries, but everyone knew his was the best in Tartarus. Normally it was full of assistants toiling in its inconsistent gloom, illumined by the ash-bitter glare of cinders and heavy, heaving bellows burping the slumbering ovens awake. Today it was empty, but for a small boy leaning at a wooden desk and tapping a set of greaves with a chasing hammer. Standing silently behind the boy was Jacques. The old waxy sheets on the windows were pulled back to let the morning light visit the workshop’s hidden nooks. Red earth was swept up, tongs and chisels stored away. The forge-maestro’s work today required only his hands and the world’s silence.
Despite its thickness, Jacques’ neck was mobile, and he turned and tilted his head as he examined the boy’s work. Fabbro had never seen Jacques without his long-eared leather cap; he assumed it was a protective guard against sparks. His permanent squint was intimidating until one got used to it – the sparks were the reason for that, too.
‘Jacques! Congratulations again on your victory. Yuri took it well.’ As they shook hands Fabbro noticed Jacques’ hands again: they were crossed and crossed again with searing scars. They must have been from when he was a journeyman – all Tartarus knew that Jacques the Hammer could handle metal until it glowed.
Jacques ignored the compliment. ‘Come,’ he said, and Fabbro followed, wondering whose son the boy was. Strange to think he knew so little about someone he’d trusted with so much money. When Jacques appeared outside Rasenna’s walls he’d asked who was king here, and when told that Rasenna had none, he had asked for sanctuary, volunteering only that he was a skilled artisan. Of course, he was a Frank, but did he hail from the Isles or the mainland? His Etrurian might be only functional, but his obvious talent soon won respect. That and his physical stature quickly made him a leader, of sorts: Gonfaloniere of Tartarus, if such a thing could be imagined. Jacques had no ambitions, at least as far as Fabbro knew, other than to be left alone. He liked the big fellow, but theirs was a fifty-per-cent friendship, that awkward bluff relationship that exists between contractor and contracted. When business was done, he would know the truth.
Jacques led him to a freshly swept corner bathed in the strong northern light. On a low turntable stood a precariously leaning pillar. It was taller than a man, taller even than Jacques, and covered with a sheet layered with wax cracked like distressed stone.
‘Who hunted your assistants away?’
‘Later, when I’m pouring metal, I’ll need men,’ said Jacques, looking at Fabbro penetratingly with dark pupils that shone through the thick slivers of flesh.
‘Nonsense,’ Fabbro chuckled. ‘A good salesman knows the value of suspense. I’ll bet every smith in Tartarus is dying to see what’s under that sheet.’
‘Craftsmen are interested in craft.’
Fabbro smiled knowingly. ‘As you like it, Maestro. Well, let me look at it.’
Jacques grunted and removed the sheet. He did it slowly, revealing first the smooth earthen clay fashioned into a paw, then a curling tail, a slender torso and finally the snarling jaw. The wooden armature that supported it broke the clay’s surface unceremoniously at various points – the neck, the back – but it was easy to ignore this and imagine the final bronze in place on the empty plinth.
Fabbro was gleeful. ‘This fellow will put his brothers to shame!’
‘They are decent sculptures,’ Jacques demurred, ‘in the old style.’
Fabbro laughed indulgently. ‘Please Maestro, no false modesty. You know very well this will tear flags all over Rasenna.’
Jacques shrugged and gently spun the massive turntable. He doused the lion with a water dispenser as it rotated. Fabbro was right: theatricality was part of Jacques’ art. Of course keeping the clay from drying was necessary, but a wet surface revealed the subtle modelling nearly as well as would the final polished patina.
Fabbro stalked around, pulling his beard and exclaiming, ‘Bravo!’ in a reverent whisper.
While the other three lions coldly gazed forward, this one would glower over passers-by. Its head twisted violently away from a body that trembled with tension and energy. Its scowl pulled ripples of flesh through its muzzle. Fabbro might be no connoisseur but he knew it was not merely the naturalistic rendering but the variety of description that made the sweet new style such a break with the past. He marvelled that the old artisans had been blind to these subtleties of contrast: the beast’s tense, compacted haunches and bristles of its mane were formed so the former appeared tough as stone, the latter soft as wool.
‘Madonna, it’s a wonder!’ he exclaimed at last. ‘So what’s next?’
‘Next I make a shell in which the caterpillar may sleep a while. After the clay dries I’ll crack the mould apart and, into the space where the lion isn’t, pour wax. But the wax is only a semblance of the butterfly; another little death is necessary. I correct the wax’s imperfections and, by a similar process, make a coffin more substantial. Pouring the metal’s the most difficult part.’
Fabbro had never heard Jacques talk so freely. ‘Tell me when you’re doing it. I’ll have Sister Isabella say a mass.’
Jacques indicated the boy hammering away. ‘Even if it goes perfectly, it will need a lot of chasing, sanding and polishing.’ He looked down levelly. ‘Can you pay the balance?’
Fabbro almost jumped. ‘You can’t have got through the first third!’
‘As you say, my studio is empty. I turn down work to give this commission my full attention.’
‘If it were my money, Jacques, there’d be no problem. I spend; ask anyone, that’s what I do. This commission, however, comes officially from the Wool Guild, a close-fisted bunch who wouldn’t thank me if I gave their gold away with nothing to show for it. These men, they know nothing of art. They’re used to dealing with low sorts – dyers, carders, pullers – and they assume all craftsmen are alike.’
‘We had Guilds in Francia too. They got rich selling craftsmen’s work and taxed them for the privilege.’
‘My dear fellow, you almost sound like a communard.’
‘Bombelli, don’t complicate things. You’re Prior of the Wool Guild.’
‘That I am.’ Fabbro laughed. To cover his embarrassment he looked up at the lion critically. ‘I think I’d prefer if he didn’t look quite so fearsome. Did I ask for that expression? No, I don’t think I did. Who wants to be snarled at on their way to work? We’ve wives for that. Why not give him a nice smile, regal, pacific? What say you?’
Jacques was watching the boy hammering. He turned slowly back. ‘I say you paid me fair for my work, but there’s not enough gold in Ariminum to tell me how to do it.’
‘My apologies,’ Fabbro said quickly, ‘of course you know what you’re doing. I didn’t mean to imply – the last two-thirds? Yes, I’m sure I can persuade them.’
‘Good.’
There was an awkwardness now that Fabbro sought to dispel. ‘What will become of the clay after casting?’
‘When I break the first mould, it’s destroyed.’
‘Seems a waste,’ he tutted.
Jacques inclined his head to one side and then the other, weighing the notion. ‘Something must die for another to live. Destruction’s easy as criticism.’ And before Fabbro’s eyes, he gouged a great handful of the clay from the lion’s belly. ‘See? The hard part’s the creation.’
He deftly filled the hole with new clay and pressed his palm flat while kneading with his thumb. In a few moments it was as good as new. ‘But even that’s easy if you destroy the right thing.’
‘Quite,’ said Fabbro, the implication plain. He bowed. ‘You’ll get the rest today. Bon lavoro!’ He walked home quickly, eager now to escape the din of Tartarus. The grind of hammers on anvils, the gush and wail of fire, the howl of metal being tortured into uncongenial shapes was an infernal counterpart to the pure note of the baptistery bells nearby.
Isabella poured the water and droned until the cares of the day passed away, as Sofia had taught her. She dived through fire, through ice, into the depths. Darkness came for her and she did—
Nothing. She did not swim nor fight nor even scream as the leather slickness enveloped her. Its dead embrace was worse than drowning. She swallowed fear and it was bitter. In the Darkness a blood-caked figure wearing a golden shroud waved its broken limbs. ‘Come here, amore,’ it mumbled through teeth smashed to slivers.
Then, at the moment the Darkness became total, a voice pure as crystal rang out.
Be not afraid.
These were not vague words of comfort but a command. The fear Isabella felt so overwhelmingly a moment ago was gone and into the vacuum rushed strength. She shrugged off the tentacles with ease and the Dark Ancient shivered a retreat as dawn came plunging from a distant height. The light, pure white to begin, grew brighter yet, though it was nothing to the purity of the voice.
Isabella returned with a gasp to find everything in the chapel exactly as before.
Except the water. As soon as she noticed it, she felt its weight. The water had floated free of the glass and hung in swollen drops conjoining and parting in the light’s myriad colours. She screamed with effort and the drops fell.
When she had recovered, she limped to the baptistery and studied the murals there, especially focusing on the Massacre of the Innocents – the weeping mothers, the tiny limbs washing through the street on a river of blood. The Virgin had been meek, obedient and forgiving, until the Darkness took Her child – then She sought the consolation of revenge. Perhaps that’s why Rasenna had such special devotion to Her.
The mystery now was unravelled: why Lucia and the Reverend Mother had gone so calmly to their deaths; why all three Apprentices had descended on Rasenna during the siege. They all knew something that Sofia herself had only recently realised, the secret to which Isabella now was also privy: Sofia was chosen to be the Lord’s Handmaid. The uncharacteristic fear Isabella had sensed in Sofia could mean only one thing: she had accepted the terrible proposition.