CHAPTER 48
Though it was already outmoded, Pedro studied the famous triple wall out of professional interest.
‘It impressed me once,’ Sofia said as they rode to the gates.
‘There’s no security in fortifications any more,’ said Pedro with a sigh. The Ariminumese clearly had no experience of the efficiency of Concord’s sappers.
‘Think there’ll be anyone to welcome us?’
‘Doubt it,’ Levi said as he dismounted. ‘You remember last time.’
When they announced themselves, a tiny bell rang, and was echoed directly by chiming bells from the mist-shrouded city beyond. The gates lifted to reveal a guard of honour, with a middle-aged man waiting at the end. Levi didn’t recognise him, or the courtiers hovering around. ‘Must have had a change of management,’ he muttered.
The man was plump and hairless, and wore a turban like an ancient Radinate king. As they ducked under the portcullis, he smiled. ‘Welcome, friends!’
‘Well, this is a good sign,’ Pedro whispered.
‘Or bad,’ said Levi. ‘They must be really desperate.’
The smiling fellow who introduced himself as the Procurator of Saint Barabasso’s Basilica was full of old-fashioned courtesy to Sofia, who had agreed to Levi’s request that she resume her title for the trip, but when Levi introduced the procurator to Pedro, he took a reverent step back. ‘You’re the one who blocked Concord’s wave?’
‘Well, not on my own—’
The procurator waved away his protestations. ‘A Rasenneisi engineer: this is a sensation!’
The flattery was designed to put them at ease, but Pedro wasn’t fooled; every Etrurian knew that Ariminum had two faces: the newly acquired mask she presented to the land, and her true face, that looked always and hungrily to the Middle Sea.
Sofia had glimpsed a few of the famous canals on her previous visit, but she had had no leisure to pay them much attention. She was therefore both surprised and concerned when the procurator led their party down a side-alley to a dock where a large gondola was waiting in the still water. Pedro had no reservations and bounded in first. Sofia exchanged a glance with Levi and followed.
The gondolier, a silent Tyrolean slave with jaundiced skin, propelled them though a dark maze of canals, over which old tenement houses leaned confrontationally. Often the only thing holding them apart was a small humped bridge, though many of the bridges were dead-ends hanging pointlessly in space like spontaneous eruptions of masonry. Ariminum was a city raised from the waves, and everywhere Sofia looked, seaweed and barnacles knotted the church spires and fish flopped breathlessly on canal banks. Her Rasenneisi sense of direction was based on a topside vantage; after a few turns in this foggy netherworld she was quite lost. At least she now understood why the streets on her last visit had always been empty, except for a few bony dogs: the streets were for foreigners.
Here was Rasenna’s dark twin, a city connected by water. There were paths and piazzas like other towns, but here they flowed. The ‘streets’ were not uniformly deep: boats glided over one part; over another, people scurried across, getting soaked to their shins. A guideless foreigner would never survive this city. If he didn’t drown, the ubiquitous griffins would surely have him – they peeked out under bridges, loomed from rooftops and snarled from doorknobs, rendered in carved stone, cast bronze and beaten metal and embroidered on flags and crests.
The gondola escaped the pressing alleys at last and turned into a wide canal crossed by several bridges, each decorated distinctly – austere Etruscan, geometric Oltremarine, severe Concordian – although Pedro noticed that they all leapt the canal with an identical apogee arch. The bridges were laden with people, and the torches they carried danced with their reflections in the still bright evening.
‘You didn’t go to this trouble for us?’
The procurator shifted uncomfortably. ‘Oh, ah—’
‘They’re not well-wishers, Levi,’ Sofia said, ‘they’re fighters.’
‘I’m afraid the lovely Contessa is correct,’ the procurator said, still a little embarrassed. ‘This congregation is not in your honour – your visit, alas, has coincided with a rather violent rash of battaglia di pugni. But it should not cause any problems to you or any of the delegates, if you avoid certain neighbourhoods—’
He saw Levi’s scowl and quickly clarified, ‘Not that the State approves, you understand. We try to keep the peace between the Guilds; but every couple of years the arsenalotti and the merchants – that is, those who build ships and those who sail them – require another forum to thrash out their differences. Afterwards the map of ownership is redrawn, each ward gains a few new blocks here and loses a few there.’ They passed under the first bridge and the procurator looked up and said with condescending admiration, ‘Look at them. They fight for each inch with such passion.’
A man with a violently scarlet neckerchief fell, but was caught by another man in a scarlet chemise. The pair were promptly attacked by several men dressed in chequered grey.
‘What caused this outbreak?’ Pedro asked.
‘That question, dear boy, only a theologian could answer. I will say that the lower orders feel more freedom to express themselves when the government’s unpopular. But in truth, the Small People are like Stromboli, there’s no pattern to their eruption – not a night goes by without an altercation – a drunken first mate and arsenalotti dispute over money, women, what have you – but what makes a brawl turn into a city-wide tumult is beyond the ken of even the Consilium Sapientium.’
‘Homesick?’ Levi asked Sofia. She punched him in the arm, and asked the procurator who typically won.
‘They look evenly matched in terms of manpower,’ said Pedro.
‘Each party grows with our commercial shipping and navy respectively – and both are very bloated, I’m happy to report. I don’t presume to be a judge of fighters besides Rasenneisi, but I’m told the arsenalotti are tougher.’
‘The ones in grey?’
‘Just so, Contessa. There hadn’t been a battaglia since I was very young. But we had one immediately after news arrived that the Hawk’s Company had saved Rasenna—’
Levi looked coyly at Sofia, and she punched him again.
‘Well, everyone hates to bet on a loser, don’t they? The Doge wasn’t very popular. And now everyone’s out of sorts again – perhaps it’s this business in Dalmatia, or maybe revolt’s in the air – a wicked pollen, floating all over Europa and sowing conflagration where it alights. Watch out!’
Another body tumbled from the bridge and the splash was followed by a great cheer. The victim’s fellow Guildsmen efficiently fished him out with long gondolier oars.
‘Why do you allow it?’ Levi asked.
Sofia smiled at his gravity. He was accustomed to thinking as a podesta now.
The procurator made an anxious face. ‘We Ariminumese are conservative by nature. We respect the Guilds’ ancient privileges – although this one is relatively new, admittedly. It’s only been in existence a few centuries. Still, tradition is tradition.’
‘You mean it’s preferable they exhaust each other, rather than join forces against you.’
The procurator’s laugh was high and innocent. ‘You have it exactly, Contessa! Plain speaking’s a foreign tongue here, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to practise with a Rasenneisi. It is just so: if the Small People periodically require a riot, as long as it doesn’t interrupt the good order of the State or – Madonna forbid – commerce, then so be it. We think of the State as a ship: you can’t always expect peaceful waters. If our canals were as lethal as your rivers, we’d have to find another way to distract them. No reform is possible, so by necessity we make distraction a fine art. The book was closed centuries ago and now we must play our hand to the end.’ He pointed to a silver plaque on the bridge they were passing under. ‘My father was a boy when that bridge collapsed in the course of a particularly boisterous battaglia. That motto was inscribed upon it when it was rebuilt.’
Sofia read, ‘Cam’era, dov’era.’
‘That’s how we’d rebuild Ariminum if she burned tomorrow. As it was, where it was. We are condemned and committed to this place and we cannot escape it.’ He sighed romantically. ‘And nor would we wish to.’
‘At least you know you’re playing with fire,’ said Levi. Sofia knew his thoughts were back in Rasenna.
‘The battaglie are rather messy,’ he admitted, ‘but when tension builds up, better out than in – look at what’s happening in Concord. Everything’s turned upside down just because they are unaccustomed to choppy waters. It defies understanding, does it not, Maestro Vanzetti? Engineers of all people should appreciate the value of a release valve. When one runs into bad luck, someone must pay for it.’ He shook his head philosophically, then cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of dues, this misunderstanding we had with the Hawk’s Company during our last negotiations—’
‘There was no misunderstanding,’ said Levi calmly. He and Sofia had both reconciled themselves to dealing with the man who’d betrayed John Acuto.
‘I admit the Doge made a terrible mistake, and naturally, you want revenge. But I hope you realise why handing over our leader would be unthinkable! The Doge is Ariminum—’
Sofia and Levi were tight-lipped.
‘—oh my, listen to the bells! We must hurry – I do hope they don’t start without us.’