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.
Sofia 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.
Bobbing wildly, leaving the shattered maelstrom behind, the skiff climbed wave after wave, high as hills. While Sofia struggled to take down the sail, Levi bailed furiously. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ He could not believe Ezra’s response to their calamity.
The Ebionite was reading: ‘The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind—’
Levi saw Ezra’s eyes widen as a great waterspout rose from the heaving water. ‘Well, that’s not good.’
The spout danced on the waves like a great arm connecting sky and sea, pulling them together. When the spout came closer to the skiff, Ezra raised his voice: ‘Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?’
The spout retreated.
Isabella felt two arms around her waist, pulling her back. She opened her eye under water and saw the pale hand grabbing her wrist. The air in her lungs escaped in a gasp. Then, feeling darkness edge into her, she steeled herself. She released the rim of the font, grabbed the hand holding hers, pulled it towards her mouth and bit down hard on the thumb.
‘Whooaahahaa!’ Norcino howled and ripped his bleeding hand out of the shit bucket.
Carmella roared with effort, and all at once Isabella’s body came free. They fell on the baptistery floor together. Isabella spat out the shrivelled yellow thumb – like something belonging to a corpse – and lay there, half-drowned in a puddle of blood and water. Carmella reached out and took Isabella’s hand and began singing the Virgin’s song. Isabella, her eyes rolled back in her head, joined in weakly.
‘Look!’ Sofia cried.
The waterspout wobbled wildly, and the base turned a violent red. In seconds the polluting colour had reached the sky. It hit the cloud with the explosive rush and crack of a forest fire. Spears of lighting fell as Heaven purged itself in a bloody monsoon.
Norcino howled and kicked the bucket against the door, mumbling in the forgotten tongue of Babel.
The water shot up from the font in a great pillar and struck the baptistery’s golden roof so hard that the mosaic shattered. Water and gold rained down on the two girls.
And Ezra’s eyes returned to normal. He looked suddenly older. ‘I’m sorry, Sofia. He found us. Wind failed. Pray water does not.’
Like a great flag buckling, the sea’s whole surface writhed under the electrical scourge, and wave after wave struck the boat, coming from all directions.
Sofia screamed as the sea enveloped them.
Water screamed louder.