Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  He worked in a fever, hardly aware of what was happening around him except when he paused to work his cramping fingers, straighten his stiffening back, and light another cigarette. The printer’s devils were firing up the little stove that drove the rocking springs of the printing-press. Bands of interleaved alloys creaked and groaned, stretching away from the heat to work the screw mechanism that wound the big barrel-spring, contracting back down to be heated again. The elder journalist was stooped over a tray of type, measuring lines with a marked stick. Aretino was quietly talking with Niccolò Machiavegli, puffing at a cigar which he also used to punctuate his sentences.

  Their talk fell through Pasquale’s fever. Niccolò was expounding a theory of power, suggesting that every society, to be stable, must in its construction emulate the Egyptian pyramid, broad at base and crowned at apex. Italy’s troubles, Niccolò explained, were caused by diffusion of power, so that the ruthless could exploit the masses. States ruled by absolute decree could always conquer those ruled by democracy, for decision by one strong man was always more rapid and more flexible than decision by committee, where what emerges is not the best action but compromise. Aretino laughed and said this was all very well, but Italians would always destroy their rulers in the end, for the needs of the family always outweighed the needs of the state. Somehow Pasquale became lost in this talk, and didn’t realize for a few minutes that he had sat back from his work not to rest but because it was finished.

  Aretino wanted a test print at once, and insisted that the block was fitted into the press. One of the boys set the ratchet levers with a practised hand and released the brake on the barrel-spring. With a rattle of leaf-springs and caged ball-bearings, the carrier shot back to grab a leaf of paper as the ink-roller ran over the surface of the plate, ran back to scrape off excess ink as the paper was deposited. The loom of the press fell with a rattle of counterweights, sprang back up.

  The boy nimbly caught up the paper, and there, beneath the broadsheet’s device, between close columns of ornate small type, was the picture Pasquale had made, shiny with wet black ink.

  As Aretino took the broadsheet and held it to the light, the door of the printing-shop was flung open. Everyone turned; the man who had burst in caught the door frame, panting as if at the end of a bitter race. Wisps of smog curled around him.

  ‘Speak up, man,’ Aretino said.

  The man caught his breath. ‘Murder! Murder at the Palazzo Taddei!’

  Someone else said, ‘Fuck. That’s where Raphael is staying.’

  Aretino set down the broadsheet and took his cigar from his mouth. ‘Boys,’ he said soberly, ‘I do believe we have us a story.’

  4

  The Palazzo Taddei was a four-square building with an imposing frontage of blocks of untrimmed golden sandstone. Windowless, it loomed out of the smoggy darkness of the Via de Ginori like a fortress wall. It was eight o’clock, but even at this late hour, when most honest citizens should have been abed, a small crowd was gathered at the Palazzo’s great round gate. Niccolò and Pasquale had to use their elbows and knees to push through to the front.

  Niccolò had a word with the sergeant in command of the unit of city militia which kept a space before the gate, handing over a cigar with a smile. The sergeant shook Niccolò’s hand and spoke into the brass trumpet of a speaking-tube beside the gate. With a sudden arthritic creaking the dozen wooden leaves of the gate began to draw back into their sockets. A ragged opening widened into a circle. One of the upper leaves stuck, like the last tooth in an old man’s jaw, and although a servant appeared and gave a hearty shove to try and force it, Niccolò and Pasquale had to duck under it as the sergeant waved them through.

  Pasquale turned to watch as the gate closed up with a rattle of chained weights that in falling recompressed the spring mechanism, regaining all the energy used to open the gate except that lost through heat or noise. Successful merchants like Taddei were in love with such devices, which signified status in the way that sponsoring an altarpiece or a fresco had once done. There were tall mirrors of beaten silver on either side of the door, and Pasquale looked himself up and down before hurrying to catch up with Niccolò Machiavegli, crossing the marble floor of the sumptuous entrance hall and following the journalist through an open door into the loggia that ran around the four sides of the central garden.

  The Palazzo was built in the new fashion of architecture inspired by the excavations of the Roman city of Herculaneum. Acetylene lamps on slim iron columns cast a yellow pallor that made the grass and clipped bushes of the formal garden look like their own black shadows. A scaly stone fish gushed water into the central pool, and a mechanical songbird twittered in a gilded cage, turning its head back and forth, back and forth. Its eyes were pinpoint rubies, its feathers fretted gold-leaf. A signal-tower rose above the garden; it was built into a corner of the loggia, the curve of its smooth stone wall gleaming white against the night sky. Niccolò looked up at the signal-tower for a long minute. Pasquale looked too, but saw nothing except a lighted window round as a ship’s porthole, and the green and red lamps burning at the end of the long T-shaped signal-vane.

  Niccolò hailed another civil guard, this one with an officer’s short red cape. ‘The captain of the precinct station,’ he told Pasquale after he had had a brief word with the man. ‘You would expect no less than that in a case like this. He tells me it happened up in the signal-tower. He will let us through, as long as Signor Taddei is agreeable.’

  Pasquale said, feeling a kind of sick eagerness, ‘Was it Raphael that was killed?’

  Niccolò took a pull from a leather flask, screwing the cap back on with deliberation. He was quite drunk, Pasquale realized: he had been drinking steadily ever since they had entered the office of the broadsheet. As a man plodding through a blizzard will choose his steps with care, so Niccolò said, ‘Oh no, of course it wasn’t Raphael. No, it was one of his followers. A fellow by the name of Giulio Romano.’

  Pasquale remembered the man who had challenged Salai. He said, ‘He defended Raphael against the Great Engineer’s catamite, as I showed in my picture. If someone wanted to strike terror and despair into the heart of Raphael, then killing his best assistant could not do it better. And if Salai did this, then he would choose the man who stood against him.’

  ‘We do not know that it was Salai who did this,’ Niccolò said, smiling.

  ‘Call over the captain,’ Pasquale said, ‘I’ll tell him what I think, at least.’

  Niccolò took Pasquale’s elbow and said quietly, ‘You are here to record the scene, if we can but see it. In a case like this…it would be better if you kept your own counsel.’

  ‘I don’t want to accuse anyone,’ Pasquale said with a sudden indignation that surprised himself, ‘but I want the truth of what I saw to be known.’

  Niccolò said, ‘Signor Aretino has given me leave to rewrite my account: all of the front page is mine. Ours, I should say. Do you realize what that means, young Pasquale? Well no, I don’t suppose you do. But believe me that it is important, and it is important that enough of what I write is new, not retold common knowledge. I have had enough of that. If you tell me your story first, and to the guard the next day, where’s the harm? The man is dead, and if Salai killed him it is not very likely that he will flee, for that would confirm his guilt. And if he does flee the city militia will capture him in short order. Listen, Pasquale. You are in deep water here, and do not know it. I admire your desire for justice, but think: would you die if it would save a thousand men?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘If they were your fellow citizens?’

  ‘Well, perhaps.’

  ‘Ah. And if your death would save only five hundred? Or seventy? Or ten? And if you would still lay down your life for ten men, what good would it do you when you were cold and dead and they were in the tavern drinking to you, and eating arista? What good is laying down your life for the common good when you can’t enjoy the taste of pork and rosemary—or anything?
’

  ‘Perhaps my children will enjoy it.’

  ‘A good answer, but I don’t think you have any children.’

  ‘Well, none that I know about.’

  Niccolò laughed. ‘And if you die now, you never will, and so you will be killing them. Listen: if you want to lay down your life for others, then confront your enemy in mortal combat and let him kill you, for then at least you will have saved one life: his.’

  ‘I have no enemies.’

  ‘You think not? Perhaps you don’t. Then why lay down your life?’

  Pasquale said, although he knew how weak it sounded, ‘I only want to tell the truth.’

  Niccolò laughed again. ‘If you are to indulge in the vice of honesty, I hope you can afford its price.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the truth?’ Pasquale thought that Niccolò’s love of argument would make him steal another’s soul simply for the joy of it.

  ‘Your truth is very different from that which the killer of Giulio Romano believes. You see it as murder; he as survival, perhaps, or a task which will put bread in the mouths of his children.’ Niccolò uncapped his flask and took another drink, shuddering with exaggerated satisfaction. ‘Ah. I’m an old man, and the night air settles easily in my bones.’

  ‘It seems so matter-of-fact. Like accounts. Bloodless.’

  Niccolò made a vague gesture, and dropped the cap of his flask. As he stooped awkwardly, he said, ‘Morality is not a guessing-game. There are laws, checks and balances. Where is that cap?’

  Pasquale picked it up for Niccolò, who took a while screwing it back on. ‘I’m tired,’ Niccolò said, as if the matter were over. ‘Now I must talk with Signor Taddei.’

  Pasquale followed the journalist through the formal garden. A stout man in a heavy embroidered robe, a Turkish cap set squarely on his tousled thinning hair, had appeared at the edge of the loggia. This was the master of the Palazzo, the merchant Taddei, who explained calmly that the household had been preparing for bed when a terrible scream had been heard. His servants had rushed about in a panic until someone had noticed a light burning in the signal-tower, and that was where the corpse had been found, although they had to break down the door to reach it: the murderer had locked the door after him.

  Niccolò listened to the merchant without interruption, and now he paused as if in thought before asking if the house had been locked up at that time.

  ‘Of course,’ Taddei said, ‘although it saddens me to say so. These are the times of enlightenment, yet even within the city walls we must protect ourselves from vagabonds and thieves. The Swiss mercenaries who are here to protect us cause more deaths of innocent citizens than the Spanish pox, it sometimes seems.’

  ‘And of course you had your guests to protect.’

  ‘Master Raphael is attempting to calm his followers. If not for him, they would all have rushed incontinently into the night, in pursuit of the murderer.’

  ‘Master Raphael is a sensible man,’ Niccolò said. ‘Has any of the guard looked along the walls of your house? No one could have left by the doors, if they were locked, so perhaps our murderer left by a window. And if so, then there will be marks where he landed, for he would have to jump from one of the upper storeys, there being no windows at ground level.’

  Taddei said, ‘I will ask the captain to order it done, if it has not been done already. But the murderer must have had a key to the signal-tower, for that is always locked at night if I have no messages to send, and expect to receive none. If he had a key to the tower, then he could also have a key to one of the doors to the outside.’

  ‘A good point,’ Niccolò said. ‘Thank you for your time, signor. Is it possible that we might see the infamous scene now?’

  ‘Of course, if the captain will allow it.’

  ‘With your permission. One more thing. Did you send any signals tonight, or receive any?’

  ‘No, none. As I said, the tower was locked. When the murder was discovered, one of my servants went for the militia straight away. Their quarters are at the end of this street.’

  Niccolò considered this for a moment. ‘There may be a simple solution to the puzzle,’ he said at last, ‘but I must see the tower before I can reach any firm conclusion. Come, Pasquale.’

  They walked across the garden to the other side of the loggia, where two or three of the militia, in white waistcoats and red and white particoloured hose, clustered at a door. Niccolò said, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It could be a servant who did it—he may have a key to the tower, and would certainly know where one is kept. If no keys are missing, well, he could have replaced it in the confusion before someone thought to see if it were missing. And a servant would not need to escape. Or it could be one of Raphael’s other assistants, or one of his pupils. But that would not explain why the murder was done where it was, in a high place in a strange house.’

  ‘Bravo, Pasquale! Your thoughts mirror mine.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say any of this to Signor Taddei?’

  ‘It would insult him to imply that one of his servants would kill a guest. When asking questions of a man, you must never slight his honour, even though that means you must come upon the truth by a crooked path. Slight a man’s honour, and he will tell you nothing more. Flatter him, and by and by he will reveal more than he ever intended.’

  One of the militia, a slim boy hardly older than Pasquale, let them through to the wooden stairway that wound widdershins inside the signal-tower. It was so narrow that Pasquale had to follow on Niccolò’s heels. Niccolò stopped halfway up and banged the flimsy rail back and forth, then went on at a quick pace. Near the top he turned to Pasquale and said, ‘Have you ever seen a dead man?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘One killed violently?’

  ‘This past winter I attended the dissection classes at the New University, to learn how a man is put together for my painting. I’ve no fear of tripes.’

  ‘Bravely said. But remember that dead men do not bleed. I fear there will be a lot of blood. And then there is the matter of the bowels, which loosen at the moment of death. You didn’t press your study into summer because of the smell, eh? Do not worry if you grow faint, or even are ill, Pasquale. It is no disgrace.’

  With two militia guards as well as the red-caped captain in the tower’s little wooden cabin, it would have been crowded even if they had not had to keep to the sides, because Giulio Romano’s body was laid on the raised round platform in the centre. Someone had already tracked through the sticky pool of blood around poor Romano’s head, adding footprints to the spatters and streaks that spangled the polished ash planks of the floor. The air was thick with a slaughterhouse reek; it coated Pasquale’s mouth. There was paper everywhere, torn into scraps the largest of which were no bigger than a man’s hand, and broken black glass in a heap by the little round window.

  Despite Niccolò’s warning, Pasquale did not feel faint; rather he was filled with an eager curiosity. He wanted to see what the journalist would do and ask, and besides, he had never before been in a signal-tower. The corpse bore little resemblance to the lively fellow who had stayed Salai’s hand in the church only that morning. Rather, it resembled a badly modelled mannequin dressed in expensive black and curled around itself, remote from the affairs of men. Nothing done to me, it seemed to imply, can be worse than that which was done to me at my death. Furrows had been ripped from the flesh of its face down to the bone of the jaw, and there was a deep ragged wound in its throat, packed with a kind of clotted black jelly.

  The wooden cabin was no bigger than the private cabin of a ship, brightly lit by a hissing acetylene lamp that hung from the apex of the domed roof. The corpse lay on a round platform lifted waist-high above the walkway that ran around it. This little platform was where the signaller would stand, using his spyglass to watch, through the windows let into the domed roof at each compass point, one or another of the local repeater arms, or the big multiple-route complex on top of the Great Tower. D
irectly opposite the door was the counterbalanced arm which operated the tower’s small signal-vane. There was a brass speaking-tube beside it, and a slate washed milky white, and a ball of chalk on a string. One of the small round windows hung open, and through it Pasquale glimpsed lights burning red and green at the top and bottom of the signal-vane.

  Niccolò greeted the captain again, took out a little notepad and a sharp sliver of black lead, and asked if the corpse lay just as it had been found. Pasquale remembered what he was here for, and took paper and chalk from his scrip, although he was not yet ready to start sketching.

  The captain said, in answer to Niccolò’s question, ‘Not at all. It was jammed up against the door; you can see where blood pooled. We had the devil of a job getting in even after the door was unlocked, and then laid him out there so the surgeon could look at him.’

  Niccolò bent to inspect the door. He peered at the lock, then stooped further and ran a finger along the lower edge before standing. ‘He was dead when he was found. That’s what the servant said.’

  The captain was a tall man with a cap of black hair and a neatly trimmed beard around the line of his square jaw; he looked like a Roman centurion. Pasquale had his likeness in a dozen nerveless lines. The captain said, ‘Quite dead. His throat was torn out; there must have been a race between suffocation and blood loss to finish him off, the poor devil.’

  Niccolò paced around the edge of the walkway, circling the cabin once, twice. While the captain and the guards watched the journalist, Pasquale started to sketch the corpse, its huddled arms and legs, the torn throat tipped back, the face set in a remote expression Pasquale had never seen on any living face. His head felt very clear as he worked. He was beginning to understand that death was not simply a loss of vitality, but a profound change. It was something he would never forget, and it made him fear death less. You did not suffer after death. There was nothing left to suffer.