The envoy read this out. Salai spluttered a cloud of smoke and protested, ‘A trick. Anyone with any training as an artificer can build the device from the model. There’s no need for anything else, no need to pay any other price. No need to trade with that, that creature.’
‘Be still,’ the magician said. His voice rang out in the room, and Pasquale felt his heart pause for a moment, as if obedient to this command.
Niccolò said, with amusement, ‘An interesting problem.’ His eyes were glittering, and he sat forward in his chair, bright and inquisitive as a bird. The chain which linked the iron cuffs of his shackles was coiled in his lap.
‘I delivered all that was requested,’ Salai said. ‘Nothing was said about any papers. In any case, they may not be the old man’s.’
The envoy said, ‘You said that the handwriting was his.’
‘So I was wrong.’
‘You change your mind?’ the envoy said. ‘It is indeed a conveniently malleable thing.’
The magician said, ‘The document was written by a mathematician. Anyone else in Florence would use the Roman system—they use it in accounts,’ he told the envoy, ‘because it cannot be falsified by adding extra signifiers to the end of a number. That’s a measure of how much they trust each other in Florence. But mathematicians use the more sensible Indian system, which is far more flexible. So here.’
The envoy said to Salai, ‘You said nothing about the need for any papers, signor. That is the point here.’
‘Oh, exactly,’ Niccolò Machiavegli said. ‘Right to the heart of the matter. You will trust the Great Engineer, or you must put your faith in the opinion of his catamite.’
Salai made to strike Niccolò, and the red-headed servant stepped forward and caught Salai’s wrist. Salai strove against this grip for a moment before wrenching free and turning away.
The envoy said, ‘Let them go. What need do we have of these two?’
‘Ah,’ the magician said, ‘but I do need the corpse, as an altar, and it is no coincidence that this number has gathered here.’ He was sweating—the air in the room was heavy, as if freighted with a portentous unspoken word.
Pasquale thought of the picture he had rescued from the fire, and felt a chill.
The envoy said, ‘The body must not be returned. That was also the agreement.’
‘And I will keep it,’ the magician said. ‘As soon as the ceremony is done, signor, it shall be destroyed. That is, if it is not taken by the one I shall call. And he will come, this time. The time is right. I can feel it.’
Salai started to laugh, but almost immediately fell silent. Everyone in the room was watching the magician, whose face was possessed by a kind of sick eagerness.
Pasquale said, feeling as if he were treading air—as an angel might feel, for an angel could never touch base earth, ‘All or nothing. Release us without the body, and the rest of the calculations will not be given to you.’
‘I think not,’ the magician said. ‘After all, why should we release you now, with a great matter at hand?’
Pasquale surreptitiously felt the device at his wrist, and was surprised to find that less than half an hour had passed since he had hailed the guard. He’d done that earlier than planned, and there was still almost an hour before the attack would begin. He tried to make himself relax. He had plenty of time to treat with the magician. Even if he rescued only Niccolò, it would be a victory. Raphael was already dead. Nothing worse could happen to him, because the worst had already happened. Not even being used as the altar for a black mass was worse than being dead.
The Spanish envoy said to Salai, ‘If more information is needed, then you can be sure that we will not pay you, signor. Our agreement was for the whole, or nothing.’
Salai said furiously, ‘It will work! I have told you that the model is all you need, no more and no less. This young fool is bluffing, that’s all. Oh, perhaps he is brave. I will give him that. Perhaps he is given to fine motives, even. But for whatever reason, he’s simply trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Kill him and be done with it. Take the papers he has, if you like. What do I care? They are worthless, you have my word on that. And even if they aren’t, why then I will personally guarantee that I will get the rest, even if I have to kill the old man. I swear this.’
‘As for assassination, that would be a new commission,’ the Spanish envoy said. ‘I cannot negotiate with you on that point.’
The magician said, ‘If I wanted the Great Engineer dead, I could send an invisible spirit that would blacken the air of the chamber while he slept, and suffocate him.’
The envoy said with obvious distaste, ‘I’ll not hear of such matters.’
‘You’ll do a good deal more than hear,’ Salai said gloatingly.
The envoy said, very much on his dignity, ‘All I know, signor, is that you promised much, but it appears you may not have delivered all you promised.’
Niccolò said to the envoy, ‘It’s like the angel and the devil and the two doors. Do you know the story?’
The magician said, ‘We all do. Peace.’
The Spanish envoy said, ‘Well, I don’t. If it has a bearing on the matter I should like to hear it.’
Salai threw his hands in the air and turned away.
Niccolò smiled and said, ‘Imagine you are in a room, with two doors leading out, one to death, and one to freedom, and nothing to show which is which. In the room with you are an angel and a devil, and you can ask only one of them a single question. The devil, naturally, is given over to telling only lies, while the angel tells only the truth. Oh, and of course both are invisible, so you will not know which has answered. Now, which one question do you ask to make sure that you will escape with your life?’
The magician said, ‘No more puzzles. The matter is plain. You,’ he said to the envoy, ‘shall take Signor Machiavegli with you, as well as the papers this young artist so kindly carried here. If it is true that they are valuable, then I will act, without commission, as courier for the rest, in return for Signor Machiavegli’s release. If not, then you may dispose of him as you will. In any event, you shall pay us as you agreed, or none shall leave here except those I choose.’
Pasquale said, ‘That changes nothing! You must free my friend, Niccolò Machiavegli, and return the body of Raphael.’
‘But things are changed,’ the magician told him. He was not smiling, but he was amused. He steepled his long fingers together and regarded his nails. ‘What has changed is that you are here, and that you may return freely. Bring the rest of the papers and your friend goes free. If not…’
The envoy said, ‘If you will lend me two men, Signor Giustiniani, then it shall be done as you said. It does not exceed my powers. Although I will say that Admiral Cortés will not be pleased at the delay.’
‘I appreciate that you are a far-sighted man, signor.’
The envoy said, ‘It is foresight that will win us the world. He who holds the key to the future has the power to hold history to ransom.’
Niccolò said cheerfully, ‘I would say that he who holds that key will find himself under siege by those who want it.’
The magician told Niccolò to be silent. ‘As for power,’ he said to the envoy, ‘you will see now how little temporal power matters. I have gathered you all here on this, Saturn’s day, to assist me. To begin with, you must be robed.’
The envoy started forward. ‘I’ll have no part in any devilment!’
The red-headed servant caught him and put an arm around his throat, and put a knife to his eye when he started to struggle. The magician held a candle to the envoy’s face and moved it slowly back and forth, all the while speaking in a low monotonous voice. When the servant released the envoy, Pasquale saw that tears were banked in the man’s wide unblinking eyes, and that he trembled like a young tree in a gale.
‘Does anyone else have an objection?’ the magician said. He turned his level gaze to Pasquale, and then to Niccolò.
‘Steady, Pasquale,’ Nicc
olò said.
‘What does he want of us?’
‘I believe he will call up a spirit, if he can. He has boasted that he will gain much power this night, and I understand now that it is not from the Spanish. Are you frightened?’
‘No spirit,’ the magician said, ‘but an angel. One of the seven archangels, in fact.’
Salai giggled, ‘This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.’
‘Beware,’ the magician said quietly. ‘This is a serious business. I believe you have an interest in angels, painter. Tell me, would you like to see one?’
Pasquale said, as steadily as he could, ‘I do not yet know if my imagination has failed me.’
‘Do you believe angels exist?’
For a moment, Pasquale’s mouth flooded with the bitter-sour taste of the wrinkled leather button of the híkuri which Pelashil had fed him. He said, ‘Oh yes. Yes.’
The magician smiled. ‘And if you would paint one, surely you should not turn from the chance to see one? What other painter could boast as much?’
Pasquale, remembering his broken panel, said, ‘Once I thought of nothing else. But things have changed.’
‘They will change again,’ the magician said. ‘You will obey me, painter, and you, Signor Machiavegli, or I shall be forced to control you too. Do not think I would not do it!’
The red-headed servant released Niccolò from his chain and lifted white linen robes from a chest, and handed out paper hats, of the kind that stonemasons wore to keep dust and chips from their hair. Under his instruction, Pasquale and Niccolò pulled them on. The servant dressed the Spanish envoy, then closed the shackles around Niccolò’s wrists again. Pasquale obeyed with a heartsick eagerness. He seemed to be split into two parts. One part wished that he might see an angel; the other knew that this was dark, dark business, and that his very soul was in peril. It was one thing to imagine the face of an angel, quite another to be on the threshold of gazing into that face.
‘Courage, Pasquale,’ Niccolò said.
Pasquale whispered, ‘Can he really call upon an angel?’
‘He believes it. But if men such as he have powers such as they claim, why are they not ruling the world?’
‘How do we know that they are not?’
‘In secret, you mean.’ Niccolò considered this for a moment. ‘No prince can rule in secret, for even with cabbalistic powers he must at some stage manifest his will so that it may be carried out. No, even I do not believe such a secret conspiracy could exist.’
‘It’s good to talk with you again, Niccolò.’
‘I’m sorry I can bring no comfort. I fear for both of us, Pasquale.’
‘No more than I,’ Pasquale said, thinking of the devices that Cardano commanded. He did not trust Cardano.
The magician girdled a long broad-bladed sword around his waist and took off his black cap, revealing that he was tonsured like a monk. ‘Now we begin,’ he said. ‘No one is to speak unless I tell him, not even you, Signor Machiavegli, nor will any of you move from his station.’
He led them into the adjoining room. Its marble floor was marked with a huge design. It was drawn in red chalk. A five-pointed star was framed inside a circle, with a second circle drawn outside the first. Lesser circles were drawn inside the five triangles of the star, and in its centre was a square of red cloth a yard on each side, with an ordinary ironwork brazier standing at one corner. In the margin between the circles strange symbols, as if of some hermetic mathematics, were carefully drawn. Pasquale recognized Roman lettering mixed up with Greek and Hebrew characters, but there was not a word or a name he knew, except for the astrological sign for Saturn at the top or north of the five-pointed star. At each point of the star burned a single fat candle of white beeswax half the height of a man. More candles stood at each corner of a kind of altar which stood in a lesser circle to the north-east of the main diagram. On the altar—
Pasquale gasped. He could not help it. Laid on the altar was the naked dead body of Raphael. His skin had been washed and shaved and was covered in red and yellow writing drawn with a kind of grease-paint. His hands were crossed on his hairless chest, and his blue-nailed fingers were wrapped around an inverted cross. A crucible sat in his groin.
The magician looked at Pasquale and with an ironic smile touched a finger to his lips, then held up the little leather pouch that hung around his neck, muttered a few words, and kissed it. It was an evil moment.
The close rich scent of the candles in the shuttered room was dizzying. The red-headed servant showed each man where to stand: Pasquale and Niccolò in the circles in the eastern and western arms of the five-pointed star, Salai and the somnolent Spanish envoy in the two southern arms. The servant handed a flask of brandy to Pasquale, and another of camphor to Niccolò, and told them that when instructed they were to shake as much liquid as a man’s cupped palm might hold on to the brazier.
Meanwhile, the magician had folded up the red cloth in the centre of the diagram, revealing a triangle drawn in the same red chalk as the rest, and bordered with ivy. He draped the folded cloth over his left shoulder and plunged his sword into the charcoal heaped in the brazier. It kindled with a muted crackle and immediately sent up a dense pungent white smoke.
The servant took up his position in the circle at the top of the diagram, and the magician used the tip of his sword to score the flagstones and close up the diagram.
‘No one is to move,’ he repeated, and crossed back to stand by the brazier.
The room was slowly filling with smoke. It was at once sweet and acrid, and as dense as an artificer’s smog. Pasquale felt a curious light-headedness. His fingers and toes tingled. At the magician’s command, he shook brandy on to the coals of the brazier, and Niccolò added camphor. The servant set down a crucible, and blue flames licked up inside it.
The magician intoned, in Latin, ‘Hear me, Uriel! From this valley of misery and the misery of this valley, from this realm of darkness and the darkness of this realm, to the Holy Mount Sion and the heavenly tabernacles, I conjure you by the authority of God the Father Almighty, by the virtue of Heaven and of the stars, by that of the elements, by that of the stones and herbs, and in like manner by the virtue of snowstorms, thunder and winds, that you perform the things requested of you in the perfection of which you move, the whole without trickery or falsehood or deception, by the command of God, Creator of Angels and Emperor of the Ages!
‘In the name of Emmanuel, in the name of Tetragrammaton Jehovah, in the name of Adonai, King of Kings, demonstrate to me your terrible power and give to me of your immeasurable largesse. To this, I dedicate my altar.’
The magician kissed his sword and plunged its tip into the crucible at the feet of his servant. At once, blue flames licked up its length. Holding it in front of him, the magician crossed the circle and touched the tip of the burning sword to the crucible set upon the groin of Raphael’s corpse. Sparks and smoke sputtered up, and continued to fly upward as the magician carefully paced backwards to his triangle.
The smoke was now so thick that Pasquale could hardly see the others, except as featureless shadows looming through a general whiteness. The sparks which flew up from Raphael’s corpse seemed to sketch fleeting faces, some near, some far. They were wistful and stern, gay and grave. Pasquale was so drowsy with fear and with the effects of the smoke that the magician had to speak twice before he remembered to cast brandy on the glowing coals of the brazier.
The magician set his naked sword, which no longer burned, across the toes of his slippers. ‘I command and adjure thee,’ he intoned as solemnly as a priest at mass, ‘Uriel, great minister, by the power of the pact I have sealed with thee, and by the power of the armies that thou dost command, to fulfil my work. I call on thee, Pamersiel, Anoyr, Madrisel, Ebrasothean, Abrulges, Itrasbiel, Nadres, Ormenu, Itules, Rablon, Hamorphiel, you who command the twelve angels of the twelve tribes which govern kings and governments, from the fire through the thirty abidings to the ninety-one parts o
f the Earth, arise, arise, arise!’
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the entire villa shivered under three quick, heavy blows. The air in the room seemed to compress as if great wings were beating it, and the flame of the candle burning in front of Pasquale shivered and then flared up. White smoke writhed before him, as if trying to take shape. For a moment a wild expectation lived in him, as bright as the candle-flame. Then, behind the heavy drapes, glass fell out of the tall windows with a ringing sound. A great wind filled the room and all the candles went out.
12
Pasquale knew at once that no angel had tried to manifest itself. He had been betrayed: Cardano had started the attack earlier than agreed. At any moment Pasquale expected to hear the sound of more missiles. There had been six of them, carried in straw-insulated cradles on the backs of the men, already heated so that the water inside had turned to steam, vigorously pressing for an exit. All that was needed to launch them was to open a valve.
‘Stand fast,’ the magician shouted, but Salai was already at the curtains, peering around one edge. ‘It would seem that someone has set fire to your house,’ he said.
The servant came back, carefully closing the door behind him. Pasquale had not even seen him leave. Plaster-dust calcined his bush of red hair. ‘Rockets,’ he reported, ‘although there’s no sign of the launch-frames, and no one saw their fires. The men are panicking. I should see to them.’
And he was gone again.
Standing at the centre of his ruined ceremony, the magician brushed lime-dust from his black robe and looked at Pasquale with a grave calm. The big candles flickered around him, throwing his shadow across the far wall; the brazier’s smoke poured around his feet, a spreading sea roiled by the air that blew in through the broken windows. The crucible set in the groin of Raphael’s body still burned and sent up sparks, making a small but distinct crackling sound. The envoy was blinking hard, staring at his hands as he flexed his fingers.
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