by Mary Gentle
She beckoned him a step forward. Conrad staggered, made it—and was looking down a shallow curve of hill, at the sails of the Apollon in the harbour.
We’ve covered more ground than I thought.
Surprisingly close to Pozzuoli itself, he could see roofless houses, and roads full of rocks, under the black daytime sky scrawled across with lightning-bolts.
Between them and the port, a lava stream cut a wide red channel in the earth.
Conrad blinked the slow-moving scarlet brilliance out of his vision. It took him a moment to realise the extent of the flow.
We’re cut off from the sea.
From the Apollon.
Tullio reached up, moving by instinct as Conrad did. He felt the older man’s strong grip help him slide Roberto Capiraso down on the ash-covered grass.
A figure plodding through the ash-snow became Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily, half a dozen aides and officers behind him.
“We’re already cut off from the coast, down there.”
He gestured south, over the rough scrub and rock, to the sea. Seeming to take Conrad as the authority for the San Carlo group, Ferdinand added:
“I’ve sent men to time both streams. The one behind us, and this one, ahead.”
Conrad turned his head stiffly, muscles cramping.
He had not even noticed the unobtrusive line of steam and sparks crossing the Burning Fields to their rear, he realised. The lava stream behind them was surprisingly undramatic. A smudge of black above the tufts of grass and scrub, a shimmer of air where heat sent the ash swirling… it might have been nothing.
The wind shifted. Conrad caught the hiss of steam, and the sparks of the lava flow behind; the stink of sulphur more virulent than at Solfatara or Monte Nuovo.
“The lava flow is wide, but I think shallow.” Ferdinand frowned. “But that hardly helps us! We can’t cross it.”
“How fast is it moving?”
Ferdinand gave a shrug that attempted to be careless. “Walking pace. Or a little faster.”
He’s terrified, Conrad realised. His own heart thumped.
Ferdinand is terrified we’re going to be caught between that flow behind us and the lava in front.
“Alvarez’s scouts say we’re surrounded,” Ferdinand admitted. “…No one expected the flows to start moving at different rates.”
Frantic panic churned in Conrad’s stomach. He pushed it out of his awareness, knowing it to be only the body’s animal desire to survive.
Towards Pozzuoli, the lava looked no wider than a city street. The heat-rippling air above, and the charcoal where it touched anything but earth, made it obvious no man could survive it.
He elbowed his way to the front of the group of aides, where the King had the best view of what was before them.
Raw black earth.
A black surface with vermilion underneath.
And then—only a few yards in front of them, now—liquid orange-red lava slid down towards the harbour of Pozzuoli at the pace of a walking horse.
“My men have rockets and maroons, to send up as signals for the Apollon.”
Ferdinand looked back, letting his gaze linger on the thundering earth from the throat of the volcano, and the lightnings that continually sparked up and down the six mile high plume of cloud.
“If we get to the harbour, we’ll still be extremely lucky if we’re seen.”
More King’s riflemen came back from all directions. Sent out as scouts, Conrad thought. He watched Ferdinand’s face as they reported in.
Frustration burned acid-harsh in his belly. No, no way out. We’re surrounded.
No way off the Burning Fields. The Campi Ardenti will have us in the end. Ahead, the stream of molten rock looks to be twenty-five, thirty-five yards wide… And anything we could bridge it with, will burn.
“This is my fault,” Conrad said aloud.
Ferdinand gave him a sharp amazed stare. “Conrad, I’m aware you’re over-responsible, but—”
Conrad rubbed both grimy hands over his face, as if the grit and stink of sulphur might wipe out the heathland in front of his eyes. It was still there when he stopped. He blinked furiously at floating ash, and watched as the wind shifted again, long plumes of smoke and gas obscuring all trace of Pozzuoli.
Ahead, lava flowed in visible torrents, coils of black soot floating on the orange surface and marking the currents in the molten basalt. It felt as if a giant held him up to a furnace door, face forced unrelentingly forward. His skin dried. He felt it pull tight over his cheekbones and nose.
He didn’t turn away from the flow, aware of Ferdinand at his side.
“I asked for this. You’ll remember, sir. Sticky lava blocks things up, and then unblocks itself in eruptions. With sticky lava, the whole caldera of the Burning Fields would blow sky-high. Thin, runny lava, on the other hand…means the Burning Fields and Vesuvius won’t blow up.”
Conrad couldn’t help a bitter smile.
“—Proof if you needed it that we didn’t speak with an all-knowing God! Any idiot could have told me that, yes, it would stop the volcanoes detonating, and they’d just spill over. And any idiot could have told me that thinner lava flows faster.”
The thunder of Vesuvius made him raise his voice. He became aware he was waving his arms, and consciously clasped his hands behind his back.
“Any idiot but me… Thin lava will run faster. So it won’t erupt. But it will cover this whole area, several feet deep. And the streams are fast enough that we can’t out-run them. I didn’t think! I asked for this miracle. And it’s about to kill us all.”
Voices shouted, sounds muffled by ash; he thought it was the rear of the column coming up faster. Nothing was quieter than where he stood. The silence emanated from King Ferdinand.
Tullio’s resonant snort fractured the hiatus.
“You have to excuse him, sir. He gets like this. Often.”
Conrad cut in. “Yes, anyone could have asked for the miracle, but it was me, and I didn’t think it through.”
Ferdinand gave a snort that was an aristocratic echo of Tullio’s. “You might as well blame me for not seeing it. Or not seeing a way out of it. Or for… not ordering the troopers mounted, so we could make better time.”
“On this ground? The half that didn’t break a leg would have gone rump over ears—” Conrad realised Ferdinand’s manipulation, and ceased babbling cavalry maxims. “All right. Perhaps there was no way to win.”
“Bear to the left.” Ferdinand had a small smile, under the muck and ash. “There’s a parallel track to this one; it may get us across in front of the lava.”
Conrad hoisted Roberto Capiraso across his shoulders, again. The man, semi-conscious, was able—fortunately or not—to turn his head both behind or in front, see, and comment on what he saw.
It was not until Conrad had to come to a sharp halt to avoid crashing into King’s riflemen, in front, and heard the Count’s sharp “Vaffanculo!” that he came out of the altered state induced by physical exertion.
The slope of land dipped down to the sea, and the muddy withdrawn shore of the Bay. The fort of Pozzuoli harbour showed silhouetted against an odd, violet daytime sky.
The vast, slow-moving lava stream cut its channel in the earth, flowing between them and any chance of a ship. Lava seared its way into the sea. Where molten rock hit seawater, raging gouts of steam made everything invisible.
That flow must be thirty yards across!
Here we are between hammer and anvil, Conrad admitted to himself.
Tullio’s welcome grip helped him lower Roberto Capiraso down on the ash-covered grass. Conrad stood over the slumped man, protecting him, and caught an elbow in the ribs. Someone trod on the back of his heel from behind.
From this height of ground, he could see the steam and hissing sparks of the lava flow behind them, stemming from Solfatara, or perhaps some rift in Monte Nuovo.
Where every other breakthrough of lava from under the Burning Fields moved so slowly as to be—a
stonishingly!—tedious to watch, the lava flow from behind was approaching them much faster than a man can walk.
Trapping us completely against the flow in front.
No way we can cross what’s in front. And what’s behind—is coming up fast.
Paolo’s hand tugged on his sleeve.
“Corrado! What’s that?”
Conrad turned in the direction of Pozzuoli again, following Paolo’s prompting.
“—Minchia!”
Ice-cold rain slashed down into his face.
Conrad instantly threw his arm up to protect himself. Bitter rain stung his exposed hand.
No! Not rain—hail—!
“Hail?” he said aloud, in complete disbelief.
Tullio yelped and clapped his hand to his eye.
A hailstone stung Conrad’s cheek and bounced, falling white to the dusty earth.
He saw a second one hit the lava and die with almost no time for a hiss.
A blast of air from above kicked up steam, ashes and dust. Conrad had to cover his face with his hands and blink furiously.
He straightened, and found himself bending forward into the wind. A slap of cold air in his face alerted him—a cloud of hail slashed down, and turned into rain as it came close to the lava.
Rain fell warm across his face, sending filthy black trickles of ash down to soak into his shirt.
Paolo’s grip on his arm closed until it hurt. She pointed with her free hand. “What is that!”
Ahead, where the wide stream of lava coiled down the Burning Fields towards the sea, Conrad glimpsed ice-cold air pushing down from above.
He blinked, disbelieving.
The wind roared, too loud to make himself heard. He caught Paolo’s hand in turn and dragged her down to kneel beside the Conte di Argente and Tullio, in hail-soaked grass and scrub.
Heat blasted into his face—but cold wind was on the tail of it, cold enough to be icy. He sheltered his face with both hands and managed to look up.
A blade of light cut down from the spreading eruption cloud, over his head.
The lightning-filled pillar still thundered up from Vesuvius. It rose a half-dozen miles into the air, flattened out, and began to spread everywhere over Campania.
Everywhere except here, Conrad realised.
Ice-white light blasted in from the west—from clouds that roiled and broke up and showed the faintest snatch of blue sky.
Not blazing blue-white, he discovered, while tears ran down his cheeks. Only the white-gold of an ordinary late spring afternoon.
He let himself think the water from his tear-ducts only cleared them from ash and dust, and did not mean he responded to the sight of natural light by weeping like a child.
By his shoulder, the Conte di Argente surreptitiously dragged a sleeve across his own cheeks.
Sandrine gasped.
“Yes, it’s sunlight,” Conrad muttered, bemused at the smoking cold rain that fell with it. “We’re not going to see much of that when the clouds close in—”
“Corrado!” The mezzo pointed.
He broke off, silenced.
Twenty yards ahead, a figure appeared, framed in the fleeting light. Appeared out of a fog of steam and hailstones and cold—
On the flowing molten lava.
The heat from the earth made the air shimmer, but Conrad was certain the moment he saw her.
For a number of moments, his voice wouldn’t function—lost to disbelief, wonder, fury, love, and a desire to both shake and kiss the approaching figure.
She is walking, naked and barefoot, over the streaming lava.
“Leonora!”
CHAPTER 57
With her hair loosened and falling unbound, long enough that it curled against the backs of her knees, she might have been some Greek goddess in sculpture. But a sculpture that would inhabit the secret museum, given that the long slope of her thighs and the quick curve of breast and nipple were quite uncovered.
He fell down onto his knees, on the rough turf. His legs wouldn’t hold him up.
The flow of lava crisped scrub and bushes black, at the edge of the molten river. The heat that rose over it swirled ashes into towering clouds. For the last quarter-hour, he had stood before an open furnace door. No place to turn away from it—turning from the one ahead only left him seared by the one behind. The faster the lava ebbed up onto the surface of the Campi Ardenti, the closer the land they stood on came to being an island at the confluence of two lava rivers. Inside an hour, the flow would join up; there would be only lava.
Conrad swayed, on his knees, the cold wind blasting into his face. Rain slashed down. Warm at first, and—the nearer the figure came—the colder it became. Conrad blinked away hail and melting snow.
Wind struck down from above. The frozen air blasted away from her. Away from her no matter what direction one looked.
Roberto’s grip startled him. The injured man had hold of Conrad’s shirt, struggling to hold himself sitting upright.
His expression was open and utterly defenceless. “You see her too?”
Conrad’s heart beat once, as if it were some large foreign object that lodged in his throat. His pulse shook him down to his fingertips. He knelt with his gaze fixed on the roiling treacle-flow of the lava.
“…I see her.”
“But the Dead don’t return twice!” Roberto whispered.
Conrad echoed him, speaking in same moment: “The Returned Dead do not return a second time…”
“But she has,” Conrad finished. He leaned his weight against Roberto’s shoulder for a moment. The other man didn’t move away. “That’s her. I know it’s—”
“I know it’s her. I thought I was hallucinating her…”
“It’s Nora.”
Freezing air and light blasted in from high above, sucking out heat everywhere. A hiss and pop confused Conrad, until he saw hail-stones hitting the surface of the lava.
His shirt flapped in the cold gale.
He wiped his hair out of his face, as the wind blew it there, staring fixedly at the magma.
Roberto Capiraso wiped his mouth, and Conrad saw the man’s beard white with frost.
The film of moisture on his eyes dried and Conrad finally blinked.
No, this will be gone if I blink—!
He realised he was gripping Roberto’s shoulder, in turn. The solidity of the wet coat cloth was a link to the reality of the world.
“She’s still there.” He heard his own voice strained and croaking. “Roberto, tell me what I’m looking at.”
The fire of the lava reflected in the man’s dark eyes. Almost too quiet to be heard, under the hiss of lava and roar of Vesuvius’s eruption, Roberto Conte di Argente breathed out, “Leonora…”
The heat made her seemingly-black figure dance and shatter and come together again. She came closer, across the black and orange swirls of the lava currents. Liquid superheated stone fell away from her feet and ankles like the waves of the sea.
“When it said, ‘I cannot give back what has already returned’—She must already have come back…”
Lava fell away from her naked-as-marble feet, as if it were water. Twenty metres now, in the shaking heat and hissing cold that surround the human figure. Conrad saw her place her foot down for her next step—
Through the glimmering air, he saw the molten lava turn black under her foot.
Turn black—
Turn into islands of solid stone, he abruptly understood. Parts of the flow cooled down enough to go from liquid to frozen basalt.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the figure in front of him. She was close enough for him to see her expression—close enough that every detail of her naked rangy body and little full breasts was visible, and he tried not to attend to that. Of all the unsuitable times to want to lay with a woman—!
Not “a woman.” It’s Nora.
He blinked rain out of his eyes where it dripped from his hair. He knotted his fingers tightly into the shoulder and collar of Robert
o’s coat, and the Count’s left hand gripped his wrist in an iron vice. One of us is holding the other up. I just wonder which it is.
Roberto looked as if he had forgotten the fractured bones of his shin and ankle; forgotten everything but the apparition in the snow and smoke. “Is this your miracle?”
“No. Is it yours? No—” Conrad interrupted himself. “If anything it’s her miracle.”
“Why is she…”
Conrad voiced his fear. “To say goodbye? To one of us? To both of us?”
He feared that.
Feared she might be an apparition, as Alfredo Scalese had been; not Returned from death in the body, but merely an echo of the past.
The blasting wind whipped around her as she stepped closer, lashing her hair into a Medusa-whip. Too far yet to see her face, but she carries herself like Nora, Conrad thought. Shoulders back, head high, unashamed.
Somewhere above the mushrooming ceiling of the eruption-cloud, it’s still late afternoon above the Bay of Naples. A serration of light ripped down, cut by wind and cold, and terminated at her figure—Leonora Capiraso, Contessa di Argente; Leonora D’Arienzo; Nora Sposito of Castelveneto orphanage…
She came closer. The islands of black around her grew larger. Cold whispered on the air; ash-fall yellowing the air like snow.
Roberto’s hand unconsciously closed around his wrist, digging in, beginning bruises. “That can’t be.”
Conrad narrowed his eyes against superheated air, so that he could bear to follow her footsteps.
Each time her high-arched narrow foot came down, basalt grew blacker and more solid under her. A few more yards and she walked on a bridge of stone—one that slowly disintegrated in her wake, basalt melted back into the coiling lava flow.
“She’s singing.” Roberto Capiraso brushed white from his beard and moustache.
“She is singing…” Conrad did not dare speak loudly. Not and break the thread of sound that whispered over moorland and lava stream, and called up islands of stone under her feet.
He beckoned fiercely, without looking behind him.
Tullio thudded down beside him, shading his eyes against the light that fell down the rising column of air. A second thud, and a chin-point digging into his other shoulder, let him know Paolo fell on her knees behind him, her arms around his body.