by David Waid
He looked down. The ice remained solid around their feet with just a little sloshing of water from where it had broken off. Inches away, great ice chunks bobbed and jostled. He and Caitlin stood downstream from where Corc had fallen in, the river’s current pushing toward them. The ice vibrated again, but this time through Eamon’s feet and legs. Looking down, he spotted movement. It was difficult to see, but he thought it might have been a hand pressing up, and the flash of a face, quickly gone.
17. Grimoire
Genoa
A man-wrought miracle had ensured the fire of the Maestro’s apartments raged for only a day, destroying less than a city block. The city’s people formed a line, passing buckets from harbor to hillside until the streets surrounding the Maestro’s home were awash in the black runoff of seawater and ash. The nature and purpose of their unity changed, however, after word of Ignacio’s mutilated corpse spread beyond the brick compound of the de Borjas.
Too many hands had been at work on the pile in the fire’s smoldering aftermath, too many had seen strange, disturbing artifacts brought forth from the rubble.
The tunnel, which Teresa’s escape revealed, seemed to confirm the most wild of the city’s growing suspicions. Soon, fantastic tales about the Maestro circulated. Unhallowed, midnight dances were described in breathless detail: sickening debauches of witches and devils. Teresa’s role in starting the fire was forgiven before it could even be asserted.
Some remembered that the Duke of Genoa, elected by his peers among the Nobile, had imprisoned Ignacio’s father and brothers when they tried to rescue the boy. With the Maestro having fled, and his assistant dead, popular anger blew the only direction it could: against the Duke. By the day after the explosion, hundreds of citizens had clashed with city guards. The following day, barricades were erected and thrown down in bloody skirmishes, and the name of Favaretto, the nobleman who’d opposed Don Abozam’s mistreatment, was being promoted to replace the occupant of the Palazzo Ducale.
These things happened as the days began to pass, but it was on the first day, the very morning of the fire, that Teresa rescued Ignacio’s body and brought it home, still swathed in smoke-scented linen from the Maestro’s cellar.
Feet rushed past Teresa. Hurrying shadows. Wisps of sharp smelling smoke from the burning buildings caught on the air, twisting and dancing like unmoored spider silk. Sitting in the street as people dashed around her, Teresa’s mind began to clear. Ignacio lay in her arms, wrapped in a great sheet from the Maestro’s basement. She’d used another to wrap the heavy, bound volume stolen from a tabletop in the Maestro’s room of inquiry. Her eyelids were red, tears spent, pale tracks cutting through the dark soot on her cheeks.
One of the men passing stopped to kneel and look at her wounds. He had kind eyes and gingerly touched the cut on her forehead. “A lot of blood for so small a cut.” In her ears, the ringing had lessened and she could make out the words. The man’s friends were rounding the corner. He glanced at Ignacio, at her, and back to the corner. He touched her cheek and then he left, too. To Teresa’s surprise, the stranger returned several minutes later with a handcart.
“Where is your home, girl? Can you walk?”
She nodded and pointed, not yet trusting her dry, smoke-scorched throat to speak. The man put his arms under Ignacio’s shoulders, lifting him into the cart. Her brother lay on his back, chin resting on his chest while his feet hung over the side, bound up in the sheets. Picking up the grimoire, Teresa clutched it to her chest and together they set off. The strange man followed her, avoiding others in the street who rushed past them toward the fire.
She led them to her house and he looked from her to the grand brick structure, its old, bowed side wall and wide, wooden doors.
“Here?” he said. “The home of Don Abozam?”
Teresa nodded. She could only imagine how she must look, covered in filth, with soot running across her face and dusting her disheveled hair. He shook his head as in disbelief, yet lifted Ignacio in both arms and followed her in.
No one saw them as she led the stranger into the front room to place her brother on the wooden settle. When he straightened, the man removed his capuchon, twisting it in his hands, darting glances around the room. Some gauze of confusion still lay on Teresa and she stood uncomfortably, not knowing what to do or say. Yet the book, so heavy in her arms, brought her mind back to what Ignacio’s shade had communicated as she lay unconscious on the floor of the Maestro’s cellar. She must keep it. It was important.
If someone came in before she’d hidden it away, Teresa knew she would never be allowed to read the book, much less keep it. The grimoire and all it contained would be destroyed. Yet if she left the room, someone else might enter to find Ignacio’s mutilated corpse, with no explanation and no preparation. If her mother found him this way, well, there was no telling what might happen.
“Are you a servant here?” the man asked, voice low and urgent. “Who is this boy? Where are the people of the house?”
Teresa shook her head and tried to talk, coughing instead. She held her hand up to the man. The book must be hidden.
“What?” he asked. “What did you say?”
She ran back to the entry hall and the stairs which led to the second floor.
“Tutti Santi! Where are you going?”
She paused halfway up the steps and, peering beneath the open archway, she signaled for him to remain. His face twisted in confusion and fear. “Where are you going? What am I supposed to…Ah, merda!” She had gone up the steps.
Teresa ran along the corridor lined with family rooms. Her own door stood just before her parents,’ and as she started to enter, their latch clicked and the door itself began to open. She pushed into her room, shutting the door behind her as her mother’s voice sounded in the hallway.
“Is that you, Teresa?”
Crossing to the great pine chest where she’d hidden Ignacio’s journal, Teresa lifted the lid just as the floorboards creaked on the other side of her door. She imagined her mother poised with her ear held close, fingers splayed out against the wood.
“Teresa?”
As Teresa shoved the wrapped book into the chest, a muffled cry sounded from the first floor. Someone — Maria, she thought — shouted her brother’s name.
Her mother spoke again from the hallway. “Maria, what is it?” Footsteps headed off to the stairs. “Is Ignacio home?”
Teresa’s stomach dropped. Letting the chest slam shut, she ran for the door. She fumbled with the latch, fingers numb. At the end of the corridor, her mother was disappearing down the stairs, a long thin shadow rippling across the whitewashed bricks behind her.
“Mama!”
Teresa ran, wanting to give some warning, say something, but when she reached the top of the stairs, her mother was already at the bottom.
Too late.
She had seen.
The fingers of one hand rose to cover her mother’s mouth, and a moan escaped them. Teresa watched her dart across the hallway and through the stone arch. A high-pitched scream rang through the house as Teresa flew down the stairs. It sounded nothing like her mother, but it was. In the room, Teresa found her on the floor by the settle, shaking with sobs, arms around Ignacio, and Maria kneeling beside her.
“Ah, my son, my beautiful son.”
Teresa stood ignored by everyone, even the stranger who had brought her home. He had backed up to the draped windows and his mouth hung open. The sheets wrapping Ignacio showed no stain of blood, yet when Maria pulled them away from his stomach, everyone saw what had been done. A stench rose from the open, empty cavity. Maria drew back. Teresa’s mother fainted, slumping to the floor in a rustle of dark silk that sounded loud above the rushing in Teresa’s ears.
They revived the mistress of the house with damp cloths. She looked bewildered and strands of graying hair had come loose, giving her the appearance of a madwoman. One of the servants handed Teresa a wooden goblet of wine for her throat. She explained in a hoarse voic
e how the strange man had helped her, and she told what had happened since the night before, holding back only the appearance of her brother’s apparition and the theft of the Maestro’s book.
Everyone from the household was present, Philippa on a chair and the other servants listening from the door to the kitchen. Teresa’s mother knelt by the corpse again, crying and smoothing his wilted curls as Teresa spoke. When Teresa told how she killed Bezio and caused the explosion in the cellar, her mother stared. At the end, there were murmurs of gratitude for the stranger. Her mother pressed a coin into the man’s hand and wouldn’t let go. He looked frightened and started stammering until Maria finally disengaged the two. Maria escorted the stranger out, thanking him again.
When she returned, Teresa’s mother stood in the center of the room looking from face to face. “What shall we do?” she asked. “Don Abozam will know. He and Sando will be released. The Duke can’t hold them now.” A flicker of doubt crossed her face. “Can he?” She sank into a chair.
Putting a hand on her shoulder, Maria said, “Speak with Don Favaretto. He has been a friend to your family before.”
“Yes! You are right. I must go to my chamber and prepare.”
“I will get your daughter cleaned,” said Maria. She pushed Teresa at the small of her back, guiding her to the stairs. In the bedchamber, Maria washed filth from Teresa’s hair as she bent over a pot of hot water brought by one of the kitchen girls. “This passes everything!” Maria said. “You may have brought your brother home, but you’re going to get killed with the things you do. And I will die from the worry. Promise you will never do such a foolish thing again.”
“I will do anything to save my family. I would do it for you, too.”
Maria gave her a small shake. “Never risk your life for me.”
“I would, though.”
“Abbastanza! Stop this foolish talk.”
There came a knock at the door and Maria shot a last glare at Teresa before opening it. The servant girl had returned with a small pile of dry cloths. Dipping one in the pot, Maria wiped soot and grit from Teresa’s skin.
“I need to talk with Father Hugh,” Teresa said.
Maria went utterly still. “Why do you need to see him?” she said. “You have never ‘needed’ to see your tutor before in your life.”
“I…must ask him something.”
“If there is something you need, say it to me and I will tell him.”
“I must talk with him.”
Maria jerked Teresa around and began to scrub her back with vigorous shoves. But she would say no more.
“I saw Ignacio’s ghost,” Teresa said.
The cloth fell to the floor with a wet slap.
“Impossible.”
“He came to me once in this house and again in the Maestro’s cellar.”
“You are not well.”
“I saw him. He told me to talk with Father Hugh.”
“You must not speak of this to the priest. He seems harmless, but the man is dangerous.”
“I have to talk to him. Please, Maria.”
“If you speak to Father Hugh, you will be lost like Ignacio.” Maria whirled Teresa around and thrust bedclothes into her hands. Gathering the rags, she lifted the pot to her hip and crossed to the door. “Stay in the house,” she said. “Do not get involved in whatever this is you are thinking.”
As Maria stepped into the hallway, Teresa called out to her. “Please, Maria. Please let Father Hugh know.”
“Oh, you poor girl. There is no doubt, after what has happened, he will seek you out.”
The fatigue of sleepless nights and the end of so many terrors created a soft void Teresa yearned to fall into. She fought it, however, sitting cross-legged on the bed with her damp tresses, rubbing her eyes to keep them open. The Maestro’s heavy tome lay on her blanket and for a long time she sat staring at it, gooseflesh rising on her arms. People had been burned for possessing books like this. Words of condemnation warred in her mind with the urgings her brother’s shade had spoken in her head.
Finally, taking a deep breath, she leaned forward and drew the libram into her lap. She traced her fingers over the intricate weave of designs stamped on its leather cover. In places the beige had worn smooth and glossy. In others it was darkened from what seemed to be the fingers of a thousand centuries. The thing had brass corner bosses and two intricately worked metal clasps, cold to the touch. She closed her eyes, undid the clasps and gingerly opened the cover.
The parchment pages were old, yellow and dry beneath her fingers, with a thick, musty smell. The words were in Latin, a language Father Hugh had taught her well. She began to turn the crackling pages, looking at the illuminations, studying the carefully written words.
There is no title for this work. Its forbears were scrolls of brittle papyrus, destroyed in the burning of Ptolemy’s library after my copies had been made. Yet through these copies, and by my hand, the unaltered, unbroken lineage of their knowledge is preserved.
It is said that this is first of the seven volumes of the angel, Hocroel, originally spoken to Avichai of Tyre and scribed in the city of Tanan so that certain secrets might not perish and man not forget the one hundred sacred names of God the Creator.
Teresa read on, hands shaking, unable to take her eyes from the book. It purported to contain signs and rituals that could be used to control the elements, summon or constrain spirits, augur the future and make mutable the shape of all things. As she read, the fatigue she’d been feeling sank deep in her bones. Her face became warm as if she had a fever and the sockets of her eyes grew hot.
The book claimed knowledge from a time when the Witch of Endor summoned a dead seer for King Saul in Gibeah. It was knowledge that had been passed down through the kings of Israel and Judah and no one, it said, should fear taint from such powers as Solomon himself was said to wield.
No evil is in this name, Magien, for this same signifies in the Greek tongue a philosopher, and in the Hebrew tongue a scribe, and in the Latin tongue it signifies wise. There is no thing or art in this world that is not created by God’s hand and it is by His art of Magick that man is brought closer to His wisdom.
Onwards she continued, oblivious to the flicker of the candle’s flame or the occasional patter of its melting wax. She came to the first of the book’s instructions. The simplest of incantations, it said, one through which a magus could move a small object without physical touch. The spell involved scribing precise circles, as well as intricate lines and letters representing holy names. A censer was also required, to be filled with herbs whose names she couldn’t pronounce, but whose burning would cleanse the air. And last, it provided instructions to guide the sorcerer’s concentration.
Teresa remembered what the Maestro had told her brother, that geistmagen could perform magic without ritual or preparation. And she remembered the way her fingertips had prickled at the Maestro’s house. She could find out whether she was one or not. She could do it here.
Ignacio would not have pointed her to the book if reading it would condemn her soul. She had to believe that. Teresa consigned herself to the protection of the Virgin Mary and tried to clear her mind, cracking her knuckles. Looking around the chamber, her eyes fell on the candle by her bed. She considered it. The candle and its holder were meager things, light in weight, and she supposed that might help. She bent her thought toward it, concentrating, the words of the book repeating in her mind, “The air is not what separates a mage from the object of his attention, it is what connects him to it.”
In her mind, she pictured the candlestick moving, imagined the feel of it through the air. She conjured the feel of a push, then a pull. Nothing happened. She continued, trying again and again, growing frustrated. At one point, she thought she saw a trembling of the candleholder and a slight shiver in the flame, but that could have been a current of air, or even a trick of her exhausted mind.
Overwhelmed with fatigue and disappointment, Teresa could stay awake no more. Too tired
even to return the book, she tucked it beneath a pillow on the bed, lay down and shortly dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted through the rest of that day and well into the morning of the next.
When Teresa woke, one of the thick curtains had been drawn partially aside. A line of dazzling light cut through the chamber’s gloom. She squinted at its brightness and gasped when she saw that it fell across robed legs upon which rested a man’s wizened hand.
Instinctively, she reached for the Maestro’s volume, to see if it was safe, but stopped herself. Frowning sidelong at the shadowed figure, she turned the movement into a grasp of the blankets, throwing them aside.
“Ah.” Father Hugh leaned forward into the light, chair creaking in the room’s stillness. “You are awake, I see.”
“Per Dio! Father, how did you get in here?”
“Maria let me in. She had the impression you wished to see me, though she seemed unhappy to admit it.” The Father’s shoulders were bent and he looked as though he’d aged years since she’d seen him last. “I assure you,” he said, “it has been decades since I possessed either the will or wherewithal to ravage a maiden. Still, if you prefer I leave…” He leaned forward to rise.
“No, please!”
He must have caught some charge of emotion in her voice, because he sat back, looking straight at her, studying her face. “I am well aware that you have endured more than any young person should. Lost more,” he waved in the direction of Ignacio’s room, “than you should.”
“This is what I need to talk with you about. I think I may be like Ignacio.”
“You are a bright girl, perhaps the brightest I have ever instructed. Your brother was bright, too.” He stared at the rectangle of sunlight on the floor. “But he possessed a unique quality. As important as it was irreplaceable. Now it is gone.”