Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “It’s early days, yet,” said Sophia.

  “It’s getting worse, not better. You’re right. We can’t – I can’t keep going like this, yet what alternative do we have?”

  “We have lots of alternatives,” she said, “which is why I’m here. To talk to you about them. Make you see sense.”

  “Very well,” said Thaler, leaning back. “Convince me.”

  “Mr Trommler, of blessed memory, kept very detailed accounts. They show we’ve many thousands, many tens of thousands of florins at our disposal. And that’s not all. Teams are being sent into the White Tower each day, and are coming out with more silver and gold than they can carry. We can bathe in the stuff.”

  “That’s beside the point. We can’t eat it. Neither can we use it to read a line of Greek or Latin, or make a plank, or hammer in a nail, or render a candle, or anything else good.” Thaler saw her expression. “You’ve got an idea.”

  “I have lots of ideas,” she said, “but specifically one. The food and the lanterns and the carpentry, someone else can see to. Your problem is that you don’t have enough librarians.”

  “Well, yes…”

  “So buy them.”

  Thaler stopped mid-objection. “Buy them. Where from?”

  “Everywhere. Wien. Bavaria. The Franks. Venezia. Genova. Byzantium. Alexandria.” She waited.

  “It’ll take too long. And they won’t be suitable, anyway. Some of them will be married, they’ll have families. We take boys, and we train them in the ways of this library.” Thaler wrung his hands together. “It simply won’t work.”

  “Frederik, you’re going to have to change the way you do things. Half the Jews in Juvavum can read German, Greek, Latin and Hebrew, yet they’re clanking around in armour and lording it over the townspeople. Would you rather they did that, or that they were in here, helping you? It’s not like you’re going to catch Jewishness from them, are you? Or just take my father.” Her even smile slipped. “Please. He’s driving me mad.”

  “But Jews won’t work in the library.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? And by the way, how about returning those sefer you’ve got?”

  “They’re library property.”

  “Give them all back, and one will be returned on loan. You don’t need three.” She leant forward. “You can’t go on with the old ways. So, while everything is up in the air, establish a new way of doing things. Let the librarians get married. Start paying them. Hire the best people from all over Europe. Don’t insist they live as though they’re members of the Order: you don’t have to slavishly imitate what they did, not any more.”

  Thaler looked out at the scaffold, and the men working on it.

  “How much money do I have?” he finally asked.

  “All of it, if you want. It has to last though, so I’d like to think you wouldn’t spend it all at once. Am I right in thinking the other under-librarians you served with are gone?”

  “Grozer died. As for Thomm? Has your father returned those stolen books he bought yet?”

  “I’ll see to it. I know where he hid them. This is getting off the point, Frederik. Change the way the library is run. Just do it. You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission, and you don’t have an old guard to humour.”

  “You’re right, of course. But there’s so much else to do.” He looked again at the scaffolding, and went to stand at the edge of the gallery from where he could survey his domain. “I haven’t so much as looked at a book in a week.”

  “Then can I suggest you’re doing it wrong?” Sophia came to stand next to him. “The library building is less important than the work going on down there, yet what impression do I get from up here? That the catalogue is running second-best to everything else.”

  “But…”

  “Frederik. You’ve got Mr Wess handing out lanterns. So this is what we’re going to do: I’m going to take charge of the alterations and all of the non-library tasks. You are going to do what Felix has made you master to do.”

  “But you’re a woman!” Thaler blurted.

  “Yes,” she said. “I had noticed. I can also read and write several languages, add, subtract, and solve geometry problems, run a household, talk to guildsmen and suppliers and haggle for the best price on anything from a book to a broom. I can also, if you’d forgotten, lead an army into battle and be the prince’s chosen consort. Anything else you’d like to say?”

  Thaler considered his options. “No, Mistress Morgenstern. Nothing at all.”

  “Good.” She patted his arm. “It’s better this way, Frederik. If you don’t think the men will listen to me and take my instruction, you’re wrong. I have the prince’s authority and the prince’s purse. If they want his coin, they’ll have to deal with me.”

  “Are you …” asked Thaler, his sudden nervousness making him grip the handrail tightly, “are you all right with this?”

  “With overseeing the building, dealing with Germans, or with being Felix’s consort?” She looked at him sideways. “Ah.”

  “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, Sophia.”

  “If I was eight, no one would even blink in surprise.” She rested her forearms on the same handrail. “I’m not, of course. I’m twice his age. And I’m Jewish. And not a princess. Completely unsuitable, really, and he’ll probably end up marrying someone else. But until then, I intend to use whatever position I have to help him.”

  “And,” mused Thaler, “helping the library will help him.”

  “Just so there’s no misunderstanding: the fate of Carinthia is in the hands of people like us. That’s why having you choose what wood to use for the new shelves is a waste of everybody’s time.”

  Thaler nodded, then frowned. “Can I show you something?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared up the stairs to the third gallery and came back shortly with two leather lunch-pails.

  “It won’t be kosher,” she said automatically.

  “There’s no food in them, more’s the pity. Look.”

  He showed her the contents. One was empty. The other had part of a roll of soft lead sheeting in it, making it almost too heavy to hold in one hand. Thaler got down on his knees and balanced both pails on the very edge of the gallery, between the upright balusters.

  “Which one do you think will reach the ground first?” he asked, looking up.

  “The one with the lead in it, of course.” She leant over the handrail. “Assuming it doesn’t land on someone’s head first.”

  “And yet yesterday, when a workman dropped both his hammer and the wedge he was trying to fix, this happened.” He jumped up, shouted “Clear down below!” and then ducked back to push both pails off.

  There was a pause, and a single loud bang.

  Sophia was watching very closely, and to her it looked as though the containers hit the stone floor at the same time.

  “How is that possible?” She squinted down at them, trying to judge whether she’d seen what she thought she saw.

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried them both empty, both full, one full and one empty. They fall at the same rate, every single time, in direct contradiction of Aristotle. I’ve tried it from the very top, too. I suppose it might not be far enough for the difference to show, but this building is one hundred and fifty feet, floor to ceiling. Some of the fortress’s towers are taller…”

  “Yes, I’m sure you’ll get permission. Perhaps.” She stopped, and frowned. “Perhaps Aristotle was wrong. Or the world has changed, and Aristotle is no longer right.”

  Thaler sat back on his haunches. “Have you noticed how we simply don’t have explanations for almost anything that happens? Things fall, yes? Then why do sparks rise? The sun at midday in winter is lower than in summer: is that because the sun is hotter in summer, or what? A barge floats, yet put a hole in it and it sinks. Has the barge lost its boatiness simply because of that hole?”

  Sophia laughed. “Boatiness?”

  “I don’t know what else to call it. Plat
o would have it that the more a boat diverges from the ideal, the less of a boat it becomes.” Thaler heaved himself up. “My head is so full of questions, I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start down there, Frederik. Start with the books. I’ll find someone to look after the lanterns and let poor Mr Wess do some proper work. And my father, too. Just make sure you search him at the end of the day.”

  51

  Felix couldn’t help thinking how small Carinthia looked on the map, and how it wouldn’t take much movement of the lines that marked the border to erase it completely. The parts that lay over the mountains, the Drau and Danz valleys, could be swallowed up by Venezia without him even noticing. The land between the Enn and the Salzach was vulnerable to the Bavarians, and in the east, Wien could march around the top of the Alps along the broad Donau plain.

  Being left with the area immediately around Juvavum, and the lower reaches of the Salzach and the Enn, was all but unsustainable. All the good land would have gone, with the trade routes that he currently controlled falling into other hands, and the mines at Durrnberg, too.

  The palatinate would collapse, and someone else would be installed in the White Fortress, to rule on behalf of a distant king who didn’t care about the land or its people.

  And the stupid thing was, he did care. He cared more than his father had, whose one excursion to protect Carinthia from invaders had ended with him dead and his orphaned son on the throne. But Büber was right. It was the Order who’d held all the power, and they were gone, all of them, for certain this time. His father, and his father before him, had been figureheads. Not puppets, exactly, but the faces of men put before other men so that no one would see the monster that hid behind them.

  For the first time in a thousand years, a Carinthian prince was solely responsible for the safety of his people, and it happened to be him. The gods weren’t noted for their sense of humour, but he imagined a mocking laugh echoing from the mountaintops and down the steep wooded valleys.

  There was a knock at the door, and he absently called his assent, but not so absently that he didn’t momentarily rest his hand on his sword and look around to see who it was.

  “Mr Ullmann. Thank you for coming.”

  “My lord.” Ullmann walked to the table and waited to be addressed, but inevitably his gaze wandered down to peruse the map.

  Felix wondered what he made of it, so he asked him plainly. “What do you see, Mr Ullmann?” He waved his left hand across the map. His shoulder was sore. It was always sore, and he wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life favouring it.

  “Carinthia is here, my lord, and…”

  “No. I’ve been schooled in geography. I want to know what you see when you look at this. What does it mean to you?” He adjusted one of the boxes that kept the map flat.

  Ullmann scrubbed at the bridge of his nose while he thought. “That we’re surrounded by both enemies and friends, but the ink on the parchment doesn’t tell us who’s who.”

  It wasn’t an answer designed to please. But it was honest. Felix leant his elbows on the table. “Nor does it tell us that the Bavarians are broke and have no money to pay for their soldiers. It doesn’t tell us whether the Doge or the Duke have the upper hand in northern Italy. It doesn’t tell us what’s happening in München or Wien or the Eastern empire, or in the Franklands.” He pointed to each place in turn. “We’re blind. We always have been. It never mattered before, but suddenly we need to know whether they’re in as much trouble as we are, or whether they’re plotting to carve us up like a roast boar.” He stared at the hand-drawn lines, trying to make sense of it all. “If you’d arrived in Juvavum just two weeks ago, we’d have appeared as strong as we ever were. Now look at us. If the Teutons come at us again, in the same numbers as they did before? A tiny army, a few hundred horse. They could walk in and take over, and there’s very little I could do – that anyone could do – to stop them.”

  Ullmann shifted from one foot to the other. “My lord…”

  Felix drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, Mr Ullmann. Really, I have no idea. Everyone else, they seem to be busy at what they do best, and I’m left gazing at the stupid map, wondering if I should be trying to raise a huge army to defend us, or writing letters to my fellow princes. I’m twelve. The people I used to trust to tell me what to do have gone, Mr Ullmann. I need new advisers, a whole new court, and that takes time we might not have.”

  “Then it strikes me, my lord, that you need to call a grand council, to hear the views all the people. I’m sure Master Thaler can tell us from his books how to run one.” Ullmann tapped Juvavum with his forefinger. “Hold it here, in the fortress.”

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help. The few earls I have are even younger than I am, Mr Ullmann, or their families are still arguing about succession.” Little Ulf had been eventually fished out of the river, along with a dozen or so other bodies, none of which was his stepmother. She hadn’t been found among the other bodies either. She was lost, more surely than he was. Felix stared out of the window at the mountains, and wondered if that was another pain that would never cease.

  Ullmann cleared his throat and spoke softly. “My lord, you can’t wait on these things. The town needs a new mayor, even though we don’t know what happened to Master Messinger yet. You gave Master Thaler the library seal, remember, even though the old master librarian is still with us.”

  “So I should just make new earls? Perhaps,” said Felix absently.

  “Not quite what I meant, my lord. You could rule that all the earldoms have reverted to you, and that you’ll portion out the land in a way that suits the new ways.”

  Felix sat back so quickly he jarred his whole body. “Take the earls’ lands? I don’t think so.”

  “My lord, there are so few earls to take them from. Some families have been completely wiped out. Rather than having distant cousins squabbling – and fighting – over who’s the heir, which’ll go on for years and become impossible to make right, just cut them out now, while everyone is still willing to accept that we have to do things differently.” Ullmann took the chair next to Felix without invitation, but the prince decided he didn’t mind.

  “Are you after an earldom, Mr Ullmann?”

  Ullmann reacted as if he’d just been offered a freshly squeezed cup of aconite. “No thank you, my lord. Not at all. Shall I tell you what I’m thinking?”

  Can I stop you? wondered Felix. He welcomed the distraction, though, and waited as Ullmann pulled the map closer.

  “When the Romans went on the march, they promised every legionary their own piece of land in return for twenty-five years of service. They were well paid, and they knew what they were fighting for.”

  “A professional army, yes: I know this.”

  “What better way to get an army than to promise this for our people? Most of them spend their entire lives working land that their earl owns. Give them their own land, and they’ll fight for you.”

  Felix looked at the map again. “So I take away land from the earls, and distribute it to the peasants?” Even as he said it, he couldn’t quite believe that someone was seriously suggesting it.

  “Forget that they’re peasants. Some of them have worked the same land for generations, and it’s a hard life that just got harder. If you make them give you their sons for a few coppers a day, then,” Ullmann shrugged, “all your fears will come true. If you ask them for their sons and tell them that, in return, the soil they’ve sweated and bled on is their own? They’ll love you, my lord.”

  Felix scratched at his nose and eyed the usher – no, not usher any more – he was wasted in that post. “I’ll have to think about this. Your parents…”

  “Serfs, my lord. I’m not apologising for that.” Ullmann sat taller and straighter. “Please don’t think that I’m just saying this to give my mum and dad an easier time; that’s not what this is about.”

  “So how did you get o
ff the land? What did your earl say?”

  Ullmann looked away for a moment. “Should I lie, my lord?”

  “Not to me, Mr Ullmann.”

  “My dad could see how much I might do, if I could only get my chance. So he pretended I’d run away to seek my fortune in Italy.”

  “And yet you’re here, in Juvavum.” This Ullmann lad was definitely lively, as Thaler had noted. Ambitious, but in a good way. Felix was warming to him.

  “I needed to learn to read, I knew that. So I found work in the library, cleaning and washing and carrying for the librarians, and after my day’s work, I used to sneak a book off the shelves and find a quiet corner – if a round building can be said to have corners, that is – and see if I could make out what it said. When I was found out I thought I was for the road again, but the librarian – no names, my lord, don’t want him in any trouble – asked me if I could read, and I had to say I couldn’t, so every night afterwards, he’d spend a while schooling me in my letters, and now I can read honest German as good as any man alive, and some Latin and Greek, too.”

  Felix tapped his finger against his lips. “And a year and a day later, you were free of your obligations to the land.”

  “That’s when I asked to be an usher, my lord. I knew I couldn’t be a librarian because I was too old to be apprenticed, but being an usher was the next best thing. Then I got to help Master Thaler on his adventure, and that made me feel like I could be useful, not just to the library, but to the palatinate.”

  The prince looked askance at him. “Useful? Oh, you’ve been more than useful, Mr Ullmann. Which is why I asked to see you. To thank you.”

  Ullmann was very still for a while, except that his eyes darted about in their orbits, his gaze lighting on the map, the door, the fireplace, just for a moment, before darting like a fly to another place.