Spira Mirabilis

by Aidan Harte

  ‘Unless you plan to found another city on the waves,’ Leto answered sharply, ‘you need a place to dock.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Akka?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious. Queen Catrina doesn’t trust you. You’ve more reason to fear her than me. I can always use a man like you, but if you return to Akka and give her what’s left of Ariminum’s fleet, you’ll find yourself strung up from the Tancred’s yardarm. It’ll be a popular gesture, I’d guess.’

  ‘Sailors are a jealous breed,’ the Moor agreed ruefully. ‘So Akka’s out.’

  ‘When we go, we’ll go to burn it. But first, set sail to Veii.’

  ‘I thought your First Apprentice considered finding the Contessa a matter of urgency?’

  ‘So he does, but – well—’ Leto gestured to the burning city. The ash whispered down between the giddy sparks rising from the ruins. ‘As you say, this changes things.’

  ‘I see the sense in that,’ the Moor said. ‘Will your First Apprentice?’

  ‘One doesn’t get to wear the red by being stupid. He trusts my judgement.’ Leto spoke with such confidence that he almost believed it was true.

  CHAPTER 30

  Geta leaned over the wall and whistled. ‘How long’s she been standing there?’

  ‘All day – maybe longer.’ The sentry was an old condottiere, bored with his station but unfit for anything better. ‘She was there when the sun came up. Didn’t think much of it at first – you often get mendicants passing by, on their way to Jerusalem or what have you – only that she’s been there so long … I didn’t recognise her as the little Reverend Mother what baptised my little lad not a year ago, not at first. Soon as did, though, I thought, “Better get the boss”. Look at her feet! She’s not right, is she?’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Geta, and then, more to himself than his companion, ‘What does she want?’

  The sentry tried for the obvious. ‘Us to open the gate?’

  ‘Cretino! The Tartaruchi have tunnels under the Irenicon. You don’t think they might have ways under the walls? If she wanted to get in, she’d already be in.’

  ‘Reckon I could plug her easy from here,’ the eager-to-please sentry volunteered. He loaded a quarrel into his crossbow. ‘I practise on the cottontails – not much else to do all day, an’ I hates to be idle— Hey!’ He glowered at Geta, who had snatched it from him. The quarrel sent up a puff of dust not a braccia from Isabella’s raw, bleeding feet, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘Oooh. Very close,’ the sentry said. ‘But if you don’t mind me saying, you wanna aim high – an’ try breathing out when you fire.’

  ‘My good fellow, shut your mouth and open the gate.’

  *

  When the portcullis was halfway up, Geta ducked under and walked towards Isabella with his usual assertive step. As he got closer, close enough to hear her panting like a tired hound, his hand strayed towards his sword. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again, Reverend Mother,’ he said jovially. ‘I heard a worrying rumour that you had gone to visit the First Apprentice.’

  His tongue went dry. Isabella looked like a corpse, one that had pulled itself from the pyre half-done. Her skin was a patchwork: where it wasn’t horribly sunburnt, it was deathly pale. She swayed towards him and back, like a pendulum both drawn and repelled by Rasenna, the spot upon which her ruined feet bounced wet with blood and pus. Her right hand clawed the air while the other hung awkwardly, her fingernails shreds sticking out of swollen black digits. Her lips had all but vanished, and a quivering black tongue poked lewdly between the sharp bits of teeth remaining.

  But it was her stare that held him. Her upper and lower eyelids were both peeled back, revealing protruding, putrid-yellow orbs, her pupils shrunken to empty pinpricks.

  She was just a harmless little girl foaming at the mouth, he told himself, ignoring that other voice that was screaming RETREAT!

  ‘I see Concord didn’t agree with you. Well, the big city’s not for everyone …’ He kept up his smooth stream of patter. ‘You’re home now and that’s what matters. I do hope we can put this late unpleasantness behind us because, quite frankly, I need you, Reverend Mother. My wife is about to give birth. She’s quite modern in most respects, but she is very conservative when it comes to religion, and she insists that he – I’m certain it’ll be a boy – be baptised right away.’

  She was but a flag-thrust away now. His confident voice continued even as his grip on his sword-hilt tightened. The closer he came, the more agitated Isabella became, panting more rapidly as her fingers started twitching and reaching, now for him, now for the Herod’s Sword that still hung round her neck.

  She was trying to say something, he thought, but had forgotten the habit of speech, and her uncooperative mouth made weird shapes as strange noises emanated: ‘Kuh-Kuh-Kuh—’

  Her once-lithe little body leaned towards him with a kind of yearning, yet her feet stubbornly stayed stamping the same puddles. He could see the grey-white streak of bone through the abused skin of her heels.

  Her panting speeded up, ‘Kuh-kuo-kuoome-daancee. Coomen-daance! Come daance!’

  Geta took a tentative step forward. He held his hands up, as though ready to lead her in a measure. ‘I’m told I do an elegant galliard, but is it decent? You’re not just a nun, after all, but our Reverend Mother—’

  ‘Ku-cuh-cluh-cluh-sedee-guh-ate—’

  Her grasping fingers clawed at each other and she howled despairingly and lurched for him. Geta backed away, drawing his sword – but Isabella did not move towards him again and he realised she was wrestling with herself. One hand was reaching for the Herod’s Sword and she looked at him, her round yellow eyes bleeding tears.

  ‘What ails you, Reverend Mother?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Close the gate!’ Her fingers grasped the Herod’s Sword and turned the sharp end towards her throat while the other hand tried to resist it.

  ‘NOW!’

  The first hand won the struggle and Geta, horrified, backed hurriedly away from the arterial jets as Isabella did a final pirouette and collapsed to the ground.

  He turned and ran and ducked under the portcullis. ‘Do as she said,’ he shouted. ‘Close it!’

  The sentry shouted down, ‘She weren’t right, was she?’

  Geta stared through the grating at Isabella’s body. ‘If any more pilgrims show up coming from the north—’

  ‘Yes, my lord?’

  ‘Plug ’em.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Once, a doughty fisherman sailing the Sybarite coast came upon one of Neptune’s daughters bathing in a cove. The naiad was modest as she was beautiful and transformed into a narrow river where his ship could not follow. The enamoured fisherman sought out Morgana to make for him a love-potion, but his song of his desire inspired lust in the sorceress’s cold heart. When next the fisherman spied the naiad, he poured the potion into the cove. Instantly she transformed into a serpent, licentious as once she was demure. He was the first victim of her embrace and died protesting his devotion. Nor did Morgana escape punishment: Neptune condemned her to spin for eternity. Thus Scylla and Charybdis were born from the wreckage of love.

  The Etruscan Annals

  A strange armada of scarred warships, merchant barks and frigates of all stripes sailed down the Adriatic like a pilgrimage. The convoy’s need to escape had been too great to allow any taking stock before embarking, but there were several Ariminumese-owned shipyards along the coast where they might replenish. Since water was especially scarce, the Moor sated his thirst on wine. He grew contemplative watching the star that was once Ariminum shrinking in the distance and listening to the bells falling silent one by one.

  He was dissatisfied with his crew – there were too many Ariminumese for his liking. They were perfectly good sailors – respectful, disciplined, well-drilled, for the most, but he demanded more than competency of his men: he wanted greed. He wanted men who would die before surrendering a prize. He’d left many
such men behind in the cinders of the city – he would have regretted it, but he had to admit that most of them were ruined long before Ariminum had burned. Come the hour, he could rely only on himself, and his ensign.

  He looked up from his reverie and found the boy-general was in equally sombre mood. The games of chance that obsessed the Moor’s men bored him horribly, so he had made the shipwright knock up a chessboard. The sailors gave him a wide berth while he sat at it, silently staring, certain that it was some table of necromancy through which he communed with the infernal.

  ‘May I ask, Spinther, why you never sought the Red?’

  ‘That particular colour makes a great target,’ Leto said. ‘I prefer mud-splattered battle fatigues myself.’

  The Moor was not to be deflected. ‘If you will allow me to say so, your friend’s desire to capture this girl – well, if it were anyone else, I’d call it unreasonable. She did not strike me as worth starting a war over when I met her. Pretty, and spirited certainly, but—’

  ‘Concord has only been defeated twice. The first time the Contessa’s grandfather led the army. The destruction of the Twelfth Legion two years ago convinced Etrurians that his granddaughter was made of similar stuff. As long as a Scaligeri lives, they’ll keep fighting. Her head on a pike means peace.’

  ‘I see,’ the Moor said, though obviously he still didn’t. ‘Well, I hope your employer is content to wait.’

  Leto fell silent. He was tired of defending Torbidda. The Moor was right after all: Torbidda’s obsession with Sofia Scaligeri was unreasonable – and the plague had come from Concord. He’d caught a glimpse of that Rasenneisi girl before the hood was put on her. Torbidda had just told him to set her loose at Montefeltro – he should have been warned about how infectious she was. It wasn’t the secrecy that irked; it was the sloppiness. People changed, but he could not believe that Torbidda of all people had become careless.

  After the convoy passed Pescara, they saw that word of the Serenissima’s fall had outpaced them: the burning shipyards told them exactly how the natives were celebrating their unlooked-for freedom.

  Still suffering privation, and in no great order, the exiles swept down the long outstretched limb that was Etruria and turned west once the thumb of Taranto was sighted. The Moor said the rock-strewn bays between the Four Fingers were unfit even for pirates, ‘And harder to navigate than a wolf’s gut.’

  ‘You know the Black Hand well?’ Leto asked. When he had brought Veii and Salerno to heel he would have to subdue this wilderness next.

  The Moor leaned over the rail so that the cooling spray doused him. ‘I hail from Barbary, where the sun is too hot for civilised thought, but the Black Hand gives me nightmares. There is a cave here roundabouts where, the natives say, an immortal crone keeps the four winds and their progeny imprisoned, and when she sleeps they run free. The one I dread most is an errant child of the Ostro. The Libeccio herds before it stampeding squalls, coming sometimes from the west, sometimes from the south. It especially delights in throwing ships against the rocks, and the natives of this hellish land sacrifice to their barbarous idols for shipwrecks. That, General Spinther, is all you need to know about the Black Hand.’

  A few hours after they passed the last finger, Leto looked up from his maps and correspondence and demanded to know why they weren’t bearing north again.

  ‘Don’t meddle in things you don’t understand,’ the Moor said. ‘We go around the Sicilies first. It makes little difference.’

  ‘It means days lost! That’s unacceptable – we’ll take the Strait of Messina.’

  Leto had insisted that the First Apprentice would understand their need to deviate from the plan, but the Moor saw now that he was less certain than he pretended – and he was not surprised. He had heard many things about the First Apprentice, but never that he was forgiving.

  But on this front, Spinther had to be persuaded otherwise. ‘Taking the strait would be folly, General.’

  ‘Do you take me for a novice? It’s been used since antiquity—’

  ‘Yes, and any mariner will tell you it has turned into a graveyard since the Great War. Charybdis has expanded her reach. I’d hesitate to run it with one ship, let alone a fleet. I pray you, do not insist on this.’

  The Moor – and his entire crew – waited for Spinther’s decision, praying he would see Reason.

  ‘But I do insist, Admiral.’

  *

  Only when Leto got his first look at Charybdis did he begin to understand the Moor’s doubts – but it was too late; they were committed to this course. He held on to the railing and remembered how the Guild Hall examiners used to talk of the terrible beauty of the spirals. He could see nothing beautiful in the great perpetual vortex, which was caused by the meeting of currents off the coast of the Sicilies and the rocky shoal-ridden shore of Etruria.

  Besides the danger these two merciless ladies presented in themselves, each extended her reach with her kin. The nephews of Scylla and the sons of Charybdis made the strait into a lethal gauntlet. The row of craggy black pillars that interrupted the strait at irregular intervals were called the niponti, Scylla’s nephews, and they concealed ship-murdering reefs beneath a skin of water. They could be run, but each was a roll of the die, for terrible though Charybdis was, the chief terror was her wayward children, the smaller maelstroms that roamed subject to no law – sometimes they vanished for months, only to appear suddenly in routes previously considered safe; such inconstancy meant that even with the most experienced navigator at the tiller there was never any sure passage.

  The Moor had made the run before, but still he kept a close watch on his helmsman, who in turn watched the shifting undercurrents as if they were rapid dogs. In any other stretch of shoaling waters, a leadsman would be in the channels, regularly calling the depths, but such caution was impossible here, surrounded as they were by a swarm of vortexes.

  The helmsman was all for gambling on an eastern passage, but the Moor insisted that they go by the mother – at least Charybdis was something they could see. He listened to the creaking rigging, feeling her teasing fingers luring them to port, and the Barabaso’s protests as the helmsmen yanked her back to starboard.

  Unlike most sailors, the Moor was not unduly superstitious, but for once the crew’s stories of ghost castles and sirens didn’t seem so incredible. He glanced starboard as the San Eco entered the next passage over. Behind them, the rest of the fleet were grouped messily in two halves, waiting to follow.

  The passage of the lanterns took place in agonised silence, but once through, a spontaneous cheer erupted. When the hurrahs died down, the cry from the forecastle became audible: ‘Sail ho! Two points on the larboard bow.’

  Tension made the Moor snarl, ‘Hush, fool. It’s the Fata Morgana.’ The mirages around the strait were legendary.

  Another cry: ‘Admiral, the Eco’s hailing us.’

  He spun around – and saw the problem immediately: the Eco was stationary, though her drums commanded ramming speed. Her stern alone moved, turning as if some unseen giant hand had hold of it. On the distant deck, his ensign stood looking back at him.

  ‘She’s holding, Admiral – we could throw a line, tow her free—’

  ‘And be dragged to our death along with her? Charybdis’ pups don’t let go, you know that. Stretch back and pull, you slaves,’ he roared, ‘before we join them in Hades.’

  As the Barabaso pulled away, the Moor looked back and raised his hand in a final salute.

  On the distant deck, his ensign touched his heart, bowed and bellowed an order they could not hear. Rather than prolong a pointless fight, the ensnared ship raised its oars. In a moment, the maelstrom had sucked her screaming into the silent depths.

  CHAPTER 32

  The heavily pregnant mistress of Rasenna was taking her passeggiata along the town walls, surveying her dominion with her husband. This pleasant promenade was interrupted when a panting sentry came galloping towards them.

  ‘Another vis
itor at the north gate, Lord Geta.’

  ‘I gave you your instructions—’

  ‘That you did, an’ I was going to plug him, only he didn’t come from the north. He came from the east. Add to that, he ain’t dancing and – well, he looks pretty rich.’

  Maddalena grabbed her husband’s arm. ‘It is our Marian duty to help the helpless.’

  ‘That it is, amore. Lead on, my good man.’

  *

  It was obvious that the fellow had been riding all day, though he was foolishly dressed for it. The women and children behind him looked to have embarked upon this journey with even less notice.

  The man’s finery and his magnificent bay horse would have revealed his wealth had his manners not got there first. ‘We are Ariminumese exiles – I demand sanctuary.’

  ‘You look an honest sort,’ said Geta. ‘Why did they kick you out?’

  ‘All my paesani are exiles. The Serenissima is no more.’ He paused after this statement, not for effect so much but because it was still astounding to him.

  ‘You exaggerate, surely, Signore …’

  ‘It is the unadorned truth – a fever swept the islands, followed by a fire that forced me to abandon my palazzo and flee with only my hapless wife and poor children.’

  ‘I’ll call you Lot, then,’ said Geta. He turned to his wife as Maddalena whispered in his ear. Ever the money-changer’s daughter, she had noticed that the mules bearing the man’s wan-faced children were also bearing heavy coin bags.

  ‘Where did this fever originate?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know. My city spread her legs to the entire Adriatic. What does it matter?’ The gentleman was obviously unused to being questioned, and now he finally lost his temper. ‘It’s ridiculous to converse this way. You will open the gate—’