by Aidan Harte
‘So you came to keep me company? Shall we tell each other stories? No? I must say I don’t know how you can sleep so easily, Spinther, with all our forces packed together like buffalo. We’ve surrendered the initiative.’
‘Every day we’re pushing forward.’
‘But into what? Every day we lose more men, we have less dry food and less clean water, and all the while we’re dragging those useless baubles along. A sword’s dead weight when there’s no one to use it on.’
‘Only children and fools live for the moment. The engines may be heavy but I promise you won’t think them useless when we reach Salerno. If we’re suffering, they’re suffering too.’
‘They’ve been raised here! They call this hell home.’
Leto had heard enough. ‘For God’s sake, don’t let me hear you talking like this to the other officers.’
‘Hush!’ Geta hissed.
‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘Is someone out there?’ He hated to admit it but the swordsman’s instincts were keen.
‘Listen.’
Leto could hear only the usual barbarous wail. ‘What?’
‘They’re sending messages to each other, you complacent ass. They’re using bolos the way the Rasenneisi use flags, the way we use annunciators.’
‘You’re giving them too much—’ Leto’s condescending smile vanished as he heard a rider approaching. ‘Who goes there?’
‘Me,’ drawled a familiar voice.
‘I didn’t give you permission to leave camp,’ Leto snapped, fear turning swiftly to irritation.
‘Don’t recall asking,’ said Sergio, leaping down from his horse. Another person was slung over the saddle.
‘Where were you?’ Geta asked.
‘Hunting. I didn’t catch nothing ’cept this fellow.’ He pulled him roughly to the ground roughly. ‘Whoever he is, he ain’t no cavalcante. He managed to drown his horse and was fixing to drown himself when I happened along. All the griping and hollering he was doing, I figured he must be one of yours.’
Leto walked over to the prisoner. ‘He’s not.’
‘That so? Well, have him all the same. I’m plumb tired of him. Hoy! Open the gate there!’
Geta saluted Sergio as he went into the camp and was looking after him when Leto asked, ‘You know who this is, Geta?’
‘Should I?’
‘I should say so. It’s another of your brothers-in-law. It has been too long, Signor Bombelli.’
‘That it has, General. Would that it was under other circumstances.’ After shaking Leto’s hand, Guido looked Geta over coldly. ‘So, you are the one who made a wife of Maddalena? A bad investment, Signore. She is quite mad.’
Before Geta could respond, Leto said, ‘Apologies are in order for Salvatore: had we broken though earlier, I could have saved him. Out of sheer pique, the Veians executed him before they capitulated.’
Geta, watching, saw that Guido knew the story was a lie and, more importantly, did not care.
‘I’m sure you did everything practicable,’ Guido said amicably. ‘What’s done is done. You know our network can be useful to you. The League is a going concern as long as the free cities think it has a hope. Cut off its silver and you cut its hamstrings.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘My other brothers are scattered across Europa. I am the senior Bombelli now in the Etrurian market. They must trust my judgement.’
‘And Costanzo? Does he trust your judgement?’
He pursed his lips. ‘My little brother cannot see that continuing resistance is throwing good money after bad. Passion is an excellent quality in a poet, but a banker must see things objectively. The League fought the best fight they could, hurt you by delaying your march, but at last you are here. Reality is not subject to argument. Two is greater than one. You are the greater force. You must win out.’
‘And so you are here,’ said Leto, considering.
‘It goes without saying – but I’ll say it anyway – that I will look favourably on whoever represents my offer to the First Apprentice in a fair light.’
‘What do you think, Geta?’
‘I think he mistakes us for one of his couriers. Give the word and I’ll put up a scaffold so the bears can watch him dangle and tell the butteri about it. That’ll concentrate minds in Salerno wonderfully.’
Leto had already considered that, but Omodeo had said weeks ago that the Concordian treasury was perilously low. It must now be empty. To be forced to retreat when they were so close to victory, and by insolvency of all things? That would be ignominious indeed. Guido Bombelli represented salvation. Leto doubted that Guido’s brothers would fall in line as easily as he intimated, but his defection would set the Bombelli firm at war with itself.
Leto’s long silence unnerved Guido. ‘I implore you, General Spinther, don’t listen to this animal.’
‘Tranquillo, Signor. No need to beg – not while we need each other anyway.’
*
Next day, Leto sent to Concord an optimistic report of progress, and along with it, Guido Bombelli: a prize to keep Torbidda happy, and hopefully a spur to send more annunciators.
That morning, Sergio as usual outlined separate routes for men and machines. Leto took the infantry by a lowland route and left Geta the thankless task of leading the engine-train. Geta declared that if he saw another leech that day he would defect and Sergio grudgingly admitted they could avoid some wetlands if they took a tapering path that circumnavigated a stretch of coastal cliff – but he could not advise such a precarious route.
‘We’ll risk it,’ said Geta.
Spinther’s precious carriage was an inconspicuous unit in the vanguard. Geta would have very much enjoyed pushing it off the side, but he could not think of a way to make it look like a plausible accident – and anyway, there was no time. The narrow path hugged an undulating cliff and required careful negotiation. They were to rendezvous with the main army during the next day and the thought of spending more than one night on this desolate and vulnerable spot held little appeal.
The height made the horses skittish. The road was poor, and the looming ravine promised death for any false step. The stops were so frequent and exhausting that he decided that Sergio had the right idea: the buttero was as usual sleeping contentedly in the back of the wagon in front of him. Geta dismounted and led Arête along. A little ahead the path turned into a steep slope. As he could not see beyond it he could entertain the pleasant thought that it would be downhill and easy going hereafter. Feeling suddenly optimistic, he looked towards the sea. Perhaps the Moor had already finished with the Oltremarines and was even now blockading Salerno – how pleasant it would be, when they finally escaped this mire, to arrive and find the city already broken and begging to surrender.
An odd rumble startled Geta out of his reverie.
Quakes were common enough in the south, but this wasn’t that. He spun around in time to see a boulder tumbling down and into the rear of the train. A carriage shattered and as splinters of wood and flesh fell into the ravine, the horses bolted, pulling their wagons along at breakneck pace. A terrible moment passed as Geta watched this stampede approaching. He took a step back, but Arête was frozen – this was almost as shocking as the stampede, for Arête did not quail easily.
‘Move, you brute!’ he cried and tugged the bridle, but the war-horse just as viciously wrested it away. Geta looked down: the ground wasn’t just shaking, it was giving away. Arête scrambled backwards as Geta leaped forward for Sergio’s wagon. He caught the edge of the feed trough just as a chasm opened behind him.
Sergio woke up, cursing. ‘Can’t a fella get some sleep—?’
Geta hung on tightly as the cart was dragged along, craning his neck to try to see what was happening with the stampede. Arête’s fearsome whinnying had alerted the panicked beasts, but they dragged the lead carriage to the edge of the chasm and then stopped so abruptly that the driver went flying headlong into the gulf, closely followed by the cargo of iron pip
es. Geta twisted his body to avoid being impaled. Sergio was not so lucky.
Men shouted. Horses bawled. Wood cracked. Pipes clanged and tolled – and amidst all this cacophony was one errant sound he could not mistake: the whoop of an owl.
Geta let go of the cart and scrambled to his feet, his sword drawn. Up ahead, a butteri posse was descending the slope. They rode by the first and second carriage and stopped at the third – the one in front of Sergio’s cart. Geta darted behind the cart again, breathing fast.
‘Geta,’ said Sergio, ‘get on out of here.’ He was trying to drag the pipe out of his thigh. The one through his chest was immobile.
‘That’s Spinther’s carriage—’
‘You want to die for it?’
‘Got to die for something,’ he muttered. The wail of horses made him stick his head out and he saw the first wagon being pushed over the edge. The second swiftly followed. Now its path was cleared, the general’s carriage started forward again. Butteri were hanging from its canvas flanks.
With no better idea, Geta stood up and shouted, ‘That’s it, flee, you heartless cowards—’ He stopped short. ‘Doctor Ferruccio – we meet again!’
The old buttero turned and in one graceful movement whirled and released his bolos. Geta dived behind the cart again and a burst of fire pushed him over the chasm. He managed to catch hold of a pipe caught between the ledges, but it began bending under his weight. There was no way it was going to hold long enough for him to climb to the other side.
‘Geta!’
He turned to trace the voice and saw Sergio’s hand. When he hesitated, the buttero grated, ‘Hurry, you ass. They got what they came for.’
Sergio lay there panting in the ferocious heat of his burning wagon. ‘Make yourself useful and fetch that jug there afore the flames get it.’
‘Medicine, I suppose?’ Geta hunkered down beside him and uncorked the jug.
‘Manner of speaking,’ said Sergio. While he drank savagely, Geta lifted his poncho. It was sticky with blood. He whistled and replaced it gently.
Sergio took a gasping breath. ‘Can’t help noticing you ain’t telling how bad it don’t look.’
Tears were stinging Geta’s eyes. ‘Take another drink.’
‘Ain’t thirsty no more.’
‘Dio, it’s a miracle,’ Geta said, then, ‘where were you last night?’
‘Told you where. Off hunting.’
‘And you didn’t catch a single cotton-tail?’
‘Shoulda known then that my luck’d turned.’
‘Funny they knew Spinther’s carriage.’
The buttero’s eyes were closed. ‘Got something to say, say it. Case you missed it, I’m fixing to quit this here mortal coil.’
‘Hell, you don’t need to confirm it. Just tell me why.’
No answer came for a long time. Geta was about to check if he was gone when Sergio’s eyes opened wide. He felt pinned by the strength of the buttero’s stare. ‘I feel sorry for you, Geta. You got salt, but you don’t know what to do with it. You got to live for something. Your folk is your folk – no matter if they hate you and you hate them, they’re all you got.’
Geta listened to Sergio’s breathing getting more ragged until it finally stopped. He took the jug from the corpse’s grip and poured the scalding liquid down his own throat.
‘Salute, partner.’
CHAPTER 54
Dawn found Pedro shivering uncontrollably and his nurse much wearied; Trotula forced herself out into the wind to collect fresh herbs. As she carried her baskets through the wings of the Asclepeion, she found the tension in the air was making the novices’ singing strained. Salerno’s citizens were a hardy lot and Trotula had never known them so nervous. She did not tarry to enquire into it; right now her prime responsibility was her patient.
She found Ferruccio waiting in the apothecary with a leather satchel over his shoulder. His eyes were heavy with weariness. ‘How is he?’
‘Worse,’ said Trotula briefly. ‘One can fight only one monster at a time.’
‘You don’t look so wonderful yourself.’
A strained smile. ‘It’s my own fault. I prayed for patience, but the Madonna sent me patients.’
‘Get some rest. I need to show him something.’
Her anger was sudden. ‘Do your ears need sluicing again, Doctor? He needs to concentrate on fighting or he’s dead.’
‘We’re all dead, unless he can help,’ said Ferruccio and pushed by her. He knelt beside Pedro. ‘Madonna, what a healthy shade of green you are. The salubrious south agrees with you, lad.’
‘Hey, Doc! You been lighting candles for me?’
‘A bushel’s-worth. Catch.’
Pedro caught the slender leather satchel and noted the Concordian squared circle impressed upon it. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, fiddling with the strap.
‘Rather hoping you’d tell me. I’ll leave you before your nurse decides to test her poisons on me.’
After chasing Ferruccio out, Trotula retired to her bench. Once Pedro thought she was otherwise occupied, he spread out the sheaves of schematics. Trotula of course only affected not to notice. She knew that work for young men of Pedro’s stamp was medicine. Even as feverish as he was, he saw immediately the great potential of the design – and just as quickly, that there was some deep flaw in it.
The captured documents were the work of two hands. The first hand was clearly the one who had conceived the idea of the ‘bouncing bridge’. Whoever this was, he had described it theoretically in an elegant but infuriatingly terse abstract. Pedro followed the steps: a cannon mounted on a river bank fired a projectile to the far bank. The projectile was fired at an acute angle, so it skipped along the river’s surface. The ingenious part – and the most brazenly impractical – was that the arcs of its bounce would trace the arches of a bridge, and wherever the projectile briefly connected with the water it would emit a pulse downwards to the riverbed, and somehow, this pulse would generate pillars of ice which would form the weight-bearing columns of the bridge. Pedro knew enough Wave Theory now to recognise that the equations describing the induced phase-shifts were superficial, incomplete. The idea’s originator had either thought them sufficient – or had lost interest.
The rest of the documents were the work of a second hand – General Spinther’s. Half-done diagrams, repetitive iterations of the same unsatisfactory equations, scribbled notes and sketches – these were the work of a lesser mind floundering in the depths and reminded him painfully of his attempts to understand Giovanni’s journal. The first hand was showing off a clever idea; the second was trying to realise it and repeatedly coming up against the limits of his wits and Nature’s bounds.
Trotula returned to his side and handed him a goblet of the steaming pink brew she’d given him before.‘Enough,’ she said sternly. ‘You must rest.’
He drank quickly, showing more appetite than he had in days. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked between sips.
‘I’m sure it’s very important. So’s staying alive.’
‘Sorry, I can’t … sleep …’ He dropped the empty goblet, which clattered to the floor. ‘Strega! What’ve you— Did you—? Give me what did …’
‘I gave you what you need,’ she said unrepentantly. ‘The war will be waiting when you get back.’
He did not sink into the darkness; he fell.
*
He struck the water. It was hard as granite. He wasn’t dreaming – there was no pain in dreams. This was another place, as real as the world he had left. The past. He could smell the earthy iron tang of the sottosuolo and hear the dissonant roar of the shadow Irenicon. Trotula was right: he had never really left Rasenna.
He tried to pull himself up, but the water was viscous and held his hands and legs fast. It took a real effort to pull his head free but now he saw the buio all around. They filed by him as if on pilgrimage and amongst these wraiths he saw the Vaccarelli and the Borselinno brothers, and Frog and Sister Lucia, Doc Bardi
ni and the Reverend Mother, Fabbro Bombelli and his wife, the two giants Jacques and Yuri; he saw Valerius Luparelli and Marcus Marius Messallinus and Isabella Vaccarelli and her father Guercho, and he saw a sullen Uggeri, holding Hog Galati’s hand. Trailing behind all of them was the frail, hunched form of Vettori Vanzetti.
‘Papa, wait for me!’
His father turned slowly and said something, but he could not hear over the water’s roar. The current carried him into the darkness. Pedro tried to wade after him, but only succeeded in getting stuck deeper. The river and all the souls that were part of it were fleeing the deathly halitus emitting from Concord and he would be left alone, in the sterile place between death and life. He was sinking. The ice-cold water reached his neck, and now his chin.
‘Pedro, look up.’
He knew the voice – his teacher, his friend; the only man who had ever believed he was worth something, even though he was too weak to hold a flag. But he could not turn his head to see him.
‘Look up!’
‘Giovanni, I can’t see you—!’
*
The water’s roar melted imperceptibly into a melody ascending on a single voice. It attained a summit and hung there, pure as the North Star. Then a cascade of other voices joined it in different registers, one after another, deepening and broadening the harmony.
A rough hand touched his cheek gently. ‘Pedro. It’s passed.’
He breathed deeply – and yes, he could feel it; he could taste the fresh air.
‘Matron. I’m very sorry I called you a—’
‘I’ve been called worse.’
Pedro tried to get up but Trotula held him down firmly. ‘You need sleep to recover your strength. I’ll go and tell the girls to keep it down.’
‘No – no, don’t. It’s very pleasant.’
It was more than pleasant. It was the answer. The notion had germinated while he had been sleeping, and it had broken through when he’d opened his eyes. He knew what was missing from the Bouncing Bridge: harmony.
*
The Concordians regrouped, bridged the chasm and arrived very late at the rendezvous point. Leto had clearly had an eventful few days too – his head was freshly bandaged and his temper short.