by Aidan Harte
After Geta reported their losses, Leto shook his head. ‘Our pet buttero got it too? Ah well, perhaps that’s for the best. We would have had to dispose of him shortly anyway.’
Leto’s callousness didn’t surprise Geta, but he hadn’t expected him to take the loss of his wagon so lightly.
‘What use are my papers to a pack of illiterates? If they’re wasting their time on vain hopes, I’m glad. We’re through the worst now.’
‘Are we, though?’ Geta asked earnestly. ‘Even if we beat them here, what do we win but stewardship of a people who hate us?’
‘Madonna! I’ve had enough surprises today without you trying to convince me of your patriotism. You’re worrying about your pelt? Don’t. Victory’s imminent. Salerno is but days away – one more push and the war’s won.’
CHAPTER 55
Trotula found Pedro next morning bent over a sheet, scribbling and humming.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Matron’ – he pointed his stylus to the vault – ‘what’s that?’
‘An old symbol. Generals carry a baton to war, do they not? Well, that is the baton of the god of medicine.’
Before she could say more, a booming voice bellowed, ‘Madonna! I was ready to take you out in a box, Pedro!’
‘Just the man I wanted to see. Here’s a list of materials …’
Doctor Ferruccio looked it over sceptically. ‘This fellow still feverish, Matron? You don’t ask much, lad, do you? How, dare I ask, did you get it working when the best minds of Concord failed?’
‘It remains to be seen if it will actually work, but I think I’m on the right track. The Concordians’ problem is they’re too used to thinking in straight lines. They were trying to apply the same principle behind their measuring instruments.’
‘The Whistlers?’
‘Yes, a signal bounced off the river bed. We used something similar to render the Irenicon safe while we were building the bridge. The buio find dense water unpleasant, and the Concordians aimed to take that a step further – not just to make the water denser, but to induce a phase-shift.’
Doctor Ferruccio was looking at the dense notations on the sheet.
‘When a liquid turns to steam or ice, that’s a phase-shift.’
‘I know that, you pup.’
‘Sorry. From what I gather, Spinther and whoever came up with the idea got stuck here. They couldn’t make a signal strong enough to form a column that would last more than a few seconds.’
‘And for the bridge to work, they need it to be weight-bearing. You can make it work?’
‘Nothing’s certain, Doctor – but I do know something about sound. Three years ago we held the Wave back by disrupting the Molè’s signal. A sound’s power can be measured in decibels, but its quality is more elusive. One of the first things my maestro taught me about architecture is that scale is trivial compared to proportion. In acoustical terms, proportion is harmony.’
Ferruccio smiled at last. ‘Music I understand.’
Pedro turned the paper over and sketched three concentric circles with a sequence of notes on each level. ‘This is a geometrical representation of a chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures and their flats and sharps.’
‘My word, a drawing of music,’ Ferruccio said brightly. ‘Fresco painters have a similar device to discover colours that sit well together.’
‘Yes, the colour-wheel is analogous,’ said Pedro. ‘Look here,’ he tapped the top of outer circle, ‘at the apex, the key of C Major—’
‘—with no sharps or flats—’
‘Right. Now proceeding clockwise, the key of G has one sharp. Next is D.’
‘With two sharps,’ said Ferruccio, following closely.
‘Exactly and the next key, A, has three sharps; the next after that, four. And if you go counter-clockwise, you get the corresponding flats. Starting at any pitch, you can create a twelve-tone scale with just pure perfect fifths and octaves.’
‘Very clever – but what’s the point of it? Does it make you a better singer?’
‘It shows the distance between the chords at which they are harmonious. That distance is governed by proportion. This is only a simple model. You can make a far more sophisticated model of pitch relations with other forms – a helix, for example.’
‘This is sufficiently complex already, thank you,’ he said drily.
‘The point, Doctor, is that a musician doesn’t light upon a pleasing chord progression by accident. Those harmonies existed before the world existed. Whoever conceived this bridge was very brilliant, but he couldn’t make it work because he wasn’t a mathematician like Bernoulli. Few of us are. I only got it because it was right in front of me.’
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense …’
‘Euclid said that the shortest path between two points is a straight line. And that’s true of a plane, but not necessarily a curved surface. Sound doesn’t travel in straight lines. It’s a wave that describes a sphere as it travels out from the source. You keep the land around Salerno drained, right? If you tried to use suction instead of an Archimedean screw—’
‘—I’d be a bloody fool.’
‘Exactly. It’d be a waste of energy.’ He rolled up the drawing and pointed over Ferruccio’s shoulder to the central column. ‘Spinther kept trying to make the signal stronger by making it louder. It’s easier to find an efficient proportion – and there is no better proportion than the one which Bernoulli used to model the Molè. Just like harmony can be represented with a circle of fifths, the Golden Ratio can be represented as a spiral that gets wider by a factor of phi every quarter-turn. Now imagine that spiral travelling in space’ – he pointed to the central column – ‘just like the snake, winding up and down eternally.’
‘I have to admit it’s beyond me,’ said Ferruccio finally, ‘but if it does what I think it does—’
‘—it does—’
‘—then that’s good enough for me.’
*
Refugees from the north were allowed to attend the assembly, but not to speak or vote. Salerno’s population had tripled in the last month, not counting the exiles – the butteri who had returned to the city in its time of need were a ragged mob, but they listened attentively to the speaker. The congestion of so many pointed-ear caps made the amphitheatre resemble nothing so much as a parliament of wolves.
‘In the north, the disease of campanilismo – that imbecilic loyalty to a certain bell – is rife. There are some things that the north can learn from the south – we certainly have a nobler conception of the city than they. Salerno is nothing more or less than its people. You—’ Ferruccio slowly traced his pointed finger across over his listeners and then jabbed it to north. ‘Concord is coming, my friends. What shall we do – build walls to crouch behind? Veii’s walls still stand, but the Veians are slaves within them: a pitiful fate, but well deserved. Men who refuse to reason are dogs and a city defined by her walls is no true city but a prison. The Ariminumese too, they burned with their city and her hoarded vanities. Shall we emulate them? We have never fought as the Northerners do. Why should we lie supine and wait as they have?’
He paused as a resounding rejection circled the amphitheatre.
‘Remember, not every northern city has fallen to these locusts. There are those who say that Rasenna too is dead. Believe it not. Her towers have fallen, but Rasenna is not her towers. As long as there are Rasenneisi willing to fight, Rasenna lives on.’
He turned to where Pedro and Costanzo were sitting with their countrymen.
‘If you see exiles, you need to look better: here is Rasenna before you. And it is the same for us, my countrymen: where we are, there is Salerno.
‘I say again: Concord is coming. I ask again, what ought we do? What is reasonable? They are many, but slow. We are few, but swift. Should we fight on their terms, at the place and time of their choosing? I for one don’t plan to make it so convenient.’
*
The Asclepeion’s gard
en was filled with sweet-smelling flowers to perfume the air and the paths were planted with herbs like burret and wild thyme and watermint that released their odours when trod upon. The blissful scent was complemented by the view of the old aqueduct; the stone creation seemed almost to fuse into the mountain.
When Pedro looked upon the old stone he fancied he heard the horns of Montaperti. Then the sun painted them orange and his eye was dazzled and his doubting heart armoured anew.
‘You like it here, Maestro?’ Trotula asked.
‘I like the people. They don’t fear adversity.’
‘We take pains to instil our children with courage.’
‘You exile them.’
‘Yes, so that they learn the folly of opposing nature. It’s not a lesson men learn easily, and without courage it would never take. Men are like those spices that reveal their goodness only when they are crushed. You are too. I think illness agrees with you – you are looking positively handsome.’
Pedro blushed. ‘Hardly, Matron.’
‘You don’t believe me,’ Trotula teased, ‘but I’ve had to remind several of my girls of their vows.’
‘I’m no bandieratoro—’
‘Perhaps carrying a flag was the acme of manhood in Rasenna, but this is another country. You may become someone else here if you choose.’
*
After the assembly, Ferruccio found a small Tolfetano horse for Pedro and together they rode the length of Silarus, the river dividing the contato south of the Salerno. Like almost every southern river the headwaters rose in Etruria’s central mountains and flowed down almost perpendicularly to the coast. The Silarus and the Calore, her main tributary, were known as Mother and Daughter. They converged gradually, travelled parallel for fifteen miles or so before finally intersecting to deluge the rocky shore with silt.
‘This large triangular plain is where we’ll fight, Maestro.’
‘We? Who else is coming?’
‘Bari, Brundisium, Taranto – they have some admirable horsemen.’
‘How many do you expect?’
‘Not enough to win, I fear, but perhaps we’ll bloody their nose before we depart.’
*
After the ordeal of the Minturnae, the last substantial river to cross was the Volturno. Salerno was only fifty miles away and Leto was certain the butteri would make their stand there. Geta suggested giving each man an inflated animal hide and crossing en masse at night, but Leto would not hear of such a risky manoeuvre.
Pontonniers were now in short supply and they had no annunciators, so Leto sent Geta with a cavalry troop to cross the ice-cold river and secure the far bank, to protect them while they worked, while he reordered what remained of the Grand Legion. Thirty thousand men had set out from Concord, but disease, desertion and attrition had taken some five thousand men. That was still more than equal to the job, but Concordian warfare was a geometrical affair and asymmetries in the cohorts reduced their efficiency – besides being distasteful. Leto moved men about until each century was restored to strength – or rather, they were all made equally weak. He was determined to leave nothing to chance; that was after all why he had built not one wide, solid pontoon but three. The reorganised army would cross in strength and surprise and overwhelm whatever force the Salernitans had managed to muster to meet them.
After all this preparation, their crossing was as uncontested as the crossing of the Allia had been. Geta had recovered from his melancholy at Sergio’s betrayal and the unnecessary delay made him frantically impatient. ‘More womanly caution,’ he ranted to Leto. ‘Our food stores are gone and we’re running through our powder reserves just trying to flavour the horse-meat.’
‘It’s common sense,’ said Leto patiently. ‘They want to lure us forward without securing our lines of supply and retreat.’
‘That’s exactly your problem right there: you’re thinking of running away when you should be attacking. All the supplies we need are waiting in Salerno’s granaries.’
Leto was unmoved, and as if to make the point that he would not be bullied into a rash charge, he left an entire cohort behind to guard the pontoons.
‘After all, who knows what’s ahead of us,’ he said to Horatius.
*
Ferruccio climbed the aqueduct for his evening passeggiata to find Costanzo waiting for him. He noticed that the younger Bombelli no longer dressed like a rake but instead wore sober clothes more suited to his new position as head of the family.
‘That was a nice speech, Doctor.’
‘The truth’s a bell that always rings sweet. Any more news from Oltremare?’
‘Some say the queen’s won; others say the Byzantines overthrew her and cut a deal with the Ebionites.’
‘You believe that?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Tales warp as they pass from ship to ship and harbour to harbour. The Byzantines are capable of it, certainly. They’ve had nothing but disdain from Akka for decades,’ Costanzo said bitterly, ‘and no one really believes in Crusade any more.’
‘Your paesano still has faith.’
‘Pedro needs to believe. If he can’t win here, he’ll have to admit he abandoned Rasenna for nothing. Even if his bridge works, it changes nothing.’
‘It gives us a chance, Costanzo.’
‘A chance for what? To outrun the hounds for a while – but the day will come there’ll be nowhere left for us in Etruria.’
‘Did you come up here to throw yourself off?’ Ferruccio took Costanzo’s wrist to measure his pulse, ‘Dear me, this is a serious case of melancholy. I prescribe acorns. I don’t want to wake one morning and find you have vanished like’ – he checked himself – ‘that foolish alchemist.’
Costanzo snapped his hand away. ‘Like Guido, you mean. You know very well I’m with you to the end, whatever that is – but that’s no reason to stop being realistic of our chances.’
‘But I am. That’s what you’re failing to see. The Concordians have all the clocks, but we have all the time. The trick to beating most infections isn’t bleeding or purges or colics. It’s simply to keep the patient alive. No matter how many of our cities they burn, as long as the League lives, the odds are in our favour. They are far from home and every day that passes they have less food, less money, and most of all, less will.’
CHAPTER 56
The Peoples of the Black Hand: A Bestiary
At its decadent height, Sybaris, the City of Welcomes, cast a shadow over all Etruria. It ruled or received tribute from every city in the Black Hand and its very name was a byword for luxury – but luxury robbed its people of vigour and strength.
When an empire withers, new empires spring to life from its ruins. Far to the north, the Etruscan League crushed the Latins, the Samnites, the Picenes and the Apuli. Knowing that they could not match Etruscan arms, the Sybarites sought to overawe the upstart. They invited the League’s ambassadors to Sybaris and plied them with cuisine and courtesans. The condescending exhibition14 instead showed the Etruscans what wealth they could win and so they declared war and sacked the cities of the Sybaritic League one by one.15
Finally, Sybaris alone was left. The Etruscans’ cunning philosophers diverted the River Crathis so that it flooded the ancient city and the peninsula which had hitherto as many names as it had peoples became known exclusively as Etrusca.16
The unhappy survivors of the deluge meanwhile relocated further south. On a map, the digitus auricularis of Etruria’s Black Hand looks almost dainty. The reality disappoints. On the Isolated extremity, the harsh winds of intervening centuries have hewn the Sybarites into creatures as rugged as the shores upon which they eke out their bestial existence.
CHAPTER 57
For lack of iron to cap his spear, the savage had hardened the wood with fire. Despite this, and though he had but one eye to aim at the fish in the tidal pool, his aim was unerring, and what he caught he skewered on another stick. It was barely half full – a poor day’s work, but he must be content. The tide was coming in w
ith the evening. With one stick over his shoulder and using the other as a staff, he climbed until the wind’s howl was louder than the sea’s roar.
The black idol stood on the promontory overlooking the bay. Its great age was evident in the way the elements had polished the volcanic rock till it resembled black metal. The carving was superficial, but despite this and other crudities – its outsized head and hands – it bore a simple dignity. The tenderness with which the Madonna held the Babe to her breast was moving, even to a savage.
In front of it, he placed two fish, one large, one small – one for mother; one for baby – and muttered a prayer in mongrel Etruscan. It did not matter that he did not understand the magic words; they were not for him. The Madonna was the Sea’s mistress; only She could make it behave.
He climbed down, whistling to himself, not watching his step though the rocks were jagged and uneven. He had prayed – as always – for luck, something with which he had never been blessed. Usually the Sybil passed on to sons their fathers’ names, but he had never known a father; he’d been slain years ago by a cruel man named Hellebore. So when the savage had come of age, he’d been given a name without honour. Old Befana had dubbed him No Man.
He reached the shore and was about to turn for home when he saw a large skiff in the uncharitable shoaling waters of the bay. Whoever was at the tiller was no fool, for he was neatly navigating the sharp rocks, both seen and unseen. No Man darted behind some rocks, trembling and panting, and remembered the promise he had made when he had plucked out his eye: Sybaris would never again suffer invasion. That he was the only one around was irrelevant. An oath was an oath.
He pulled the day’s catch off his other spear, praying that the Madonna would grant him time for a second throw, and leaped up with a great war cry. The first dart was loose before he realised his target was a woman carrying a child. This surprise was swiftly followed by another: moving with the reflexes of a mountain-cat, she simply stood aside. His spear splashed harmlessly in a rockpool and before No Man could cast his second spear, another of the invaders snapped his sling. No Man spun his spear to deflect the stone, but as he did so a second, much larger, rock came hurling towards him. It snapped his stick and slammed into his chest.