by Aidan Harte
While their masters howled though the Day of the Innocents, the Ebionite servants were busy preparing for the Day of the Dead. They rearranged the death masks in the Ancestor Room, laid out great banquets and then fled the city before the sun went down. Next morning, family members performed their ablutions and then tied blindfolds on each another. One by one they entered the Ancestor Room, and when they came out they were someone else. Nubile girls emerged wearing the faces of bearded soldiers, old men with the faces of beautiful boys. The great feasts vanished in minutes, and afterwards, other hungers were sated.
Fulk and his skeleton crew patrolled the walls as the mayhem let loose. Sofia tried to keep the infant calm, but the changed atmosphere was palpable.
‘You don’t partake, Fulk?’ she asked.
‘With this body? It would be unjust to the dead.’
Sofia didn’t believe his selfless act; he, like Arik, was obviously disgusted by the festival, but his fidelity to his queen trumped everything.
Sofia asked, ‘Are they really possessed?’
‘Does it matter?’ he said, then, softer, ‘Forgive me. I’m just— For the first few hours it’s play-acting, as far I can tell, but after dusk …’ He whistled dryly. ‘Then it gets rough. To start with, everyone’s just delighted to be alive, but later they weary; they feel themselves slipping away. Some go down fighting, and occasionally you get a really strong personality. They always bring a few back. You’ll see.’
They followed the prince’s tracks for several miles until they came to a place where the soil gave way to shifting sands and Arik swore and confessed that they might have lost him. He held his hand out and called, ‘Dhib!’
The falcon had been following so long that Levi had forgotten it, but now it swooped down and landed on Arik’s outstretched arm. He whispered some words to it and it took off again.
‘Now what?’ said Levi.
‘Now we wait. Tea?’
Arik poured the water onto a mint leaf and piled in several spoons of sugar. As he handed Levi the cup, he muttered, ‘לחײם’
‘חודה ךבה’ said Levi as he took the tea, then looked up guiltily.
‘Yes, I thought so,’ said Arik. He did not wait for confirmation. ‘When you were taken by my brother’s men, did you hear their plans?’
Levi sipped the tea. ‘I understood enough to know they were excited. They kept talking of the Old Man of the Mountain. I was surprised.’
‘Surely you’ve heard of him?’
‘I always thought my mother had made him up to convince me the Ebionites once were more than slaves.’
‘My father also told me stories. The Old Man was the greatest. He could cajole the cautious and tempt the greedy and inspire the timid. He united the tribes and almost pushed the Franks into the sea – almost. But he is gone, and they remain, too powerful. Too many.’
‘They said he had returned.’
‘Ha! Yusuf must truly be desperate to feed them such fantasies—’ Arik suddenly looked up and Levi did likewise, but he saw nothing but empty sky.
Then a cry came from above, and a distant speck became the silhouette of a bird.
Arik swallowed his tea and leapt up. ‘Come. Dhib has found something.’
That night Sofia slept on the walls, keeping the child warm against her own body. Bad dreams were interrupted by cries as the knights fought back half-hearted invasions of the lecherous dead. After the third such attempt, Sofia gave up any hope of sleep and sat up to watch the carnival. One of the Lazars, a young recruit, was badly bitten and she bandaged his wound. When the baby awoke, she was careful to keep her faced away from the city.
The streets were awash with drunken revellers and the alleyways with frantic couplings as long-dead lovers sought each other out with no regard to who or what their host might be; prim matrons pressed spread-eagled against walls, mothers and sons copulated, fathers and daughters; hardened sailors sweated with priests, tight-fisted merchants wept with joy as their slaves straddled them … This night Akka’s walls were a pen that kept the dead from spilling into the desert and the sea.
Sofia noticed some of the younger Lazars watching the proceeding with prurient interest: so not everyone was as committed as Fulk, as fully convinced that they had chosen wisely when they doomed themselves to corruption, isolation and chastity. She watched Fulk moving between these regretful souls throughout the night, bolstering their sagging spirits.
The carnality of the dead was insatiable. Although they only had new faces, Sofia could hardly recognise courtiers she saw every day, for their movements were at odds with their bodies: girls quivered arthritically and leered at mincing old men. Sofia was shocked to hear the queen’s voice amongst the moaning throng. She was lying on a stairway, grunting passionate imprecations as the patriarch’s head bobbed between her legs, gnawing away like a pig eating old vegetables.
They followed the bird’s shadow across the dunes until they came to a place where the sand gave way to rock. Arik promptly found the trail in the moonlight, but he was obviously puzzled. ‘He’s this way – but this is a different camel to the one he set out on. This one is near death. See, how close together the footprints are.’
When they caught their first sight of him, the prince’s camel appeared to be wandering aimlessly.
‘Looks like he’s sleeping in the saddle,’ Levi remarked, puzzled.
When they got closer the camel turned, braying plaintively, and Prince Andronikos tumbled to the ground. His throat had been cut and the smell was enough to tell them he’d been dead a while, though they had found him before the vultures could do much damage.
‘Sicarii,’ said Arik. ‘They wanted us to catch him, but not this quick.’
‘What’s going on?’ said Levi uneasily.
‘Get back on your camel.’ Arik handed Levi his waterskin. ‘Drink.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘We don’t stop until we reach Akka. They mounted a dead man on a thirsty camel that knows this area. There’s water on the other side of this wadi. Don’t you see? They wanted us to follow the camel, but we caught it too early. Look: either side of the slope, see those rocks at the end of the wadi, in the shadows there?’
‘An ambush?’
‘And one we’ve not escaped yet. Are you ready? Ride!’
When the sun dawned, hundreds of discarded masks littered the otherwise empty streets. Naked, half-dressed citizens stole homewards, limping and bow-legged, their bodies left stiff, bruised and bleeding by their temporary occupants. Usually at this hour the bazaars would be filling with merchants preparing for the day, but all was quiet as the city slept off the previous night’s orgy.
Sofia woke to see Fulk and his men quietly descending from the walls. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I have to check for deserters. Stay here: this is when it’s most dangerous,’
‘No way. You watched my back all night.’
‘I don’t have time to argue.’
‘So don’t.’ She gave the infant to the injured Lazar and joined Fulk’s troop. Fulk unclipped his axe as he stepped onto the street. ‘People lock up when they get home so it’s easy to find the deserters. They make lots of noise. If you hear anything, get behind me.’ He divided his men into fours and sent them out across the city.
Fulk glanced at Sofia. ‘Feel the air?’
‘It’s clean,’ she said in wonder, ‘like the desert.’
Fulk inhaled with relish. ‘Enjoy it while you can. Hello, who’s this?’
Just inside the mouth of an alleyway stood an apron-wearing hulk. The blood on the apron wasn’t his. He wandered up and down, mumbling to himself. When he caught sight of the Lazars he went mute and statue-still, like a child, hoping to hide in immobility. Fulk nodded to his men and checked Sofia was behind him. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he murmured. ‘The hosts are the ones in most danger.’
Soon the butcher forgot his purpose and started mumbling again, arguing with an unseen other. ‘I’m not going ba
ck,’ he insisted in a girlish lisp. ‘I said No. It’s cold and it’s dark—’
The Lazars came closer, dragging their spurs in the dust, when suddenly the butcher brandished his cleaver and screamed, ‘I said NO!’
Fulk stood his ground as the butcher charged. His men either side waited patiently and when Fulk took a step backwards they stepped forwards, slamming their shields into the blundering mass. The cleaver flew up as he tumbled down and the knights fell upon him, pinning his arms.
Sofia caught the cleaver and smiled at Fulk’s disapproving snort. ‘What? You’ve got an axe!’
Fulk didn’t have time to argue; his men were struggling with the butcher. He sat on the man’s chest, gripped the mask on each side and pulled. An unearthly dual voice emanated from the butcher’s scabbed lips: ‘Nnnnuuughghgh-gh-ga,’ he groaned, while the girl within him screamed like a harpy, ‘SAID NOOO!!!’
The flesh clung to the mask as Fulk pulled and at last it came free with a ripping sound. There were bloody lesions on the man’s cheeks and forehead, but he was already snoring. Fulk held the mask like a dead rat – it belonged to a girl with a high forehead and a pouty, sulking mouth. He threw it against the wall under the nearest Madonna Muerta statue. The fragments fell to the pile of other would-be deserters from the Land of the Dead.
‘When a mask is broken—’ Sofia began.
‘They can never return. She knew the rules.’
They walked on. Amongst the occasional discarded mask lay the bodies of dogs and cats and goats. Once they came upon a partially eaten horse. ‘Supposed to lock the stables,’ Fulk tutted. He looked at Sofia. ‘Folks who starved to death tend to have an appetite.’
‘No kidding.’ She threw the cleaver in the air and caught it, getting used to its weight. It took an hour to circumnavigate the city, then Fulk sent his men out on a final random sweep of the backstreets.
Sofia accompanied him back to the citadel. A young knight standing outside greeted Fulk with relief. ‘Grand Master! Thank the Madonna – inside – I don’t know how they got in. All the doors were locked—’
‘How many?’
‘Two, I think.’
Fulk sent the Lazar to get some back-up. After he ran off, Sofia slapped Fulk on the back and flipped her cleaver nonchalantly. ‘Two? We can handle that.’
They walked down the corridor, which was lined with empty coffins. At the end, it split into two; to the left was a dark corridor, an ossuary, the piled bones feebly illuminated by thin shafts of morning sun. A dry musk filled the air. The other way led to the training hall, a large chamber illuminated by big circular windows. A pair of deserters were wrestling in the middle, though it was a clumsy affair: both parties were frantic with hate, but neither was used to their temporary body.
‘Old grudge?’ said Sofia.
‘Looks like. It’s better that they’re focused on each other.’ Fulk advanced with confidence. ‘Stay here. I’ll handle it.’
Sofia snorted and began to follow, when she heard a lapping sound to her left and paused. She saw a shadow – a white face – scramble by a shaft of light at the end of the dark corridor, and mocking laughter.
One of the wrestlers pulled the other to the ground and pulled his ear off, but he didn’t appear to notice. Fulk risked a quick glance behind him. ‘Contessa?’
He was about to go and look for Sofia, but instinct made him turn again – just in time to see the two wrestlers coming for him, their quarrel forgotten. Fulk backed away as the pair charged, shocked: this kind of coordination between deserters was unheard of. He slapped the first in the face with the broadside of his axe and as soon as the porcelain mask cracked, the host tumbled over soundlessly, already asleep. The other was more nimble; he dived at Fulk, grabbing his axe hand. Fulk hit the ground heavily with a grunt and winced as his axe skidded across the slabs. The dead man’s clumsy, insistent hands found his neck and began to squeeze.
Down the other corridor, Sofia heard Fulk’s call, but didn’t dare answer for fear of alerting her quarry. She crept slowly from pillar to pillar, listening hard. A drip-fed pool was streaked with undulating trickles of blood. She walked around it, following a dragging trail to the end of the corridor. Between the shelves of dusty bones were side-vaults, stacked with grain-bags and barrels. The chuckling reminded her of the dogs that had encircled Arik’s fire in the desert; it echoed in the darkness between the uneven tempo of the dripping liquid.
Steeling herself, Sofia turned into the last side-vault. A girl was kneeling before a niche on the far wall. She had arranged something in the niche; Sofia could see a veil, but she couldn’t make out what it was attached to until she took a step closer, and suddenly gagged when she saw what it was. The body belonged to a dog, pregnant to judge from its heavy teats and pink hairless belly, but the bitch’s head had been replaced with a sow’s and painted with merry, garish cosmetics.
The girl turned around slowly, her arm held straight out. She held a small dagger in that hand. From her body, Sofia judged her to be about Isabella’s age, but her mask was that of a purselipped older man, a cleric or a notary, maybe. Her skin was beaded with sweat.
‘Porca Madonna! That’s you, Scaligeri! How could you be the Handmaid? You’re not pure. You’re not obedient.’ The guttural voice was full of mockery, the words it spoke a collage of syllables awkwardly hammered together. ‘You’re a selfless bitch who’s let everyone who ever loved you die to save yourself.’
‘Go back to Hell,’ Sofia said.
‘You’ll abandon that piglet in your belly, too, when the time comes, won’t you? ’course you will, dirty pig. Why don’t we save some time and let me cut it out? The way you cut Donna Bombelli!’ She threw herself at Sofia, knife shaking a little, nails clawing.
Sofia sidestepped and the girl rolled over neatly, chuckling.
Fulk came upon them, out of breath and limping. He took in the scene and lowered his axe. ‘If you remove the mask, you can go home and come back next year—’
‘Liar!’ the girl hissed, retreating into a pillar. ‘Fuuuulk,’ she crooned as she rubbed her back against it, ‘take it if you want, Fuuuulk. You needn’t abstain.’ The voice dropped to a whisper: ‘I won’t tell Catrina …’ She untied the front of her chemise. Her small breasts were bruised and scratched from yesternight’s entertainment.
‘You know you have to go back,’ Fulk said in the same soothing voice. ‘Take the mask off.’
‘I will if you will. You sound so sweet. I want to see your face.’
When Fulk took another step, she screamed, ‘Take the mask off!’ She put the dagger to her neck. ‘Show me, or I’ll take her with me into the Dark.’ A drop of blood formed around the dagger’s point.
Fulk turned to Sofia, eyes begging.
She understood, and looked away as he lifted his visor.
‘So beautiful,’ said the girl, lowering the knife and reaching out to touch him with her other hand.
He suddenly bellowed
‘Fulk!’ Sofia shouted as he turned, but she was frozen at the sight of his face: a knot of tangled crimson ropes.
The girl took advantage of the pause, expertly kicking the back of his legs and bringing him crashing to his knees. She held the knife to his neck and glared at Sofia. ‘Give me the piglet or I’ll kill him.’
‘Sofia, get out of here,’ Fulk hissed. The claw-marks on his cheek were just a more vivid red in a mass of matted blood.
Sofia stepped back. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘He’s coming back, Scaligeri! We hear of nothing else in the pit. He grows strong, like your piglet. I’ll tell him and my reward shall be great. Wherever you run, he’ll find you.’
‘Tell him I’m ready,’ Sofia said, and threw the cleaver. It turned over and over and over, and the handle struck between her eyes. The mask cracked apart neatly and fell, shattering as it hit the ground, followed a moment later by the sleeping girl’s body.
CHAPTER 77
The servant who opened the door of Palaz
zo Bombelli made Pedro wait in the atrium to be announced. This pretentiousness would have amused him once, but Pedro was fresh from attending to Jacques in the stables. Still he did not let himself show his anger, not when he’d come to try to bridge the gap between the engineers and priors that had opened since Geta appeared.
‘Is that Pedro?’ Maddalena called from the stairway. She pattered down the steps, her smile luminous. ‘I’m glad it’s you. You should be the first to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘I’m engaged!’
Pedro had only just come from Piazza Stella, where he’d seen Uggeri’s crew loitering as menacingly as they had in the old days. Uggeri had so far kept the peace Sofia had charged him with, but he hardly looked festive. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, hiding his confusion. ‘I wish your brothers were here to celebrate.’
‘I’ve always considered you a brother, you know that, and I pray you’ll agree to be my husband’s best man. Lord Geta thinks highly of you too.’
‘Geta!’
Maddalena’s smile twitched. ‘But you must have heard! I know how fast gossip leaps between towers. What’s the matter? It’s wonderful news. I’ll be a lady!’
Pedro struggled to be polite, ‘It— I— It’s only a little unexpected, and a little hasty – I mean, in so short a time, how well can you know this – this foreigner?’
Maddalena’s brow clouded. ‘I see. It’s inappropriate because he’s Concordian. But, of course, the Contessa Scaligeri can slut about with Captain Giovanni and then Levi, a condottiere from God knows where, and nobody says a word.’
‘That’s not true – Sofia didn’t— Oh, never mind that. I couldn’t give a damn about Geta’s nationality. He’s noble, Maddalena. You’re not naïve. We’ve only just thrown off the Families. Your father’s one of the most important people in town. If your mother—’