Spira Mirabilis (30 page)

‘Is the Handmaid as inept as you?’ he asked conversationally. ‘This will be easier than I expected. You’re getting tired. Why don’t you go to sleep?’

His voice was honey-seductive, but she resisted. ‘Because I see
you
. You may have deceived all of Concord, that blind priest, even that boy whose skin you wear, but I see
you
.’

Her words penetrated and for a moment his serene expression faltered and a twist of doubt made his face spasm. His right arm began trembling. His other hand restrained it. ‘Down!’ he commanded, speaking not to Isabella, but to someone else, partially present.

Isabella chose that moment to strike. A jab to the neck made
his chin dip involuntarily and with her other hand she dragged her nails across his brow, then leaped out of reach.

His fist burst suddenly out from the dust, but rather than block it, she avoided his touch as something vile.

‘You’re beginning to vex— Aaahh!’ he screamed as the blood from his brow hit his eyes.

Isabella had been waiting. She slammed her knee into his bent-over face and he swung wildly, stumbling back. She caught his wrist as it passed and punched him in the kidney – a blow that would have made any normal opponent collapse.

He just laughed.

She grabbed the arm with her other hand too, and turned a standing somersault, never releasing her grip. The tendons of his shoulder joint ripped audibly and he bellowed with royal outrage.

A whiplash kick to her chest sent her flying.

Darkness for a second – no – don’t black out – don’t—

Her tongue was blood-coated. The kick had broken ribs, and every breath was jagged agony, and tasted of over-salted meat.

He stood before her in the swirling dust, his arm limp and backwards, blood streaming down his waxy face. He
writhed
unnaturally, and she saw the sickeningly pale skin between its black iron scales.

‘Worm, I
see
you,’ she cried.

With demonic strength, he raised his dislocated arm and it coiled like a trapped serpent until it wriggled back into position. His blood-bathed eyes remained closed.

‘Child, I see you too,’ he crowed.

*

Isabella awoke with a throbbing pain in her head and a constricting feeling around her chest. She was bound to the base of a massive metal cylinder that narrowed to a spike, exactly beneath the tripod legs on the summit of Monte Nero. The boy stood over
her, tightening the manacles that held her wrists. Around the needle’s base was a shallow circular pool filled with briny-looking water intermittently blackened by inky slicks.

‘I must leave, my King,’ said a voice behind the needle.

The boy left off his work and waded towards the speaker. Isabella, listening to their voices as she looked at the water, began to suspect that the unreflective dark liquid was very slowly drifting towards her.

‘You are abandoning me, Astrologer.’

‘I have an appointment to keep in Jerusalem.’

‘There’s no need – I’m dispatching Leto to bring her back.’

‘The Contessa and her child are invulnerable while my brother is at their side. I will stop his meddling at last.’

‘You’ll go with the fleet then?’

‘There are quicker ways to travel.’

‘Very well,’ the boy said. ‘I owe you thanks.’

‘Don’t embarrass yourself. I knew what you were when I persuaded Torbidda into your jaws.’

The boy dropped his hand uncertainly. ‘Then why did you help me?’

‘I believe in Balance. The Messiah needs a devil to tempt him, and if that fails, to crucify him.’

The Astrologer turned and looked at Isabella. ‘I’ll give the Handmaid your regards, little bird.’

The boy appeared in front of her once more. ‘So it appears you weren’t the only one who saw through me.’

‘
Torbidda
,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘That was your name, wasn’t it?’

‘His name matters little. I do not expect to be staying long in this vessel. Tell me, do you like my temple? It will soon be complete, but its heart is beating already. Those busy ants beautifying the giant’s skin cannot hear it, but they are not my audience. The world those ants think so vast is merely a membrane between
heaven and hell, an intermediate stage scarcely noticed by the contesting parties. You and I know the truth, little bird: to them it is
everything
, to us it is merely a bridge. When I erect the rest of the needle, it will be visible to the great unblinking eye for which I built it. I shall emulate cunning Ulysses and put it out! Then blessed blindness shall descend upon the earth like a mist. That foolish astrologer craved sleep, but I’ve drunk my surfeit of that nightly death. While I was entombed I dreamed of rivers. I mapped them in my last life – a life which seems another dream now. As the Molè was but a shadow of the Beast, so the rivers of Etruria my pedantic tools described are like the superficial veins compared to deep arteries.’

He crouched and scooped up a handful of the strange liquid. ‘The
real
rivers of Etruria run deep underground, pulsing life throughout the earth – I could hear them flowing beneath my grave. And O! how I yearned to drink them dry!’

He held his cupped palms up to her face. ‘This is
melan
, water unpolluted by God. I have extracted that essence that made the buio such a nuisance. See its purity –
smell
it.’

Isabella gagged, and the boy laughed.

‘You think it’s unnatural? On the contrary, I wish to return to Nature. I remember when Man was just another filth-encrusted beast, chewing roots in the plains – and then that terrible eye fell on him and suddenly Man’s little head, hitherto concerned with nothing more than rutting and eating, was filled with
notions
. Inventions. Art. Argument. The overweening creature stood upright, and every beast shrank from his nakedness. They recognised his unnaturalness – would that they had torn him to pieces. The world would have been spared so much grief.’

‘God raised us up,’ Isabella said.

‘He gave you a thirst that could never be quenched, like a whore teasing beggars. And for it, you slaves
praise
Him! He gave you wit enough to know your flesh is rotting, and for that you
thank
Him. O base, base servility. It was a crime against Nature and in kind it shall be punished. An eye for an eye!’

Isabella strained against her restraints to look him in the eye. ‘Take your life back, Torbidda!’

‘You cannot move me.’

‘Silence, Worm! I’m talking to the boy inside you – can you hear me? Philosophy blinded you! They said you were a number, but you’re more than that. The hole in you is
not
God’s fault. Only God can fill it.’

‘Shut up!’ he snarled.

‘Break free!’ she shouted, and suddenly his expression
changed
. Fear and regret flooded his face, and Isabella realised that the prisoner had heard her and was fighting to escape.

Then his face changed back, twisting in bottomless hate as the two souls warred for one body. The struggle ended suddenly.

The worm had won. His black pupils had over-spilled until his eyes were totally black. He brought the liquid closer to her, raising his palms above her head. ‘You must be born again, as I was. God is an infection of the mind. A most radical purge is necessary.’

Isabella closed her eyes and prayed:
Reverend Mother, Lucia, Sofia, be with me now. Madonna, give me Grace
.

‘You shall be my prophet, going before me in the world, spreading my good news.’

‘I shall die before I do your bidding!’

‘Torbidda said that too, before I ate him. I’ll tell you what I told him: a little dying is necessary.’

The unexpected coldness was shocking. It snaked through her hair down to her face, and before it invaded her, she knew that Grace had fled the world.

Her tormentor watched his medicine work, musing, ‘Now that I recall, it didn’t comfort him either.’

The interlocking layers of the Ponte Bernoulli’s lapidary gate slid open and spilled the soldiers of the Reserve Legion into the Wastes, heading for Ariminum.

Before the legion came to the mountainous backbone that bisected Etruria, the last caravan of the baggage train turned south towards the Rasenneisi contato. The corporal driving the small covered caravan had precise orders; he was to catch up the rest of the men as soon as he had seen them carried out.

The two foot soldiers in the back of the caravan were eager to rejoin their comrades. Ariminum was not a city to miss. The younger of the pair tried to make conversation with his colleague. ‘You were one of Geta’s bravos, weren’t you?’

The old soldier’s hair was grey, and his sun-withered skin was slashed with horizontal wrinkles and vertical scars. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Only asking. What’s he like?’

‘The best fighter I’ve known, and the worst man. After the Apprentice did for that Corvis, Geta abandoned us without a thought. If it hadn’t been for the amnesty I’d’ve hanged for sure. Plenty of me mates did. I’m an old man, but I’ve one ambition left, and that’s to see Geta dangle.’

The younger soldier had been hoping to pass the time listening to a good yarn, not a rant. He tried to change the subject before the veteran got fully into his stride. ‘What’s she singing for, you reckon?’ He looked at the prisoner kneeling opposite them. A
pole behind her back connected the steel hoop around her neck to manacles around her ankles.

‘Crazies always sing.’ The veteran’s scowl inverted itself into a leer. ‘Pretty, though. Got a look before they put the hood on. Nice young thing. Reckon the corporal will let us—?’

‘Being as how he forbade us to even touch her, I’d say not. What’re you at?’

‘Relax.’ The veteran pushed his younger counterpart aside, leaned over and poked a finger under the hood. ‘No harm in saying hello— OW!’ He pulled back, swearing. ‘She bleedin’ bit me!’

The other laughed. ‘Serves you right, dirty donkey.’

The veteran petulantly punched her and the prisoner gasped until her breath returned, then resumed her sing-song.

He sucked his finger. ‘Ought to knock her bloody teeth out. Mad as a mendicant, she is.’

‘You ask me, it was that Fra Norcino what drove everyone mad – First Apprentice and all.’

‘Naw, sonny, you mark my words. The Apprentice’s just
using
them fanciulli to build his new – whatever it is. Soon as it’s done, he’ll let us at ’em. Seen it a hundred times.’

The caravan stopped at the southern border where only the hardiest scrub was growing. A little further south were the grassy hills of the Rasenneisi contato.

The corporal came round to the back. ‘We’re here.’

‘Here don’t look like much,’ the veteran commented.

‘Ignoramus! This is Montefeltro.’

The young soldier looked around superstitiously. This was the field where, thirty years ago, his grandfather and thousands besides had perished, where Rasenna and her allies had smashed the Concordian host. The ground was an uneven blanket under which a mass of cannon and engines were rudely buried. They would need to tread carefully, lest broken bones beneath the weeds draw fresh blood.

‘So?’ the veteran didn’t like being reprimanded in front of the youngster. ‘Bit late for reinforcements, ain’t it?’

‘So General Spinther said to bring her this far.’

‘Don’t see the need—’

‘Don’t you? Well, maybe that’s why you’re the oldest foot soldier in the legions. Now get her out – and be careful. Don’t let her touch you – and before you ask, it’s ’cause it’s orders is why.’

Grumbling incoherently, the veteran climbed back into the caravan. After some awkward manoeuvring, he managed to disconnect the pole from the girl’s ankles and hurried her to her feet. He used the pole to lead her to the caravan’s edge – then viciously booted her out.

The corporal swore at him, then added, ‘Didn’t I say keep hold!’

The veteran leaped down, pleased with himself. ‘All this fuss. It’s not as if she’s a mad dog.’

The young soldier grinned. ‘She gave you a good—’

‘Shut up!’

‘Shut up the both of you.’ The corporal grabbed the pole and pulled the prisoner to her feet. He pointed her away from Concord. ‘Release her feet and stand back – don’t worry, I got her.’

They did as instructed, then the corporal carefully disconnected the pole before backing away himself. All three waited as the girl swayed on the spot, her fingers twitching, moaning.

‘Now what, Corp? She going to grow roots?’

The sweating corporal jabbed the pole between her shoulder blades and thanked Saint Eco when she took the hint and started walking. They watched her getting smaller for a good quarter of an hour.

‘She ain’t turning, Corporal.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘General Spinther said she wouldn’t. Let’s go then.’

‘Before they start without us,’ the veteran said, and slapped his colleague’s back. ‘Ariminum, here we come!’

As the carriage turned around and set off in pursuit of the legion, the hooded girl didn’t deviate from her course, not even when a stale breath from the Wastes whipped the shroud from her head. She danced on, on towards Rasenna.

Isabella was coming home.

Pale flesh, lined red where the skin was creased for the first time. A rotund chest, inflated to bursting point before emitting a shrill cry. By some animal instinct, the infant knew it was in peril. Torbidda tried to stifle the crying. It was so very cold up here on the canals. The guards must be close – he could hear their voices – but the mist rising up from the water – uneasy water, disturbed by the beckoning hands and grasping claws of the buio – made it hard to be sure of anything, even his next step. He stumbled and …

… was in the Dissection Hall, scalpel in hand.

‘I warned you, Cadets,’ Agrippina shouted to the class. ‘You’d better have your subjects securely restrained.’

She glanced at his bench as she marched by.

‘Cadet Sixty, what is that?’

A trembling lamb lay upon the table. She whipped a sheet from a nearby cadaver and covered it. ‘Take it away,’ she whispered, ‘before they smell it.’