The Religion (16 page)

"Brother Starkey was most complimentary of your talents."

"I am sure he was."

"His letter-"

"His letter?"

"His letter said you were a man of remarkable ability, who feared nothing and held all authority-moral, legal, and religious-in outright contempt." Why this should flatter him she wasn't sure, but she believed it would. "He said that, above all, you were a man of your word."

"The Englishman is more crafty than I gave him credit for."

At last she felt she had some useful intelligence to offer. "Fra Starkey said he could offer us a passage, on the
Couronne
."

His mood showed no sign of getting brighter. "I don't doubt it."

"The
Couronne
leaves on the midnight tide."

"It will leave without us."

He snuffed out the anger and smiled.

"War has a long arm, and its fingers are around my throat, but I will yet give it the slip."

"Would the
Couronne
not be the surest way of getting there?"

"Perhaps. But a bargain made with the Devil is best reserved for an hour more desperate than this one."

He paused, as if at the brink of a steep drop. Then he nodded.

"Entrust the arrangements to me and forget Brother Starkey. You'll hear from me within two days at the most."

It took her a moment to realize that with these words he'd agreed to her request. She wanted to speak but couldn't find the words. Tannhauser rose from the bench and bowed with conspicuous gallantry. He indicated the house.

"Now, if I may, I'm curious to see the girl's shew stone. Her vision glass."

Carla stood up. "We haven't discussed your payment."

He hesitated, as if he'd already set his price but thought it exorbitant.

He said, "If I return you and your son, safe, from Malta, I would have you marry me."

Carla was stunned. She thought she'd misheard him. "Marry you?"

He seemed abashed and coughed. "Wedlock, Holy Matrimony, the reading of the banns. So forth."

For a moment her instincts thrilled. Dormant impulses stirred deep in her pelvis. She swayed with a sudden headiness. She felt his hand take her arm. She looked at him. His eyes were so clear she could read nothing in them. She didn't know what it was he saw in her face, but he read it as some form of horror.

"The request is a gross impertinence," he said. "Yet my motives are not ungentlemanly, merely avaricious. Even the faint flavor of nobility that such a union would give me would be invaluable to my enterprises. The price I ask is high, yes. Given our relative stations, perhaps outrageous. But so is the risk inherent in your quest. We may contract, of course, that I have no rights to your property or your income, which I do not covet. Furthermore, you have my word of honor that I won't take unwelcome advantage of our arrangement."

The joy of her naïve fantasy vanished. This was business, nothing more. They were as distant from each other in temperament, as well as in station, as any two individuals could be. She had no right to think ill of him. Indeed, she'd never held any man in higher esteem. And in return for what he offered, the price was trifling. Even so, something inside her, which had in this last hour bloomed back into life, withered away. She tried to keep her voice even, and felt she sounded cold.

"You misunderstand the complexities of nobility," she said. "Marriage alone would allow you the appearance of a title, but no more."

"May I legitimately comport myself a count-and insist on being addressed as 'my lord' or 'Your Excellency' or some other such obsequious courtesy?"

"I believe you may."

"Then the appearance is worth a fortune, no matter how fraudulent, and I shall be more than satisfied."

"Very well," she said. "My title has been bartered away before. At least this time it is a matter of my own choosing."

"Then we have a bargain?"

"Shall I have an attorney draw up a contract?"

"A handshake will do for now."

He held out his hand. It was large and rough, with the calluses of a sword hilt on the palm. She reached out her own hand to take it and he pulled back.

"May I add a rider to our pact?" There was a sly amusement in his eyes.

The charm he was able to exercise was infuriating. "You may try," she said.

"On our return, you will play for me again on your viola da gamba."

A confusion of sentiments rose within her. "Why are you doing this for me?"

His brow flexed. "Because I consider the bargain fair and a boon to my business."

"Your faith in my intuition may be frail," she said, "but I sense you enter this venture with deeper motives than simple business might entail."

Tannhauser considered her-for what seemed like minutes but could only have been seconds. He seemed to calculate how much he should reveal of himself, and she sensed that at the core of that self was a sorrow as deep and enduring as her own. Perhaps even deeper. If he'd taken her into his arms, she wouldn't have resisted.

Tannhauser said, "I once knew another mother who fought for her boy."

"That's all?"

"The mother lost," he said.

Carla waited. But on this matter, Tannhauser said no more.

He smiled with his broken teeth. He stretched out his hand.

Carla took it and he squeezed and a sudden shiver rippled across her skin.

She wished they'd sealed their bargain with a kiss.

Tuesday, May 15, 1565

The Messina Road-The Oracle

Tannhauser rode through hills painted violet and gold by the set of the sun. The women of the Villa Saliba had laid him like greyhounds fetching down a deer, yet he was gratified.

Amparo, for one, was a find. Her sexual allure, of which she seemed ignorant, itched at his mind and privities. Her shew stone had proved a marvel. Most such stones were spheres of pure crystal. Grubenius had owned a speculum of polished obsidian. Amparo's device was an optical contraption-constructed merely as a novelty-but with the mantic genius that paves the way to knowledge she'd recognized a higher function within it. It was a brass tube with an eyepiece at the fore end, while at the nether end two slim, triple-spoked wheels, also of brass, rotated about a spindle, one flat against, but independent of, the other. Between the spokes of each wheel was laced an intricate fabrication of stained-glass fragments. Down the bore of the tube were fixed two slender strips of mirrored glass, their reflecting surfaces opposed at thirty degrees.

On first glance the wheels appeared dark, but when pointed at sunlight, or a candle flame, a multiplicity of colors was revealed, and when the wheels were spun with a flick of the fingers, the colors and the sum of their parts whirled through amazing combinations that stunned the eye. Any movement of either wheel changed what could be seen, and Tannhauser understood that by altering the speed of their rotation, and of their speed relative to each other, Time itself was broken up into particles infinitely small. Furthermore, the temper of the field of vision depended on the source of illumination-the closer to the flame, the more incandescent
the colors. The smokiness of the candle, the intensity of the sunlight, the texture of the intervening ether, all these elements changed what was changing even as they themselves were changing too. And when the wheels rolled into stillness, and a particular combination of color and light was chosen by Chance, there for an instant was a shard of eternity captured. In short, within the girl's vision glass was a model of the Cosmos-of the mighty flux, of Fate itself.

Sometimes Amparo would see nothing but the beauty of the colors; at others, images of startling clarity would fill her mind. Sometimes she would hear the voice of angels. No one could know the future; Amparo did not claim to do so. But amongst the infinity of Things that one day might be, lie all the Things that will be. It was possibility she saw within the vortex. What could be lay waiting in the crucible of what was yet not. This, it seemed to him, was what Amparo, albeit by instinct, understood.

Night fell as he approached the northern gate. In the last of the twilight a two-wheeled carriage clattered up the road toward him. The driver wore a helmet and a breastplate and the matchcord of a musket glowed down by his seat. As the vehicle trundled by, a young, ratlike face peered out from under the hat of a priest. Tannhauser thought on them no more. He passed the watchman at the gate and crossed the city. That final frenzy that marks the end of the day had all but passed and the streets were soon quiet. He rode along the waterfront for the Oracle.

Tonight he would drink too much and slake his lust upon Dana. Perhaps, he thought, this impulse was somewhat ungallant, for it was Amparo and Lady Carla who'd inflamed his fancy. But such was life. He wondered what sound each would make in the throes of love. The ferocity of Carla's attack upon the gamba echoed still through his mind. Furthermore, she was clearly of high intelligence, an erotic force he hadn't encountered before. He imagined peeling off that red silk dress, though he doubted she would ever consent with such as him. Her one experience of romance had brought her punishment and shame, and exile from all she loved. She was entitled to be cagey. Even so, he shifted in the saddle to give his member room.

Along the waterfront darkness was general, broken by yellow pools from the lanterns of the ships. The new-risen moon above the sea was a day past full. A hundred yards hence stood the Oracle and a curious crowd clustered about its doors. Tannhauser stopped. Beyond the crowd
he caught the glimmer of torchlight on a pair of steel helms. The helms belonged to men-at-arms. City constables. And crowds were prone to gather about misfortune. A murder at the tavern? There'd been none to date, thanks to Bors, but it was far from impossible.

Then Tannhauser heard the threnody of a scream.

It was muffled by walls and distance but clear enough. A surge of fear swept his bowels. In an extremity of pain such as the fading scream announced, most men sounded strangely alike.

Yet Tannhauser knew that the cry came from Sabato Svi.

He dismounted and led Buraq through the passage between the chandler's and the ropewalk. To the rear of the buildings that fronted the docks lay a maze of workshops, wagon pens, storage yards, and stables, all threaded without design by crooked alleys barely wider than his shoulders. He picked his way through the dark by the shreds of moonlight. Buraq followed quietly behind. As he approached the rear of the warehouse he heard another scream, much more piercing here, and saturate with terror and desolation.

Sabato Svi was being tortured.

Buraq felt his master's distress and blew his nostrils in sympathy. Tannhauser hawked the gall from out his throat. He tethered Buraq to an iron hoop in the wall and reassured him. He unrolled the cuffs of his high leather boots to protect his thighs and crotch and drew his sword. He stole toward the warehouse, its roof a stark black parapet against the stars. He stopped on a feral instinct. He'd heard no sound. But above the stink of the alley, a smell of sweat and leather not his own. Then a hoarse breath. He shaded his brow against the starlight above and relaxed his eyes into the darkness. A hulking shape lurked-there-against the paler dark of the wall. Tannhauser took a step closer. The smell was distinct. He whispered.

"Bors."

The shape moved sideways, crablike, and ducked toward him. A crossbow emerged at two paces, aimed at his chest. Tannhauser poised ready to strike, should his judgment prove him false. Bors's face appeared. He canted the crossbow skyward against his hip. His grizzled features were drawn. He kept his voice low but couldn't quite still its tremor.

"City police. Two outside, four within. Cuirasses and helms. Two hackbutts and a pistol stand inside."

"Do we know them?"

Bors shook his head. "Not from our patch. They're led by the scrawny inquisitor from the
Couronne
."

Tannhauser fancied he could hear the clank of the wheels that cause the universe to turn. One of those moments when the architecture of your ambition was revealed to be a brothel built on sand; when the needle of the compass broke and all the clocks stood still; when the future you'd imagined and the future which gaped at your feet parted company forever.

Tannhauser said, "What do they want?"

"I came up from the cellars toward the end of it. They were looking for you."

"And Sabato?"

"He had to make a dispute of it-mocked them something fierce-and they struck him down. Young Gasparo took that hard." Bors's mouth twisted. "And they shot him dead."

Tannhauser felt a grinding inside his skull. It was his own teeth.

"I kept my head down," said Bors. "When the police cleared the tavern, I shuffled out with the rest. No one played me false."

"Dana, the girls?"

"I left them safe and sound with Vito Cuorvo, then came back."

Another agonized scream rang out. Bors grimaced.

"Where are the villains now?" asked Tannhauser.

"They scoured the building and regrouped in the tavern. From the rear, our way is open."

"The Inquisitor is one of the four?"