The Shadow Master (18 page)

“You sound like Galileo,” said Cosimo. “Always talking about proof and evidence.”

“Galileo is a man of science,” the apothecary said. “There are many in our order who do not trust science. It is too quick to seek new ideas. Too radical in its propositions.”

“I would rather a scientist who was more radical still,” said Cosimo, and then winced as the apothecary pressed hard on his wound.

“Pardon me,” the man said. “But a little pain is sometimes necessary.”

Cosimo shrugged. “Finish your work,” he said. “I have much to plan today.”

“Proper healing cannot be rushed,” the man said.

“Nothing can ever be rushed in this city,” said Cosimo. “Except for war. That comes at a speed that few are ever prepared for.”

“We do not concern ourselves with politics,” said the apothecary.

“Only with the mending of those wounded as result of political battles,” said Cosimo.

“That is one of our tasks,” said the apothecary.

“And what else do you do that you keep secret?” asked Cosimo, wondering for a moment if there were any way the apothecaries could be made into allies for his cause.

“If there are any secrets we do not reveal,” the man replied, “they only remain secrets because they are not revealed.”

“So you do have some secrets? Anything that I might find of interest?”

“Every profession has its secrets,” he said. “But nothing I fear that you might find useful for your current preoccupations.”

“What about the plague?” asked Cosimo. “How have you not managed to find a total cure if you have the knowledge of the ancients?”

“We have their secrets of spice wine,” he said.

“That only keeps the plague at bay,” said Cosimo. “It is not a cure.”

The apothecary pressed hard into his wound again, but this time Cosimo was ready for it. “We do not possess all their knowledge,” he said.

Cosimo said, as if casually, “I wonder if I should direct Galileo to allocate his resources to finding a cure? That would be a secret worth having, wouldn't it.”

The apothecary said nothing.

“Yes,” said Cosimo. “I think whoever finds the cure for the plague is going to have the ultimate power in our city, don't you?”

Still the apothecary said nothing. “I'm sure science could find a solution,” Cosimo said.

“That would greatly upset the status quo,” said the apothecary.

“Don't tell me that you don't wish to see it upset just a little more in your favour,” Cosimo Medici said.

The apothecary gave a grim smile and worked on. Then he said. “This looks like it is mending well. As you know, infection needs to be kept at bay to prevent it moving into dangerous territories. But there are some parts of the body that are difficult to cure and in such cases prevention is the best course, which means not allowing the infection to take root there in the first place.”

Cosimo immediately realised that the conversation was moving into new territory. “So if a limb became infected you must cut it off to prevent infection spreading to the body?”

“We would first seek to cure it,” said the apothecary.

Cosimo studied the man closely to see if he was being impudent or not. He grunted. “Anyway, I am more interested in finding ways to clip the wings of a bird than to sever the limbs of a man,” he said.

“If this dagger had been poisoned,” the apothecary said. “There might be very little we could do. You can cut off a limb, but you cannot cut off a head and expect a cure.”

Cosimo stiffened a little, certain there was a subtle threat in the metaphor. “If a creature had two heads instead of just one,” he said, “severing one head might be possible, but then the remaining head would control the body entirely would it not?”

The apothecary bowed a little. “As I said, we do not concern ourselves with politics.”

Cosimo gave a single short laugh, like a bark, and said, “And I do not concern myself with healing. Except when I'm wounded.”

The man did not reply and gathered up his things and said, “I will return tomorrow to inspect the wound. It is healing well, but the risk of infection still remains.”

Cosimo glared at him. “A man of your reputation would not put himself in such a position as having a patient succumb to infection after healing so well, surely.”

The apothecary bowed and removed himself from the chamber. Cosimo's steward, who had been sitting silently in the corner of the room the whole time, said in a low voice, “I will make sure we have a new apothecary from now on.”

“Good counsel,” said Cosimo. “I don't like the man's tone. The apothecaries have grown far too powerful and disrespectful. They forget they are servants of the city, charged with its welfare.”

“And they wish us not to forget that only they can make the spice wine that keeps the plague at bay.”

Cosimo nodded. “Look for a young apothecary,” he told the steward. “One who might have an eye for a pretty woman. Or a boy. Or a taste for jewellery and gold. Let's see if we can't find a way to encourage them to share their secrets.”

The steward bowed. “It shall be done.”

Cosimo turned in his chair and looked up at the large portrait of his father sitting astride a horse with the family crest of six balls in a circle over his head. The portrait dominated the room, grander than any of the mosaic scenes of the ancients. When Cosimo used this room he preferred to sit beneath it in a way such that anybody coming into the room had to face both men. His father's arrogance and power would sit upon his shoulders like a mantle. Cosimo wondered what his father would do if he were still alive? Would he have Galileo tortured to make him make new war machines? Would he find a way to shoot the giant eagle out of the sky? He would certainly have had the apothecaries of the city working for him by now. He turned his chair away again. He preferred to have his father's disapproving eyes glaring at others in the room rather than himself.

“Fetch a parchment and pen,” he commanded the steward. “It's past time we wrote a letter to the Duke of Lorraine and told him that we do not fear his eagle because we have a certain little bird in a cage.”

 

 

 

XXXIII

“I am going to tell you once more to tread slowly and silently,” said the hooded man in a soft voice, “as we are not alone, and this time the danger is to us.”

“More monstrosities?” asked Lorenzo.

“Of a type,” said the hooded man. “Now not another word until we are safely past. We must become masters of shadows. That's what you called me once. The Shadow Master.”

“When?” asked Lorenzo. “I have never met you before.”

“It was a long time ago,” said the stranger. “We will talk more of that later.” Then he pressed a finger to Lorenzo's lips to cease the inevitable questions and to let him know how deadly serious he was in this and then turned his soft light in front of them again.

Lorenzo had a feeling that they had walked beyond the borders of the Walled City already, but they had made so many twists and turns and gone down so many steps, that perhaps they had just gone deeper below the city. Each step took him further into a feeling that he was now in a mirror city down here. There were perhaps as many tunnels as there were streets above and for each tower in the city there was a shaft or descending set of steps here. But this mirror city lacked people to reflect the many who lived above.

They walked along in the darkness until Lorenzo heard voices ahead of them. A chanting-like groan that at first sounded like some weird cavern echo, but became more distinct the closer they came to it. It was a chant and refrain from a group of people, as one might hear in a mass. But this one was not subdued and tonal like those uttered in the cathedral above; this was bordering on hysterical. The hooded figure slowed, then he extinguished his torch beam and held out a hand to lead Lorenzo along in the darkness. Already, however, he could see the flicker of light ahead of them. The warm glow of torches and lanterns. And yet Lorenzo felt a chill run along his spine.

The voices were now echoing around them, distorting in the tunnel so they could not easily be understood. He tried concentrating on the voices to pick out any meaning, but he could only catch individual words. Then he looked up and found the hooded figure was gone. He looked around but could see no sign of him and felt the soft icicle fingers of panic in his insides. Then a hand reached out and touched him. He looked and saw the hand was attached to an arm and the arm attached to a body that was standing in the shadows of a stone column. His companion was indeed the Shadow Master, he thought, melting into the darkness like that.

He pulled Lorenzo close to him and suddenly he could see and hear everything. They were standing in a passageway overlooking a large chamber beneath them, like they were upon a balcony. It was closely set with pillars that provided both an open view and a hiding place for observation. And down below them were perhaps forty robed men, dressed like monks, but in rough hessian, kneeling in supplication to a figure at an altar. That man, dressed in robes of soft violet, was masked with the top half of his face obscured by a rough leather mask. He had descended into a mysterious world of hoods and masks, Lorenzo thought.

The man, standing in front of the crowd like he was their priest, had blood smeared across his cheeks and held a curved knife aloft over his head. “The time has come,” he called out to the men kneeling before him. “Time to cut off the head of the beast! Time to free the city from sin and blasphemy. Time to ascend to our rightful places.”

Lorenzo wanted to ask the Shadow Master what the man meant. What was he talking about? Who were these people? What kind of a secret service were they holding here? Why was he daubed in blood? But he kept his tongue as he had been bidden and the congregation below called back to their priest, “It is time!”

“The ascension is near,” he told them.

“It is time,” the congregation replied again.

The purple priest then held his dagger high over his head once more and muttered something that could have been a prayer, or could just as well have been an evil incantation, and then slowly and deliberately he lowered the dagger, held out his other arm, wrist up, and carved some strange sign on the skin of his arm, drawing blood. It was not possible to see what he had carved, but Lorenzo thought it might have been some variation on a cross. Then the priest held the tip of blade into the fire of a candle beside him.

“Blood and fire shall be our creed,” he said. Then he made a hand motion and an acolyte stepped forward with a bronze bowl. The priest made another hand motion and the acolyte stepped back quickly, to be replaced by another acolyte, bearing a wooden chest. He laid it on the altar before the priest who held his knife over it and said, “One sacred blade amongst many makes all blades as sacred.” Then he opened the chest, not without some assistance from the acolyte, and Lorenzo could see, looking down, that it was filled with daggers. The purple priest pushed his own dagger down into the chest and then called the congregation forward. They came obediently. Each man took one dagger, like they were playing some parlour game, turning it over in their hands, as if wondering if it had been the one that the priest had used.

Lorenzo tried to see their faces, to see if he knew any of the men down there taking part in this bizarre ritual, but they were turned away from him. When each man had a dagger in his hands, they all proceeded to carve a symbol into their own forearms. Then at a hand sign from the purple priest the first acolyte brought the bronze dish back to the altar and lit a candle to it, standing well back. It was filled with oil and a bright flame leapt from it and Lorenzo knew it as the symbol he had seen on many of the shop fronts in the city.

Then the priest figure took off his mask. Lorenzo tried hard to see his features, but he was now standing side on to him. One by one the congregation, or army or whatever they were, stepped forward and looked at the man's face with a look of astonishment, and then dipped their daggers into the flames, mumbling some incantation before returning to the centre of the chamber.

Then Lorenzo felt the Shadow Master pull at his arm. He was reluctant to leave, wanting to see what other madness the men below him were going to perform, but the other was insistent. They moved along the back wall of the tunnel and were soon around a corner. “We must leave this cavern of twisted reason and fear,” he said to Lorenzo, still softly.

“Who are they?” Lorenzo asked, in a whisper. “Who is that man leading them?”

“Who do you think he is?” asked the Shadow Master, softly.

“He sounds like the High Priest.”

“You can call him the puce priest,” said the Shadow Master.

“What does that mean?” asked Lorenzo.

“It could mean he left a red sock in the wash with his robes, or it could mean he is a madman.”

“What?” asked Lorenzo. “Why did you always talk in these strange riddles?”

The Shadow Master faced him squarely and said, “Never forget, the greatest fight should always be against those who dwell in darkness and oppose enlightenment. Now we do not have much time. We must hurry. There is still more I must show you,” the Shadow Master said. “But this time, something both terrifying and wonderful.”

 

 

 

XXXIV

The Duke looked up at his wife and wondered if he had ever hated her more than he did now. Many nights he had dreamed of reaching out in bed and placing his hands around her neck and squeezing and squeezing until her eyes bulged and she gasped for breath, but then he would be shocked by the violence of it, and roll away until the feeling passed from him. But now, he thought he might be able to actually do it.