The Shadow Master (6 page)

“Why does it matter who was behind it?” she said, spinning back to face him. “We have an opportunity to move against the Medicis while they are in disarray.”

“While they are armed and expecting another attack?” he asked.

“Coward,” she hissed.

The Duke said nothing and toyed with the device in his lap a moment.

“I will not be held responsible for a war inside the Walled City,” he said patiently. “Not while I have the means of preventing one and still defeating the Medicis.”

“But you are squandering an opportunity to crush them,” she said.

“We will defeat them anyway. They are no longer able to bring their ships into the harbour while Leonardo's whale men can block them.”

“Nor have we been able.”

He shrugged. “We have the odds of success in our favour. Our stocks of spice are sufficient. We are better placed than they are.”

“You would rather count tin soldiers than knock them down.”

“I would rather not risk our business interests in a war than would benefit nobody.”

“Nobody but the victor!” she spat.

“Please, petal of my rose,” he said, though he was thinking,
thorn
of my rose, “If we go claw to claw with the Medici household it will be a decision we make together, based on a need, not an opportunity.”

“What is the difference?” she asked haughtily.

He thought back to nearly two decades ago, when he had the opportunity to marry several women, but had a need to wed her. “The differences are small but important,” he said.

“You play with words,” she said. “You play with these devices. You play at being a man of commerce and you play at being a Duke.”

“I am the Duke,” he said firmly, stroking his thin moustache, “Which you sometimes seem to forget.”

“You never let me forget,” she said. He knew what she wanted to say next, which she had often said when she was in one of her furies – if he was to die suddenly she would take over the ruling of the house and things would be done her way. He had no doubt of that. He met her stare and said slowly, “Observation and reason say we will not move with force against the Medicis until we know more or until we have a need. We have other means at our disposal to take advantage of their weaknesses. Cosimo without Giuliano is like…” He paused. The most apt metaphor was the Duchess without the Duke, but he said, “A sword wielded by a blind man.”

“Who only a fool would attempt to dance with,” she smiled. He glared at her and she returned his glare with a look of contempt and then stormed from the chamber. He sighed and looked down at the device in his hands. She would calm down eventually, though he would do well to keep his distance from her at meal time when she'd have sharp implements at hand. He wondered if she might take matters into her own hands and summons a deathseeker to attack the Medici household. It would be foolish. They would be wary of an attack and it would only confirm their beliefs that the Lorraine's were behind Giuliano's death. He turned the dial on the device once more and then back again. It was indeed an ingenious invention, but he'd rather Leonardo create him one that could control the tempestuous moods of his wife, rather than those of the weather.

 

 

VIII

“We are at war and you will make me war machines,” Cosimo Medici said, standing up from his seat and pointing an angry finger at Galileo. He was not used to being defied. “No more toys,” he said. He gestured around at the clockwork mechanisms that filled the side tables that he had once delighted in. A wind-up bird that could sing. A hand-turned screw that could raise water up from a basin and then have it cascade down, turning water wheels to make a windmill turn, sending out a rainbow of colour. A glass for viewing small objects that made them larger.

“They are not just toys,” Galileo said defiantly. “They are machines of science. Each of these can be produced at a larger scale and benefit the citizens of the city in some way. Each one adds to our knowledge of the world.”

“There will be time for knowledge of the world later,” Cosimo said. “First we need to defeat the Lorraines so that we can have peace once more.”

“I seem to recall we had both peace and the Lorraines for a long, long time,” said Galileo.

Cosimo fumed and withdrew his pointed finger into his hand, making a fist. He now wished that he had dismissed his advisers from the chamber. He did not want them to see Galileo defying him like this while he sat there in ceremonial battle armour, and he did not wish them to see him losing his temper with the man. They well knew his worth and tended to trust his counsel. But today they should not. “You tell me that you seek the knowledge of the ancients,” he said. “You tell me that will make us great. And yet the ancients possessed mighty war machines.”

“And that is why they faded from our memories. Their wars cast us into a thousand years of darkness. Almost all their knowledge has been lost to us. Their ways of building. Their ways of healing. Their ways of understanding the world. They buried their greatness with war machines.”

“We will be different. We will only use them to restore peace.”

“The peace that could exist without them.”

“The Lorraines tried to assassinate me! They killed my beloved brother Giuliano. How can you stand there before me and deny this?”

“So you obtained a confession from the attacker?” Galileo asked.

Cosimo turned away and shook his hands in the air. “If not the Lorraines, then who else?”

“That is the question we should be devoting our energies to, rather than declaring a war that is not based on any sound evidence.”

“Evidence?” said Cosimo. “You insist on evidence? I know it to be the Lorraines. I feel it in my breast that it is the Lorraines.” He banged a fist upon his metal breastplate and looked to his advisors to see if they supported him in this, but not a one met his eye. He felt like he was at school, with his teachers asking him to debate some point of logic and sitting there in judgement of him. Even Galileo's apprentice was following the arguments of each man carefully, he could see, hiding back there near the chamber door. He felt he was being judged harshly in his own governing chamber, where his word should have been law. But it was his own decree that no man would be punished in this chamber for speaking his mind. He paced back and forward like an animal in a cage.

Galileo said nothing for a while and waited for Cosimo to return to his seat and then said, in a soft and fatherly voice, “I have always mistrusted my feelings as leading me in directions they wanted to go rather than in directions that the evidence dictated. That is one of the lessons I've learned from the ancients. One of the basic tenants of science. Evidence is the only truth we can rely on.”

“In the absence of such evidence I must rely on my instincts,” said Cosimo. “They have always served me well in the past, in business, in matters of employment – such as seeking you out and offering you a position.”

“I would like to think it was based on the evidence of my successes and your successes in business in turn,” said Galileo, with a bow.

Cosimo the Great could not deny that and so ground his teeth in response. Then he said, “But you defy me and you infuriate me.”

“For infuriating you I apologise,” said Galileo, “That has never been my intent.”

“Then what is your intent?” Cosimo demanded.

“To help you make the best decisions possible.”

“You suggest I am making a poor decision?”

“They are your words, not mine.”

Cosimo ground his teeth again. Many evenings he and Giuliano had enjoyed such bantering with Galileo, trying to keep up with the way he jousted with words and demanded sharp thinking of this. But today such behaviour was uncalled for.

“I will ask you once more,” said Cosimo, bringing his voice back to a low but firm level. “Will you make me war machines?”

“And I can only reply that it would fly in the face of my duty to you, my Lord, to the citizens of this city and the very future of civilisation. It would throw us back into the darkness. I may as well throw open the gates for the plague victims to enter the city.”

Cosimo glared at Galileo. He needed him to know it was a very dangerous game he was playing with him. But the old man seemed not to care. “I could have you crushed,” Cosimo said, in a low dangerous voice.

Galileo bowed to Cosimo, acknowledging his power over him, but then said, “But who then would make your tools of commerce, let alone machines of war? My apprentice

Lorenzo?” Lorenzo looked up and felt his mouth go dry. He had no desire to become a pawn in this battle between his masters. “Come forward, Lorenzo!” Galileo commanded.

Lorenzo walked forward slowly, keeping his eyes down at his feet. “Can you make our lord war machines? Like those the ancients had?” Galileo asked.

Both men were looking at him. The advisors were looking at him. They all believed they knew what his answer would be. He was suddenly an orphaned ward again. No different in their eyes than the nameless boys who mucked out the stables and swept the floors. He could almost see the opportunity before him being held out on a silver plate to him. All he had to say was the truth. “Yes, I can make you armoured carts that do not need horses to pull them. And I can make you clockwork crossbows that shoot at five times the speed a man can shoot them. And I can make you devices that a single man can use to tumble the huge stones off a wall or tower.” He only had to say it and he would be an apprentice no more. He would be seen as a great man of science in his own right. He would no more be the boy in-between floors. He would be welcomed to the upper floors of the palace. And he only had to tell the truth for it to happen.

But he could not stop thinking of the Medici men toppling the tower where Lucia lived and burying her in the stones of her own chamber. How could he assist Cosimo in attacking the Lorraines when Lucia was a Lorraine? And he could not bring himself to betray Galileo again. With his face burning with shame he kept his eyes at his feet and said, “No, my Lord. That knowledge is lost to us.”

“Enough,” said Cosimo, “You are both dismissed!” The old man and his apprentice bowed low and withdrew from the chamber.

It took some time for the first advisor to gather the courage and step up close to Cosimo's seat and say, “Perhaps there is wisdom in avoiding going to battle. There would be losses to us as well. Perhaps we should consider other ways to end this war?”

“Deathseekers?” asked Cosimo, the word a bitter one in his mouth.

“Think more of it as fighting fire with fire,” said the advisor.

Cosimo turned his head up to admire the ornate gold ceilings decorated with frescos of the ancients, their great cities and great civilisation. Then he nodded. “We have men inside the Lorraine household. Let them know what needs to be done.”

 

 

IX

Lucia awoke as the pillow pressed tightly against her face. She tried to scream, but the air remained in her lungs. She kicked and punched her arms, feeling a strong man looming over her, impassive to her blows. She tried to turn her head and draw a breath, but the pillow was pressed over her face too tightly. Then she felt the sharp point of the dagger probing her rib cage for a point to enter and stab into her heart. That gave her strength, and she raised against her attacker with her whole body, throwing him off. The pillow fell from her face and she squirmed to the far side of the bed, ready to scream, expecting to see the attacker falling upon her again.

But he stood there transfixed, his eyes turned up to the heavens, the dagger held out beside him. Then he dropped it to the ground. She could not comprehend at first, and then she saw the tall man behind him in the dark cape and hood. He was clean-shaven and held her attacker from behind with a blade against his neck and the other hand gripping his wrist, shaking the dagger free.

She looked at the moustached face of her attacker and recognised him as one of the servants who worked in the yard. This deathseeker was a man of their household – although clearly not a man of their house. And clearly not a man of great fortitude, as she could smell the urine stain that was filling his hose and running down his leg towards the floor.

“Please, signor,” the man muttered and then gasped. His eyes rolled up in his sockets as the point of a thin blade emerged from his chest. Lucia gasped too. And threw a hand over her mouth.

The man in the dark cape and hood withdrew the bloodied blade and put it to his lips, as if it were a finger, and said, “Shhhhh.” Lucia kept her hand tightly over her mouth. There was a scream welling inside her, but she did not know if she were in mortal danger still, or had just been saved. Who was this strange man and what was he doing in her bedchamber?

Then before she knew quite what to do, the hooded man said, “If only he'd said ‘pretty please'.” And then he scooped up the body of her attacker and stepped over to her window. He turned back and looked briefly at her wall mural in the dark, and said, “You're going to want to leave some of the wall around the city.” Then he was gone. Out the window. Impossible. She sat there in bed for a moment longer, her heart racing like a bird trying to break out of a cage, and then pursed her lips and took a step out of bed. She felt her legs wobbling, as if they were going to collapse under her, but she took a deep breath and walked unsteadily across to the window. She peered out cautiously, not quite sure what to see – but there was nothing. The men were gone. She looked down the tower wall and looked up to the rooftop above. Where had he gone? How had he gone? Who was he? He had saved her life. If he was working for her father he would have said so. And he certainly wouldn't have disappeared out the window. The same way Lorenzo came to her. He was too tall to be Lorenzo. How could he have climbed down the wall with a dead man in his arms? Her head was giddy from the confusion of it. She wanted to go back to bed and lie down and close her eyes again and wake up and discover it was all a dream. But she knew it wasn't. She could still smell the dead man's piss in the room. And there was a single spot of blood on the floor where he had been stabbed by her mysterious saviour.