Pasquale's Angel Read online

  ‘What, through the window? Why, the city of course. It’s still there, if a little singed around the edges.’

  ‘Lately when I look out I see a city in flames. I see flying machines fluttering above defensive walls and dropping pots of fire on those places which will burn best. I see the populace fleeing, harried by the same flying machines. I see men turned into devils. It may yet come to pass. Pick up your breakfast, young man. Eat, drink. Regular habits make a regular mind. We have a little time.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jacopo said quietly. ‘He’s thinking about it.’

  ‘It may soon be too late,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘Hush. He moves at his own pace. You’ve already caused enough trouble.’

  ‘I hope it is enough,’ Pasquale said, and bit into a plum. The rich juice flooded his mouth and awoke his appetite. As he fell to, the Great Engineer finished winding his clocks, and Pasquale observed (taking great satisfaction in the way that Jacopo rolled his eyes) that there was indeed a great deal of time stored here.

  ‘Measured, rather,’ the Great Engineer said. ‘I find it interesting that it can be measured in so many ways. Sometimes I would rather I had been a clockmaker than an artificer. Or perhaps an artist, as I set out to be. But I have little power in my right hand now, and so cannot steady my left, and besides, it is a trade to which one must devote one’s life. I took a different path after Lorenzo was assassinated, and yet sometimes I think I can glimpse what might have been, as when a climber mounts a high peak, and finds he has not conquered the world after all, for beyond it lie others, dwindling into the mists. Time is a tricky thing, as painters well know. We see it as a river, moving always in one direction, but perhaps God sees it differently, and can return to different events and change them as an author might correct a draft. In another life…Well, but you smile at these notions.’

  ‘You reminded me of my teacher, Piero di Cosimo.’

  ‘I know him well enough to realize that his fabulations which at first seem only amusing are in fact profound, for they strike at the roots of what we accept only by custom or habit without questioning. In that respect Piero is like a child, to whom all is new. Indeed, it’s my contention that all artificers should first see a thing anew if they would understand it.’

  ‘Then I would ask you to see things anew, master. To see that things are not as hopeless as you believe. The device itself does not matter: it is the importance that certain people have placed upon it that matters. It…it’s like the angel, the angel of the Annunciation! It doesn’t matter what message the angel bears, what form of words is used. It is enough that he bears God’s radiance. That itself is the message. If we can take the device back, then the advantage will be ours.’

  Pasquale would have spoken more on this, and more boldly, but a bell chimed softly and Jacopo said, ‘The guards are coming back. No doubt their captain has been informed that you are loose—I never did trust that page. Master, we’ll have to go now. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand. I’m old, but I’m not in my dotage.’

  They went through the door which the page had used, down a long corridor with a window as tall as a man at its end, overlooking the city. Jacopo swung this open, and it proved to be a mirror or screen that cleverly reflected a view from a lens, with a stair hidden behind it.

  They descended a long way, passing through small rooms that opened out at intervals like beads on a rosary. Jacopo explained that within the tower was a kind of anti-tower, hidden places only a few knew about. Many builders had laboured to construct the tower, but they had worked on one part or another and had not the whole sight of the Great Engineer, just as an ordinary man cannot properly see the city in which he lives unless he is raised far above it so that, like God, he can see all. Pasquale thought that this was taking analogies too far, but the Great Engineer showed him how true it was in the next room they passed through.

  It was windowless like all the rest, but larger, and circular, and lit not by acetylene lamps but by sunlight, projected through an aperture in the ceiling, which fell on a small table with a dished white surface. At the Great Engineer’s order, Jacopo reached up and moved a lever, and suddenly the dished table was filled with an image of the city, shown as if from the eye of a bird hovering above it. More trickery with lenses, prisms and mirrors, but nonetheless compelling.

  ‘Show me the house of this Giustiniani,’ the Great Engineer said, and after a moment Pasquale was able to find the villa, a white speck on the hillside inside the city wall on the other side of the Arno. For a brief moment, the shadow of his finger erasing the image, he really could believe that this was how God saw the world, that if he could but sharpen his eyesight he would be able to see Salai riding towards the house, or see through the roof of the house and spy upon the magician, or find poor Niccolò in his prison.

  ‘Light is my abiding interest now,’ the Great Engineer said. His deep-set sad eyes were pools of shadow, and shadow etched every line of his face. ‘Light…it is purer than idea.’

  Pasquale said, ‘Together we can defeat Salai’s plot, master. There is still time. The Spanish are a day’s ride away. Even if they get the message that Giustiniani has the model, they must collect it. Come with me!’

  ‘Isn’t that what I am doing? You have already persuaded me, young man. Jacopo, are you with us? Close your mouth, man. You might swallow a fly.’

  ‘I am amazed as usual, master, by the sudden turns of your mind. I have been trying to persuade you to move against Salai ever since he tried to have you assassinated, and suddenly you will do it.’

  The Great Engineer said to Pasquale, ‘It was the way you burst through the window, so like an angel, I knew then, but I only now know that I knew. We will rescue Salai from his folly.’

  ‘Your science against Giustiniani’s magic, master,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘Magic is only science which seeks to hide itself as something else. I suppose that we have only a little time. We must hurry. Where will you take me?’

  ‘But I had thought—’

  The Great Engineer groped for a chair, and sat with a weary sigh. ‘What, that I could raise an army? There is none, except for the guards, and they are Salai’s. All I have is inside my own head. I have no pupils, even. I have not had a pupil for twenty years, only followers.’

  ‘Who glean your least ideas like crows,’ Jacopo said.

  Pasquale said, ‘There is only one man who can help us, but I do not know that he will.’

  ‘Never mind. Lead me to him! I have great faith in your powers of persuasion, young man. Together we will make him understand. But first, I must rest. There are times when I wish that I had not built the tower so high.’

  Jacopo took Pasquale’s arm and steered him deeper into the room. ‘He is an old man, and this enterprise will be dangerous for him.’

  ‘It is the only way to stop Salai.’

  ‘I see that we understand each other. Very well, then. Let me show you something—as a painter you are sure to be interested.’

  In the furthest reach of the room was a series of stone troughs lit by bloody light diffused through a red-tinted lens. A constant cold wind blew there. Jacopo said that this was where the Great Engineer painted with light. He showed Pasquale a rack of glass plates evenly coated with silver, and the lensed apparatus into which they fitted.

  ‘Although first the silver must be made sensitive, by treatment with iodine vapour. Then, after exposure to light, the plate is held over a trough of hot mercury until the image forms, and is then plunged into hot salt water to fix it. Here is his latest. Be careful! The silver film is fragile, and although he tried a new varnish to preserve it, it is already flaking. Careful I say!’

  For Pasquale had grabbed the plate and marched across the room to the table. Jacopo followed. ‘Be careful, be careful! You see it is a portrait of the feast for the Pope. There is the Pope himself, with the unfortunate Raphael beside him.’

  Pasquale was not looking at the
dignitaries, but at the servants who waited behind them, ready to make the second serving of wine. In particular, the servant standing at Raphael’s shoulder. He knew that pale face, that shock of hair, and finally understood all.

  9

  When Pasquale was delivered into Signor Taddei’s presence, the merchant was playing chess with his astrologer, Girolamo Cardano, in front of the great stone fireplace. Documents were strewn about their feet; a mechanical tortoise, its ebony shell inlaid with a swirling pattern of tiny diamonds, was making its way across this drift of papers on six stumpy legs. Taddei’s secretary was writing at a desk behind his master’s high-backed chair, and an assistant was adding figures using an automatic abacus, fixing the settings and turning the handle and recording the result on a long sheet of paper with quick mechanical dexterity.

  On the far side of the room, a trio of musicians was playing a sprightly piece, and the servant escorting Pasquale waited until they were done before marching him briskly down the length of the great hall. Cardano eyed him sardonically, while Taddei contemplated the board, a finger stroking his beard. The mechanical tortoise reached his feet: he turned it round and made his move before glancing up. They made an odd pair, the twitchy young black-clad aesthete and the comfortably expansive merchant, but such unlikely couplings were common, for often the master would recognize in a servant or employee an exaggeration of a trait lacking in his own character, and so would raise that man up to become a confidant and sounding-board for his own ideas.

  ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ Signor Taddei said, and looked askance at the servant who escorted Pasquale.

  Cardano moved a bishop across the board and then set the tortoise trundling back towards Taddei.

  The servant explained that Pasquale had marched up to the gate and demanded entry. Pasquale said boldly, ‘I came with a friend. I believe you should speak with him, rather than play at war.’

  ‘Is that so,’ Taddei said, and settled back in his chair and stared frankly at Pasquale. He was dressed in a red robe trimmed at neck and cuffs with dyed black fur, and a square hat was set on his balding pate.

  ‘Beware tricks,’ Cardano murmured. His lower lip was swollen, and even as Pasquale watched he bit it so hard that tears stood in his eyes. The astrologer had had a lot to think about, it seemed. He added, ‘One man can do the work of many, in the right place.’

  Pasquale said, with a lightness he did not feel, ‘He is an old man, and no assassin.’

  ‘Appearances often deceive,’ Cardano said. ‘Be careful, master.’

  ‘In every way,’ Taddei said. The tortoise nudged his curl-toed slippers. Hardly glancing at the board, he moved a pawn forward one space and with his foot turned the little device around so that it started to march back towards Cardano.

  Pasquale said, ‘I have only to glance at you, Signor Cardano, to remind myself of that.’

  The servant told Taddei, ‘There is an old man, master, and also a man escorting him, in armour.’

  ‘His bodyservant,’ Pasquale said. ‘He’ll give up his sword if you ask him, and has no other weapon.’

  ‘Fetch this old man up,’ Taddei told the servant, and said to Pasquale, ‘You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble, boy. Tell me now that you are not in league with the Savonarolistas.’

  ‘You know that I am not,’ Pasquale said as steadily as he could. ‘It was the Savonarolistas who took me from your men at the Ponte Vecchio.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort! Two of my men dead, and the third lingering with a bullet in his guts as likely to die as his companions. Perhaps the Savonarolistas took you, but now here you are, unharmed.’

  ‘Although not in the best odour,’ Cardano said.

  ‘I had to resort to an unusual mode of transport.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Taddei said, ‘there is still no trace of Raphael’s body. Did you see it, when the Savonarolistas held you?’

  Pasquale said, ‘The Savonarolistas don’t have Raphael’s body.’

  ‘I always thought that you were poor enough ransom,’ Cardano said.

  Pasquale said, ‘The Savonarolistas did not want me, but something I possessed—and I no longer have it. And in fact it was not they who set up the exchange, but another. They learned of it because there is someone in your house, signor, who is in contact with them.’

  ‘If you were with the Savonarolistas, that is just what you would say,’ Cardano said. The tortoise was trying to clamber over his black boots, and he nudged it away impatiently.

  ‘I’m not accusing you, signor. It will be one of the servants, perhaps the replacement for your signaller. In a way it does not even matter.’

  ‘If it is true,’ Taddei said, ‘it matters to me.’

  Cardano said, ‘We can’t believe a word this boy says. How is it that he is standing here if he was taken by the Savonarolistas?’

  ‘Hush,’ Taddei said. ‘It’s your move, Girolamo.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Cardano moved his queen so that it stood beside his bishop and leaned back, pinching the inside of his elbow with thumb and forefinger. ‘There. Checkmate.’

  ‘It is?’ Taddei looked at the board distractedly, then pushed it away.

  Pasquale said, ‘This is all you can do while armies march on Florence?’

  Taddei regarded him with mild amusement. ‘I cannot send my goods out by road because the roads are closed by order of the Signoria, and I dare not send my goods by water, as the Spanish navy sits off the coast and like as not would sink any ship that dared try to pass. Meanwhile, citizens are calling for the resignation of the artificers’ faction from the Signoria, the city is under martial law but is still threatened by mob rule, and my manufactories are closed because of a strike called by your Savonarolistas—but as for that, I wait only for my spies to identify the ringleaders so that they can be dealt with.’ He ground fist and palm together, to show what he meant. ‘You will tell me how you escaped from the Savonarolistas.’

  ‘They were taking me across the river, on a ferry they had captured, when they were attacked from the shore by what I believe were forces under the command of Paolo Giustiniani. I dived into the river, and swam to shore.’ There was no need to mention Rosso’s role in this. The dead are dead, and there’s no use speaking ill or good of them. Pasquale added, ‘If you need proof that I have nothing to do with the Savonarolistas, here it is.’

  He pulled out the plate, which he had carried from the Great Tower wrapped in a square of linen. He said, ‘I know who killed Raphael, now, for I recognize his man. This was taken at the feast after the entry of the Pope. You are there, Signor Taddei, at the end of the table, so you must remember it.’

  Taddei took the glass and peered at the smudged black and brown image. ‘I remember it being made,’ he said. ‘We had to sit still for two full minutes, and the glare of the lights was horrible on the eyes. Ah, there is poor Raphael!’ The room fell silent as the merchant gazed at the picture. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘how does this advance your cause?’

  ‘When was the picture taken?’ Pasquale asked.

  ‘Why, between courses. I cannot remember exactly when. No, of course, it was just before Raphael died. What is your meaning, boy?’

  ‘Look in the background, signor. You will see the servants waiting to serve the wine for the new course. Fortunately, they too obeyed the instructions to stay still. You will see one at Raphael’s shoulder. I know him. He is a servant of Paolo Giustiniani, the same man who tried to capture me in the Piazza della Signoria, and who later tried to break into Niccolò Machiavegli’s room when I was there. Perhaps you remember him, Signor Taddei. He has red hair, and a skin as pale as milk.’

  Cardano said, ‘Even if you can show that you came by this representation legitimately, we have only your word that this servant is who you say he is.’

  Pasquale glanced over his shoulder, and to his relief saw the Great Engineer hobbling along beside Taddei’s servant, with Jacopo in his glittering armour behind them. ‘As for how I came b
y this representation, my friend here can vouch for me. I think you know him, signor.’

  Signor Taddei followed Pasquale’s glance, then jumped up in astonishment, sending the chessboard and the carved ivory pieces crashing to the tiles. With great and apparently genuine effusion, he took the Great Engineer’s arm and escorted him to his own chair. Even Cardano seemed overcome by this apparition, and stood aside to watch with eagerness as Taddei settled in the chair opposite the Great Engineer and began to ply him with questions.

  The Great Engineer answered with a nervous smile and a shake of his head, and indicated that Jacopo could speak for him. He was after all an old man in bad health, exhausted by the break in his reclusive habits and the short journey on foot from the Great Tower to the Palazzo Taddei. He slumped rather than sat in the chair which Taddei had given over to him, refused wine and, through Jacopo, asked instead for water. His eyes, behind the blue lenses of his spectacles, were half-closed.

  Jacopo stood behind his master’s chair, visibly amused by this turn of events, and said that his master would help as much as he could in the matter of Paolo Giustiniani. ‘He acquired something belonging to my master, a trinket which must be returned.’ He bent to listen to the Great Engineer, and added, ‘Or destroyed, my master says. In any event, it must not fall into the hands of the Spanish.’

  Pasquale explained as quickly as he could that it was this device which Giulio Romano had originally stolen to the order of Paolo Giustiniani, who was acting as agent for the Spanish. That the Savonarolistas, who did not trust Giustiniani, had taken him because they wanted to capture the device and give it straight away to their masters. That this Paolo Giustiniani was not only acting as a go-between in the matter of the stolen device, but that he was also the instigator of the murder of Raphael, that it must be he who had stolen the painter’s corpse. ‘This surely must have been either on the orders of Spain or simply to make money from its ransom. When Giustiniani learned that I had the device, he decided that he would kill two birds with a single shot, and offered Raphael’s body in exchange for myself and poor Niccolò Machiavegli, knowing that we knew where the device was. Instead, the Savonarolistas took us, although I cannot pretend to be grateful.’