Pasquale's Angel Read online

  So in the end nothing had been settled. He’d gone out through the back alley rather than go in through the tavern again and face his friends. He had felt all of eight years old again.

  Now, in the darkness, in the long grass by the road, Pasquale checked the time given by the mechanical timepiece strapped to his wrist. It was as thick as three ducats set one atop the other, with a single wedge which moved around a dial marked with the quarter divisions of the hour. Pasquale’s fingers told him that the wedge was more than fifteen minutes from the hour, when according to the plan he would walk up to the gate and surrender to the guard. Cardano wore the twin of this timepiece, and at the end of the next hour he would set the attack in motion whether or not Pasquale had succeeded.

  These synchronized timepieces were the least of the wonders culled from the workshops of the Great Engineer. Nor were they his only gift. When Pasquale had returned to the Palazzo Taddei from the tavern, with his tail between his legs, he found the old man awake again, picking at a bowl of heavily oiled fava beans flavoured with rosemary. He had been filling page after page with diagrams, seeking, so Jacopo explained with a shrug, to work out a method whereby a square could be derived from a circle so that each shared the same area.

  ‘In mathematics is truth,’ the Great Engineer said mildly. ‘Only in mathematics.’ Then he added, ‘Alas, I waste too much of my time on these problems.’

  Pasquale was becoming used to the old man’s mood-shifts, whereby he raised something up only to dash it down. He remarked, ‘The Greek, Pythagoras, believed numbers embodied pure truth. As if they were the dust from God’s robe.’

  ‘Many do believe so still. I receive many letters containing intricate calculations which claim to show how old the universe is, or how big, or how all laws which govern it may be subsumed into a single simple statement. Isn’t that right, Jacopo?’

  ‘How would you know, master? You make me read them for you, and very tedious they are, too. Like Pythagoras and his followers, and like hermetic scientists such as this Venetian, Giustiniani, the fools who write to you believe that the universe is a great puzzle, which may be solved by devising the right key. And they further believe that this hypothetical key will grant unlimited power and knowledge to those privy to it. They make offers to you, master, that you will have half the kingdom of Heaven if you help them solve their puzzles.’

  ‘And yet,’ the Great Engineer said, ‘I am reminded that Pythagoras and his followers, who saw numbers as the true essence of things, were confounded by the simple observation that the diagonal of a regular square one unit to a side is a number which is not a regular fraction, that is, the ratio of two whole numbers. This was so fundamental a flaw that one disciple, Hippasus, was ritually drowned for revealing it. Poor man. I have always sympathized with him. I fear the irrational deluge that can in one day destroy all of man’s works.’

  Pasquale asked the old man’s permission and picked up a sheet of paper to study. ‘These abstract designs are almost decorative.’

  ‘Oh, often I have picked out designs for architectural features from these doodlings, most especially for stained glass.’

  ‘I am sorry that I destroyed your window. I would have liked to see it.’

  The Great Engineer leaned forward, his eyes suddenly filled with fiery enthusiasm. ‘When you burst through it! It was the most marvellous sight I have seen for some time. I have been too long in the tower, away from the world…but the world is a confusing place, not well ordered. I need order to think, more and more. The strange thing about these mathematical fancies is not that they generate what we apprehend as beauty, but that one cannot predict which geometry is beautiful. There is no equation of beauty: it arises randomly, as a snatch of song may be apprehended above the buzz of a crowd, before sinking into the general noise again. Euclid proposed that geometry was a solid base for rational exposition of the universe, but even in Euclid’s expositions there are puzzles to be found. I have long wrestled with this or that problem…perhaps I have wasted my time. Perhaps there are irrational properties in geometry which cannot be derived from Euclid’s sand-drawn axioms. But if the absolute certainties of geometry are overthrown, then so too are all our architectures and our artistic endeavours, our navigation and our fixing of the stars.’

  Pasquale felt a giddy excitement—if the world was not fixed, then every man was surely free to determine his own fate. Nothing could be measured against one thing, but all was free, true only to its own self. Angels and men. The world of things, and the World of the senses. He said, ‘Yet Cristoforo Colombo found the New World.’

  Jacopo shrugged. ‘While aiming for something else.’

  ‘But others follow his navigation. Piero di Cosimo, for instance.’

  The Great Engineer crooked a finger, and Jacopo cleared his throat and said with a certain formality, ‘My master reminds me to tell you that Taddei is not to be trusted. Don’t count on his sponsorship, Pasquale.’

  Pasquale said, ‘There is something I would ask you, Jacopo. When I am gone, I’d like you to call on a certain important household. I could never gain entry, but you are the personal servant of the Great Engineer, and I trust that you are well known in such circles.’

  Jacopo swelled with self-importance. He asked, ‘Who is this person?’

  Pasquale told him, and gave him the message, and from Jacopo’s look of glee at this intrigue knew that it would be delivered.

  The Great Engineer said wistfully, ‘If I were younger then I might wish to sail with you.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ Jacopo said. ‘When you were a young man you would never have been allowed to set forth on such a dangerous voyage, for you were too valuable to the city.’

  Their talk turned, slowly, to painting. To Pasquale’s angel.

  The Great Engineer listened as Pasquale explained how he had wrestled with the problem of painting something new, an angel no one had seen before, but then a silence fell. Pasquale believed that the old man had fallen asleep, but suddenly he said, ‘He would not look stern or sorrowful, you know. That is what a man might feel, but not a creature of God. An angel would be ecstatic, for he would be doing God’s work, and besides, he would also see the future. Your angel would know that the Fall would set man free, for before the Fall man was perfectly attuned to God’s will, and since the Fall man must strive to regain the ability to hear the secret and solemn music by which the spheres of the universe are ordered. For having fallen, man has gained the chance to mount higher than angels.’

  ‘Flow high? Surely you don’t mean—’

  The Great Engineer smiled, and touched a finger to his lips. They were rose-red inside his silky white beard. Pasquale suspected that they were dyed. The old man’s fingernail was long, yet quite clean, and painted with some substance that gave it a pearly sheen.

  ‘Don’t say it. It will get you into trouble even thinking it here.’

  Jacopo said, ‘Signor Taddei is a close friend of the Vatican.’

  The Great Engineer added, ‘He would say such pride filled Lucifer, and in that instant he rebelled and in the same instant was overthrown. But Lucifer Lightbringer was of Heaven, while we have nowhere to go but to mount higher. Your angel would see this, and so would be filled with joy.’

  ‘A stern kind of joy, it would seem. Perhaps I am not equal to the task.’

  ‘Doubting that you are able to do the work is the first step. When you know what you do not know, you can begin to gain knowledge. Otherwise, in ignorant bliss, you learn nothing. I have always wondered if angels are intelligent, or even rational, for if they are perfect servants of God’s will, then they need know nothing, proceeding as they do from that which knows all.’

  The guard went past the gate again, the fifth time since Pasquale had settled down in the undergrowth. The lights of the villa could just be glimpsed beyond the walls, glimmering as cold and remote as the moon.

  Mastering the science of light, the Great Engineer had told Pasquale that afternoon, wou
ld be the achievement of the age. The recording of light and the motion of light would revolutionize the way in which time was perceived. He foresaw a way in which the slow chemical process by which light freed silver from its iodine salt could be hastened, so that an exposure could be made each second, capturing the way in which men and animals moved. Such sequences passed before the eye imitated movement, falling one after the other just as in life. Jacopo added with no little pride that his master had already essayed such a technique before the Pope, but that was simple trickery, as Pasquale would see. Amongst the devices to be used against Giustiniani was one which employed the same kind of trick.

  ‘I hope we do not need to use it,’ Pasquale said. ‘I must treat with Giustiniani, on Taddei’s request.’ He thought for a moment, and told the Great Engineer, ‘Seeing your drawing, master, has given me an idea of how to set about that task. If you would spare me a few moments, then perhaps there is a way in which I can seriously bargain for the life of my friend, and my own safe return.’

  There was the sound of a galloping horse, the creak of harness and the thud of wheels. A carriage swayed up the steep road, pulled by a sweating coal-black horse. The gate clashed open as two guards hurriedly stepped through. From where he lay, Pasquale was no more than a few braccia from the nearest, could see his white face under the shadow of his peaked steel helmet—a heavy-set man with a thick moustache that lapped a thick-lipped mouth, eyes blue as the mountains of the moon. A Swiss or Prussian mercenary, like the men Taddei had hired for this expedition. Pasquale had a brief vision of the hireling soldiers of both sides throwing down their arms and greeting each other as brothers: he really had no stomach for the fight.

  The carriage was reined in. The guard closest to Pasquale caught at the traces of the sweating horse, which hung its head, blowing heavily through its nostrils, and spoke to the driver in guttural Prussian. The milk-faced driver laughed and swiped off his loose hat, letting curly red hair fall over his forehead. In that moment a sliver of ice seemed to pierce Pasquale’s breast. The driver was the servant of Giustiniani, the man who had driven Giovanni Francesco all unknowing to his death, the man who had handed the poisoned goblet to Raphael, who had chased Pasquale in the Piazza della Signoria, whom Pasquale had glimpsed at the window of Niccolò’s room.

  The guard waved the carriage on. As it slowly rattled beneath the arch of the gate, Pasquale stood up and walked into the road.

  The guard levelled his pistol in reflex, then relaxed a little when he saw that Pasquale was alone. His companion said in halting Tuscan, ‘No visitors. Go away like a good fellow.’

  Pasquale said, ‘I have business with Signor Giustiniani.’

  He made to pull the papers from inside his jerkin, and the first guard raised his pistol again. The second stepped up, knocked aside Pasquale’s hands, and drew out the sheaf of papers.

  ‘For Signor Giustiniani,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘We take them. You go.’

  Pasquale hadn’t foreseen that he would be turned away—but why would the guards recognize him? He said, ‘I want payment,’ and snatched at the papers.

  The second guard pushed him over. Pasquale sprawled in soft rutted mud and for the first time since he had set off for the villa felt anger, fierce and hot. He sprang up and snatched at the papers which the guard waved overhead, out of reach. Both guards laughed at this crude Prussian bully-boy joke. See the spic jump, hear him cry out. How fine it is to be a good strong stupid Prussian!

  ‘You’ll be in trouble,’ Pasquale said breathlessly, quite beyond fear, ‘when Signor Giustiniani hears of this.’

  The carriage had halted on the white gravel beyond the gate. Now the driver jumped down and walked back. He recognized Pasquale at once and broke into a broad grin. ‘The party is complete. And just in time, too. Tomorrow, we would not be here.’

  ‘Then you have the Spanish envoy with you.’

  The red-headed man laid a finger alongside his prominent nose and winked. ‘He’s in the coach. I admire your balls, signor.’

  Pasquale snatched the papers from the guard and held them up like a shield. ‘Your master will want to see these. Salai has not told you the whole story.’

  The red-headed man shrugged. ‘I’m not the person you want to convince. Climb up on the board, and I’ll take you straightway to my master.’ He turned, and told the guard, ‘Close the gate. There’ll be no more visitors this night.’

  11

  As before, light blazed from all the windows of the villa. In every room, glass chandeliers were filled with luminous tapers, like so many burning bushes slung under high plaster ceilings where friezes of putti and cherubs frolicked in buttocky profusion. When Pasquale entered the villa through double doors which stood wide open, following the red-headed servant and the Spanish envoy, he heard a woman laughing somewhere. The echo of her laughter floated across the entrance hall, where white marble statues posed under a pale blue ceiling. The laughter soared, breaking towards hysteria, and then stopped as abruptly as if a door had slammed upon it.

  Pasquale realized that he had been holding his breath. He glanced at the red-headed servant, who merely smiled and said, ‘This way, if it please you, signors.’

  Many of the rooms through which the servant led Pasquale and the Spanish envoy—a straight-backed, taciturn man in ordinary red and black hose and doublet, and a leather tunic cinched by a belt with a big silver buckle—were empty, and the rest held only a scattering of furniture. In one room soldiers played dice before a massive fireplace, so intent on their gambling that they scarcely looked up as the three passed through. A fortune in books, a hundred or more, was stacked along the wall of another.

  The door on the far side of this room was shut. There was, incongruously, a kind of door-knocker, in the form of a mask of tragedy, set square on its planks. The red-headed servant touched the lips of this mask lightly and reverently before opening the door and ushering in his two charges.

  Pasquale stopped, struck again by fear. It seemed there was no end to fear.

  The room was the same room in which Giovanni Francesco had been murdered. There was the same grate in the fireplace, in which logs burned with a fierce spitting sound; there was the same throne-like chair, its dark wood modelled with intricate carvings picked out in gold-leaf. And in the chair, as before, sat the Venetian magician, Paolo Giustiniani.

  He wore a square black hat, a black robe embroidered with silk thread and slit to the waist up both sides, his hairy muscular legs bare beneath it. His feet were cased in black slippers with upturned toes. He turned to the two other people in the room, so that his spare hawkish face was in profile to Pasquale, and said, ‘As you see, the sending was successful. Now we are ready.’

  One of the men was Salai, who simply shrugged. The other, sitting upright and composed on a stool, his wrists manacled and laid in his lap, was Niccolò Machiavegli. He turned his quiet ironic smile to Pasquale, and Pasquale smiled back, his heart turning over with hope.

  ‘Ill met again,’ Niccolò said, ‘although I hope you may find this interesting, Pasquale.’

  ‘Do not hope,’ the magician told Pasquale. His Tuscan was flavoured with a heavy Venetian accent, with spitting x’s instead of ch’s. ‘There is no hope here, especially not for you.’

  The red-headed servant shut the door and leaned against it carelessly, smiling quite without malice at Pasquale.

  The Spanish envoy began to protest, in a slow sonorous voice, that he was here on serious business, and business that had been paid for.

  ‘Oh, give him what he wants and let’s be done with it,’ Salai said. He stuck a cigarette between his meaty lips and bent to light it, then blew out a riffle of smoke with an impatient flourish. He still wore his red velvet tunic, with a slim sword at his side. He added, ‘All this bores me.’

  ‘I am not here for your entertainment,’ the envoy said, with affronted dignity.

  Salai bowed mockingly. ‘Forgive me, signor. The way you are dressed I believed
that you were here for a masque.’

  ‘Be silent,’ Giustiniani said. He cupped his hands together, the left on top of the right. When he parted them, the device stood on the palm of his right hand. ‘This is yours, signor,’ he told the envoy, and the red-haired servant stepped forward and handed the flying device to the envoy with a flourish.

  Giustiniani said, ‘Now, let us hear what the painter has to say.’ He had a way of holding up a hand when he spoke, to command attention. Pasquale didn’t think much of this: if he was any kind of leader, a man should be able to command respect without tricks.

  ‘Surely you know what he will say,’ Salai said, ‘having drawn him here. Or was the funny business with a mirror and burnt hair a charade?’

  ‘It is all in earnest, as you will see,’ the magician said. He pressed his hands together at his chest in a mockery of prayer and told Pasquale, ‘Lay on, boy. You have brought me a gift. Show these people what it is.’

  Pasquale drew out the crumpled sheet of paper. ‘Here, magister. This, for the life of Niccolò Machiavegli. The rest of it when we are released with the body of Raphael.’

  ‘There must indeed be much written there.’

  ‘Salai did not tell you the truth. When he lost the plates he also lost important information. The model is not enough. You will also need these calculations, of which I have brought you the first half. The rest, as I said, on my release, together with my friend, and the corpse.’

  The magician took the paper, glanced at it, and handed it to Salai. ‘This is your master’s writing?’

  ‘It is,’ Salai admitted.

  The magician took the paper back, and passed it to the envoy.

  Salai burst out, ‘But there is so much writing. The old man does nothing but scribble scribble scribble. One damn fat book after another. This could be anything, anything at all.’

  ‘Look at the bottom,’ Pasquale said steadily. ‘You will need a mirror to read it easily.’

  The red-headed servant produced one and handed it to the envoy, who used it to examine the cramped backwards writing. There, as Pasquale and Jacopo had conspired to compose, and had patiently dictated to the old man, was written, This is the record of the true calculations by which a man may fly using a vertical screw to draw himself through the air. I, Leonardo, do so depose this.