CHAPTER 83
‘Torbidda?’ The Drawing Hall’s door was ajar and though Leto walked in feeling like an interloper, he found himself remembering many happy hours spent in that room. He stopped in front of the warped mirror to examine his uniform, and to compare his current self with the boy he’d been. The comparison was not pleasant. Through old, experienced eyes he saw the endless deceit that marked his still youthful boy’s face like acid-etched metal. How did Torbidda live with it?
Outside, a cloud moved away from the sun and a sudden shaft of light struck the desk behind him. He saw the reflection of the drawing first, and he turned and approached it with a feeling of transgression, the sense of spying some forbidden thing. The scale was impossible, insane, and mildly nauseating, though it was just a drawing. All about the desk were crumpled pieces of paper, all scarred with the same dense scribbling, rows of digits overlapping each other, sometimes scratched out, with lines drawn between the rows at various angles. Scattered about the floor were old Ebionite and Etruscan texts, with passages underlined, and etchings of Solomon’s Temple and the Molè had been torn apart and taped together in mad combinations that were almost unbearable to look at.
Fra Norcino watched through the bars with a patronising smile as the coffin descended and slowed. His cell was near the bottom of the pit now. ‘Seems I shall meet the Master before you. What shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him I’ve achieved everything he did – I control Concord. Rasenna and Ariminum are broken. Tell him my cathedral will be as beautiful as his Molè was terrible. Tell him the Handmaid’s child will soon be brought to me.’
‘And you have not the wit to make use of its blood. Shall I tell him that you’re still afraid?’
‘I am master here!’ Torbidda shouted.
‘You can’t even master yourself. I can smell your fear, even here where the air is saturated with the stuff. You’re still a little boy, weeping for his mother. If you weren’t, you’d confront him.’
‘Confront him?’
‘Come, we both know why you keep returning. It’s not to keep me company. You want his wit as much as he wants your flesh. Why not fight for it? Your will against his. If you were truly a wolf, you’d fight.’
Torbidda said nothing and Norcino showed his black teeth as he laughed. ‘Fearful child, take off that red. You won it on false pretences. You’re no Apprentice. You will always be afraid until you confront him … Agrippina would not have hesitated.’
‘She should have won,’ Torbidda said, watching himself backing into the pod. ‘What if I’m not strong enough? What if I am just a lamb?’
‘Courage, lad. I know a king when I see one.’
When the door hissed closed and there was no one to hear, Torbidda whispered, ‘Madonna preserve me. I’m afraid.’
As the pod started to descend and the blue light danced between the grinding torque of the rows, Norcino started cackling. ‘Alas for thee, child, blind men make poor guides.’
A storm cloud churned around the summit of Mont Nero, and purple lightning stabbed the summit, again and again. Those watching from the streets and canals of New City swore next morning that they saw the Molè’s ghost appear every time the lightning struck. Finally, one swollen sea-blue bolt exploded in the air at a point where once Argenti had looked at the stars and wept, where once the lantern’s flame had been lit to call back a boy running for his life. The writhing electric charge dropped, straight as water falling, and impaled itself on the upraised sword of the angel, the only part of the Molè still standing.
It emerged a second later, searing the darkness of the pit like a razor, shooting past Norcino’s cell to the lake into which the coffin had just sunk.
The buio leapt and clawed and climbed over one another, each particle of the filthy water striving to separate itself from the rest to escape the writhing agony that churned the depths until the ascending coffin parted the surface, wreathed in fronds of black-green scum, and rose.
The exhausted water went still.
The thing inside it was no longer crying. A talented, terrified boy had descended moments before; what stepped out was something else; Fra Norcino’s blind eyes could see that plainly.
‘Welcome back, my king.’
‘Come, astrologer. The hour is late and we have work.’