The Shadow Master (28 page)

“I will move you to safety,” Lorenzo said. “Away from these men.” He placed his arms under Galileo's shoulders to drag him down one of the side tunnels when he realised that none of the wounded men about them were crying out anymore. He stood and walked cautiously across to the closest man. He appeared dead. He reached down and put a hand on his neck. No. He was asleep or unconscious. He stood and looked around carefully, expecting to see the Shadow Master there, but there was nobody. It had to be him. He had done something to these men so that they could not harm Galileo. But why did he not show himself and help Lorenzo?

“Shadow Master?” he called. The words echoed back at him. “Shadow Master,” he called again, but the only reply was still his own voice. He was leaving Lorenzo to figure things out on his own again. Or to remind him of what he had to do. So be it. He strode back to Galileo and said, “You will be safe. Friends are watching over you. I must save Lucia.” The old man opened his eyes and looked at his apprentice, and then Lorenzo added, “But to do that I must save the city and save civilisation too it seems.”

 

 

LVII

“Warn the City Council,” Sergeant Cristoforo said, looking out over the town walls. He had been summoned by one of the guards who insisted he come at once to look out at the plague people. “There is an army of them,” the guard had told him. The Sergeant was reluctant to come. The guardsman was a new recruit. A youngster. And clearly too easily scared. “Yes,” Sergeant Cristoforo had said. “There is an army of them there every day.”

But the young man was insistent, and so Sergeant Cristoforo had put on his boots and followed him up to the walls. The guardsmen there were all in quite a state and he knew something bad was happening before he even looked out over the surrounding lands. There
was
an army! Not just the growing number of rabble who made their way to the city, but this was a real army. Hundreds or thousands of them. With weapons. Some were riding on donkeys and some were in carts, and some wore the scavenged armour of a dozen different cities and lands, and a few carried tattered and dirty banners, and they were all streaming through the mountain pass towards the city.

He saw the plague people beneath the city walls emerging from their hovels to scurry away. Like peasants the world over, they knew that standing in front of an advancing army was not a place to be. They were gathering their meagre possessions, or precious bags of food, and were hurrying to get clear. Sergeant Cristoforo pondered for a moment whether he should report to the City Council that he had at least succeeded in clearing the walls of the plague people. That at least might get some reaction from them.

“Warn the City Council,” he told the young man who had come to fetch him. “Tell them that there is a large army at our gates.” The young man was off down the stairs without any more urging and the Sergeant presumed they would pay as much attention to the man as he himself had done. Then he called over two of his more senior and respected guards and said to them, “You must each go to the House of Medici and the House of Lorraine. Tell them that we are under attack and that they must send men to the city walls at once. If they do not we will be overwhelmed and the plague will be free inside the city by nightfall.”

 

LVIII

Dead people were all around them, threatening to trip them at each step. The priest had emerged from the catacombs into a dark corner of the crypt beneath the cathedral. Lucia was having trouble keeping up with him, now, as he bent her head one way and then another, leading them around tombstones and graves underfoot. Twice she tripped and he hauled her to her feet by her hair, causing her to scream in pain. He was close to his goal now though, and there was nothing she could do to slow him down.

The crypt was empty and he hurried along the narrow paths between the graves, mumbling to himself in words Lucia could not understand and could not tell if they were prayers or curses. She had hoped that they would emerge into the cathedral and find it full of people who would recognise her and come to her aid, but when he pushed her up the stone stairs into the back corner of the large building, it was empty.

The priest looked around, as if also expecting to see somebody there, and then hurried down the centre of the cathedral towards the altar. He drove her quickly before him and pushed her past the altar, where she had never dared to step, and into the priest's sanctuary behind it. Lucia was surprised to see the High Priest sitting there. Then who was this man who had her captive? The High Priest had been underlining passages in a book, with a fraught look upon his face, but he stopped and looked up at them and said, “Savonarola! What in God's name have you done now?”

The minor cleric, Savonarola, now that he had been named, said, “No! I am the High Priest!”

“
I
am the High Priest,” the other said, standing to his feet. And then Savonarola stepped up close in front of him. “And I am you,” he said. Lucia saw the surprise on the High Priest's face, and the then saw him fall to his knees as Savonarola said, “It is the end of days. Judgement Day. Your loyalty is being demanded!”

“What do I need do?” the High Priest asked meekly, his self-importance suddenly gone.

“The artefact of the ancients,” said Savonarola.

“It is forbidden,” said the High Priest. “It is an object of science.”

“So it must be destroyed,” said Savonarola.

“It serves to remind us of the folly of the ancients,” said the High Priest, but with less conviction.

“It is time to remind us all of that folly,” said Savonarola, and the High Priest nodded his head and rose to his feet. He took a small key from around his neck. He used it to unlock a small cabinet behind a red curtain. “Here it is,” he said, one madman communing with another.

The High Priest held up a small glass sphere filled with a golden liquid. The cleric lowered the dagger from Lucia's neck and sheathed it, still holding her hair, and then took the object from the High Priest carefully with his free hand and held it up in triumph “The city shall be cleansed of its sins by the hands of the ancients,” he said.

“You're mad,” said Lucia, struggling to get free. “They'll stop you.”

“No one will stop me!” he cried, then he pushed her out into the cathedral.

“I will stop you,” she said defiantly, standing her ground.

“You may still have some use as a hostage,” he said. “You will submit to me.” And he twisted her hair, turning her face to his for the first time. But she was staring into her own face. She did not understand it. Then he bent her head back and Lucia could see the frescos of the ancients staring down at her from the high arched ceiling. How many times had she turned her head up to look at their impassive faces during services, and thought them unseeing of the plight of the people below? But now their eyes seemed to follow her and they looked at her with pity, as if they knew what was to become of her.

“I will defy you,” she said and let her body go limp, falling to the floor, knowing he could not drag her and hold the precious glass orb easily.

“So be it,” Savonarola said and let go of her. Then he reached into his robes with one hand and pulled out his blooded dagger. He stabbed at her violently and she held up a hand to stop him. “No,” she called, and the blade entered her palm with a sharp pain. Savonarola grinned and pulled the knife back to strike again. But it would not come. Lucia felt her fingers melding around it. Felt it becoming a part of her. Savonarola pulled harder but Lucia easily pulled it from his hands and it continued to form and shape into a large talon or claw. Then she stood and lashed out at the cleric's face. Her own face. It caught him by surprise and Lucia felt glass shattering under the blow. It took her some moments to understand that he had been wearing some type of mirror mask on his face. Surely some other product of science, that reflected the visage of the person in front of it back to them.

The shock of the blow nearly caused him to drop the sphere. “No!” he cried, and grasped it in both hands. He fell to his knees and hugged it tightly to his chest, as if it were his own heart, and despite her resolve to see that he killed no one else, Lucia turned and ran. She gathered her skirts in two hands and headed straight for the main doors. There must be people outside on the streets. There must be somebody who could save her.

The madded shout of the cleric boomed around her in the cathedral like it was the very voice of the ancients calling down to her. But the large cathedral doors were closed and bolted. She scrabbled with the large bolts, but the talon inhibited her fingers. She looked back over her shoulder to see that Savonarola was on his feet now and coming towards her. She dragged at one bolt and felt it moving. She smacked at it with her metal hand and then tugged at it again. It opened a little further. It must open for her. It must. The streets would be filled with her father's men, and if she could just get the door open she would be safe.

She looked at the metal hand and shook it desperately, until she felt the dagger detaching from her fingers and it fell to the floor with a clatter. Then she was tugging at the bolt with both hands as she heard the mad cleric's footsteps close behind her. She almost screamed in frustration to the ancients above her as she knew she would never get it open in time. She would have to turn and defend herself. She spun and looked around on the floor for the dagger. She should have kept the talon. She should have cut his throat with it. She should have done something other than this, because he was upon her now and as he reached out for her she dodged to the side and ran again. Across the stone floor of the cathedral towards a corner door.

She ran through it and started up the spiral staircase, holding her skirts high as her tired legs tried to go faster. She could hear the curses of the cleric behind her, more intent on vengeance now than having her as a hostage, she suspected. She ran up and up and finally reached the door at the top that led out onto the walkway around the cathedral cupola. She had only been up on it once herself, when she was a younger girl. Her father, the Duke, had taken her up to see the city they way the High Priest saw it.

That day had been sunny and calm and she had felt each step was taking her somehow closer to the heavens, up on the level of the murals of the ancients. Today the staircase was just a promise of escape. But when she finally reached the top of the stairs, the small wooden door there out onto the walkway was locked. She banged on it with the flats of her hands and shouted at it. She had to find a way through it. She turned and looked back down the stairs. She could run back down them into the mad cleric's arms, hoping to bowl him over. But he would have the dagger again, she knew. He would hear her coming.

She turned back and grasped the door handle again and tugged on it. Pressed her hand against the lock. Then felt her fingers melding with it, moving into it. She tried to calm herself and concentrate on her fingers, probing and moving them around, feeling the parts of the lock that were becoming a part of her. It only took a moment to turn the mechanism and then she slowly detached her fingers from the metal again. She looked at her hand now and saw that where the dagger had entered her hand the skin was grey and unfeeling and her fingers had also lost colour. She would consider that later, she decided, and threw open the door.

It was an overcast morning outside, but, after the darkness of the catacombs and the empty cathedral, it stung her eyes like bright daylight. She shielded her eyes and looked around. The streets far below were empty. She muttered one of the curses her father used when he was most angry, that even made his guardsmen look to the floor. She had hoped that she would see someone to call for help to. She hurried around the walkway, to look further around the streets below her, but it was empty too. Then she thought of the door behind her. She hadn't locked it. She hurried back and had just put one hand on the door handle when it pushed open, almost knocking her over. Savonarola emerged onto the walkway, red-faced and puffing. His madness had turned to something other, she could see. Some dark fury that was intent on playing itself out only in her death.

She stepped back and thought to turn and run. Thought to look for something to hurl at the cleric. Thought to wrestle the dagger from him. But she did not think an angel would suddenly appear between them. The winged being landed heavily in front of her, and both she and Savonarola threw up their hands to protect themselves. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. A man with marble-pale skin and huge white wings was standing there before her. He was reaching out for her and then had her in his grasp. The wings were flapping and she was being lifted from the cathedral roof.

This half man, half bird was lifting her to safety. It was beyond belief. She looked down at the cleric and heard him shout, “Return her to me,” he called up, “I am your master.”

“You are no longer my master,” the bird-man called down. “You should kneel down before me.” The cleric called up something she could not understand, that sounded like he said he possessed the power of the ancients, but the man-bird said, “No. I
am
the power of the ancients.”

Lucia tried to turn her head and look at his handsome face and she said, “Thank you. You have saved me.” The words came out in a stammer.

He looked back to her and he said, “I have saved you to be my bride. I have watched you from afar many times, Lucia Lorraine, and imagined it. Leonardo will make you wings too and together we shall rule over this world.” She closed her eyes. Where was it written that she had to be incessantly kidnapped by crazed men? And she recalled the saying about beautiful women having to bear a greater burden in the madness of men than any burden that men ever bore in bearing the whims of a beautiful woman. She would write such aphorisms about men's madness if only she survived this day, she resolved.