Pasquale's Angel by Paul J McAuley

Author:Paul J McAuley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

6

The vaporous liquid that soaked the cloth did not put Pasquale entirely to sleep. It was as if he were hovering at the border of dreaming and waking, might again be in his truckle bed in the narrow little room of the studio he shared with Rosso and the Barbary ape, nursing the dull pain of a hangover and easing into the day. He felt motion, and dreamed, or thought he dreamed, that he was being carried swiftly on the back of a demon eagle, like the magician Gerbert, who had ridden a demon to save himself from the Inquisition and had lived to become Pope Sylvester II. The eagle turned its terrible horned face to him and with a flick of its wings tumbled him from its back. He tried to scream, but no words would come. A great mouth rushed at him, grinding its teeth as it opened and spat him out into night.

When Pasquale woke, it was to the jolting of a carriage. His head seemed cramped by a band of iron; his mouth was thoroughly coated with a foul sweet taste. He was lying on his belly on the carriage floor, slung lengthwise between benches where two soldiers sat. His hands were bound by a thin strong cord, and although his feet were free he did not yet have the energy or will to try and sit up, let alone stand.

The soldiers, as massive from his prone perspective as statues of Roman emperors, wore iron breastplates and helmets with an elongated beak and an upswept crest that broke into horns, the sort of fantastication loved by the Albanian mercenaries who were employed by private merchants to protect their wagon-trains. Taddei was making good his promise, then. Pasquale was being delivered as ransom for Raphael’s corpse.

The coach rattled to a stop, and one of the mercenaries leaned out of the window—Pasquale heard the bang as he slid the shutter back, then felt a draught of cold air—and shouted something to the driver. With the cold air, which helped revive Pasquale’s strength, came a diffuse sound like the roar of the sea, and a smell of burning.

The coach set off again, and the roar grew louder: men shouting; a random peppering of shots; screams. The carriage stopped again. One of the mercenaries was talking to someone, saying look, look, here was the pass, here was the seal of the Ten. The carriage door swung open, doubling the roar of the mob. A ray of lantern-light shot into the interior. Rough hands dragged Pasquale to a sitting position; just in time, he remembered to close his eyes. Let them think him unconscious.

The first mercenary said, ‘This is the piece of shit we have to deliver across the river.’

‘And by tonight,’ the second mercenary said.

A third, Florentine-accented voice said, ‘You’ll have to do the best you can, but you won’t get across this bridge, or any other.’

The first mercenary said, ‘It must be this bridge, Captain. We have important business at the other end.

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