Wave was created by amplifying a particular harmonic sequence. We stopped the Wave by creating a signal that was its counterpoint.’
Isabella glanced at the aged Madonna of Rasenna in a corner niche. ‘Like throwing a cloak over Rasenna.’
Pedro said nothing; the image from the old Rasenneisi prayer was eerily apt. Perhaps his failure was one of language – call it ‘Love’ and an engineer is suspicious but call it ‘Harmony‘ and it can be measured and amplified, dissected and destroyed.
‘Sofia told me everything. She told me that Giovanni was one of them – a buio …’
Isabella didn’t even pretend to be surprised. ‘Is she safe?’
‘More than she ever could be in Etruria. She’s on the way to Oltremare.’
‘Grazie Madonna!’ Isabella sighed in relief, then looked at him. ‘That wasn’t all she told you, was it?’
Pedro looked around in embarrassment. ‘I don’t know what to believe. Nothing generates spontaneously, especially life. There must be a cause—’
‘There is, and someday you’ll understand that miracle too. Right now all that matters is that you helped her escape.’
The tiered circles ground against each other pitilessly and the echo of the tortured metal was amplified by the pit. The beast carried on its excruciating revolutions, though now it was a prison with only one prisoner.
Fra Norcino scrambled to the compartment before it closed and grabbed the bowl. He threw the food in the corner impatiently and placed the bowl under a drip. His shit-bucket was under another drip, and it was getting fuller. He listened merrily to the tapping, and when the bowl was filled he poured it into the bucket. The water was still below the brim.
‘Nuh!’ he grunted, unsatisfied.
He stood astride the bucket and made up the missing inch with a steaming stream of greenish-amber piss. He fell to his knees like a worshipper and inhaled the textured vapours of the noxious brew with delectation. ‘Perfect,’ he said, blowing upon the surface.
After Pedro left, Isabella stood on tip-toe, looking down into the cool water of the font.
‘Come out, Carmella.’
The older novice appeared from the dark corner of the baptistery where she’d been hiding. ‘I’m sorry, Reverend Mother. I was cleaning when the young engineer came in …’ She stopped, seeing that Isabella didn’t believe the lie. Carefully, she said, ‘What he said about the Contessa – is she really—?’
‘—I expect your discretion.’
‘How long have you been hiding her sins?’
‘You heard nothing, and you will repeat nothing, Carmella. I would be alone now.’
‘I— Yes, Reverend Mother.’
The novice left hurriedly. Isabella waited for her composure to return and studied the still cold water below. Her mind drifted, and she let it, leaving behind her frail body – it was too heavy for where she needed to be. She was a bird, travelling through the soft froth of clouds, seeing the white feathers of her outstretched wings, making minute adjustments, the better to catch the wind. She felt the bird’s hunger, and sensed the change in temperature as it travelled beyond the land, where the air chilled still further. In the calm sea below her she saw a tiny skiff. A tremor passed on the distant surface below; electrical tension in the air; drops of unseen rain danced on the water of the font.
Sofia watched Ezra warily. The old man had been surveying the sky for an hour now, though she could see nothing of interest but a single seagull. Ezra sniffed suspiciously as the sails filled with wind, and the breeze, gentle till now, suddenly grew stronger.
Levi woke with a start, like Sofia, gagging at the foul stench that suddenly surrounded them.
‘Damn you, not here!’ Ezra cried as the skiff suddenly lurched to the side.
Mumbling through his cracked lips, Fra Norcino stirred the foulness clockwise, and it kept spinning when he removed his finger. Far below his cell, in the lake at the bottom of the pit, the water’s surface was alive with changing forms, cubes and cylinders and disproportionate disembodied limbs that clawed the air and fell apart.
A sudden wind blew the dust through Rasenna’s streets and burst the baptistery doors open. ‘You have no right!’ Isabella screamed, seeing – feeling – the maelstrom growing in the Holy Water.
‘We’re being tugged from below!’ Levi shouted. ‘Ezra, what is it?’
‘The current,’ Sofia said. She could feel it in her bones.
Ezra was shaking his fists at the black clouds that had eclipsed the insipid sun. ‘You may not harm her. You can only point the way!’ His voice was small against the howling wind.
Norcino’s cackle echoed