Nemesis (9 page)

“Please can I have a helicopter too?” Shafer asked.

“Within the hour. Just keep your mouth firmly shut and that includes chatting to the pilot. And make damn sure you’re back here with answers at twenty-one hundred precisely. That applies to all of us.” Webb got a heavy stare.

“I’ve been going through the kitchen cupboards,” Webb said. “Kenneth, you’re brilliantly stocked with spices.”

Kowalski grinned. “Doctor Negi is a regular observer here.”

“We have to eat. This evening I’ll take an hour and make a curry that will transport us straight to heaven. I didn’t mean it that way,” Webb added.

McNally said, “I don’t seem to be getting through to you, Mark. No hardware exists that will enable me to deflect Nemesis a week or a month from today.”

Noordhof blew one of his smoke rings. “I’ll tell you why you’re wrong, Jim. Because if you’re right, we’re dead.”

Judy brushed eggshell from her well-filled blouse. She looked at Webb with wide eyes and said, “Didn’t Herb do well.”

Webb displayed his teeth. The oaf hadn’t uttered a single original thought. He’d missed out on nuclear reactors scattered to the winds; catastrophic chemical imbalances in the atmosphere; invisible, scalding steam sweeping over doomed seaboards. He’d missed out on the typhoid and the bubonic plague which would surely sweep through surviving
populations, deprived of the most basic amenities. He’d missed out on the fact that the big tsunami would hit again and again as the ocean sloshed, maybe half a dozen times or more over a few hours. Most of all he’d missed out on the cosmic winter: the darkened post-impact sky, below which nothing would grow; the freezing gales which would turn what was left of America into a blasted Siberian wasteland in the weeks following the crash; and the terrifying risk of a climatic instability which would close down the Gulf Stream and switch off the monsoon, bringing calamity far beyond American shores.

On the other hand, Webb thought, quite a few of these things had been missed by others; and he had to admit Sacheverell had done a moderately competent Internet search. For an idiot.

And now, Webb thought, everybody knows what to expect and it’s simple. There will be little warning. A huge burning mountain will be thrown to earth; it will set the earth ablaze with falling hail and fire; it will darken the sun and moon; and it will plunge us into a smoking abyss.

The sky was still dull blue, and a light early morning mist was hugging the Tuscan fields, when the soldiers of Christ came for Vincenzo.

The monk was awakened by a violent shaking of his shoulders. His woman was over him, her grey hair brushing his face and her eyes wide with fear. “Vincenzo! Robbers!”

He threw back the sheets and ran to the window, pulling open the shutters. Horses were clattering into the courtyard below.

There was a heavy thump from below. It shook the house, and came again. The woman screamed, but the thump-thump continued, and then there was the sound of splintering oak, and running footsteps on the marble stairs. A youth of about sixteen ran into the room. He wore a white jerkin, a white cap and striped black and white tights. He was breathing heavily, had an excited gleam in his eyes, and he was carrying a short, broad-bladed sword. It looked new and unused. He stared at Vincenzo and then turned his eyes to the woman. He seemed uncertain what to do next. He was staring excitedly and kept swinging the sword.

An older man, stocky and bearded, followed him into the room. “Get dressed!” he ordered Vincenzo, ignoring the woman. More men ran in. They started to haul open drawers and cupboards, flinging clothes on to the floor and overturning chairs and tables which got in the way. Vincenzo’s woman threw on a woollen dress, and then grabbed the young
man’s arm. Flushing with humiliation, he turned to hit her but stopped as a man, dressed in a long dark cloak embroidered with golden crucifixes, stepped into the bedroom.

The man approached the old monk. “Vincenzo Vincenzi, son of Andrea Vincenzi of Padua, you are under arrest.”

“Why? What have I done?”

“You are being taken to Bologna, where you are to be tried for heresy.”

The woman screamed in fright, and settled down to a torrent of abuse delivered in an increasingly excited voice. The old monk tried to pacify her and finally persuaded a terrified maidservant, peering round the door, to take her down to the kitchen.

The monk had hardly finished buckling his tunic when they bundled him downstairs. An open carriage was waiting. Early morning dew was beginning to steam off the red pan-tiled roofs where the sunlight touched them. A cluster of servants, some of them half-dressed, gaped from the shadows of a cloister. As the carriage clattered out of the courtyard, Vincenzo looked back and glimpsed a cart into which his notebooks and instruments were being tossed—including his perspective tube which, they were later to say, had been invented by the heretic Galileo if not by Satan himself. Minutes later the soldiers, clearly in a hurry, mounted up and galloped out of the courtyard, the cart rattling noisily over the cobbles.

Vincenzo’s mistress had dashed out of a back door from the kitchen just as the soldiers were leaving the front, fleeing along a broad gravel path through a garden scattered with cypress and myrtle trees, statues and tinkling fountains. She ran the two kilometres to her brother’s house and arrived in a state of near collapse. Her brother, a prosperous wool merchant, had a stable with half a dozen horses. A servant saddled one up and she set out for Florence, forty kilometres away, trailed by her brother whose horsemanship was constrained by age and gout. Entering the city through the Gate
of the Cross, with the exhausted horse slowed to a trot, she headed for the city centre. She used Brunelleschi’s cathedral dome and the tall bell-tower of the Old Palace as landmarks to find her way to the
Ponte Vecchio
. Across it, at the Grand Ducal Palace, she dismounted and tied the horse to an iron ring next to a window.

A soldier with a pikestaff, his tunic bearing the fleur-delys of the Medici family, stood at an archway. She approached, almost too breathless to speak. “I must have an audience with His Highness.”

The soldier stared with astonishment, and then laughed. “Franco! Come here. Your grandmother wants a word with the Duke. Maybe he didn’t settle up last night.” A stout man appeared from within, his mouth stuffed and a thick sandwich in his hand. He took in the work-worn hands, the wrinkled face and the cheap woollen dress at a glance. “Try the back entrance. He’s helping out in the kitchens.”

The woman held her hand to her side in pain. “Deny me access, with what I have to tell him, and he’ll have you disembowelled and tossed in the Arno.”

The sandwich man’s amused expression gave way to an angry glare. “Don’t talk to me that way, bitch. Just what do you have to tell him?”

“The words are for His Highness, not his dogs.”

The soldier’s expression of anger was replaced by one of fear. “Franco, is this a witch?”

“Shut your mouth, Steffie. You, wait there.”

“And be quick,” the woman said. “If you want to keep your fat belly.”

Fifteen minutes passed before a tall, thin man of middle age, dressed in black, appeared at the lodge. She curtsied. He beckoned, without a word, and she followed him into the interior of the building, through a large courtyard and under another archway; a door was opened and Vincenzo’s woman followed him into a small anteroom.

“I am the Altezza’s secretary. And you will now explain yourself.”

“Sir, Vincenzo Vincenzi has been taken by soldiers.”

The man sat upright. “The Altezza’s mathematician? What soldiers? When did this happen? And who are you?”

“Sir, I am Vincenzo’s woman . . .”

“Ah!” Recognition dawned in the man’s eyes. “Of course, I have seen you in the Poggia. Proceed please.”

“It happened an hour, two hours ago, at dawn. The soldiers came. They took Vincenzo and all his books and charts, and his instruments.”

“These soldiers. Describe them.”

“What can I say? They all wore white tunics and caps, and—”

“Soldiers? So far you have described strolling players. Their weapons?”

“Pikestaffs, daggers, arquebuses.”

“Common bandits. If they think they can demand ransom from His Excellency . . .”

“I thought so at first. But then their leader said that Vincenzo was being taken to Bologna to face trial for heresy.”

The man stood up, staring at the woman in astonishment. “Impossible!” he said to himself. Then: “Wait here.”

Minutes later Vincenzo’s woman was standing outside a door. The secretary turned. “You will curtsy on introduction and dismissal. Address the Grand Duke as Altezza or Serenissimo, and speak only when spoken to. Now, compose yourself.”

Through the door, along a high-ceilinged room and on to a broad verandah where a man and woman sat at a breakfast table with milk, bread, and a bowl of apricots and apples. Servants hovered around, one of them holding a baby. The man was about thirty. He had a bulbous nose, a thick, turned-up moustache and bags under his eyes. The woman was fat and double-chinned, and stared at Vincenzo’s woman with open
disdain. The man waved Vincenzo’s woman over. Awestruck but determined, she forgot to curtsy and without invitation launched into the tale of the abduction. The man showed little emotion other than a raising of his heavy eyelids, and waited patiently until she had finished.

“You have done well to inform me so quickly. Enzo, see that she has a ducat or two.”

“Highness, I need only the return of my Vincenzo.”

“At least you will accept an escort back to the villa. And my household will repair the damage these men have done.”

The woman gone, the Grand Duke threw a napkin angrily on to the table. “Barberini?” he asked.

The secretary nodded. “Who else?”

The Grand Duke snapped a finger at a trembling servant. “Get that fat pig Aldo out of his bed.”

The fat pig appeared in a minute, his white hair dishevelled, pulling an indigo-dyed cloak over his red tunic.

“Sit down, Aldo. And use that contorted mind of yours to tell me what game His Holiness is playing.”

“Your Grace, this is an outrage.”

“Do you refer to the abduction of a scholar under my sanctuary, or to the fact that you have been roused from your licentious bed?”

“Sire, the law is clear on this matter. The Holy Office is not free to arrest a heretic outside the papal states without the permission of the secular authorities, who in this case are embodied in the person of Your Grace. This need for permission is particularly so if extradition is involved. This arrest is a gross violation of accepted procedure and an unlawful intrusion on your authority and property. An insult compounded by the fact that this Vincenzo is under Your Grace’s patronage and protection.”

“I have not yet had an answer to my question: what game is Prince Maffeo Barberini playing?”

Aldo continued. “I can think of only one reason.” He paused.

“Well?”

“The one actually given. The Church does not tolerate heresy.”

The secretary butted in: “Serenissimo, it is a warning. If I may speak frankly?”

The Duke nodded, but his expression warned against too much frankness.

“I too have warned you,” the secretary said. “Your patronage of the arts and music is renowned, and it gives many of us joy to see you continue in the great tradition of your family back to Lorenzo. To praise man is to praise his Creator. But this Vincenzo? He is suspected of magic and worse. And Your Grace—forgive me—I have often suggested that you are too tolerant towards Jews and visiting foreigners. There are more Jews in Livorno than any other city in Italy. And many of the foreigners are suspected of being Lutherans.” The secretary hesitated, wondering if he had already gone too far, but the Duke, peeling an apple, encouraged him with a gesture.

“Worst of all, sire, is the clandestine book trade. You allow it to flourish. In the past year, in the streets of Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia, I could have bought prohibited books by arch-heretics like Melanchthon, Bullinger, Brenz and Bucer. I have even seen, with my own eyes, peddlers selling Calvin’s
Institutes
, Castellio’s
De Haereticis
, and Luther’s
Small Catechism
in streets not a stone’s throw from the Duomo. These godless men bring them down over the Alps from the Reformationist printing presses in Geneva and Basel. The abduction of Vincenzo is a warning, sire.”

The Grand Duke stood up and approached to within a foot of his secretary. He was plainly angry, but his voice was controlled. “My dear Enzo, in promising religious toleration I merely continue the tradition set by my grandfather. Through it Florence has flourished; Livorno is a jewel in the Medici crown. And must I remind you that my own father invited Galileo to Florence where he spent the last
years of his life? Am I to be denied the same? And why have they taken Vincenzo’s works? To be burned? Will they never be added to the great Library which Gian Carlo, Leopoldo and I have devoted our lives to creating? And are we to stand here discussing my political philosophy while horsemen ride off with a scholar to whom I have offered patronage and sanctuary?”

The secretary bowed. “So, Altezza. Let us intercept Barberini’s mercenaries before they reach Bologna, and hang them at the roadside.”

The Grand Duke turned to Aldo. “Aldo, you are chewing your lip.”

“I expect they are taking him to Rome: why else say Bologna for all to hear? But that is not why I chew my lips. Your Grace, we must be careful here.” Aldo paused, as if gathering his thoughts.

“Note our magnificent patience, Aldo, while we await your words of wisdom and the horsemen flee with my scholar.”

“The Church sees erosion. Erosion of faith. It is being questioned not only by the northern Lutherans but right here in her midst, by men who look at the sky. She has already pronounced on the Copernican heresy. Only last year, when Galileo died, a heretic patronized by your father, the Church forbade you to erect any monument in his memory.”

“Nor did I.”

“Indeed. But what did Your Grace do instead? Buried the heretic’s remains in the Novice’s Chapel at Santa Croce. It is dangerous to provoke a wounded animal.”