The Pop’s Rhinoceros (60 page)

“What is it? What’s happened?” he shouted over the noise. The guards ignored him.

“Mama. Where’s his mama now?” A chuckle followed, behind him. He knew the voice. He turned, and Cippi’s smiling face stared into his own. “Mamama-mama …” Cippi had his knife out, and there were men pushing past him now.

“What has happened?” he demanded.

“Don’t you know, mama’s boy? The old bastard’s dead. Aldo the Great. No more. …”

Salvestro backed away. Cippi looked up at the fortress. “They’d kill us if they could. Shovel the lot of us into a hole, the bastards.” Salvestro turned from him and ran.

He lost his bearings in the shambles of little streets and alleys that sprawled out from a long windowless building, once a granary, which he arrived in front of twice before finding the road back to the jail. Soldiers milled about in a disorganized fashion, and the bells rang on above their heads, jarring the air with great clanging blows. A few men crouched on the ground with their hands over their ears. The word was spreading now that Aldo was dead, but no one knew what this portended. Except Salvestro. Salvestro thought he knew what it meant.

The guards had not returned when he regained the street. He had been gone more than an hour. Perhaps two. Too long, he told himself. The house showed no lights, but the shutters and door were closed. Two loud knocks, then five softer ones. At the first blow, the door swung open a crack. Inside, darkness.

“Groot?” he hissed. “Bernardo?”

Silence. Only bells, near and far, and from all directions. He said their names again. Nothing. He pushed the door farther, but he already knew that he would not enter. This was one of the things that the bells meant that night. The dead were in there.

“They went away.”

It was Amalia. She stood not ten feet away in the middle of the street, spotless in her spotless white dress.

“Mama, and Agatha, and Cesare, though … Oh dear.” She mimed a child crying, pouting with her knuckles in her eyes. “All dead and off to heaven. Come on now. Time to get Big Bernardo and Grotbag Groot.”

Salvestro stared at her, unable to take in her presence there and the words she was saying.

“Come on!” She stamped her foot and set off down the street. He followed.

Groot and Bernardo were three streets away, walking casually with the three guards. It seemed to Salvestro that Bernardo was practicing his pike-drill.

“I’ll stay here,” whispered Amalia, though they were fifty yards away. “You go and get them.” She crouched in the nearest doorway. “Well, go on,” she scolded him.

All five stopped as he trotted up. The guards were dressed in dark clothes and watched him warily.

“So there you are!” Groot greeted him. “We’ve been looking for you. You should have stayed like I said. Those bells are for Aldo’s death. Good news for us. We’ve been relieved. They’ve got some regular troops guarding them now.”

“You’ve done a good job,” one of the soldiers said then. “Fat purses all round.”

“Hear that, eh?” Groot chimed in.

Salvestro grinned. “Fat purses? Well!” He looked down at his feet. “Unfortunately I left my things back there. You and Bernardo better come and give me a hand with them.”

“That’s all taken care of,” said the same soldier as before. “No need to go back.”

“What ‘things’?” asked Groot. “You haven’t got any ‘things.’”

“Come on, Groot,” he said, but Groot did not move. He looked at the soldiers, then at Bernardo. “Bernardo?” Groot and Bernardo stared at him. “They’re all dead,” he blurted out.

One of the soldiers put a hand to his sword. Another shook his head in be-musement. Salvestro stood rigidly.

“His wits have turned,” Groot said at last.

The nearest of the soldiers edged sideways and began circling behind him. Salvestro kept him in the corner of his eye. “You’re right,” he said, backing away. Bernardo had his pike up and was looking from Salvestro to Groot and back again. Salvestro walked backward until there were twenty yards between himself and the nearest of the soldiers.

“Salvestro!” called Groot. “Don’t be a fool!” He shook his head and kept walking.

Amalia was still in her hiding place. “Don’t they want to come?” she asked.

Salvestro looked back. The five were where he had left them, indistinct in the darkness. The bells clanged on, tuneless and out of time.

They walked quickly, Amalia leading the way back toward the house. They had barely gained the next street before they heard footsteps, a man or men, running. Amalia skipped ahead of him, her dress bouncing up and down. Her pace quickened at the sound of pursuit, and Salvestro found himself breathing hard to keep up. They took the last corner before the house, the footsteps fading, then returning into earshot, nearing and falling back. He was strangely calm, being led in this way. As the house came into view the girl rounded on him suddenly, a whirl of white cloth; he felt a tiny hand grasp his own and pull him sideways.

Outside the house were more soldiers, torches, men shouting orders with an edge of panic in their voices. A tumbrel was being wheeled up to the door. For the bodies, thought Salvestro. He and Amalia crouched in the darkened
quintana
between two derelict houses. Directing the activities was a man mounted on a powerful roan, helmeted, and wearing a breastplate, who cursed the slowness of his men: the Colonel. Amalia began pulling Salvestro farther down the alley. He squeezed past a chimney breast, feet sliding amongst the refuse accumulated there. “Hurry up!” Amalia scolded. They had almost reached the far end. He sensed the ground sloping down steeply as the walls of the houses gave out. He heard water. And then:

“Salvestro!”

From the street, late, coming into view through the narrow slat of the
quintana
, pike up and bellowing. “Bernardo’s here,” remarked Amalia, clambering crablike down the slope, Salvestro above her and looking back to see the big man judder to a standstill, mouth agape at the soldiers farther up—they have seen him now, and he has seen them see him (Salvestro’s sinking heart registers successively the Halt, the planting of the Foot, both preludes to the one, two,
three
of the well-drilled pikeman). Shouting, a horse’s hooves, and then again, “Salvestro!” more plaintive this time. He’s frightened, thought Salvestro.

“Poor Bernardo,” said Amalia, who had reached the bottom of the ditch and was wading into the evil-smelling stream of black liquid that flowed there. Bernardo was looking about, confused, seemingly rooted to the spot. “They’ll chop his head off,” said the girl.

“Bernardo! Bernardo! Down here! Here!” It was his own voice.

“Silly Salvestro.” Amalia was floating on her back in the current, a wheeling white agent against the darkness. “He’ll lead them down here and then they’ll chop all our heads off. Except mine.”

For a heart-stopping second it seemed that Bernardo could not hear him, then he turned and lumbered down the alley, feet thudding, pike striking sparks off the walls, his body a great black silhouette. He was more than halfway when, with a thunder of hooves, the Colonel’s horse appeared at the far end, the Colonel himself spurring the beast forward like an engulfing shadow, metal glinting, nostrils snorting, the animal gaining more ground than seemed possible. Bernardo seemed to slow and slow until Salvestro realized that the big man would not make it.

It was the chimney breast, he realized later. Horse and rider appeared to stop dead. Full gallop one second. The next, stopped. The horse let out a terrible scream, but it was as nothing to the howl that issued from the Colonel. Horse and rider were jammed tight, but it was not pain in the Colonel’s voice. It was rage and want, the desire to sink metal into their skulls. The soldier was staring at him, mouth open, shouting his hatred as Bernardo shot forward and both men tumbled down the bank and landed in three feet of sluggish dark water.

The ditch rose steeply on either side. The backs of the houses rose higher still. They heard the Colonel shouting to his men, “No! No! Get back!” Amalia was waiting for them, a boat of immaculate white afloat in the stinking flood.

“Poo,” she said, batting away a turd. “This way.”

They waded in her wake.

The boy brought them mugs of beer in sullen silence. “He’s not a bad lad,” Groot said as he retreated. He turned back to Salvestro. “So the girl got you out. They asked me about her later.” He toyed with the fingers of his gloves. “They asked me about you, too.”

A ditch and water within it. Two men, themselves. Amalia. The ditch received tributaries, similarly foul ones, which deepened and darkened it and quickened its flow until Bernardo was struggling along with water up to his chest and Salvestro was half-wading, half-swimming, choking every time he took a gulletful of the stuff. They passed under little bridges, waiting beneath one in panting silence while men and horses passed overhead. Amalia floated effortlessly, spinning on her back, facing up to heaven. They reached a wall that climbed out of the water and rose forty feet above them. The water gurgled and whorled at its base. Salvestro eyed it in despair, but before he could frame the question, Amalia answered him. “Not over it, silly Salvestro. Underneath. …” She ducked beneath the surface and disappeared.

“Well, that’s that,” Bernardo said after a minute of silence. “She’s dead.”

“She’s out,” Salvestro replied. “She’s on the other side of that wall waiting for us.”

“I can’t,” muttered Bernardo. “I’m going back. I can’t. … Not underneath.”

“We can’t go back,” Salvestro told him. “They’ll hang us if we go back.”

“I’m going back,” Bernardo said. “We should have stayed with Groot.”

“Forget Groot. We’ll start with your head. …”

“My head?”

“Pinch your nose shut like this, close your eyes, then …”

He could not remember how long they spent there, Bernardo shaking his head and insisting that he could not do it, himself insisting the opposite, finally shouting at him, finally threatening to leave him there. “Groot doesn’t care about you, you fool!”

A few seconds of blind terror, the big man’s thrashing, his panic, the weight of the stones piled over them, and the submerged tunnel stretching forward. … He was an eel curling about Bernardo, nudging him, punching him once or twice, sensing the panicked hands that reached for him, the legs kicking and scything, long seconds that stretched like hours, and then there was air again, the same wall towering above them, air in his lungs, and Bernardo spluttering and choking beside him. They were out.

“Poor old Bernardo!” Amalia was standing above them on the bank of the
stream. She looked concerned. “You can climb up there. It’s easy.” The two men heaved and gasped. “Hurry up! There’s miles to go yet.” She struck out across the rough pasture, hopping over the hillocks and swinging her arms. The two of them stumbled behind her.

“Where are we going now?” panted Bernardo.

“Away from here,” answered Salvestro. Anywhere but here.

The first torches appeared soon after. Four of them, away to their left. They seemed to fan out as they drew nearer. More appeared ahead of them, and soon they heard the soldiers’ voices, which were sharp and angry-sounding. They are frightened, thought Salvestro. The Colonel would be out there somewhere. They pressed on, but cautiously. He could not judge the distances. Amalia was silent. The ground grew wet underfoot, and an old memory rose in Salvestro, a familiar fear he could not grasp.

There was a shout, sudden and frightened. Some of the torches seemed to bunch together. One disappeared. Then another. More shouting, but distant. He could not make it out. Amalia was a shapeless beacon, white in the blackness. She had stopped hopping and skipping. Another shout came from behind them. He glanced back. Nothing. Still Amalia walked on, but the footing was odd, something strange about the ground. “We’re nearly safe now,” said Amalia. “Just a little farther.” Then, almost simultaneously, a soldier started screaming for help, near them, perhaps—he saw nothing—and Salvestro brought his foot down in water. His leg sank in above the knee, and he knew the memory that had teased him. “Stop,” he said quickly. “You’ve led us into a bog.”

First the child, a tottering tot, then the siblings, smaller to the fore and larger to the rear, mother, then father, a horse, an ox, a fully loaded cart, yes, you could drive a cart across a bog, with care. But you needed the child. He had seen such processions traversing the bog around Koserow, watching from whatever scant cover rose above the bouncy waterborne sphagnum. Intricate zigzags and doublings-back were the norm as this or that patch of the moss-crust bobbed and bent under the increasing weight and the hesitant parade ground to a halt, turned on itself, and moved off in search of the one path, the singular safe passage, the invisible winding line that the bog-surface concealed. Underneath was the bog proper, a peaty soup of earth and water that waited hungrily for the incautious foot or leg or wheel to puncture the surface, when it; would suck and pull, and then drown. So you needed the child, to find the way. And you needed the load that followed to increase gently and steadily. Going through the moss meant dead. …

He lay back slowly, stretching out his arms and trying to free himself from the bog’s grip. Somewhere behind them he heard the soldier cry out again, then the sound he dreaded, a muted splashing as the man began to thrash. Never thrash in a bog. Be calm. The shouting ended very suddenly. And then, thought Salvestro, the moss closes over the face. His leg was slowly coming free, gently now. “Lie down on your back,” he told Bernardo.

“What are you doing?” Bernardo demanded.

“Lie down!”

They had the child, he thought. They would not die here. The voices of the soldiers were thin and distant, the odd shout as they retreated: victory to the bog. He felt the moss bend as Bernardo lowered himself onto it. Leg almost out now. “Amalia,” he said, “don’t move. Just lie down and reach out your hand. Don’t be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened!” She sounded indignant. “It’s you who’s frightened.”

“Just lie down, Amalia.”

“No!” She stood there, an irreducible ten feet between them. “You’re too heavy,” she said after a pause. “And I have to go now.”