War & War (28 page)

18.

Castus returned precisely seven days later to tell them that their rhapsodic report on the divine Vallum had been passed to the
Praetorius Fabrum
and that having been delivered their business in Britannia was in fact done, and having done so bowed his head and once again addressed them as an emissary of the
Pater
, telling them that he was doing them an honor by addressing his task to them, the task being that they should follow him to Brocolitia for the sacred feast of
Sol
and
Apollo
, on the day, he raised his right hand, of the great sacrifice and the great feast, where he would see them through the purification ceremony required of those who wished to partake in the glorious day of the killing of the Bull and the rebirth of Mithras, though only Bengazza, Falke and Toót were to make the journey for Kasser was incapable of undertaking it, especially in weather that was, if anything, worse than before, as Kasser told Falke, very quietly, when asked, saying no, it was too late, he was beyond making the attempt, and the others should go without him, asking them to report everything in great detail on their return, and so Bengazza and the others gathered together the cloaks and masks required for the ritual, put on heavy fur coats and, following their instruction to the letter, proceeded without an escort and therefore in the utmost secrecy—and, for the first time in their adventures, without Kasser—setting out on their journey most of which, with a quick gallop and three changes of horse, they managed to complete in one short night despite the icy wind blowing in their faces, which made any kind of gallop a superhuman task, as they told Kasser later, on their return, but they made it in time, that is to say they arrived before dawn in Brocolitia where Castus directed them to the secret entrance of a cave a little to the west of the encampment, though Kasser had the feeling they were hiding something from him and gazed at them with ever greater sadness, not asking, nor expecting them to reveal what it was, but plainly knowing that
something had happened to them on the road
, something that they were keeping quiet about, and all the while their eyes sparkled as they spoke of Mithras’s rebirth, of the gushing of the bull’s blood, the feast, the liturgy and the
Pater
himself, how inspiring he was and how wonderful, yet Kasser noticed some subtle shadow in their sparkling eyes that spoke of something else, nor was he mistaken in this—
no error
, said Korin—the manuscript was clear on this point, for something did actually happen along the way, at the second stop, between Cilurnum and Onnum, where they had changed horses and drank a little hot mead and where they were suddenly confronted by something they might have anticipated but could not prepare, for as they were about to leave the precincts of the mansion and set out on the road again, a group of horsemen of unknown appearance, but reminiscent, if anything, of Swedish auxiliaries, burst out of the darkness, wearing chain mail, fully armed with
scutum
and
gladius
, who simply rode them down, so they had to dive into the ditch along with all their horses to avoid being killed, the assailants being a cohort in tight formation headed by a tall man in the midst of them, a man without insignia, wearing a long cloak that flowed behind him, who cast the merest glance at them as they clung to the ditch, a glance, that’s all, then galloped on with his cohort toward Onnum, but a glance that sufficed to tell Bengazza who it was, and thereby confirm the rumors, for the glance was harsh and stern, though that is not quite accurate enough, said Korin, for stern would not quite do, it was something more like a blend of
seriousness and dourness
, as he put it, the kind of look a murderer gives his victim to inform him that his last hour has come, or, more to the point, Korin tried to sum up, his voice taking on a bitter tinge, it was the Lord of Death they saw in him,
the Lord of Death
, said Korin in English, from the wayside ditch on the road from Cilurnum to Onnum, and the narrative of the Gibraltar chapter merely pauses to point out how in one place it was the terrible distance dividing them and in the other the terrible proximity that frightened Bengazza and his companions, since it is probably superfluous to add, Korin explained, that when Mastemann sat down at the table with them at the Albergueria and embarked on a perfectly normal conversation they were aware of how close they were to such a terrifying face, a face that was more than terrifying, a face that froze their blood.

19.

He preferred Malaga wine, that heavy sweet Malaga, those first few evenings following his disembarkation, evenings he spent largely with Kasser’s companions, ordering one flask after another, filling glasses, drinking, then refilling, encouraging the others not to hold back but to go on, have a drink with him, all of them, then, surrounded by his band of lovelorn whores; he talked endlessly—
talk and talk
, said Korin—talked so that no one dared interrupt him because he was talking about Genoa and a power the like of which the world had never seen—Genoa, he said, as if merely to pronounce it was enough, and: Genoa again, after which he rolled off a list of names beginning with Ambrosio Boccanegra, Ugo Vento and Manuel Pessagno, but seeing that these meant nothing to his listeners, he leaned over to Bengazza and quietly asked him if perhaps the names of Bartolomeo, Daniel and Marco Lomellini had a familiar ring; but they didn’t for Bengazza, who shook his head—
no, he said,
said Korin—so Mastemann turned to Toót and asked him whether that phrase of Baltazár Suárez in which he says “these are people who consider the whole world not to be beyond their grasp” meant anything to him; but Toót answered in confusion that, no, it meant nothing, in answer to which Mastemann prodded him with his finger, saying that the perfection of the words, “the whole world,” told him not only that the world would indeed be theirs, and pretty soon, but that they stood at the threshold of a momentous event, the period of Genoa’s greatness, a greatness that would pass in the course of nature, naturally, though
the spirit
of Genoa would remain, and that even after Genoa was dead and gone its engine would continue to drive the world, and if they wanted to know what this Genoan engine consisted of, he asked them and raised his glass so that it caught the light, it was the power generated when the
Nobili Vecchi
, that is the world of the simple trader would be surpassed by the
Nobili Novi
, the trader dealing exclusively in cash, in other words by the genius of Genoa, boomed Mastemann, in which the
asuento
and the
jura de resguardo
, the exchanges and credits, the banknotes and the interest, in a word the
borsa generale
, the building up of the system, would produce an entirely new world where money and all that stems from it would no longer be dependent on an external reality, but on intellect alone, where the only people needing to deal with reality would be the unshod poor, and the victors of Genoa would receive nothing more nor less than the
negoziazione dei cambi
, and, in summing up, said Mastemann, his voice ringing, there would be a new world order, an order in which power was transformed into spirit, and where the
banchieri di conto
, the
cambiatori
and the
heroldi
, in other words roughly two hundred people in Lyon, Besançon or Piacenza would occasionally gather to demonstrate the fact that the world was theirs, that the money was theirs, whether it be
lira, oncia, maravédi, ducats, reale or livre tournois
, that these two hundred people constituted the unlimited power behind these things, just two hundred people, Mastemann dropped his voice and swirled the wine about in his glass, then raised it to the company and drained it to the last drop.

20.

Two hundred? Kasser asked Mastemann on their last evening together, and with this the packing—
the wrapping
, said Korin—began, for there was a moment the previous night as they were going up the stairs and heading for their rooms when they looked at each other and without saying a word decided that this was the end, it was time to pack up, there was no point in waiting any longer, for should the News arrive, even if everything should turn out as Mastemann had predicted, they would not be affected by it—
the news was not for them
, as Korin put it—for though they believed Mastemann, and indeed it was impossible not to believe him, his words were as hammer blows to Kasser and over the course of several evenings they were increasingly convinced of the coming into being of this new world, a world born diseased; in other words they had already decided to leave and Kasser’s question, that Mastemann in any case had chosen to ignore, was only the
mood music to
all this, said Korin, so that when Kasser repeated the question—two hundred?—Mastemann once again pretended not to hear him though the others did and you could tell from their faces that the time had come, that once a wind sprang up there would be no point in prolonging their stay, and it didn’t matter from which of the hoped-for directions the News did arrive, whether from Palos or Santa Fé, or whether they first heard it from one of the people around Luis de Santangel, Juan Cabrera or Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, this new world would be more dreadful than the old—
awful than the old
, said Korin—and Mastemann kept repeating the same message, even on this, their last evening, about how the wine from La Rochelle, the slaves, the beaver-pelts and wax from Britannia, the Spanish salt, the lacquer, the saffron, the sugar from Ceuta, the tallow, the goatskin, the Neapolitan wool, the sponge from Djerba, the oil from Greece and the German timber, all these things would become merely theoretical items on paper, you understand? allusions and statements, and what mattered was what was written on the
scartafaccio
and in the ledgers of the great
risconto
markets, that is what they should pay heed to, for that was what reality would be, he said, and downed another glass of wine; then the next day a bunch of sailors from Languedoc arrived with stories that they had seen a few
magogs
coming down to the sea at Calpe, this being the first sign, soon to be followed by many others, such as the Andalusian pilgrims who turned up one day to report that an enormous albatross was flying low over the surface of the water, so that everyone should recognize that they were no longer becalmed, that the iron grip of the
calma chicha
was loosening, that the lull was over—
the lull is over
, said Korin—and within a few hours delighted servants entered the room where Kasser’s companions were lodged, and told the gentlemen who had been locked in there for days, that a wind had sprung up, that sails had been seen to tremble and that ships were moving, slowly at first then with ever greater speed, as the
Cocca
and frigates, the
karaks
and the galleons set off, so suddenly the Albergueria was a hive of activity, seeing which Kasser and his companions also made a start, their backs to Gibraltar, Ceuta before them, Ceuta where, in accordance with their earlier plans and with the preparation of a new navigational map, they should pick up a new commission from Bishop Ortiz, and in other words they knew what was to happen next, as they did at Corstopitum when they took their farewells before they crossed the channel, knowing what would await them on the beach at Normandy—
what comes at the beach of Normandia
, said Korin—and it was only Kasser who didn’t know whether he would reach the other side, the others having wrapped him in the warmest fleeces and led him to the dormitory of the
carruca
reserved for their special use by the
cursus publicus
, helping him up and settling him in, then getting on their horses and escorting him in the face of terrible winds, through thick fog that surrounded them at Condercum, past the wolves that attacked them at the bridgehead of the Pons Aelius, then boarding the extremely fragile-looking
navis longa
awaiting them in the Roman harbor to face the enormous waves of a tempestuous sea, moving into the daytime darkness and falling across the shore, the sun in hiding, said Korin, and no light at all, no light whatsoever.

21.

He gazed vacantly for a long time, not saying a word, then took a deep breath indicating that he would close the account for the day, and glanced over at the woman, but for her the story had been finished some time ago and she was leaning back against the wall behind the bed, her head having dropped forward, her hair across her face, fast asleep, and Korin hadn’t noticed until now, at the end, that she had had enough of the story, and since there was no need to take elaborate leave he rose carefully from the bed and left the room on tiptoe, returning after a moment’s thought, to look out for a piece of rumpled bedding, an eiderdown left behind for them by the movers, and covered the woman with it, then went to his room and, fully dressed, lay down on his own bed but couldn’t sleep for a long time, and when he did fall asleep it was in an instant so he had no time to undress or draw the blanket over him, the result of which was that he woke the same way the next morning, fully clothed, his whole body shivering, in the dark, and stood at the window gazing at the vaguely glimmering roofs, rubbing his limbs to warm himself, then sat down on the bed again, turned on the laptop, entered the password, checked that everything was still there on his home page, that he hadn’t made any mistakes, any miscellaneous errors, and found no error, so, after performing the few ritual strokes demanded by the format he looked to see the first few sentences of the manuscript on the screen, then turned the computer off, closed it and waited for the eviction to begin, the eviction he said, though it wasn’t an eviction that got under way, he said later, but rather a moving in, if he might put it that way, for moving in was what it most resembled, since boxes and packages kept arriving as he stood in the corner of the kitchen by the door with the woman beside him, gawping at the furious activity of the four movers, the head of the household, the interpreter being nowhere in sight, utterly vanished, as if the ground had swallowed him, and so the movers carried on shifting their endless boxes and packages until they covered every inch of available space, at which point the four workmen got the woman to sign another piece of paper then cleared off while they remained standing by the table in the kitchen staring at the upheaval, understanding nothing, until the woman eventually took the nearest package, tentatively opened it, tore the wrapping paper and discovered a microwave oven; and so she continued through other packages, one after another, Korin joining in and unwrapping, using his hands or else a knife, whatever served the purpose, uncovering a refrigerator, he said, a table, a chandelier, a carpet, a set of cutlery, a bathtub, some saucepans, a hair-dryer, and so on until they were done, the interpreter’s lover walking up and down among the vast gallery of items, treading over mounds of wrapping paper, wringing her hands and darting panicky glances at Korin who did not respond but carried on walking up and down himself, stopping every so often to lean down, examine a chair, a pair of curtains, or some bathroom taps, checking that they really were chairs, curtains and bathroom taps, then went over to the front door where the workmen had left that purple polyester fabric, opened it up, examined it, and read aloud the writing on it saying
start over again
, and said to himself, this is an enormous length of tape, perhaps it is some sort of game, or prize, since everything was tied round with it, but his remarks meant nothing to the woman who continued marching up and down in the chaos, and this went on until they were both worn out and the woman sat down on the bed and Korin settled beside her as he had done the day before, for it was exactly the same, just as mysterious and worrying as it had been the previous night, or at least, as Korin explained much later, as far as he could judge from the interpreter’s lover’s look of deep anxiety, which was why everything went exactly the same as the night before, the woman leaning back against the wall behind the bed, casting frequent glances at the open door through which she could see the entrance, leafing through the same magazine full of advertisements, while Korin, in an attempt to divert her attention, picked up the story where he had left off last night, for all was ready, he announced, for the last act, the finale, the ending, and this was the important moment when he could reveal what was hidden there, to tell her about the realization that changed everything, the realization that made him alter all his plans and was, for him, a moment of dizzying enlightenment.