Slovo looked within and acknowledged that there were a few matters that trailed free and unresolved from his recollection of the English adventure. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let me put our new relationship to the test. Am I to presume from your lack of alternative guidance that you shared Pope Alexander’s concern to preserve the English Tudor monarchy?’
‘You may,’ replied the condottiere. ‘Although we think the Papacy may one day repent of that policy. It was our wish that the Britannic Isles be subject to the firmest and most centralizing of regimes. We have plans for that particular race and our requirement is that they be welded into a modern nation state.’
Slovo’s neck was beginning to ache with craning up at the Tribunal on their raised dais, but he bid his protesting body be silent. ‘Then that is strange,’ he said. ‘At initiation I was told that you stood for the restoration of older and better ways. The resurgent Celts indisputably represented a revival of the antique.’
‘You should not always look for consistency in us,’ said the lady Vehmist, smiling falsely. ‘Consistency is the handmaiden of rationalism and leads to predictability. Not all that is older is better, not everything better is yet born. We pick and choose. Sometimes it is necessary to go forward in order to come back.’
‘But what are your plans for me?’ asked the Admiral.
‘They are … fluid, Brother Slovo,’ replied the condottiere. ‘Merely continue as you are for the moment.’
Slovo looked at the Vehmists and they looked at him. It should have been an unequal contest, three against one, a conspiracy of unknown size and mighty ambitions versus one short-lived man – but somehow it was not. Slovo sensed that the Tribunal were deprived of some ultimate sanction against him; that in a curious way he was their master, sitting in judgement on them.
Pondering on this paradox, he let the silence stretch uncomfortably until he made another intuitive leap and landed in a very interesting landscape.
‘I’m in your Book, aren’t I?’ he said, first ensuring there was no trace of triumph in his voice. ‘The Book.’
The Tribunal looked saddened.
‘We suspect so,’ their leader confirmed after a brief pause. ‘There are allusions that could refer to you.’
‘May I see them?’
‘No, that might pervert the prophecies they detail.’
‘Did you always think thus? Is that why I was recruited?’
‘No again. It is only lately that our analytic scholars, our hidden universities, have seen the concordances between your career and what is written. At your initiation here, the stone gods into which we have drawn down some of the essence of the divine, recognized you. We always watch for it but such a thing occurs at intervals of centuries. That was when we were first alerted.’
‘I recall the antique colossi,’ said Slovo, looking back at them, ‘but …’
‘Mostly they are silent, Admiral,’ said the northerner. ‘Using the magic bequeathed us, we can preserve some fraction of those gods who linger on and we store their godhead in stone to wait out the Christian-Islamic monotheist era. They are duly grateful and assist us as best as they can.’
‘Gods with no worshippers,’ commented Slovo. ‘How terribly sad.’
‘We aim to change all that, Admiral,’ said the condottiere with quiet confidence. ‘We may ally ourselves with atheists and Elves, radical humanists and Roman-Empire nostalgists – in fact anyone who rests uneasy under the present dispensation. However, we never for one moment lose sight of our ancient objective. So there you are, Admiral. Now you know our “great secret”! We wish the old gods to burst their bounds of stone, empowered by the prayers of millions!’
Slovo contrived to look appropriately impressed and honoured, but did not believe a word of it. ‘And I have a role in achieving this – according to your predictive Book?’ he asked.
‘It seems so,’ agreed the lady Vehmist. ‘Possibly a crucial one. However, to be more specific might subvert the lines of fate traced by the Blessed Gemistus. Rest content in the knowledge that mighty events, things even we cannot yet clearly discern, seem to hinge upon you.’
‘So you’ll take good care of me?’ he said, unable to resist the temptation to tease.
‘For the moment, yes,’ agreed the Vehmist with commendable honesty. ‘At least, we’ll ensure that destiny is able to have its way with you. If, as our Holy Book suggests, you are going to be the world’s salvation, we can hardly do otherwise.’
There was a violent noise from behind the Admiral. He looked round just in time to see the two great effigies they had spoken of slowly topple forward and crash – miraculously intact, he noted – to the ground. When the dust had abated, he saw that their heads and upraised arms pointed directly towards him, as though in homage.
‘And so,’ said the condottiere, remaining in his seat with admirable cool, as the thunderous noise echoed round the chamber, ‘it seems, say all of us.’
The Year 1506
‘BE ASSURED, HE IS NOT THERE: I commission a masterpiece of Western art and learn the key mystery of Mother Church. A friend is glad to hear he has not wasted his life.’
In high summer, the streets of Rome could be distressing in a thousand subtle ways. Admiral Slovo, experiencing them all, looked over the side of the carriage and coveted the cool green salad being eaten by a poor man. In his ignorance, he also envied the man’s undoubted innocence, his air of ‘tomorrow I’ll up and go elsewhere’ – but mostly he envied him his solitude.
‘It is unpleasantly humid, Admiral,’ said Madame Teresina Bontempi. ‘The various forks of my body are suffering great discomfort.’
‘It is unpleasant, my lady,’ Slovo replied, holding his smile rock-solid.
The Lady Bontempi’s coach, he thought, was as big and ornate as that of a conquering Sultan. And its present mistress was of a parcel with it – an over-filled, pink-and-white strumpet sitting beside him, riding the vehicle as she did her lover, Pope Julius II – that is to say, often but for short distances only. In another close parallel, Slovo suspected that the mere act of being seen to be riding was the thing; regardless of any point to the exercise.
However, in contrast to her nocturnal forays into Venus’s jousting field, on her carriage rides Teresina Bontempi demanded both noble company and genteel conversation. The idea was to deter the catcalls of those too debased (or free of social restraints) to keep their moral judgements to themselves.
Slovo found that she was free with herself in a manner that depressingly failed to stir him. The opinions of the populace he could quell with a glance of his renowned stone-grey eyes, but his own inner verdicts were more ungovernable. In short, Madame Teresina Bontempi drained the well of his duplicitous diplomacy, a spring hitherto through inexhaustible.
‘… and at San Giovanni Laterano, Admiral, just beside the statue of the bemused man on a horse …’
‘The Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, madam,’ prompted Slovo, his eyes narrowing with sudden weariness.
‘… a group of what I can only assume to be escaped apostate galley-slaves, danced around my coach and called me “whore!” as I passed. “Whore!” – can you imagine it?’
Admiral Slovo nodded sagely, modifying his smile to signify sad appreciation of human depravity.