Admiral Slovo frowned slightly in a pained of course, who do you think you’re dealing with? gesture.
‘On reflection,’ said Numa Droz brightly, ‘I’m delighted to accept this commission, Admiral, and am obliged for your recommendation.’
‘Good,’ said Slovo, giving the prearranged signal for the concealed handgunners to stand down. ‘So go over and sort out that bodyguard unit King Louis has forced upon us. Oh, and find out who’s Commander-in-Chief and fit us into his plan of battle, will you?’
‘It’s done,’ said Numa Droz, striding away.
Admiral Slovo had long observed that the safest course of action in a general engagement was to get stuck in. Those who remained aloof were asking to be selected as targets or easy pickings against unequal numbers. In due course, he therefore rode forward and charged with the French army, indulging in the usual hacking and stabbing of other mothers’ sons who had in no way offended him.
Numa Droz, who had to watch his back against the French as well as worry about the enemy and the Admiral, was in his element and effortlessly efficient. Amidst the scrum, he saved Slovo’s life countless times and cleared the necessary space for his Master to observe and ponder. The King’s elite troop of Scottish archers performed the same function as an outer circle of expendables.
As luck would have it, it all worked rather well. Self-tuned into a high state of awareness, the Admiral’s mind picked up the air-borne vibes before the coarse and licentious soldiery, before even the well-bred nerve endings of the metal-covered Gallic aristocracy. He bravely embraced what was seeping invisibly through the ether, then painfully managed to claw free from its grasp. How wise, he reflected, was Pope Julius – or the Providence which directed him – to select me for this task. So few other men could have done it.
Despatching a stradiot by a simple parry-feint-blade slide (they didn’t seem to teach that basic move or its counter any more), he looked about for the source of his sensory experience. It was soon located and full comprehension thereby gained. He reined his horse back and sought the ear of Numa Droz.
‘It’s all sorted,’ he said, his natural dignity marred by all the jostling and a flesh wound on the face. ‘I know what’s going on now. Cut me a way back. We’ll need to be quick.’
It soon became clear that Slovo was right about the need for expedition. What he had already felt now began to affect the grosser sensitivities of the Allied army and, in turn, their professional performance. Before long they would cease to fight; soon after they would start to flee.
In the memoirs of his old age (acquired, read and then burnt by a Sicilian Bishop in the eighteenth century), Admiral Slovo’s account of the Battle of Ghiaradadda (14/5/1509) refers to an alien sensation that began as calm but soon mellowed into an indifference disguised as tolerance. It then intensified (a contradiction in itself) into a loss of vivacity and ended, most horribly, in the featureless but enduring grey plains of boredom. If Admiral Slovo had not already been on first-name terms with philosophical misery, he could not have fought off, even temporarily, so terrible a foe.
Slowly, but surely, it was this very foe that was leading to the unravelling of the Allied army. As the last determined man in that army, Admiral Slovo made it his business to take charge of the artillery.
‘Do you see that obelisk I’m pointing at.’
‘Behind the Venetian lines – with all the people round it? The grey thing beside the Officers’ latrines?’ checked the gunner. ‘Yes, I see it.’
‘Desist fire on all else bar that until it is destroyed,’ ordered Slovo. ‘There could be monstrous gold in this for you, you appreciate—’
‘I don’t need bribing,’ said the cold-eyed man. ‘I take a pride in my work. That box is bloody dead: you watch!’
Such myopic stupidity inspired confidence and sure enough, soon after, the guns spoke united and deadly, like the voice of God.
Admiral Slovo turned to address his remaining colleagues. ‘The obelisk to which I referred is presently departing this vale of tears,’ he said. ‘Our troops will then regain their confidence and the Venetians will run away. You will proceed to the obelisk’s remains and convey to me as prisoners those remaining about it.’
And that’s just what happened.
When Numa Droz and the Scots returned with their prisoners, the Swiss looked furtive and guilty.
‘It’s like this,’ he said, avoiding the Admiral’s eyes. ‘We could have been back sooner but I stopped to get some heads.’ He held up a damp-bottomed canvas sack. ‘All those running people – just too tempting. There’ll be a quarter off my invoice for the lapse – I insist.’
It meant nothing one way or the other to Slovo since Pope Julius was picking up the bill. He didn’t even acknowledge the confession, being too busy studying the crop of serviceable captives, yet he stored it up as possible future ammunition against the Swiss.
There were a dozen of them, some a little damaged in transit but basically of merchantable quality, all dressed from head to foot in grey. One was distinguished by the paler grey of his robes, but otherwise this was a brotherhood, united even in defeat, that glared wildly at Admiral Slovo.
‘I think I know you,’ said Slovo in a kindly tone to the one man singled out by his clothes.
‘Murderer!’ spat the grey man in return.
‘And knowing you,’ Slovo continued unperturbed, ‘I suspect I now know all. I apologize for the largely wasted errand, Master Droz, but would you kill these others please? It transpires they are incidental.’
The process brought a little more reasonableness to the man Slovo had selected. Wide-eyed, he rushed away from his companions as Droz and the Scots moved in.
‘I’m very sorry,’ explained the Admiral to him, ‘but my instructions were very clear: “root and branch” were the words – and so it must be.’
‘You do not understand what you are destroying!’ said the survivor, half angry, half placatory.
‘On the contrary, Master Pacioli, I am only too well aware,’ replied Slovo. ‘But if it is any comfort I suspect that I have destroyed nothing, merely postponed something. By the way, whilst unable to actually admire your great book, I appreciate the power and thought within and, of course, the illustrations by Da Vinci.’
Despite the circumstances and the bodies piling up, Luca Pacioli, author of Summa de Arithmetica (Venice 1494), the world’s very first accountancy and double-entry book-keeping primer, was fanatic enough to enjoy the pseudo-compliment.
‘It is the start of great things!’ he said excitedly. ‘It was the reason I was chosen. And it can still go on, it is not too late! Despite what you’ve done, we can still cut you in.’
Admiral Slovo smiled his thanks for the offer but declined. ‘Not my cup of sherbet, I’m afraid,’ he explained politely. ‘I’m rather partial to being on the winning side, you see, and your … persuasion’s time is not yet come. It will soon, doubtless, but today’s work will set you back until well after I am safely dust.’
‘That cannot be!’ answered Pacioli, calmer and more rational now that the screaming round about him was over. ‘We have logic on our side.’
‘A commendably austere ally,’ agreed Slovo, ‘and thus not in keeping with the spirit of the age. Incidentally, who chose you? What did it call itself?’
‘Just such a spirit as you speak of,’ said Pacioli, with all the fervour of a true believer, ‘but not that of this untidy, ungoverned era. The spirit that called to me was of a glorious time to come! There will be an ending of history when man will speak, rationally, to man – but only as much as is necessary and only of solid, tangible subjects. Life will be sensible and capable of prediction and …’