He undressed, went back to bed and fell almost instantly asleep. It was as if, along with his stomach stuff, he had vomited out all the day’s anxieties and forebodings. He didn’t wake until Annetta opened the door in the morning, well past sunrise.
ANNETTA PUT DOWN THE TRAY SHE WAS CARRYING, made signs to him to stay where he was and put her finger to her lips, then helped him sit up, stuffed an extra pillow behind him and laid the tray across his knees. There wasn’t much on it, just a bowl of thin broth and a single slice of bread. Alfredo was still hungry, but he spun it out, sipping the broth and nibbling the bread, and was only just finishing as Uncle Giorgio arrived.
“Well, I trust you feel better,” he snapped. “You slept well?”
“Yes, thank you, Uncle Giorgio. I feel almost all right. Just a bit feeble. And, er, empty.”
“No more vomiting? No looseness of the bowels?”
“I don’t think so. I haven’t tried yet. There isn’t, er…”
“No doubt. Toni, apparently, has the same sickness, so it will have been the plums that caused it. In an hour’s time you may eat a little more, and again an hour after that. If any sign of the sickness returns, do not eat. Annetta will leave food for you in the breakfast room. Eat nothing else. You understand?”
“Yes, of course. …Can I get up?”
“Yes, but stay in the house, out of the sun. I will see you on my return from Mass.”
He marched out of the room without another word. Alfredo rose, washed and dressed, then finished the remains of last night’s supper, listening intently all the time for the sound of footsteps in the corridor. After that there was nothing to do but wait in his window until Uncle Giorgio left.
All his anxieties came crowding back. His plan was like a chain, each link depending on the one before it. If one link snapped, the plan would fail. What then? Run away, as he had told Annetta? How? Where to? Who on the island would risk the fury of the Master of the Mountain? He tried to force himself to think about the problem, but his mind kept slithering back to the chain, testing it through, link after link after link. And again. And again.
At last Uncle Giorgio appeared from behind the house, already riding his mule, with Annetta striding at his side. Just as he rounded the terrace he turned and looked up at the house. Alfredo waved. Uncle Giorgio raised his hand in brief acknowledgment and headed down the hill. Still Alfredo waited until they had long disappeared among the olive trees, then hurried downstairs.
He found Toni sitting placidly in the kitchen. There was a satchel on the table beside him, which he pushed toward Alfredo with a smile. Alfredo glanced inside. More food.
“Your mother is a marvelous woman,” he told Toni. Toni smiled, but there was no knowing whether he understood the words, or only the tone. Alfredo beckoned to him and led the way out into the yard.
Together they fetched out the two remaining mules and tethered them to separate rings in the stable wall. They gave them nose bags to keep them quiet, and then brought out the two harnesses and the cradle to carry the salamander’s bucket. Alfredo worked out how it assembled and then stood for a while checking round the yard, making as sure as he could that this stage of the plan would really work. The main problem was going to be the weight of the salamander’s bucket, filled with some of the molten mass from the furnace. Strong though Toni was, Alfredo didn’t believe that the two of them could carry it up from the cellars between them, and then lift it into the cradle between the mules. That’s why the second bucket had been so important.
There was nothing more he could think of. He sighed with anxiety and led the way back into the kitchen. The clock said it was still twenty minutes to go before the start of Mass, so he opened the satchel and forced himself to eat. Toni had no such problems.
With five minutes to go he repacked the satchel, took it out and stowed it in one of the saddlebags, went back to the kitchen, lit a lantern with a spill from the fire and led the way down to the cellar. Toni gazed without interest at the massive door of the furnace chamber, and turned inquiringly to Alfredo. Now came the first true test, the first link in the plan. If this succeeded, there would be no going back. If it failed…
Alfredo put the lantern on the floor, aligned his hands in front of his mouth and moved his fingers over the stops of an imaginary recorder. Toni took his real one from under his smock and put it to his lips. Quietly Alfredo began to sing the old Persian chant of summoning. After the first two notes Toni joined smoothly in.
And an Angel of Fire was there, with them, filling the height and width of the gloomy passage with its blazing presence. Alfredo almost lost the chant, stunned by the sudden nearness of such power, so much stronger, more vivid, than that of the two that Uncle Giorgio had summoned to his rite with the starlings. Now he understood what the notes had meant when they had talked about the difference between the Greater and Lesser Angels. Those two had been of the sort that could be commanded by a man with the Knowledge. But this was indeed one of the Greater Angels—perhaps the same one that had appeared before Toni in the rose garden. They could ask it, but it would choose whether to do what they asked.
The Angel waited, impassive, until the chant ended, and even then seemed to ignore Alfredo. Instead it faced Toni directly, bowed its head and waited again. Toni looked to Alfredo for guidance, and now at last the Angel turned to him. He, too, bowed his head as the Angel had done, placed his finger onto the keyhole of the lock, and spoke the two grating syllables with which Uncle Giorgio had commanded the Lesser Angels to light the star around the brazier. He stood back and watched the Angel reach out an arm and place its hand over the lock. A white light gathered itself inside the Angel’s body, pulsed gently down its arm and settled in a dome of pure heat over the lock. The passage filled with smoke and the stench of burnt timber. The Angel withdrew its arm, turned and bowed to Toni, and vanished.
Alfredo pushed on the door and it swung open. There was a pool of molten iron on the step below the lock.
Toni seemed dazed by this second encounter with the Angel. Alfredo had to take him by the elbow and lead him into the furnace chamber, where he stood, slowly gazing round with unseeing eyes while Alfredo fetched the things they would need from the stack in the corner: the two buckets with their carrying pole, the ladle and the tongs. He fetched both pairs of dark glasses from the shelf and fitted Uncle Giorgio’s onto Toni for him. He didn’t bother with the lead screen—they would be moving around too much. They would have to take their chance with the emanations.
Now, at last, he raised the lid of the furnace.
There was no sign of the salamander, so he took the lid off the smaller bucket and began to ladle the molten liquid into it. With its bowl barely half full the ladle became almost too heavy for him to control. He stopped when he could no longer lift the bucket by himself.
He closed the furnace, put the lid on the bucket and fastened its clasp. The metal of the bucket itself was already too hot to touch. This was something he hadn’t thought of, but for the moment it didn’t matter. He went over to Toni and removed his dark glasses. Toni seemed to have woken at the change from the glare of the furnace to the dim light of the lantern and was now looking round the chamber in an interested way, as though seeing it for the first time. Alfredo led him to where he wanted him, fetched the carrying pole and slid the hook in under the handle of the bucket.