“Ready?” he said. “You take that end.”
He grasped his end of the pole and lifted it a few inches, waited till Toni had copied him, stood upright and led the way out into the passage. The load was heavy but manageable. They took the stairs slowly, with the bucket swinging uncomfortably to and fro as they climbed. Already Alfredo could feel the heat beaming out from it. Once up they could hurry along the corridors and out through the kitchen into the yard. He settled the bucket down by the stable wall, close to the mounting block, unhooked the pole and went back with Toni to the furnace chamber.
This time, the moment he opened the lid the salamander rose from beneath the surface. Alfredo was expecting it to look at him and he would then sing Levavi oculos—I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills—while he told it through the music what was happening. Instead it stared for a moment at Toni, opened its small round mouth and, unprompted, started to sing. Toni took out his recorder and joined it. The salamander’s song was a strange mixture of wild joy and deep grief, joy at the coming of a new and kindly Master, grief for him, for what he was. The salamander wept.
On an impulse Alfredo picked up Uncle Giorgio’s little ladle and leaned forward to harvest the salamander’s tears. He remembered something that one of the priests in the cathedral had told them, explaining some miracle of healing: “The mind is spirit, but the brain is flesh. A madman has an ailment of the mind, and therefore of spirit. An idiot has one of the brain, and therefore of the flesh.”
Sovereign against all ills of the flesh, he thought.
The song finished and the salamander disappeared beneath the surface. Alfredo tipped the contents of the ladle into the phial, but had to wake Toni from his half-trance before he could give it to him.
“Drink it,” said Alfredo, miming the action. Toni obeyed and gave the phial back. Alfredo hadn’t expected anything much to happen. When Uncle Giorgio, on the verge of death, had drunk the tears it had been some while before they had had any effect. And time was pressing. He picked up the ladle and filled the remaining bucket with as much as he thought they could lift, then picked up the tongs, held them over the furnace and softly began Levavi oculos at last.
The salamander rose and at once reached for the tongs, scrambled up and let Alfredo close them gently on it. It peeped pitifully as he lifted it out and across, and huddled down into the molten heat in the bucket, though it could barely get its whole body beneath the surface. In that brief transfer Alfredo had seen that the salamander was exactly like the pendant he wore round his neck, right down to the hooked barb at the end of its tail.
He was about to close the lid of the bucket when Toni stopped him with a grunt, and then, to Alfredo’s astonishment, picked up the ladle and added another bowlful of the liquid to the bucket. He tested the weight, and only then allowed Alfredo to close and fasten the lid.
As he did so Alfredo noticed that heat was now radiating from its surface in a way it hadn’t done before, and there was a slight roiling motion as if the liquid were slowly coming to a boil. He guessed that this must be something to do with the salamander’s having left it. When he turned he found that Toni had already hooked the carrying pole into the handle of the bucket and was standing ready, but holding the pole some way in from its end, so that he would be taking a larger share of the weight. They left the door of the chamber open and the lantern still burning.
Out in the yard they heaved the bucket up onto the mounting block, fetched the mules, tethered them to rings on either side of the block, slid the poles of the cradle into their harness, and then stationed them so that the central ring of the cradle was close beside the block. Now…
But it wasn’t going to work. In Alfredo’s plan he was simply going to heave the bucket across into its place in the cradle while Toni held the mules steady, but now, faced with the task, he realized it was beyond his strength.
“It’s more than I can manage,” he said, and scrambled off the block, but before he could start back across the yard for the spare bucket and the ladle Toni grunted and stopped him, laying his hand on Alfredo’s arm and tapping himself on the chest. He seemed utterly confident.
“All right,” said Alfredo, taking the bridle. “But watch out. The bucket’s going to be hot. You’ll need a bit of sacking or something.”
Gingerly Toni tested the bucket, frowned slightly and climbed the block. He tested the handle again, this time more firmly, positioned himself, grasped the handle and with a single flowing movement swung it across into the cradle ring. He rose, blowing on his palms, and grinned at Alfredo. Yes, the bucket was hot, but nothing like as hot as Alfredo, or Toni himself, apparently, had expected.
Nothing like as hot as the other one either, it turned out. That was now beaming out heat like the open door of an oven. They used the carrying pole to take it across to the block.
“We can’t pour it in,” said Alfredo. “It would be far too dangerous. I’ll go and get the ladle. You see if you can find a way of getting the lid off. Don’t burn yourself. It must be something the salamander’s doing, keeping the other one cool. It did it in the furnace too.”
He raced off, checking on his way through the kitchen how much time had gone. More than he’d thought. In twenty minutes Mass would be over. As soon as Uncle Giorgio stepped out of the church he’d know that something was happening up on the mountain, and the closer he came to home the more he would feel it and the faster he’d hurry.
It was warm now in the furnace room. More than warm. The furnace was beaming out heat, much like the bucket in the yard. Alfredo snatched up the ladle and raced back. He found Toni crouched over the bucket, his face streaming with sweat while he levered at the clasp with a hoof pick and a screwdriver. Alfredo took the lead mule’s bridle again and watched Toni anxiously, getting his breath back. If Toni didn’t succeed in the next few minutes they’d have to give up, and the salamander must take its chance with what was already in the bucket. …
There was a sudden click. Toni rose and backed away, gasping. He unfastened the clasps on the bucket in the cradle with his bare hands and then used a leather apron he’d found to lift the lid of the other bucket clear. The salamander was again making its peeping complaint, but stopped as Toni ladled the hot liquid in for it, then tipped in what was left in the other bucket and closed and clasped the lid of the one in the cradle. He then calmly began to fold the apron, as if they had all the time in the world.
“We’re in a hurry now,” said Alfredo. “He’ll be coming out of the church in ten minutes. We’ve got to get as far up the mountain as we can before he reaches the top of the wood.”
Alfredo nodded, but finished folding the apron and tucked it into the harness. With the same assurance he gestured to Alfredo to switch to the rear mule. The change in him was astonishing. He now seemed to understand everything that was said to him, and all that was happening, and why, and to be fully aware of the urgency, but at the same time to be completely untroubled, without any of Alfredo’s twanging tensions and anxieties. Nor was there any doubt who was in command. Now, for a while, the mountain had two real Masters, Toni and Uncle Giorgio, and the coming contest would be between them, with Alfredo merely helping Toni as best he could. He accepted the change with relief.
They untied the halters and started up the hill. Uncle Giorgio’s mules were well mannered, as mules go, and used to the mountain, but the cradle was an awkward burden on the steep and twisting track, so they toiled slowly up through the wood, Alfredo with all his inner senses tense for the moment when he would first feel the outburst of Uncle Giorgio’s fury on discovering how he had been betrayed. That would be no merely human rage, he was certain. It would be the rage of the Master, an eruption like that of the mountain. Even here, far up the slope, he was sure to sense it.