Destiny's Children - Coalescent. Part 23

Rosa murmured, "The dome is bigger than that of Saint Peter's in the Vatican. Did you know that? But the building was started before the birth of Christ. The Pantheon was built as a temple to all the pagan G.o.ds, but was turned into a Christian church in the seventh century, which saved it from being torn down. Now it's the most complete of the buildings of antiquity left. Of course it has suffered even so.

Once the dome was clad, inside and out, by bronze, but that was stripped away by the Barberini popes to make cannons.What the barbarians didn't do, the Barberini did, as they say."

Lucia gazed up at the disc of blue sky. "We used to get taken to the Forum area all the time, as kids. But you get used to the imperial-era stuff as just a heap of ruins. You forget that it was once all intact-that it was once all like this."

"Yes." In the subdued light of the Pantheon, Rosa had taken her dark gla.s.ses off, to reveal slate-gray eyes, just like Lucia's own.

Lucia said, "I think you should tell me why you brought me here."

"All right. Look at this building, Lucia. It was rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian, but the Renaissance artist Raphael is buried here, as are the first kings of Italy. The same building, you see, serving many purposes over time. But at root it is the same Pantheon, the same expression of its architect's vision."

"I don't understand."

Rosa laughed. "I'm starting to think I'm becoming heavy-handed in my old age. I'm being metaphorical, Lucia."

"Oh." Lucia made a stab in the dark. "The Pantheon is like the Order?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so, though that isn't what I meant. After all, this church is even older than the Order itself. Yes, the Order has survived for sixteen centuries by adapting, by changing what we do to suit the needs and pressures of the times. Butwe , who we are and why we gather together, that at heart hasn't changed.

"And just as the Pantheon has survived, though it changes-just as the Order survives, thoughit changes -so you, too, will survive the changes your body is taking you through, now and in the future. That's what I wanted to show you. Why, if you hadn't grown up in the Order your menarche would seemnormal for a girl your age. Whatever becomes of you-whatever is asked of you-you will still be yourself. Remember that."

Whatever is asked of you:now Lucia felt scared.

Rosa raised her face to the great halo of light in the ceiling. "You should take some time for yourself, Lucia. Come out again-immerse yourself in Rome. One of the most remarkable cities in the world is on our doorstep, and yet down in the Crypt we often behave as if it doesn't exist! And I don't mean with your cla.s.ses. Come by yourself-or with a friend or two, if you like. That girl Pina seems sensible.

Immerse yourself in humanity for a while."

It will prepare me,Lucia thought.That's what she's telling me. I must broaden my experience, to prepare for-what?

"You're talking in riddles, Rosa," she flared. "What is to be asked of me?"

"A great deal, if you are lucky. You'll see. I'll do what I can for you-but always remember, I envy you! It isn't duty, but privilege." Rosa glanced at her watch. "Now we must go back. There's somebody I want you to meet."

"Who?"

"Maria Ludovica."

Lucia felt as if her heart had stopped, there in the dusty air of the Pantheon. Ludovica was one of thematres .

Rosa smiled, watching her reaction.

The elevator was steel-walled, and it slid into the ground smoothly, all but silently. All very modern, as was much of the equipment in the Crypt. Rosa stood in patient silence watching the elevator's LED display, hands calmly folded before her. Lucia envied her composure.

Lucia vaguely imagined the Crypt as a great drum shape, sunk deep into the ground beneath the old Appian Way. There were at least three levels-everybody knew that much. On the first story, nearest the surface, there were schools, offices, libraries, and the computer center where she herself worked on thescrinium 's endless projects. On the story beneath that-downbelow, as the Crypt jargon had it- there were living accommodations, the dormitories and rest rooms and dining rooms, food stores, kitchens, a hospital, all of them crammed, day and night, with people. Few of the day girls who attended the Order's famous schools would ever descend this far, and the light shafts didn't reach; there was only the pale glow of electric lights, and in the old days, it was said, candles and torches.

And there was at least one more level downbelow.

The elevator whispered to a halt. The doors slid open to a mundane white-walled corridor: the third story. Rosa led the way out with a rea.s.suring smile. Lucia followed reluctantly. The corridor was narrow. Some of the doors leading off the corridor were heavy, as if designed to keep an airtight seal.

There was a faint smell of antiseptic here, heavily overlaid with a more pleasant scent, like lavender.

Lucia's heart pounded. She didn't know anybody who had visited the third level. Lucia herself hadn't, not since she was a very small child. From what little she knew, this was a place of nurseries and creches. She herself had been born here, and had spent her first couple of years here. She remembered nothing but a blur of smiling faces, of pale gray eyes, all alike, none special, all loving.

And, so went the whispers in the dark, this was a place of mortuaries. You were born downbelow, here on the third story, and you died downbelow. So it was said. Lucia didn't want to know.

The corridor was crowded, of course. In the Crypt, everywhere was crowded. People smiled, nodded, and ducked out of the way as Rosa forged ahead. Almost everybody was female. Most people wore everyday clothing, but some wore simple cotton smocks that looked like nurses' uniforms. Though most shared the usual lozenge-shaped features and smoky gray eyes-and even though everybody seemed young, not much older than she was-there wasn't a single face here that Lucia recognized.

Lucia had heard bits of dormitory gossip that the Crypt might hold as many asten thousand people in its great halls and corridors. That scarcely seemed credible-but then, wherever you looked, there were always more corridors, more chambers, stretching on into the electric-lit dimness: who was to say how far it stretched? She would never know, for she would never need to know.Ignorance is strength . . .

And it was possible, she thought now, thatn.o.body knew the whole picture-n.o.body at all.

Here on the third level people stared at her openly. Their manner wasn't hostile-some of them even smiled at her-but Lucia felt herself cringe. This wasn't her place; they knew it, and she knew it. The pressure of those accusing glares made her long to flee back to where she belonged. She felt breathless, almost panicking, as if the air in these deep chambers were foul.

If only she could be like Rosa, who seemed to be accustomed to flitting between the stories with the ease of a dust mote in the Pantheon.

At last Rosa paused by a door. Lucia felt a vast relief. Whatever lay ahead, at least she was done with the ordeal of the corridor. Rosa opened the door, and let Lucia go through first.

She was immediately struck by a sense of richness. It was like a drawing room, she thought, with dark oak panels on the walls, and marble inlays in the floor, and furniture, tables and chairs and couches. The furniture looked as if it had come from a number of periods, perhaps as far back as the eighteenth century, but there was a wide-screen television, set in a large walnut cabinet. The furniture was heavily used: worn patches on the seat covers, scuffs on the table surfaces, even wear in the marble tiles on the floor. Clocks ticked patiently, their faces darkened by a patina of time. There was more of a sense of.a.ge here than in any room she had ever visited in the Crypt.

And there was a unique smell-sour, strong, quite unlike the antiseptic hospital smell of the corridor- something hot, animal, oddly disturbing.

At the center there was a bed, or a couch, the single largest piece of furniture in the room. There was somebody lying on the couch, still, frail looking, reading a book. There was one other person in the room, a young woman who sat patiently in a big, worn armchair, quietly watching the woman in the bed.

Rosa nodded at the attendant, smiling.

Rosa led Lucia forward. Their footsteps seemed loud on the marble, but as they neared the bed they reached a thick rug that deadened the noise.

There was one large painting on the rear wall, Lucia saw now. It showed a melodramatic scene of a line of women, their clothing rent, standing before a mob of marauding men. The women were wounded and defenseless, and the intent of the men was obvious. But the women would not give way. The picture was captioned: 1527-SACCO DI ROMA, the Sack of Rome.

The woman on the bed did not look up from her book. She was very old, Lucia saw. Her face looked as if it had dried out and imploded, like a sun-dried tomato, her skin leathery and marked with liver spots.

Wisps of gray hair lay scattered on the cus.h.i.+on behind her head. On a metal stand beside her bed a plastic bag fed some pale fluid into her arm. A blanket lay over her legs, and she wore a heavy, warm- looking bed jacket, although the room seemed hot to Lucia.

This was Maria Ludovica, then, one of the legendarymatres . She looked terribly old, tired, ill-and yet she was pregnant;the swelling in her belly, under the blanket, was unmistakable.

The stink was powerful here, a stink like urine. Lucia felt drawn, repelled at the same time.

Rosa leaned forward and said softly, "Mamma-Mamma-"

Maria looked up blearily, her eyes rheumy gray pebbles. "What, what? Who's that? Oh, it's you, Rosa Poole." She glanced down at her book irritably, tried to focus, then closed the book with a sigh. "Oh, never mind. I always thought old age would at least give me time to read. But by the time I've got to the bottom of the page I've forgotten what was at the top . . ." She leered at Lucia, showing a toothless mouth. "What an irony-eh? So, Rosa Poole, who is this you've brought to see me? One of mine?"

"One of yours, Mamma. She is Lucia. Fifteen years old."

"And you've reached your menarche." Maria reached out with one clawlike hand; she compressed Lucia's breast, not unkindly. Lucia forced herself not to flinch. "Well, perhaps she'll do. Is she to be your champion, Rosa?"

"Mamma, you shouldn't talk that way-"

Maria winked, hideously, at Lucia. "I'm too old not to speak the truth. Too old and sick and tired. And Rosa doesn't like it. Well, I've stirred you all up-haven't I? At least I can still do that. It's just as when I'm ready to pup. I can see how it agitates them, all these slim breastless sisters. Their little nipples ache, and their dry bellies cramp-isn't that true, Cecilia?" She snapped the question at her patient nurse, who merely smiled. "Well, I'm pregnant again-andI'm dying, and that's stirred them up even more. Hasn't it, Rosa Poole?" Maria cackled. "I feel like the pope, by G.o.d. White smoke, white smoke . . ."

Lucia remembered what Pina had said, about a disturbance in the Crypt going back years, of more girls like her-more freaks,she thought gloomily-coming into their menarche, instead of staying young, like everybody else, everybody normal. Perhaps the illness of this strange old woman really was having some kind of effect-perhaps it had somehow affectedher .

If so, she resented it.

Maria Ludovica saw that in her eyes. "By Coventina's dugs, there is steel in this one, Rosa. If she is your choice she is a good one." That claw hand shot out again to grab Lucia's arm. She whispered, "You know, child, I'm old, and shut up in here, but I'm no fool, and I'm not out of touch. Things are changing in the world, faster than ever, faster than I can remember. The new technology-phones and computers, wires and cables and radio waves everywhere-everybody joined up . . . We have many new opportunities to do business-don't we, Rosa? You see, Rosa and her rivals know this. But they know that if it is to prosper in a time of change the Order must be based on the firmest of foundations. And I, a foundation stone, am crumbling. And so the rivals maneuver, through looks and glances, visits of their candidates and inquiries after my health, testing their strength against each other as against me-"

Lucia said, "Rosa, what does she mean?"

Rosa shook her head. "Nothing. She means nothing. Mamma, you should not say these things. There are no rivalries, no candidates. There is only the Order. That's all there ever has been."

Maria held her gaze for a few seconds, and then subsided. "Very well, Rosa Poole. If you say so."

Rosa said, "I think the mamma is tiring, Lucia. I wanted you to meet her before-"

"Before I die, Rosa Poole?"

"Not at all,Mamma-nonna, " Rosa said, gently scolding. "You'll be giving us all trouble for a long time to come yet. Say good-bye, Lucia . . . Give Maria a kiss."

Lucia could think of few things she would less rather do. Maria watched with her wet, birdlike eyes as Lucia took a step forward, leaned over, and brushed her lips against Maria's imploded cheek. But despite its off-putting appearance it was just skin, after all, human skin, soft and warm.

"Good, good," Rosa murmured. "After all, she is your mother."

When the interview was over, Rosa took Lucia to one side. "You know, you are honored, the way she spoke to you. But you still don't understand, do you? Let me ask you something. When you were a child, here in the Order-were you happy?"

"Yes," Lucia said honestly. "Immensely happy."

"Why?"

She thought about that. "Because I always knew I was safe. Nothing I needed was denied me. I was surrounded by people who protected me."

"What would they have done for you?"

"They would have given their lives for me," she said firmly. "Any one of them. There was n.o.body near me who would have harmed me."

Rosa nodded. "Yes. They would have sacrificed themselves for you; they really would. I was brought up in a family-a nuclear family-a family with difficulties. My parents loved me, but they were remote . . . That is how it is for most people, how it has been for all of human history-how it was for me. But you are one of the lucky few for whom it was different. And that was why you were happy."

Rosa stepped closer to Lucia, her face intent. "But, you must realize, one day you will have to pay for your happiness, your safety. That is the way of things. You have to pay it back. And that time is coming, Lucia."

Lucia quailed, baffled, trying not to show her fear.

Chapter 20.

There was a nervousness about the hill fort today. Artorius was due to return from his latest campaign against the Saxons, and n.o.body knew how their loved ones had fared.

But Regina set this aside. After six years in the hill fort she had learned it was best to stick to orderly habits. So, first thing that morning, she went to her small room at the back of Artorius's roundhouse.

With a mug of bark tea at her side, she settled on a wooden stool and spread out her calendar.

The calendar was a bronze sheet, divided into columns, carefully inscribed by Myrddin with Latin lettering-she had insisted on Latin, despite the barbarian origin of the calendar itself. It had sixteen columns, each representing four months. This sheet covered a five-year cycle. In fact the sheet was one of a set that made up a complete nineteen-year calendar, and it was said that the Druids, who had devised this mighty tabulation, worked on much longer cycles still.

It was a calendar for farmers and warriors. Each year was divided into two halves, with a "good" half- mat-stretching from Beltane in the spring to Samhain in the autumn, and the "bad" half-anm- spanning the winter months. And then each month, of twenty-nine or thirty days, was itself split into good and bad halves. Themat months corresponded not just to the growing season but also to the annual campaigning season: for Celtae a good day was a day for war. But Samhain was approaching once again, and another campaigning season was almost done, to her relief. Regina understood the necessity for war, but hated the waste of life it represented, and every year longed for it to be over.

Anyhow the calendar was very intricate. But it worked-once she had gotten used tothinking like one of the Celtae rather than trying to translate back to the Roman equivalent; that had been the key. The point of the calendar was that each day, right through the complete nineteen-cycle, had a different divine flavor, which subtly determined the decisions to be taken, the combination of G.o.ds to be placated. In a way it was even comforting to believe that the shape of the universe, down to the day and the hour, had been shaped by ancient cosmic decisions. It reminded her of old Aetius, her grandfather, whom she had thought the most superst.i.tious man she had ever met, until coming to Artorius's capital; when it came to the old G.o.ds there had been nothing particularly rational about the Romans.

She would think like the Celtae, then. She could hardly have refused to use the calendar at all, for it had been the idea of Artorius himself. But she wouldn't give up her bronze sheets and her Latin. The Druids maintained their centuries-spanning calendar entirely in their heads, but it took a Druid novicetwenty years to memorize the oral law that lay at the heart of the old religions. Well, she was already in her late forties, and if she was granted twenty more years she could think of better things to do with her time thanthat .

With her scrutiny of the calendar done, her head full of properly regulated auguries and omens, she picked up her wax tablet and stylus and left her office for her daily inspection.

It was midmorning. The sunlit air was clear of mist, though it had a nip that foretold the winter to come.

The colony on the hilltop plateau had grown: nearly five hundred people lived up here now, and many thousands more in the farmed countryside nearby. This morning fires still burned in the huts and roundhouses, and the air was full of the rich scent of wood smoke, and the greasier scents of cooking.

There was a great deal of bustle. People moved among the houses, and a steady column marched out of the compound's open gate, or returned with such staples as wood, pails of water, and bales of hay.

Children ran underfoot as they always did, cheerful, healthy, and muddy from head to toe.

As well as the great hall of Artorius there were now granaries and storage pits, seven large roundhouses, and simple rectangular buildings used by the craftsmen. Great capital this place may one day be, but there were always chickens and even a few pigs wandering the lanes, and there were still a few areas of green. At the back of Artorius's own hall a small kitchen garden grew garlic, mint, and other herbs; theriothamus had started a fas.h.i.+on among his n.o.bles for highly spiced food.

In the manufactories the day's work had started.

Regina approached the carpenter's. On the walls were arrayed hammers, saws, axes, adzes, billhooks, files, awls, and gouges, and wooden boxes of nails were stacked on the floor. Today Oswald-the head of the little manufactory, a great bear of a man with huge scarred hands-was working his new toy, a pole lathe. A rope ran from a beam above to a foot pedal, and when he worked the pedal the central spindle ran smoothly. He was still getting the hang of the device, but already the stool legs and wooden bowls he was turning out had a pleasing symmetry.

Meanwhile, in the pottery, the kiln had been fired up. One worker mixed clay with the crushed flint that helped avoid shrinkage and cracking, another shaped a pot by hand, a third prepared the kiln itself. The kiln was an updraft design, far advanced over the simple pit clamps Regina had used on the farmstead.

Firing took a whole day, with the temperature raised and lowered in careful stages. Maybe one in ten of the pots still failed, but the rest was solid red earthenware. The potters were even learning how they could control the color of their product, from black through gray or red, by changing the amount of air available in the kiln. It was still coa.r.s.e stuff-they had yet to master the technique of using a wheel-but it was solid and useful.

Regina's old friend Marina ran the largest of the cloth works, from a big roundhouse she ruled as firmly as Artorius did his kingdom. The looms themselves, three st.u.r.dy frames taller than Artorius himself, were set just inside the entrance to the house, so the weavers could get the best light.

Regina liked to watch the weavers. The most skillful of them was another Marina-a docile sixteen-year- old, one of the old woman's own grandchildren. Young Marina worked steadily. A warp, threads of spun wool, was suspended from a top bar and kept under tension by small triangular stones. Marina pulled the horizontal heddle bar toward her, opening up a gap between alternating warp threads. She pulled the weft, a horizontal thread, through the shed, and then released the heddle to pull the alternate threads backward, and then pa.s.sed the weft back through the gaps. Every few pa.s.ses Marina would pause to push her weaving sword, a flat wooden board, into the gap between the warp threads, and thus compacted the weft. All this was done fluidly and without pause, and her speed of working was remarkable; just standing here, Regina was able to see how the cloth's crisscross pattern was emerging, row by row.

Regina had been proud of the success they had had with her own weaving experiments back on her farmstead, but all they had been able to produce was coa.r.s.e cloth. This loom design had come from another of the experts Artorius had gathered up in his sweeps across the countryside, and the results were far better.

She pa.s.sed a little time with old Marina. Marina liked to talk of old times in Verulamium, and Regina knew that the skill and loyalty of her granddaughter had been a great comfort to Marina since the death of poor Carausias a few winters before. But Regina escaped before Marina produced her foul-smelling buckets and asked her to contribute. Marina's vegetable dyes needed a fixing agent, and the best fixer of all was stale urine: a vintage half a month old was generally thought to be just right.

Regina made more marks on her wax tablet, and moved on.

Of all the industries that had sprouted here on the dunon's plateau, the most significant was iron: fully half the manufactory area of the plateau was given over to its complex production. Myrddin ruled his little empire of iron and fire and charcoal as if he were king of the underworld. As she approached the forges, two of Myrddin's helpers-unfree, recent arrivals both of them-were working on a charcoal clamp. Myrddin insisted on training up his clamp workers personally, and from the look of the hollow, sleepless eyes of these two men, his training regime had been as brutal and unrelenting as ever.

This clamp was a few days old and several paces across. A mound of timber had been covered with a thick layer of damp leaves and bracken, turf, and soil. Fire had been started inside with embers poured into a hole in the top, and then the mound was capped off, so that the wood within could only consume itself. Running the clamp was a skilled job. A constant watch had to be kept on it by day and night, for as the wood turned to charcoal it would shrink, and the clamp could collapse on itself-and if air got in the whole thing would go up in an unproductive blaze. When the burning was done the mound had to be dismantled carefully, and the charcoal doused with water, for while hot it had a tendency to erupt into flames spontaneously. There were many such clamps, some much larger, in operation day and night beyond the hill fort, for Myrddin's works demanded a constant and heavy supply of charcoal. You could smelt some metal ores with wood fires, but only charcoal could provide the high temperatures needed for iron.

Myrddin himself ran the next stage in his process. His shaft furnace was just a tube of wattle and daub, vitrified by repeated firings. By the time Regina arrived the furnace had been running since early morning, and two more unfree were laboring mightily at their animal-skin bellows. They were naked save for loincloths, and their bodies were slick with sweat and soot. Myrddin was supervising the day's first charge of charcoal and ore.

He preferred charcoal made from alder, which he said burned hotter than any other sort, and ocher, a relatively easy ore to smelt. The furnace would be worked all day, and then allowed to cool; by tomorrow Myrddin would be able to pull out a bloom, a dense, irregular ma.s.s of metal and impurities.