Page 57 of The Devils
Close to Heaven
‘Here we have philosophy,’ said Lady Severa, swinging the doors wide, ‘history, theology, astronomy and mathematics, the natural and arcane sciences …’
‘Sweet Saint Jerome …’ breathed Brother Diaz as he followed her. Who else could he appeal to at that moment but the patron saint of learning?
The rotunda at the heart of the Athenaeum was closer to heaven than he’d ever expected – or supposed that he deserved – to come. Shafts of angelic light filtered down from cupolas high above, set into a dome decorated with scenes from the history of Ancient Troy: Hector humbling Achilles, Cassandra tricking Odysseus, the burning of the Trojan Horse, the triumph of Astyanax and the sack of Mycenae. Dizzying ranks of shelves covered the walls below, a curving cliff of them, ten times a man’s height or more, festooned with a madman’s scaffolding of gantries, stairs, and ladders, bursting with books in mind-boggling numbers. Legions of them. Acres of them.
‘Drama and comedy are through there …’ Severa gestured to other doors as she led him down a flight of steps, since they’d entered at the lowest of several balconies ringing the hall, the rotunda’s floor sunk into the ground.
‘This isn’t all of it?’ he breathed, mouth falling open as he gazed upwards.
‘Oh, no. Herbalism and physic are in the west wing, theology and scripture in the east, there is a separate collection of maps, and so on …’
‘Incredible—’ breathed Brother Diaz, cut off awkwardly as his eyes dropped from the shelves. If it was heaven above, perhaps it was hell below.
The wide circle of floor was more densely covered with markings than Vigga’s back. Rings within rings, triangles within pentagons, spiralling diagrams of interlocking symbols so complex they gave him a sickening sense of vertigo. Cast from different metals, painted in different inks, chiselled into the marble, whole incomprehensible treatises in crabby handwriting. It reminded him far more than was comfortable of the apparatus Balthazar had prepared in Venice, but on the grandest of scales. That floor, one might have said, had Black Art written all over it.
Lady Severa glided across it, the swishing of her dress over those runes echoing in the heavy silence, and Brother Diaz had no choice but to follow. In the centre was a tall copper rod, wreathed in wires, blackened as if by fire, and on either side of it, ringed by particularly dense snakings of symbols, were two benches. As he came closer, he saw – to his even greater discomfort – that they were furnished with heavy straps, as if to hold a prisoner tightly in place.
‘This was the apparatus … for Eudoxia’s experiments?’ he murmured.
‘Her final one,’ said Severa.
Brother Diaz blinked down at the nearest bench. The padding looked scorched. ‘The one she died performing …’
‘She had been dying for years.’ Severa frowned at the other bench. ‘She was born sickly. The runt of Theodosia’s litter, with a saint for a sister and a hero for a brother. Small wonder she felt … some resentment.’
‘Hardly an excuse for stealing an Empire.’
‘She was protecting it,’ said Severa. ‘Or … I suppose that would have been her justification. So imperfect herself, she yearned to create something perfect. Her husbands disappointed her, betrayed her, one by one, and then her sons. So she retreated. Buried herself here, among her books. Hoping to find perfection in her magic.’
‘But that failed her, too, in the end …’
‘So it seems.’
There were two jars clamped to the copper rod. Brother Diaz’s curiosity overcame his fear and he stepped closer, peering through the distorting glass of one. Did something float inside? A great, black, shiny feather? ‘What was she trying to do here?’ he whispered, somehow reluctant to raise his voice.
‘Free herself, perhaps. From her own decaying body. From her own mistakes.’
‘You sound almost as if you admired her.’
Severa looked up. ‘She was a savage, vindictive, paranoid tyrant. Her efforts to save Troy brought it low. Her efforts to build a dream created a nightmare. She shunned her failures, whether they were her experiments, or her students, or her sons. But she could not stop making the same mistakes, right to the end. Admired her? No. But understood her? We all have our reasons, do we not? We are all the prisoners of our own flaws.’
Brother Diaz slowly nodded. No doubt he had his own flaws to contend with. His own mistakes to atone for. He tightened his grip on the sheaf of demands Duke Michael had given him and squared his shoulders. ‘We will have a new Empress, now. A new chance. Our only option … is to do better.’
‘You are right, Brother Diaz.’ Severa lifted her chin, clasped her hands, and was once more the stately Warden of the Imperial Chamber. One could never have guessed that she had such things as feelings, let alone what they might be. ‘The archives are this way.’ She glided off across the rotunda and Brother Diaz strode after her, fixed on the task in hand.
Not at all reluctant to leave Eudoxia’s mistakes – not to mention his own – behind.