Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

There had been centuries of conflict, with Rome a battleground between popes and antipopes, and between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors. Rome had paid a terrible price. But now the papacy had thrown off the yoke of the German emperors, and Rome had begun slowly to recover. On the higher ground, the mansions and palaces of the rich loomed with their towers of burnt red brick. The Frangipani family, in fact, had built a series of towers all the way around the old Circus Maximus, the emperors’ racetrack.

Leo was watching her.

She could read what he was thinking. He was trying to make out her body through her ground-length dress, its hem and sleeves now stained by Roman dirt. He was a good-looking boy, and he was scarcely older than she was, at twenty-four.

She felt a welcome flush. She was, after all, a woman. Which was, indirectly, the reason she was here.

“We’re here to talk business,” she reminded Leo gently.

“That’s so.” He stepped back, his smile apologetic, and averted his eyes.

“You have secured your interests in the land in Venice?”

“In principle.” He smiled. “All I need is the deposit …”

Times were changing — and it was Francesca’s instinct that the Order must change to suit.

Over the centuries the Order had continued to develop its charitable work. But it was a business, after a fashion. For every hundred of the poor or unfortunate whom the Order helped — so had been learned — there was always one who became rich enough later to make a significant donation to the Order’s coffers, wishing to show his gratitude to those who had saved him when he was at his lowest. It was a long game, but the amounts doled out to the poor were actually so small that the gamble was more than worth taking. It was a business, like Rome’s pilgrim-fleecing industry — but if it served a pious end it was surely a business worth carrying out.

But now there were new opportunities. After the death of the last Emperor in Rome, the cities and towns across western Europe had shrunk back, to be replaced by small hamlets and migrants, with few communities numbering more than a thousand. Now agricultural innovations were seeping across Europe from Germany. Major communities were developing again — Venice, it was said, had more than a hundred thousand inhabitants — and with this revival had come new opportunities for profit.

Young Leo’s scheme was simple: to buy marshland close to Venice, drain it, and then farm it until such time as he could sell it off in the face of the expected expansion of the city. Francesca could see the sense of it. For a small initial outlay he could multiply his holdings many times within a few years, and thus make his name within his family.

Francesca was prepared to make the loan to enable him to do this. But she had asked something in return. Now she outlined her latest plans: she needed soldiers.

As it spread out relentlessly, deep beneath the old Appian Way, the Order had broken through into another set of underground chambers, occupied by a group of Aryan Christians with a way of life strangely similar to the Order’s: run by a small group of women with massive extended families, served by a network of childless nieces and daughters … It seemed that similar pressures, surrounding the collapse of Rome, had induced similar solutions. It said a great deal for the secrecy of the Crypt and its dark twin that the two groups had remained unaware of each other for so long.

But they could not coexist, of course. Francesca had seen that straight away, felt it on a deep gut level. The other “Crypt” had to be broken up, assimilated.

If you uncovered a problem you were expected to fix it yourself: that was the Order’s central mode of working. So Francesca had made a quick decision. Leo would find soldiers to cleanse the parallel crypt, and the Order would break through and occupy the abandoned chambers. At a stroke the Crypt’s effective size would be increased by more than half, and the Order would gain many servants.

If Francesca succeeded in her scheme she would gain great prestige within the Order — and, she hoped,

get close to the matres . She had realized a year ago that Livilla, oldest of the matres , was dying. And it had been only a few months later that her own blood had started to flow — at the age of twenty-three, for the first time in her life. Then had come the realization that she , through skill, cunning and luck, might take Livilla’s place.

The next time a bachelor was brought in from the city, it would be her body that would bewitch him, her loins that would bear his child. When she thought about that prospect she felt a dull ache in the pit of her belly, and a soreness in her breasts.

Conversely, if Leo’s Venice adventure succeeded he would gain great influence in his family. They were both the same, really, she thought. The pursuit of individual ambitions, tied into the goals of the group: it was the way things were. As she studied his face, she saw that Leo understood this.

Leo still wasn’t sure, though. He rubbed his nose. “I’m no soldier, Francesca. I’ve no idea if this plan, of sending mercenaries into the Catacombs like field mice into a sewer, will work.”

She smiled. “Then hire a general who will know.”

He laughed. “I don’t think we need a general. But I do know somebody who might be able to help, as it happens …”

“Then bring him to me.”

They concluded their business. When they parted he made playfully to kiss her cheek, despite its thick plastering of cream, but she would not allow it.

Peter turned up at my hotel a couple of days after my first descent into the Crypt. He stood there in the lobby, as big as Fred Flintstone, crumpled, faintly smelling of sweat, and yet untroubled. He arrived oddly short of luggage, bringing not much more than a carry-on bag, and he was out of money.

The first thing he said was, “Did you bring your duffel coat?”

“What? … No, I didn’t bring my duffel coat. What’s that got to do with anything?”

He grinned. “In Roman times the British used to export duffel coats. A duffel was a modish item for a while. It was called the byrrus Britannicus . George, you could have been fashionable for once in your life.”

“Peter, forget duffel coats. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Cash-flow problems,” he said.

“What are you talking about? You own a house, for God’s sake. You must have savings—”

“My accounts have been frozen,” he said. “Long story. Look, obviously I’ll pay you back …”

Maybe I’m naive. It was a time in my life in which various people, including a Jesuit and my long-lost sister, seemed to have little difficulty keeping me away from awkward truths with simple deflections and guile. But that day I was distracted, as I had been since coming out of the Crypt. I couldn’t get the memory out of my head; it was as if the milky air of the place were a drug, and I had been addicted in one quick hit.

So that was why I went with the flow concerning Peter, why I found it hard to focus on his evasions about what he’d been doing, why he’d turned up in this state. It just didn’t seem to matter.

I didn’t want to stump up for a separate room; the hotel was cheap but not that cheap. I upgraded to a twin, in my name. We moved into the room that afternoon.

It didn’t take Peter long to unpack. That carry-on contained nothing much but his laptop and a couple of changes of clothes, some of which still had shop labels on them, as if he had purchased them in a hurry. He didn’t even have a razor; he borrowed mine until he bought a pack of disposables.