Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“Very well — no harm to anything you hold dear. My word, Claudio. And perhaps we will do a lot of good.”

He said little more that day. He showed me out, his remaining conversation brief and stiff. I suspected I had compromised whatever friendship I had with him.

But a day later, perhaps after sleeping on it, he got in touch.

Under Claudio’s guidance, Peter immersed himself in the archives for days on end. And he surfaced with a string of tales: the diaries of pilgrims and nobles, records of wars and sackings, the account of a thwarted love affair — and even a mention of one of my own ancestors, a different George Poole …

George Poole had first come to Rome in 1863, in the company of the British government’s chief commissioner of works, Lord John Manners. Poole was a surveyor. It had been a time when the Modern Age, in the form of hydraulics, telegraphs, steam power, and railways, was just beginning to touch the old city, and British engineers, the best in the world, were at the forefront.

Poole had even been in the presence of the pope himself, for a time. He had seen the papal train, with its white-and-gold-painted coaches, and even a chapel on bogie wheels. The pope had come to the opening of a steel drawbridge, built by the British, across the Tiber at Porta Portese. The pontiff took a great interest in the new developments, and had asked to meet Manners and have the bridge mechanism explained to him — much to his lordship’s embarrassment, for in the middle of his working day he was carrying an umbrella and wearing an old straw hat.

When Poole came back to Rome twelve years later, it was in his own capacity as a consulting engineer. He returned at the invitation of a rather shadowy business concern fronted by one Luigi Frangipani, a member of what was said to be one of Rome’s great ancient families.

Poole expected that much would have changed. During his first visit it had been just three years since the great triumph of the Risorgimento had seen Italy unified under Victor Emanuele II. Now Rome was the capital of the new Italy. Among Poole’s circle of old friends, there had been great excitement at these developments, and much envy over his visit, for he was coming to a Rome free of the dominance of the popes for the first time in fourteen centuries.

But Poole was disappointed with what he found.

Even now the great political and technological changes seemed to have left no mark on Rome itself. Within its ancient walls, the city was still like a vast walled farm. He was startled to see cattle and goats being driven through the city streets, and pigs snuffling for acorns near the Flaminian Gate. The source of wealth was still agriculture and visitors, pilgrims and tourists; there was still no industry, no stock exchange.

But there were changes. He saw a regiment of bersaglieri , trotting through the streets in their elaborate operetta-extras’ uniforms. The clerics were much less in evidence, though you would see the cardinals’ coaches, painted black as if in mourning. He even glimpsed the king, a spectacularly ugly man, passing in his own carriage. He gathered that the king was a far more popular figure than the pope had ever been, if only for his family; after all, no pope since the Middle Ages had been in a position to display a grandson!

After a day of wandering, Poole met Luigi Frangipani. They went for a walk through the cork woods on Monte Mario.

Frangipani sketched in something of the background to his approach to Poole. “There is much tension in Rome,” Frangipani said, in lightly accented English. “It is a question of time, you see, of history. Rome is a place of great families.”

“Like your own,” Poole said politely.

“Some are prepared to accept the king as their sovereign. Others are prevented from doing so by loyalty to the pope. You must understand that some of the families are descended from popes themselves! Still others have made their fortunes more recently, such as from banking, and have yet a different outlook on developments …”

Poole thought all this talk of families and tradition sounded medieval — very un-British — and he felt oddly claustrophobic. “And what is it you want of me?”

They stopped at a wooden bench, and Frangipani produced a small map of Rome.

“We Frangipani, lacking the great wealth of some other families, are not so conservative; we must look to the future. Rome has been invaded many times. But now that it is the capital, a new invasion is under way, an invasion by an army of bureaucrats. The municipality was first asked for forty thousand rooms for all those teeming officials, but could provide only five hundred. To house its ministries the government has already requisitioned several convents and palaces. But much more housing is needed.

“So there is an opportunity. There is sure to be a building boom — and there is plenty of room for it in Rome. We believe the earliest developments are likely to be here—” He pointed at his map. “ — between the Termini station and the Quirinal, and perhaps later here , beyond the Colosseum.”

Poole nodded. “You are buying the land in anticipation. And you want me to work on its development.”

Frangipani shrugged. “You are a surveyor. You know what is required.” He said that Poole would be asked to survey the prospective purchases, and then lead any construction projects to follow. “There is much to be done. During their thousand years of control, the popes, while they ensured their own personal comfort, did little to maintain the fabric of the city concerning such mundane matters as drainage. Every time the Tiber floods the old city is immersed, and the fields beyond the walls are a malarial wasteland — why, the Etruscans managed such affairs better. We know your reputation and your experience,” Frangipani concluded smoothly. “We have every faith that you will be able to deliver what we require.”

Poole asked for time to think the proposal over. He went back to his hotel room, his mind racing. He was sure from his own reading that Frangipani’s analysis of the housing shortage was correct — and that this was a great opportunity for Poole personally. He could look ahead to an attachment here for years, he thought; he would have to bring the family out.

But he was a cautious man — he wouldn’t have become a surveyor otherwise — and he asked for reassurances about Frangipani’s funding before committing himself further.

Two days later he met Frangipani again, in a cafй near the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Frangipani brought a colleague this time, a silent slate-eyed woman of about forty. She introduced herself simply as Julia. She wore a plain white robe of a vaguely clerical aspect. Frangipani said she was an elder of a religious group called the Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins — “Very ancient, very wealthy,” Frangipani said with disarming frankness. The Order was the source of much of Frangipani’s funding.

Julia said, “The Order has a mutually beneficial relationship with the Frangipani reaching back many centuries, Mr. Poole.”

Poole nodded ruefully. “Everything in Rome has roots centuries deep, it seems.”

“But we must grasp the opportunities offered by the times.”

They talked for a while about the dynamic of the age. Julia seemed to Poole to have an extraordinarily deep perspective. “The harnessing of oil and coal is propelling a surge in the growth of cities not paralleled since the great agricultural developments of the early medieval days,” she would say.

Clearly the Order was not run by fools; they intended to profit from the latest developments, just as, no doubt, they had profited in one way or another from previous changes throughout their long history.