Episode Seven: Pavia
Part One: No More
The last day before Pavia sucked.
It rained. But that wasn't even the start. The start was, literally, the next moment.
Peitho looks up, scoffing. But, rather than asking what I mean, nothing actionable – or something to that effect – she says, in fact, nothing. Just stands up and starts stripping.
“Get naked. It's nearly daylight. We will not have as long today to go through the routine. I am anxious to get on the road.”
Her voice is dead. The command of a superior officer.
I comply, thinking nothing of – well, anything, really. I, maybe, should have second-guessed joining her today.
She went hard at the routine this morning – and fast.
Maybe she's angry. Probably she was angry that I wouldn't tell her any more than that I'd seen nothing actionable. Would I be angry? I would be angry – can confirm. But I don't mind. Actually, I'm thankful for how hard we're going at this.
For starters, she isn't talking. She's breathing too hard for that – not as hard as I am, but you wouldn't expect her to be at this point, would you? But it also means that I'm not thinking about the Dream. I'm not thinking about how Pepin killed another girl and was about to run off into the mountains west of Pavia to meet his army. Nor am I thinking about those glimpses which I caught of the man behind the mask, as it were.
Glimpses I had not intended to have.
I'm sweaty and my body hurts only minutes into our routine. But I can keep up. Can I keep going as long as she can? Can any man?
By the time the sun has peeked its little eye over the horizon and Peitho has spent whatever it is she is spending – her frustration, her latent energy, who knows – Probably not any sexual tension she's feeling – but maybe probably. I am once more wishing I were dead – but for another reason altogether.
I haven't moved my body like that except in short bursts since I was effectively a child.
Holy shit, what have I done to myself?
I stagger to my pile of clothes. If it had surprised me how quickly Peitho was dressed yesterday – considering the staggering complexity of her outfit, if not the mystery of how her vest releases her from its embrace – it is not this morning. In fact, I get in trouble for dressing too slowly.
“Jesus, Robert. Get dressed. Just— Quit bitching about being sore and get dressed, all right? We have a long day ahead of us – and it looks like it's about to rain.”
She was right. It did rain.
But you know this already.
Not only did it rain, but evidently that meant that I was going to be the one who would have to entertain her until she was ready for today's sleep – what of it she was going to get. I didn't learn this because she said it. No, nothing that simple. The way she told me, however, was as self-evident.
She just stared at me, waiting, moving her eyes around and twisting her lips.
“All right, all right,” I mutter. “What do you want to talk about?”
Rain is already beating down on the roof of the carriage. She rests at an angle in her seat. Shrugging exaggeratedly, she allows her body to conform as though she were only semi-solid, to the shape of the bench.
S - So I just get to talk, I sigh to myself. All right, then.
“I've been thinking.” I meet Peitho's eyes for the briefest moment. Then I'm looking out the window. “If we can imagine something, it's real.”
I don't know if Tedoro is listening – I've often wondered whether drivers, be they taxis or Ubers or men like Tedoro, listen in on the talk of their fares. In my experience, their talk is no different than you might expect – whatever thing or things are uniquely on their minds. Do they train themselves to ignore chatter which is not interesting to them – or do they log it all away like I do? Do they find profit in it like tavernmasters and innkeepers? I don't know. The chatter may mean nothing to them, but there are patterns in how people talk which tell you what sort of person they are.
That would be an ideal skill for a person like him.
“Plato said that the things we make with our minds are as real as the things we make with our hands. Maybe more real.”
Maybe that was why I was trusting Peitho to listen to me say this. I'd listened without listening for three days now as Peitho has kept Tedoro company. This is not normal behavior. Though, not for nothing, I am a strictly backseat Uber rider and just want to listen to your tunes and look out the window. And Peitho is nothing if not normal. It takes a particular kind of person to engage a stranger for three days. Peitho was the kind with endless questions to ask.
“If we can imagine something, then there is some unattainable perfect form of it – the Ideal.”
She isn't asking them right now. She's letting me think aloud. Maybe she's trying to put herself to sleep. I don't know. I'm not paying her any heed. Instead I'm letting my Mental Librarian sort through – so, in a way, thinking about without really thinking about – what I knew about the people involved in this thing – and which, if any of them I should trust.
“That means that by thinking of it, we make it – anything – more real than if we don't.”
I feel like a child, lost in a wide, indifferent world. I feel more lost and alone and childish than I did as an actual child actually lost and alone on the streets of London. Peitho— She wanted to know about Tedoro – and his world and how he saw it. She was genuine and curious, and she listened. Had her family made her into the woman I'd first met? The weapon? The temptatrix? Are the curiosity and openness she displays with Tedoro who she was when she was a girl? Who she really is?
“Does that mean that if I think of some future event I make it happen?”
It can be helpful to imagine someone as a child, and to wonder how much they have changed. And what sort of environments might have made them into what they are today. Children are... well, children are the future, right? Villains are defined almost exclusively by how they endanger children; and heroes by how they venture to save them, right? Children are the metaphorical wax tablet into which the future – if the future is a thought – can be written.
There is a reason that children are valued in – let's call them unsavory fantasies and rituals.
“Does that mean that we can – that we do – make imaginary-real futures?”
They aren't, but children can be useful placeholders for strictly-thought experiments. If we think of them like Mad Libs, really – machinery or algorithms— Systems which more or less work the same. You can tweak one thing at a time in the system that way, control for the causation of any changes. You know – do science, blinds and all that junk.
“It sounds like, listening to you, that you would say that, yes – we do.”
What had they done to Peitho? Had they done anything? She made the choices she did – out of necessity? To survive? But what did they deprive her of? Or am I not empathizing with her? Am I imagining some somehow more Perfect Peitho? Some Ideal form of her? To what end? To measure her against it? To determine how I might value it and her by contrast?
“As a metaphor I can understand the value in this thinking. I can.”
Or am I thinking of Metus – the Metus – and how he – it— How she was made into... it? Am I thinking about child sacrifice – and worse desecration of Life and its sanctity – am I thinking about the mindset it must require to convince oneself not only to commit such acts, but to somehow consecrate them – even to glorify them and those who would commit them in addition – if not in conjunction with – you?
“But literally?”
Pepin is feeding on those girls, somehow. I know it now. If it's not – as I freely admit to considering it could be – a subconscious sort of metaphor for sexual violations either which I had committed or which Pepin might be, then he really is using the Rod to.... to what? To feed his body? To keep him alive? Well.... he hasn't slept in days, has he? And I did... feel it. The satisfaction. The fullness of some indescribable stomach. What would a stomach for Souls be like?
Too terrible to imagine, thank you.
“I don't know. I just— I don't know. If magick is what you say it is....”
I've been talking slowly, allowing huge, chasmic silences to follow each statement. I glance at Peitho before finishing what I had planned to say. Then double back to look on her – fondly.
She's asleep. I don't know how long she's been that way, but she is. And I'm glad for it. I really didn't want to admit to her that I'm not ready. Not for magick. Not if she's expecting me to be some kind of actual magician from the Stories.
"Then that means that thinking about the future makes the future real. It doesn't make it quasi-real, imaginary, ideal - the thinking about the future makes it happen, simultaneous to the thought. Like a star, shining on you, the future will be waiting for you to find it."
I look at Peitho, watch her sleep, and shake my head.
S – I'm sorry, Peitho. Whatever future you're looking for.... I don't know how to hurl lightning around – or whatever it is magicians are supposed to be able to do. I'm just— I'm just a normal person. Whatever this Fulcrum stuff you think I am is....
I can hear Lamiya's words echoing in my mind. And, as though they were rainwater pouring off an awning in a rivulet, I duck my shoulder under them, avoiding them entirely. Take that, ducks' backs.
It's just not me.
The statuette burns against my chest. If I thought I could bring myself to do it – and that I could get away with it – I'd throw the damn thing out the window.
R – Why not just talk with her?
S – You think that's what this is? It gets hot when she wants to talk to me?
I – As good an idea as any.
S – I don't think so. I don't think it's really getting hot. I think I'm imagining it. I think it's my guilt that makes it hot. She doesn't want to talk to me.
R – Then what, you're just going to leave the thought you were exploring with Peitho unfinished?
I look around the carriage interior, at Peitho. Then nod, satisfied that I'd said as much as I needed to say.
S – Yes. I think I am.
And I lay my head down to try to find some sleep of my own. One more day – then it's all over. No more chasing nightmares, no more dreams of Pepin. No more.
No more.
* * * *
The walk west isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Boring. But pretty, at least. And blessedly flat. The Po River Valley extends ahead of me. But the mountains are on the horizon. If I can't see them yet, I will be able to by tomorrow – by Turin.
Not that I'm paying attention.
I am lost, somewhere between the heat of the rod snugged against my chest and the endless monotony of moving my feet ever forward.
The knowledge of what I've done is as present in the back of my mind as my tracks are behind me – and I'm not looking back. Not for anything.
I open my eyes when the carriage stops. The subtle change in my environment enough to pull me from the dream – to pull me from being Pepin. I'm more muddled, upon waking up, than I have been since – well, since Venice, really. Since I stopped overconsuming on the regular. I'm looking around me, my eyes rolling like a panicked horse in my head, but really I'm just trying to make sense of my surroundings. And why we've stopped.
It's daylight. Maybe early evening. Too early to have stopped.
My heart starts racing.
Did someone stop us?
“Hey,” Peitho's voice is low, soothing. Her hand finds my shoulder. “You all right? We're here.” She looks out the window, then back at me. “Your stop – Pavia.”
It takes me some time to understand this.
S - Pavia. Right. Pavia. Not Turin. Pavia. I'm—
“Rob?”
S – That's not my name. But it's not Pepin, either. I'm not Pepin, I'm—
“Really – are you...?”
“I'm fine,” I say, pushing myself upright with a sigh.
Our eyes meet. Peitho doesn't say anything, just looks kind of sad. And I—
I find it difficult to get out of the carriage.
“I guess this is goodbye, then,” I say. My hand almost reaches out as though to offer her a shake – or whatever.
“For now,” Peitho says, her eyes not leaving me. “Until I find you again.”
“Are you going to give me a head start or something?”
Those eyes never blink. “We'll see what happens.”
S – What, does she think something is going to happen?
I – Something is going to happen. You know that.
R – Like what? Is he going to open the door and Metus is going to be standing right there?
It's funny to say you hadn't thought about a thought until you thought it – but I hadn't thought about that possibility. I might have started to – thinking that we had been stopped - by whom? Metus, duh, might have been the way it would have gone. But I didn't.
And now I can't stop.
My hand stops just before it reaches the door, hovering there.
“Rob?”
“Eh?” I look over at her.
“What are you doing?”
I look back at the door, at my hand. It really is just kind of hovering there, even wavering, like it's trying – regardless of my will – to reach for and open the damned door – but it can't. I smile. Kind of laugh.
“What do you know,” I wonder at it. “It just... the damn thing won't—“
“Oh, for Christs's sake,” Peitho hisses, leaning forward and shoving open the carriage. “Are you really such a coward? You can't even run away from me without my help?”
R – Hey, now.
I – Yeah. That's how we talk to him.
R – Back off, bi—
“Thanks, Peitho. It's been great knowing you, too,” I say, only-just not under my breath. Then, in a single burst of motion, I'm out of the carriage. That isn't to say I don't stumble a little on the way to the ground – just enough to remind me that Karma is real and she is a bitch.
I can say that because she's not real enough to get offended.
Ow.
No Metus. This is possibly my favorite thing about seeing Pavia in the only-now-beginning-to-wane evening sun: there's no Metus in my immediate field of vision. I stand there, kind of drinking it in – the smells of the city – so shit, for the most part – but a different kind of shit, a shit with its own particular odeur. The feeling like this is the beginning of something new, something different – a different chapter in my story. Maybe a different story altogether.
“You going to get out of the way so I can get out?” Peitho gruffs behind me.
I make the kind of face you make when you almost step in something gross with your bare feet and move forward and to the side, turning to watch her emerge.
“What are you looking at?” she asks, smoothing her skirts, a few moments later. “Don't you have somewhere else to be?”
I hadn't really thought about it. I'd grown so accustomed to spending my free time – so all of my time – with her, I feel almost... well, I feel like a piece of lint, trapped in some kind of magnetic anomaly. Attracted to, inclined to cling, to her; but repulsed by some invisible magnetic field. If I were that small, that at the mercy of whatever energies were at work, I would have been blown about, helpless and almost hilarious for the curiosity of a man kind of floating back and forth, pulled in and pushed away.
As it was, I just kind of stammered nothing, turned, and walked into the inn.
R – Very nice. That'll show her.
S – Shut up.
I – So, brave hero – what's the plan?
I don't have an answer. I don't know. I feel like... I feel like I'm wearing a sweater, and Peitho has managed to snag a single one of its threads; and every step I'm taking away from her, the more my sweater unravels. Well, if she wants to destroy my sweater—
I'll soon be naked, lying on the floor. Undone.
S - I guess there's really only one thing left to do.
R - And that is?
Hailing the innkeeper - a fat man, again, wow, in keeping with custom - I walk right over to him and his counter. I am aware that Peitho has entered behind me. Good. We can get this over with right now - and I won't have to repeat what he says.
"Hey," I make a little waving gesture. "Tell me something. Have there been any - you know – strange things going on in town? Killings or—"
That's as much as I needed to say. Maybe it's the way I'm dressed, maybe it's Peitho, maybe it's that I all but asked – or maybe it's that he's an innkeeper and he was going to talk about it sooner or later enough – it must have been killing him to hold it in even as long as he did.
"Oh, aye. Killings. Little girls. It's just the—"
I'm looking at Peitho, and I hold up a hand at the man. Rude, I know. Not my finest work.
"Did any of them have anything, I don't know, unique? Like a hair--" Before I can finish the question, without even looking at him, he interrupts.
"Yeah. Little Sophia, her red bow. Her nona just got her the ribbon...." His eyes drift to the floor, sad for the girl and her family all over again. Then back up to me - not suspiciously, but questioningly. "But how did you—"
"I dreamed it," I say, looking directly at Peitho, hoping that my eyes feel like hot irons.
And walk out.
Peitho catches me a few moments later - literally, hooking her hand into the crook of my elbow at a run, then digging in her heels and wheeling me around.
"What?" I all but shout.
"What the Hell was that back there?"
"Pepin was here. There. I proved it."
"What the fuck, Rob. You can't just do that to people. You can't just—"
"I can, Peitho. And I will. Now, if you please—" I yank my arm out of her grasp. "I'm going to go get drunk. You can find me and do whatever you're going to do tomorrow. Tonight— Tonight I'm free."
* * * *
Peitho doesn't try to stop me. And I don't so much as look at her face to gauge her reaction. Fuck her. Fuck this whole situation. Dead girls, dreams....
It is nice, though, to use my legs again. To wander a city I don't know, to go nowhere and be expected to be nowhere. Now if only I knew where I could get some grass, I'd be in great shape. The sun is out. The sky is clear – funny how that is, after it rained all damn day. And the air is still. It feels like—
I – It feels like the calm before the storm.
R – And you know it.
I end up, sometime later – who knows how long; I wasn't paying attention anymore, and by the time I got there, it didn't much matter – I found a tavern. Now, Pavia is what you might call a rich city. Kind of like London, it's situated on a river and is well-positioned for trade. And anyone who wants to get his kingdom rich quick knows to start here. Thus the still-standing, unbreached, Lombard walls encircling the city. Despite the fact that the Lombards were conquered by the Carolingians some two-hundred years ago. The Lombards, for a nomadic, pastoral people before they conquered yhe lands sacked and pillaged and plundered by the Ostragoths certainly were sturdy builders.
Come to think of it, their buildings stand out in history. There is a very real and mysterious question about their reign: Where did they learn to build in the Lombard style? Now, I'm not going to get into it - it's a story for another time, and I most certainly was mot in an architectural sort of mood. But it plays a role - in this and my story more broadly, but in the development of Christendom as it was, and the European identity more generally as the centuries progress.
You can tell the richness of a city by the gap between the rich and the poor. The greater the gap between how those with means live and those without, the more successful your city. So I shouldn't say I end up at a tavern. They're all over the damn place.
What I should say is that I turn down the urge to stomp into one, plomp my ass on one of the seats, and not move from it until Peitho finds me passed out in the straw, and whatever Next is coming next just gets itself over with. I wouldn't argue that I offer much resistance. Not even the articulated sort – where you think or say something like, No, I shouldn't.... I just kind of avoid looking for anything that might resemble a tavern.
For that matter, I resist looking at anything at all.
What is there to look at if not Peitho?
Sentimental, I know. But I was twenty and five. You think things, when you're young, things like without a pretty girl there's not beauty left in the world – or that you can become immune to thoughts of her at the bottom of a long series of cups and the cheap perfume of other, lesser, sorts of women.
Well, all that said, I eventually gave in. But by the time I had entered and lay witness to the low-level tumult of the handful of patrons enjoying meals and song and dance – and, yes, drink – I wasn't so sure I wanted to drink at all. I wasn't sure of anything, really.
Least of all why I was here.
Here, in Pavia – here, in this tavern.
Here – on this planet.
Sighing, I make my way to the bar. Maybe it's tavernmasters, maybe it's my face, but without fail, there always seems to be a cold one – or, as the case may be, a lukewarm one – waiting for me at the bar when I get to it. The master kind of nods at me, and leaves me to mine. The pottage will come soon.
It must be my face.
It has to be, right? I can't look like I want to talk. I can't look like anything but a gloomy son of a bitch.
TM – Far as I can tell, ya always got somethin on your mind. Always frownin. Always so damned quiet.
The tavernmaster's voice floats through my head – and with it a glimpse at the cobbles of Genoa's central plaza – and my feet, and his, like we're walking and I'm looking at anything but him because I don't want to meet his eyes – I don't want him to know I don't want to be talking to him – I just want this to be over.
Why do I remember this so vividly, and yet I am certain, as certain as I am of anything, that it never happened?
The pottage does arrive. And a second beer. I don't get to eye the contents of the dirty wooden bowl for edibility, nor take so much as the first sip from the stein, however. Here I am, minding my own business, just trying to eat, to drink, to be anonymous again – when I hear a name I thought, especially after Peitho said it, that I would never have to hear again. A name from another life. But not a life so long ago that I had to wonder at the voice.
Not a life that long ago at all.
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