The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘Tell him I do not come on my own behalf but that of Isabella Lisarro.’

  ‘I have told him so, sir,’ replied the servant who blocked William’s way.

  ‘His good friend, Isabella,’ William repeated. The little stamps that marked his words bore the emphasis of William’s anger and his fear. The servant made no reply.

  ‘Tell your master I shall not leave until I have spoken with him.’ William stalked over to the wall by the water gate. ‘Here I’ll plant myself, tell him.’ He subsided to mutters: ‘He will speak with me.’

  Such uncivil reception he had not thought to find and yet he should have seen its promise. When they had found the Papal Nuncio at Marco Venier’s feast he should have thought how strange that was, for Marco Venier was no friend of this Pope, nor Venice inclined to give welcome to one who would be master of its courses. What foul timing, if this betrayal be so, to have Marco Venier gone from them when most they had need of him.

  William looked up from his thoughts and saw the servant’s angry look. He waved him off: ‘Go, tell your master I will speak with him whether he will or no. Though I must stay so long as he may make a post of me to tie his gondola to or build a bench by my support, still he will speak with me before I’m gone.’

  The servant turned his head in response to some message from behind. Then, with a sighing and a grimacing show, he beckoned William to him and allowed him through the gate. William’s joints, stiff from his watch and his clothes sodden from the rain, moved with ungainly steps into the Ca’ Venier but he kept his head held high.

  ... But looked not on the poison of their hearts

  ‘Sir William,’ Marco Venier greeted him with no echo of the churlish welcome at the gate in his voice or words. ‘I had quite forgot how stubborn a man you are. I do not say a mule for it, but no less an ass.’

  ‘Have we so swiftly turned to insults, sir? Be it so. I have not come on my honour’s account but on our friend’s behalf.’

  ‘Insult or praise? How often we speak of the same virtue and find our words treated as one or other not by our intent but by the hearer’s own thoughts. Wine?’

  William shook his head. ‘I did not come to speak philosophy with you.’

  ‘Why did you come?’ Marco Venier’s voice at last showed some hint of anger in it. ‘The times are not those they once were. Welcome was not offered.’

  ‘Isabella is sick.’

  Marco Venier’s face fell for an instant before he pulled it back. ‘That is grave news. I am sorry to hear it.’

  William’s fears began to lift. Whatever had prompted Marco Venier to bar him from the house would not prevent him giving aid to Isabella. He waited to hear that help was offered. The room stayed silent. Marco Venier drank his own wine but said nothing.

  ‘What may you do for her?’ William prompted.

  ‘As much as you,’ Marco answered.

  ‘I can do nothing more. Such coin I have, it is all spent.’

  ‘I cannot help you.’

  ‘I do not need it. It is your friend, Isabella, needs you.’

  ‘My friend is double-diseased,’ said Marco Venier, his own tone a gentle reproof to William’s harsh one. ‘One plague makes her ill, the other keeps her from those that would have helped her. The first she caught I know not where. The second she caught of you, Sir William.’

  William’s anger flared like a torch in wind. He strode across the space between Marco Venier and him.

  ‘Then it is a plague of cowardice,’ said William. ‘You should not fear to breathe the air of those that carry its infection. For I see it corrupts your blood already.’

  ‘You speak as a doctor, but physician, first heal yourself before you seek the cure of others.’ He reached up and plucked William’s hand from his collar.

  William turned and strode to leave. By the door he paused and struck the wall. ‘Tell me what has made such a coward of you, Marco Venier.’ The strength went out of him and his shoulders fell. ‘God’s will, she is dying, Marco.’

  ‘Caution is not cowardice, Sir William. When our enemies did play but in a concealed way, then might we make our concealed response. Now they show themselves openly and each blow against them is seen and will be counted, reckoned and revenged.’

  ‘How is it a blow against our enemies to help a poor woman?’

  Marco Venier walked across to where William stood. ‘My business is in balance, Sir William. My profit comes from holding the scales, not placing weights within them. If I am seen to choose a side, my role is lost. The Nuncio knows I have been friendly with you. The Nuncio knows and makes demands of me, which I in turn resist with that same argument I now give to you.’

  ‘I ask a mote of dust, Marco, and you claim it will set the scales tumbling. You call it choosing a side. As if the Nuncio cares if a whore lives or dies.’

  ‘He does not,’ said Marco. ‘He cares about your embassy. He speaks of heretics given succour by the state. He looks to see who aids them and counts them amongst those selfsame heretics. You are a plague in the Pope’s eyes that passes to all you touch. I must put you from me. Be grateful that I do not do more or seek to win the Nuncio’s favour with a gift.’

  William laughed. ‘I thought in coming here to use such power of language as I possessed to summon you to Isabella’s aid. So much a fool am I, and an arrogant fool, to think that if her person was not enough to enchant you that my words might triumph in her memory’s stead. Worse, I find that I am but a ‘prentice in the orator’s art. You have such skill of argument that you have persuaded yourself of this course of treachery, for so we must call it when you turn aside from those that have ever been loyal and loving to you; yes, treachery is the righteous path and not a coward’s actions.’

  William’s words, which had risen in volume and venom, fell back to a hiss. ‘The sweet smoke of your own rhetoric comfort you, Marco Venier. While it lasts. For when it and your head clears, you shall have such a deal of sorrow in this moment’s remembrance.’

  William pulled open the doors to the great room. Two liveried servants blocked the way.

  ‘Let me past.’

  ‘Alas,’ said Marco Venier behind him. ‘I did not want you here, remember that. Yet having come, what will the Nuncio’s spies conclude that I permitted you entry?’

  William turned on his heel. Marco Venier had the good grace to look ashamed and saddened by his own words.

  ‘Balance, Sir William. Balance. Admittance speaks of welcome. There must be some sign of rejection to restore the balance.’

  The liveried servants clapped their hands on William and began to drag him from the room.

  ‘Come no more for parley, Sir William,’ said Marco Venier as he closed the doors on the sight of William being hauled through the corridor, his feet scrabbling for purchase against the rush of events. ‘You shall find no welcome here.’

  And not Death’s ebon dart, to strike him dead

  William was thrown into a gondola and rowed out across the wide canal to the Giudecca, away from the heart of the city, and there deposited. Hauling himself up, he had sat in silent anguish on the side of the canal for a quarter of an hour when Hemminges sat down beside him. Hemminges said nothing at all. After another quarter of an hour he picked up a loose stone and skimmed it out across the water of the lagoon.

  ‘You were watching over me again,’ said William.

  ‘I was,’ said Hemminges. ‘I was not the only one to do so.’ He nodded towards a scowling figure still standing at the traghetto point on the Giudecca, who seeing himself picked out, turned hurriedly and disappeared into the crowd of people gathered to await the ferry’s return.

  ‘The waiting time is over,’ said Hemminges. ‘The playing has begun.’

  William and Hemminges trudged through the dark of the city in silence. William felt the weight of Marco Venier’s refusal as a stone in his stomach. He had nothing left to give and now it seemed those that might have aided them, nay, say rather those who ought in justice and for
the memory of Isabella’s wit and good friendship have run to offer her succour in her time of need, no longer cared for that connection. They hid like beetles beneath a log, scurrying from sight at the first tread of the Pope’s minion. William’s fingers ground against each other.

  ‘We might as well be dead already,’ he muttered.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Hemminges.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  William was wondering again how much he might draw on Sir Henry’s credit. William and the others had not dared to do so for a month or more. Not since the news of the papal legate’s coming to Venice had reached them. Yet, thought William, he might do so now; pay for another doctor to come and see to Isabella. This resolution made his step take on a lighter stride. To act would fend off his sense that he had become but a stormtossed leaf, blown by fate.

  Hemminges put a hand upon his arm. ‘Do you hear that?’ he whispered.

  William stopped and listened. They stood in a small square in the ses- tiere of Santa Croce. The city was very dark, the moon a thin, crescent bow that shot little light; they were far from the canals and the streets were silent. William strained against the silence and, after a moment, heard what had given Hemminges pause. The shuffle of feet, soft and faint.

  William looked to his left and saw that Hemminges had drawn his knife. Hemminges looked past William’s shoulder to the shadows of the street beyond. William drew his own blade.

  ‘What think yo—’ William began but Hemminges pressed a finger to his lips. The two men stood in the darkness of the square waiting and listening. Minutes passed. From moment to moment William heard sounds but nothing to which he could give a name. Hemminges, it seemed, heard more for he turned to William and pressed his lips close to William’s ear.

  ‘Wait for me the time it takes to recite the Lord’s Prayer three times then walk, slowly, through the alley there to the bridge ahead,’ he whispered.

  ‘What do you fear?’ whispered William in reply. The night had taken on many shapes in William’s mind and it was only the calm of his friend that kept those fears from spurring him to flight.

  ‘Murder, William. I fear murder,’ said Hemminges. With that he pressed William’s arm and was gone.

  Three times William whispered the words of the prayer, each time his mouth drying as he spoke of those who would trespass against him. Then he screwed his courage to the sticking place and put one foot in front of the other and strode towards the bridge. When before he had fought through Venice’s streets at night he had the spur of anger to drive him on. Now he felt only the terrors of the night.

  He rounded the corner and the slender light of the moon lit the small bridge across the narrow canal ahead. He stepped out on to the bridge. Three men ran from the darkness towards William. Their faces were swathed in cloth black as their purpose. Swords bared, they swooped towards him as eagles on to prey.

  Hemminges came from the darkness and took one of the men in the side, hurling him into his neighbour. The two turned to front their enemy but Hemminges had already knocked the closest man’s blade aside and ran his dagger up the sword’s metal edge and on to slice through the masked man’s arm.

  The third man turned his head at the sound of his companion’s cry and William, ready for the moment, ran forward. The killer’s blade came up and, though William had twisted in anticipation, still its edge cut through his doublet and scored his ribs. With a roar of his own, a heady mix of pain and rage, William thrust his dagger into the shoulder of the man, who stumbled back. William drove on and, abandoning the blade embedded in the man’s muscle, dropped slightly, grasped him round the waist and tossed him over the bridge’s wall into the canal below. He did not wait to see the man’s fate but stooped to pick up the sword the man had dropped when William stabbed him. He raced to where Hemminges now feinted and parried the two blades before him. The narrowness of the street Hemminges played to his advantage, pushing his assailants’ blades across each other and stepping always to keep one between him and the other.

  William’s battle-cry proved too much for the two assassins. At his approach they turned and fled. William skittered to a halt and felt at once the flare of pain in his side. Hemminges reached him and pulled up his shirt to gaze upon the wound.

  ‘A scratch, no more. ‘Twill heal. Come, we must go.’

  They set off at a pace. Without warning Hemminges pushed William into the shadow of an overhanging arch just as one quarrel slammed into the stonework beside him and another bounced and jumped across the street where the two had been running.

  ‘Jesu, Hemminges ...’

  ‘Quiet,’ Hemminges hissed at William. ‘Ahead, Will. Two at least, by the stacked barrels of an inn.’ There was a moment of silence, or so it seemed to William, but Hemminges again heard something in the night. William made to peer round the edge of the arch but Hemminges pulled him back.

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  Hemminges looked about him and then, some decision made, he turned to William. ‘I will make for the safety of that wall. When they loose, run. We will have but a moment’s grace.’

  It is the same men?’

  ‘Who cares, Will? The same. Others. The Pope himself.’ Hemminges grasped William’s collar and pulled him round to face him. ‘When I move, they will loose, then you run. Yes?’

  William nodded. He wiped his palms, damp with fear, on his doublet. Hemminges darted from cover, twisted, leapt and rolled. Again the strained, shrill whistle of twisted rope released and the flash of the quarrels in the dark, each flying so close to Hemminges’ passage as to seem some aspect of his shadow.

  William ran.

  Ahead he saw two figures crouched. As Hemminges had said, they hid behind barrels stacked outside an inn, kneeling, cranking at the mechanism of their crossbows. As he closed with them William saw all as if time were slowed. The one closest let his crossbow clatter to the ground and straightened to draw his sword. Too late. William’s own borrowed blade went through his enemy’s throat and William’s charge drove him and the blade on till the hilt struck the man’s throat and the blade beyond scraped the stone walls of the inn. William pushed the man back, his hands flapping at the rapier William held. The man lost his footing and fell backward; the weight of his falling body snatched the blade from William’s hand. William turned, his dagger set to ward off the second man only to find that Hemminges was on him and dealing with him using short, swift strokes that first hamstrung him and then ripped open his throat.

  William stood a moment staring at the man he had surely slain, even if he had breath a few moments longer. It was that selfsame Nuncio’s man, the Crow, the colourless man, though his pale face was smirched now with red that poured from the hole in his throat and bubbled and frothed from his mouth. The Crow lay, still kicking, with his hands clawing at the sword through his throat. Hemminges hauled William from his reverie by the arm and the two turned and ran.

  Let him depart: his passport shall be made

  Not until they had the safety of the House of the White Lion did they pause again. Its door closed behind them and William and Hemminges slumped against the walls of the dark hallway. Their breath came in ragged gasps. After a minute, Hemminges pulled himself to his feet.

  ‘I will rouse Nick. We need take little ...’ He was moving towards the kitchen as he spoke. ‘Salarino can call for a gondola at first light to take us to Mestre.’

  ‘I’m not going.’ William spoke to Hemminges’ back.

  Hemminges stopped but did not turn. William raised himself up to his own feet.

  ‘How can you ask that I go?’ demanded William. ‘Isabella lies dying. You want me to leave her to die alone?’

  Hemminges leaned against the hall’s wall.

  ‘I do not want her to die alone,’ he turned. ‘Nor do I wish her to die in company. God’s blood, Will, it’s the dying I look to avoid. Tonight’s events are the writing on the wall. I know you saw him, as I did.’

  ‘The Crow.’ William nodded
.

  ‘The Nuncio’s man, yes? He that stood and glowered at us while his master spoke his veiled threats. We have tarried too long.’

  ‘I cannot go.’

  ‘You cannot stay and live.’

  ‘Then I will die by my lover’s side.’

  Hemminges’ voice rose. ‘And leave your children orphans? Jesu, Will, have a care for others.’ His fist hammered the wall. ‘And there is more at stake than you and Isabella. We must deliver our intelligence.’

  ‘What do these spies’ names matter to me next to Isabella?’ shouted William in answer.

  ‘Damn the names, Will, I speak of us, of your friends. I need your aid if Oldcastle is to make it to safety. If I am.’

  Hemminges stalked back to where William stood silent and grasped him by the shoulders.

  ‘You are overfull of self-affairs, Will. Enough, we can debate no more.’ His voice softened. ‘Bring Isabella with us. Her safety here in Venice is lost. The thunder’s heard and her friends have fled the coming storm. We should flee too.’

  ‘Whither away?’

  ‘Mestre and then on to Verona. We’ll shun the canals, take the country roads as we did when we were in Sir Henry’s train.’

  William shuddered at the memory of that unhappy journey from England and of its bloody ending, the embassy all cut down by the Pope’s agents save he, Oldcastle and Hemminges.

  ‘She will not last on that road,’ he said, more to himself than to Hemminges. Nonetheless Hemminges answered.

  ‘She will, she must. It is a short journey, a few days. We will have shook off pursuit by the time we reach Verona and may return to the canals from there. Come.’

  Hemminges stalked away to climb the stairs to the first floor, the piano nobile, where he and Oldcastle’s rooms were. William did not follow. He could not do so. He could not leave Isabella and she could not follow them.

  The storm is up, and all is on the hazard