The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  25

  ‘So –?’ Dandolo asked again. ‘What do you think?’

  Frid was not used to having his opinion sought. It was enough getting used to speaking Italian and not Norse. But he knew his mind. ‘We should go,’ he said. His changed circumstances made him eager to finish the job, to leave the city he’d spent the last nine years of his life in. Dandolo looked across at Leporo. ‘You’ve been seconded,’ he said drily. ‘Make the arrangements.’

  ‘You wouldn’t take my word for it,’ Leporo said.

  ‘Make the arrangements,’ repeated Dandolo.

  Leporo was on the point of leaving when there was a furious hammering at the door.

  ‘Open it,’ said Dandolo.

  One of the Venetians of Dandolo’s team entered. The man was out of breath, haggard.

  ‘What is it, Francesco?’ Dandolo demanded.

  ‘I’ve come from the port,’ replied the messenger, steadying himself against a table and struggling to breathe evenly. ‘The news is bad. A Greek ship has just returned from Chios –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Our navy has been smashed. The attack came at dawn, when no one was prepared. We’ve lost twelve ships – sunk or disabled. They set the flagship on fire with all hands. They showed no mercy. Eleven more ships were captured.’

  Dandolo blanched. He would have expected the Venetians to have put up more of a fight, caught on the hop or not. Each ship represented a capital outlay of perhaps 1,500 florins. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’re saying that the same wind which was behind the sails of the Greeks blew round after the attack started and scattered our ships. They couldn’t regroup and counter-attack. The Greeks lowered sails, used their oars to power their ships, and picked us off – those of us they could catch – one by one.’

  ‘But what were we doing? Why weren’t we ready? What were our oarsmen doing?’ Dandolo spoke as a great cry of triumph went up from the direction of the port.

  ‘Most of our ships only had skeleton crews aboard. All the rest were ashore. There was no time to muster them. Vitale had trusted in the truce, and besides – ’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘The plague,’ gasped the man. ‘The plague had taken hold. They’d set up a lazaretto and quarantined the sick, but they couldn’t stop the spread. Half our manpower was dead or dying by the time the Greeks struck.’

  The sounds of victory had grown louder; it was as if the Greek triumph were now pounding on their door. One of their ships must have anchored and its crew was spreading the news.

  Dandolo thought fast. ‘Gather our men,’ he ordered Frid. ‘Tell them to pack everything and be ready to leave by tonight. By my authority. Check the tides. Go with him, Francesco. We’ll get out by the dawn flood at the latest.’

  ‘They’ll detain us if they want to,’ warned Leporo.

  ‘Let them try,’ retorted Dandolo. He was thinking, the only use we are to them now is as emissaries to take the bad news home. But he wasn’t taking any chances. The safety of the tablet took precedence over everything else in his mind.

  He made his way down to the Galata quayside where their own three ships were moored, but was stopped by a contingent of the Greek Imperial Guard.

  ‘Enrico Dandolo, Italian Envoy?’ its captain demanded.

  ‘What do you want? How dare you accost a Venetian diplomat?’

  ‘You’re under arrest.’

  Dandolo was taken immediately to the Palace of Boucoleon but rather than being ushered through its gates he was bundled roughly down an alleyway along one side and thrust through a side-entrance. Everything happened in silence.

  Here, there was no white marble, no gold, no silver, no finery. Black stone walls hedged him in. He was shoved along a corridor and down a long staircase, carved through rock into the depths of the earth.

  The staircase ended in a hallway lit by torches which guttered in their sconces. The stench was suffocating. Five wooden doors, black with soot and grease, opened off this space. The prison guards who’d taken charge of him stripped him roughly, but even in his panic Dandolo noticed that one of them, taking charge of the garments, folded them carefully and placed them on the table which was the hall’s only furniture. Then they unlocked one of the doors and flung him into the dungeon beyond it.

  He was alone in the semi-darkness. The cell was windowless, and only a little grey light came from the gap between the door and the wall. The cell was clean and free of vermin, and the straw in the palliasse equally so, and dry. Apart from the straw mattress and the rough wooden bed on which it was placed, there was a chair and a table, and a half-barrel for him to piss and shit in. He knew what they were up to.

  He marked out three days, No one spoke to him, and they brought him no food. Water was delivered once a day through a hatch, in a wooden beaker which he was obliged to return empty whenever the hatch opened, always at irregular times of day or night. The hatch remained open only for a few seconds, and if he missed it, he would get no chance of anything to drink until the next day. Yes, he knew what they were up to, but he refused to crack.

  Dandolo spent hours listening, but heard no sound except for the banging of the hatch – not distant voices, not the wind, not a footfall, nothing. He tried to pray, but mostly he thought – would he get out? What would they do? Why was he here? Were they after the tablet, Adhemar’s sacred scroll? Had his double-dealing been discovered? His network of spies? Had he been betrayed by one of them, or was it Contarini who had given the order?

  The scroll was always in his mind. It haunted him, it tormented him like an itch he could not scratch. The absence of the tablet’s familiar icy cold against his skin racked him like the memory of a lost love. It had been tucked deep into a loop of the sleeve of his inner robe when they arrested him.

  The key and the box were in his baggage with Leporo, but Leporo could not open the box.

  Had the scroll fallen into another’s hands? That was the thought that tore at his spirit.

  He could bear his physical state. Though he was hungry, cold and naked, he was spared other abuse. He could only think that some kind of respect for his diplomatic status restrained his gaolers.

  On the fourth day, the door was unlocked. Two men entered, bringing a lamp with them, whose unaccustomed light hurt Dandolo’s eyes. He rose from his chair as the door swung shut behind them.

  The men were in their mid-thirties, tough-looking, bearded, with intelligent, cold eyes. Faces from which you could expect nothing – neither mercy, nor humour. The faces of people to whom there could be no appeal.

  They motioned him to sit, still, without speaking. Dandolo did so, aware of how weak his limbs were.

  No sooner was he settled than one of the men moved fast, unexpectedly, and kicked the chair brutally from under him. He fell sprawling on the floor, grazing his elbows and knees, twisting his foot badly. A shooting pain told him that one of his toes had fractured, snagging on the edge of a loose flagstone.

  He thought they would kick him then, urinate on him, smash his head on the stones, but they kept their distance. Only as he attempted to rise did the first man push him back down, with the toe of his boot.

  ‘You Venetian dog,’ said the second, but his voice was mild, without malice, as if he were stating a simple matter of fact.

  Dandolo started to get up again, and this time they let him. The first man retrieved the chair and held it for him to be seated once more. Dandolo hesitated.

  ‘Sit down, you filthy Italian spy,’ the man roared suddenly, his voice splitting Dandolo’s ears. He took him by the hair and slammed him into the chair with such force that it rocked, and its struts split.

  Angered, Dandolo started to speak: ‘What do you want from me? Do you know what will happen when Venice –?’

  ‘Venice will do nothing!’

  ‘Tell us what you have found out,’ said the quiet man, perching on the edge of the table, drawing off one glove and playing with it with his other hand.

&nb
sp; Dandolo said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ His first and overwhelming sensation was one of relief: they are not after the tablet. They do not know.

  26

  But then his nightmare was realized. The man with the gloves dug into a purse at his belt and produced the tablet.

  He laid it carefully on the table. ‘What is this?’

  Dandolo hesitated before replying. ‘A talisman. A family heirloom. I carry it with me everywhere.’

  ‘A lucky charm?’ the man asked, but he wasn’t sneering.

  ‘If you like. It is of no value.’ He struggled to keep his voice calm.

  The other man unhooked a dagger from his belt and, holding it by the scabbard, hefted it in his hand. Its pommel was in the shape of a lion’s head, in iron. ‘Then you won’t mind if I smash it,’ he said.

  Dandolo controlled his breathing. They’d notice the slightest sign of tension. ‘It is of value to me,’ he said.

  ‘Then tell us what you have found out, if it is of value to you,’ the first man almost whispered. ‘We don’t want it. We’ll let you have it back.’

  ‘It’s in code, isn’t it? Were you planning to take it back to Venice with you, or were you going to send it?’ questioned the first man.

  ‘If you were, you’re out of luck,’ said the man with the dagger. ‘Your ships are impounded and your men confined to their quarters on board.’

  ‘Who?’ Dandolo asked quickly, a glimmer of hope in him.

  ‘Your men! The Varangian you recruited, and your guard, and your sailors. Everyone except some monk who got away – buggered off back to his monastery – that’s what they always do at the first sign of trouble.’

  Dandolo let out his breath. They hadn’t got Leporo.

  The other man dropped his glove on to the table and stood up again. He leaned forward and brought his face close to Dandolo’s, while the other pinioned him to the chair.

  ‘Tell us what you know or we’ll twist off your balls with wire.’ The voice remained soft. To hear him, you might have thought he was seducing a woman. ‘And that will be just the beginning.’

  ‘You can kill me,’ replied Dandolo evenly. ‘But Venice would never forget such an insult. My city will reach out and tear the heart from your body.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘It is not our custom to execute criminals such as you.’

  Relief flooded him. Not our custom to execute … Then, he might be facing a year or two in prison, at the worst, while he waited to be exchanged. He was important enough!

  The first man straightened. ‘This is a waste of time,’ he said decisively. ‘We will arrange a confession and have it signed for you. And we’ll send it back with you, hung around your neck. We know you’ve been spying on us. Your network here has been smashed.’

  He had been betrayed, then. Who had he been foolish enough to trust? Who had he underestimated? He had answered his questions within seconds. Apart from his own men, there was only one man in the Great City who could have found out about his secret mission.

  Contarini. A fellow countryman but not a Venetian; a man who had lived away from home for so long that by now he was more Greek than Italian.

  Dandolo cursed himself for his confidence in the man. Had he not learned by now that you can never know what is in the heart even of your dearest friend? Henceforth he would trust in only one thing.

  But there was still room for manoeuvre: ‘You’ll send me back?’

  The man spread his hands. ‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘But we will also put you in a dungeon from which you will never escape.’

  Then Dandolo understood. He remembered what the standard punishment for treachery was in the Greek empire. Tears of panic and rage stood in his eyes.

  27

  They came for him in the middle of the morning of the next day. They had bathed and clothed him, and as soon as he could he had placed the tablet back in its hiding place. They had offered him meat and fruit, and wine, but he touched nothing but water, and little of that. He had not slept, wanting to keep his eyes open for as long as he could.

  ‘Wash him and dress him,’ he heard the quiet voice of the man with the gloves say. ‘And prepare him.’ Dandolo smelt the man’s musky perfume as he leaned close and whispered. ‘We will let you keep your talisman. You will need it.’

  The rough clay tablet was placed gently in his right hand. He closed his fingers tightly round it. Nothing mattered more, he told himself, than that he had it back again. If it was with him, nothing they could do, beyond killing him, could stop him.

  He drank in everything he could see, no matter how unimportant, from the plain beaker which held his drink to the patterns the light made on the irregular stonework of the walls.

  But then they put a black hood over his head. He was led from the cell and bundled into a cart of some kind, seated, then trundled through streets filled with jeering crowds.

  They went a long way. When they stopped and he was pulled out of the vehicle, he heard the lapping of the sea, and felt the sun on his hands. It was a hot day, and he sweated under his robes, though he felt calm, almost dead, within himself.

  He was made to mount some stone steps. At the top of them a soldier removed the hood, and he looked around him. At first the light dazzled him. The sun was almost at its zenith, and burned white in a hard blue sky. Not a cloud tempered it.

  He stood on a broad platform, which must have been placed high on one of the fortified southern towers punctuating the walls which ran along the coast between the city and the Sea of Marmara. The platform was made of white marble, the stones so exactly placed together that they seemed to form one unbroken surface. At the far end was a long raised dais, on which a number of Greeks in official robes were seated. Dandolo squinted to see who they were. At the centre sat the Grand Vizier; the emperor was not present. Near the Vizier Dandolo picked out the figure of Tonso Contarini. For a moment their eyes met. Contarini lowered his.

  The two flanking sides of the square were crowded with onlookers, for this was a public spectacle. Dandolo scanned the faces there, and his heart gave a leap of hope when among them he saw Leporo. The monk had exchanged his black habit for a modest Greek tunic. Leporo and he exchanged a brief look. The monk discreetly sketched the Sign of the Cross in the air.

  At the centre of the platform stood a table, big enough to take the body of a man laid prone. Dandolo saw that it was fitted with leather, buckled restraints to go round the ankles, thighs, arms, wrists, torso and neck. A kind of leather pillow, narrow, with raised sides, was ready to take the head and hold it firmly. Above it was fixed an apparatus of some kind – a tripod with an adjustable arm at its top, in turn equipped with a slot into which something must fit.

  Dandolo steadied himself as he felt his legs weaken. Two soldiers supported him as they led him to the table where another man awaited him, flanked by two assistants. The three were clad in black tschalvar, but their upper bodies were bare. Each wore a leather cap and mask.

  It seemed to be happening to someone else. Dandolo’s spirit hovered over his body as he was handed over to the assistants by the soldiers. They were burly men. One held him down as the other arranged and tightened the straps around him. He allowed them to do this without a struggle, and when they were finished he found he could not move. The sweat ran over his body under his robes.

  They fitted pegs to his eyelids to hold the eyes open. His hands clawed the air.

  Now the assistants drew back and the third man stood over him. Gimlet eyes, eyes of steel, looked into his. The man disappeared from Dandolo’s view then reappeared holding a magnifying glass in a bronze frame, which he fitted to the slot in the arm above the tripod.

  It was a burning-glass. Dandolo watched as the man adjusted it so that it aligned with the sun. His eyelids strained to shut against the pegs which held them. His body writhed against the fetters.

  A concentrated beam of sunlight bore through the lens and briefly scorched his face as the man moved the glass across it, towa
rds his eyes. The man covered the glass with a black cloth until he had positioned it correctly.

  The right eye first.

  Dandolo flinched as he watched the man’s steady hand guide his instrument. Pain was near which would be like no pain in the world had ever been before. The white sun screamed into his eye as the imperial executioner burned it out. Dandolo could feel it bubble and burst, and the agony was like a boiling iron spike thrust hard through his head. His forehead poured sweat and he could feel another, more viscous, liquid running down his cheek towards his mouth. He did not know whether he was screaming or not.

  The glass moved slowly across the bridge of his nose towards his left eye. The eyelids fought against their restraints, the muscles that controlled them instinctively urged to protect.

  And now, a miracle! His surviving eye saw the executioner glance around for a moment. No one else was near. And the man reached up, and tilted the lens slightly so that the sharp beam was diffused. When he set to his work again, the beam that bore through his pupil into his retina hurt him indeed, but it did not sear out the eye.

  Now he heard himself scream. Now he felt his body arch and stretch vainly against the leather straps. And his left eye saw, after a long minute, huge amoebic shapes of purple and blue and gold float up against it, bumping into one another as they crowded into a narrow space.

  The executioner stood back, businesslike, and unscrewed the lens from its slot. The assistants came forward and undid the straps before roughly bandaging the wrecked eyes, then hauled the sobbing Venetian to his feet as he dribbled and spewed down the front of his apparel.

  Dandolo closed his eyes, squeezing them shut until multicoloured stars appeared on the insides of the lids, as he was thrust forward, down the steps, and on to the cart again. No hood was necessary now. Sightless, he was taken north through the city, across the Horn to Galata, and deposited at the quay where his ships were moored. He heard troops coming to attention, and the rattle and clatter of their weapons as they did so.