Ascension

by Gregory Dowling

  And so it proved. We arrived in the square in time to see the grand procession setting out from the Doge’s palace: first came eight officials bearing silk standards (two white, two red, two sky-blue and two green), followed by six officials blowing silver trumpets; then the comandadori, pipers, shield-bearers and the Doge’s cavalier with the Missier Grande (head of the sbirri) on his right and the scalco on his left. Six canons in scarlet copes came next followed by two ducal gastaldi, four secretaries of the Council, the Doge’s chaplain, two lower chancellors, and the Great Chancellor between two equerries, one bearing a gilded chair and the other a cushion of gold cloth. Next came the Doge himself, in a gold cope with a white stole around his neck and the ducal cap perched awkwardly on his wig; he peered out vaguely at the crowd, attempting a benevolent smile, and there were a few half-hearted cheers from some onlookers, but it was mostly appreciation of the spectacle rather than any warmth towards the man himself. Pietro Grimani had not endeared himself to the Venetian populace, who remembered how frugal had been the largesse he had scattered on his election day; still, he was their doge and nobody was actually going to denigrate him – not on a popular feast day, with foreigners around. His golden train was borne by four officials in scarlet liveries; to his right walked the papal nuncio, and to his left the imperial ambassador. A great golden cope was held over the Doge’s head, protecting him from the weather – in this case, the sunshine – by an official in scarlet robes; behind him came a lengthy train of other ambassadors, legates and office-holders including the Heads of the Forty, the Leaders of the Council of Ten, the Cavaliers of the Golden Stole, and representatives of various institutional bodies.

  Through sheer Engish determination and skilful use of elbows and a walking stick the Higgins family had managed to push their way to the front of the crowd – not exactly oceanic, since this was actually a fairly minor festival by Venetian standards – near the Caffe Florian; I had followed, a trifle apologetically, in the wedge-shaped gap created immediately in their wake, so that I, too, found myself in the front line.

  “So that’s the Doge,” said Mrs Higgins, with a sniff. Clearly she had expected something grander.

  “Is he going to get his head cut off?” asked Frederick, the younger Higgins child, who had not fully understood the intricacies of my earlier explanation.

  “No one’s going to be beheaded,” I said, and realised that once again, quite contrary to my intentions, I was sounding apologetic.

  “And who’s that man on the roof?” asked Peter, the other boy.

  “On the roof?” I swivelled to look in the direction he was pointing. At the far end of the square, on the roof of the building flanking the church of San Geminiano, which stands directly opposite the basilica of Saint Mark, was a figure dressed in black. He was holding something round in his hands, like a large cannonball. The procession was heading in his direction; once it reached the far end of the square it would make a broad U-shaped turn in order to move back towards the basilica.

  “I expect he’s just gone up there to get a better view,” I said.

  “He’s going to throw it,” said Peter.

  He had indeed raised his arms above his head, and he stayed poised in this position for a few seconds. As far as one could tell from below, he was not especially tall but he was certainly broad. Suspended in that menacing position he was almost like an allegorical figure of brute force.

  Other people in the crowd and in the procession had now caught sight of him and an excited buzz was arising, even above the sound of the pipes and trumpets. The procession had begun to lose some of its stately dignity; it was no longer moving forwards at a slow but steady pace. Some of its components had halted, others were hesitating and one or two were frankly moving backwards; there was a certain amount of stumbling and bumping, with all the consequent treading on heels and trains. The music itself had fallen for the most part into inharmonious squeaks, with just one steadfast trumpeter determinedly playing on; maybe he simply had not noticed what was happening.

  Venetian crowds are generally well disciplined and there has never been any need to marshal them with armed guards, so the only people with any weapons were the ornamental halberdiers. And unless the man on the roof jumped down and tried to strangle the Doge with his bare hands, it was unlikely their halberds were going to be much immediate use.

  The squat dark figure threw his missile and there was a general scattering in the area immediately beneath his vantage point. From our position we could only see the round object plummet into the crowd, not the actual target – whatever the target was. The next instant the figure on the roof had disappeared: it happened so fast it was hard to say whether he had just vanished into thin air or had dropped into a waiting skylight. There was a sudden scream from the area where the object had been hurled: it was not a cry of pain but a female yell of pure horror. It was taken up by other voices, until there was just a general high-pitched babble. The crowd around us was getting agitated; the procession was breaking up, so that it was now difficult to distinguish between onlookers and participants. I said to the Higgins family, trying to sound firmly in control of things: “I think we had best withdraw.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs Higgins. It was as if I were yet again trying to swindle her.

  “My dear,” said her husband nervously, “I think it might be prudent … the boys, you know.”

  “We don’t want to go now!” said Peter.

  “You’re not going to see anything in this confusion,” I said grimly.

  “You think so?” Peter said, with a defiant glance at me. And suddenly he wormed his way through the apparently impenetrable barrier of people ahead of us and disappeared, heading in the direction of the point of greatest turmoil.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mr Higgins. “You shouldn’t have challenged him.”

  “Get after him!” snapped Mrs Higgins. “No, not you,” she added, seizing her husband, who had made a half-hearted gesture of pursuit. She made a firm snatch at the younger boy with her other hand and then stood rigidly firm, like the bell tower.

  I set off after Peter, pushing and elbowing and squeezing until I somehow managed to get within sight of the determined little figure, still pressing onwards. Fortunately he was wearing a bright blue coat, which was easy to see in the crowd.

  A few seconds later I caught up with him and grabbed his arm. He resisted my backward tug, yelling, “I want to see!”

  Since we were now so close to the heart of the hubbub it seemed a little ridiculous not to make the final penetrative thrust; I, too, had some natural curiosity. So, still holding tightly on to his arm, I pushed between two priests and found myself on the edge of a jostling circle of people, most of whom were looking horror-struck. The perimeter was being kept steady by a number of burly arsenalotti, who had clearly been deputed to this task by some quick-thinking officials in the procession, and at the very centre of the circle was the object that had been hurled.

  It was a human head.

  The position in which it had come, so to speak, to rest was, unfortunately, with the severed neck towards us, so that we had a grim view of dark, matted arteries and skin; beyond that we could see a white staring face with an open-mouthed, open-eyed expression which in other circumstances would have been comic. The headgear, too, might have been amusing in another context: I could just make out the curious details of a cat’s ear protruding from the top of the head.

  And now amid the confused babble of voices I heard the word “Gnaga” being repeated all around us, adding an odd feline intonation to the tumult.

  I looked down at the boy beside me. His face had taken on the same round-eyed, round-mouthed expression as the severed head. It was clear that the comic elements of the spectacle were lost on him too. That was a relief.

  “Come on, let’s get back to your mother,” I said.

  He allowed himself to be led away. We found the rest of the family still standing where we had left them, while the crowd seethed and sur
ged around them. I had not really expected his mother to swoop on him with a tearful rib-crushing embrace so I was not over-surprised when she greeted him with a severe “What have you to say for yourself?” without even bending towards him.

  He muttered sulkily, “I wanted to see.” And then, having plucked up some courage in the last thirty seconds, he added, with a note of justificatory pride: “They chopped someone’s head off. I saw it!”

  “Nonsense,” said his mother automatically.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” I said. “I really think you had better take him away. I think it’s been a bit of a shock.”

  “Someone’s head?” said Mr Higgins.

  “That was what was thrown down,” I said.

  “It was all bloody and messy!” said Peter, with an evident desire to taunt his younger brother, who had not had the privilege of beholding this spectacle.

  And inevitably Frederick started to wail. “I want to see.”

  “Madam,” I said firmly, “this is no place for children.”

  She accepted this and announced: “We will return to our inn.”

  We made our way back to the gondola. I realised there was no need to tell Bepi what had happened. Gondoliers pick up news long before anybody else in the city; they seem to have an instant network of contacts, each one equipped with that spider touch, so memorably described by Alexander Pope, which, “exquisitely fine / Feels at each thread, and lives along the line”.

  As Bepi manoeuvred us out into the lagoon, he just said to me: “Another gnaga.”

  “So it seems,” I said. “I only caught a glimpse. It was not pleasant.”

  “Someone’s got it in for them,” said Bepi.

  “And for the Doge,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Bepi. “That is strange.”

  I do not think he said it out of any special love for the present doge. Like all Venetians he simply had an unquestioning respect for the order of things as they are in the city. Venetians will grumble about almost everything but they would never dream of trying to change anything.

  8

  The shocking event had the immediate effect of putting an end to the Higgins family’s sojourn in the city. The decapitation of a male prostitute was not exactly the kind of edifying and instructional experience that the parents had hoped for. The next day they left for Padua, Frederick still bewailing the fact that he had not seen the gory head and Peter taking every opportunity to remind his brother that he had done so by making unconvincing imitations of the expression on the face. Even his father was driven to tell him to stop it.

  With my wages in pocket and no new client I took the opportunity to call on Fabrizio. It was always good to get a sane perspective on things.

  When I raised the subject that was on everyone’s lips he shook his head, slowly and sadly. “There’s something sinister behind this.”

  “Well, yes,” I said, a little disappointed by the obviousness of the statement. “Murder, sedition…”

  He shook his head more briskly this time. “No, that’s not what I meant. There’s more to it. I’m talking about the deliberate symbolism.”

  “Symbols of what?”

  “Well, that’s what I would like to understand. The procession of Saint Isidore commemorating the beheading of Marin Falier, and a beheaded prostitute. The previous one…”

  “Was stuffed down a well,” I said.

  “Exactly. And this one, the rest of the body…”

  “Burned.” They had found the decapitated corpse in a baker’s oven, charred and unrecognisable.

  “Exactly. The legend of Saint Isidore tells us that, among his various sufferings, he was thrown into a well and thrust into a furnace.”

  “Ah,” I said. “So these aren’t just random acts of violence.”

  “No. But the pattern is not clear. In fact, you have to be a bookseller with time on your hands even to know the legends that surround the life of Saint Isidore. It’s almost as if there is a private message.”

  “Addressed to whom?”

  “Well, I doubt they had me in mind. The Inquisitors may well have done the same reading as me, but I don’t think they will communicate their suspicions to the public at large. So for the moment, despite the glaring publicity of the actual crimes, the message remains private and cryptic.”

  “You think it might be a religious fanatic?”

  “It’s possible. A devotee of Saint Isidore. He is a protector of sailors – just as Saint Mark is. In fact, you could consider him a kind of poor man’s substitute for Saint Mark. But why St Isidore should have a particular objection to gnaghe…”

  “Well, I imagine any especially religious person might consider them offensive.” I only needed to think of the lady in the apartment above mine, who, between one church visit and another, had told me that the two victims had practically asked to be killed.

  “Yes, but there is a great difference between being offended and being ready to commit murder. And very spectacular and risky murder.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And a very well-planned one.” The figure that had appeared on the roof and hurled the bloody trophy had climbed there from an empty apartment; after his gesture he had dropped back into the apartment, stripped off his black disguise, which was later found on the floor, and managed somehow to slip into the crowd unobserved, helped by the fact that no one was watching the back of the building at that moment.

  “I wonder whether it can have been done by one person,” Fabrizio said. “Think of the whole business of dragging a corpse to a disused baker’s shop, lighting the fire…”

  Lucia entered the shop at this moment. She had a laden shopping basket; the smell of fresh bread filled the room. It was a comfort to know some bakeries were used for kinder purposes.

  “Sior Alvise,” she said, with a smile.

  “Siora Lucia,” I said with a bow.

  “You have left your English family?”

  “They have left me,” I said. “Or rather they’ve left Venice. The episode with the head was too much.”

  She grew serious at once. “Ah, I can imagine. You weren’t there in the Piazza, were you?”

  “I’m afraid I was. And one of the boys had the misfortune to see it.”

  “Ah.” She winced. Then she added, with a touch of rueful realism: “But knowing boys I’m sure he’ll have got over it.”

  “All too quickly,” I said. “But it was undoubtedly a shock at first.”

  “And think what it must be like for the poor family,” she said.

  “Well, as I said, they’ve left now.”

  “I meant the family of the murdered man.”

  “Ah yes, right. Have they found out who he was?”

  “Another young man from the Friuli, come here to try to make a living. I’m sure it wasn’t his first choice of career.”

  I could tell that her father was embarrassed again. This was not the kind of topic he would have chosen for conversation with his daughter. “My dear, perhaps you should put the shopping away.”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry, Father. I don’t intend to engage in a discussion with Sior Alvise on the ethics of prostitution, whether female or male.”

  “My dear…”

  “But a word of common pity seems the least we can offer this wretched victim,” she went on undeterred. Then, presumably out of common pity for her father, she changed the subject. “Have you heard any more of your young English gentleman?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t really expect to. Has his tutor looked in again?”

  “No,” said Fabrizio. “But I have heard that his pupil was not so fortunate on subsequent visits to the gaming tables.”

  “Well, what a surprise,” I said. “And I suppose our Georgian count is encouraging him to try again.”

  “So it seems. They attended the private casino of his Excellency Loredan, I believe.”

  “Well, perhaps the count will teach him how to turn base metal into gold and so all his problems will be solved,” I
said. “Anyway, it’s not my problem. I’m just surprised that his tutor didn’t make the slightest objection when the count turned up. He is such an obvious frappatore.” I used the Tuscan word for swindler that Goldoni had made popular.

  “There’s something strange about Mr Shackleford,” Lucia put in.

  “Strange?” I said.

  “Yes. I suspect his scholarship is not so profound as he claims.”

  “What makes you say that?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know. It was an impression I got when we talked here in the shop the other day. When I started talking about Virgil he steered the conversation away. In fact, at a certain point I realised he just wanted to be left alone with the books.”

  “That is hardly unusual in a bookshop,” observed her father mildly.

  “Yes, but it wasn’t just a desire to browse in peace, I think.”

  “I think I’d steer the conversation away if we got on to Virgil,” I said.

  “Yes, but you don’t claim to be a tutor and a classical scholar.”

  “No, just a humble cicerone. Oh, and the name comes from Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman consul and orator and –”

  “Bravo, Sior Alvise. But you do see there’s a difference between your job and that of a private instructor for a scion of the English ruling classes?”

  “Yes, I know. I just show them the way to the gambling houses and the –” I pulled myself up short, with a glance at Fabrizio, who was frowning.

  “I spoke out of turn the other day,” Lucia said, with a slightly embarrassed smile. “I apologise.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say so,” said her father.

  “Have you forgiven me?” she said, turning her dark eyes full on me.

  When she looked at me like that I would forgive her anything. “There was nothing to forgive, signorina. You gave me food for reflection.”

  “You are generous to say so,” she said, and her smile became broad and dazzling.

  Realising that I would melt unless I turned away I spoke to Fabrizio, choosing a different topic of speculation. “I wonder if I’ll ever find out what those people who were following Boscombe wanted. And whether they’re connected with the Georgian count.”