I could hear a loud female voice. It was high, but as tightly controlled as the others were panicked. 'By what right?' it said. 'By whose authority?' Mother Zaneta, apparently, was having none of it. There was a piercing yelp beside me. Through an open door, I saw a big man with a scratched face pinning a young whore against the wall by her throat. He was fumbling somewhere between them: going either for his knife or his cock. I took two strides across the room and slammed the club across the back of his head. He buckled, his face smearing blood down the girl's breasts as he fell.
'Don't waste time!' hissed Letice. I grimaced: she was right. We abandoned the girl, who was picking her tormentor's purse, and charged down the next flight of stairs. No one there, and the doors were either shut tight or open to reveal empty rooms. There was a peal of cursing and then barked orders from below - the ground floor. We had come to it. I paused and looked at Letice. She shrugged and bared her teeth in a desperate grin. Her face was flushed, the darker red that lies at the centre of a pink rose, and she shook back her sleeve and jerked Thorn free of her scabbard. A laugh that was not fuelled by joy rose like a bubble in my chest. I switched the chamber-pot to my right hand and shrugged helplessly, grinning myself, feeling the fingers of madness upon my face. With Letice at my back I hurled myself down the stairs. We turned the corner together, and ran straight into the young man in yellow. His hands were empty, and he took one look at Thorn and fled with a clatter, with me treading upon his heels. We reached the downstairs hall together. I had time to see Facio, sword drawn and laid casually across his shoulder, and another man; and Mother Zaneta, who was staring them down like some ancient martyr facing the pliers and the saw.
Then the boy, in his panic, pitched headlong into the man next to Facio, who fended him off with an indignant shout and sent him flying into the old woman. The two of them fell in a tangle, and a cacophony of shrieks and laments rang out, for now I saw that beyond Facio a huddle of girls clung to each other, shaking and whimpering in fear. Facio had whipped around and I found myself surging towards the gently wavering point of his blade. I had no time to stop, but reflexively put up my right hand to cover my breast, and the gaping mouth of the chamber-pot swallowed the sword point. The sword was stout but the pot was stouter, and did not break; but its heavy bottom banged into my chest and stopped me short. Facio drew back his blade to strike again and without thinking I hurled the pot at him. He got his hand up and the pot glanced off his knuckles and smashed into the side of his face. He staggered and, awkwardly, wildly, I swung the club with my left hand and bludgeoned him on the ear. He went down awkwardly and I sprang forward and stamped with all my weight upon his crotch. The other man had meanwhile tugged out a hideous short sword, more a cleaver than a sword, and was raising it to chop me down when there was a flash of quicksilver beside me and the man's arm opened to the bone -I glimpsed its blood-netted yellow - and he dropped the cleaver with a scream.
Instantly Letice struck again, stabbing him in the upper shoulder. He flailed with his good arm and caught her wrist, twisting it. My foot was caught between Facio's legs and as I tore myself free and brought up my club, the man's knees buckled and he fell in a heap. Behind him stood a whore, a long-handled copper kettle in her hands. She raised it up and hit him again, and then, as if some terrible mechanism had been triggered, the kicking body was being belaboured from all sides by women wielding fire-irons, pots, clogs, even a wooden stool. The boy in yellow had got to his knees, but Mother had him by the collar. I raised my club, but saw in time that he had no weapon and was a boy, younger than me, and weeping in terror.
Tie him up!' I yelled at Letice. Everyone was yelling now save the men on the floor, for Facio was doubled up in agony and his companion would never make another sound. She nodded as if in a fevered trance, eyes showing white all around. I straddled Facio to keep the whores from him while Letice bound the boy’s wrists together with his own belt and forced his head down to the floor as he sobbed and shook in a palsy of terror. I held out my hand to Mother Zaneta and helped her to her feet. Then I bent down and hauled Facio up by the neck of his tunic until he was sitting, his face ashen, panting with the pain of his crushed stones, eyes screwed shut. I took hold of his hair and shook him until he opened them. He did not seem to recognise me. I shook him again.
'Remember me? From Tiber-side? Querini sent you to find me, did he not? Tell me!' I was mad with rage; my spittle was flecking his cheeks. He shook his head, then nodded.
It was you who killed Anna .. ‘ He tried to shake his head. 'No, no, you charnel rat’ I told him urgently, 'you did: you rode her down in Cheapside and broke her skull. You trampled her face into the mud ...' I had twisted his hair so tightly around my fingers that they had gone numb. He was wincing in pain, but still he held my gaze. 'And Horst - do not shake your head at me, filth! - the man you butchered in Foligno. And the boy in Spoleto, when it should have been my head on the flagstones, what about him?' 'Petroc’ said Letice, quietly.
'No! He will tell me why!' I shook the club under his nose, then threw it away in disgust.
'Letitia?' gasped Facio, seeing her for the first time.
'Good morrow, Facio. Why did you come here?'
'To take you and this one to Messer Nicholas. You were seen coming into Chioggia. I thought he was chasing ghosts
'Ghosts? No’ said Letice. 'Nicholas wouldn't waste time on ghosts.'
Why?' I pressed. He panted and shook his head. 'The letter?' he winced. 'Baldwin's letter. Christ, you know better than I.'
'No, you do not understand’ I said, all the fury suddenly draining from me. Why? I want to know why.'
'Gold, what else?' he said, eyes narrowing. He was almost master of himself again. 'Oceans of gold. See? You already know, you fool.'
There was a stillness in the room, a breathlessness. The whores, with their gory, hair-crusted pots and shoes; the hunchback, who had appeared from somewhere, a bloody rag clutched to his head; a customer, who cringed by the fireplace; the boy, whose shoulders heaved, though he made no sound; Facio, who was rocking gently in my grasp, eyes still fixed on me; Letice, who had gone quite pale again, save for a constellation of sprayed blood across her face; and Mother Zaneta. Someone had found her cane, and she was gripping it, standing straight and sombre as a poplar tree. She was staring at me too. Everyone was. I had become the centre of the room. Mother smoothed back her hair, for her wimple had been knocked off, and her heavy tresses, the colour of burnished pewter, had come free. Then she held out her hand to Letice.
'Give it me’ she said softly, and took Thorn from her, almost sweetly, as if prying a rattle away from a tired baby. Then she held the knife out to me.
I still had a hold of Facio's hair. Without thinking I reached for my knife, and a ripple went through the room, a shiver, a scurrying of thought, skittering like mouse-feet. Letice reached for my hand, but Mother Zaneta warded it off with her cane. The green stone hilt did not waver. Mothers eyes were the same green. I took the knife.
Facio set his jaw. He raised his chin and glared at me. I looked past him, at the faces arrayed there: young, smooth, ravaged, keen and simple. Luchas' lips were pulled back like a fox at bay. Righi sniffed, his eyes gone soft, distant, as if he were trying to will himself away from here with all the useless conjurations of a trapped mind. Mother Zaneta drew herself up even straighter, trembling with the effort. A lock of hair had fallen down across her face, making her seem at once a girl and terribly old, a rain-smoothed idol dressed up for some heathen rite. She pushed it away and, closing her eyes, bowed her head.
I looked at Facio. There was nothing much in my own head, I found, save for the memory of Anna as the apoplexy took her, and her fingers as they had scrabbled at my palm and then gone still. There was Horst, teaching me to ride amongst the thistles on the Janiculum hill, and the hollow knock of the poor servant Giovanni's skull against the stones of Spoleto. And now the Captain turned his head to me, eyes swollen shut, the stink of rot about his body. I shook my
head and they left, but I still had hold of a mans hair, and of a knife. I did not wish to do this.
Here was Anna’s killer, the half-seen, barely remembered figure on a rearing horse whose face I had strained again and again to make out in dreams and in bitter memories. He was a pale man, tall and thin, whose face bore the deep lines of worry; not very old, but not so young either. He was afraid - the smell of his fear was coming from him like an old fox skin - but not surprised. He knew what we were doing here far better than I did. And he was ready to die.
I did not wish to do this; but now, I found, I had no choice. I turned to Letice, but she was staring at Facio, her face tight, revealing nothing. Every eye in the room was fixed upon the man before me save those of Mother Zaneta. It was I whom she watched curiously, expectantly. Then I knew. I no longer had the stomach for revenge, and if we had been alone I would have let him go. But now Facio was a dead man whether I killed him or not. His life had brought him here to this room, with this audience, and no way out. And I had arrived at the same place. I would not leave here alive if I did not kill this man. Vengeance and justice were but a dream. There was nothing left for me but survival.
I closed my eyes, trying to gore myself with the pain of memory. But all I saw was Anna running away from me, skipping up on to the stepping-stone over the kennel of Cheapside, hair flying. She turned back to me and smiled.
'Goodbye, Anna,' I said. I wrenched Facio's head back, and cut open his throat before he had time to make a sound.
Chapter Thirty-Two
W
hen he was dead, when his legs had ceased to scrape and thrash upon the floor, I stepped back. The faces of our audience - or my audience, for Facio had departed and left but one mummer upon this stage - had come back to life, and suddenly everyone was busy, straightening their clothes, staring in bemusement at the blood-caked implements in their hands. I turned to Letice, and she lowered her eyes. On the floor, Righi had stopped shaking, though he had pissed himself. In his eyes, the artifice of bravery battled with overwhelming fear.
'Not you, boy’ I said, and my voice sounded strange to me. I found Thorn's scabbard on the floor and, wiping her upon my tunic, put her away. My hands were shaking so hard that I had to trap them beneath my arms, yet even as I hugged myself I shook. Facio's blood had soaked me from my navel to my feet. I had better have someone wash them, I thought, and then I was sitting on the bottom step and staring at the soles of the dead man's shoes, swallowing back the bile that had risen, scalding, in my throat. Mother Zaneta leaned over and spat loudly and neatly on Facio's chest. Then she clapped her hands.
'Gather this filth up and take it to the storeroom. Take this child and lock him in there as well. Now, are any of my dear customers hurt?'
I was led to the bath-house, for of course there was one, a somewhat dank and cavernous room at the back of the house that smelled of mildew, sweat and rose-oil; stripped naked and helped into the hot water by three girls, who scrubbed Facio's blood from me and left me there. I sat amongst the curls of steam, and my teeth chattered. My blood is cold, I thought. How strange: the doctors are right about that. Nothing else seemed real. I had stepped into a different life, and I was not who I had been. Perhaps this was survival.
I did not notice when Letice came into the bath-house, only when she swung her leg over the edge of the tub and stepped in. She slid beneath the water and came up with her hair plastered to her head. Pale hair; pale, naked skin; glistening water: she glimmered like a fish, like quicksilver. I did not look at her, for she seemed hardly there at all: perhaps just a vision conjured by my frozen blood. But she straddled me and wrapped her arms about me, and at her touch my body began to remember what it was to be warm, and then all of a sudden I was Petroc again. I took her head in my hands and felt the hard vault of her skull and all the thoughts, all the life inside it. We said nothing, but rocked together until life returned, and heat, and sweat; and until I did not care whether or not she saw my tears.
My clothes were declared ruined - but by some lucky fate the letters hidden within them were only a little stained - and more were found for me from among the great store left by careless or insensible customers. I couldn't have cared less, so the choice was made by the girls: a short tunic with long flared sleeves in a maroon and chestnut striped silk damask, dark-blue hose, and a cycladibus of black, arm-holes, hem and collar scalloped and trimmed with dark red ribbon. I let them dress me like a mannequin while I stared at the blackened heap of my old clothes, my gift from Anna. The whores were chattering, debating the relative merits of this costume - how I would blend in just enough, but not too much, how rich it made me look, how manly. At last, Mother Zaneta appeared in the doorway.
‘I must have words with you’ she said.
It was a command, and I obeyed. She led me through the girls and serving boys who were scrubbing the floor with lye. The bodies had already vanished. We went upstairs to a finely appointed chamber and she called for wine, which I sipped at, then gulped. When the cup was empty she took it from me and set it down out of reach.
You have killed an important man’ she said. I opened my mouth to speak, though what I would have said in my defence, or perhaps in self-condemnation I did not know then, nor do I know now.
‘It was well done’ she went on, before I could say anything at all. ‘It was necessary, and you did well. He came into my house with his bravoes, and that could not be tolerated. Do you know who he was?' I nodded, glumly.
'The capo of Nicholas Querini’s company’ she went on. 'The coming man in this quarter. Many friends, and many more enemies, as such a man must have. What do you know of Venice, young man?'
What I have heard is that the water in its streets is no match for the fire of its people’ I said, half-remembering some words of my friend Zianni. She wrinkled her eyes at me, questing.
‘I know what you are thinking’ she said at last. You fear for yourself, for what will befall you as a consequence of what you have done. And you fear for this! She leaned forward quickly and placed her hand flat against my breast, over my heart.
You are young, and you have seen and done much’ she went on. It is cut into your face. And you hold yourself well, for which I have reason to be grateful. So I will tell you this. The first of your concerns is nothing. Do you think that you have spilled the first blood that has ever stained my floors? Do you understand what manner of place this is, what manner of city? We kill each other for taking the wrong side when crossing a bridge. Men die here, and my girls die, and if an explanation is sought I give one, but I tell you that I do not often need to do it. Signor Facio was a man of standing, but as such a man stands taller than those around him, so will he be cut down, sooner or later’
'But Querini..’
Will find another Facio. It is business for him, for me, and what I must tell you, Englishman, is that what you have just done was a fine piece of business for yourself and many others. Querini will not thank you if he ever finds out, but others will, and Messer Nicholas, I am certain, will not take it personally. He is a great man, but when the whores of San Cassiano are angry, even great men's balls shrivel in fear.
And as for this ..’ and she patted her own heart, 'if you had not slain that man I would have, and then I would have slain you too, for bringing trouble to my door. If you thought you had a choice, you chose well, and if you knew you did not, you are wise. I thank you for what you did, and for bringing Letitia back to me. Now you must go. The girl will stay here, for I can hide her but not you. Go to the mainland. Letitia told me that your master is in Ravenna - go and find him. You can do no more alone’
'And the boy?' I asked, fearing what the answer would be.
'Righi?' she said with something like a chuckle. ‘I know his mother. He is a good lad, but a fool. We will terrify him, then give him wine and a girl, and send him back to his master, where he will tell such tales of the fearful Englishman that Messer Nicholas, and all the quarter of San Polo, will wish to be your friend
.'
'Is that so?' I said, bitterly.
'Perhaps,' she shrugged. 'Now. There is a stunned man upstairs. We will send him home today, with Facio and his two dead friends - the man on the stairs, his neck was snapped.' And she rose. I followed her out of the room, but she paused in the doorway, and raised the silver tip of her cane so that it hung in the air between us.
'Letitia is safe here,' she said. You do not know, O dealer in treasures, what a marvel you have brought back. Such a thing that not even the storerooms of the Palazzo Centranico have ever seen.'
'But how ...' I began.
'And you may give my compliments to Messer de Montalhac,' she said. 'The quarter of San Polo is small, and full of secrets, but every secret, like a strand of spider-silk, ends here.' The cane tapped the floor between her feet. 'I tell you that as my gift of thanks. Now go.'
I had four things to my name in this world: the pope's letter and that of Brother Andrew, a purse of gold and silver, and my knife. A strange and powerful burden, to be sure, but now, I knew, quite useless save for the gold and, alas, the knife. I hid the letters inside my tunic and buckled on Thorn and purse. I wondered where Letice could be - or had Mother Zaneta meant me to go at once, with no leavetak-ing? Perhaps so, for one of the younger girls hurried over to me and held out a travelling cape with a large hood. She actually curtsied, and then tripped back to her companions, most of whom were lolling about as if nothing untoward had happened.
The Vault of Bones Page 43
