by Martin Seay
No! Fall back! shouts a stern voice from farther up the street, but the sbirri don’t listen: the first one lurches after him, the second queues behind, and the three others who’d been shuffling eagerly in the background press forward as well, sensing weakness, smelling blood, covetous of the chance to do harm. Crivano scrambles backward, gasping in feigned distress, until three of the five have followed him onto the bridge, and he feels pavement beneath his heels again.
Then he starts killing them. The first man becomes an impromptu barricade, crumpled on the planks with wounded knees and punctured lungs; the second loses his footing as he steps over his comrade, falls into the canal when Crivano’s blade finds his femoral artery. The third jumps back in a panicked rout, collides with the man behind him, plunges uninjured into the water. The last two retreat to await their fellows’ arrival.
The clangor of clapped steel echoes in Crivano’s ears, but for a moment the air is still: he hears only the quick rough breathing of his adversaries, the gurgling wheeze of the dying man at his feet, the splashes of the fallen sbirro as he swims east in search of a quay, the approaching footfalls of the next wave. It has been a long time since Crivano last fought for his life. He is no longer young. Cold sweat soaks his shirt and streaks his face. The tibialis anterior of his right leg aches and burns from lunging.
Five more sbirri appear at the opposite end of the bridge. The clever one from the White Eagle, Lunardo, is among them. He dismisses two of the others immediately, sending them for reinforcements. Good evening, dottore! he calls, raising an arm. I’ve worn my gloves, you see! Just as you asked. Now, come across the bridge!
Lunardo wears a rapier and an offhand dagger, and two of his men—one is the scar-faced ruffian—wield cudgels. A defense against such variety will be difficult to maintain. Crivano floods his lungs with air, shakes out his legs. His wrists are trembling.
I should tell you, Lunardo shouts, that many more of us are on the way. Some will come on boats, and will moor in the campiello behind you, thus to envelop you. These men will not kill you, dottore. They will be armed with clubs, and they will beat you, and break your hands and feet, and they will deliver you to the Council of Ten. The Council will have you tortured, and strangled, and put in the lagoon. Much as you put that mirrormaker in the lagoon, isn’t that so? Hardly a death a man would choose, dottore. But you have other choices, don’t you? I think you do. So, then. Shall we wait? Or shall we pass the time by killing one another? Come across the bridge, dottore.
Crivano doesn’t reply. He measures the space he stands in, pacing the width of the planks between the smooth wooden cart-curbs, the distance from the fallen man to the pavement. The light dims suddenly in the west, then turns orange: a boat is passing the canal’s terminus, eclipsing the reflection of the moon on the water; someone aboard bears a blazing torch. After a moment the boat slips from view, and the light is as it was.
Lunardo squats on his haunches at the canal’s edge, smiling, bobbing to stretch his legs. Crivano cleans the gore from his blade, then steps onto the bridge, over the dying sbirro. He will go no farther. Lunardo salutes as he comes forward, but Crivano doesn’t reciprocate. Beneath their feet, the planks are daubed with dark medallions.
They begin. The walkingstick fouls Lunardo’s sword with semicircular parries; soon Crivano opens small cuts on the sbirro’s thighs and arms and cheek. Lunardo is an adequate swordsman, but no master, and although the stick grows heavy in Crivano’s weaker left hand, it gives him the advantage of reach. He presses his attacks, wanting to finish this man quickly.
Again and again Lunardo falls back to the pavement; Crivano takes these opportunities to catch his breath, measure his steps. He finds these attempts to lure him over the bridge insulting. Lunardo must know by now that he won’t prevail without bringing his men into the fight; Crivano can read calculation in his stoat-like eyes.
Just as Crivano’s decided that his opponent lacks the courage to make the charge, it comes: Lunardo hurls his main-gauche over the canal and lunges with a cry, sprawling forward, scrambling on his knees and emptied hand, slashing wildly with his rapier. Crivano glances the crown of the man’s skull with his stick, but he’s forced to fall back; he steps over the dying sbirro, onto the end of the bridge. Lunardo keeps coming, as he surely knows he must, accepting a hard blow to the right shoulder to block Crivano’s final desperate riposte: it opens a gash on his side, but his ribs turn the point away. The men collide with an ugly sound of jarred bone, and when they return to their feet, they’re both standing on the pavement.
Another sbirro is already across the bridge, swinging his cudgel; in the time it takes Crivano to parry him, Lunardo has retrieved his thrown dagger. Soon Crivano is fighting a third man as well, a wild-eyed Genoese with a rapier, and the faceless cyclops is not far behind, at the bridge’s midpoint, awaiting his opening. Crivano can do nothing but hold his ground, and that only poorly. The snaplock pistol still hangs in his belt, but he’ll have no chance to withdraw it. He tries to keep calm, to encourage their confidence. He fights like an automaton, distributing his attention to the periphery of his vision. Watching for a mistake. He needs to kill someone very soon.
But now he sees lights flicker in the glazed windows around him: torches coming at his back. The sbirri’s reinforcements have arrived. Crivano is beaten. He hopes he can fight hard enough to die here, to avoid capture. He gauges the approach of the sbirri behind him by the spread of the lupine grins on his adversaries’ faces. He keeps his stance forward, waiting until the last moment, hoping to gut at least one before their bludgeons pulverize him. He and his opponents have all grown shadows: the fires are close. Then, as Crivano readies himself to drop and pivot, he registers a flicker of confusion in Lunardo’s eyes, and stops.
A diminutive figure darts past, a torch in its outstretched left hand, and sets the Genoese’s hair on fire. Then a belaying pin smashes the Genoese’s foot. Lunardo’s mouth falls open in alarm, and Crivano lunges: the rapier’s tip is stopped by the man’s breastbone, but Crivano passes forward and redoubles and lands the stick’s ferrule on the bridge of his nose. Lunardo drops with a cry.
Crivano turns and kills the panicked Genoese, then looks over his shoulder for more attackers, but no one else is behind him. The sbirro with the cudgel is swinging at the torchbearer, who ducks, throws the belaying pin, ducks again, and catches a blow in the side. Narkis! Crivano thinks—the torchbearer is similarly slight—but it isn’t Narkis: the yelp of pain is high-pitched, childish. Somehow familiar. One of the linkboys?
Crivano hears a distant twang, and a loud crack nearby: someone has fired a crossbow. He spins, searching the surrounding windows and rooftops, but they’re all clear. The sbirro raises his club to strike the torchbearer again; Crivano sweeps forward and stabs him in the chest. The blade reemerges from the man’s back, below the inner edge of his right scapula, then snaps inches above its hilt as he stumbles and falls. The torchbearer is curled on the pavement, moaning through clenched teeth, clutching his ribs. The torch lies beside him, sputtering and hissing.
Lunardo has shaken off Crivano’s blows, returned to his stance. His face is livid, his left eye dark with blood. In the unsteady footlight cast by the dropped torch, Crivano searches for the Genoese’s fallen rapier, and spots it at the canal’s edge.
The one-eyed mutilated sbirro is coming over the bridge, his cudgel at his side. As his boots touch the flagstones, he drops the truncheon with a clatter. Then he begins to speak in a deep resonant voice. Toute leur vie estoit employée non par loix, statuz ou reigles, mais selon leur vouloir et franc arbitre, he says. Se levoient du lict quand bon leur sembloit, beuvoient, mangeoient, travailloient, dormoient quand le desir leur venoit; nul ne les esveilloit, nul ne les parforceoit ny à boyre, ny à manger, ny à faire chose aultre quelconques.
Lunardo and Crivano look at each other. Then they both look at the scar-faced sbirro. He passes between them, swaying like a drunk, still speaking slowly and very clearly. Ains
i l’avoit estably Gargantua, he says. En leur reigle n’estoit que ceste clause: fay ce que vouldras. The fletched shaft of a crossbow bolt protrudes from the left side of his skull. After a few steps, he bumps into the closed shutters of a shop, turns, and slides down the wall to sit on the pavement. He’s whispering now, a great sadness in his voice.
For an instant, Crivano and Lunardo meet each other’s eyes again. Then Crivano throws his broken rapier at Lunardo’s head and dives for the fallen sword of the Genoese. Lunardo ducks, intercepts him, slices him across the left biceps. Crivano pauses, his stick held high, his empty right hand hovering over the weapon on the pavement. Then he feints, parries Lunardo’s thrust downward with his stick, draws the stiletto from his boot, and punches it through Lunardo’s chest, a half-inch to the left of his sternum. Lunardo rises from his crouched stance. A look of mild irritation passes over his face, and he falls backward into the canal.
The splash echoes and fades. Car nous entreprenons tousjours choses defendues et convoitons ce que nous est denié, whispers the scar-faced sbirro.
Dottore, groans the torchbearer. Help me up. We must go.
Crivano’s hands spasm, his legs cramp. He can barely hold the walkingstick. He leans down, offers the boy his arm. The dirty face is known to him, intimately so, but Crivano can’t place it. Like a dream-face that belongs to someone dear, that speaks with the same voice, but resembles the person not at all. Could this be the Lark?
Who are you? Crivano says.
It’s me, dottore. It’s Perina. I came as quickly as I could.
Crivano blinks, shakes his head, looks again. The small nose, the full mouth, the obstinate eyes. He touches her cropped scalp with his trembling hand. What became of your hair? he says.
I took my vows.
What?
I took my vows. I didn’t know what else to do. Don’t be angry, dottore. I couldn’t find you unless I could move through the streets at night, and I couldn’t do that unless I could pass as a boy. You see? I couldn’t pass as a boy without short hair, and the nuns wouldn’t cut my hair except for my profession. So I took my vows. I simulated a sudden mania of piety, and I wept and begged until the abbess included me in tonight’s clothing ceremony. Then I fled. The linkboy you sent sold me his garments.
Crivano stares at her, gape-mouthed. A tremor gathers in his belly: the beginning of laughter, or tears. He’s very tired. The cyclopean sbirro with the bolt in his brain has fallen silent, his chin on his chest. The one lying on the bridge no longer breathes. Dottore, Perina says, seizing his hand. We should hurry. Others will be here soon.
So, he says with an antic smile—one he suspects of containing more than a hint of madness—what is your new name, then?
Her eyes flash. Perina, she says. It’s Perina. As always.
She pulls him away from the bridge, toward the campiello, but he resists. There’s no way out there, he says. We must cross the canal.
No, dottore. Your friend is here, with his boat. He’ll meet us this way.
My friend? What friend?
The gondolier. The one you sent to Santa Caterina to meet me when I escaped. He didn’t say his name.
The one I sent? What are you talking about?
Your message, dottore. You said to flee the convent by the third bell, and to meet the gondolier on the Misericordia Canal.
Who told you this?
The linkboy told me. Dottore, we must go!
She’s tugging his arm like the bridle of a recalcitrant mule. Her skin is blotchy with pink, her face rived with terror. The cool air has grown much colder. The torch on the pavement goes out abruptly, as though it’s been dipped in a bucket. A thick rope of smoke rises from it. There is no wind.
Did he tell you to look behind the curtain? Crivano says.
Who?
The linkboy. The messenger.
Perina relaxes her grip on his hand. Her expression is baffled, exasperated. What curtain? she says.
Over her shoulder, the twisting street that leads to the campiello has gone entirely black at its center. As if the night itself has gathered there, clotted like a wound. Crivano looks up from Perina’s face. Merciful Christ, he whispers.
Listen, dottore. We must—
Crivano drops his stick, seizes Perina by the collar, and pulls her against his chest. She lets out a startled squeak as her face strikes his ribs. His fingers scurry along the fabric of his robe until they find the slit, then search inside for the smooth grip of the snaplock pistol. He’s vaguely aware of the sound of his own chattering teeth.
Already the fiend is almost upon them, gliding with the silent speed of a diving owl. It seems to hang on the air, not to move at all. As if the space between it and them is simply vanishing, shrinking like the foot of a snail. Crivano’s hand has found the pistol. As he draws it, the cock catches the fabric of his robe. The fabric rips.
Perina pushes away from him; he claps his hand on the base of her fuzzed skull and pulls her back with a thump. The pistol is free. He thrusts out his arm. The demon is yards away now. Its ash wand held high. Smoke streaming from its beak. Perina turns her head to protect her mashed nose, and Crivano moves his left palm over her exposed ear. Then he wrenches back the cock—opening a bloody furrow across his thumb’s first joint—and pulls the trigger.
A white flare as the pan ignites, and a breathy whoosh. Then nothing. His vision wrecked by the flash, Crivano stares into the blackened street, his lips twisted in a rictus of idiot horror. His eyes can discern nothing but the twin glassy spheres that move toward him through the void, aglow like glory-holes. They are coming. They have always been coming. Now they are here.
The pistol fires. From its muzzle emerges a globe of flame that erases everything and vanishes, leaving only a pulsing afterimage on Crivano’s seared eyes. But the roar of the blast remains, a howling hiss, an undiminishing echo that runs circuits of the street until he can hear nothing else. Perina has broken away; she’s looking at him, gesturing, screaming. Her voice reaches him not as sound, but as a gentle pressure on his face. She grabs his left hand, pulls. His right arm, the arm with the pistol, is over his head. He lowers it gingerly. He’s aware of sharp pain in his bludgeoned ears: a lacerating high-pitched chime that, he realizes, is the sound of broken glass striking the pavement under every window on the street.
The plaguedoctor is gone. Crivano’s eyes rake the smoke-shrouded air, and the pavement where the monster stood, but they find nothing: no pink mist, no pooled blood, no beaked mask, no ash wand. Blown to bits, he thinks. As if the pistol were a cannon. Blown to bits. Blown to bits. Blown to bits.
The cloud of smoke from the blast is rising, signaling their location. Perina’s face is streaked with angry tears; she twists his arm, looks over his shoulder. Crivano searches the ground around his feet for his dropped walkingstick, then sees that Perina is holding it. He tries to put the pistol back in his belt, but his arm won’t move as it should. His hearing is returning, heralded by a dull ache; he can make out Perina’s urgent whisper, shouts from the Campiello of the Dead. Sbirri are coming over the bridge: three that he can see, more lights behind them. The first freezes when he sees Crivano, fear animating his dull eyes, and the second stumbles to avoid a collision. They huddle together on the bridge, scuffling their feet like tethered dogs.
Perina and Crivano turn and run. She’s fast, he’s tired and old, and he can’t keep up. Fallen glass splinters and cracks beneath the sbirri’s feet: they’re gaining on him. By the time he turns into the campiello they’re on his heels. One brushes a hand against his shoulder, then collapses with a thud and a gasp, tripping up the man behind him. Crivano sees the sandolo now, Obizzo outlined against the setting moon, lowering his crossbow to stand in its stirrup, a fresh bolt clamped between his teeth.
Perina has already cast the boat off. Crivano catches a foot on the gunwale as he jumps, lands facedown in the hull. Dozens of dry bouquets are crushed under his chest; the odor of lavender fills his sinuses, followed by the
ferrous tang of blood. The sandolo rocks but doesn’t capsize. Crivano rises with effort, wipes his injured nose.
Obizzo fires again, catching a sbirro in midair as he vaults from the quay; the man drops with a splash. More rush into the campiello, but caution slows them. Obizzo passes the crossbow and quiver to Crivano and takes up his oar; Crivano steps in the stirrup and fixes the string to the nut, then levers it back while he gropes for a bolt. By the time it’s loaded, they’re a safe distance from the sbirri’s angry cudgels, but Crivano fires and wounds one anyway out of spite.
Damn you, dottore! Obizzo growls. Save your bolts. A caorlina crowded with these devils still awaits us on the Grand Canal.
Crivano blows his nose into his palms, shakes the mess overboard. The scent of lavender reaches him again. How did you find me? he says.
With difficulty, thank you. Your messages were a lot of bilgewater. I had to row along till I heard the hue and cry, then follow the noise. What in God’s name was meant by that nonsense about the curtain?
Messages? Crivano says. How many—
Obizzo shushes him. Torches have appeared on the bridge ahead. Crivano loads another bolt, takes Perina’s position in the bow. A quick brightness in the west: at first Crivano takes it for a casino’s hearth-lit door, but it’s what remains of the vanishing moon, peeking at them from a dead-end street. Good luck, it seems to say. I can do nothing more for you tonight.
The torches on the bridge have been smothered; dark shapes now crouch where they shone. Crivano snorts, swallows blood and phlegm, and nestles the crossbow’s buttstock against his shoulder. The sandolo’s black keel slices the mist-veiled water, heading north along the Saint John Beheaded Canal.
