A Death in the Venetian Quarter

by Alan Gordon

  Niketas found a table in the back and was ordering a marrow-bone custard for the two of us when I sat down. He was a middle-aged man like myself, though stouter. We jesters tend toward the slender due to our regimen of exercise and constant dashing about. I had never seen Nik do anything more strenuous than lift a spoon to his lips or wag his tongue.

  We came here because the place catered mostly to the local Genoese. It was unlikely that we would find a Greek who would wonder about seeing us together and impossible that we would run into any Venetians. Given the topic of conversation, it was a good choice.

  “Now, what was so urgent that you needed to move up our luncheon date?” he asked.

  “For once, I’ve come to ask you something in your official capacity.”

  “As a senator?” he laughed. “You’ve never thought much of that position before.”

  “As Logothete,” I said.

  “And you generally think even less of that,” he said. “When did my bureaucratic powers become interesting to you?”

  “Since the death of Camilio Bastiani,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow at that.

  “Who wants that looked into?” he asked quietly.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” I said, while simultaneously nodding my head to the north.

  “Ah,” he replied, glancing in that direction. “Well, I can make my own guesses. Bastiani died in his sleep, I heard.”

  “I think he was murdered. So do his friends.”

  “I didn’t know he had any,” said Niketas.

  “What do you know about him? The quarter falls under your jurisdiction. You probably know it better than anyone outside of the Venetians.”

  “He came to the city about fifteen years ago, I think,” he said. “Went about his business efficiently, kept a low profile. Never gambled, either with ships or with dice. Kept a carefully steady margin of profit and otherwise drew little attention.”

  “What about family? I heard something about a wife, but nobody said anything at the funeral.”

  “There’s a wife. Children, too.”

  “I haven’t seen them about.”

  “That’s because he left the whole family in Venice,” said Niketas. “Arranged marriage, did his duty, continues to support them, goes back to visit when his business requires the voyage, but makes his fortune here.”

  “Not much of one,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He lived in a boarding house in a tiny, windowless room. Not the mark of a rich man.”

  “Then it may surprise you to know he was one,” replied Niketas, grinning.

  “Really?”

  “As I said, he didn’t gamble. The money went back to Venice. He lived simply because he had no desires. This was all that he did.”

  “He must have had some desires,” I said. “Rumor had it there was a woman here.”

  “Then I am glad for it,” said Niketas. “He always struck me as a lonely, crabbed individual, trapped in his life. If he had found some beggar’s mite of happiness before he died, good for him.”

  “But you don’t know who the woman is?”

  “This is the first time I’ve heard anything about it.”

  “Hm. If a merchant is murdered, it’s usually over money,” I mused, remembering Tullio’s words. “Who inherits?”

  “The family back in Venice, I suppose.”

  “What about business competitors?”

  “Every silk trader in the city would be one,” said Niketas. “Even his fellow Venetians. The denizens of that embolum present an ever-shifting series of alliances. They invest in shipments together, secretly sell each other out for better independent deals, then they reform for the next one. The only thing they won’t do is collude with any of the other quarters.”

  “Could Bastiani have been doing that? Entering into some kind of pact with the Genoese or Pisans?”

  “I doubt it. As I said, he didn’t like to gamble. The quarters police themselves, and any outside contact would be scented quickly and dealt with.”

  “Maybe it was dealt with,” I said. I leaned forward to whisper. “There is some belief in Blachernae that a Venetian uprising is being organized. What do you know of it?”

  “Just the same rumors,” he said.

  “Was he the type who would participate?”

  “Not him,” he said firmly. “He cared little about his fellows. I cannot see him taking up arms for Venice. It would cut into his profits. And now you have me wondering if he was killed because he knew too much about it.”

  “I am beginning to lean in that direction myself.”

  “I have to get back to the Senate,” he said, rising. “We are bravely deciding upon a wait and see position. But I will keep my ears open. Come by anytime, Feste.”

  He paid for the lunch, and left.

  I saw a pair of familiar faces when I came out of the tavern. Henry, a captain of the Varangian Guards, was standing in the street, his adjutant Cnut by his side. They were in full armor, as always, their enormous axes resting casually on their shoulders.

  They were chatting amiably with a group of Genoese, who were listening intently and nodding a lot. The conversation ended with handshakes all around, and the two soldiers turned and caught sight of me.

  “Hallo, Feste!” bellowed Henry. He was a good-natured Englishman who took soldiering seriously but little else. Even for a Varangian, he was powerfully built, with any number of scars that he would proudly display at the slightest hint of a request. Cnut was much younger, a stripling sent from his native Denmark to gain military experience, something lacking at home of late.

  “Well met, good soldiers,” I said.

  “Hello, Feste,” said Cnut. “What brings you here?”

  “What brings me anywhere? Good food, good wine, and someone else paying for them. How about yourselves?”

  “Just getting some of the city defenses organized,” said Henry.

  “Time for people to decide what side they’re on. Either you’re a Greek or you’re a Venetian, that’s the choice.”

  “Said the Englishman and the Dane to the Genoese,” I said. “And there are Frenchmen with the Venetians, too.”

  “That just means I get to combine pleasure with business,” chortled Henry. “It’s about time we had a proper war around here. Things were altogether too boring.”

  “So I hear,” I said. “Someone told me you’re now doing escort duty for funerals.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Henry. “Escorts for the dead! A waste of our talents. If this keeps up, I’ll end up using my axe to hew wood.”

  “I’ll beat your sword into a plowshare if you like,” I said. “I admire your bloodthirst, but what will you do if there is no war? They could still make peace, you know.”

  “Now, where’s the fun in that, eh, Cnut?” scoffed Henry, slapping the younger fellow on the back, which resulted in a loud clanging noise.

  “How about you, lad?” I asked Cnut when the reverberations had faded.

  “Oh, I would like to see battle,” he said. “Father sent me here for experience, and I haven’t had much, except for marching.”

  “There’s plenty of experiences you can have without getting yourself killed, you know.”

  “You can stay home in bed and grow old if you want,” said Henry. “But the true test of a man is with steel.”

  “Steel cuts all men, the brave and the cowardly,” I replied. “Well, may you get what you came for, my friends. And I wish you well. There is no shame in surviving battles, either. Remember that.”

  We made our farewells and parted.

  I spent the afternoon roaming the Great Palace complex, juggling far and wide. I could find no sight of Ranieri. But as I came up to the lighthouse, I saw a crowd gathered, watching the fleet as it sailed north up the Bosporos. Needless to say, they were completely uninterested in my little performance.

  In the evening, I watched from a discreet distance my wife fooling around wi
th a younger man. I was not alone in watching them—they were surrounded by a crowd of Venetians. I was leaning against a corner of the embolum, my back to the alley leading to the side entrance.

  To all outward appearances, I was a Venetian myself, abandoning the motley and makeup for dark clothes and a voluminous cloak. I had also added what I thought was a rather dashing mustache and beard, but all it did was produce peals of laughter from my beloved when I showed myself to her. She told me afterward that it helped her forget about the throbbing pain in her jaw, which was good. When I saw the size of the bruise under her whiteface, I had to be restrained from storming Blachernae and committing reginacide.

  Aglaia’s duties to the Empress generally kept her inside Blachernae, but she was a superb street performer when given the opportunity. It was the first time I had seen her work with another fool besides myself, apart from when all four of us performed together.

  Plossus and she transformed into a variety of couples: mother scolding son, old lecher pursuing virtuous maiden, squabbling siblings. When he donned his stilts and began to juggle, she pulled out her lute and matched melodies to his movements.

  There was an odd mood in the quarter tonight. A suppressed excitement combined with apprehension, a sense that the world could end soon. Children chased each other in and out of the flickering pools of light cast by the torches, while couples held each other close, wondering how much longer they had together.

  Plossus was now standing on his hands on top of the stilts. Suddenly, he let one fall so that he was balanced on just his right hand, ten feet off the ground. As all eyes turned upward, I reached behind my back and tapped the cloak.

  Rico, who had been clinging to a leather harness that wrapped around my chest, slipped to the ground behind me. I held out my arms for a moment, shielding the alley from view with my cloak, while he noiselessly fiddled with the padlock on the side entrance to the embolum. I heard a soft click and a satisfied grunt. Checking to make sure no one was watching me, I stepped backward until I found the door. Then I went in.

  I had a small burglar’s lantern that I held in front of the door where I had seen Ranieri move his crates. Rico examined the padlock, then selected an iron key from several on a ring at his waist. He slid it gently inside the padlock and turned it. The lock fell open.

  “Cake and candy,” said Rico. “Shall I do the others?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Let’s get these crates open.”

  I was wondering how we could pry them open without being heard from the outside. Just then, I heard the crowd start singing along with our two colleagues, a fervent, patriotic air.

  “Perfect time for a sing-along,” said Rico as he slipped a short crowbar under the lid of the first crate. I did the same on the other side, and the lid came away with a creak. Rico pulled himself up to the top of the crate, and we took a look at something blue and fluttery.

  “Just a bale of silk,” said the disappointed dwarf.

  I took my crowbar and tapped the bale in a few spots. The third tap produced a muffled clank.

  “Not just a bale of silk,” said Rico. He slipped inside the crate and stuck his hand carefully into the bale. He grunted, then pulled out a sword that reflected the lantern brightly. He held it up.

  “Does this make me the true king of England?” he asked.

  “Better put it back,” I said.

  He replaced it, then squatted to see what else was there.

  “I count over fifty blades,” he said. “Good steel, no fancywork around the hilts. I wonder what kind of worms spun them.”

  “Come on out. We’ll check the others.”

  The next crate held four dozen shields stacked under the barest of coverings. A third opened to reveal crossbows along with a slew of bolts. I shuddered upon seeing them.

  “What gave you the shivers just then?” asked Rico, ever watchful.

  “Ugly things, these,” I said, holding a bolt up to the light. “Took one through my thigh a couple of years ago. Lucky I still have the leg.”

  “Well, just because you had one little unpleasantness with a crossbow doesn’t mean they’re all bad,” he reasoned. “I find them useful once in a while. When you’re my size, you think highly of anything that can even the odds.”

  “Want to take one as a souvenir?”

  “No, thank you,” he replied. “I already have one back at my place.”

  The remaining crates produced more of the same.

  “Whose storeroom is this?” asked Rico.

  I held my lantern up to the door. There was an engraved plate bolted onto it with the name of Bastiani in large letters.

  “Interesting inventory for a dead man,” said Rico.

  “Or a good storage room for a live one,” I said. “If the weapons are found, they could always blame the deceased.”

  “What should we do about all of this?” asked Rico. “Tell the eunuch?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We need to know why the weapons are here. Are they supplies for an insurrection or just kept as a precaution in case their Pisan and Genoese neighbors decide to take advantage of the times and attack the quarter?”

  “Or maybe someone’s just smuggling arms,” added Rico. “And your friend Bastiani got wind of it somehow and was killed before he could pass along the information.”

  “So, if we alert Philoxenites now, we don’t discover who’s behind Ranieri. We’ll just frighten them into inactivity.”

  “Not the worst result,” he said. “But you also want the murderer, don’t you?”

  “I don’t like letting him run around loose,” I said. “At the very least, I want to know who it is before we decide what to do about him. Maybe I can convince Philoxenites to hold off any action until we’ve learned the full story.”

  He gestured at the opened crates. “We didn’t bring our glue pot with us. They’ll know someone’s been poking around.”

  “Let’s put the lids back. If they’re not checking inside every day, they might miss the damage.”

  We replaced the lids as snugly as we could, then closed the door and locked the padlock.

  “Where next?” he whispered.

  “Ranieri brought the crates out of that one,” I said. I held the lantern up. The plate read “Ranieri.”

  The lock succumbed quickly to Rico’s manipulations, and the door swung open. The room contained many more crates than had Bastiani’s, many of them stacked to the ceiling.

  “Where do we begin?” I wondered, looking around.

  Rico peered around the corner of the pile.

  “There’re a few more in back,” he said. “It looks like the front stack was placed to conceal them. Unless they’re all put anywhere.”

  “Ranieri seems too careful a man to be messy,” I said. “Let’s try it.”

  We had just finished prying the lid off the first crate when Rico looked up in the direction of the street. The singing had died down.

  “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

  “Hide,” I said, handing him my crowbar. I crept to the door to the main room of the embolum. To my dismay, I heard the padlock on the front door being unlocked and voices in the alley by the side. There was no other way out. The best tack was to take the offense. I stepped out of the storeroom, closed the door, and set the padlock so that it appeared locked without actually being so. Then I blew out my lantern and placed it under a table.

  Torchlight preceded the entrance of several young men who stopped when they saw me standing motionless in the darkness.

  “Who are you?” one of them called in Greek.

  “Who are you?” I replied in my best Venetian dialect.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Lay down your weapons.”

  I held my cloak open to show that I wore no sword. I did have a knife and dagger secreted about my person, but I wasn’t ready to give them up just yet.

  “Which one of you is my contact?” I demanded.

  They stared, then looked un
certainly at each other.

  “Come, men of Venice, I have little time,” I continued. “I’ve been waiting far too long. If I’m not back on my boat before daylight, we may all be dead men. Who is my contact?”

  One of them stepped forward. “You are from the fleet?” he asked.

  “Children,” I said, shaking my head in amazement. “Useless. All right, I’m going. If anyone comes in here looking for me, tell him I will return tomorrow at this time. Now, get out of my way.”

  I strode toward them. For a moment, I thought I might pull it off, but the one who had just spoken to me blocked my path.

  “We heard a noise like someone was breaking into this place,” he said.

  “That was me,” I said. “This is where I was told to go.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you’re just a common burglar.”

  “Do you see me with any stolen goods?” I demanded. “Or tools to break down doors? Use your head, boy. Now, let me go. Our Doge awaits my word.”

  He put his hand on my chest.

  “If it is so important that the fleet contact one of us, then you shall stay,” he declared. “Tie him up.”

  The others, given something simple to do, grabbed me. In a minute, I was trussed to a chair.

  “We’ll be back with our elders,” said the youth. “Then we’ll figure out what is happening here.”

  They ran out, leaving me bound and in the dark.

  But not alone. As soon as the last youth exited, a knife blade slid through the crack of the doorway to Ranieri’s storeroom to dislodge the padlock. Moments later, Rico and I were running through the back alleys of the quarter.

  We found my bag, which I had stowed for safekeeping before this venture. I was in full makeup and motley in under two minutes, the Venetian garb and fake facial hair tucked under my juggling clubs.

  “Should be enough to conceal your identity,” muttered Rico. “Good try with that story, by the way. You almost convinced me that you were a Venetian spy, and I know you.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, picking up my bag.