The Forging of Fantom

by Reginald Hill

When we reached the Marqués Bedmar’s house, we paused at the garden door.

  ‘Will you not step inside, Master Fantom?’ inquired Wotton. ‘My business will occupy but a moment and there are many treasures worthy of note in the house. The Marqués is most hospitable and you will be made very welcome, I promise you.’

  I didn’t doubt it, but I was in deep enough with these Spaniards already without letting myself be seen hobnobbing with their ambassador.

  So I began to make my excuses when behind me I heard a familiar laugh and, turning, I saw at the end of the street the figure of Zanetta being aided along on her lofty choppines by Maria. These two I had no objection to encounter, but accompanying them was Benetto and I had no desire to let him see me chatting with one foreign ambassador outside the house of another. So before they could take note of me (I hoped!) I opened the garden door and stepped through.

  Thus it is that in order to conceal the smaller sin we are often driven to the larger!

  Sir Henry must have been surprised at the suddenness of my change of mind but the courtesy of his rank and his race forbade him to show it.

  At the house as promised I was greeted most courteously and while Sir Henry went to an upper chamber to meet with Bedmar, I was given wine by Señor Miro, his secretary, and invited to make free of the lower floor.

  I don’t know much about art, but I know what I can sell. Part of my training in the palazzo Priuli had been in ‘appreciation’ of those foolish ornaments and antiquities with which the clarissimi love to surround themselves. So I tested a pair of golden doves and found them gilt, pinged a crystal vase and found it flawed, ran my fingers over a medieval altar-screen and found it faked. The only things I could lay my hands on which seemed to be genuine were a beautifully balanced rapier and its left-hand dagger, though even here one could not be certain that the signature on the blade, A. PEREZ EN TOLEDO, was genuine. Under Godfrey’s tutelage I had learned that the town of Solinger was the greatest producer of blades, but these Rhinelanders, recognizing the higher reputation (and therefore price) of Spanish swords, particularly those of Toledo and Valencia, did not scruple to forge Spanish signatures on their own metal.

  Still, it looked a fine blade and its presence in Bedmar’s house was surely enough to authenticate it. The hilt was certainly Spanish, with that multiplication of guards which was turning the old ‘swept’ hilt into a kind of basket. In that country the art of the duello was more advanced than anywhere else in Europe, and the need for protection to the hand most clearly recognized.

  I made a few passes with the sword and wished it were mine, instead of the old heavy cutlass that Godfrey had given me. A large painting hung on the wall before me. I sprang forward, sword arm straight so that my body weight would provide the penetrative power, and brought my point to a halt but an eighth of an inch from the painted breast. Right to the heart! I complimented myself. And raised my eyes to find the face that looked reproachfully down at me was that of Father Ignatius! I’d have recognized that big nose anywhere. And as if to confirm my recognition, I saw that close by on the same wall with a jewelled crucifix between hung a smaller portrait of that same attenuated saint I had seen in the room of my ‘trial’ on that night of the carnival.

  ‘A complete man, I see! One who loves art and the military sciences alike!’

  I turned and saw that Sir Henry, Señor Miro and another man had come into the room. It was the last who spoke. Dressed with the lacy fussiness of a Spanish grandee, this I guessed was the Marqués Bedmar himself. Wotton confirmed this and presented me.

  ‘You like my paintings?’ inquired Bedmar. ‘They are good enough, though not like to fetch a great price here in Venice, eh, Sir Henry?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Wotton; then, in explanation to me he added, ‘This portrait is of St Ignatius Loyola who founded that Holy Order we now call the Jesuits.’

  I looked at the saint and nodded my understanding.

  ‘So,’ I said gesturing to the other portrait. ‘Ignatius hangs by Ignatius. Which of them is to be forgiven?’

  It was a foolish blasphemous joke on the two thieves who died with Our Saviour and I regretted it as soon as I made it. But Wotton merely looked puzzled while Bedmar did not speak but stood quiet with a little smile on his thin lips.

  ‘You are too subtle for me,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You must explain your riddle at our leisure.’

  ‘Is not this priest Father Ignatius?’ I asked, gesturing to the portrait.

  ‘I know not who you mean,’ said Sir Henry. ‘But strange clothes surely for a priest! No, this is the Duke Osuna, Viceroy of Naples, am I not right, your excellency?’

  ‘As always, Sir Henry,’ said Bedmar.

  I looked again at the portrait. The face was certainly Father Ignatius’s but the robes, now I observed them closely, were those of a great nobleman, not a simple priest.

  Oh God! I thought. If Osuna himself had risked coming to Venice incognito, how much more serious must this whole business be than even my worst fears had guessed?

  ‘You admire good weapons, sir?’ inquired Bedmar. ‘And do you know how to use them?’

  ‘In a just cause, sir, I shall not be found wanting,’ I replied.

  ‘Then if we find a just cause for you, perhaps you will return and claim them,’ said Bedmar. ‘They will be waiting for you, never doubt me.’

  With that double-edged remark, the visit came to an end.

  I felt weak at the knees and offered no resistance when Wotton insisted that I share his midday repast with him and fetched me with him to his house in St Hieronimo’s Street. This calle is a place where a good Catholic should take a tight grip on his soul for at one end of it is the Ghetto, that area where the numerous Jews of the city most use to live, while the street itself, besides the house of heretical England’s ambassador, contains the dwelling of Fra Paolo Sarpi, the socalled theologian who had been most active in the Venetian State’s disputes with His Holiness the Pope (and for his pains had been roundly beaten and almost killed by some indignant fellows whose religious zeal had overflowed!).

  God help me, what am I doing? I suddenly thought as I accepted the wine Sir Henry’s servant offered me. From the Spanish Embassy, which the Venetians regard as the centre of all that threatens their State, I have come here where I am surrounded by Protestants and Jews! My life hangs by a thread surely. But how to escape from this city without breaking that thread? And must I, like Orpheus, lose my love again after believing for a brief moment that she might be released from her bondage?

  Again I prayed for Godfrey’s swift return so that he might help and advise me.

  But let him return this day and I will move in the ways of virtue evermore, I bargained with God.

  The door of the salon opened. I sat open-mouthed, dribbling wine down my chin.

  God had accepted the deal.

  Smiling down at me was Godfrey.

  When you make a contract with God, you had best keep the terms of it. But all contracts, even (or perhaps especially) those of prayer, have their small print and God should read His copy as closely as man.

  The small print in this case extended the main clause of the deal and made it clear that in return for my continued virtue Godfrey should be able to offer such advice and aid as would steer me through perils and bring all my concerns to a joyful conclusion.

  Well, for some weeks I stuck to my side of the bargain and it looked as if the Deity was sticking to His. Godfrey listened closely to my account of events at the carnival and after. When I finished he took my hand and clasped it firmly.

  ‘You are a good friend to me, Carlo,’ he said (referring I suppose to my refusal to tell Jaraj who or where he was). ‘I shall labour to be as good a friend to you.’

  And labour he did.

  I left him at Sir Henry’s, whom he was visiting on some matter of an English passport as I understood. Both men had had occasion for safety’s sake to leave their own country but while Godfrey (as I have said) came into disfavou
r when the Scottish King ascended the throne, the Wotton star began to shine once more. His provident exile had begun some years earlier when the Earl of Essex, whose secretary he was, rose in revolt against the Queen and had his head chopped off. These matters I paid little heed to then, but later in my career the son of this same Essex was to lead me into a great deal of trouble. Such are the knots and tangles which God weaves into our shoddy lives!

  Godfrey, I believed, was now seeking a way of making his peace with King James so that he might have a safe return, I wished him luck, happy in the certain knowledge that where he went, there would I be taken also. And my new bride with me, for when Godfrey came to see me later that same day, he had worked out a plan whose excellence seemed to show how highly my virtue was valued in heaven!

  ‘Carlo,’ he said. ‘Your dilemma has bigger horns than Benetto! What is your main aim in this matter?’

  ‘To come off with my life and Felicia,’ I answered promptly.

  ‘I’m pleased you choose such an order,’ he said with a smile. ‘And it is the order of difficulty too. Getting Felicia is simple. ’Tis saving your life must give us pause.’

  That should have worried me, but I was more taken up with his notion that getting Felicia was going to be easy.

  ‘She will not be the first noble nun who has been abducted from her convent,’ he said smiling at my naivety.

  ‘Nay, I will not use force,’ I said in alarm.

  ‘Be still! I have no purpose to encumber our flight with an unwilling dame. No, first you must press your suit and get her agreement.’

  ‘But how shall I do that if I cannot see her?’

  ‘The city is full of go-betweens,’ he said impatiently. ‘I shall bear her your messages myself if needs be. Foreign travellers, and English in particular, are always crowding into such places to examine the antiquities. No, the important part of our plan concerns the manner in which you comport yourself.’

  He had read the situation much as I had. I was on a hiding to nothing, like to be condemned or at best disregarded by whichever party triumphed.

  ‘So we must make our plans and be away before the outbreak of any insurrection,’ he said. ‘For your own safety, you must appear to work for these Spaniards. But also it may be that you can discover the date and details of their plan so that we may know how soon to take our leave.’

  He regarded me speculatively for a while, before adding, ‘Indeed such knowledge could be especially useful, for the broil of cvil commotion might well distract the Ten from pursuing us with their avengers.’

  ‘God’s boils!’ I cried, in alarm. ‘Surely they will not want our heads for merely leaving their city? Even with a nun!’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But what say you if we took more than a nun?’

  ‘You mean, two nuns?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Stupid!’ he said angrily. ‘No, Carlo, have you thought how we shall live when we flee? My little store of money is almost gone and you are wholly dependent on the charity of the Priulis.’

  ‘Not wholly!’ I answered, piqued.

  ‘Aye, not counting what you have won by gambling, though that, as I guess, is all spent. Or by thieving, perhaps.’

  ‘I am no thief!’ I said, my pique turning to anger.

  He looked at me and shook his head sadly.

  ‘No thief? Well, then you are not the man for this enterprise. I have mistook you for another young fellow who came to me disguised as a Turk and gladly transformed into a pirate. Well, go your ways, take your ease! I shall obtain for you your lady and the money to keep you and her in comfort also. You shall not soil your hands.’

  Of course I insisted he tell me his meaning and when he did, of course I insisted on being his accomplice. But not just out of friendship or shame or simple need, but out of a sense of justice! For this Venice had involved me, will I, nill I, in its plots and its politics and had given me deep wounds to the mind and to the soul, and I truly felt that the State owed me some kind of gratuity to sweeten my departure.

  The gratuity Godfrey had chosen would be sweet indeed.

  He was proposing to rob the Treasury of St Mark’s.

  12

  WHAT a thing is this youth! Later in my life I learned to tread the middle path which winds between fields of asphodel and banks of briar. But then it was all black or white, thorns or heady perfume.

  In real terms Godfrey’s plan did nothing but double my danger, for now I was not only committed to betraying the Spaniards but robbing the State! Yet suddenly I found myself waking in the morning with such a surge of joy in my breast that I felt I could have soared like the joyous lark and greeted the dawn in song. For was I not to be reunited with my love? And not through the chancy charity of the Spaniards, but the certain courage and guile of Godfrey!

  As promised, he had made contact with Felicia, visiting the convent where she lay on the pretext of studying a certain famous altar-piece and, having used a generous donation and his own great charm to strike up an acquaintance with the Mother Superior, he was soon a welcome and regular visitor. He even contrived to have Felicia appointed his regular guide to the extensive catacombs of the convent where its founder and patron, the Patriarch of Aquileia, had stored many relicts of the old Italy before the great victories of Attila. These gullible and greedy nuns could not do too much for the rich, generous English lord who was such a close friend of the Doge’s own family!

  So he carried notes and spoken messages from me, and brought back the same, couched in terms whose language bore witness to her modesty but was yet translucent to the pure light of her love. My only fear was that such virtue might be difficult to bend to an elopement, but Godfrey’s persuasiveness was equal to the task and on the day he returned bearing her agreement, I was so intoxicated with joy that I needed no wine to celebrate. Everything seemed easy now!

  Everything, that is, except finding out more details of the Spanish plot. Godfrey began to press me to glean more information, but whenever I brought up the topic with Quevedo he would merely turn me off with a laugh and a general reassurance that all was well. To press too hard would have aroused suspicion and, besides, in all this business the thing that troubled me most was the thought that I was betraying Quevedo. True, he was a spy and a conspirator and I had no doubt that if the conspiracy required that I should be sacrificed, his loyalty to his cause would come before his affection for me. Similarly I would put those things I valued most highly – Felicia, Godfrey, and my own health – above my friendship with the Spaniard. But I felt deep pangs of conscience as I searched his room and read his private papers, pangs more painful because I found nothing of interest save for a handful of scurrilous ballads and some sheets of a kind of story in which the writer pretended to have descended into hell.

  I now started to follow Quevedo in the hope of discovering his place of assignation with others of the conspiracy and overhearing their conversations, but this proved difficult and dangerous for he knew me too well. I did observe, however, that he met frequently with Bedmar’s secretary and it struck me that this Miro was likely to be a much more profitable focus of observation than Quevedo. First, he must be Bedmar’s chief intelligencer, for the Marqués himself would hardly wander round the city arranging his plots. And secondly, though he knew me, he had not that same close acquaintance which made my tracking of Quevedo so difficult. So I transferred my attentions to Miro and after a week had begun to doubt if a conspiracy really did exist. Miro did nothing that could not be said to fall within the circle of his duties. The only activity which at all aroused my suspicion was that at the same time every forenoon he would enter the church of Santa Maria Dei Frari, the church of the Franciscan friars, and there kneel in prayer for some minutes. At first I suspected that this must be a place of assignation, but I never saw him talk to a soul inside the church and I began to believe in the end that this regularity was merely the deliberately formed habit by which the truly devout man ensures he maintains his devotions. Virtue, as I was di
scovering myself, is a matter of routine almost as much as will. To go to the same church at the same time and kneel in the same place on the same stool might have been as necessary to the health of Miro’s soul as much exercise and cold compresses were to mine!

  But two things still caused me to be doubtful.

  The first might have been a coincidence, but several times as he approached the church with myself in close attendance, I observed another figure I recognized coming out. It was that same Senator, Giambattista Bragadino, who was an acquaintance of Godfrey’s and had explained the meaning of the heads on the porphyry slab. The memory made me shiver, and I looked for excuses to draw back from my suspicions. Perhaps, I told myself, he is merely another who feels the need of regular devotion. But on my next visit for the sake of variety, I got to the church first to await Miro’s arrival, and there was Bragadino kneeling on the same cushion that the Spanish secretary always chose.

  Coincidence? I wondered. The next day I arrived early once more and my suspicions were confirmed, for not only was Bragadino on the same stool, but when he rose and left, one of the frari, a hook-nosed fellow with a pallor which suggested his withdrawal from the world was well advanced, happened to occupy the same spot before Miro’s arrival which manifestly caused the Spaniard some consternation. He hung around, pretending to examine some of the ornaments of the church, waiting till the friar had left before taking up his usual place.

  This time I waited till his head was bowed deep in prayer then tip-toed much closer than ever I had done before. His thoughts might have been in heaven for all I know, but his fingers were at the cushion of the stool he knelt on, plucking from its velvet folds a slip of paper which he palmed into his missal and carried away with him.

  So, the plot was clear! Bragadino was passing on information of some kind which Miro would bear straight back to Bedmar. I studied the knowledge closely, wondering how I might use it, but there seemed no way. At best it merely confirmed what already Quevedo had alleged, that there were in the Senate, perhaps even in the College or the Ten themselves, close sympathizers with the Spanish plot. Godfrey and I were not about to trust anyone, but this at least confirmed the wisdom of our closeness.