Satisfied that nothing more was to be gained from following Miro, I desisted from that time. Indeed I would have had to in any case as the following day Benetto departed for Padua on some affair of business or of state and invited me to attend upon him. I say ‘invited’, but though familiarity had bred me a great deal of freedom in the Priuli household, yet was I still dependent on their charity and an invitation from Benetto was pretty like a command from anyone else.
In Padua he was closeted for long hours with the two rettori, the podesta or civil ruler at whose table I had first encountered Giacomo Basadonna, and the capitano or military ruler. The following day we set off for Verona, Benetto in a carriage, I on horseback, for we had paused at the villa on the Brenta to pick up some mounts including my own favourite, Priam.
Perhaps my joy at riding along a strange road, free from all constraints, except the umbrella strapped to my thigh, and almost forgetful even of Felicia, should have told me something of my nature. But when, after his business in Verona was concluded, instead of taking me further with him towards Brescia, Benetto sent me back to that most beautiful of prisons on the lagoon, it took all my dreams of Felicia to give me will and strength for the journey.
At the same time I was flattered, for the reason for my early return was to bear important missives from Benetto to his uncle, the Doge. True, I had an escort of armed men from the Paduan guard – for the countryside was full of fellows who would slit a lonely traveller’s throat for a purseful of gazets. But I was the one entrusted with the dispatches and these soldiers, even their officer, all deferred to me and called me ‘sir’.
Following Benetto’s instructions, we returned slowly and on two occasions were overtaken by other of his messengers on lathered and panting horses with further missives from Bergamo and Brescia to add to my load.
Back at the villa I said farewell both to Priam and my escort, for once on the river I was reckoned to be as safe as in the city itself. Water was the Venetian element. Was not the State remarried each year to the ocean?
It was a mild evening of spring when I set foot on the Molo, with the setting sun throwing the piazzetta into deep shade. But it was not so deep that I could not see a third column between the two great pillars. As on my first arrival in Venice, someone had recently paid the price of offending the State.
I had enough acquaintance now to be interested to see if I knew the poor hunk of meat that dangled there. And when I looked closely I saw that I did. And wished that I didn’t.
For it was Giambattista Bragadino.
Now I wished more fervently than ever that I had set Priam’s nose to the north and galloped away while I had the chance. But that chance was gone, and perhaps even the chance of ever again having the chance, for there were foot-steps behind me and a voice murmured, ‘No trouble now’, as I felt myself seized and pushed unceremoniously towards the even deeper shades at the edge of the piazzetta. I had no thought but that I was arrested, so what use to resist? Then suddenly terror gave me strength and I began to struggle wildly. There were three or four of them but I managed to break free and give one a shrewd blow in the groin before I was seized again from behind and felt the cold steel at my throat.
‘In God’s name, Carlo, will you betray us all?’ hissed Quevedo’s voice.
Now I struggled no more but let myself be bundled through a nearby door into one of the houses directly opposite the Ducal Palace. Only the clarissimi could afford to live here and the Spaniards must have had a great hold over the poor devil who owned the house to get his cooperation with the lair of the Ten just over the way, and the evidence of their power swaying in the sea breeze even closer!
The dispatches were taken from me and opened swiftly but with care. Miro was there and he read through them with a rapidity I marvelled at even in my present state of shock. As he finished each, he passed it to Quevedo who resealed them with hot wax and a signet ring which looked in every respect the twin of Benetto’s. Meanwhile two other fellows I knew not watched over me with stilettos ready, while the third whom I had struck crouched in a corner nursing his crutch and shooting glances of pure hatred.
‘Carlo,’ said Quevedo in a soft voice in order not to disturb the secretary’s concentration. ‘You must now take these with all haste into the palace. Your delay is but short and will not be noticed for there is a great banquet being held tonight at which the Senate honour an emissary of the Holy Father, and you will be kept waiting long.’
‘What?’ I cried. ‘You expect me to deliver these missives you have stolen from me in the most public place of the city and tampered withal? Nay, you may die for your own fool-hardiness, but not I!’
‘Carlo,’ said Quevedo urgently. ‘The other way is for your body to be found in a rio with your money gone but the dispatches intact. This is almost as safe a way for us.’
‘Much safer,’ gasped my friend with the bruised balls. I smiled at him and contemplated putting my foot through his belly, but his companions still did not waver their blades.
‘Put like that ….’ I said.
‘Good man,’ said Quevedo. ‘Miro, are you done?’
‘Aye,’ said Miro, passing over the last sheet. I looked at him curiously. Clearly he must have had one of those minds which is able at a single reading to take the print of all it sees. My own memory for languages is great, but it came nowhere near this miraculously speedy learning of what was written.
‘What news?’ inquired Quevedo as he impressed the hot wax with his signet.
I thought he was speaking to me but Miro replied.
‘Mainly good,’ he said. ‘The rettori are all of a mind, that they maintain their rule but perilously and only by making growing concessions to the common people to make Venice seem a more bearable master than the local nobles. But the balance is delicate. In Bergamo for instance the capitano has rejected the Ten’s instructions to arrest Count Colleoni because they have not power enough to assault his castle. This disaffection is widespread and should give us great hope.’
‘Good,’ said Quevedo. ‘Carlo, here are your dispatches, good as new. Go quickly now. I shall see you tomorrow.’
From the doorway, I could see the grisly centrepiece of the two pillars in the fast darkening square.
‘Who is it that hangs there?’ I cunningly asked Quevedo, who had accompanied me to the door.
‘A fool,’ he replied. ‘One who reported to us all that passed in the Senate, but had no more wit than to let himself be caught by an ignorant friar! ’Tis his passing that increases your importance, Carlo.’
‘How so?’
‘Why, now we need all the help we can get to discover the Senate’s plans. Such information as we have gleaned tonight would in the past have come from Bragadino. Now we must rely on other sources. So thank him as you pass!’
‘Thank him?’
‘Aye,’ he laughed. ‘The more important you are, the greater shall be your reward. Go now! You tarry too long.’
As I crossed the piazzetta I glanced up at the body and thought of what Quevedo had said. There had been nothing in his intonation to suggest that he knew of my own observation of the meetings between Miro and Bragadino. But I shuddered to think that that sharp-eyed monk may have noted my presence and mentioned it in his report to the authorities. These damn Franciscans should stick to their own business such as talking to birds and the like. I would I had the disciplining of them!
So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I entered the Ducal Palace.
In the event all passed as Quevedo had forecast. I was kept waiting for nearly three hours, but when I was finally dealt with, it was not by some minor officer of the Senate, but the Doge himself, old Antonio, who greeted me most kindly, inquired after his nephew’s health and offered me refreshment while he glanced through the dispatches.
Finally he put them aside with a sigh which confirmed Miro’s reading.
‘Well, Carlo,’ he said, ‘I hear good reports of you since you put this business of the M
olini girl out of your mind.’
So, the old sod kept tabs on me, I thought. I didn’t care much to be considered important enough for that.
‘My nephew speaks fairly of you,’ continued the old man.
‘I have much to thank the great beneficence of God and the family Priuli for,’ I said.
He looked pleased at my almost blasphemous flattery.
‘We are a proud people, Carlo, jealous of our heritage,’ he said. ‘But you will find that we are willing to reward the stranger who serves our State with the same open hand as we use to pour bounty on our sons. Go now and rest. You have travelled far and waited long.’
As I left the chamber, he spoke again, making me halt in the doorway.
‘Soon comes the Feast of the Ascension when Venice pays special thanks to the fates for our greatness and to those who have helped in no matter how small a way to preserve it. Perhaps if you continue well we may find a place for you in those holy celebrations. Good night.’
I left feeling relieved and flattered. Ascension Day was when this marriage with the sea took place, a pagan notion, but one which not unexpectedly delighted these pagan Venetians.
Perhaps after all the way lay open for me to make good in the city and win the hand of Felicia by open and legitimate means.
I went to bed happy and dreamt of my love till my lust exploded with no help from my hand. So does benevolent nature relieve the virtuous man from the temptations of the flesh. But the temptations of the mind may expect no such spontaneous and natural relief.
13
QUEVEDO hadn’t been joking when he said that Bragadino’s death increased my importance. I doubt not that the Spaniards could find any number of the clarissimi venal enough to pass on State secrets for cash, but the Venetian reputation for cunning was so great that the conspirators were ever in doubt as to what information was genuine, and what had merely been planted. I was the nearest thing they had to direct access to the Doge’s own family and I found myself being urged to acts of eavesdropping and burglary perilous in the extreme. Godfrey was just as eager to discover what stage the plot against the Most Serene Republic had reached and urged me in his turn to acts of eavesdropping and espionage against the Spaniards which were like to have proved even more perilous than spying on Benetto!
‘God’s windows!’ exclaimed Godfrey at my objections. ‘Have you become so soft with this easy living that you fear to take a little risk for your mistress’s sake?’
I answered that I didn’t really see what all this had to do with Felicia and if, as her messages indicated, she was ready to flee with me at a moment’s notice, why not go now before things got more complicated?
‘As you will, as you will. Go, go, go,’ he answered in great irritation. ‘I will bear a letter to the convent this day. Make your arrangements. You will need a boat to bear you to the terrafirma, a carriage and horses ready to bear you as swift as may be out of Venetian territory, lodgings planned along the way, and double fees for all who abet you, one for their service and one for their silence. Let me know when all is prepared and I will tell your lady.’
I was stumped, of course. Besides being penniless, I had not even got the freedom of movement to visit the mainland and begin to make these necessary arrangements.
Seeing my bafflement, Godfrey became conciliatory.
‘Come, Carlo,’ he said, putting his arm round my shoulder. ‘Forgive me for slurring your courage. I know it is a lover’s impatience, not fear, which makes you eager to be out of this place.’
Well, if he knew that, he knew more than I did, but he went on to offer to ease one-half of my dilemma by himself acting as the source of the kind of information the Spaniards wished me to pick up from Benetto. When I asked him how he planned to get this he laughed and made the sign of the fig, saying, ‘Men talk in their beds and women too, when their mouths have nothing better to do.’
He was as good as his word and soon I was bearing back information of sufficiently good quality to delight Quevedo. But I was still too insignificant – and too much of a security risk – to be entrusted with details of the plot. It was close, so much I could sense from the way Quevedo and Miro talked in my presence, but whenever they touched upon matters of great secrecy, they spoke in a strange tongue which I did not comprehend. Quevedo, knowing my skill with languages, had tested me out before I was aware what he was at, and listen as hard as I might, I could not come to grips with this tongue. It was no simple dialect of Spanish, that I knew, no patois. It was a language in its own right, but not such as I had ever heard before, and I could in no way seize the core of it.
Then one day, as I wandered along the Molo on some errand for Benetto, I paused to observe a Venetian war-galley which was being brought to its moorings. One of the oars fell out of the rhythm slightly and I heard the crack of a cane across some poor fellow’s shoulders and a few words of filthy Italian abuse. The answer this drew sounded even filthier and more abusive but I could not comprehend it, save that it was that same mysterious language of Quevedo’s and Miro’s! The cane cracked again, the voice subsided, and moments later the galley was made fast to the quay.
Boldly I leapt aboard, knowing that a brazen face (which God had given me) and a gentleman’s clothes (which Benetto had given me) would probably carry me past all but the captain. Him I encountered on the upper deck, a sulky-faced, gorgeously dressed young fellow, clearly one of those who had reluctantly chosen this form of paid service in preference to the other main alternative open to younger sons of impoverished families, the Church.
‘What do you seek, sir?’ he demanded.
‘Why, sir, forgive me. I thought this was my friend, Ferigo Corner’s command, but I see I am mistaken.’
My mention of the name of one of the city’s most famous and powerful families impressed him. I chose it partly for this reason, and partly because I had heard in the broglio only that morning that Ferigo Corner’s galley had sailed for Crete at dawn, and he was not likely to be around to deny my acquaintance.
It was not long before I was being shown over the galley and I soon realized this fop was one of those who would rather use his ship’s allowance to put jewelled rings on his fingers than meat in his oarsmen’s bellies. These poor sods – nearly all condemned criminals, for few men are so wretched as to take on such work for pay – had little chance of protest. Whatever their crimes, they deserved better than this, I thought. And where was the wisdom of the State in permitting their famous fleet of galleys to be powered by such verminous, starved and beaten wretches as these?
I spotted my man by the fresh weals across his back and casually made inquiry of the overseer of his crime and provenance.
He was, I learned, a native of a region of Spain called the Basque provinces. These Basques it was who defeated Charlemagne’s rearguard at Roncesvalles and slew Roland, a story I knew well. (Not, let me add, for the heroic moral it contains-but for the tactical lesson. Even then, before my career had properly begun, I was more interested in the craft of warfare than its heroics!)
But I had not known that the Basques spoke their own language, Eskuara, somewhat barbaric but not unmusical, and totally unlike either French or Spanish, the geographically closest tongues.
I spoke briefly with the fellow, who had made the mistake of signing on as a mercenary with the Venetian army, then trying to abscond with his bounty. Big or small, Venice is loth to lose those who have offended her.
To my delight I discovered that this fellow’s sentence was now up. His return of the overseer’s abuse had sprung from a sense of imminent freedom and the blows he had received for his impertinence were a kind of affectionate farewell.
The State could afford to be generous in the strict observance of its own sentencing laws, for it was clear as this ragged wretch limped wearily off along the Molo that he would almost certainly be taken up for some other crime before the day was out.
I overtook him before his fate could, and invited him to eat with me at a low taver
n such as the poorest fishermen do use, though even here they looked askance at my companion particularly when, after bolting more food in a minute than he’d probably had in a month, he staggered outside and was violently sick into the canal. But, nothing daunted, he came back in and set to once more.
His name was Sabino Baroja and while our acquaintance lasted I learned everything there was to know about him from his early history to his present state. He was one of the blackest-dyed villains I had ever met but so consistent in his villainy that it was almost a kind of moral code. He claimed to be a devout Catholic and supported his claim by asserting that he would have nothing to do with flesh on Fridays whether it was eating it, killing it, or fucking it. This extreme piety (he asserted) had brought him to his present plight for he had first of all lost his mistress’s favour (niece to the Queen of Spain, he proclaimed) by refusing to service her on a Friday and then, having joined the army and been like to command a regiment, he had sheathed his sword in a desperate broil one Thursday midnight and refused to take it out again till the twenty-four hours had passed.
I believed only one word in ten, but I listened most patiently off and on for the next week, all the time learning his own language, which he always fell into after the third flask of wine. It was an expensive business and he clearly imagined I was reserving his services for some deed of unspeakable foulness.
‘A killing is it, master?’ he would ask leering at me knowingly. ‘A rival in love? Some old sod who’s got you in his will but won’t oblige by snuffing it? Never you fret. Big or little, young or old, man, woman or priest, Sabino Baroja is your only man.’
In the end it was easier to let him believe that this was my purpose, particularly as I felt his pretensions to expertise were probably ninety per cent braggadocio. Then, about ten days after our first encounter, as I went to meet him I passed a gang of men pulling a dripping bundle out of a rio – a not uncommon sight particularly in the harbour area where the bravi roamed freely at night. I saw the face of the drowned man as I passed; and he had been too recently killed for the fish to have chewed or water to have washed it beyond recognition. It looked like the bright young captain of Sabino’s old galley and when I reached the tavern where we usually met, the villainous Basque was full of drink and self-delight and in answer to my questions mockingly waggled two fingers at me, on both of which were heavy bejewelled rings. Furiously I dragged him outside into a shady calle where I tore the rings from his fingers and would have cast them into the nearest canal had not his face warned me that I might follow them. Instead, finding a loose stone in the paved way, I prised it up and beat the rings with it till the jewels fell loose and any distinguishing marks in the soft gold were unrecognizable.
The Forging of Fantom Page 16
