The Forging of Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  No, there was only one language which he spoke anything near as perfect as his own – and there would not be many travellers from that country to notice any strangeness of accent.

  So I started making inquiries about a Croatian – my uncle Godislav, whom I was following with important messages but who had been uncertain where his road would take him from Verona. Instantly I got results but these too I checked and double-checked before I set Priam’s head westward once more and followed the road to Brescia. Here there was the same legerdemain but I was becoming familiar with Godfrey’s tricks by now and lost much less time before I found the warmer trail that took me to Bergamo.

  Now I was almost at the edge of Venice’s territory. A few miles more and I would be in the Duchy of Milan. If Godfrey’s aim were to take refuge in a land inimical to the Venetians, he need look no further. The Spanish ruled in Milan and the failure of the recent plot in Venice would not have drawn the two countries any closer together.

  On the other hand the occupying forces of the Duchy had a reputation for being even more suspicious than the Venetian Senate. They saw spies and smelt plots everywhere. No stranger, however elevated in rank, could feel totally secure in that place and, in addition, while Venice tolerated almost any religion, Milan accepted none but the True Faith. I knew that all Protestants deserve the eternity of hell that lies before them, but even I shuddered at the stories I heard in Bergamo of innocent travellers being taken up by the Spanish and disappearing down the gullet of the Inquisition.

  The English, being the most notoriously perverted of all the protestant races of Europe, were especially susceptible. No, it was most unlikely that Godfrey would take that risk. His destination was much more likely to be Switzerland – Zurich most probably, for that city had the deserved reputation of being the headquarters of the devil’s party and the centre of militant anti-Catholicism in Europe.

  This conclusion seemed perfectly rational, yet when I looked for traces of him on the road which swung away north by Lecco and then alongside Como up to the Grisons, I could find none. Puzzled, I lost time by hesitating whether to go forward or renew my inquiries in Bergamo. Priam was delighted to take his ease, but there was no ease for me, not in my mind at least. For I could not sleep for worrying that I might have been once more deceived and Godfrey and Felicia could at this very moment be wantoning their way south to Cremona.

  Then a friendly Franciscan who overheard my inquiries and mistook their purpose, took me aside and spoke to me most seriously, advising me against taking the easy lakeside route to the Grisons. At first I regarded him with suspicion, thinking he must have some unpleasant motive for sticking his nose into my affair. But soon I realized he was just one of those good, kindly religious men who are disgusted by barbarisms even when enacted in the name of his own Church.

  ‘Near the border the Spaniards have a castle, Forte Fuentez, close by Colico,’ he told me. ‘Any traveller moving along that road is treated with suspicion for he has either just come from or is heading for the protestant territories.’

  ‘How shall I go then, Father?’ I asked him.

  ‘Up the valley of the Brembana is best,’ he told me. ‘’Tis a rough, hard road, but you may be sure it will not take you by Rome or Madrid!’

  I thanked him sincerely, asked for his blessing and gave him gold. Naturally, had Godfrey taken the Como road, I would have followed him dauntlessly, clad in the assured armour of my proud faith. But as he’d taken the coward’s road, there must I go also.

  The coward’s road I called it. Cowards they may be who take it, but fit cowards they are before they finish! For fifteen miles or so, the road climbs gently enough, then of a sudden you are out of the foothills and labouring up a mountainside. Huge boulders litter the way and underfoot is nothing but rock, rock, solid rock.

  Soon I dismounted from Priam and walked alongside him, leaning on the saddle for support when my legs grew too weary. Sometimes our roles were reversed and, where the ascent became very rugged, I had to pull on the reins to keep his head forward while his hoofs slipped and sparked on the stones, and his eyes rolled white with fear and effort.

  I was not used to such exercise, and young though I was, the suppleness of young legs for dancing and playing pallone is not the same as the durability of old legs made tough by half a dozen hard campaigns. But all the time I had the knowledge to comfort me that if this was agony to me, what must it be like to Felicia? Every step I took must be bringing me closer to them. No carriage could come up here, certes, and few horses could be ridden. In any case, knowing how Godfrey cared for his horses, I could not see him permitting Felicia to ride along these hardest stretches. I was surprised to detect a pang of sympathy for my lost love!

  So I pressed on hard and Priam, as if recognizing that I was willing to share these hardships equally between us, made no complaint. Two days after leaving Bergamo we emerged at the top of the Passo di San Marco. Mountains stretched on all sides about us. They are huge terrible things, so full of power, yet neither good nor evil. I thanked God he had chained them to the earth and let only man loose to roam freely and kill or be killed.

  At the head of the pass was an inn, the Ca di San Marco. Who, or what, had the courage and strength to build in such a place I do not know, but he had a certain wit. For above the door in black letters on a golden ground was an inscription celebrating the reopening and improving of the road in 1594. God’s cobbles! What must it have been like before?

  But while I smiled at this, my eyes were taking in the significance of another part of the design. Above the inscription was a winged lion all of gold. The symbol of Venice.

  And in this place, the symbol of the boundary of Venice’s power. The Serene Republic ended here.

  In the inn I took refreshment and talked with the landlord. He was a garrulous fellow and information was easy to come by. He shrugged at my description of Godfrey, but his eyes lit up at the mention of Felicia. Her he remembered well. The poor lady! So exhausted. But so beautiful too! It hadn’t seemed right that such a soft tender creature should be reduced to such weariness. Not by walking at any rate!

  And so he went on, alternating between pity for her plight and lechery for her person. I was amused to observe some stirrings of anger in my breast when this coarse fellow spoke so familiarly of Felicia’s charms. God’s pimp! can a man defend the honour of a whore?

  Finally I got him to shut up about soft flesh and elegant figures and tell me when they had passed.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘I was just smoking some ham, then the wool merchants came up from Morbegno, and it was one of them who said, “Here comes a beauty. But so tired!” and I said …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently before all that could start again. ‘But when?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said grumpily. ‘Five, six hours ago.’

  Five or six hours! I had made up more than a day on them. Felicia must indeed have been weary.

  My old impatience was back with renewed ardour, but I forced myself to wait till Priam had been taken care of and given some opportunity to rest. I was beginning to learn that a horseman is a centaur, the man’s head being no more powerful than the beast’s legs.

  The descent into the Valtellina was easier, but needed as much care as the road up had needed effort. I was in a hurry to get into the valley, but I wanted to arrive in the same condition as I had set out! I remember when we had gone but a few hundred yards I looked back at the Ca di San Marco, already perched high above me, and it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d been out of Venetian territory since Godfrey and I rowed through the mists of the lagoon, how long ago? A lifetime? Several lifetimes! I had arrived as a boy. Grown into a young man. And now I was I knew not what. But I knew that I was changed.

  I looked back once more at the golden lion which glared defiantly from both sides of the inn so that, coming or going, a man must think of Venice. Our acquaintance had not been long but she had been like a parent to me; sometimes
harsh of manner, stern of reproach, restrictive of behaviour, but often loving, smiling, cherishing. For the second time in my life I felt I was leaving home.

  Once in the Valtellina Godfrey must have felt safe, for now his trail was broad and easy to follow, which is more than can be said for the roads in that valley. They are too narrow for a carriage or even a cart to travel. Horse or foot is your only device and like to be painful either way for the ways are rarely paved but scattered with sharp rough stones which will rip a boot or split a hoof with equal ease.

  It was at an inn in Morbegno that I so easily picked up traces of Godfrey and Felicia. I arrived there in the evening and discovered that the fugitive pair had paused for refreshment that afternoon and then pressed on westward.

  ‘Terrible tired the lady was. I doubt they’ll have gone far on the road,’ mine host assured me. He was a fat jolly fellow and as he concentrated only on Felicia’s fatigue and said nothing of her figure, I warmed to him. Various cronies of his were drinking in the tavern and soon they were drawn also into the conversation. I had heard much of the renowned wines of the Valtellina and now I tasted them, each in turn, and was soon able to understand why the people of that valley were so jovial and welcoming. When I entered the inn, I’d had half a mind to press the pursuit hard once more, but I was way weary and that combined with the good wine and better fellowship soon changed my mind and I went to bed happier than I’d been for many a night.

  My resolution had been to make a dawn start, but when I woke the sun was high.

  To have lost more time should have angered me, but I found it did not, or not so much as I might have wished. I am not one of these self-regarding fellows who thinks no expedition so fine as that into his own mind to examine the motives there, but he who lives by his wits and his sword does well to keep them both keen. So as I broke my fast, I considered my state closely and discovered that now the moment of confrontation was imminent and practically certain, I had not the enthusiasm for it that I’d started with.

  Mistake me not. Vengeance I still wanted. How could I call myself a man of honour without it? And if, even then, some cynic in my breast mocked the idea of Carlo Fantom, the Croatian farmer’s son, as a man of honour, it was that same cynic who recognized that only a fool bilked his debts to Venice. Where I had come, others could come also.

  And yet now – perhaps it had been the good wine and fellowship of the night before – now the act of vengeance, though still important, was not the sole motive for existence. When I caught up with Godfrey and Felicia I would kill them – or try to. At least, I would kill Godfrey. Felicia deserved no less, but I was no longer certain I could so easily do that deed. And even with Godfrey, though my resolution had not weakened, yet my keen anticipation had lost its edge. It now seemed a necessary chore, not the pleasure in prospect which it had hitherto been.

  Such were the thoughts still turning like high hawks in my head as I clasped the landlord’s hand and gave and received a most cordial farewell. And such were the thoughts that stayed with me as I let Priam amble gently along, picking his own path over the stony narrow way.

  The sun was hot even under my umbrella, the wine-drowsiness still with me despite my long sleep. Twice I almost fell out of the saddle as I dozed. As the sun approached its apogee I looked for somewhere to rest and quench our thirst. Ahead not far off the road lay a farmhouse. There was no one in sight, but at this time of day wise men enjoyed their siesta. I turned Priam up the track that led to the house. He was almost as sleepy as I was and when a miserable mangy farm cur started up from behind a wall, its sharp yapping threw us equally into confusion.

  I swore, Priam reared. Somewhere there was a dull crack like a rotten beam breaking. Priam screamed and came down violently. His forelegs would not hold him and over he went on his head. I who was horseman enough to survive the sudden rearing, could no nothing about this, but soared through the air, the umbrella strapped to my thigh acting as a kind of brake so that my fall to earth was not too violent. But it drove the breath from me and brought tears to my eyes, tears which anticipated the grief which should have caused them. For when my eyesight cleared I beheld Priam lying a few yards away with his dear life ebbing from a great hole in his chest.

  I struggled to rise, but the umbrella impeded me. As I tried to wrench it free, it struck me that I was shaded still, though the hoop of leather rested on the side of me away from the sun.

  I turned and looked up.

  Godfrey stood there, sword in one hand and a smoking pistol in the other.

  He smiled with what looked like genuine pleasure.

  ‘Welcome, my little phoenix,’ he said. ‘Carlo, you never cease to amaze me!’

  2

  THUS begins the last chapter of my friendship with Godfrey Hatfield, English gent., Uskok pirate, seducer of virgins, betrayer of friends.

  Truly I may say that most of what little I know in life I learned from Godfrey.

  He disarmed me as I lay on the ground, all unmanned. He whistled with pleasure as he examined my Spanish blade, saying, ‘Truly a gentleman’s weapon. So the phoenix would rise in society too!’

  ‘I had another sword once,’ I answered. ‘But it was used so dishonourably that there is no armourer’s acid may burn away the stain.’

  He regarded me sombrely.

  ‘It was not my words that brought her to that place,’ he said accusingly. ‘So swiftly it happened that she was dead before I saw she was not just some interfering watchman.’

  ‘Perhaps so. But had it been your own mother, she would still have had to die!’ I said.

  ‘We all have to die, Carlo,’ he said. ‘And as I recall you are not averse to killing God’s own priests, which are a kind of woman. On your feet now!’

  He drove me before him to the house, preventing me when I tried to unstrap the cumbersome umbrella from my thigh, saying, ‘Keep your anchor, Carlo, so you will not drift on a rocky lee-shore.’

  The first person I encountered within the house was a redfaced, wine-nosed man whom I recalled as one of my most convivial companions of the night before. He did not look so jolly now.

  ‘You said nought of killing in the house!’ he protested.

  ‘You said you would follow him along the road and finish it there.’-

  ‘I could not know he would turn towards this hovel,’ said Godfrey carelessly. ‘Go about your business. Better still, take your pay and go and spend it in the town. All will be done, and gone, by the time you return.’

  He tossed the red-faced man a purse and he thrust it into his pocket and hastily departed.

  ‘Strange,’ said Godfrey. ‘A farmer, and can’t abide the sight of blood. Forward!’

  He thrust me into a broad stone-flagged chamber simply furnished with a stout wooden table and chairs to match. There was a deep fireplace, not cleaned out since the winter, and here he forced me to sit amidst the cold ashes so that, what with the umbrella, I was almost wedged in.

  ‘There, Carlo. Now we can talk at our ease and not always be worrying if the other is comfortable!’

  He laid my sword and his own on the table, sat down and began reloading his pistol, the English dog-lock I had once so envied. He looked perfectly careless and relaxed but I was not deceived.

  ‘You paid those fellows to hold me with drink last night, then send me on this road in the morning,’ I accused.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You should know me by now, Carlo. In enemy waters I will twist and dodge. But once on the open sea, I never hesitate to turn and fight. I am not one who cares to have some hound of Venice sniffing his trail half across Europe. Though such a puppy as you I never thought to see again! Tell me how you did it.’

  There seemed no harm, and in any case when the talking stopped, I cared not to think what was like to start.

  He made a good audience, applauding merrily when I described Jaraj’s death. Even on the edge of eternity a man may be flattered, and nothing is more pleasant than to be thought an entertaine
r. So I pressed on with my tale, never thinking what I was saying till I had finished and Godfrey, a smile still on his lips, said. ‘And so, Carlo, they sent you alone.’

  It was too late to claim anything else. I stared at him dumbly, forcing myself not to plead.

  ‘I had better keep faith with that peasant and not kill you here,’ he mused. ‘I had meant to follow you along the road, blow your brains out from behind and leave you in a ditch as though the banditti had taken you. But you would come up to the house. Still it has given us a chance for this little talk!’

  Then he added more sombrely, ‘Carlo. I am sorry for what happened out there.’

  I did not take his meaning for a moment.

  ‘I did not mean to kill Priam. It grieves me much,’ he continued.

  I looked at him in amazement. Of course he hadn’t meant to kill Priam, he’d meant to kill me!

  But at the same time I was touched by his regret! This was the first horse I had felt anything of that love for which can only exist between a man and his mount. For a moment, the murderer and his victim were united in a common grief.

  ‘Well, that’s the way of the world,’ he said finally. ‘In the midst of life, eh? Stand up now and let’s get this over. No, stay. Would you care to speak with Felicia before you go?’

  If he’d asked me if I’d care to speak with Beelzebub I’d have said yes.

  He went to the door and shouted, ‘My love!’

  There was no reply.

  ‘She’s very tired and has been resting,’ he explained. ‘Another reason to make my stand here. Felicia, my sweet! We have company!’

  There were footsteps on the stairs and a moment later she appeared.

  I had come to picture her in my mind as a kind of cross between one of the top-class Venetian courtesans and the Whore of Babylon. But this was no gilded, perfumed creature bedecked in lace and scarlet silk that stood before me. Clad in a simple dust-stained black travelling gown, her cheeks pale and her eyes dark-shadowed by strain and fatigue, she looked if anything more frail, more defenceless, more pure than the girl I had first encountered in her father’s gondola so many months ago.