A Death in the Venetian Quarter (10 page)

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Authors: Alan Gordon

BOOK: A Death in the Venetian Quarter
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“That won't work,” I said.
“I know it. So, I want you to go with them, then slip off and make contact with your people there. Find out what the Crusaders want to go away. Or what they want to make peace.”
“You trust me to do this?” I said, a bit surprised.
“I don't trust anyone in this city,” he said bitterly. “But I distrust you less than most.”
“Thank you, I suppose. When does the delegation leave?”
“In a few days. I'll send word.”
“Very good, milord,” I said, bowing. “And milord?”
“Yes, Fool?”
“I distrust you less than most as well.”
He laughed, a rare occurrence for him.
“That almost counts as friendship around here,” he said. “Now, get out before I change my mind and have you killed.”
Fools make a mock at sin.
——PROVERBS 14:9
 
 
 
A
clatter of hooves and wheels approached the courtyard. As I looked out our window, an enclosed coach pulled by two horses burst through the entrance, Plossus frantically reining the steeds in. The vehicle stopped just before crashing into the house.
I went out to tie up the horses while Plossus climbed carefully down, staggering as he hit the flagstones. He pulled out a large handkerchief and mopped his brow.
“You could have warned me,” he said.
“About what?” I said innocently.
“About what? About this devil incarnate, this four-hooved fiend, this demon in a horse's shape.”
“Hello, Zeus,” I said, patting the nose of the shaggy gray malevolence that continued to buck in the traces. “Did you frighten my young friend?”
“Frighten?” groaned Plossus. “The beast is the terror of the stables. It took a team of giants to wrestle him into harness. Am I to understand that you have actually ridden this creature?”
“Oh, Zeus is just a sweetheart once he gets used to you,” I said. “And he's the fastest thing on four legs in this city.”
“That I can well believe,” said Plossus. “For he took this carriage
down the Mese at a pace that would have left Hermes coughing up dust. Pedestrians scattered, soldiers took cover, and I swear I saw the Bronze Bull in the Forum Bovis leap back to avoid being trampled into pennies.”
“Yet you lived to tell the tale,” I said. I produced a pair of carrots and gave one to each horse. The second was a sorrel mare who cast a bemused glance in Zeus's direction. “My Lady Hera seems none the worse for the experience.”
“Your wife's horse was superb,” he said. “She has no equal for equine equanimity. I see now that each horse takes after its rider.”
“I'll accept the compliment on her behalf, and forgive the insult on mine,” I said. “Nice carriage. Where did you get it?”
“Borrowed it,” he said vaguely. “The owner probably won't even notice it's gone until it's already back.”
“Good work. All right, we'll see you later.”
“Right. Good luck,” he said, then he stopped. “I just remembered something I wanted to tell you. I saw one of our wandering silk merchants this morning.”
“Ranieri again?”
“No. This time it was our drinking partner of yesterday.”
“Viadro? Where did you see him?”
“Staggering around the seawalls near the Petrion Gate,” he said. “Below the Fifth Hill. He looked drunk.”
“He's been drinking a lot, it seems.”
“I said he
looked
drunk,” said Plossus. “However, having just seen your masterful performance of last night, I can say with confidence that he was only pretending to be drunk. Badly.”
“Really? Any idea of where he was going?”
“He was staggering along the base of the wall, occasionally haranguing a shopkeeper or arguing with a guard.”
“Spying out the defenses of that section, perhaps.”
“That occurred to me as well,” said Plossus. “He got into such a debate with a Varangian at the tower by the gate that several other Varangians had to interrupt their repair work to come separate the two. That's when he turned and saw me watching. I hailed him and walked over to where he was standing, and he started into the drunk act with me. He lacks even a scintilla of your talent, my master.”
“Thank you. Did you learn anything from him?”
“No, which was more proof that he was acting. A real drunk would have given up something.”
“All right. I don't know how it fits in with everything else, but we'll add it to the puzzle.”
I summoned the rest of our band of players from the house. Aglaia was unrecognizable, even to me. She had covered her short auburn hair with a long, curly, raven-black wig and had made her face up according to the fashion of the young and unmarried ladies of the town. She wore a blue silk gown with delicate beadwork across the front and had draped a hooded cloak over everything. She looked at me, then suddenly giggled and flounced like a sixteen-year-old girl.
“I'm convinced,” said Plossus in admiration. “In fact, I'm positively smitten.”
“Which is why Rico is our coachman,” I said. “I need someone who can keep his five wits in one head.”
“And here I am,” said the dwarf, emerging from the house carrying a horsewhip and an apple. He tossed the apple to Plossus. “Put this on your witless noggin, lad.”
“Are you quite sure about this?” said Plossus as he took off his cap and bells and placed the fruit on top of his head.
Rico shrugged, then suddenly cracked the whip in a smooth forward motion. The top half of the apple flew off, leaving the remainder wobbling on Plossus's head. The lad reached up gingerly and removed it, wiping the juice from his hair.
“Nicely done,” I said as Aglaia applauded.
“First time for everything,” chuckled Rico as he climbed onto the driver's seat and took up the reins. Plossus keeled over in a dead faint, then waved good-bye from the ground as I helped my wife into the carriage.
The horses had watched the exhibition with interest. Zeus looked back at the dwarf sitting serenely with the whip coiled by his side, then looked at me.
“Give us a smooth ride, my friend,” I instructed him. “You don't want to make Rico unhappy.”
I hopped into the carriage, closed the door, and we were off.
We reached the Venetian quarter as the sun was setting. Rico stopped the carriage about fifty paces from the alley leading to Vitale's house. I stepped out, cloaked but still in motley and makeup, and ran to the front door.
Vitale opened it, then smiled when he saw me.
“It's tonight, isn't it?” he whispered eagerly.
“It is, my good landlord,” I replied, handing him some silver. “Now, here is your payment. This buys your silence and no interruptions. You are to remain down here, and you are not to address my master at peril of your wretched hide.”
“Is he that close about it?” asked Vitale.
“You will not see him, and you will never see him, or you may never see anything else,” I said. “Is that clear?”
“Oh, dear,” he muttered. “I'd better go to my room and lie down for a bit.”
“That would be the best course,” I said and dashed back to the carriage.
A short time later, I emerged as a clandestine aristocratic libertine, escorting a cloaked maid who muffled her giggles with her hands as we entered the building. As we passed by the second landing, I noticed
John Aprenos looking curiously out of his room, but I didn't meet his eye. I heard sawing from that direction.
Aglaia continued the giggling until we reached Bastiani's room. I closed the door behind us, dropped the bar, and listened. Nobody was eavesdropping from the hall.
“It would have been easier if Plossus played the lord,” she commented softly. “It would have saved you the quick change.”
“I didn't want him playing any more scenes with you,” I said.
“You're jealous!” she said in wonderment.
“I am not. I'm just feeling old when he's around. I'm remembering all the things I could do when I was his age.”
“I daresay that you can still do just about all of them,” she said with a merry look in her eyes. “And by way of proving it, as well as maintaining the illusion we have created, I am fully prepared to make love to you right here.”
“Hmm, tempting,” I said. “As much as I respect your devotion to authenticity, I'll pass. I dislike getting into debauched characters as an act. I truly don't want to do it in reality.”
“Suit yourself,” she sniffed. “Keep an ear by the door, good Fool, and I'll have a look around.”
Vitale had cleaned up the chamberpot and spread some rushes by the bed, but the room was otherwise as it had been during my first visit. A wick stuck in a dish of tallow burned fitfully and threw off a foul-smelling smoke that became trapped at the ceiling.
“What a dismal existence he had,” she said. “I'm revising my opinion. If I had to spend my life in this room, I might consider suicide.”
“This was only where he slept,” I pointed out. “And made love. He spent most of his time making money at the embolum.”
“That such a skinflint could be involved in such a luxurious item as silk is beyond me,” she said. “And that any woman would have consented to meet him in such a squalid setting …”
“She was a prostitute. He paid her. Prostitutes don't complain about location. She was probably happy to do it in a real bed for a change.”
“I don't think she was a prostitute,” she said.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons,” she said.
“A woman's reasons?”
“A woman's. And a fool's. You would understand the latter, being a fool, but you've never been a woman.”
“As a matter of fact, I once portrayed a courtesan in Toulouse so successfully that—”
“Stop!” she commanded. “Listen to me. A rose once bloomed in a dung heap. I think, odd as it was, that this was love.”
“Explain.”
She shook her head. “You'll want more than intuition,” she said. “I'll have my proofs first.”
She walked around the room, opening the cedar trunk and rummaging through it thoroughly, massaging the pallet for any hidden pockets, sniffing the cushions.
“Not a perfumed love, I'll give you that,” she said. “There's something missing, I'll warrant.”
“What's that?”
“A keepsake. A token of some kind, whether it's a sleeve or a locket or a lovelock. If it was love, then it would be here. But it's not.”
“Maybe it wasn't love, then.”
She looked at me, a serious expression for a change.
“You do have something of mine, don't you?” she asked sternly.
“I do. I confess it.”
She nodded, satisfied. Then she pointed to my right. “What's that?”
I looked. In the corner of the room by the door lay a crumpled heap of cloth. I went over and picked it up.
“Just an old blanket,” I said, displaying it to her.
“But the bed is on the opposite wall,” she observed, coming over to inspect it. “What's it doing over here?”
“The others probably threw it when they went to help Bastiani.”
She looked at the bed critically.
“That bed is the most expensive thing in the room,” she said. “Come over and feel the sheets.”
I did, expecting the usual coarse linen. To my surprise, they were soft and smooth.
“Well, there are some benefits to being a silk merchant,” I said.
“Indeed. The coverlets are equally rich. And they are still here. Why would that ratty old woolen blanket be on this bed? Why, for that matter, would he want a woolen blanket in the middle of the summer?”
She walked over to examine the door. “The hinges were replaced?” she asked.
“According to Vitale.”
“But they are affixed to the same spots as the old ones,” she said. “So, the door would have swung open in the same direction as where we found the blanket.”
“So?”
“Is anyone out there?” she asked.
I listened at the door again.
“No one,” I said.
“Very well. Give me the blanket.”
She took it and shoved it against the bottom of the door so that it completely blocked the crack at the bottom. Then she unbarred the door and opened it quickly. The blanket was swept against the wall at the same spot where she had spotted it. She closed the door and barred it again.
“That explains how it got there,” she said.
I shrugged. “An elegant demonstration, my love, but so what? He kept the blanket at the base of the door to block out the sounds of the hall.”
“Or to cover up the noise of his lovemaking,” she added.
“In any case, it still doesn't add anything to our shallow pool of knowledge as far as I can tell.”
“I wonder,” she said. “You didn't notice any letters lying about when you were here?”
“No, but I had less time to search. There aren't any now, but they could have been returned to his family.”

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