A Death in the Venetian Quarter (27 page)

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Authors: Alan Gordon

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With all of the preparations for the coronation taking place, it was hard for me to get an appointment with the Imperial Treasurer. He had been busy selecting particular enemies of the new regime to hit with onerous taxes and forfeitures. I figured he had settled a few personal scores along the way. When I finally gained entrance to his office, he was chortling with glee over the discovery of a small horde of gold buried in the garden of one of Euphrosyne's cousins.

“The idiot never gardened in his life until the siege hit,” he laughed. “Suddenly, he's spouting gibberish about marrows and beans, pretending it had been a lifelong hobby. We only had to dig down a foot before we struck the casket.”

“Well done,” I said.

“So, Feste, what news?”

“I found out who killed Bastiani,” I said.

He sat behind his desk and frowned.

“Do you know? I had forgotten all about that,” he said. “Well. Good. Who was it?”

“Had you heard about a pair of killers-for-hire known as the Huntsman and the Carpenter?”

“Rumors only,” he said. “Some say the Carpenter arranged the collapse of the floor in Blachernae Palace. He just missed the Emperor and got Palaiologos instead. Are you saying that they killed him?”

“Yes.”

“And where are they now?”

“Dead.”

He sat back, toying with a ring on his finger, looking at me closely.

“I heard about a pair of fellows who killed each other in the Venetian quarter yesterday,” he said. “That was them?”

I shrugged. “I guess they had a falling out.”

“A pity,” he said, smiling. “With Will and Phil gone, I could have used them. Oh, well. And I suppose that with them gone, you'll never find out who hired them.”

“As a matter of fact,” I began, then I stopped.

The ring that he was playing with was one I had never seen him wear before. It was an emerald set in an enameled cross on a band of gold. He saw me staring at it, and held it up so that it sparkled in the light.

“Pretty, isn't it?” he said. “A gift from a new patron.”

“One with bushy brows,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “So generous, even in mourning. He lost his wife recently. Tragic. Funny how one small burning ember can be carried on the wind until it singles out just one house for disaster. But listen to me, trying to tell a jester what's funny.”

I looked at him for a moment. He returned my gaze evenly.

“There's a murderer standing by the Byzantine throne,” I said.

“There's one sitting on it,” he said. “Several more around it, a few married into the family, and others waiting in the wings. If the emperor is strong and smart, he survives and the Empire thrives. If not, then someone who is strong and smart becomes the emperor. That's how it has always been.”

“Sometimes, the successor is only ambitious and lucky,” I said.

“The next best thing,” he said. “Isaakios is old and weak, Alexios is young and weak. I do not intend to lose this empire.”

“You've already lost it,” I said.

He sighed. “I think that it is time for you to leave,” he said.

I stood. He held up a hand.

“You misconstrue me,” he said. “I meant leave Constantinople. Take your wife with you. I understand that you are expecting a child. My felicitations. You should raise it in a place of safety, don't you think?”

“And Plossus?” I said.

“He may stay,” he said. “He's just a lad. Talented, but no Feste. And besides, he makes me laugh. Go, Fool. I know that you have a performance at the games on the first. By the second, I expect to find no trace of you in this city. And I will be looking.”

At the games, Isaakios and his son sat on a pair of matched golden thrones. The men who sat in the Kathisma with them spoke many languages. Few of them spoke Greek. Doukas sat where he could observe everything and everyone. He was relaxed and calm, as only a man who knew how to wait patiently could be.

One part of me wanted to pick up the nearest weapon and hurl it at the point where his bushy brows met. But he was beyond my reach, and would remain so.

We buried our feelings and turned into a trio of performing fools. Most of it was dumbshow, given the variety of tongues in our audience. But we did the Two Suitors in Greek, so that the blind man on the throne could enjoy at least one bit of our act.

When it was over, Philoxenites came up to us and handed me a sack of silver. He said nothing in farewell, nor did we want him to.

We went back to Niketas's palace. The three troubadours were waiting for us.

“You sent for us, milord?” asked Raimbaut, bowing.

“Yes,” I said. “Aglaia and I have been banished.”

“We know,” he said. “A pity. Still, that leaves four of us. I shall be glad to assume the mantle of responsibility.”

“Very good,” I said. “Of course, under Guild rules, I have the right to name my successor. I name Plossus.”

“What?” he shouted.

“Ridiculous,” said Giraut. “He's just a lad. We have been in the Guild longer than he's been alive.”

“Plossus is Chief Fool of Constantinople,” I said. “You will report to him and follow his directions. If I learn that he's come to an untimely end, I will drop whatever it is that I am doing and come back here. I will then hunt the three of you down and kill you. I will not be in fool's garb, I will not engage in any chivalric challenge, I will simply use every sneaky, underhanded method I know, and I know many, to bring about your deaths. Am I understood?”

They looked at each other, then at Plossus.

“Plossus, it is,” said Gaucelm.

“Gentlemen,” said Plossus. “I have a few ideas that I would like to discuss with you. Meet me tomorrow morning at the Forum of Arkadios.”

Aglaia and I packed the few things that we had purchased since the fire. At dawn, we rose. Niketas escorted us to the stables. Plossus had taken it upon himself to rise earlier and get our horses ready for our departure.

Niketas embraced each of us in turn.

“Stay alive, my friends,” he said. “We need you to make this world laugh again.”

“Take care of yourself, Nik,” I said. “We must sit and gossip again someday.”

Plossus was doing everything he could to hold back tears.

“I really hadn't planned on running this place this early in my career,” he said. “I was hoping you'd last a few more months before I had to step up and take over.”

“You'll be fine, lad,” I said. “Watch your back. Go to Father Esaias if you need to hide out. And don't drink any of Philoxenites's wine.”

He hugged me, then turned to my wife.

“There's no one like you,” he said. “I wish that there was.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him gently.

“Farewell, Plossus,” she said.

He helped her onto her mare. I swung myself onto Zeus, and we rode a short distance until we came to the public gate that led through the double walls.

The Via Egnatia started here, the old Roman road built when the Empire was a great one. We headed west. About two miles from the city, Aglaia called for a brief halt, dismounted, and pulled a shovel from her gear.

“Wait here,” she said, and headed into the nearby woods.

I sat there, thinking how a pregnant wife adds to the length of a journey. A few minutes later, she came back. To my surprise, she was carrying a small, wooden casket. She came over to me and opened it. There was a sack inside, with enough gold to keep a pair of fools going for years.

“My earnings from Euphrosyne,” she said. “When she was generous, she was generous to a fault.”

“My word,” I said, impressed.

She put it inside her saddlebags, then mounted her steed and looked back at the walled city for the last time.

“I liked it here,” she said.

“It was interesting, challenging, and dangerous,” I said. “What's not to like?”

She smiled at me. “Interesting, challenging, and dangerous,” she said. “You're going to love being a parent.”

CODA

[Y]ou'll tender me a fool.

âWILLIAM SHAKE-
SPEARE,
HAMLET,
ACT I, SCENE III

W
e reached Rhaidestos in a few days. Alfonso was waiting for us, strumming his lute in a backstreet tavern. He greeted us with relief, which shortly turned to outrage when he learned of how his fellow troubadours had turned against the Guild. He immediately left to shore up Plossus.

Three weeks later, we reached Thessaloniki, whereupon my wife declared that she was not going to ride another foot in her condition, and that I was a brute if I thought that she would, especially considering that the next part of the journey was through mountains with winter approaching and bandits and wolves gathering, and if I thought that she should endanger our baby just because â¦

I had actually conceded the sojourn at her initial statement. I thought about pointing out that it was only the end of August, and that we could have made it over the mountains before winter, but never let it be said that I would spare my wife a good harangue when she got her wind up.

We stayed with Fat Basil, who was glad for the company. He and I did a lot of two-man work, with Claudia (for I must use our Guild names again at this pointâAglaia and Feste were left behind in Constantinople) accompanying us on various instruments from a comfortable
cushion on the side. She also would sing and throw in any ribald remark that crossed her mind. All in all, our months in Thessaloniki provided some of the more pleasurable performances of our joint careers.

To the east, events took their dreary and disastrous course. Isaakios, having regained the throne, settled into his old, debauched ways again and died before the year was out. He may have been helped along by his son, or his wife, or just about anyone close to him. It doesn't matter much at this point.

Alexios the Fourth was as fit to rule as a goose, and with less morals. He kept Alexios Doukas close by and quickly ran what was left of the government into the ground. Doukas quietly gained sufficient support among the aristocracy and the bureaucrats to make his move and deposed the boy in the middle of the night, with Philoxenites suborning the Varangians yet again. After a couple of attempts to poison the youth failed, Doukas took matters and a bowstring into his own hands and became Alexios the Fifth.

Mourtzouphlos, the people called him, a word meaning bushy-browed. He stood against the Crusaders and called the covenants made by Isaakios and his son void and against God's divine will. The Greeks stood by him, grateful for any display of resistance.

There were two more fires. The first was when the locals rose against the Venetian quarter. In their rage, they extended their anger against the Pisans, the Amalfitans, and the Genoese, who fled across the Golden Horn into the Crusader camp. Thus, the Greeks accomplished what no one thought possible: The unification of the Italians.

With the addition of so many thousands of arms to the Crusader cause, the ultimate outcome was not in doubt. The Venetians, having learned from experience, refined their battle techniques. After some initial attempts at negotiation, they tied pairs of the giant merchantmen together and sent them once again across the Golden Horn to lash
their flying bridges to the towers of the seawall. Mourtzouphlos proved to be a poor general and followed the example of his father-in-law by fleeing the city. For the first time since the walls were erected around Constantinople, an enemy had conquered from without.

For the best account of the carnage and destruction that took place within the city after, I must refer you to the history compiled by Niketas Choniates. Only he truly does it justice. It isn't surprising that he became a historian. What is history but gossip written down? I ran across a copy of his tome years later when my wife and I were at the court of Frederick II. Nik survived, barely, and even a bit heroically, but lost his palace to one of the fires and most of his possessions to the Crusaders.

Mourtzouphlos and Evdokia decided to flee to her father and throw themselves on his mercy. Alexios welcomed his new son-in-law and rival and treated him like family. By which I mean to say, of course, that he had him blinded. Mourtzouphlos wandered for a while and, as fate would have it, ended up back in Constantinople. The Crusaders took him to the top of the Pillar of Constantine, spun him around several times, then laughed as he staggered around, and laughed even harder as he went over the edge.

Alexios the Third, having another daughter to trade, gave Evdokia to some king somewhere, another cruel marriage. He carried on as Emperor of a dwindling empire as long as he could, but the money ran out, his troops deserted, and he was captured by the Crusaders. They did not execute him. They sent him into permanent captivity with Euphrosyne, a fate he probably considered worse than death.

We lost track of Rico. The Guild may know of his fate, but not I. That's what happens sometimes in our profession. You work with someone in one part of the world, then you take separate paths to who knows where and never hear from each other again. I enjoyed my time
with the little fellow. We often wondered if he ever got anywhere with the flutist. She we would encounter again, under quite different circumstances, but that's another tale.

The Crusaders never made it to the Holy Land, spending their energy squabbling over the remains of Byzantium. The Doge died soon after the conquest. They say his intestines erupted from his body, but that was probably just wishful thinking. Montferrat died in a battle with the Bulgarians trying to keep control over some spit of land somewhere. They say Raimbaut died with him, although it's not certain. Nobody bothered to write any songs about it.

And Plossus continues to this day as chief fool in Constantinople and is generally accounted in Guildlore one of the greatest fools in history. My tutelage, of course. We think he got Philoxenites finally. I hope that's true.

When I look back at the Guild's efforts to stop the Fourth Crusade, I see from the perspective of Time and old age that it was impossible. But that is not to say that we failed. A handful of men and women in motley staved off the initial launch and kept the sack of Constantinople at bay for three years. You may say, Well, the rape, slaughter, and desecration happened anyway, so what was it worth? I reply simply: three additional years of life for thousands of people. And if that seems like just postponing the inevitable, let me ask you this: given the choice between dying today and dying three years from now, which would you prefer?

I thought so.

What survived were Nik's history and Raimbaut's songs, which are still being sung even today. Not a bad legacy when you think about it. We are lucky if anything survives us, whether it's a stone, a song, or a history.

Or a child.

Most stories in life begin with a birth and end with a death. But this is a fool's tale. Since it began with a death, I shall end it with a birth.

On the morning of the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Fat Basil and I galloped around Thessaloniki, searching for a sober midwife. We finally located a dour but competent woman and carried her back to Fat Basil's house. Then my brother fool kept me pinned outside in the cold while I listened to the screams of my wife, helpless to do anything about them.

Shortly after the sun set, there was one final yelp, and then a higher, weaker cry joined them. The midwife came out and smiled for the first time, and I hugged this woman who I had never met before like she was my own sister.

Inside, my wife was pale without the assistance of whiteface, but as happy as I have seen her. She beckoned to me, as if I needed any prompting to come closer. In her arms, a small, red-faced little girl bawled lustily.

“Meet your daughter,” said Claudia, and she sat up and handed her to me. I took her in my arms with a feeling of disbelief mingled with joy.

They say that newborn infants do not smile, that they do not know how. I will swear by the First Fool, Our Savior, that when she opened her eyes and gazed upon me for the first time, seeing a fool in makeup cooing at her, she smiled, and my heart melted.

“Milady, I find I must break an oath I once made to you,” I said.

“What oath is that, Fool?” asked my wife, smiling at me.

“I swore when we married that I would never love any woman but you,” I said. “But I find I must make room in my heart for this little one.”

“I expected no less,” said my wife.

“What shall we name her?” I asked, sitting next to her in bed and handing our daughter to her.

“I've already named her,” said Claudia. “Portia. I hope you don't mind.”

“Portia,” I said, rolling it around in my mouth.

“Yes,” said Claudia. “She will be a woman men should listen to or ignore at their peril.”

“I like it,” I said. “Portia it is. A daughter of fools, born on Twelfth Night.”

In late March, the snows melted sufficiently for my wife to agree to travel once again. We purchased a mule to add to our two horses, bade our host farewell, and once again rode the Via Egnatia. We planned to take it west to Durazzo, then north to visit Claudia's children in Orsino, and thence across the Adriatic and back to the Guildhall.

We passed Lake Ochrid around Easter. Claudia had mastered the art of nursing on horseback, a delicate matter for both parties. She was fussing over the baby when suddenly she reined her mare to a halt. I immediately had my sword out, but she shook her head and pointed to the road ahead of us.

Someone had drawn a crude circle in the center of the road, the compass points marked by piles of stones and strange markings that seemed to be Latin incantations.

“I think it's meant to be a magic circle of some kind,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed.

We looked down at it for a while.

“Could be that it's supposed to be some sort of trap or other,” she observed.

“Yes,” I agreed.

We looked at it some more.

“Of course, I don't believe in magic,” she said firmly.

“Neither do I,” I said equally firmly.

We looked at it one last time.

“But there's no harm in being careful,” I said, guiding Zeus carefully around it.

“None,” she agreed, following me.

I could have sworn that someone muttered, “Damn!” from behind a nearby tree, but we moved on.