The Venetian Contract (21 page)

Somewhere in the deep belly of the Doge’s palace, the two guards who had let Feyra escape stood in a windowless room. Seated before them, at a dark wood desk, was a blond-haired man who asked a lot of questions; but really his tone was so pleasant they began to believe that they might escape the whipping they had expected. On the other side of the desk sat a smaller man with a quill in his hand and the four-cornered hat of a scribe upon his head. The scribe scratched at his paper as the elder of the two guards described the fugitive.

‘She was dark.’

‘Skin or hair?’

‘Both,
signore
.’

‘Darker than a Venetian?’

‘Darker than some, I’m sure,
signore
,’ said the younger. ‘But really, she could almost have been a southerner, but for her clothes.’

‘Any distinguishing characteristics?’

The guards looked at one another.

‘Anything
different
about her. Besides her garb, I mean. We have your description of the yellow slippers.’

‘Well,
signore
, she was … that is to say … when the people ripped away the veils …’

‘She was fair,’ blurted the second.

There was a brief, intense silence. ‘You’re telling me she was
beautiful
.’

‘Yes,
signore
.’

‘You’re telling me, that we are seeking a
beautiful Turkish woman
?’

The first guard, the elder and cleverer of the two, began to be afraid. There was something in the inquisitor’s tone that made him think again of the sting of the whip. ‘Well, perhaps,’ he said, ‘now you mention it, her skin
was
dusky; swarthy almost.’ He looked at his partner.

‘That’s right,’ agreed the second. ‘And her nose was somewhat large …’

‘With a hook in it!’ finished the first triumphantly. ‘It tended downward as much as her
infidel
shoes curled up.’

The blond man nodded with approval, as the scribe scribbled ever faster at his drawing. When he was done the inquisitor turned the drawing around to face the guards.

‘Would you say,’ he asked, his voice honey once more, ‘that this resembles her?’

The guards peered at the drawing. There was a hideous hooknosed crone, black-skinned and swathed in veils and billowing breeches. Her nose turned down to meet her upturned shoes. Both men nodded enthusiastically.

The inquisitor picked up the drawing in his ringed hand and gave it to the older guard. ‘Take this personally to the pamphleters in the Campo San Vio,’ he commanded. ‘Have one posted on every corner of every
sestiere
by sundown.’

Chapter 17

I
n the first light of dawn a man in a bird mask walked the silent streets of the Miracoli, his black greatcoat sweeping the pavings.

He stopped at a door with a red cross on it and tapped it with his cane. A family, cloaked and hooded, carrying few possessions, filed out silently and followed him.

He went to the next painted door and did the same. Soon there was a little band following him, winding through the streets, swelling in number.

At the Church of the Miracoli, the procession stopped as Annibale raised his cane. He entered the church where he had been christened, but he did not genuflect, nor gaze at the considerable marble marvels of the interior. Instead he climbed the small stair to the stone arch that arced over the street like a dun rainbow to a little convent tied to the church. From the latticed windows he could see the families huddled below, waiting for him. He felt a sudden jolt of panic. But he had put this thing in motion, now he must see it through.

He walked across the arch to the little door beyond and rapped on it, as respectfully as he could, with the knob of his ebony cane. An elderly nun in a black habit and white wimple opened it.
La Badessa
, the Abbess of the Order of the
Miracoli, with whom he’d had a long conference yesterday. ‘Are you ready,
Dama
Badessa?’

She nodded, serious. ‘Yes. We are ready.’

‘And you are sure?’

She gave the ghost of a smile. ‘We are a pastoral order,
Dottore
. If the families go, we go too.’

Annibale turned, and the Badessa and the sisters followed him downstairs. He waited while the Badessa genuflected before the marble altar. She shut and locked the aumbry set into the altar wall which contained the Host. After bowing once to the tabernacle she burned two wads of holy oil before the golden cross and laid the cross down on the marble. On her way back to her nuns in the aisle the Badessa did not do reverence to the supine cross. The priest had died the night before, and for the moment, this was no longer a church, but a beautiful, marble mausoleum. God was gone, and now the sisters of the Miracoli must be gone too.

Outside, Annibale led the way, like the pied piper who had stolen the nurselings. But his growing band had attracted attention –
Dottore
Valnetti, pulling his cart of false, bottled hope, dropped the red handle and ran after Annibale. Annibale set his teeth behind his mask. He’d known that this moment would come.

‘Annibale? Where are you taking these people?’

‘To my new hospital.’

‘What the … Which is where?’ Valnetti spluttered.

Annibale was silent.

‘These are
my
patients.’ Valnetti’s voice grew louder.

‘Mine too.’

‘You can’t
do
this, Cason.’

‘And yet, I am.’

‘But why?’

‘We differ in our methods. I have tried yours, and now I am going to try mine.’

Valnetti started to wheedle. ‘We can reach a compromise.’

‘I do not think so.’ Stony, Annibale swept past Valnetti, but Valnetti shot out a restraining arm.

‘My family is from Genoa, you know.’

‘So?’

‘There’s a legend there.’ Valnetti stumbled to keep up with Annibale, speaking fast and loudly. ‘A shepherd called Nicholas, who was little more than a child, had a vision from God and led thousands of children across the Alps to crusade against the Muslim infidel.’ He ran to overtake his junior. ‘They fetched up in Genoa, all these lost children, in their multitudes. Nicholas believed that the sea would divide, and the baby crusaders all sat on the shore waiting for it to happen.’ He stopped Annibale with an out-thrust arm, gathering a bunch of the younger man’s black coat at his chest. His out-thrust beak clashed with Annibale’s. ‘Nicholas was not a visionary, Cason, he was just a stupid child.’

Annibale batted him away and walked on, silently. Valnetti was stranded in the steady stream, some of the followers barging him a little as they passed. He tried to appeal to one, then another, but gained no answer and had no choice but to trot after Annibale until the company reached the Fondamenta Nuove.

As Annibale directed the families into the waiting boats Valnetti could do nothing but watch. When the younger doctor jumped into the largest boat, he delivered his parting shot.

‘I’ll have you struck off the
Consiglio Medico
,’ he warned.

Annibale shrugged. ‘It’s a duty of care.’

Valnetti snorted down the long nose of his mask. ‘Since when?’

Annibale did not even have to think about it. He put out his foot and pushed the boat from the dock.

‘Since now,’ he said.

At the head of the little flotilla, once again a figurehead, Annibale had the worst cases with him in his boat as the forerunners. When they reached the Lazzaretto Novo he saw that Bocca had carried out the instructions he had given him during the previous week. The red cross had been scrubbed from the boathouse; there would be no doleful markings here. A brazier had been erected on the jetty. When it was lit, the boats were to stop here; when it was dark, they should not come near. Bocca had dug a shallow pit at the gate’s threshold, and filled it with potash at Annibale’s instruction, so that each visitor’s feet would be purified before entry and on leaving.

Annibale told the other boats to wait and he took his little band of desperately ill patients through the gates, some on litters carried by the less afflicted, some still able to walk, some stumbling with crutches or leaning on their fellows. Annibale led them into the Tezon, settled them in their beds and gave each one water. Then the great doors were closed.

Returning to the boats he fetched the families one by one and settled them in the almshouses, with strict instructions not to enter the Tezon, no matter how much they might long to visit their loved ones. Two houses were left unoccupied: the little ruin next to the church and the corner house
by the
torresin
, which he’d taken for his own. He left the children playing under the tree walk of white mulberries, and took himself off to the Tezon.

But first he looked into the little church. There was a figure there, kneeling. Annibale retreated, not wishing to disturb her prayers, but the Badessa turned and stood. ‘Come in,’ she said.

He walked forward a little tentatively, and slid the broad-brimmed hat from his head. The beak he left alone. ‘Forgive my mask,’ he said to to her. ‘It is for your safety more than mine.’ But he bowed awkwardly to mitigate any disrespect; not towards the altar but to her. ‘I do not wish to disturb you.’

She spread her gnarled hands. ‘I am not saying anything which cannot be continued later.’ She pointed a knobbled finger to the rafters. ‘Our conversation will take a lifetime; it will not be concluded today.’ She smoothed her habit over her ample hips. ‘What are you doing here,
Dottore
?’

He fiddled with a splinter that protruded from the pew and smiled ruefully, inside his mask. ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’

She smiled too. ‘I think I do. You are about to embark upon a great undertaking.’ She sat down on one of the benches and invited him to do likewise. ‘When you came to me yesterday, and tended to poor Father Orlando, you reminded me that our order of the Sisters of the Miracoli was instituted for the
incurabili
– the incurables, whom God had smitten with leprosy and other untreatable conditions first brought back from the Crusades. Those first patients knew there was no cure for their afflictions. The first sisters knew it too. But what they believed in was the Miracle.’ She looked at him. ‘When you came to me with this idea of
yours, it humbled me. It was for this that I and the sisters came with you. We were in the business, then, of delivering miracles. And, it seems, we still are.’

Annibale, listening, said nothing.

The Badessa clasped the simple wooden cross that hung about her purity. ‘Son. I heard Valnetti’s story, and men say it is true. Nicholas and the Children’s Crusade sat on the shore and
waited
for a miracle. But there is another story told too, a greater story, part of the greatest ever told. A man once led his people to the promised land, and there was an ocean in his path. He did not sit and wait for the waters to cleave; he crashed his staff upon the ground and
demanded
that the seas part.’ The Badessa rose, and the coloured glass of the single picture window turned her simple habit to motley. She turned and looked down at him. ‘And they did,
Dottore
. They did.’

Over the days, the little island buzzed with activity like a hive of bees. The sisters of the Miracoli did wondrous work filling in the arches of the Tezon with wattle and daub. The boy Salve, despite his afflictions, seemed to understand simple instructions and had been a great help; more, if truth were told, than Bocca. There was a wattler among the families of the Miracoli, and he had directed operations, while the sisters of the Miracoli, well known for their robust and practical rule, were not too otherworldly to soil their hands.