The Venetian Contract (44 page)

‘We will watch and wait and pray, and send word when
the lizard demon is exorcized from the house. But the Triannis should wait, for a week at least.’

Feyra received the news of her friends’ stay of departure with relief, but it was tempered by a small and secret disappointment. She did sometimes wonder what would happen when she and Annibale were alone on the island.

That night she dreamed of him, of the heat of him, the weight of him, suffocating, sensuous. She woke gasping, as if someone had laid a hand across her mouth and stopped her breath. The shame poured from her with the sweat. Feyra rose from her bed and crept downstairs to where the fire still burned. She saw the Bible the Badessa had given her, propped on the mantel. She did not want the book in her house, but could not bring herself to burn a gift given in kindness.

In Constantinople the name of God was sacred. If inscribed on paper the paper itself, even the merest scrap, became a thing of great value. Because people wore such scraps about their person, they were often found dropped upon the ground and the citizens of Constantinople would pick up the sacred shreds and tuck them into the walls. Some walls on the busier thoroughfares were saturated with the name of God. Feyra did not want to burn the Bible; although the god named there was not her own, she feared the sacrilege.

Too hot suddenly, Feyra stepped out into the night, just as she was, in her long shift. The ground was cold beneath her feet and she felt a welcome shiver cross her burning skin. A fat spring moon shone to equal the sun, the firmament was baubled with stars and she could see every silver blade of grass as if it were day.

She walked the square of green to the Tezon, her skirt trailing in the dew, soaking and dragging as she went. Inside the empty hospital, the moon lit the atrium of the cavernous space and the ghosts of those she had treated there fled to the shadows. Around the door she could see, as she had seen every day, the scrawled
graffiti
on the walls. The markings seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight; and she saw again the Ottoman ship and the calligraphy that had once been such a comfort to her.

The
graffiti
on the walls spoke of a past tolerance towards the many peoples who had come to trade here, of a relationship of mutual benefit, of the give and take of commerce. This Venice had been a crucible of nationalities and races and religions with as many colours as a prism and she could only hope that, as the Plague faded, this Venice would return. She couldn’t help thinking that along with the four horses, the Sultan had sent a fifth: with the cessation of trade he had cut off the city’s very lifeblood.

Feyra reached up and touched the word that was clearest to her:
Constantinople
. Once it had meant home. Now this island was her home.

On the way back, Feyra looked up at Annibale’s house. The lights were out. In the Trianni house too; all was dark. She decided to walk on and went to the gatehouse. There, the door was standing open; she saw Salve’s chair in the chimney corner next to the empty hearth.

She walked right through the gates and out on to the jetty where she had, only this afternoon, waved off Sister Benedetta. She looked out to the lagoon, to the silver pathway of water paved in moonlight, leading to the
horizon where the sea met the night. As she watched, the pathway was broken into numberless radiating ripples of light.

A boat.

Feyra watched, suddenly absolutely still, her pulses thudding in her throat as she realized the boat was rowing away from the island, not towards it. She peered into the moonlight. There was a boatman in the craft, but no passenger. What was the meaning of it?

Feyra took a step forward, and saw in front of her a pair of footprints shining on the jetty. They were prints that no human could have made. One was cloven like a two-toed foot or hoof, and the other had three.

Like a lizard.

She crouched down and put her hand to the print. It was still wet and gave off a familiar smell. She dipped a finger in the print, raised it to the moonlight and rubbed it together with the thumb. Then she held finger and thumb to her nose and sniffed once. It was oil of olives.

Swivelling right round, still in her crouching position, she looked back to the gateway. The strange footprints continued to the gatehouse and beyond. She stood too suddenly, and swayed for a minute. Someone
had
disembarked here. She was standing in their footsteps.

Feyra followed the footprints through the gatehouse and lost the trail on the grass. She shook her head. Sister Benedetta’s talk of lizard demons had infected her mind: what she needed to do was to sleep.

The first thing she saw as she opened the door of her house was the pages of the Bible scattered all over the room. Then she saw a pile of clothes on the floorboards, a voluminous cloak and a shirt and breeches.

Then she saw the demon himself, stretched out and skinless before the fire, as if the flames had birthed him.

Feyra collapsed, falling into a chair. When she opened her eyes she wished them closed again.

She could see now, that the thing on the floor was a man, but he had been skinned of all flesh. He spoke, a strange strangled sound, for his lips were gone.

‘Forgive me. I cannot bear clothes upon my skin, nor shoes on my feet.’

Feyra recalled the forbidden etchings of Andreas Vesalius, declared diabolical by the Christian Church, that she and Annibale used to pore over in the evenings. She recalled the corpses stripped of their skin to show the workings of muscle and sinew, but animate, standing and walking with waking eyes in their heads. This monster had stepped from a book of science, but in his warped hand he held a book of faith, the remnants of the Bible the Badessa had given her.

Feyra knew herself then to be in a nightmare for she understood the demon’s tongue. She looked away from him at the pages of Latin scripture scattered around the room.

‘Did you do this?’ she whispered.

The thing seemed agitated, and rocked its scarlet head. ‘I cannot find it. I tried, but I cannot.’

‘What can’t you find?’

‘The white horse. Janissaries are raised Christian. My father was a tower commander in Iskenderun, and a follower of the shepherd prophet. So I knew this infidel book well before I was brought to Constantinople and the light of the true God.’

The familiar name penetrated the fog of Feyra’s nightmare. ‘Who
are
you?’

He turned his terrible, lashless, browless eyes upon her, burning from their skinned sockets with a fire she had seen before. ‘Don’t you know me?’ he asked.

She nodded, slowly. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Takat Turan.’ In the Doge’s palace, she had seen, with her own eyes, the fire spreading across his chest. How could he possibly have survived? ‘But – the fire … I thought you had died in the fire.’

‘I did.’

She knelt then, appalled by his suffering. ‘What will give you ease?’ She remembered the prints on the jetty suddenly. ‘Oil of olives?’

The thing nodded. ‘And a physician gave me juice of the poppy.’

Feyra reached for the medicine cabinet, holding her breath, for his exposed flesh stank of putrefaction. She poured the black linctus directly into his mouth, and though it ran down his scorched cheeks, he swallowed some of it. It seemed to give him a little renewed strength.

‘I wish to ask a boon of you.’

‘Of me?’

‘I’m dying.’

This was not the time for lies. ‘I know.’ Suddenly everything fell into place like a tile of mosaic. ‘The fourth horse,’ she said, ‘is Death.’

‘Yes. And now I will greet him face to face.’

She pressed him further. ‘But it is not just
your
death, is it? There is more to come before that. The first horse, the black horse, was Pestilence. My father brought that here on his ship. The second horse, the red one, was
Fire. Death is the fourth, the pale horse. What is the third?’

He was silent, his eyes closed.

She repeated, urgently, ‘What is the white horse?’

‘There is no time. The die is cast. But I must ask my final request of you. I need you to send my bones back to Constantinople. I must be buried among the faithful, and collect my reward in Paradise. Will you promise?’

Feyra stood, her pity gone. ‘Tell me of the white horse.’ Her voice was cold as stone. ‘Tell me first or I will bury you beneath the stones of the church. Here, hard by, there is a temple of Saint Bartholomew.’ She leaned close over his dreadful face. ‘I will lift the pavings of the very altar and inter you there, I
swear
it. Tell me. The white horse. What else is coming to Venice?’

‘And if I tell?’ he croaked, fading.

She forced herself to speak gently. ‘You will be placed in a casket and sent to –’ she thought again. Not the Sultan, for he would not do honour to this man who had given his life for him ‘– to Haji Musa, the physician of Topkapi. He will give you to the priests and have them pray for you and do honour to your grave. Now
tell
me.’

‘There is a room in the Topkapi palace,’ mouthed the dreadful lips. ‘The Sultan’s own chamber. I saw it once when I received my orders. There is a marble floor, set with the designs of the seven seas and all the lands.’

Feyra grew impatient. Takat’s mind had begun to wander, as she had often seen at the end.

‘He has fleets of ships, my master, cast in many metals,’ went on the terrible whisper. ‘The ships are as high as his knee. He can move them, just like Allah can move mortals with his hand.’

Feyra set her teeth; he did not have much time left. The crossing of the lagoon must have cost him, and she could hardly bear to think of the pain of every splash of the salt spray on the flayed flesh. She took him by his greasy shoulders, and gave him a little shake, her fingers penetrating the soft tissues.

‘Never mind the metal ships.
Tell
me, quick and plain.’

He swivelled his eyes to her. ‘The white horse is War.’

Her flesh froze. ‘Say on.’

‘The Sultan’s design was to weaken the city with Plague and Fire. The first horses were just the forerunners. Now, with the spring tides, he is sending an armada to take Venice. It will be the biggest sea battle ever seen. Lepanto will be nothing to it.’

Feyra could see how much it hurt him to talk, the remains of his lips drawn back against the blackened and broken teeth in a permanent snarl, but she had to persist. ‘When?’