Winds of Folly (34 page)

He was in the
Pozzi
. The Wells. Known as such, Spiridion had informed him, because their proximity to the canal meant that they were flooded to a depth of between two and three feet at high tide. So twice in every twenty-four hours, for several hours at a time, the prisoner was obliged to wade up to his thights in water, or stand on the wooden pallet. And unless he took the bucket with him, the waters would be fouled with his own filth, though as the canal was more or less an open sewer this was a minor consideration. Far worse was the prospect of being overrun by the large rats that infested the place, for they could swim as well as they could climb, Spiridion had assured him, and only waited for you to lie down before subjecting you to their foul attentions.

The door was slammed shut. The bolts slotted into place.

Nathan remembered that it was his birthday. He was twenty-eight years old.

He sat down on the wooden pallet and subjected the room to closer study. Apart from the grating the only objects of interest were two small holes at floor-level, presumably to let the water out – and the rats in – and the
graffiato
scratched by previous occupants on the walls and ceiling. A few names, some individual words in Italian, some drawings, mostly lewd – and a few lines of what appeared to be verse.

Nathan took off his coat and folded it into a pillow. Then he lay down on the pallet, clasping his hands behind his head, and contemplated the verse above his head. Though he spoke little or no Italian, some of the words seemed familiar to him
from his knowledge of the Latin. Perhaps they contained some useful message from a previous inmate, an aid to survival. Lacking anything better to do, he set himself to translating them.
O voi che entrate
must mean
O you who enter here
… He could guess the next line.
Abandon all hope
. It was from Dante's
Inferno
. Hardly the most inspiring of messages, or the most original. He did not bother with the rest.

Instead he applied himself to an exercise that had served him during previous incarcerations in Paris. He tried to make a mental picture of the night sky as he had last viewed it from the
Unicorn
and to project it on to the ceiling of his meagre quarters. The concentration required for this, however, combined with exhaustion and the beating he had received, caused his eyelids to feel heavy and within a few moments he had fallen fast asleep.

Unhappily it was neither as sound nor as relaxed a slumber as he could have wished. He was tormented by a succession of nightmares in which an army of beautiful nuns armed with flails and other instruments embarked on an endless battle with another army that appeared to be composed entirely of lizards. Nathan, who had been recruited as a General in the army of the nuns, was engaged in conflict with a lizard that looked remarkably like Cristolfi when he awoke to find the water seeping steadily into his cell from the gap under the door.

For the next hour or so he watched it rise with gloomy interest. He was not unduly alarmed, for the tidemark on the walls assured him that it would stop more or less at the level of his refuge. As the water continued to advance, however, he grew rather more anxious. When it began to slop over the pallet he was obliged to put his coat back on and stand upright.

The water gradually advanced over his boots. The only positive note was that thus far there were no rats. None that he
could see, at any rate. His main complaints were the stench, which was foul in the extreme, the sweltering heat, and – ironically in view of the amount of water in his cell – an immense thirst.

The prospect of drowning, of course, was another factor in his discomfort. Although he told himself that the water would only rise to the level on the wall, his imagination persisted in informing him of the likely situation if it did not. It had advanced almost to the top of his boots before it began to retreat. The atmosphere remained extremely humid, however; the pallet was too damp to sit or lie upon and his thirst had not abated.

At last, when the waters had entirely receded and only a few puddles remained, a small hatch was opened in the door and a mug of water was thrust through with a hunk of stale bread on a wooden plate. This apparently constituted his rations for the day. He drank half the water straight away and kept the rest to aid him through the hours of darkness. The bread he put in his pocket for later as he was not at all hungry.

The hours slid slowly by. The jailers had taken away his watch and everything else in his pockets but he marked the passage of time by the bells of the clock in St Mark's Square, and to divert himself he returned to his study of the Cosmos. Once he had fixed all the major constellations in position he set himself to exploring them in a conveyance of his own imagining which he called a starship.

This craft, which was conical in shape, was propelled according to the principles discovered by the late Sir Isaac Newton, after whom it was named. It was projected into the heavens by a number of rockets, each of which ignited its neighbour before reaching the limit of its trajectory and falling away. Once the craft had risen by these means above the gravitational pull of the earth it would continue to move,
consistent with Newton's theories, at the same speed and in the same direction until some other force diverted it. Accordingly, Nathan had designed an ingenious system of magnets which could be raised and lowered and otherwise manipulated by means of several wheels or windlasses, whose purpose was to lock on to the diverse magnetic fields emanating from the planets: not unlike the practice of mariners in following the trade winds. When the time came to return to Earth – and the gravitational pull of that planet caused the craft to drop more rapidly than was desirable – the crew would remove themselves to the detachable chamber at the rear of the craft, inflate the balloon by means of a small furnace, and float safely back to Mother Earth.

Thus Nathan traversed his imaginary universe, stopping off from time to time at planets that appeared of interest to him and exploring them further as the mood took him and whenever he had nothing better to do. His present situation fitting into this category, he settled himself as comfortably as he was able upon his meagre platform and embarked upon a journey to the constellation Monoceros, otherwise known as the Unicorn.

Little was known of this constellation beyond the recent studies of Sir William Herschel, which had revealed it as having four stars. It was bound to have a great many more planets, however, and though nothing was known of them, Nathan gave his imagination full play by applying to them a character and an identity which conformed to his particular fancies, rather in the manner of a Gulliver or a Voltaire. In common with these literary figures, Nathan took the opportunity to satirise those social and political systems on Earth which seemed most absurd, or unsatisfactory, or venomous to him. Such as the one he was in at present.

And so he created the Planet Serenissima.

The Planet Serenissima was in theory governed by a
Legislature composed of several hundred members chosen by the electorate. This institution met regularly to represent the grievances of the people and to enact laws that would address them. In reality, however, the members treated the assembly as an exclusive club which endowed them with great privileges and generous expenses, provided they approved the laws passed down to them by a select few known as the Ten. The Ten were the real rulers of the planet, but to avoid giving this impression they appointed an individual they called the Doge, who had all the appearance and apparatus of power but none of the reality. That is to say, he lived in a great palace, rode about in a golden carriage, or barge, appeared before the public on grand occasions and gave his approval to all the laws that were enacted in his name.

To deflect them from criticism, or rebellion, the people were permitted every indulgence in terms of bread and circuses. They had a Carnival which lasted above half the year and numerous sporting occasions and festivals. Cheap drink was supplied to keep them at a level of drunkenness, or in an abject state of recovery from it, that made them incapable of any sustained level of political protest. The cooking and eating of food became a national preoccupation; dance, music, the fashion industry and the cult of celebrity were all promoted as additional diversions. And the people were allowed every facility to express themselves in writing or in some form of public performance. Almost everyone was writing a novel or a play – usually a reflection upon his or her own life – or singing or dancing or playing upon a musical instrument. On the surface, at least, it seemed that they were all thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Unhappily, very few people were doing any work. The planet was becoming poorer and poorer. The poorer it became, the more pleasure was provided, almost always now at
government expense. Paper money was printed to pay for it. This, of course, brought its own problems. As the government's critics began to multiply, the government resorted to oppression. They began to rely more and more upon the police, led by a man people called
Il Diavolo
.

This worked for a while, but eventually they confronted a new critic who could not be kept down. She was a woman – a nun, in fact. Soon she became the leader of a large protest movement. Civil war appeared imminent.

At which point Nathan landed upon the planet in his starship. His natural instinct was to support the rebels, even though he did not entirely trust the woman who led them. He was further inhibited by the fact that the planet which had sent him here – the Mother Planet – was desirous of making a treaty with the Planet Serenissima and recruiting its help in a war they were engaged in with their neighbour and arch-enemy, the Planet of the Frogs. But while he dithered, the Devil pounced. The starship was impounded and its Captain arrested and thrown into their deepest, darkest dungeon.

And now he had to find a way out of it.

Reality impinged upon these fantasies. It was, in fact, becoming darker. By the time the clock on St Mark's Tower had struck nine, it was black as pitch and the nightmares of Nathan's earlier imagining were replaced by the real thing.

First came the mosquitoes. He could not see them but he heard them buzzing around his head. He sat on the pallet flapping blindly at them with his hands. Then he felt the water at his feet. High tide, he estimated, would be at about eleven o'clock. It would be at least an hour after that before it had receded sufficiently to uncover the pallet, another hour before it was dry enough for him to lie down on it again. It was like camping for the night in a bog. He took off his stock and wound it round his face, leaving a small gap for his eyes, even
though he could see nothing, but the insects were so bold they even settled on his eyelids. He thought he would go mad. But there was worse to come.

He heard the squeaking first, that distinctive high-pitched squeak that announced the presence of rats. Normally rats were of no concern to him: he had grown used to them aboard ship. But ship's rats were sustained largely upon a diet of ship's biscuit, or whatever stores they could find; they were denied a diet of refuse and human waste because it went straight into the sea. And they usually kept out of your way. You did not encounter them in pitch darkness on their own territory. Sewer rats were an entirely different matter.

Where were they? He stared into the dark, the mosquitoes now a minor irritant. He was sitting on the pallet with his legs folded under him, and the first intimation of their proximity was when he moved his hand and touched one.

He scrambled to his feet and stamped around the pallet, kicking out to mark his territory. This was greeted with a great many squeals and some splashes. He remembered the bread he had stuffed in his pocket and broke it into small pieces, though it was almost as hard as ship's biscuit, and threw them into the furthest corners of his cell. He heard the rats fighting over them. How many of them were there, for God's sake? If only he had a light. He felt the water once more at his feet and one of the creatures crawled on to his boot. He lashed out and he heard the thud and squeal as it hit the far wall and then the splash as it landed in the water. This gave him some small satisfaction. But he was so tired. He had slept for barely two hours in the last thirty-six. Sooner or later he would have to lie down and then they would be all over him. He turned up his coat collar and fastened the buttons up to his chin, though it was already unbearably hot. St Mark's clock struck midnight. Five or six hours before dawn. He would have welcomed
another interview with the Devil. He wondered if it would do any harm to tell him who he really was and the reason for his visit.

Shortly after the clock struck two he heard footsteps in the passage outside. Then the bolts of his door were drawn back and it was forced open. The water still lay a few inches deep on the floor but they splashed through it and dragged him out of the cell. There were four of them, with a fifth outside holding a torch. The roughness with which they handled him convinced him that they were taking him to the torture chamber. He had been wrong in thinking they would be inhibited by his presumed nationality. They did not care. The only question was what instruments they would use.

But they did not take him to the torture chamber. They took him back across the Bridge of Sighs to the room where he had met the Devil. And the Devil was still there, reading his papers by the light of several candles. He looked up when Nathan was brought in and put the papers down, just as before. But this time they did not bring Nathan a chair.

‘So, have you had sufficient time to think who you are and what you are doing here in Venice?' he enquired in his excellent English.

Nathan considered. There was really no reason not to tell him the truth, or at least an approximation of it. It could do no damage to his country and it could harm no one in Venice, for he had not yet had time to contact anyone apart from Sister Caterina, and they must know about her. It might conceivably embarrass the Ambassador, of course, but Nathan was not sure he cared overmuch about that.