Sword of Shame (13 page)

‘Ha! So there is something!' snarled de Wolfe, triumphantly. ‘You admit it now?'

Knotte shook his head stubbornly. ‘It is a personal, private matter, Crowner. It does not concern you, and you should not persecute me like this!'

John stood up, leaning on the table and glowering down at the seated clerk. ‘Does it concern Serlo, your master?' he shouted. ‘Or perhaps the widow Christina?'

Martin shook his head violently, ‘Why should it? It has nothing to do with them.'

‘Are you just being faithful to them?' barked John. ‘Misplaced loyalty will not save your neck if it conceals knowledge you may have against the King's Peace!'

Again the ashen-faced man fended off all the coroner's efforts to prise information from him,
subsiding into a stubborn denial of any knowledge of wrong-doing by his employer.

Eventually, de Wolfe lost patience and jumped to his feet to wag a stern finger at Martin. ‘Then I must go and tackle Serlo himself, to drag the truth from him. It will go badly for you if I discover that you have been concealing anything from me!'

He stalked out of the hut and swept up Thomas outside, hurrying him around the corner of the nearest mill-shed in his search for the master-fuller. If he had not left Martin in such a temper, he would have remembered to ask the man about Serlo's whereabouts, but now he had to seek him himself. As a workman passed, bent under the weight of a large bale of raw wool, John glared at him and demanded to know where his master was to be found.

‘Try the lower mill, sir,' replied the man. ‘I saw him there an hour ago.' They went across the yard to another large, but ramshackle wooden building and Thomas pointed to a small shed attached to one end. ‘That looks like the hut of the other clerk. He may be in there.'

But Serlo was not there, neither was he in the fulling mill, where a score of men and boys, some of them children, were labouring at tanks and troughs of water. They were washing fleeces, some treading them rhythmically with their feet to remove the dirt and grease, throwing in handfuls of fine clay to assist the process.

Above the incessant splashing and chatter, Thomas managed to question several men, but came back to de Wolfe shaking his head. ‘He has gone again, no one knows where,' he reported as they walked out of the watery hell that was the workplace of so many of Exeter's citizens.

‘Damn the man, he's never around when I want him!' growled the coroner.

‘He's unlikely to have fled the country now that he'll soon own all this if he weds Widow Christina,' observed Thomas, waving an arm around them.

‘Let's go, then, I've had enough for today,' grunted de Wolfe. Then he stopped walking and slapped his left hip, feeling an empty space. ‘Damnation, I've left Gwyn's sword in the clerk's hut. I wanted to take it back to the armourer on the way home.'

They changed direction and went the few hundred paces back to the upper mill. At the hut, John pushed at the door and found it immovable.

‘Strange, it must be jammed,' he muttered, putting his shoulder to the door with little effect.

‘There's no keyhole, so it must be barred on the inside,' said the observant Thomas.

Now suspicious, John hammered on the boards with his fist and yelled for Martin Knotte to open it. There was no response and he kicked at the door, this time feeling it creak and bend. A few more hefty blows with his foot splintered several of the thin planks, sufficient for him to put his arm through and push the bar up out of its brackets.

As it flew open, he charged in, shouting angrily. ‘You can't get away with it by avoiding me, fellow!' he yelled.

Then he stopped dead, Thomas peering round him at a gruesome sight. Martin Knotte knelt in the corner of the room, as if in prayer. His right shoulder was supported by the wall, keeping his body upright, though he was stone dead. He was impaled on Gwyn's sword, the point embedded in the lower part of his chest, the pommel jammed into the angle of the walls and floor. Blood lay in a wide, spreading pool around him and dribbled obscenely from the corner of his mouth.

‘Great Christ, what does this mean?' rasped de Wolfe hoarsely, as his clerk began crossing himself rapidly and murmuring Latin prayers for the dead.

The coroner strode across to the corpse, to make sure that he was past any aid, then pulled the body over on to its side, so that he could withdraw the sword.

‘Is this another murder, master?' asked Thomas in a horrified whisper.

‘Falling on a sword in a locked room?' he snapped. ‘I don't think so, Thomas! The man has committed
felo de se
! But why, for God's sake?'

As he removed the six inches of steel from Knotte's chest, the more squeamish Thomas turned away and as he did so, his eyes fell on a sheet of parchment left on the end of the table. While the coroner was straightening out the limbs of the corpse, his clerk began reading the document, the ink of which was hardly dry.

He held it out towards de Wolfe. ‘I think I had better read this to you, Crowner!' he said tremulously.

 

By noon the following day, Gwyn was back in his usual place in the Bush Inn, sitting opposite John de Wolfe at his table near the fire-pit. Thomas de Peyne was next to him, the pair beaming at the reunion, as was Nesta when she slipped on to the bench alongside her lover.

‘I've got five minutes before I need to check that stupid new cook-maid hasn't overcooked the mutton,' she said. ‘So tell me what happened today.'

‘I escaped from that damned priory today!' guffawed Gwyn. ‘Their ale wasn't too bad, but they live on bloody fish! I'd have grown fins if I'd stayed there any longer.'

‘But why were you able to come out, that's the point?' persisted the auburn-haired landlady.

De Wolfe broke in, to begin telling her the story of his suspicions of the whore's pimp, then of Serlo and Christina, all of which were confounded by Martin Knotte's suicide.

‘I had it all wrong, twice over,' he admitted. ‘But there was never any reason even to consider that fat
clerk down at the mills.' He stopped to take a long pull at his quart of Nesta's fine ale. ‘At least, not until Thomas read out that message that Martin Knotte had penned just before he spitted himself on Gwyn's sword.'

‘Not my sword any longer, Crowner!' grunted the Cornishman. ‘Thank God you've already taken it back to Roger Trudogge. The bloody thing had bad fortune written all over it, not some Latin message!'

Ignoring his officer's interruption, John continued with his tale. ‘Serlo and Christina, whatever their secret passions, had nothing to do with Walter's death, glad though they might now be that it's turned out this way.'

‘But what about that horrible fellow from the whorehouse?' demanded Nesta. ‘You said that he had Walter's purse full of money!'

‘That slimy bastard told the truth for once, that he had taken it from the corpse. When the harlot Bernice told him how much coin she had glimpsed on Walter's belt, he ran after him, presumably to assault and rob him in the alley. But someone had already done the job for him and all he had to do was snatch the purse and run.'

‘He'll hang for the theft anyway, even if he didn't kill Walter,' observed Gwyn with some satisfaction.

‘But what did Martin Knotte's message say?' asked Nesta, impatiently.

De Wolfe gestured at Thomas. ‘Let him tell you, he was the only one who could read it!'

The little clerk wriggled self-consciously, but was quite pleased to be asked. ‘It was a confession of his partiality to the sin of Sodom,' he began portentously.

‘You mean, he liked buggering boys?' growled the down-to-earth Gwyn. ‘Then at least that sword did a bit of good, in getting rid of him!'

‘It seems that he had long suffered from this aberration, but had managed to conceal it from everyone,
until the night of Walter's murder,' continued Thomas. ‘Being a married man, he had to use that hut in the fulling mills for his activities and early that evening, Walter walked in unexpectedly.'

‘Caught him
in flagrante delicto
with a lad from Bretayne,' explained John, Bretayne being the slum area down near the west wall of the city.

‘His master was outraged and promised to expose him next day to his wife and the cathedral proctors.'

‘Why them?' asked Nesta. ‘Surely such a crime should go to the sheriff?'

Thomas shook his head. ‘As a clerk, he was in lower religious orders and could claim ‘benefit of clergy', he explained. ‘That would remove judgment on his misdeeds from the secular to the ecclesiastical authorities.'

‘Though after the bishop's Consistory Court found him guilty, they might well hand him over to the sheriff to be hanged,' added John, with some satisfaction.

‘The note ended with a confession that he had panicked and lain in wait for Walter to come out of the brothel. As his clerk, he knew he was going to the New Inn that night to collect payment for wool, so he followed him and the first chance he had to slay him was in that alley off Waterbeer Street.' Thomas paused to make the sign of the cross at the memory. ‘He had taken a large knife that was used in the mill for cutting the ropes binding wool bales. He used it to slash at Walter's neck, then ran away.'

‘Yes, but that was days ago,' objected Nesta. ‘Why wait until last night to kill himself?'

‘His conscience eventually drove him to it,' explained the clerk. ‘He knew that Gwyn was being falsely accused by the sheriff and was in grave danger of being hanged. Then the Crowner's persistence in trying lay the blame on his master Serlo and Christina was the last straw. If
he didn't own up, someone was going to suffer. Even though Martin Knotte was an evil pervert, he still had some sense of honour.'

There was a thoughtful silence, broken by a loud belch from Gwyn. ‘What did that other bastard, Richard de Revelle, say when you took him the parchment?' he asked.

‘Huffed and puffed, refused to believe it, saying it was a forgery!' answered John, grinning lopsidedly at the memory of the sheriff's discomfiture. ‘It took a view of Martin's corpse, the shattered door and the bloody sword before he grudgingly admitted that it must be true.'

‘A bloody sword indeed!' said Gwyn with feeling. ‘I wonder what will become of it now?'

John de Wolfe drained the last of his quart. ‘Roger Trudogge said that he might already have sold it again,' he said. ‘It seems that some knight took a fancy to it before we bought it and wanted the armourer to let him know if it came up for sale again. He wants a good weapon to take on this new Crusade we hear about, the one that's leaving from Venice.'

‘I wish him luck with it!' grunted Gwyn. ‘He'll need it.'

Venice, 1262

I stare across over the moonlit water at the two little humps of islands that house the churches of S Cristoforo and S Michele. These are my primary targets, where I can rest and plan my escape properly. The tide is low in the lagoon, but it will soon come rushing back–I will have to hurry. I slide down on to the muddy, weed-skirted margins, and squelch my way out to the water's edge, where I begin wading. Halfway across, I turn for one more look at La Serenissima. Venice is now no more than a long, low line of dark buildings stretching far to my left and right. I wonder if this will be my last view of my home. I refuse to contemplate the thought for too long, not least because leaving Venice for good also means leaving sweet and sexy Caterina. And that I do not want.

The sword is strapped across my back, safe in its sheath from the depredations of the salt water. I prod ahead of myself with a long staff, feeling my way through the mud. Eventually, waist-deep in water, I can't see where I am putting my feet. Only the staff tells me if the next step is safe or not, that I am not stepping into a hole, or into soft, clinging mud. I am sweating despite the cold water, and suddenly the sword slips, lodging awkwardly under my left arm. I stumble, and panic for a moment, recalling this very thing
happening in a dream. I lose my grip on the staff, and plunge into an abyss. The cold, muddy waters of the lagoon close over my mouth, choking me. I go down under the surface, the mud churning up as I thrash around. I can taste the fetid water as it invades my mouth–the cloying taste of rotting flesh and cemetery earth. I try to call out for Caterina but the mud in my mouth prevents me from doing so, muffling my cries for help. Then my blindly groping hand finds the staff again. It has jammed upright, and I manage to right myself.

I pause for a while to regain my breath, spitting out salt water and stinking filth. It has been a close call. The softest mud patches can suck a fully-grown man down and down until he simply disappears off the face of God's Earth. Angry at the sword for once again putting me in mortal danger, I rip the binding free that holds it to my body, and feel its considerable weight in the grip of my right hand. This goddamn sword has been the source of all my troubles, including an accusation of murder. Now is the time to be rid of it, and then maybe my luck will change for the better. I steady myself, and yank on the hilt. The sword comes out slickly smooth from its sheath, and I heft it in the night air. The moon reflects coldly on its polished surface, only slightly scarred by my own misuse at the very tip. The light causes the inscription to seem to sparkle mockingly in my eyes. I don't need to read it–the legend is as firmly engraved on my heart as it is on that perfect blade.

‘
Qui falsitate vivit, animam occidit. Falsus in ore, caret honore.
'

I growl at such a pious sentiment. What harm does a little lying do to the soul? And as for honour–give me profit any day. I swing the blade in a glittering arc, and stand for a moment with the sword held up to the
moon by my outstretched arm. If I swing it once more and let go, it will sail away to disappear for good in the mud of the lagoon. Out of harm's way. Thinking back to how the sword came into my possession, I nevertheless begin the arching swing…

 

The Year of Our Lord Twelve Hundred and Sixty Two started out as a good one for yours truly, Nicolo Zuliani. Everything I touched turned to gold. It culminated with a
colleganza
I set up at the beginning of the year. That's a sort of short-term, high-risk, high-return business venture that appeals to us Venetians. At the time, I was essentially potless, after spending all my previous trading profits. So I was ready to take the risk–with other people's money–on a big gamble. My reputation was good, even if some thought I was a chancer. To many, that was a good thing to be. So, I soon convinced a bunch of silversmiths who traded along the Merceria that I had already leased a 250 ton galley, with which I would transport cotton from Syria for the South German cloth trade. I even offered to show them over the ship in question–the
Provvidenza
. All they needed to do was supply the funds for the cotton, and I would guarantee them a nice little profit for their investment. I didn't mention the little difficulties of high seas, savage rocky shores, and pirates. Well, you don't want to put off investors when you've tapped into their greed, do you? They were on the hook, so I just needed to reel them in. Once I had secured the funds from them for the cotton, all I had to do was find the wherewithal to lease the
Provvidenza
.

Naturally, I had lied to them. I didn't have any share in the ship when I showed it to them. But I had watched the routines of the captain and his crew for four days, until I was certain they all went for lunch around the middle of the day. A lunch sufficiently liquid to ensure
they did not return for at least three hours. I even greased the way, as it were, by slipping one of the crew a few coins by way of thanking him for showing me privately over the ship the previous day. You have to speculate to accumulate, and if things turned out the way I hoped, those few coins would be all I would put into the trading enterprise.

The gaggle of silversmiths arrived at the quay close by San Zaccaria Church promptly at noon as requested. I could see them already sniffing profit in the air. Unless it was the smell of the load of fish that was being unshipped next to the
Provvidenza
that teased their nostrils. Whatever it was, I greeted them like some Eastern potentate, eager to show off his magnificent palace.

‘Greetings, Master Saraceni, Master Luprio…' I shook each man's hand in turn, careful to recall their names properly. I wanted them to feel like we were a bunch of intimate friends embarking on some adventure together. Confidence is what it's all about, after all. The problem was the little, squinty-eyed man who always seemed to bring up the rear. Why could I never remember his name? I squeezed his hand, and stared back genially at his wall-eyed, suspicious stare as I racked my brain. Then of a sudden it came, like a cold shower sweeping across the piazza. ‘And last but not least, welcome Master Sebenico.'

He merely grunted, and slid his cold palm out of mine, which had begun to sweat. I knew I would have to watch Maestro Sebenico. From his name, I would guess he was descended from some Dalmatian pirate, and was probably as slippery as an eel. For now, I addressed the assembled throng, extolling the virtues of the galley on whose deck we stood.

‘Look at the suppleness of those sheets.' I waved my hand up to the sails, and the spider's web of ropes that
ran up to the mast. I wasn't sure which were sheets, but I did recall some of the spiel of the sailor whose lunch I had funded. I employed it as best I could. ‘And those cleats are the sturdiest I have ever seen.' Fortunately, my attentive audience were sufficiently overawed not to question my nautical know-how, and contented themselves with looking sage, and nodding their heads. Even Master Sebenico seemed not to wish to betray his ignorance. Maybe he thought his pirate ancestors would turn in their watery graves if he did. ‘Let's go for'ard, and examine the hold.'

And before you ask, yes, I did go in the right direction.

That had all been days ago, and as soon as I had got their money in the bag, I had worked on the Widow Vercelli, and Old Man di Betto to supply the funding for the galley. The widow was easily flattered by my flirtatious approaches, though she was old enough to be my granny, and ugly enough to be my pet dog. But a kiss on the hand and she was a cert. As was Pietro di Betto. The old man yearned for the good old days, when he had sailed in trading galleys himself. But now he was too sick to travel, and a little addled in the mind. In truth, I almost didn't take his money, out of sympathy for his affliction. But he insisted, didn't he? And I could not refuse him this last little pleasure in his life, could I? Besides, I wasn't cheating him, or any of them, out of their money. All being well, we would all profit from the enterprise. It's just that I was skating on thin ice, as it was usual for the merchant to put up one third of the funds. I was risking none. The trouble was, even after the widow and the simpleton coughed up, I was still short by a few thousand. So I decided to confide in Caterina.

After a particularly exhausting night of pleasure, she seemed pensive, almost impatient with my attempts at
light-heartedness. Normally Caterina Dolfin looked flushed and healthy after a tumble in my bed, but this morning she was pale and wan–sickly even. I tried to laugh it off.

‘What's the matter? Can't you take the pace any more? Maybe you should ease up on the wine, my dear Caterina.'

She always tried to match me goblet for goblet, but I was too practised at drinking to be beaten by a mere woman. Even if that woman was Caterina Dolfin, scion of one of the
case vecchie
–the aristocracy of Venice. If her father had known she was romping with a mere Zuliani, a merchant and a penniless one at that, he would have had me whipped out of La Serenissima at best. At worst, murdered in a dark alley and my body dumped in the lagoon. Still, I could not resist the excitement and allure of our assignations. Caterina Dolfin was a beauty, dark-haired and brown-eyed, with a rare figure that shone through the heavy folds of her richly embroidered bliaut over-gown. So, once again I had lured her secretly into my bed, and come the morning, I was caressing her voluptuous naked breasts, as I taunted her about her drinking. But this particular dawn she appeared to have something else on her mind, and she responded distractedly.

‘Oh, leave over, Nicolo.'

This made me suddenly wary. She only used my full given name, instead of calling me Nick, when she was annoyed. I tried on my simpering look as she carried on.

‘You should buy something more palatable than that cheap Rhenish you are so fond of when I dine with you. Maybe that's what disagreed with me. Unless it was the fish. God knows what they feed on in the lagoon.'

I guffawed. ‘I don't need to be God to know what is washed from the Serene Republic's sewers and on to
the feeding grounds where the lazier fishermen ply their trade.'

Caterina's eyes narrowed, and she held a petite hand to her mouth at the thought. She began to look even greener than before, her eyes almost pleading. I wondered again if she was expecting me to propose marriage, and I almost did at that point. But though I longed for Caterina, I thought of my own parents' stormy marriage. So I just couldn't bring myself to encompass such a commitment right then, and the moment was lost. Instead, I sounded her out on my small embarrassment with
colleganza
funds. She snorted in disdain.

‘If you think I can lay my hands on any of my father's money, you must be mad. He didn't get rich by ignoring the pennies.' She rolled over on to her stomach, presenting her arched back and rounded, bare buttocks to my adoring gaze. ‘You should try Pasquale, he's mad enough to risk money on you.'

I tore my eyes from her divine arse. ‘Pasquale? Fish-face Valier?'

In truth, I had not considered Valier–he of the bulging eyes, and receding chin–but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Pasquale liked to mix with the same drinking crowd I did. And although you couldn't say we were friends, we had exchanged a few drolleries over some good wine. Moreover, like Caterina, he was also of the
case vecchie
, which meant he was loaded. And gullible enough to be taken in by my flattery. I would woo him like I had the Widow Vercelli. Just as long as he didn't hope to end up in my bed like the widow had. Hoped that is–my bed I reserve solely for the beautiful Cat. With that thought bringing me back to the present, I ran my fingers down her sensuously curved spine, and over her remarkable arse. And then further on.

If I had been able to foresee the future, I would not have left the question of marriage so unfinished. But then, I had no idea that time was running out for me. That I would only see her one more time, as murder came between us. Back then, I had reckoned there was all the time in the world to settle down. And for the time being, I was content to enjoy myself like any man should. I didn't really want to admit to myself that I was avoiding marriage because I feared ruining it all like my father had done. That was a thought I could not entertain, even while sober.

 

‘Did you hear that there is talk of an election? And Doge Renier Zeno still firmly ensconced with no intention of resigning.'

Pasquale Valier was outraged that any such idea should be contemplated. He drank deep of the good Gascon wine I had supplied him with, spending some more of my precious few coins in a desperate attempt to raise the few thousand I still needed for my
colleganza
. His fishy eyes bulged even further at the thought of tradition being so usurped. These old families hung on desperately to the ways that had served them well. Myself, I thought the ducal election was rigged from the start in favour of the old families. Since when had a Zuliani had a chance to get voted in? Still, I needed to keep Valier sweet, if I was to tap into his money supply.

‘Outrageous,' I murmured.

I had been more than a little surprised that he had accepted my invitation so easily. My lodgings were not the most salubrious of accommodation, being close to canal level, and consequently damp and rather smelly. Maybe it was the fact that they backed on to the fabulous Ca' da Mosta, and that I used the palace to describe how to reach my own more humble abode. The Ca'
looked out majestically on to the Grand Canal. My quarters squinted blearily on to no more than a dingy alley of mud that you wouldn't dignify with the word canal. I prayed the interior would convey more a sense of modest simplicity to Valier than the reality. That of shabby poverty.

I had no need to worry. Once in his cups, Valier was blithely ignorant of the damp walls, and down-at-heel furniture. All I had to do was to keep refilling his tankard. And listen to him banging on about politics, which interested me little except when it affected business. Since last year, when the Greeks had retaken Constantinople, Venice's influence in that region had been blighted by our old enemy, Genoa. The doge's old title of Lord of a Quarter and Half a Quarter of the Roman Empire had suddenly become increasingly hollow-sounding. It had been won sixty years ago, when Doge Dandolo–the old, blind wheeler-dealer himself–had conned the leaders of the Fourth Crusade into conquering Constantinople instead of aiming straight for Outremer. They had owed the Republic a lot of money, and could do little else, mind you. With a puppet installed on the throne in Byzantium, Dandolo had picked up vast chunks of the newly made Latin Empire, and that lordly title. But now it was gone again, and apparently some blamed the present doge for the inconvenience. Including the erstwhile governor of Constantinople, Domenico Lazzari. Valier continued to blether on about it.