Sword of Shame (17 page)

‘As
ballotino
,' I tried to explain in words of one
syllable, not sure if the thief knew or cared much about politics. ‘Whoever is running the doge's election, comes out of the Basilica, and selects the first boy in the street he comes across. And it's that kid who pulls out a name from the voting jar. Into the jar the Forty-One have put a shortlist for doge. It was easy to guess the most likely names that would go on that list. So all I had to do was ensure one particular name from that shortlist was drawn. That name was the one I wagered all on. The boy had a slip of paper with that name on, and I taught him to palm the slip of paper, and appear to draw it from the jar. Easy.'

‘Hmmm. Not so easy, it would seem. Last I heard, the boy was being escorted to the prison, and the whole matter was being hushed up.'

I went cold, and a sick feeling spread in my guts. I felt afraid not only for myself, but mainly for poor Malamocco. No one ever emerged alive from the doge's prison.

‘What happened?'

‘It's difficult to tell. As I said, they are keeping the whole thing quiet. But someone must have ratted on you. I have heard that after the paper was drawn, they opened the jar, and still found the same number of slips inside.'

I marvelled at Alimpato's intimate knowledge of the goings-on of a so-called secret meeting deep in the bowels of the Doge's Palace. But maybe that is why he is as successful as he is. And I might have wished for some of his insider information myself. I begged him to tell me what had gone wrong. His next words were chilling.

‘Zuliani. You have been betrayed, and they know everything. But it is worse than that. Domenico Lazzari has been found murdered, and you are in the frame for it.'

Lazzari? What had I to do with his death, or his death with the rigged election? My brain could barely contain the flood of events.

‘They say Lazzari was part of the scam, Zuliani, and that you silenced him when the truth came out. Just to save your own skin.' There was a rustling in the seat behind me, as if Alimpato was eager to put a very great distance between himself and me. And I couldn't blame him. But first, he had a final warning. ‘It matters little now what has gone before. All is lost, and the
Signori
are on your trail. I suggest you get out while you still can. I know I am.'

So the flim-flam was blown apart like a powder barrel in the Arsenal shipyard, and the
Signori di Notte
, or ‘Gentlemen of the Night', were hunting in broad daylight. I twisted round in my pew, but all I saw was the back of the cloaked shape of Alimpato disappearing down the central aisle, taking his own advice. I crossed myself in one last effort to get God on my side, and dashed out of the church into the bright sunlight of a clear Venetian afternoon. Hesitating for a moment in the church's doorway, I considered my options.

My best hope of escape lay towards the marshy wastes to the north of the island republic. But I was trapped on the southern side of the Grand Canal, at the bottom of the reversed S-shaped loop of that wide, watery thoroughfare. The only foot crossing was the Rialto pontoon bridge in the middle of the loop. But that was too far away, and too risky to cross–the
Signori di Notte
police force would have men posted on it. Fortunately, there were also many random points at which the canal could be crossed. On ferry-boats.

I ran along the quay to the tip of the southern island, the Punta della Dogana. But even as I did so, I heard a cry from behind me.

‘Nicolo Zuliani–the game's up.'

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the man who had called out was dark-browed, solemn and heavily bearded. It was Lorenzo Gradenigo. I knew him from childhood, and he had been a bully then. He strode towards me, as I searched for a way out. Almost upon me, he pointed at my dishevelled mantle with a stubby finger.

‘Look, the blood stain is still on you. Murderer.'

I remembered my drunken antics with the Dolfin sword, and how I had nicked myself. But this was not the time to protest that it was an old stain, and my own blood besides. I stuck my fist hard in Gradenigo's face, and drew some fresh blood with which to stain my clothes. As he reeled back, clutching his squashed features, I dodged round him. Not far ahead, I saw the drab, dark uniforms of half a dozen
Signori
coming in pursuit, swords drawn and flashing in the sunlight.

‘The game's not over yet,' I muttered through gritted teeth, as I ran down the quay. There was no time to negotiate with any of the waiting boatmen. Their keen sense of a bargain would have ensured several minutes of debate before a price for crossing the canal could have been agreed on. And those were minutes I could not now spare. I was facing the imminent likelihood of capture and incarceration in the doge's prison, from where I was unlikely ever to emerge. Except in a coffin.

Suddenly, I saw a large, flat barge being expertly steered out of the mouth of the Giudecca canal to my right.

‘Just in time, my friend.'

I put on a spurt as the boat wallowed past the end of the wooden quay along which I and my pursuers were running. Its prow pointed across the Bacino di San Marco towards the landing in front of the Doge's Palace itself. Without pausing for thought, I sprinted to the end of the quay, and launched myself into
space with a yell. ‘I hope you're carrying something soft.'

I sailed through the air, and landed right in front of the startled boatman. It was indeed a soft landing. The barge was a rubbish carrier filled with the rotting remains of the leavings of rich men's tables. And there were many rich men in Venice. I was sitting up to my waist in stinking vegetables and rotting fish bones.

Despite my predicament, I laughed uproariously at the frustration of my pursuers, who stood shaking their fists on the quayside. But even as I watched, Gradenigo split his crew into two groups. Some ran off along the quay in a desperate but doomed attempt to cut me off on foot, while the rest hurried down the steps to the water's edge to hire a boat. I knew they would find someone ready to ferry them–every Venetian from the highest to the lowest has his price. Even for the hated
Signori di Notte
. But I had a start on them, and that was all I needed.

‘What's to stop me just paddling in circles till they catch us up, maestro?'

The oarsman's tone was wheedling and cunning, and the barge wallowed ominously. I saw that the boat containing my pursuers was already cutting through the waters of the basin at each stroke of the single oar, and sighed histrionically. I pulled my purse from my waist, and jingled the contents.

‘Name your price.'

The oarsman grinned, revealing a mouth devoid of anything but rotting stubs of teeth. I could smell his breath even above the stench of the offal on which I sprawled.

‘You must be desperate, not to bargain. Give me the lot.'

He held his hand out for my purse. Hesitating only for a moment, I dropped it into the grasping fist. In a
flash it was stowed safely in the folds of the man's filthy rags, and the refuse collector returned to plying his own oar with a will. As the landing at San Marco approached, I got ready to leap off, and disappear right under the doge's nose into the narrow alleys beyond the Palace. Not least because my rescuer would be outraged to discover, when he opened the strings of my purse, that he had been caught out like Malamocco had by a few pennies and several rusty nail heads. After all, I had wagered all my money on the election.

 

The escape provided me with a moment of elation, and I dared to return briefly to my rooms in order to retrieve the sword. Especially as it looked as though I would need it now. I reckoned I could find some respite by lying low in my uncle's palazzo for a while. Uncle Matteo was on the Dalmatian coast on business, so I would have the place to myself. The modest house backed on to the family church of San Zulian, and was as safe a place as I could find for the time being. But even as I drew breath, I knew I would have to go eventually. All the Zuliani family properties would be searched sooner or later. I began to wonder if exile wasn't so bad an option, after all. The alternative–torture, and death in the doge's dungeon–was unthinkable. The only problem was having to give up hopes of Caterina. It was for that reason alone that I went against my own better judgement.

I decided on trying to prove my innocence–at least of the murder of Domenico Lazzari. I thought that maybe, if I could achieve that, I could talk myself out of the accusation of vote-rigging. It was a long shot, but I had gambled on longer odds at dice and won. Though usually I gave blind chance a little helping hand in such circumstances. Now, as I couldn't manufacture my own evidence, I would have to rely on uncov
ering the plain truth, uneasy as I found such a concept. Especially as my first action was to try and contact the thief Alimpato again. Despite my predicament, I laughed at the thought of my acting like a public prosecutor from the Council of Forty-one. The only problem was that I would have to operate in secret, and largely at night if I was not to get arrested myself, and brought before the
Quarantia
.

Fortunately, Venice is a doubly convoluted labyrinth, well designed for skulduggery and sneaking around in the dark. There is first the maze of streets, or
calle
, some of which cut under buildings. And interwoven with that is a second maze of canals, or
rio
. At various points you can step across from one to the other, bewildering anyone who is trying to follow you, especially if they are strangers, or only know their own district. I am perforce familiar with the whole of Venice and its underworld. Card-sharping often required hasty exits and obfuscated escape routes.

Like many houses in Venice, my uncle's has a back door that opened into an alley barely as wide as a body. You never know when you might need to avoid your debtors. Now, even if the front of the house and the water entrance were under observation, no one would see me come and go. After dark, I slipped through this door, and down the narrow alley which also backed on to the church of San Zulian. With my sword belted to my waist, the passage was a tight fit. But it soon gave out on to a wider
calle
that ran down parallel to the Merceria towards a tiny
rio
. On the water at this junction bobbed a small flat boat with its pole jammed in the Venetian mud. It was my uncle's boat. I jumped into it, and used the pole to manoeuvre it northwards towards a T-junction. There I turned east, and poled to an elbow where I followed the southern arm of the
rio
. As the boat snaked between the buildings on either
side, the water plashed against their walls. But no one was made aware of my presence, as all the houses and workshops looked the other way out to the street. On the
rio
side, they were blind. I poled cautiously along, until I came across a building to my right which was heavily fortified. I was at the back of the Doge's Palace, and incorporated in its lowest levels were the prison cells. My expectation was to find Malamocco languishing in one of these.

Despite his avowed intention to go to ground, Alimpato had not been too difficult to find. Especially when he knew I wanted to find out the location of the boy. It appeared Malamocco was still being held in the Doge's Palace, while it was decided if a swift or a slow death was warranted in his case. I was grateful that the doge was still in a quandary over such a matter. It gave me time to effect a rescue. Alimpato suggested I was mad, when I had proposed it.

‘I knew you were a gambler. But not one to go against such long odds, Nick.'

Apart from Cat, Alimpato was the only person who used the English version of my name. The fact that previously only my mother had been the one to use it, and then only privately beyond my father's earshot, tells you how precious it is to me. She was born in Salisbury in England, and said she never regretted marrying my father, despite the pain and suffering he caused her. Still, she is free of all that now, God rest her soul. I smiled sadly, and patted Alimpato on his skinny back.

‘Such long odds,
and
such a little reward.' I sketched Malamocco's height with my hand, barely raising my palm above my waist. ‘Such a small package, and yet such a big appetite.'

Alimpato laughed, knowing that I could do nothing else but take the risk. It was my fault that the boy's short life would soon be ended otherwise. He would
have expected nothing less of me. At least he gave me a fighting chance with a sort of plan.

‘I can speak to the gaoler–he is my cousin's brother by marriage–and he will arrange for the boy to be in one of the
rio
-side cells. They are below water level, and are damp, stinking and full of rats, so are usually kept for the doge's worst enemies. But for the boy it can be little worse than where he lived before his imprisonment. After that, it is down to you Nick.'

Which is why I was now slowly pulling myself and my boat along the stone walls of the doge's prison, urgently calling into the barred windows that stood barely above water level.

‘Malamocco, are you there?'

At the first two windows, my call only elicited a rustling that may have been rats, or the shifting of the starved body of some long-incarcerated prisoner. At the third window I received a reply.

‘Who's there?' came the timorous reply. It was a boy's voice, but one that from fear and hunger no longer sounded like that of the cocky Malamocco I had trained in sleight-of-hand.

‘It's me–the card-sharp. I'm going to get you out.'

His eager face appeared at the bars, a little paler and a lot gaunter than when I had seen it last. But the gleam in his eyes told me the cockiness was not completely lost. I pushed my boat pole in the mud to secure the little barge in place, and drew my sword. The boy recoiled from the bars in horror.

‘Barratieri! What are you going to do? Cut me into little pieces so I can pass through the bars?'