The Venetian Contract (11 page)

‘The soldier told me that if I died my body would be cast into the waves,’ came the answer. ‘And furthermore, this man himself would lie in my casket, be wrapped in my
shroud, would breathe my miasma, and carry the contagion himself.’

Realization dawned and Feyra’s flesh crept. ‘So this man is aboard the ship?’

‘He is. And if he dies, another soldier of the Sultan will take his place. Every man on this ship has taken the pledge to carry this disease to Venice. We are all doomed, girl; you too.’

Feyra’s fears gave way to her curiosity. ‘But why this senseless series of sacrifices? Why should a man be taken?’

‘The good doctor told me that, in the days of Justinian, the Plague was brought to Constantinople in a bale of silk from Pelusium. The Sultan could have done likewise but he wished for certainty; so the doctor counselled him that the best way to carry the pestilence is in the body of a victim. So when I told you that I was Death, I spoke true. My real name I cannot tell you, for I gave my promise in the name of the Sultan, the light of my eyes and the delight of my heart. If the plan were to go aright
or
awry, it is equally necessary that the source of the contagion is secret. The soldier told me that if the states of the infidel Christ knew what had passed, our nation would be condemned and we would bring down a crusade against Constantinople just as in days of old.’

Now
Feyra understood why Haji Musa had been so fearful at their leave-taking in the Hall of the Ablution Fountain that he barely marked the passing of Nur Banu. Now the warnings made sense. The doctor, who had made an oath to save life, could not countenance the full infamy of a plan which would claim thousands. She voiced, at last, her horror, unable, now, to keep the
condemnation from her voice. ‘But, the
people
of Venice – the citizens?’

‘What of them?’ came the reply. ‘The doctor was right about me. I was at Lepanto. The Venetian curs fired our ships. I watched them burn, girl. All those sailors. It was hell on earth. No. I welcome what I go to do. I embrace it. I am content.’

Over the next two days Feyra grew stronger, and began to believe that a miracle had occurred and that she had somehow recovered from this most dire of diseases. She did not tell Death of this, for she was chary of giving him hope of such a recovery. Their friendship grew over those days and at night, after the quartermaster had come and gone, she would draw back the white curtain and talk to Death.

By tacit consent they did not talk again about the mission and the contagion he carried. They talked of home, of places and things they would both know; the Bazaar, the fair at Pera, the regatta on the Bosphorus. He would talk, when he had the strength, of his own travels, and she was reminded, strongly, of her father. She asked him too, in a circumspect way, if he had heard of a fabled black horse, or a horse of another hue, but he had not. She even asked him if he had heard of a man called Saturday; she tried the words in Ottoman and Venetian; but at the sound of a Venetian name she could hear him attempt to expel what little spittle he had in a contemptuous spit; the muslin before his face darkened like a small bruise, and she let be.

The one topic she did not probe was that of his family.
She knew that, one way or another, he was going to die; and could not bear to hear that he had a daughter that sang to him while she spun the distaff in the kitchen, or a son who told him jests as they yoked their bull for ploughing, or a wife who curried his beard and kissed him as he left the house for prayers each morning. She just tried to ease his last days as best she could for she could not imagine the horror of his existence, to be confined in that space with his own wastes as disease ate him.

Now too, she knew why her father had asked her, a week ago at dinner, about the isolation of a patient aboard ship. It was she who had advised him about the curtain, she who had counselled him about the muslin panel, she who had prescribed a small, curtained enclosure hung about with myrtle.

It was she who had placed Death in this box.

‘Girl?’

‘Yes, Death?’

‘Do you ever think about
Jannah
? What do you think it is like?’

Feyra thought for a moment. She had been asked the question before, in the Harem – the dying always turned their thoughts to what came next.
Jannah
, Paradise, was the destination he had been promised, and she was not surprised that he should wish to elevate his mind from his dreadful prison to the great beyond.

She did not know what to say. She could tell him that he would live in a meadow of flowers, drink sweet honey and dress in garments encrusted with jewels. But she believed in good and ill and a Prophet and a God who believed in them
too so she could not, in all conscience, tell Death that he would be rewarded for smiting an entire city. She was saved from offering either a palatable lie or an unpalatable truth by a cry far overhead, above the deck, the sails and even the mast itself.

‘
Land ahoy!
’

Chapter 9

^‘
D
eath?’

‘Yes, girl?’

‘Have we stopped?’

‘Yes. They have dropped anchor. We must be near.’

‘Why have we stopped?’

‘They are waiting for a storm. The soldier told me this too. Only then will we draw closer to the city and I will perform my final act.’

Feyra began to dread the arrival of the storm, because of the dreadful thing she must ask of herself. It would be terrible for any person to contemplate, but it went particularly against the grain for her, not just because the man in the box was now her friend, but because as a doctor she had sworn to heal; to cure not to kill. She longed to reveal herself and seek her father – but she could not, for his own sake, till the deed was done. One life, after all, was but a feather when weighed in the scales with the ten thousand that might be saved.

The moment came, early one morning, with a crack of thunder that shivered her ribs and rattled her teeth, followed hard upon by a flash of lightning so intense that it
found the cracks in the clinkers and lit the hold for one brilliant instant. Almost instantaneously Feyra felt a jerk and a rattle of chain below as the rode was lifted and the anchor was weighed. The great iron flukes scraped at the side of the hold like a beast scratching to be let in, and the ship began to move.

High above she heard the cries of the sailors, the creak of ropes pulled taut, and the belly and snap of canvas as the sails were raised. The ship began to pitch and heave, she felt a strong pull forwards and
Il Cavaliere
was in full sail again, full speed ahead.

Over these last days she had withdrawn a little from Death. For one thing, she knew his condition was worsening – his breathing was laboured, his speech confused. For another, when the way ahead had become clear to her, she could not bear to sit with him, knowing what she was to do.

As the ship gathered speed, she crossed the hold, lurching and stumbling against the motion of the newly rough sea, and drew back the white curtain for the last time. Beyond the rushing of the winds and waters and the creaking protests of the timbers, there was an eerie silence from the sarcophagus. Perhaps he was already dead. She hoped so.

She placed herself behind the heavy casket and began to push as hard as she could. Her strength had almost fully returned, and she had been eating and drinking carefully from the supplies to restore it. But still it was more than she could do even to move the thing an inch. In the end she let the forces of nature assist her. The ship pitched and rolled to such an extent that she was able to push the casket down a steep slope as the ship rocked, and, when the slant of the floor was against her, set her shoulder against the pewter to stop the coffin sliding back.

At last she’d achieved her purpose and the casket was butted up flush against the gantry doors. Next, she took a heavy coil of rope and wrapped it around her wrist, to secure her to the shipboard. Then Feyra loosed the latches and threw the double doors open.

They were immediately thrust back at her, slamming against her forearms. She shoved them again, but was pushing against the four winds. With an enormous effort, taking one door at a time, she pushed them open in turn, judging it this time so the wind would snatch the doors and thrust them back against the ship itself, keeping them open with the blast. Her eyes were blinded by too much light, her lungs filled with too much air. After her dank, still dungeon, the freshness of the outside world made her gasp.

A roiling tempest sent heavy ropes flicking against the portholes like whips, and the sea-spray doused her with its freezing drench, fit to pull her into the depths. She looked down with sheer terror – she was among the dragon’s coils now. The sea was pewter like the casket, and boiling so high that one moment she was in a leaden valley so low she could not see the sky, the next she was atop a silver mountain.

As she clung to the sodden ropes she was dimly aware of a tiny island lit by torches and enclosed around by walls, and heard a cry as the ship swept past. As she pushed the casket until first a quarter, and then a third of it protruded from the ship, above the clamouring, shrieking tempest she heard a more piercing cry.

It was Death.

He knew what she was about and began to hammer at the casket, crying out. She thought she heard an answering cry from somewhere above her, drowned out by Death’s desperate pleas.

‘No, girl, no! Leave me be! I must have my triumph. My family, what of my family? I beg you! If I do not fulfil my task they will not be rewarded!’

She tried to stop her ears and set her shoulders beyond the head end for one final push, but she heard every desperate word. ‘I have a son, who wants to buy the farm next to mine! He is called Daoud and is just seventeen! I have a daughter, Deniz, who is twenty and wants to marry but has no dowry! My wife, my Zarafa … my love … dear God, don’t let me fail them!’

Then she knew he was a man, just a man. They could call him the black horse, she could name him Death, but he was just a doomed mortal man with a family and a daughter as old as she. Feyra’s tears were snatched and cast away by the winds before they fell, but she pushed grimly on. At last she stood back.

The casket teetered on the edge, balanced see-saw, and as she watched with horror, it reached its tipping point and began to fall into the roiling waves.

Then, all was confusion, as behind her, the deck hatch was thrown open and a succession of seamen tumbled down into the hold. In an instant her arms were bound behind her with the rope she held, while a figure flew past her and threw himself at the end of the sarcophagus that was still inside the hold. The coffin fell back down with a clang.