The Venetian Contract (18 page)

He took the chalice and purse from his voluminous sleeve. He laid the cup and the mouseskin gently on the wooden board, and gestured to the two men to sit. He noted that the boy immediately retreated to a shadow in the
chimney corner, where he hid, peering out. ‘Now listen to me well,’ said Annibale. ‘Here is my family treasure.’ He indicated the purse with his gloved finger. ‘May I trust you two honest gentlemen to watch it for me, while I look about on the Doge’s business? And this –’ he tapped the rim of the old brass cup which sang faintly back to him ‘– is a very old chalice. Some say –’ he lowered his voice reverently ‘– that the Christ himself drank from it.’

The old man goggled at the worthless cup.

‘I will be back in one quarter of the bells.’ And Annibale left the little smoky house, walking through the arch into the Vigna Murada.

He had expected a purely functional place but here was a green lawn of lush grass, and a beautiful avenue of mature white mulberry trees, their gold-edged leaves waving against the cerulean sky. Here and there, set into the ground, were abbreviated pillars and great fallen stones which told the story of an older building that had stood here once. Just inside the retaining wall was a square of low stone almshouses, with a little church at one corner, and in the centre of all a great roofed building with arches open to the air, that the Venetians called a
Tezon
.

He had heard of this place and now imagined what would happen when a ship came in, reconstructing the scene, peopling the island in his mind. First the crew would disembark, and walk through a shallow pit of lime. Then they would carry the goods from the ship and pile them in the Tezon, marking the unique insignia or cognizance of the shipment on the wall above the pile of goods. Then the crew would be moved into the almshouses for forty days,
the origin of the word
quarantine
. They would be expected to keep healthy and chaste and attend mass in the little church unless they were infidels. Each day of the forty, the goods would be carried outside the Tezon through the open arches, smoked with cleansing fires, aired, then piled back under the great roof overnight. Once the goods and the crew were pronounced healthy, they were allowed to leave and enter Venice proper, free to disembark and trade their goods.

Annibale knew that there had been an edict from the Council that all merchandise must be clearly marked with a cognizance because the black market on the quarantine islands was rife – the goods that went back into the cases after smoking and airing were sometimes not the same in quality or number as those that had been taken out. Annibale wondered how much money Bocca had made over the years, replacing luxury goods for homely ones. Well, soon enough he would have a measure of the gatekeeper’s honesty.

Annibale walked through one of the great arches into the belly of the Tezon. Once his eyes had adjusted to the dark he saw a great yawning space, empty of persona and purpose, with nothing to tell of its past use but a few hollow barrels and a broken box or two. The walls, though, told their own story. Scrawled on every spare space was writing and drawing, some in Venetian, some in Ottoman, some in strange hieroglyphs unknown to him. The markings were in red, and if this had been a prison he would have thought them written in blood. He came closer to one scribble, rubbed it with his finger and sniffed his glove – the writings were in iron oxide, the same compound used to mark up the cargo. Some sailors, clearly bored by their forty days’
enforced sojourn on the lazaret, had exercised their artistic talents – here was a gondola, there a perfect galleon, there a knight, there some kind of be-turbanned infidel king.

At one end of the great room Annibale looked back – each bay formed a natural niche and he could fit dozens of mattresses in here. All he’d need to do would be to close off the open arches, to keep the afflicted sheltered from the elements.

Ducking back outside, Annibale climbed the great boundary wall, the
murada
that gave the island its old name. Here and there, spaced along the wall there were
torresin
: observation towers where the marshals would stand to monitor the ships. He climbed one of them and looked over; there was a little wooded wilderness beyond the walls, and a
giro di ronda
pathway through the laurels and blackthorns. Then, beyond, a marshy expanse of salt flats that led to the lagoon, scattered with enclosed expanses of water which would be perfect for trout meres or laundry pools. Right on the horizon, as tiny as this island had been to his eye yesterday evening, was Venice, shrunk down at this distance to a spiky pewter crown cast into the middle of the lagoon.

Annibale climbed down the stone steps, walked around the back of the Tezon and found a well – a good-sized wellhead with a decorative rain drain. Wells of this design had seven layers of rock and sand filters between the drain and the bowl, so the water to be drawn was clean and fresh. The stone bowl featured the ubiquitous winged lion carved in relief, but the book he held was closed.

Annibale leaned in to look, momentarily distracted. Usually in such depictions the book in the lion’s paw lay open, with the greeting of Saint Mark, ‘
Pax tibi, Marce
,
Evangelista meus
’, clearly etched in stone. He wondered what the closed book meant; perhaps that something was sealed, or hidden.

Reminded, he dropped to his knees and dug up a clean square of turf in the soft ground, placing the Cason casket deep in the earth by the well, covering it completely so it was unseen. But he felt eyes upon him and thought for a breathless moment that the lion was watching him back.

As he got to his feet, a large grey cat hurtled out of the wilderness of long grass as if shot from a mangonel, slowed to a saunter, and sidled brazenly right up to Annibale, nudging his hand for a stroke. The creature was destined to be disappointed.

Annibale continued along the row of almshouses. He looked into one empty dwelling – two rooms, one above the other, with a fireplace, good light and ventilation. There were probably above a hundred family houses here. All of the houses were in good condition except one in the corner, which looked run down and ruined. Annibale guessed it had once been blasted by cannon – not all ships called in to the island by the officers acceded readily to the Republic’s strict quarantine laws.

Where two rows of almshouses adjoined there was a small square church topped with a cross. Annibale walked over to it and went inside, followed by the cat. He didn’t have much time for religion. He had been raised to be devout, but at Padua had been taken to hear a few radical underground lectures by those who set science against God. He could sometimes, secretly, see their point.

He turned about in the centre of the little nave. There was one good window of Murano glass, with shaped and coloured panes in a pleasing design of four ships flying the
scarlet and gold pennants of Venice, riding curly periwinkle waves. But apart from a few rude wooden benches, and a rough wooden cross on the plain altar there was nothing here – not a chalice nor a book. It seemed God was long gone from this place; birds had made their nests in the crossribs.

Someone, though, had been sweeping the floor – he could see the twig tracks of a broom in the dust, and a white stain where someone had tried to scrub some of the birds’ leavings from the pew. Annibale kept this snippet of information, bottling it like a specimen in the cabinet of his mind.

Outside he looked up at the architrave; gold letters read
San Bartolomeo
. Saint Bartholomew. A good name for a church; a better one for a hospital, he thought.

He went back to the gatehouse. The old fellow was watching the humble chalice on the board in front of him as if it were about to perform a miracle. The simpleton, still occupying a shadow in the chimney corner, watched his father.

Annibale picked up the mouseskin purse. It was lighter than before. ‘My thanks,’ he said. ‘And for your pains I make you a gift of the chalice. May it bless you and give succour to your son, for did not Christ himself bless the afflicted? My ducats, of course, I will take back.’ He bored the father through with his red gimlet eyes.

Bocca looked at him, his eyes as round as the ducats. Annibale saw a flicker of guilt there and knew, suddenly, who had been sweeping the church. He fingered the coins through the mouseskin; there were three, not four.

‘Wait,’ said Bocca, twisting with shame. He opened his dirty palm. ‘Here is a coin I … found … on the
floor. It must have jolted from the purse when you set it down.’

Annibale swooped upon it, snatching it up in his gloved hand. He saw the man visibly recoil from his beak. ‘Why, thank you, Bocca. Honest men are rare. In return for your rectitude I will offer you a rare opportunity. I have been granted this island by the
Consiglio della Sanita
for a Plague hospital. Your help would be most welcome, so you may stay and work for me.’

Bocca knelt and kissed Annibale’s glove. ‘Oh yes,
Dottore
, let us stay. We will give you all the help you need.’

Annibale was pleased with his own cunning. He needed Bocca, who had known the island for twenty years, and the man and his idiot would now be loyal, and not question his credentials.

‘Good then. I will return tomorrow, and in the meantime, do not let any other person through these gates. From today, this island will be known as the
Lazzaretto Novo
.’

Annibale walked through the gates with a flourish of his black coat, pleased with the morning’s work.

Back on the jetty the grey cat followed him still, trotting after him delicately over the wooden slats to the boat. When Annibale stopped the cat wound about his legs looking up hopefully. Annibale picked it up by the scruff of its neck. One of the rules of his island – for in his mind, it was already his – was that there would be no cats or curs to spread the pestilence. The cat dangled calmly in his grip and he lifted it so he could see its face before he cast it into the sea to drown.

It was a mistake. The red eye-glasses met the jade
black-slabbed eyes and Annibale read utter trust there. Cursing, he threw the cat into the boat instead, much to the boatman’s surprise, and took it all the way back to the Fondamenta Nuove before setting it free in the
calli
of Venice.

He was royally scratched for his pains.

Chapter 15

F
eyra set forth from the island later than she’d planned, delayed by the visit of the strange old man.

The light was already fading a little, silvering the lagoon and greying out the city across the water.

As soon as she’d left the ruin and begun to walk along the seaboard she felt vulnerable despite the fact that she once again wore her veil and her medicine belt. She took the foreign coin from her bodice and turned it over and over in her hand. She took a deep breath. True, she was utterly alone, but she still had her wits and her knowledge and one gold coin. It was enough. It had to be.

She walked down a stone walkway on the city side of the island towards a huddled settlement of houses. As she approached, she saw a black crescent-shaped boat crossing the silver channel between the island and the city. The boatman was headed to a small pier with a parti-coloured pole. Her heart beating faster, she arrived just after he did. He’d decanted some passengers, and she noted with interest that two of the women travellers had scarves drawn over their faces against the sea fog. Perhaps her own veil would not be such a cause for comment, and her father’s coverlet, which she’d wrapped about her as a makeshift cloak, covered the rest of her alien garb.