The Venetian Contract (41 page)

Matters were already being well organized by a tall man with white hair and a beard; his long robes tattered and blackened, shredded at the hem like a pedlar’s. He might have been a priest or a hermit but he was organizing the people as if he were the general of an army, and like the best of generals, he was not just giving orders but was first into the fray and nearest the fire. Following his pointing arm Feyra fell into line between Annibale and him, and helped pass the buckets of salt water.

During those hours as her arm muscles cracked and her hands blistered, she began to admire the human spirit, exemplified in the lines of Venetians who had flooded from all parts of the city to help. As the effort to fight the fire swelled, the containers that passed through Feyra’s exhausted hands were changing; not just buckets now but ewers, chamber-pots and even a child’s bath. The fire, the vast drama that played out before her as the great white palace burned, was shrunk down to these humble household containers that she held in her hands; she
knew
these people, through these cracked jugs and christening cups with their children’s names writ on the side.

As the interminable night wore on Feyra almost fell asleep where she stood, her face burning in the white heat of the roaring flame. The beak mask was long gone, burned or trampled or used for bailing, she would never know. Her feet chilled to blocks of ice by the freezing water that slopped on to them from the buckets. But it seemed that the fire was gaining headway and eventually the white-haired general turned to the line. ‘The fire will spread to the Basilica,’ he bellowed. ‘We must take down the counting house. Menfolk, to me! Bring hammers and rams.’

The night changed from then. The men began to attack the antique walls of the old
Zecca
, the mint and counting house, in an ecstasy of destruction. The ancient stones were pulled down under their hands till a gap appeared against the yellow sky, a gap the fire could not leap.

Feyra looked desperately for Annibale, and caught sight of him once or twice in the thick of the men, shrouded by smoke, his face as black as a moor’s. She shed her cloak, organized the women on the bucket chain, redoubling their efforts for the lack of the men. Between the dousing she would also tend injuries where she could: minor burns, smoke on the lungs, and even a woman bleeding from the head where a molten lead tile had fallen from the skies and struck her.

Once back in the line, Feyra was struck by the irony of it all; she was striving with these people to save their great golden church, a church with the four bronze horses bursting forth from the gallery, turned to gold in the fire. Watching them rearing above the flames she knew that this was their work, that of the four the red horse had dominion this night. Why should she save these four-legged demons? And Saint Mark, whose feast his citizens celebrated this day,
who lay within there wrapped in his blanket of pig’s flesh? Let him cook there, like a Saint’s day feast himself. But she did not stop the relentless pass and toss of the buckets, never slowing in her rhythm.

By dawn they were gaining. Having devoured a great dark bite of the palace, the ravenous fire seemed satisfied and dwindled to a few pockets of flame, the temple and her sentinel horses smoking but safe. As the sky silvered to day, the sun rose on a different world. All was black – the palace, the citizens, and even the sky rained sooty cinders. The only colour was the red rose petals of Saint Mark, strewn about, blowing in eddies with the ash.

Feyra dropped her bucket at her feet and staggered to the corner of the church. The menfolk were dispersing and she looked desperately for Annibale. She saw him, leaning on the corner of the Basilica. He was doubled up, coughing, his face as puce as the stone. She dragged him clear, sat him down on a fallen pillar and looked at him closely, as he caught his breath. In all his doctoring he had kept his face covered; now he was exposed not just to the miasmas of the city but the thick smoke too. The fire was doused, the Doge, she hoped, was safe and Takat was dead. It was time for them to go. She held out her hand. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

Annibale had barely risen, still speechless and wheezing, when a fellow, trailing smoke like a comet, ran round the corner from the Riva degli Schiavoni, and stopped, panting, at the feet of the tall hermit. The old man addressed him.

‘Tommaso,’ he said, laying his long hand on the man’s heaving shoulder. ‘Calm yourself. The fire is beaten and we have won the day.’

‘Not so,’ said the man in the blackened livery. ‘The fire has taken the
Piombi
, and the prisoners have all cooked in
their cells like fowls in the
forno
and the blaze now spreads along the nether bank to the Merceria.’

‘The Rialto!’ The hermit strode away, and those who were still able followed him.

Feyra turned to Annibale. ‘Palladio!’ she said.

They hurried after the crowd of citizens and past the Basilica. Feyra glanced up one more time at the bronze horses. They were glowing as if heated in the forge, the four of them striking forth with their fiery hooves, their red mouths open, as if the Basilica were a vast gilded chariot that they pulled with their supreme strength. Their temple was untouched by fire. The horses had protected their own.

She turned away from them, intent on protecting the architect, whose house in the Campo Fava lay in the path of the fire. They raced the spreading blaze through the market, which had been more than usually crowded with sellers because of the Saint’s day. Turning for an instant Feyra saw the pitches and stalls were burning merrily behind them; the glassblowers’ wares cracking and bursting in the heat, spewing molten jewels of multicoloured glass on the pavings.

Before they reached the old bridge she and Annibale broke away from the crowd and hurried to the little square with the house with the golden callipers over the door. Behind them the pall of smoke followed like a stalking shadow. Feyra hammered on the door, and when the cook appeared, she spoke for Annibale as she could see he was still in want of breath.

‘Corona Cucina,’ she said. ‘Rouse the household and get everyone to safety. There has been a great fire and it burns this way.’ She held up a hand to dam the cook’s torrent of questions. ‘Is your master here?’

‘He is, and Zabato too.’

Feyra pushed past her and walked straight into the well-remembered study. She found Palladio in his familiar posture, bent over his drawings in conference with Zabato, the two grey heads together as she had so often seen them. She was filled with a sudden determination that they should be safe, these two men. They looked up at the interruption.

‘Feyra?’ Palladio’s dark brows drew together as his eyes went past her to the doorway. ‘And who is this?’

Feyra realized that Annibale’s face was unknown to him.

Annibale strode forward. ‘I am your doctor, and I’m about to fulfil the task I was charged with. There has been a fire in the Doge’s palace and it is spreading through the Merceria to the Rialto.’

Palladio moved surprisingly quickly. He took up a soft leather pack which gave the telltale clink of his tools. ‘Zabato. Get the household across the Accademia.’

His draughtsman stood too. ‘Where are you going?’

Palladio strode to the door. ‘If the fire spreads across the Rialto, the other half of the city will burn.’ He turned at the door. ‘We have to destroy the bridge.’

Feyra and Annibale could barely keep up with Palladio as he swept before them through the
calli
.

Soon the great bridge loomed out of the dark, a great black arch against the saffron sky of slatted wood rising out of stone piles. Feyra could make out the tall shape of the hermit, lofty against the night, organizing the buckets ready for the conflagration and even recruiting children to stamp
on stray sparks that drifted close, threatening the great wooden structure.

Palladio went right up to the hermit, and began to talk, waving his arms and gesticulating toward the bridge. Feyra heard little of their conversation against the crackle of timbers, but then he turned back to them. ‘
Dottore
, come with me. Feyra, over the bridge with the rest.’

Feyra did not budge, her flesh chilling with foreboding. ‘What are you going to do?’

Palladio laid down his pack with a clink, took out a chisel and handed it to Annibale. In his own hand he held a heavy-headed hammer. ‘The important thing is to take out the piles. Then the whole bridge will tumble.’

The two men slipped into the water and attacked the bridge from below, even as women and children crossed over it to the safety of the other bank. Palladio concentrated his efforts on the two great joists supporting the piles at either side of the bridge. The two men hammered away but the fire was gaining. The hermit had directed the men to destroy the little row of wooden cots by the bank, but the fire soon beat them back. Then several of the menfolk, including the hermit himself, waded into the water to help. Feyra bit her fingers till they bled, and listened with dread as the structure began to groan, then creak, for now she worried that the bridge could collapse on top of them. In front of her she could see the reflection of the flames turning the water to fire, but she still did not turn. The sun had fully risen before the beams came free, and as the arch began to lurch she could wait no more and waded in to pull both men clear with a strength she did not know she had. As the great structure began to collapse, she heard gasps and screams from the gathering crowd on the
opposite bank for the loss of the symbolic wooden bridge was a calamity.

Feyra wondered what it meant to Palladio to destroy something when he lived to build. But when the old man straightened up his eyes were shining with a fire that was not entirely reflection and there was a certain relish in his expression. ‘What is destroyed can always be built anew,’ he said, and smiled.

Annibale waded up to them. ‘Come. We must get to safety.’

Once Palladio was dispatched to his bed, his house untouched, Feyra and Annibale staggered back through the square in the direction of the Riva degli Schiavoni and home. Their eyes red-rimmed, hair clogged with ash, faces and limbs blackened with soot, they stumbled through the cinders and roses.

In front of the ruined Doge’s palace, an artist had set up his canvas, readied his palette and was beginning to thumb his paints. As the two doctors passed him he began to draw with his charcoals in furious strokes, attempting to capture the aesthetics of devastation.

In the cage at the foot of the Campanile, the Lion of Saint Mark was a charred and smoking skeleton. Trapped, as he had been in life, within his blackened bars.

Chapter 37

F
eyra looked down at Bocca the gatekeeper, twisting and sweating on his bed in the gatehouse.

‘What happened to him, Salve?’ Feyra asked.

The little dwarf stayed in his customary shadow. He would not speak while the doctor was in the room.

It had been an uncomfortable morning for Annibale. Exhausted from lack of sleep, his lungs paining him from the smoke, and charcoal in his saliva every time he spat, it would have been bad enough; but he felt naked without his mask, especially here on the island. The inevitable explanations, the fascinated glances of his islanders, especially the women, made him ruder than ever; and Feyra feared the lash of his tongue would fall upon Salve.

She turned to Annibale. ‘Get some rest,’ she urged. His eyes were almost closing and he swayed where he stood. ‘You are no use to anyone like that.’