The Venetian (33 page)

The man had taken his time climbing the stairs, knowing that Paolo had nowhere to go. He was unhurried as he entered the beacon chamber. He looked enormous in the cramped space. His clothes were wet, clinging to his massive frame, and Paolo could see the muscles straining at the fabric. His skin was lighter than Paolo had realized, as were his hair and beard. He had dyed the hair, Paolo now saw, and darkened his skin, the color partially washed away by the water from the fountain. He was fair-skinned and blond. His face was ruined, the nose pushed in and twisted, the left eye a gruesome sight. The black socket oozed remnants of the eyeball, a silvery coagulated pulp. Blood beginning to crust over framed the hole in ragged smears.

“You’re a Mamluk,” said Paolo. The man said nothing, only stared. “You murdered my brother. I want to know why.”

“You know why Venetian.” His voice sounded like rocks in a bucket. The Mamluk walked toward Paolo, slowly. Paolo backed away, keeping the distance between them.

Paolo didn’t know what he meant, and was struck by something in his voice. “You say the word as though you despise Venice. You are serving the Republic now by hunting me.”

The Mamluk laughed, deep and sonorous, but said nothing more. The fact that his nose was broken and he was missing his left eye seemed to trouble him not at all.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” Paolo pressed. “Why is the council trying to kill me? Why did you murder the
Provveditori
?”

The Mamluk stopped, considering the questions. “You truly do not know.”

“I told you. I know nothing.”

He shrugged. It no longer mattered. “Then you will never know, and you will die not knowing why your brother was murdered. Why your father was killed. Why you must die here today. Why your entire family was wiped from this earth.”

Paolo felt his rage growing, no doubt what the Mamluk intended, attempting to antagonize him into making a fatal mistake. He had lost the knife Calix had given him, likely laying at the bottom of the fountain’s basin. He didn’t know whether the Mamluk had a weapon. He certainly didn’t appear to need one. They continued their slow turn around the chamber, Paolo backing away, the Mamluk advancing steadily, but not making any sudden moves. The small smile on his lips looked all the more menacing next to the grisly eye socket.

Paolo passed the stone shelf and grabbed the piece of wood he had noticed earlier. The Mamluk saw and smiled.
If that is your plan, this will indeed be over quickly.

“I do not know how you have managed to stay alive so long,” the Mamluk said, looking at the wood in Paolo’s hand. He swiped at it lazily but frighteningly quick. Had he connected, Paolo had no doubt his wrist would have been broken. But he didn’t. He wasn’t even close, the large hand a good two feet from Paolo’s.
He has a problem with his vision
.
He cannot judge the distance between us.
The Mamluk realized it too. He smiled again to show it didn’t matter, but Paolo could see the trace of uncertainty in it.

The Mamluk stopped, spreading his hands—another smile, this one reassuring.
He is worried. He will try something else. Stay alert.
“Let us be reasonable. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding.” The instant the last word left his lips he sprang. In a single motion, he had wrapped the rope from the tower’s center around Paolo’s neck. One eye or no, the Mamluk had him. He tightened the rope.

Paolo didn’t know how, but he had raised his damaged left arm, managing to get two of his fingers between the rope and his neck. It felt as though his shoulder was being ripped from its socket. The Mamluk pulled tighter. Paolo gasped, his two fingers crushed into his neck, compressing his airway. Intense pain stabbed at tendon and muscle. He swung the wood wildly with his other hand, striking nothing. The Mamluk’s right eye grew wide with anticipation, spittle bubbling on his lips.

He tried to spin away, to loosen the Mamluk’s hold on the rope. The red embers flashed in the periphery of his vision. He swung the wood at them and missed, hitting the lip of the bowl. He jerked his body back, the motion tightening the rope around his neck, intensifying the pain, but getting him a step closer to the bowl. He swung again, this time finding his target, and sprayed the burning embers up the side of the bowl and into the face of the Mamluk.

He didn’t move. It was as though he felt nothing. He tightened his grip on the rope. What are a few hot embers to a man with half a face? Paolo swung again and again, each time with less force, the darkness coming. Finally succumbing, Paolo swung wildly. He knew it would be his last act on earth. Some of the slag entered the Mamluk’s eye socket, the heat searing the raw flesh around the ragged hole. He reeled back, covering the eye, the roar far away in Paolo’s ears. The rope fell.

Paolo choked, sucking at the air, and knew he had very little time. He swung at the mirror with the wood. Shards of glass rained down, landing in the bowl of embers and on the floor. He reached into the bowl, felt the searing bite of heat, grabbed a long slice of mirror, and rushed at the giant.

The glass tore at his hand, carving bloody grooves across his palm. He felt nothing. The Mamluk heard him coming and bellowed, tearing his hands away from his face. Paolo plunged the shard of mirror into his throat. The Mamluk’s head snapped back, his hands clutching at his neck, the remaining eye going wide. Arterial blood pulsed from the wound, spraying Paolo’s hand and face. Paolo wouldn’t let go and shoved the glass deeper. The Mamluk grabbed at his arms and Paolo pushed harder. He no longer cared what happened now, whether he lived or died, returned home or breathed his last breath atop this tower. His life’s work, all he required, had become in an instant, the death of the man before him.

The Mamluk’s legs buckled, his grip on Paolo loosening. Paolo let go and stepped aside. The Mamluk stood still for an instant, swaying on his feet. He shuffled forward, his left eye gone, his right eye already dead, and crashed into the stone bowl, the fragment of mirror piercing the back of his neck. Paolo stood there, frozen, staring at the Mamluk, his own body shaking with fear, exhaustion, and hate. He didn’t move until he began to retch from the smell of crisping flesh and burning hair.

The sun had come up, flooding the tower with light. It caught the shard protruding from the Mamluk’s neck, sending a spike of morning across the chamber toward the stone steps. Paolo followed it, on his way down wondering if Avesari e Figli had perhaps made the mirror.

***

HE PRESENTED HIMSELF
to the ship’s captain as Esau had instructed him. The man stared, Paolo looking as though he had been raised from the dead, but said nothing. A ship’s captain sees many strange things. Another man showed him to a small cabin below, a place where he could clean up. Later, back on deck, the captain described the voyage to come.

“And we will leave you on Negroponte before we sail on to Venice, as arranged,” he concluded.

“I’m not going to Negroponte,” said Paolo. “I’m going home.”

Thirty Four

S
he didn’t recognize him at first, without the beard. When she did she wept. They made love with a rough urgency, settling into tenderness only much later. The questions of their feelings for one another, the ones that had been plaguing them, were all answered. He told her what had happened, attempting to spare her some of the more grisly details, but she insisted on hearing it all. She clutched him at times as he spoke, burying her face in the warm pockets made by their connected bodies, murmuring things he couldn’t understand and didn’t need to.

They stayed that way all afternoon. When Bercu returned home the sun was low in the sky, the interior of the house ablaze with orange light. He found Paolo sitting at his kitchen table.

“My God, is it you?” he whispered. He was stunned, looking more at Chaya than Paolo as though he could not trust what he was seeing unless confirmed by his daughter.

Paolo smiled. “It is.”

Bercu rushed to where Paolo sat. “Then get up man.” Paolo stood, gingerly, and Bercu embraced him. “It is very good to see you my friend. Adnah sent word of the
Provveditori.
We feared the worst.”

“Your fears were not unfounded.”

“I want to hear everything.” He clapped Paolo on the back. “And then we will figure out what to do.”

***

“THEY KNOW ABOUT
the
Provveditori
, about what happened,” Bercu said. The three of them sat at the kitchen table, bowls of rice and peas set out before them. Paolo raised his eyebrows. “Only that they are dead,” Bercu explained further, “but not how.”

“I can help you there.” Paolo explained what had happened. It was a briefer version than the one he had recounted for Chaya. Bercu looked skeptical.

“Forgive me my friend, but a Mamluk? You are young and fit it is true, but Mamluks exist for no other reason than to wage war. How could you possibly have defeated him?”

Paolo nodded. “I do not know myself. Only that I was fighting for my life.” Paolo stole a quick glance at Chaya, one that was not missed by her father. “And he underestimated me. Just as you have done.”

Bercu held up his hands in apology. “Paolo, I meant nothing by it.”

Paolo waved it away. “No, no, I would think the same thing in your position. I still do in fact,” he said with a chuckle. “And in the end, it was a very good thing. It is the only reason I am sitting here now. That is the
how
. The bigger puzzle is
why
.”

Bercu stroked his beard. “Indeed. It makes very little sense, like so much of this affair. A Mamluk assassin,” he mumbled, pondering the thought. “Hired by whom? Surely not the council. They sent the
Provveditori
to retrieve you, to bring you back for trial. Not kill you.”

Paolo nodded. “The Mamluk killed the
Provveditori
to keep them from bringing me back. Whoever hired him wants me dead, but murdered quietly, away from here.” Paolo paused, thinking. “He spoke to me as though I were an insect. Because I was a Venetian, I was beneath contempt.” Paolo remembered the beacon chamber, the blood, the smell of charred flesh. Chaya reached for his hand beneath the table and gently squeezed it.

“And yet they are among our most trusted allies,” replied Bercu. Without the Mamluks, we could not hope to control the spice trade.”

“And without Venice, they would not be the kings of Egypt,” Chaya added.

Her father nodded. “It is true.”

“I suspect the council now believes that I had something to do with the murders of the
Provveditori,
” Paolo said dispassionately.

“I suspect so,” Bercu answered. “Under the circumstances, it would be difficult to draw any other conclusion.”

Paolo was tired. It was getting late, the darkness matching his mood.

“Why did you return?” Bercu asked softly, not wanting to admonish Paolo.

Paolo glanced at Chaya, a reflex he couldn’t help. Bercu smiled.

“Other than to see the radiant face of my daughter again, I mean.” Both Paolo and Chaya reddened. Bercu laughed. “I am old but I am not blind.” He patted Paolo on the arm, glancing sideways at Chaya with a small smile. “We will speak of it later.”

“I am tired of running. I could not bear the thought of starting again in Negroponte. There is something very wrong here, and I cannot uncover it as a fugitive.”

“You may not uncover it at all my friend. You may die instead.”

“Then so be it. I would prefer death to the life I have been living.” He looked at Chaya, staying on her face as he spoke to Bercu. “But I have no intention of dying. And it is very clear that someone doesn’t want me in Venice. So Venice is exactly where I need to be.”

Thirty Five

F
rancesco read the message. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He read it again. He would need to handle this very delicately.

***

“BUT THIS IS
almost too perfect.” Gabriele smiled. It had been an infuriating few weeks: Avesari found on Candia, the
Provveditori
sent to bring him back, their removal by Qilij, only to be followed by his disappearance. He should have known he couldn’t trust a man who would betray his own people. He chuckled.
How very ironic
he thought. He read the message again, his smile growing, showing more teeth. But now it would all be put to right.

***

“ARE YOU SURE
about this?” Bercu asked.

Paolo wasn’t, not at all. “Whether I am or not no longer matters. The messages have been sent.”

Bercu nodded. “Tonight then,” he said and left the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

Paolo walked over to where Chaya was sitting at the edge of her bed and sat down next to her. He ran the back of his hand down her cheek, amazed at its softness. She closed her eyes, placing her hand over his. He leaned forward and kissed her eyelids.

“This love can never be. It is not allowed,” she whispered. “A Jew and a Christian. My father, I think he cares for you. And though he has said nothing thus far, even smiled at the thought, he will not allow it either.”

“It may not matter after tonight,” he said, hearing the soft cry she tried to stifle. He kissed her again and gently pressed her down onto the bed.

***

SHE HAD PUT
up a token resistance, her rational mind wrestling with her desire. Desire had won out, but only briefly, a minor skirmish in a larger war. They still lived in a world where people believed they used the blood of murdered Christian children to make their unleavened bread. How could their kind of love exist in such a place? Chaya shook her head.
Why these thoughts now?
She looked at Paolo lying beside her—eyes closed, naked body slick with sweat, saw her hand carelessly resting between his legs. She smiled. What had happened to her ordered little world?

Paolo opened his eyes. “What are you smiling at?”

“I’m rather shocked at where I currently find my hand.”

He raised himself up on an elbow and looked down. “What a coincidence. I was just thinking the very same thing. About my hand.”