The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘Go and bring me better news. What lord am I that cannot give safety to his people?’

  Rodrigo and the captain bowed and departed. Aemilia crossed to her father and put her arms about him. He reached up and stroked her hair.

  ‘Ah, Aemilia, you were ever a comfort to me. There is so much of your mother’s passion in you. I would you’d known her.’ He sighed. ‘I shall be sorry to lose you.’

  Aemilia glanced sharply up at her father. He nodded at her look.

  ‘You are to be married, girl.’

  ‘Father, no.’

  Her father pushed her from him. His momentary calm lost again.

  ‘I say yea,’ her father roared, then took another breath to calm himself. ‘The match is a sound one. For you and for our estate. You are all the heirs of my house and in your fortune lies the safety of many others. You hear how we are beset and want both men and money. Besides you are twenty and that is high time to be married. Count Claudio will make a good husband to you and to this land.’

  ‘Claudio? No.’

  ‘What is this “no”, Aemilia, this wretched “no"?’

  ‘Claudio, the Florentine?’

  ‘Even he.’

  ‘Father, he is half your age but twice mine.’

  ‘What of it? A steady and mature hand to guide both wife and lands should I die without issue beside you.’

  ‘His cruelty, Father, oh, I beg you! I have heard such stories of the treatment of his servants, of his vassals...’ Aemilia felt distress and panic swelling in her breast. She had not thought there would be so little time before her father spoke of marriage and that he should propose Count Claudio! And such a face, the blade of a sword across it could only improve it. Oh, Father, and such rumours follow him and how he came by his estate.’

  ‘Ungrateful child, to speak of him thus. No, no,’ her father nodded, ‘you have the right of it. He is no pampered courtier with hands like a woman and the manners of a lady. He is firm in his rule and does not shirk the stern measure when ‘tis needed. The better for it.’ The Duke cast his finger out in a wide circle. ‘Our position is precarious, Aemilia. We rule at the pleasure of the Signoria of Venice and we are surrounded by enemies jealous of us and of Venice. The Pope wants our lands, Philip of Spain wants our lands, the damnable Duke of Savoy wants our lands, and each has men in numbers that far outmatch that meagre tally I may call upon. God’s will, Aemilia, who will fight them if they come? An old man and a girl?’

  ‘Why not? Did not Caterina Sforza defend Forli?’

  The Duke roared again, but now with laughter. ‘Good child. I see you are mine in bravery at least.’ He reached out and pinched her cheek, a gesture that Aemilia could not abide both for the pain of her father’s grip and for the way it cast her in a child’s role. She smacked his hand away.

  ‘The contract will be made, Aemilia,’ her father continued. ‘Count Claudio may have the figure of an ox—’

  ‘A dog,’ said Aemilia.

  ‘– but he has the courage of a lion.’

  ‘And the manners of a toad.’

  ‘Be silent. I have thought on it much. Count Claudio has wealth and more than that, he has proved himself in the wars. If he be willing, then he will be your husband and my heir unless the good Lord bless me with another child.’

  The Duke made to leave but found his daughter danced before him.

  ‘I beg you, Father, let me choose my own husband ...’ Aemilia was in tears. She reached out to grab her father’s hand.

  ‘Who would you choose? Some pretty weakling like your cousin Valentine?’

  Aemilia looked up with hopeful eyes, ‘Why not him, Father? He is your cousin’s son and would keep the duchy in the family’s hands. Besides’ - she clamped her hand on her father’s as he tried to pull it away - ‘he is a goodly man, educated, wise and graceful.’

  Her father finally succeeded in snatching his hand from his pleading daughter’s grasp.

  ‘I feared as much. Despite my command, you have let him whisper love words in your ears.’

  ‘Father, he has importuned me with love in honourable fashion.’

  ‘Ay, “fashion” you may call it. Go to, go to.’

  ‘And has given countenance to his speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven.’

  ‘Ay springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows. I forbid you his company.’

  ‘Father, no. Please no.’

  The Duke strode away. ‘You will marry Count Claudio,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘and there’s an end on it.’

  Silence that dreadful bell

  Venice

  The doctor passed William at the doorway and pressed his arm as he passed.

  ‘All things are in God’s will. Pray, good sir. Pray.’

  William shook off his hand. The wrinkle that rose upon the doctor’s face told that this was not the first time the anger, rightly directed at the news, had been sent instead towards the messenger. The doctor would forbear to chide the young man. The news, after all, was bad.

  ‘This corruption of her womb ...’ William began but trailed away.

  ‘It is not uncommon in those of...’ The doctor paused at the delicacy of his message. ‘In those of the lady’s profession. I have seen it before. She has had children?’

  ‘Miscarried.’

  ‘That too is of a piece with the other signs that lead to this. I am sorry.’

  ‘You see no sign of poison?’ said William. There, he had spoken it. The fear that had lurked in him was in the air.

  ‘Poison?’ said the doctor, his voice rising with his brow. ‘No, good sir, none of that. Without question it is not poison. You say that the pain has been present for many weeks. I know of no poison that works in that manner. A more mundane blow has struck at the lady. Has she reason to fear poisoning?’

  William ignored the question in favour of one of his own. ‘What may be done?’

  ‘Little. Prayer, a tincture for the pain. The matter comes to its head. If it is God’s will she will recover.’

  The doctor waited for William to speak again, to answer his question about the fear of murdering poison. William said nothing, he was thinking how few of his prayers he had found answered in his life. The doctor sighed and moved to leave.

  ‘I shall send my bill,’ he said from the door. William waved him away. What did money matter now?

  He stepped back into the bed chamber. Isabella sat, propped upon the bed, her hands still crossed upon her stomach. William came and reached for her hand, to hold it. The two lovers looked at each other but William could not hold her gaze. He could not bear the fear in it, nor did he wish her to see his own.

  ‘Maria thought you were with child,’ said William.

  Isabella barked a laugh.

  ‘She may yet be right,’ protested William. ‘This physician was too hasty in his judgement. We shall send for others, better. Marco Venier will have names we can call on.’

  ‘William,’ Isabella shook her head. ‘There’s no child here. I know it.’

  He made to speak.

  ‘I know it,’ Isabella spoke over him. ‘Even before the doctor pronounced his sentence, I knew it.’

  Again, they fell to silence. A bell began to toll outside. One of Venice’s many churches announced some moment, a baptism, a wedding or a death. William spoke over the chimes.

  ‘So much has happened in the few months since I left England, I scarce know myself any more. You are such a great part of that change in me that I cannot bear the thought you will...’ William’s voice fell away. ‘I worry that... I worry that...’

  He could not complete his thought, that it was some sin of his had made this canker in Isabella. He had known it too and waited as the physician, with his unseemly fingers, examined Isabella and, nodding, always nodding, turned to him to pronounce his mortal sentence. Why did the doctor not speak to her? Why speak to him? It was not he the physician spoke his tale of death about, n
or did he bear the corrupted carbuncle that was the end of happiness. Why speak to him? Curse all physicians. Their only prognostication was unhappiness.

  Say he be taken, racked, and tortured

  The Veneto

  The abbey near Ferrara was small and newly established. It nestled itself in a valley that in the spring was green and verdant and now, in winter, had a snowy stillness and a quiet to it that quite belied the hot hell of torture in its cellars.

  ‘Confess,’ demanded Father Thornhill. He was weary of the stink and noise and longed for the fresh air of the courtyard above. But the obstinate merchant would not confess and so he must go on. He thought back to the frustrations of the past weeks. That interfering Duke of Verona had delayed him in his inquisition but only for a while. For the nonce the trail he followed led here to Ferrara and it was politic that it do so since it took him away from the Duke, but there was business left undone in Verona and he would see it done. This time he would not be so humble as the first. The Duke must learn that all kneel to the Church. He nodded to the soldier whose mailed fist began again to beat and blast the ruin of the merchant’s face as he had done this hour past.

  The man had said little that was meaningful in this past quarter-hour and before that nothing that Father Thornhill did not already know. How quickly he had spoken of his heretic sympathies, of his help to the English at Padua, at Geneva. The man had no spirit at all. That should be no surprise, for he had let the Devil seduce him with this Lutheran poison. Yet of English spies in Venice he’d said nothing. Father Thornhill picked at his nails; perhaps the man knew nothing.

  There was an angry hammering at the cellar door. Father Thornhill waved to one of the soldiers, who answered it to the angry face of the Abbot himself.

  ‘What is the meaning of this desecration?’ roared the Abbot at the sight that greeted him: a naked man, more dead than living, strapped upside down to a barrel of wine, teeth broken, eyes swollen and shut, blood dripping from lacerations, his voice reduced to pitiful moans where once had been screams, shouts, pleas for a mercy that had not come. Father Thornhill waved to the soldier to stop his blows.

  ‘I asked for privacy, Father Abbot. I would have it still.’

  ‘You will cease this blasphemy within my walls,’ cried the Abbot, his face puce with anger, his finger pointing tremblingly at the bloody man.

  ‘What blasphemy?’

  ‘What blasphemy? What blasphemy? Why this, this...’ The Abbot was lost for words. He gathered himself. ‘You will take your men and yourself from my abbey this night.’

  ‘We will go when we are done.’

  ‘You will go now,’ declared the Abbot.

  ‘When we are done,’ answered Father Thornhill. His voice gave no sign that he thought either the merchant’s moans of pain or the Abbot’s rage worthy of his concern.

  ‘Escort the Abbot from the room,’ he said to the nearest soldier, who responded without pause. The Abbot, lifted bodily from the ground, his feet scrabbling against the soldier’s strength, was driven to the door.

  ‘This will not stand,’ he cried. ‘The Bishop shall hear of this. Rome shall hear of it.’

  ‘Rome already knows,’ said Father Thornhill to the closing door. The hammering upon it he ignored. He turned back to the man before him. The soldier held the man’s head in his hand.

  ‘He’s dead, Father,’ said the soldier after a moment’s examination.

  ‘Regrettable. Still, we would have sent him to Rome only to have him executed. We save ourselves so much labour.’

  ‘He might have told us more?’

  ‘No. I think not. He said enough. There has been no message, no packet from the English spies by this route. Inform Monsignor Costa at Venice of this at once. If the English spies are still in Venice then they have the names still. Let them be taken with speed.’

  And so we add another nail to hammer shut heretic England’s coffin, he thought, as he passed to the door to walk out in the fresh air again.

  ‘The body, Father?’

  ‘Burn it.’

  Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mocked

  Venice

  Isabella’s pain grew worse.

  The doctor sent his bill and William, angry at the price of knowledge without cure, hurled it against the wall and chased the doctor’s servant into the street throwing coins at him.

  ‘There’s the dignity of spirit I have so much admired,’ said Isabella from her bed when William returned.

  ‘I am angry and afraid,’ said William.

  ‘I noticed.’

  William said nothing. The day had a chill in it and he raked the grate with sharp thrusts of the poker and pulled another log on to the fire.

  ‘Tell me of the child you would have me bear.’

  He shook his head: ‘I cannot.’

  ‘No. No. I see that. A whim. Distraction only. Then tell me of your children.’

  William thought of Susanna and of Hamnet and Judith. How little he knew of his own blood when he strove to know so much of others.

  ‘I cannot speak of them without thinking how little is the time that I have spent with them,’ answered William. ‘Then I recall how much I am changed by them in all that brief time. And I think of you, Isabella. I think of you and all the changes you have wrought. I would I had the words.’

  ‘You do,’ said Isabella with a sudden urgency. ‘You do. You think it was your looks seduced me?’

  He gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘I do not speak foolishly, William. That time has passed, I think. Each moment precious now,’ said Isabella. ‘Will you shy from compliments now? May not a dying woman speak freely?’

  ‘Do not speak thus,’ demanded William. ‘This is but a call to arms. No death knell.’

  Her hand clutched at his and her thumb came up to run over the carved face of the gold ring she had given him. The dark cornelian stone set at its heart was engraved with a lance with a pen’s tip. It had for many years belonged to Prospero. He had given it to Isabella in honour of her poetry, which he had said could strike deeper than any weapon. She had given it to William in turn, meaning to make of the gift a sign of hope, a sacrament to the way love could be found even in the midst of terrors.

  ‘I love you, William,’ said Isabella. ‘What a thing, a foolish thing, for a courtesan to say. And I may say it freely. There is no world of aged worry for me now. You will be my end and I may speak without care for what’s to come. I love you. I love you. I’ll cry it to the reverberate hills, I love you. What a foolish youth you are and still I love you. You will be with me at the end. I shall not pass from this world alone. Think what a thing that is and how few may make so proud a boast.’

  ‘You will not go,’ protested William.

  ‘I will.’

  William shook his head, denying it, not understanding how she could speak with such certainty of her own doom. ‘I would that bell would cease. I cannot think, it frights me with its ringing from any semblance of a plan.’

  ‘A plan?’ said Isabella. She reached up and cupped his face and turned it from the window to look upon her own. ‘Oh, William. There’s no planning to be done. What is to be, will be. If not now, then in a week, a month, a year. Still it will come. The moment itself does not matter. The readiness is all.’

  ‘I am not ready, Isabella,’ said William. His voice caught in his throat as he spoke. He did not have the strength, the courage, to hide his fear from her any more.

  She cradled him in her arms as his body heaved. ‘Oh William, William. Yours is the only readiness that matters.’

  Your Grace attended to their sugared words . . .

  William’s ceaseless pacing in her room at last drove Isabella to suggest a quest: to fetch her a preserve of peaches from the market while she rested. Reluctantly acceding to her wisdom, William left her.

  The Campo Erberia was scant of people and those that were there had a subdued air, as if the chill wind that blew through the city had blown away both warmth and jo
y. Clouds loured over the marketplace and threatened rain, those that were there hurried against its coming.

  William felt no such urgency. His step was listless as his spirit. There was a conspiracy against his happiness. Hemminges and Oldcastle sought to drive him from Venice and he defied them. The Papal Nuncio laid his threats against them and he defied him. Now, Isabella was struck down, and his defiance counted for nothing, nothing, against her malady. He was as powerless as a babe in arms.

  Such coin as he had was nearly spent, that knavish doctor, that black crow of ill-tidings, having taken all but the last of it. He dared not draw more from the embassy’s funds, fearing the strength of his continued disguise as ambassador’s man. Yet without funds what action might he take? What physic could he find that might make Isabella well again? What good his power of thought now? The carbuncle in Isabella was proof against his cunning words and those were all he had to offer.

  He stopped. Not so. He came at matters too direct. If he had no funds that did not mean others were as poor as he. To Marco Venier would he go, to use such power as his words had to make that man unpick his purse’s strings and pour forth physic on to Isabella. Sure, it should not need much work, for was not Marco Venier Isabella’s friend? And his?

  Resolution made, he turned to the gondolas on the Canal Grande and was at them, his mouth opened to call one for the journey, when he recalled his mistress’s quest. To the sound of mocking shouts at his indecision from the gondoliers at Rialto, whose reputation as the most vicious and licentious varlets in Venice was well earned, William hurried back to the Campo Erberia to buy the preserve of peaches. Then carrying the precious package he returned and at last took a gondola.

  *

  The high walls of the Ca’ Venier looked the same to William. The old stone was familiar, as were the tattered banners that decked them, taken from Byzantine and Ottoman ships by Marco Venier’s ancestors. All was as it had ever been save in one thing only, there was no welcome here. Two hours he had waited since he’d first announced himself. Now a servant came to send him on his way again. He would not have it.