The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  As with a storm, whose clouds are seen slowly gathering many miles hence but then upon you comes with the speed of thunderbolts, so the days that followed passed in a clap.

  The first day of the Carnival came. The city threw off the cold and the damp, the disappointments of winter were given over to merriment, mischief and masks.

  Hemminges did not search William out again. Salarino brought news of his and Oldcastle’s departure along with a chest of clothes they had left behind. William told Salarino to send it to England and shut the door on him.

  William had not dared to tell Isabella of his meeting with Marco Venier or of his friends’ departure. She had not asked after the preserve of peaches she had sent him for or asked why he returned so late. Her strength failed. Her cares turned inward. She sickened quickly.

  William waited, listening to the sounds of the Carnival outside, helpless, impotent, and alone.

  Sweet love, sweet lines, sweet life!

  Verona

  Aemilia found him in the walled garden. Despite his mask she knew him easily amongst the aged courtiers of her father’s palace. He favoured a Florentine style and Aemilia took a moment as he walked ahead of her to admire him again. To her approving eyes, and to her father’s scornful ones, Valentine’s doublet sat a little tight about his shoulders, his hose clung a little closely to his calves and his hair, his wonderful, flowing, flaxen hair, swung loosely. The days since her father had announced she would marry Count Claudio had been an agony to her, the more so because her father had at first had her more closely watched and the chance to speak with Valentine had not come. Yet the watch had slackened and now the masks and revelry that accompanied the approach of Martedi Grasso, Fat Tuesday, gave them opportunity.

  She looked about to make sure her maid was not near and swept up behind him and pulled him into the dance. Over the sound of music and the laughter of others she told him her grave news.

  ‘Oh, Valentine, what are we to do? I am to be married to Count Claudio.’

  ‘That beast. Never,’ Valentine pronounced and pushed her back to hold her at arm’s length and gaze up into her eyes. ‘I swear it shall not be so.’

  How strong he was in his intent, how masterful he seemed in his declaration. She pulled him back to the dance lest they be noticed.

  ‘But how, Valentine? I am promised. Oh, Valentine, I begged him that I might marry you but he only laughed at it. Why? Why are you not ten times the husband in his eyes? Why does he not value your qualities? He thinks only of Claudio’s brutish strength, not of your gentle wisdom.’

  ‘You told him of us?’

  ‘No, Valentine, no. As you have urged I told him nothing of our wooing but he knows, of course he knows. I spoke to propose you as a husband.’

  Aemilia felt Valentine tremble and marvelled at his passion. She remembered the first time they had spoken, truly spoken, here in this garden, the cousin that had late arrived at court and set all the ladies’ tongues to wagging with his good looks and gentle manners. The cousin whose deep blue eyes she had looked on longingly across the dinner table and blushed when he had caught her looking.

  In only one thing did she find him wanting, a willingness to speak to her father of their love. Even there she could not fault him overmuch for his pride was understandable. He would not, he declared to her, come as a beggar for her hand but it should be offered to him. He may be poor but he was honourable. He should not have to plead for that which should be given to him by right. She had not pressed him then but now, with her promised to Count Claudio, he must overmaster his own pride and make demand of her to her father.

  ‘The date for your wedding is set?’ Valentine asked.

  ‘I know not, I think not. Lent approaches and may create delay. He did not say.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Madonna, your father!’

  ‘Yes, my father. Valentine?’

  The young man had already pushed away from her and Aemilia watched in astonishment as he scampered away.

  ‘Aemilia.’

  With a start, Aemilia heard her father’s voice and turned to see him. Masked as they all were, there was no mistaking his size or the still black beard. He took her hand and led her back into the dance.

  ‘Who was that you were with?’ her father asked.

  She stumbled at his question. ‘I know not, Father. I could not tell who was beneath the mask.’

  ‘It was not Valentine?’

  ‘No, sure, Father. You have forbid him my company.’ Aemilia again missed the step of the music and her heel came on her father’s foot. He cried at the pain of it.

  ‘I am sorry, Father. This unhappy talk distracted me.’

  ‘Really, Aemilia, we must look to your lessons. It will not do for you to be so ungraceful at your wedding.’

  They danced on but Aemilia was grateful for her own mask, which hid the tears that welled in her eyes.

  Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath

  Venice

  Beyond the balcony of Isabella’s bedroom, the sounds of Venice caught in the revels of Carnival were cruel contrast to those of pain within. William strove to give Isabella comfort. Her illness worsened quickly and savaged her mercilessly. Isabella’s body was wracked with the most terrible pains that denied her all rest, that made her rend the air with great cries and twist and turn till William thought he would be driven mad by it, by his powerlessness to bring her balm, and still it would not end.

  As, day by day, her pain worsened William grew more desperate. He had padded the room with anything that held softness in it so that Isabella might not hurt herself further as she groaned and hurled herself from her bed or bent to vomit the foulness out of her. Gone were the days of poetry and the loving touch, replaced by weeping cries and the raking clutch of her hand on his arm as another wave of agony crossed her. The stench, the horror had been terrible but he had stayed, stayed and stayed. It was now the night before Martedì Grasso, the Carnival had reached its pitch of revelry and Isabella’s suffering with it.

  The night drew on, long and cruel, with Isabella insensible to all but the pain that tore her. She did not see William or hear his words. She suffered and he was incapable of helping her. All was an agony.

  Then there came a minute, in the dark of the night when all outside had at last come to quiet, when she came back to him. For a moment, oh, too brief a moment, she saw him again, the clouds of pain and disease parting.

  ‘Will, you are here?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I am so afraid.’

  Her hand had reached for his and he had clutched it to him, kissed it, pressed it to his chest and she had smiled up at him, that wondrous smile. Her thumb had run again across the face of the ring she had given him.

  ‘How strange the world is,’ she said, looking from its face up to William’s own.

  A flood of tears came over him and he pushed them away, furious, wanting nothing to obscure the sight of her.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He could do no more, say no more than an echo of the words back.

  Then she was gone again, wracked by her illness once more.

  At midnight’s toll she had passed into a deep faint and William had rejoiced in it for the calm it seemed to bring her and damned his own selfishness that he longed to speak with her again, to tell her more perfectly that he loved her, how he loved her. He quenched the candle and, sitting to watch over her in the darkness, let her rest.

  She never woke. William could not tell the moment that, in his vigil, he had realised she was gone from him forever. His howl had marked it. His howl and echoed howl, his desperate pressing of her hand, his call for her to come back to him, his declaration that it was too soon, too soon, too soon. He could not see for his tears. He should have waked her. He had more to say, more to hear. Oh God, he should have waked her. He needed just a moment more with her. A moment, no more. Come back, be here, be with me. Oh God, he was not ready.
He would never be ready.

  Maria, called from her rest by his cries, had been in her turn quiet. With gentleness of movement she had guided him, railing, tears falling, broken, from the charnel house to the public room and then returned to see her mistress’s body prepared. The awful face of death wiped clean and painted with the false calm of the grave.

  When she returned to him William had fallen silent. He sat in a chair and did not move. Nor did Maria speak to him again but, her work done, took herself to her own room. There to weep in private for her mistress whom death had claimed for his own.

  The long day’s task is done, and we must sleep

  William sat in the dark of the great room. Dawn had come and beyond the balcony outside the revels of Martedì Grasso, Fat Tuesday, the Carnival’s last day, were already growing to a roar yet William heard them as if from a great distance. In the bedroom behind him lay Isabella, dead.

  No, not Isabella. A shell, a body, no more, for in that room and in that body was not the fire of life that had so animated her. William felt himself in turn an empty vessel. The horror of those hours that had passed still marked him. It had been a cruel death.

  When the door opened William was still in that chair. His mind was at once so full of thoughts and yet he could not conjure even one to stillness, that it might be examined, interpreted, understood. So, for all the thoughts within him, it was as if his mind was as blank as a tablet.

  ‘Sir William?’

  The voice repeated itself two times more before William was pulled back to the moment and its awful truths.

  ‘Marco Venier,’ said William without turning round to face the man. ‘You’ve come too late. She’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Aye, dead.’

  William heard the footsteps pass to the bedroom and return.

  ‘I am sorry, Sir William,’ said Marco Venier.

  ‘Not sorry enough,’ he answered.

  ‘This was not my doing,’ Marco Venier protested.

  William waved his excuses away. What did they matter now?

  ‘I came to warn you both. The Nuncio’s men gather this morning. They seek to use the Carnival to hide their acts. They come to silence you both.’

  William said nothing.

  ‘Sir William,’ urged Marco Venier, ‘where is your master, Sir Henry Carr, his man, the dancing-master Hemminges? You all must fly from Venice.’

  ‘Gone,’ said William. ‘All gone.’

  ‘Then you must go too. Hurry, Sir William, there are not hours but minutes till they come.’

  William stood and looked slowly about him, taking in the sight of the walls, the long bench where he and Isabella had sat, the balcony where they had spoken late into the night.

  ‘Maria?’ he asked.

  ‘She and her son I have taken into my care already,’ said Marco. ‘For her mistress’s sake, whose Christian burial will also be in my charge.’

  William nodded.

  ‘They know nothing.’

  ‘And are the safer for it. I will keep them from harm. I swear it.’ Marco Venier grasped William’s arm. ‘You I cannot protect. You must fly. Now.’

  William nodded again. He bent down and picked up a folio from the table and weighed it in his hand but did not move to leave.

  From outside the sound of revels was cut by angrier sounds. Shouted instructions to the crowds to part could be heard along with the clatter and clank of metal on metal.

  ‘Come,’ said Marco Venier. He pulled William after him and William followed. To leave Venice was nothing to him now. The city was already dead to him.

  Act Two

  Verona and woods in the Veneto, February to March 1586

  My stooping duty tenderly shall show

  Verona

  Aemilia stood at the back of the hall. She had climbed on to a chair in order to see over the heads of those in front of her, yet, above the disapproving tuts of her maid and whispers of the other courtiers, she could barely hear what commerce her father had with the strange visitors to his court.

  ‘Robbed, I say again, robbed, of wealth, of horse and armour, and of dignity,’ declared Oldcastle, turning about with arms spread wide to allow his words and state to be taken in by all those assembled. He finished his orbit facing the Duke. ‘Humbly we throw ourselves upon the mercy of your court.’

  ‘Your name, again?’ asked the Duke. He was in a poor humour. He’d scarce sat down to breakfast, easily the favourite of his four meals of the day, when servants had called him to his hall to deal with strange new arrivals. The men had been brought before him in a haste by virtue of their tales of banditry in the forests and the Duke had barely been given a moment to speak before the taller, stouter of the two men had begun to declaim the story of his suffering.

  ‘Sir Nicholas Hawkwood, my lord,’ replied Oldcastle, performing a deep bow of the kind that always surprised watchers, who assumed no stomach such as Oldcastle possessed would permit such movement at all, let alone that there be so much grace in the performing of it.

  ‘Hawkwood. I know that name...’ The Duke chewed at his black beard as his mind made a rummage of his memory. ‘Was there not a Sir John Hawkwood who led the Compagnia Bianca del Falco?’ asked the Duke at length.

  Oldcastle had heard of this Hawkwood in London but knew little of him save that he was an Englishman that had come to Italy some hundred or more years before and made a name for himself. When he had suggested to Hemminges their continued disguise he had proposed the name for himself. It had a ring to it that he rather liked, not least for the echo of his own.

  ‘An ancestor, my lord,’ decided Oldcastle, inventing the connection extempore and ignoring the slight but audible grind of Hemminges’ jaw as he did so.

  ‘And are you of the same profession?’ demanded the Duke, a sudden eagerness in him.

  ‘I am,’ declared Oldcastle, without the slightest understanding of what he had admitted to. He cared not, for the answer he had given brought out a great smile from the Duke.

  ‘This is good news to make an ill day better.’

  The Duke rose from his chair and strode towards Oldcastle. A great bear of a man, he was near Oldcastle’s height and the clap of his arm on Oldcastle’s shoulder staggered him. ‘It has been too long since we had a soldier in my court.’

  Oldcastle drew himself a little taller now that he understood more clearly the part that he had taken for himself. A soldier, eh? Well he fancied himself of a martial spirit. The crunching of Hemminges’ teeth would not dismay him from the role. The Duke’s broad smile buried itself again in his black beard and his frown returned. ‘How came a soldier to be robbed?’

  Oldcastle told again the story that he and Hemminges had devised on the road from Venice. How they had set forth for England in good spirits and in the company of two squires and a wagon bearing their accoutrements. How they had been set upon by bandits in the forest to the north of Verona, their servants slain and they fled with only their lives. It was a tale to move the heart of the stoniest audience.

  Of course, when Oldcastle had first proposed this play-acting to Hemminges it had been intended for the benefit of a simple innkeeper on the road from Venice to Verona. Hemminges had agreed to it only with the deepest reluctance, to prevent Oldcastle from continuing to shamble and pout as they walked along, scuffing his feet and sighing like a sack of wine that was being wrung for its last drops. Hemminges felt a desperation to make haste, to be free of Italy. The burden of the intelligence he held weighed him down and he would be free of it. He feared the secrets that the Signoria of Venice had entrusted to their false embassy. If the dead men that dangled from them did not already speak to their importance the scale of the pursuit roared it. Even in the few days’ journey they had made from Venice they had heard constant rumour of papal agents searching for English spies and of the horrors being visited on those that were suspected of harbouring them. More than that, Hemminges wanted to be free of Venice and the remembrance of his friend Willia
m and of Isabella, ill, abandoned. Guilt at leaving them behind weighed on him almost as much as the intelligence did. He had vague plans to reach England, to send for William, or to beg aid of Sir Henry Carr’s patron, Lord Hunsdon, as the price for the knowledge delivered. He must reach England, that was all to accomplish all else. Yet the more he pulled at Oldcastle to follow with speed, the more Oldcastle, like a stubborn ass, dug in his heels and groaned against the rigours of the journey. Even Hemminges had a limit. Worn down by worry he had relented at last. Now he cursed himself again for his lapses.

  Oldcastle was too great an actor. His tale of the robbery had proved too moving for the innkeeper who had insisted, in the teeth of their refusal, that they must pass on the news of this knavish attack on a noble visitor to the Duke Leonardo. At least, thought Hemminges, they had made a rehearsal of the tale and, he noted, performance before nobility raised Oldcastle to the heights of his art again.

  ‘Sure and there were a dozen of them if there was a man. Armed with bows with which they made a terrible slaughter. See here, here, how close I came to my own end.’ Oldcastle approached a young lady of the court and gestured to a nasty cut upon his cheek, to which the young lady responded with a gratifying squeak of terror. The cut was one that Oldcastle had made himself while shaving the day before. In Venice he’d had no cause to groom himself, their host Salarino insisting that the dignity of his house required that the English Ambassador receive the service of a barber, and he’d lost the practice of it. In the woods, when Hemminges had spoken up behind him at an unexpected and inopportune moment his hand had slipped and the razor run too deep. He’d sworn then, terrible oaths against Hemminges, himself, the gods and the dullness of the blade. Now he swore again to the Duke, that the crusted line across his cheek marked the passage of an arrow’s flight. He was gratified to hear the moan of the audience at his tale, transported by the terror of the thought of so close an encounter with death.

  ‘These bandits plague us, base cowards all, striking at the innocent and the good.’ The Duke’s hand that gripped Oldcastle’s arm clenched in anger at the idea of them, causing Oldcastle to grimace in pain as the fingers ground the muscles. ‘It is my care and charge to see to the safety of travellers in my domain. I have failed in that charge to your distress, Sir Nicholas. You shall have welcome in my house until such time as you and I might mete out justice to these recreant dogs.’