The Four Horsemen

by Gregory Dowling

  “Exactly,” said Fabrizio, looking at me just a little quizzically. I realised he must be wondering where I had acquired my knowledge of Padoan’s history and probably not liking where his wonderings took him. He continued, “He became a schoolteacher and, from all I heard, not a very successful one. He was not popular with his pupils and did not have the gift of communication. I think it was after some years of teaching Virgil and Homer to boys who did not want to learn Virgil and Homer that he began to buy books on the Roman Empire of the East. I think at first he just wanted a new field of study to explore, uncontaminated by the displeasing associations of his old field: no superior rivals in learning refusing to allow him into their academic precincts, no mean-spirited children laughing at him behind his back. The world of learning and refinement in the Empire of Constantinople had none of these disadvantages. So he began to read such works as De Administrando Imperio by Constantine VII, The Alexiad by Anna Komnene, the Chronographia of Psellos . . . And he clearly began to fantasise that Venice itself was in some way the continuation of that empire.”

  “How did the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders under the leadership of Venice fit into this vision of things?” I asked. “After all, if Venice is filled with artefacts from Constantinople it is because of that.”

  “Well, that I don’t know,” said Fabrizio. “Remember, as I said, the man was mad. There is no point in looking for complete logic from him. What was clearly important for him was to find a way of . . . well, it’s complicated . . . a way to save, or to sanctify, something of the world he lived in, a way to make it seem, well . . .” He seemed lost for words.

  “A way to redeem it,” I said, recalling the abbot’s words.

  “Exactly,” said Fabrizio. Again he darted a quizzical look at me.

  “That was the word the abbot at Sant’Elena used,” I said, “when I asked him about Padoan.”

  “Very apt. And of course the religious dimension to all of this is very important. That also helped to distinguish his new studies from the old. The authors he was now studying were glorifying God, not pagan heroes or pagan deities. Venice, too, was a city devoted to the Madonna, founded on the feast day of the Annunciation, protected by one of the Evangelists. This meant that when he found himself constrained to take on the, um, demeaning job – as he saw it – of a confidential agent” – Fabrizio’s eyes were lowered as he said these words – “he could justify it to himself because he was doing it for the sake of this holy city.”

  “I see,” I said, trying to sound coolly objective. “And this is in the diary, is it?”

  “Well, let me give you a random example.” He turned the pages and started reading, with just a few pauses as he sought for the right word: “June 5th. ‘Again I start the day with a prayer to Saint Mark and Saint Helena. Who knows if today my enquiries will be divinely inspired and lead me towards the revelation I am seeking; perhaps among these men and women, frivolous though they seem, I will find the illuminated spirit, the – the soul that has caught a spark of the fire that was not extinguished in 1453 . . .’”

  Fabrizio glanced up at me. “Yes,” I assured him, “the year Constantinople fell to the Ottomans.”

  He resumed his reading with an apologetic cough: “ ‘and who knows but that one of these people holds the key to the location of Constantine’s tomb . . .’”

  “Is that a mystery?” I said. “Wasn’t he buried in Constantinople?”

  “Yes, in the church of the Holy Apostles. However, our friend is not referring to Constantine the Great but to his distant descendant Constantine XI, the last Emperor of Constantinople.”

  “Ah,” I said. “He was killed when the city was taken by the Turks, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, that is the mystery, which has given rise to countless legends. He is said to have fought to the bitter end, leading a final desperate charge against the invaders. However, his body was never identified for certain, and so stories abound about his having escaped with a band of trusty followers, some even going so far as to claim that he was spirited away by an angel and is now waiting in some mysterious hiding-place for a trumpet call to summon him to retake the city from the infidels. Your friend seems to be a believer in many, perhaps all, of these legends, even when they contradict one another. He seems to have seen this as his ultimate mission: to locate the tomb – or the resting-place – of Constantine XI. He had been asked to make a report on the Venetian-Greek community for the Missier Grande . . .”

  “Ah,” I said. That was perhaps a little beyond the Missier Grande’s area of competence, since he was not supposed to interfere in diplomatic matters.

  “. . . and he took this as an opportunity to pursue his fantastic dream of, well, reviving the emperor, finding his legendary sword, and perhaps then leading the charge into the city to drive the Turks out of it.”

  “I see,” I said. “Perhaps a little unrealistic.” I was remembering the man’s dutifully petty reports for the Missier Grande, his bare apartment in the eastern corner of the city, his resentful muttering sister.

  “Well,” said Fabrizio with a half-smile, “I invented the part with him leading the charge. But that is certainly the spirit that fires most of the writings in this diary.”

  “So perhaps those who dismissed his account were right,” I said.

  “I certainly would not like to make an accusation against anyone on the basis of this man’s words.”

  “No,” I said. I realised that Fabrizio had said this last sentence with special precision and deliberation. “My job isn’t to accuse anyone. Just to draw up a report.”

  “Which could be used in an eventual accusation.”

  This was becoming awkward. I suddenly remembered something. “There remains the fact that someone disliked what Padoan was doing so much that he – or they – had the man killed.”

  Fabrizio gazed at me. “You are quite sure of that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am. And crazy though he may have been, the least we can do for the poor man is try to find out who did it.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right. But it’s difficult to get a clearly coherent picture of who or what he was dealing with.”

  “Please try, Sior Fabrizio,” I said. “I am relying on you.”

  “That slightly worries me,” he said.

  “My job is not to act as a tittle-tattle or a spy,” I said. “You know me better than that, I hope. The Republic does face dangers and you’ll remember that in the past I helped to avert them. I don’t know what is behind this story but I suspect there is some similar peril and it would be better to find out the truth. You can see that, can’t you?”

  He sighed. “Goodness knows I have no right to judge,” he said. He gestured towards his edition of Suetonius. “I have indulged in the vice of gossip myself, and without the excuse that I was creating something of literary value. So what do you want to know?”

  “Well, who are these people he’s referring to here? The frivolous souls? And has he mentioned the Four Horsemen anywhere?”

  “All right. Let’s take things in order. When he starts this diary he has just been asked to investigate these Greek Venetians by the Missier Grande, whom he refers to simply as MG throughout.” He glanced up at me, perhaps wondering whether to ask if this breezy familiarity was common among agents. But then he went on, “He seems pleased that his philhellenic propensities have been noticed.”

  “Just one moment,” I said. “When you say Greek Venetians do you mean Greeks living in Venice? Or . . . ?”

  “Primarily the attention seems to be on members of Venetian families who have, or have had, properties in the Greek-speaking world. That is to say, both those parts that are still under Venetian rule, such as Corfu, Zante, Cephalonia, Cerigo, and those that spent some time under Venetian rule before being lost to the Ottomans, such as parts of the Peloponnese, islands in the Cyclades, Crete . . .”

  That would make sense, I thought, since such people were definitely Venetian, and so there woul
d be no risk of the Missier Grande’s going outside his area of competence.

  Fabrizio went on, “But the, um, MG probably also wanted to hear about Greeks in Venice – and, more particularly, contacts between them and Greek Venetians. And it seems that Padoan’s first contact is with a Greek, a man he met at Sant’Elena: apparently another devotee of the saint. Much to Padoan’s delight, he finds that the man’s name is Constantine: or rather Kostantinos Komnenos.”

  “Ah,” I said, “I thought I had seen that name. I wondered whether he was just writing about history.”

  “Yes, I can see your puzzlement. It is of course the same name as that of one of the most important dynasties of emperors of Constantinople. The man in question, however, claims to be only distantly related to the imperial family. And it seems he is a poet and a philosopher with quite a following here in Venice. He has been in Venice for some months and regularly attends the salotto of Isabella Venier-Querini.”

  “Ah,” I said again. “Another name I spotted.”

  “The Venier family still rules the island of Cerigo, or Kythira, and so has constant links with the Greek world. Isabella Venier married into the Querini family. You may know that the Querinis were banished from the city back in the fourteenth century, after the attempted Tiepolo uprising . . .”

  “1310,” I said in automatic cicerone (or know-it-all) fashion.

  “. . . and they established themselves on the island of Stampalia, or Astypalaia, in the Aegean. They ruled there until the early sixteenth century, when the Turks expelled them and they returned to Venice; that branch of the family is now sometimes known as the Querini-Stampalia. And so the marriage between the Venier and the Querini brings together a family that still has possessions in the Greek world and one that looks back nostalgically to the days when they too ruled there. A potent mixture, it seems. Isabella Venier has set up a salotto in her palace – or rather her husband’s palace, near Campo Santa Maria Formosa – which is attended by many other Greek Venetians and one or two Greeks, like this Komnenos.”

  “I see.”

  “Padoan’s account of his visits to this salotto – it seems he had to overcome a natural timidity – are rather confused. And this is where your horsemen seem to come in. At first it seems he was simply overwhelmed. Rather like, I don’t know, an opera enthusiast who finds himself in the same room as Farinelli . . . or a whole roomful of Farinellis. There he was, surrounded by other people from that world he had only read about and dreamed about: the Greek-speaking world of the eastern Mediterranean; the former Eastern Roman Empire, whose inhabitants still describe themselves as Romans, or Rhomaioi. Remember, he has never been further from Venice than Padua. Then he begins to discover that these people are not as touched with the divine fire as he had hoped. Indeed, many of them seem simply frivolous. And then we begin to get hints of danger. He is afraid of something.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, that’s where the problem lies. His writings become more and more confused, so that you can’t tell whether he is reporting what he has really seen and heard, or what he has imagined . . .”

  “What does he say?”

  “He begins to talk about the Four.”

  “The Four,” I said. “No mention of horsemen?”

  “No. Just the Four. Among the people attending the salotto are the Four, he has discovered. He has heard people whispering about the Four. And what they have done.”

  “And what have they done?”

  “Things unspeakable. Indescribable. Unutterable. He uses all these adjectives.”

  “Unspeakably bad or unspeakably good?”

  “It’s never clear. At first he just seems awed by the fear that the Four inspire, and then he clearly begins to feel the fear himself. He is afraid he is being followed on his way home. He’s afraid that someone is watching his house.”

  “Does he give any indication who belongs to the Four? This Komnenos, for example?”

  “He never says so explicitly. We do get a clearer picture of who Komnenos is, however. He tells us he is a Phanariot.”

  “Yes, I noticed that. What is it?”

  “I too was unfamiliar with the term. Fortunately my books” – he gave a vague gesture, which encompassed not only the volumes that surrounded us but also the even greater quantity in his private apartment on the floor above – “supplied the answer. Phanar is the quarter of Constantinople where the Greek patriarchate is situated. It’s where the most prominent Greek families reside. You may be aware that a good part of the Ottoman administration is run nowadays by Greeks; most dragomans – the ambassadors of the Ottoman court – are Greek, since the Muslim Ottomans are often not willing to learn the languages of non-Muslim peoples. The Phanariots are thus people of great prominence in Constantinople and in the Ottoman Empire as a whole, working for the Sultan while remaining proudly Greek. A curious situation. Komnenos grew up in this world and, I think, occupied a position as interpreter. At some point he seems to have given up his official role and become a travelling poet or thinker or whatever he is . . . his current role is not entirely clear.”

  “Hm,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll have to try to visit this salotto.”

  “That might be an idea,” said Fabrizio.

  “What might be an idea?” said a voice behind us, a voice that, as ever, gave me a feeling of sudden elation.

  I turned round. Lucia was standing in the doorway with a laden basket.

  “Sior Alvise,” she said with a smile. It was also the same smile as ever, and it still hit me like a swig of succulent Cypriot wine.

  “Siora Lucia,” I said with my best formal bow.

  “You have been a stranger,” she said, putting down the basket. An apple tumbled from it, and I scooped it up deftly as it rolled across the floor and returned it to her with another bow.

  “Thank you. Agile as ever,” she said.

  “And you are as graceful as ever,” I said, feeling absurdly thrilled by her trivial compliment.

  “So all is as it ever was,” she said, still smiling.

  “I hope so,” I said, and tried not make it sound too mawkishly fervent.

  “We must not be strangers,” she said. “That would be too sad.”

  Her father put in a word. “Alvise has been very busy, he tells me.”

  “Of course,” she said. It was evident that she was hesitant about asking me what I had been busy at. Instead she returned to her first question: “What is the good idea?”

  Her father answered easily enough, “Alvise has heard about a salotto in the city and is curious about it.”

  “Which salotto is this?” she asked.

  “One run by Noblewoman Isabella Venier-Querini.”

  “Ah,” she said with interest. “I’ve heard of this. They say that it is the gathering to attend if you have any interest in the classical world. Sior Alvise, you must go, if you can.”

  “I fear that as a mere cicerone I might not be welcome.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I’ve heard that it’s open to all who have a genuine interest in Greek culture – and I know you do.”

  “Yes, I hear you persuaded your father to buy back my lost translation of The Iliad from a sbirro the other day.” I pulled the book from my pocket to show her.

  “I’m so glad you’ve got it back. Perhaps you’ll tell us how you came to lose it.”

  Her father intervened once more. “Sior Alvise was apparently set upon by bravi and then rescued by arsenalotti.”

  “Goodness,” she said. Her tone was immediately rather wary, as if she was wondering whether she really wanted to hear any more details.

  I saved her from embarrassment: “It was nothing really. Just some drunken fools.” I decided not to tell her that I had been one of them.

  “You weren’t hurt?”

  “Nothing serious,” I said. “Just the injury to my pride. And to my Homer, of course.”

  She smiled with relief, probably more at the fact that the conversation had been s
teered away from any distasteful matters than at any serious concerns for my safety, or so I suspected. She said, “It’s clear that this salotto would be ideal for you.”

  “Yes, but I’ll need an introduction.”

  “That is true,” she said with a slight frown.

  “I can arrange that,” said Fabrizio. “My friend Filippo Madricardo will be happy to sponsor you. I’ve heard him mention Isabella Venier as an acquaintance. He usually visits the shop around five o’clock.”

  “Do you think I really have the credentials?”

  “You can tell them all about English translations of Homer,” said Fabrizio, “and your friend the good Alessandro Pope.”

  “Of course,” said Lucia. “People will be fascinated to hear how Greek culture is perceived by barbarians from the northern wastes.”

  “Barbarians who are now becoming the wealthiest nation in Europe,” I said.

  “Wealth is not all,” she said with a smile. “I see that its sons have not yet learned to wear wigs.”

  “I’m not actually a son of England,” I said, touching my bare hair self-consciously.

  “An adopted son,” she said, “without any doubt. And don’t worry: it may be barbaric but it suits you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “My friend Pope calls that damning with faint praise’.”

  “How does that sound in English?” she said.

  I quoted the lines in English:

  “Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

  And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

  Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

  Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.”

  “Too difficult for me,” she said with a laugh. “But I like the music of it.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “And nothing could be less barbaric than the poetry of Pope. Some might even say he is too civilised.”

  “Goodness me,” she said. “How strange a concept.”

  Perhaps this little exchange was itself all too civilised. I wondered if I should just swoop down on her and press my barbaric lips to hers . . .

  But probably not in front of her father.