The Serpent

by Claire North

  Then the umpires come.

  The voice is female, but beneath her white robes who could tell until the moment in which she spoke?

  - Come with me, she says. - We have watched you play.

  - Come where?

  - You would like to meet the Gamesmaster.

  It is not a question, nor does it need to be.

  Thene follows to the silver door. Like Thene, perhaps we pause here to inspect the four carved panels which are mounted there. They depict the fall of empires. Proud Rome, overcome by the barbarians of the north. Noble Constantinople, its people screaming as the Ottoman pushes them from the walls. Two cities she cannot name, and as the door opens it occurs to her that, to another pair of eyes, the images carved there are not tragic laments at all, but celebrations of the new empire that slays the old.

  Then the doors close and we are alone with Thene in a corridor, too long, the path obscured by silks hung like ancient spider-webs, the sound of music muffled, the smell of wax and candlelight sweet in our senses.

  She is briefly afraid, but to go back is impossible, so on, on she goes until a pair of wooden doors opens to a new place, a hall of soft voices, of low couches and bunches of grapes in copper bowls, of the old and the young, the beautiful and the strange. In the courtyard of the lower league, she thought she had seen some great variation in the peoples of the world, but now she looks and sees faces that, to her eyes, seem barely human, and yet now we might name for her as there the high historian of the court of Nanjing; there, the wife of a samurai slain in battle, her obi tight about her waist. Here, the Maori chief who glowers at the fur-clad woman of the steppe, and here is there not some clue to the nature of the house? For even Thene, who knows nothing of the camel-herders of the east or the canoe-builders of the south, can look and know that these people are alien to her world, and that their garb is not fitted for Venice. Not merely is it absurd to think that they could have passed without comment, but the very weather itself is set against them, for surely she who wears such white furs about her throat would swelter in the autumn warmth, while he who wore – and even she turned her face away from the sight – little but animal hides about his midriff, was surely too scantily clad to endure the Venetian night?

  How then did all these people come to be here? A great many doors lead in and out, and of a great many different designs, for the one she came through is of a classical Roman bent, but over there are paper panels that slide back and forth, and there a great metal barrier that must be winched back to permit the passage of people through its maw.

  All this she considers, and again feels fear, though it is a fear which cannot be named, and is greater for the ignorance which spawns it. Then an umpire is there and says, - Come, please, come.

  She follows.

  A small black door, tiny next to the vastness of the space, leads up a narrow flight of stairs.

  At the top of the stairs is a windowless room.

  Cushions have been set on the floor, and three men are gathered there already. Two of the men wear masks. The other she recognises: a player from the courtyard like herself, whose record stood on a par with her own.

  Before them all, sitting cross-legged on a heaped mess of cushions, a silver goblet at her side and veiled all in white, is a woman. Like the umpires, her face is hidden, but her robes are greater in volume and length than any other, swathing her entirely so that only where her wrist protrudes from her long winding sleeves, and when she speaks, could any sense of her form or sex be discerned.

  For a long while they are silent, the four strangers and this gowned woman, until at last the latter seems to rouse herself from some manner of meditation and, raising her head, says to them,

  - You have all been chosen.

  She stops a moment and considers this remark, which came so easily to her lips. How many times has she spoken it before, and to how many players? Too many – too many.

  - There exists in this house two leagues in which players may compete. The lower league you have all experienced, and there is gold and pride aplenty to be won from those who seek such material things. The higher league I now invite you all to join. Here we do not play for merely earthly things. You can wager diamonds if the glint of those gems amuses you, or rubies, or bodies, or gold, or slaves. These are all objects that others may covet. But here you are invited to wager something more. We invite you to wager some part of yourselves. Your skill with language, perhaps. Your love of colour. Your understanding of mathematics. Your sharp sight. Your excellent hearing. Years of your life – you may wager so much, if you choose, and those who wager unwisely and lose the game will find themselves growing old before their time, and those who play and win may live a thousand years, and become in their playing more than what they were. Nor, with the stakes so high, do we play petty games of chance or symbolic objects. If your objective is to capture a King, then we shall name that King, and to his court you shall go to win your prize. If you wish to compete, as our young boys do, for the ownership of a flag or other symbol of your power, then rest assured it shall be the flag of the mightiest general in the land, and your troops shall be legion, and with cannon and powder shall you make your claim. Our games are played for amusement and the increase of our minds, but they are played with flesh and blood and guts and pain as surely as any monarch of the world.

  - You may decry such things as impossible or witchcraft but they are neither, and were you considered of such narrow-minded sort as to reject the veracity of what I am saying, you would not have been invited to participate. A great many people have heard rumours of this league and our house, and many lives have been lost and confidences betrayed in seeking to reach it. You are, in many ways, blessed to have been chosen, but if my words cause you fear, then you may leave now and the game will go on. Be aware that you shall not be invited to return to this league, nor shall you be permitted to speak of it to any other. This is a term inviolable.

  She finishes speaking, and waits.

  No one rises, no one leaves.

  - Very well, she says. - I accept your consent. Yet as this is the Gameshouse, you cannot simply walk into the higher league without some venturing first. Four of you have been judged suitable – one will join the higher league. The rest shall leave this place, never to return. A game is proposed to determine a winner. Please – take the boxes.

  We watch now as four boxes, each in silver, are presented by the umpires to the players, whose fingers itch to open but who keep themselves perfectly still, locked perhaps in fear of she who sits before them.

  - The game, she continues, - is one of Kings. Within these boxes are pieces that you may deploy. Each piece is a person, somewhere in this city, who has through rash venture, wager, debt or misplaced ambition come to owe a certain something to this house. Their debt we now transfer to you to be deployed as you may. You will also find within these boxes the details of your king. There is a vacancy emerging in the Supreme Tribunal for an inquisitor in black. Four candidates of some equal strength will compete for it. Each one of you has been assigned one of these candidates – one of these Kings. The winner is he or she whose king takes the throne. The rules of the game are also laid down within your boxes. Anyone who violates them will be punished most severely by the umpires and, friends, please do not doubt that the umpires will know. They will know.

  So she finishes, and so she rises, and so the players rise too, and for a second all stand, stiff and silent in the room, waiting for something more.

  Do we imagine a smile behind the hidden face of the Gamesmaster? Do we think we can hear humour in her voice?

  We dare not speculate, not tonight, not with a silver box in our hand and the terror of the unknown beating in our breasts.

  She leaves, and so do we, the room dissolving like memory.

  Chapter 7

  We are in a most private place.

  Thene and her husband do not share a room, and he, for all he dares, does not dare enter this place, her place, the highest r
oom in the house, a place usually reserved for servants though they are now nearly all gone. In it are some little things, for only in little things will Thene invest, knowing that when they are stolen, destroyed or taken from her, the material loss is nothing, and as for the emotion, the history and the time she has put into them…why, let it go. Let it go.

  We are bold, you and I, to be here at all, watching unseen. Yet here we must come, voyeurs to another’s story, for here it is that Thene removes her bodice and her heavy outer skirt, unpins her hair, lights another candle from the stubby end of the first, sets it down beside her bed and, sitting cross-legged on top of the mattress like a child with a secret enthralling book, opens the silver box.

  Dawn is rising outside through the streets of Venice, the grey light seeping in over the islands of the lagoon, through the slumbering workshops of Murano, across Piazza San Marco, that proud place built in defiance of Byzantine ambition, along the still waters of the Grand Canal and towards San Polo, where Thene’s treasures are revealed.

  A piece of paper outlines the rules.

  Do not harm the other players.

  The winner is the player whose king is crowned.

  There was nothing more.

  She turns it over a few times, then laughs out loud and stops herself at once lest the sound be heard in the house.

  She looks into her box.

  A silver figure, a statuette, showing a man in flowing robes and flat cap. His name, engraved on the bottom, is Angelo Seluda, though she little needs to be told. Everyone knows the Seluda family, who have for these twenty-five years fought running battles with the Belligno family in the streets of Cannaregio. The Seludas wear blue; the Bellignos wear green. The Seludas trade glass; the Bellignos trade fish. Everyone knew why the feud had started, though no one knew the same thing. Some said a woman…others said a boat. It was whispered that Belligno’s favourite son was betrayed to a rival from Milan by a Seluda captain. The boy loved a woman (in as much as a seventeen-year-old boy knows how to love with anything but a blazing passion that dies like candles in rain) but that woman had a brother, and the brother was jealous, and two years ago the child vanished. Belligno is too powerful for any one house to openly murder his kin, but not powerful enough, it seems, that even his mighty word can keep the wandering children alive. Then again, who is to say what really happens in matters of the seas and war? We trust only the uncertain men, for they are the ones who hear everything and believe nothing, reporting rumour as rumour, and in their doubts they stumble on a truth, and the truth is that no one knows anything and people like to talk for a long hour or two in the sun.

  In three hours’ time, word will spread through the city that Stephano Barbaro is dead, there will be elections for a new inquisitor to the Supreme Tribunal, and both Angelo Seluda and his arch-rival, Marco Belligno, will leap from their beds to fight for the post.

  How, we wonder, did the Gamesmaster know that Barbaro would die?

  We wonder, and then we do not. To wonder too deeply seems unwise, and will not aid our goal.

  Her king, then, a sixty-one-year-old head of a merchant house, member of the Collegio, rival for the throne. She wonders who the other players have been given as their piece. Venice is a republic, a democracy even, in as much as a great many wealthy men of the city may vote for the Doge in the following manner: thirty members of the Great Council are chosen by lot. Another lot then reduced this thirty to nine. These nine members then chose forty members of their kin, who took another lot, and by this were reduced to twelve. These twelve then chose twenty-five, who were reduced by lot to nine, and these nine then elect forty-five. Of these forty-five, a lot again reduces their number to eleven, and these eleven then elect the forty-one who elect the Doge.

  Is this democracy?

  Why, certainly, it is democracy, if democracy is the machinations of a small handful of great and powerful men who by bribery and marriage own the others. Chance is not welcome when lots are drawn in Venice; votes are only worthwhile when the electors know that the votes will be cast the proper way. But who would be Doge? A worthless, ceremonial position; a man in a hat, living in a gilded cage. The Supreme Tribunal, to be a Tribune, there is where the power lies! This every Venetian knows. Even the silent; even the women.

  A letter unsealed. A ribbon with a ring attached invites her to read, then seal at her own leisure. She opens it.

  Dear Sir, the bearer of this note will assist you in your enterprise. Please accord her full courtesies. Your Friend.

  She examines the ring with which this note should be sealed. It bears the head of a lion, roaring as do the knockers to the Gameshouse gates. She seals the note with wax and puts it aside.

  More objects from the box. A white mask, which, unlike many of the masks made for females, does not require the wearer to bite a handle between her lips to keep it in place. She may speak, strange liberation, though her face is unknown.

  Tarot cards. The Fool. The Three of Coins. The Knave of Swords. The Queen of Cups. The Seven of Staves. The Tower. The Priestess. The King of Coins. On the back of each card is written a name and a place of residence.

  A promissory note for five thousand ducats.

  A single golden coin. The face carved on it was none she knew, and the inscription is Latin. We know it now – how we know it! – a coin from ancient Rome, but with it no note nor an explanation. What is its purpose? Perhaps it will only become apparent when other tasks have been completed? Games, unlike life, have a structure, a pattern, an order to unlock. Play, and all mysteries shall be revealed.

  She laid it aside, sealed her box, blew out the candle and lay down to sleep.

  Chapter 8

  She placed one thousand ducats on the table.

  Jacamo de Orcelo watches it. What does he see in that purse? Ships? Chests of cloth, barrels of fish, precious spices from the East, slaves, grains? Or does he merely see casks of wine rolled across the pantry floor?

  For a while they stand there, husband and wife, on the opposite side of the gold, and their faces speak, rage in the arguments that their voices have no courage to express, until at last Thene says:

  - I’m going into a convent for three months to pray. You will find all things have been arranged. Goodbye.

  He screams then, - Whore, hussy, harlot, where did you get the gold? Where can you get more? and tries to grab her by the hair, but she punches him. It is not the open-palmed slap of a lady of house Orcelo, but rather it is her, herself, the Jew’s daughter, who hits him full in the face, and as he falls back bloodied, she gathers herself together and says, - If you want more, you will have to wait until I return.

  He sits on the floor, legs splayed, rump down, and for a moment is too shocked to move. Then the little boy within him comes out, and he weeps, and crawls on his belly to her feet, and kisses her shoe and says, - I love you, I love you, don’t go, I love you, where’s the money? I love you.

  She turns away.

  Chapter 9

  The house of Angelo Seluda is by a canal. Its lower floors are – in traditional fashion – a place of business, its middle floors for the family and its topmost reaches crawl with servants, clerks and men of trade, humbly appreciative of their post from a man so great as the master of this house. It has its own well, the surest mark of status, and there is something of the Byzantine in the patterns above the windows, the carvings on the wall, scratched to the tiniest detail, which tell of an old home for an ancient name.

  Thene examines it from across its private bridge and sees the statues raised to guard the entrance: Ares and Venus, hands clasped together in an arch above the gate. She feels a cat brush against her legs, curious at her curiosity; hears the push of oar through water, another supplicant coming up the canal to do homage to Angelo Seluda.

  She is afraid, but has already come too far.

  She loosens her fingers in their grey gloves and finds herself humming half a tune, a song she thought she had forgotten on the edge of her lips. She wears he
r mask, and coming to the door is stopped, challenged and when she speaks, surprise and distrust grow deeper on the faces of the lazy boys armed with clubs who accost her.

  - My letter, she says. - I can wait.

  She waits outside, five, ten, twenty minutes. In the time she stands there, we do not see her feet move, her back bend, her fingers ripple with impatience. Ares and Venus sweat in the face of her composure.

  A boy returns, his face humbler now, and says, - Please come in.

  She follows inside.

  The door shuts her from our view.

  Chapter 10

  Snatches of a conversation overheard through an open window.

  He is Angelo Seluda, and we have observed him before in the streets of Venice on his way to prayer, arguing with merchants fresh come to port, inspecting timber and glass, giving censure at the Doge’s palace, watching his rivals from between the cracks of the door. His family long ago discovered some secret sand, or some hidden colour, or mystic tincture – like all things in Venice, the detail is unclear – and took a great interest in glass. War has sometimes been unkind to this trade, but after every war there is always a great sighing of peace and, more importantly, a great many cracked windows to repair. And so on Murano his name is worth more than gold, and in the little islands that pepper the edge of the lagoon where twenty, thirty men at most inhabit and labour, Angelo Seluda is uncrowned king, Doge in all but name, commander of the workshops across the water. For too long he has laboured in the Senate, seeking advancement, but alas! He has always been a little too wealthy to escape envy, and thus his rivals have barred his advancement; yet he has never been quite wealthy enough to buy his way through this conundrum.