The Serpent

by Claire North

  The Priestess is silent a while, agreeing but offering no more, for what can she do to rectify this? What is there to be done?

  So our eyes turn to the Tower, who is known as Foscari and at six foot three stands so high and has shoulders so broad that it is a miracle any gondolier would take him on his barge, fretful that the slightest sneeze of this great frame could upset his boat and tip them all into the sewage-chased water. A sometime military engineer, he lost his left arm in an unnamed war, one of the endless skirmishes of the city states, an incident which was denied by both sides as soon as it had been fought, for no one in Italy likes to go to war with each other; rather their battles are merely misunderstandings over piddling matters of territory, honour and pride, and the men who died were adventurers on the road, not soldiers, not men of any military sort of the kind commanded by princes, for who knows if yesterday’s sworn enemy will not tomorrow be your son-in-law? Such is the necessity of turbulent times.

  - I believe it is in our interest to create a need for alternative works, Thene continues. - Ones in which Contarini does not hold the greatest power or interest.

  - What do you suggest?

  - The Patriarch has a very nice house, she replied.

  Silence.

  Foscari the Tower seems uninterested, his gaze turning outwards to a pair of flies that are skimming across the water, tangled in each other yet still somehow staying in the air, wings beating with furious vigour as they rise from the water. The Priestess sits and despite herself, despite her decorum and training, her mouth hangs a little ajar and she blurts out at last:

  - You wish to burn the house of the Patriarch?

  The Tower smiles at nothing much; his gaze still elsewhere, like a child who has heard the parents argue and knows if he can just keep his peace, their argument will end well for him.

  - Only a piece of it, Thene replies.

  The Priestess sits back, shaking her head, hands flickering up then down from her lap, like a butterfly unsure of its flight.

  - The Patriarch is very rich, Thene continues softly, - and a man who is chosen by the Senate more than by God.

  - You can’t know that, retorts the Priestess, sharper than perhaps she intended. - God is in the hand of the men who vote, and the tongues of men who speak, even those who speak ill, for all will come at the last to serve his holy spirit.

  - Even us? asks Thene. - Even this?

  Silence again.

  Then the Tower turns his great, bearded head and looks up at the sky, seeing in its running clouds perhaps some infant fancy – the back of a dragon, the legs of a horse, the spirit of a dolphin that is blown away – and he says,

  - Do you want anyone to die?

  - No.

  - How big do you want the fire?

  - Not so big that the house is considered irreparable, nor in such a place that it may spread too far.

  Perhaps this is disappointment we see in the Tower’s face, and if it is then here we begin to know that, for all his childish simplicity, his innocent airs, this is a man who has had his fingers round the throats of his enemies and enjoyed it. What was it, we wonder, that bought him to the Gameshouse’s service?

  (And here it is, the secret hidden, for Foscari once looked upon a town that would not be taken, a place high in the hills, of sloping yellow streets and cracked red roofs, whose very steepness seemed to stretch it out like a map on the landscape that the attackers might see every road, every corner, every home, and mark with the tip of their little fingers which one now was set for destruction. In this place, at this time, with victory assured, Foscari reached out to the cannon which were his lovers, his friends, his power, his all, and as he set to light the flame, a woman dressed all in white stepped to his side, caught his wrist and said, - Don’t.

  - Don’t, she said. The powder is too heavy, the metal too old. This cannon will burst when you fire it, and kill you for sure.

  This warning given, she departed, and he, being a proud but superstitious man, ordered his lieutenant to light the fuse, and stood well back, and he was finding dried drops of blood from the man’s shattered body in the folds of his doublet for months after, and when the white lady came again to his door he knelt at her feet and said he was hers, and she said, -I know.

  Such is the story of the Tower.)

  - I do not see how this will help you, says the Priestess, her voice bringing us back to this time, this place, this moment by the sea. - The Patriarch will spend money on renovating his palace and this will only increase Contarini’s profit.

  - Contarini’s entire strategy depends on his relic, Thene replies. - It is the excuse that the bishops have been looking for to build more and richer shrines to themselves, from which construction they may take a profit in money skimmed and gold trim, for Rome will surely send them money for the housing of a sacred relic. Contarini provides stone at great expense, the bishops take the money of Rome, the Senate takes money from the bishops and traders, and everyone profits. But! If the Patriarch finds himself in a dilemma – to invest in building a church for a relic of doubtful providence, or to repair his palace – where will that judgement fall? Certainly Rome will not pay for both, and there is far less profit to be made by the Senate in repairs to a palace rather than in a new reliquary where every piece of gold leaf may be the offspring of five pieces that vanished.

  - And the relic? asks the Priestess. - What of that?

  - I have one card left to play, she replies. - I must simply choose the time.

  Chapter 35

  The Three of Coins is a boy, barely fifteen or sixteen years old, all long, hanging limbs and tiny, oval face. Nothing seems in proportion about him, for he is surely too skinny for lungs to breathe, too tall for legs to balance, eyes too small to see, ears too big to hear. Yet here he stands, alive and, for all intents and purposes, well. A sometime thief, a sometime beggar, he is of that sort who is nothing for very long, but rather drifts from easy idea to easy idea, riding the wave of life until he either drowns or is washed up on some alien shore.

  He is not the ideal piece for this purpose, but he is the only one she has left.

  - Steal a relic? he muses. - I can try, could be interesting, could be boring, don’t know.

  - I sent a man to find it, and he was murdered.

  The Three of Coins shrugs; he doesn’t seem surprised by this. - My life ended when the Gameshouse took my card, he explains. - It was made clear that I weren’t my own man no more.

  A question she wants to ask. She looks, and does not ask it. Does not need to. This boy, this strange, distant boy stares at nothing much. It is the same vacancy she saw in the eyes of the Tower, the same focus in the gaze of the Priestess. It is the thing that hides behind the laughter of the Queen of Cups, the swagger of the Knave of Swords, the slouch of the Seven of Staves. Each piece in each way lived their life by their own definition, but beneath it all, there is a thing she dares not name.

  Is this slavery?

  A quick dismissal of the idea: slaves are taken by force, held against their will and yet…

  …and yet:

  Alvise Muna, Seven of Staves: I had debts.

  Pisana, Queen of Cups: I bet the life of my child.

  The Knave of Swords: My sword broke.

  The Priestess: There are some who made arrangements which they might regret.

  Every piece has come into her hand through the Gameshouse, but what pushed them through the Gameshouse’s door?

  The Queen of Cups knew she was coming: I was a player once.

  And what of herself, what of Thene?

  She has not thought of her husband once.

  There is no shame in that; she has had better things to keep her occupied.

  And even if questions could be asked, what is she to do?

  Walk away?

  Back to Jacamo, back to the life that went before?

  A player must play in order to win. A king who conquers the kingdom must slay many soldiers in his path; four men wish to b
e captain, and only one may rise to that rank. What of the others? What of those who are left behind when victory is won?

  History will not remember them.

  And so on, Thene, on.

  On to the end.

  Chapter 36

  She had asked a question of the Knave of Swords – a question he died answering. Where is Contarini’s relic?

  Now she realises what a foolish question it was. Contarini, Contarini, frightened, wandering Contarini! You played a card to catch spies in your house, you change the bed you sleep in every night, and certainly you smile and you laugh and you shake hands with prelates and princes, and say how wonderful it shall all be when you are Tribune, but Contarini…the word that has not yet been invented for you, but it comes; the word is paranoid.

  What cards were dealt, what deals were made to give Contarini his ridiculous relic she doesn’t know, nor does it much matter. The relic is not the point of this exercise, merely the excuse – an excuse to build, an excuse to embezzle, to proclaim triumph where there is almost none. But as it is a symbol still, it holds value, and where does Contarini keep a thing of great value?

  About himself. Always – but always – about his own person.

  Terrible trust!

  If only you had trusted in others, Contarini; if only you knew how to smile and mean it, you could perhaps have won this game, but no – no. You never understood the value of such things.

  She must tempt Contarini out of hiding.

  How better to do it, she thinks, than through the pieces of her enemy?

  She speaks to Seluda.

  - You were friends with Zanzano, you say, before he betrayed you?

  - I thought I knew what friendship was, he replies, - and by that clearly mistaken understanding of what was between us, yes, I was his friend.

  - Do you have any letters he sent? A note or two? Something written in his hand?

  - I may; why?

  - Do you want to know? she asks. - Seeing as you still cling to some part of friendship, that is?

  Seluda considers, and then quickly absolves himself. - No, he says. - I don’t want to know.

  A letter is sent.

  A reply is given.

  The reply – alas, the reply! – is given to a messenger boy who is lazy and easily bribed, and Thene reads it closely as the Three of Coins stands idly by, scraping the dirt out from beneath his nails and flicking it away in little black spots towards the water of the canals.

  Thene reads, considers, then pens another letter, seals it again and sends it on its way.

  An invitation, written in the name of Zanzano, suggesting that though he has spoken most firmly for Faliere these last few weeks, yet now he has some small doubts, and would Contarini be willing to discuss a couple of matters of mutual concern?

  Why, it would appear that Contarini is most willing.

  Most willing indeed.

  Night in Venice.

  Few cities are more beautiful and more ugly in the dark than Venice.

  The city is a jewel of contradictions. We stand by the waters of the lagoon, you and I, and watch the moonlight ripple beneath a star-pricked sky. We hear the creaking of the ships, smell fish sizzling in the pan, hear the distant laughter and feel the warmth through an open door, and know that this is surely paradise, the beautiful city, and marvel at how great are the deeds that man has wrought.

  Yet turn away, and what is there now in this place that is not a threat? The alleys too dark, the walls too close, the water lapping at your feet hungry, hungry for blood. How many bones were sucked bare by the wide-eyed fish which twist away from the worm and the rod to gorge on sweeter pastures? How many of the crows that nest in the highest towers have, of a frozen night in winter, not swept down to pluck an eye from the still-staring corpse of he who shall by tomorrow have no name to put on his tombstone? Beauty and blood: does the blood give the beauty its edge? Is skin fairer when washed in red? Or is it the blood itself which is beautiful, for surely men will blaze the brighter when they know that tomorrow they may be drowned?

  Or maybe here is the most terrible truth of all: that in a city as tide-turned as Venice is, perhaps it is simply too hard to find love, loyalty and truth, and so in other virtues people invest their hearts – passion, beauty, poetry and song – fancying perhaps that these shadows of the former are as great as love itself.

  Contarini receives Zanzano’s note and, as a good piece must, shows it to his player.

  Does his player smell a trap?

  Perhaps he does, but then the battle is too close between Faliere and Contarini, the net too tightly drawn to refuse this offer, and if a little something is lost, what a great deal could be gained! The letter is compared to others known to be in Zanzano’s hand, the seal is checked, and indeed it seems to be his voice, his style, his composition, and so in the deepest hour of the night when even the drunk boys and merry girls who dance on the tables of the inns have at last lulled themselves into stupored sleep, a gondola sets forth from Contarini’s home.

  There are four people within it, and a gondolier who says nothing and of whom nothing is asked. Torches burn at either end to guide the way, but the moon is shrouded behind the high walls of the city, and only a little light pushes through the mosquito-humming dark. The waterways at this hour are a place for insects, some crawling along the surface, visible only by the pushing ripples of their darting motion; others zip high, bumping along walls like blind bats feeling their way through the air, indignant to find their journey so disrupted.

  Through this, Contarini moves in silence.

  Let us consider the others who accompany him.

  One man we may immediately assess, name and discard: a guard carrying a short spear that he probably can’t use and a chipped sword which perhaps he can. He is a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

  Another we have not seen before, his face half shrouded by a velvet hood, but if we were to consider his role, his strength, his abilities, we could give at least a representation of a name to him, and say perhaps that he is that card known as the Sun, whose real name will turn out to be something Germanic, and who used to pass letters for Sir Francis Walsingham and who betrayed the Spanish king and is now what he most excels at being – a spy, a traveller and a watcher of men. He had some aspiration, once upon a time, of playing in the same Gameshouse where his masters sometimes dallied, but for reasons we cannot know, the Gamesmaster never invited him to challenge for the higher league, though his skill was entirely apt to it.

  Contarini does not trust the Sun, suspecting what he once was; but for all that he is a fearful man, he is an economically minded one too, for to him a man whose card is held is a man who is now owned. His gaze turns in satisfaction to the final occupant of the boat, a man in a bone-white mask, and Contarini smiles upon him, though if he smiles back we cannot see. How easily has this old, plump man, cheerful Contarini, come to congratulate himself on owning a piece as powerful as the Sun, and somehow managed yet to forget that he is a piece himself. The easiest intellectual option, the path of least resistance, and there you have the man.

  A guard, a spy, a piece and a player.

  Their route to Zanzano’s house takes them under four bridges. Two are high enough that the gondolier needs only to bend a little to push them through it; of the other two, one requires him to squat, and one is so low indeed that it is miraculous that the pilot of this little vessel does not lie down flat to propel them beneath its stones. As they approach it, Contarini mutters his usual exclamations against new money and the vulgar, unpleasant things it builds, forgetting – choosing to forget – how yesterday he shook the hand of the very man whose construction this bridge is, congratulating him on his superb judgement in supporting Contarini’s claim, and hoping to see him very soon for some private chat.

  Coming towards this little bridge, it seems that a shadow stirs around it, and at the sound of footfalls, the Sun raises his head.

  A sound that might be the scraping of a ba
rrel.

  A creaking that could be the drawing of a bow.

  The Sun rises to his feet, steady in the still-moving boat, and seeing him rise, the white-masked player asks, - Something?

  - Perhaps, replies the man, and then, - I heard…

  What he heard we shall not know, for what he next experienced was a cracking of timbers and an explosion of sticky blackness across his face as, from windows high above, barrels of honey, mud and egg were thrown, all mixed together by an angry cook of Seluda’s, the dark sticky stuff splattering across every soul in the boat which, rocked by this assault and then by the confusion of all within, sloshed first from side to side and then, with a final slow flop, capsized, hurling all into the water.

  At this all light ceased, and for a moment five men flapped and splashed, flailed and gasped in the murky dark. How terrible to drown; how much worse to drown in the dark when there is no sense of where safety lies, only water without bottom, darkness without end, clothes swelling up and dragging down, bubbles of air popping from nose and mouth, eyes pushing against their sockets with the pressure of liquid building in your gasping, choking face. Terror, terror to drown, and now the soldier’s sword is an anchor and the fine fur lining of your cloak and golden chain about your neck is death that threatens to pull you down, the rich men drowning faster than the poor.

  Yet! A light above, voices in the dark, and here are ten or fifteen boys, the forgotten, unloved, undrawn poor of the city. They crowd round the water’s edge, torches burning and hands outstretched, and some three or four dive in to help the flapping, spluttering passengers, hauling them, some by the arm, some by the neck, one even by the hair, gasping onto the safety of the bridge.

  - Money, money, please sir, money! cries the boldest of these unlooked-for saviours, or:

  - I’m strong, you see how strong I am, I am very strong indeed you could use me, yes, as a servant, I work very hard because I am very strong!

  Or maybe even the simpler, softly whispered words that are not a threat; no, never that, never threatening…

  - I saved your life. I could have not done that, sir, and heaven looked no less kindly on my soul.