The carpenter smiled at that; then, pushing himself upright, he disappeared through the door.
“We should kill him, too,” said Luca. “I don’t trust him. He’ll talk, I know he’ll—”
“Shut up,” said Jacopo. They were the first words he had spoken since the others had begun dividing the ship among them. “You’ll leave him alone, and he’ll leave us alone. We’re all hanged men if we’re caught. Him as much as us, and he knows it.”
The mention of “hanged men” silenced them. It was hot in their little wooden box. They grew somber again, anxious and sickly-looking in the yellow light of the oil lamp. Stupidity and greed and fear, thought Jacopo. Sons of the soil, and all at sea.
“You’ll divide half what we get between yourselves,” he said. “The other half goes to me.” He watched their outrage swell, their eyes widening, faces turning thunderous. “Unless one of you wants to strike the first blow. … Any of you want to be the first? … Luca? … Piero?”
He looked at each of their faces in turn. Enzo’s eyes were the last to drop, but drop they did. “No takers? Well then, I must suppose that it will be me.” He spoke lightly, toying with them. They so wanted to be old and fat, and ashore. “I’ll kill the first, since none of you have the guts. We’ll all do the others. All of us, mind you. And together.” They were frightened now and relieved. He had brought them near enough.
“Which one first?” It was Luca who spoke, his lips pursed with nerves.
“The big one. Bernardo. Without him, the others will be easy.” Lank black hair framed his face like a bonnet. The men watching him were apprehensive and silent. He had put himself beyond them; he frightened them now. “I’ll do it tonight,” he declared, “if they ever rouse themselves from that bloody cabin.”
All seven of them glared up at the ceiling.
“What are they doing in there, anyway?” asked Enzo, lowering his eyes from the boards above his head and fixing them, for no good reason, upon Luca.
“Talking?” Luca replied doubtfully. “What have they got to talk about?”
Jacopo did not answer. He was thinking of Don Antonio’s stray remarks about “our two fools,” a phrase he had varied only rarely. Once he had dubbed them “our beast-catchers,” the title bestowed with a strong sarcastic inflection; once, and in the same tone, he had called them “our licensed brigands,” a phrase that he had puzzled over until he had seen the two of them following this “Captain Diego,” hurrying across the quay to the jetty with the girl, unnoticed as all eyes turned to the barge and its robed passenger. They had walked in step. Marched, as it were, and when this captain had directed them to settle the girl in the cabin, to drag out its drunken occupant and dump him on the deck, then take up their station at the stern to doff their hats to His Holiness, they had obeyed without delay or reflection. “Licensed brigands” meant only one thing to him then.
“I believe that they were soldiers together,” Jacopo said eventually. “Once.”
Their faces clouded, and he cursed his loose tongue. “A long time ago,” he added, but they were inwardly shaking their heads, slipping away from him, back to their drudgery and digging. “Soldiers” were a black stain that appeared on their horizon, a monster with ten thousand hacking limbs that pulled them out by the heels, then their women and children. … No one had told them that these were “soldiers.” He eyed them contemptuously. Don Antonio had somehow neglected to mention that one of the “fools” stood almost two heads taller than he, that they would be joined by their old commander, if that were the case, who had even brought a woman on board. Don Antonio would have a few questions to answer if they ever met again.
“I’ll take the big one,” he spat at them. “Then it’s all of us together.”
He tripped on the doorsill as he quit the cramped chamber. Behind him, he heard a couple of them snigger.
It began as ants. Then became worms, a ball of them the size of an apple, then the size of a small cabbage, vigorous and slithery in the pit of his stomach. His mouth filled with spit, which he swallowed every few seconds or so. The worms drank it, then lashed about with their tails and mated, producing more worms— bigger ones. It might have been something he ate, except that he had eaten nothing since the night before, when five or six of Rodolfo’s pies had disappeared down his gullet at the Broken Wheel. These had shown no intention of returning. It might have been the drink, which was more likely, and it might have been his “nerves,” which still jangled from the moment when he had released the dwarf in mid-heave and found himself staring into the face of the very man who had chased them out of Prato, and Rome, over mountains, through rivers, and down them, eventually to a fishing port, where a ship waited to take them to “somewhere safe”—this was how he had understood it. So here he was aboard ship.
Every few minutes, Bernardo looked across at Salvestro to see his friend was immersed in a conversation with the very man they had taken passage to escape: the Colonel, who it now seemed was not about to kill them, and who it seemed was no longer “the Colonel,” but “the Captain.” So it was in all probability his nerves, and if not that, then the strange musty smell that clung to the whole ship, a noxious vapor of the sort that caused fever, and if not that, then it was the actual motions of the vessel, though these were gentle and almost imperceptible. The cabin was furnished with a kind of table built into the stern bulkhead, a stool and chair on which Salvestro and Diego respectively sat, an open-fronted cupboard filled, so far as he could see, entirely with empty bottles, and two bunk beds. He sat on the lower, the girl was asleep on the upper. She had not been mentioned yet by the two men. One corner was piled with a heap of dirty rags, clothes possibly. The other held a small chest with bands of iron about it held shut with three formidable locks. Its contents clinked occasionally, usually when the boat rolled. Worms, pies, drink, nerves, the stink or motions of the Santa Lucia … Bernardo felt that he might very soon be sick. The cabin did not contain Captain Alfredo. Or a bucket.
“It was an unholy trinity,” Diego was saying, shaking his head. “Aldo, Medici, myself. If it had been I who went in to parley with him, then everything would have been different. Of course Medici wasn’t going to let that happen, and Aldo was sick with a wasting disease, it was eating his flesh, and I, I had little wish to breathe the air in there. Even in the antechamber, you could smell it. … No, they spoke alone.”
Bernardo had heard this bit already and almost understood it. He remembered a lot of waiting around outside Prato. More specifically, a lot of being hungry. This had happened then. Diego and the Cardinal had talked terms with Aldo. … No, he’d got that part wrong. The Cardinal had talked terms with Aldo, and Aldo had surrendered the town, on terms that… He did not quite grasp “the terms.” Then the Cardinal had ridden back to the camp with a story about Aldo’s defiance, which had been the pretext for all that followed. There was something wrong with this, Bernardo felt, but whether it was his fault or someone else’s was still unclear.
“The boy knew,” Salvestro was saying. “Aldo’s son. He thought his father a coward for it.”
“Then they all knew,” replied Diego. “No wonder Medici kept them hidden. Aldo was brave enough, though. He had little choice. …”
This was going too fast for Bernardo. He had the talking bit, the surrender bit, but the Aldo and his family bit he did not understand. Nor were “the terms” getting any clearer. He heard the girl shift on the bunk above him. He was going to have to be sick soon. Very soon, actually.
“Medici came out of that room shaking his head, lamenting his ‘old friend Aldo’s pigheadedness.’ He was almost in tears, the charlatan. I even remember him trying to persuade Cardona not to attack. Imagine if he had acceded! “The soldier grinned quickly, but then his face fell again. “Of course, Cardona would have known everything. Even then he would have realized that Aldo had to surrender, that Medici was lying through his teeth, and there was I, standing next to him, an officer under his own command. … He must have
known then where the blame would fall.” His voice had a strangled quality to it.
Bernardo cleared his throat loudly.
Salvestro furrowed his brow. “Why?” he said at last. “Why would he wish the town sacked?”
“I await the chance to ask him. I await the chance to ask many things. Why else am I here, aboard a floating jakes on a fool’s errand for the man I detest most in the world?”
The talk drifted and meandered around this question. Bernardo followed intently, certain in the belief that if he only listened hard enough, Diego’s role in this whole affair and his presence here on the ship would make perfect sense to him, or at least become less inexplicable. The Beast, he gathered gradually, was central to the soldier’s project, which was intended to gain Fernando’s ear. Possibly the ear was central, too, but anyway, the one clearly led to the other: the beast in some sense was the key to the ear, and this had something to do with “renown.” With the ear gained, the rest more or less fell into place. There would be a petition to Fernando (via the ear) against the injustice done Diego by, as he had put it, “the man I destest most in the world.” This could only be the Pope, guessed Bernardo, basing this belief on the fact that every time the word “Medici” or “Leo” was mentioned, it was invariably preceded by the epithet “loathsome” or “vile” and followed by clauses portending violence such as “whose head I look forward to parading on a pole.” The Pope had been the murderer at Prato, albeit through the actions of men who did not know whom they served (Rufo was mentioned here), who believed they served Diego while actually serving the Pope and thus were intended to implicate Diego when caught, except they had escaped, or some of them had, and Diego had been disgraced anyway. And these “men” had been dupes just as much as Diego, for they had been led to believe they were protecting Aldo’s family, even though they were actually guarding them only so that the murderers, who were not they, could kill Aldo’s family later. And then the “men” would be blamed for it, and Diego, too.
This last part had a very familiar ring to it. Being blamed for things he had not done struck deep chords within Bernardo. He watched Salvestro and Diego construct this edifice of supposition and guesswork as they faced each other over the table. Then it dawned on him that, by “the men,” the murders of Aldo’s family who were not the murders of Aldo’s family and the soldiers in Diego’s service who were not in Diego’s service (although they thought they were), the two men talking amongst themselves actually meant himself and Salvestro.
There followed something about the “men” also being the “men” who would, assuming both the Beast and Fernando’s ear were gained, form the first link in a chain that would drag “the man I detest most in the world” into the light, where his guilt would be clear and thus Diego’s honor restored, and their own, too, it seemed, although Bernardo was far from certain that he had ever lost it or even had it to lose in the first place. Also, his nausea was growing worse. He hiccuped and swallowed.
“Cardinal Medici,” Salvestro was saying.
“Yes. Our beloved Pope. May he burn in hell—”
“I’m going outside,” Bernardo broke in then.
The two men looked up, and the girl too raised her head, roused by the unfamiliar voice. The other two had been talking on for hours.
“To be sick,” Bernardo added, reaching urgently for the cabin door and slamming it behind him.
Salvestro and Diego looked blankly at each other, as though nonplussed to find themselves in a little wooden room floating in the middle of the sea when, only a moment ago, they had been standing on terra firma in a little town at the end of the valley of Mugnone, hundreds of miles to the north. The sound of vomiting reached them faintly: a gurgle from the deck, a soft slop over the side.
“We were amongst the vanguard, when the order to attack came. I found Aldo in the palace, the very room outside which I had waited while he and Medici talked. Only the old women had stayed with him. There was no guard, and we would have killed them if there had been. There was no defense, do you remember that?” Salvestro nodded. “He was all but dead already, rotting from the inside, by the smell of him. All he said was, ‘So the stories of the Spaniards are true.’ Later he asked to see his family, but they had fled, so I thought. He smiled when I told him this, and I was not unhappy for it. He already knew that his would be a miserable death. Later the Cardinal arrived and asked my permission to administer the last rites to ‘his old friend.’ I agreed, naturally. Another mistake. When he had gone, Aldo was transformed, almost: mad. He asked again for his family, and again I told him that they were far away by now, perhaps already in Florence. This time he would not have it, and ranted that they were yet in the city, that I must find them and keep them safe, for my own sake as much as his. He was a clever man. He had already understood what was happening. I ignored him. I understood nothing then.”
“But you did send out patrols, did you not?” Salvestro asked.
“Too late,” said Diego. He stared into the oil-lamp. It might have been anyone putting the question to him.
The door opened again and Bernardo stepped carefully over the sill. It banged behind him, the noise bringing Diego’s head up quickly, as though startled from sleep.
“I was sick,” said Bernardo.
Salvestro glared at him.
“What?” protested Bernardo. “What now?”
“You know the rest,” said Diego, “if what you tell me is true.” He watched Salvestro. “There were no ‘last rites’ for Aldo. Medici had his family as hostages for his silence, and you were intended as Diego’s men, so Diego’s fault. Rufo was Medici’s man, but you never thought to ask his name, did you?”
Salvestro did not answer, so Bernardo shook his head. He was feeling somewhat better now, though the beads of sweat on his brow were still cold. The moon was quite bright. His vomit had resembled a waterlogged shirt, and obviously he had missed several important episodes while outside. Salvestro would explain them to him later.
“Aldo died on the twenty-fifth day of the sack,” Diego continued, “though no one knew until two days later, not even Medici. Another day and I would have had his family safe.” He frowned then. “It was the Pratesi themselves who told him. The sheep who whistled for the wolf.”
“The bells,” said Salvestro, and then it was Diego’s turn to nod.
“The whispers began the next day. Men I had fought with the length and breadth of Italy began to turn their faces from me. I had found their bodies, but that proved nothing. There was a tribunal later, and your old comrade Groot performed the tricks he had been taught in the cellars beneath the fortress. …”
“Groot!” Bernardo burst in then. “Groot’s alive?”
“Alive,” Diego confirmed. “Is that not what led you to Rome?”
“That was the monks, well, we led them actually,” began Bernardo, and was about to begin the lengthy process of organizing his thoughts on the question of how it was that they found themselves in Rome when Salvestro motioned for him to be quiet.
“He lives, in any case,” Diego resumed. “And on a pension from the Pope, I believe.” His tone was of mild mocking surprise. “He confessed to the killings, carried out on my orders. It was enough.”
“Groot didn’t kill anyone!” Bernardo burst in. “Him and me were there alone, then some other soldiers came along. …”
“It does not matter,” Diego said impatiently.
“But he didn’t—”
“I know!” It was the first time he had raised his voice, and he grimaced as though this betrayed some weakness. He began to speak more calmly, talking of the humiliations that followed, his shunning by his peers, the mutterings from the men he commanded, finally his secondment to Rome, there to trot before the Orator “like a mastiff on a ribbon,” as he put it. “No court was ever convened,” he said. “Medici and Cardona saw to that between them. And Fernando’s ear is an elusive organ, selective in the lips that are permitted to approach it, and in the words that such l
ips may speak. Sometimes Fernando’s ear even appears quite deaf. Sometimes it is necessary to bang a drum in it merely to gain a hearing. …” He paused for a moment, lost in this thought. “And I will have a hearing. It is my right.” He looked up and smiled, not at Salvestro or Bernardo, but at the figure on the topmost bunk, the girl. “It will be before the clerks of the orators and the servants of the Roman Pope, before the Portingales, and the Aragonese, and the Castilians, who knows, even the French. Two cutthroats will be my witnesses, and my advocate. … My advocate will be a monstrous animal.”
“Ezodu.”
Bernardo looked up, startled by the voice. The girl was staring at Diego, head propped on her elbow, her black face expressionless. The two looked at each other for several long seconds.
“Ess-odoo,” he repeated carefully. “It is her word for the Beast.”
“I think,” said Bernardo. “I think that…”
It was the worms again, unvigorous as yet but growing more energetic with each passing second. They had already passed the apple stage and moved on now to the small cabbage stage. They were beginning to thrash and multiply. A small vanguard had formed up and were attempting the climb his gullet. Bernardo gulped, rose, and hastened once again for the door. Salvestro watched a faint smile appear and disappear on the girl’s face.
“She knows this beast,” Diego said. “She has seen it. …”
“She?” The girl had sat up.
Diego stared at her. “She is called Eusebia,” he said. “Or Usse.”
In response to this, Eusebia-or-Usse snorted dismissively.
“Usse,” she said. “Eusebia is only fit for scrubbing people’s feet.”
“Usse,” Salvestro echoed absently. “Eusebia” and “Usse.” “Salvestro,” and “Niklot,” who was far away and long ago. Dropped somewhere and lost. What was “Salvestro” fit for?
The cabin was quiet and the motions of the Lucia were confined to a lolling motion, a shiver slowed to the swing of a bucket being raised carefully from a well. He thought vaguely of his flight out of Prato, the little girl skipping away into the darkness. Of Usedom, himself twisting away from the men who had dragged him down to the beach, then beat him to the ground. Of Rome … There was a boy swimming in the black water of the Achter-Wasser, diving deeper and deeper. Was that him? Or was he the one running away? “Salvestro” was fit for that.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 65