by David Hewson
He went back to the makeshift bench and pulled from the nest of shavings a small piece of dark, stained wood and placed it on the table. “I carved this for Scacchi. He would have hated the thing in life, but now he’s dead he can’t stop me. Promise this will be in the coffin. That old man needs all the help he can get where he’s going.”
Piero’s work was an intricate cross carved from a twisted gnarl of olive wood.
“Of course,” Daniel said. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is an idiot’s offering to his smart-ass cousin. Who knew me to be an idiot all along. Scacchi would have thrown it in the fire and then complained it burned meagrely.”
Daniel felt the smooth wood and thought of the long care that had gone into the piece. Piero was correct: Scacchi had had little time for the mundane. “I’ll place it there myself. I promise. And I hope you’ll reconsider your decision. I’m no expert on funerals, but I feel you may regret not being there.”
“No. The person is gone with that last breath. Why say good-bye to a carcass? I have Scacchi where he belongs, in my head, still alive there, where he will remain until I join him. I have no need of a funeral to convince myself he is dead. But you must go, Daniel. You are young. For you it’s different. And . . .” Piero wrestled with the words. “This is all so strange. Scacchi gone. The American too. For what?”
He required an answer, which was impossible. “I have no idea,” Daniel admitted.
“Ah! I’m a cretin. Why should you? Scacchi was a difficult man. He wound himself in mysteries and dealt too often with people best left alone. I know. Sometimes I was his errand boy on those excursions, more fool me.”
Daniel said nothing. Piero scanned his face closely.
“So he treated you the same way too, eh?” he asked. “Don’t deny it, Daniel. We were all, to some extent, Scacchi’s playthings. I loved the old man, in the way one loves a dog that never behaves. But when he wanted something, we were all merely pawns upon his chessboard, and there, I feel, lies the answer to his death. He has cheated someone, no doubt, and for once pushed too far.”
“Laura . . .” Daniel began to say.
“Laura! What fools the police are! To put her in jail like that. Do they have a brain in their heads?”
“She confessed, Piero. What else do you expect them to do?”
“Think about what they are hearing, for a start. Do they believe everything some villain tells them? Of course not. Yet when some poor woman whose head is mad with grief makes up this kind of cock-and-bull tale, they swallow every word and put her in prison. And all the while the real crooks swan around the city free as birds. You wonder why I live in Sant’ Erasmo? It is to distance myself from the stupidity that rains down upon you, day and night, in that place across the water.”
Daniel placed his paper cup on the table and held his hand over it when Piero tried to pour more wine. “Where is she now?” he enquired. “I need to talk to her.”
“I have no idea. Why ask me?”
“Because you’re her friend. You know her. This is important, Piero.”
“I have no idea!” His angry voice boomed across the low, flat fields. Xerxes’ ears fell flat to his head as the dog scuttled off to the corner of the clearing. Daniel said nothing. Finally, Piero apologised.
“I shouldn’t have shouted, Daniel. My nerves are frayed. You ask these questions and assume I have some answers. I have no more than you.”
“Where could she be? She said she had an elderly mother in Mestre.”
Piero cast him a withering glance. “A mother in Mestre? Laura was an orphan, Daniel. She came straight from the home to work for Scacchi many years ago. There was no mother. A man, no doubt, and why not?”
“But she told me!”
“Your capacity for belief astonishes me, boy. I wonder you manage to walk the streets of that place without having the clothes stolen off your back.”
“Then who is she? Where might she be?”
“Daniel, Daniel. How many times must I tell you I do not know. Besides . . .”
Daniel waited. Piero seemed unwilling to go on. “Besides what?”
“You care for her, I think. More than the care of a friend. Is this correct?”
“I believe so. I believe she feels the same way towards me.”
Piero took a swig of wine, then spat on the ground. “This tastes like piss. The wine has turned this past week. The world has turned too. Oh, Daniel! How can it be true that Laura loves you? She’s not mute. She’s not deaf or blind. If she cared to contact you, she could, surely. Yet she’s gone. With no news to you or me. What does that tell you? Are these the actions of a woman who has a care?”
Daniel suppressed his anger. “It tells me she is frightened, perhaps of the men who killed Scacchi. Perhaps she seeks to protect me from them for some reason. I don’t know. That’s why I must talk to her. If she tells me to my face that she wishes to see me no more, then so be it. But I can’t leave it like this. I will not.”
“You have no choice. I can’t help you. She will not.” Piero watched the dog slumbering by the canal and sniffed the salt air. “Perhaps it’s in the atmosphere. That poison they push into the sky from all those filthy factories in Mestre. It’s driven us all mad. I thought, that day we came here, that you were one of us. I saw the way you played our little game. We all loved you. Scacchi more than any other. But we were wrong. Every one of us.”
He turned and took Daniel by the shoulders. “You don’t belong here,” he said. “When your business is over, go home. You won’t find any happiness here. Only misery or worse. Go, while you are still able.”
Daniel stared at the man in front of him who now seemed a stranger. “If I didn’t know you, Piero, I would have interpreted that as a threat.”
“No. The very opposite. Sound advice from someone who cares for you. Who does not wish to see you wasting your life chasing ghosts, clutching at thin air. Will you listen? Please?”
Daniel closed his eyes and tried to think of some way through this maze. Piero was right. There were ghosts in the air: Scacchi and Paul laughing on the wind, Laura standing in front of him, staring in bemusement at the eel writhing around his face. And Amy, sad, lost Amy, who had been abandoned from the start.
“I’ll heed you, Piero,” he answered. “Next week I shall leave Venice, for good.”
Two vast arms swept around his body. Daniel found himself gripped to Piero’s massive chest. When he let go, Daniel saw there were tears in the huge man’s eyes.
“If it were in my power to turn back the clock,” Piero said. “If this poor simpleton could give anything to make things other than as they are . . .”
“No,” Daniel replied, shocked by this sudden turn of grief. “You’ve done everything you could to help me. I’ll always remember you, always the best times, on the Sophia, in our little party.”
“Boy!” Piero gripped him again, and this time the tears flooded down his cheeks.
Daniel disentangled himself somewhat, wondering all the while how Scacchi might have handled such a situation. “But there is something you must promise me, Piero.”
“Anything!”
“That you’ll remember me as I am. Not as others may paint me.”
Piero slapped him on the shoulder and poured two more cups of the sour red wine. Then he turned to watch the nodding heads of artichoke and the dog, who was awake again, tail now wagging hopefully, at the corner of the clearing.
“I know you, Daniel,” Piero said, not looking at him. “I’m not such a fool as some think.”
50
A hurried return
I COULD NOT HAVE BLAMED MARCHESE IF HE THOUGHT me mad. At four in the morning, with the sun beginning to rise over the city, I began to tell him, in a stream of tumbling words, of the man I knew as Oliver Delapole and he as Arnold Lescalier, the scar upon the cheek which confirmed their joint identity, and why I must return to the city on the instant. The magistrate listened to me patiently as I laid out my case as op
enly and honestly as I dared. It was imperative Delapole was stopped and apprehended. But in doing so, I had to ensure Rebecca and her brother escaped the Doge’s net, too, for reasons Marchese could not hear.
As I might have expected, Marchese saw the lacuna in my tale in an instant. “This concerns you greatly, Lorenzo. The man is a beast, no doubt, but not a common rapist. I do not see why you should worry yourself at a simple meeting.”
“The Englishman may be able to make demands of her,” I offered lamely. “And she is vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable? You made her sound a strong character to me.”
“Sir, I recall the way he looked at her when we met. He finds her attractive. Given the opportunity, he will use any means he can to press himself upon her.”
“Ah.” The old man’s face spoke volumes. “You and this lady, then . . .?”
“Please, my friend. I do not have the time to gossip. I love this woman, and that is all there is to say.”
He placed a finger thoughtfully to his cheek, and I realised how formidable a foe Marchese must have been to those he had pursued. Nothing escaped his attention. “Yet Lescalier . . . Delapole . . . whoever he is . . . This man will meet many women in the course of a week, Lorenzo. We must report him to the authorities, of course. But I think you should be content that having done no harm we know of, and still unaware we have him in our sights, he will play the part of the English fool a little while yet. Unless . . .”
I buried my head in my hands, unable to speak.
“Lad,” the old man said, and there was now a note of impatience in his voice. “I cannot advise without the facts.”
He was right. I was acting like a child. I thought of our last meeting and the way Rebecca had struggled to tell me the truth and, in the end, failed to summon the strength, dismayed by my own coldness. I thought of the dream. Her single outstretched hand and those four words: There is no blood.
“The facts . . .” There were none, only guesses, yet they had now achieved such solidity in my head I knew them to be true. “I believe the facts are she is with child. My child. And the picture that repeats itself in my head is that she uses this in order to resist his advances, with consequences we may both imagine.”
The old man’s complexion turned quite pale. He gripped me by the arm. “Good God, Lorenzo! Are you sure? For this changes things mightily.”
“I believe it to be so, and that she wished to tell me before I left, and instead fell into an argument because I—I—urged her speak to the Englishman for help upon a private matter!”
He groaned and a look of hard determination came upon him. “A child . . . Well, you know how much he thinks of that. At least you believe you do, though what I set down on that paper was but a tenth of what I saw and learned. Had I told all, none that read it would sleep again for fear that he might pass their door. This man is the very Devil himself. We must stop him!”
“But how?” I pleaded.
Marchese had the plan already set in his head. “It is more than three hundred miles by coach from here to Venice. I shall take the first seat I can find, and be lucky to reach there after midnight tomorrow evening. Can you ride?”
“I grew up on a farm, sir. Show me the saddle.”
“Excellent! My neighbour keeps a decent nag. I’ll pay him well for it. You’ll take the mountain route by Perugia to Ravenna on the coast. Then ride to Chioggia. See if you can get a boat there. With luck you’ll beat me by a good six hours or more.”
I followed him to the door, where already he was yelling for his neighbour to get out of bed and ready the horse. It was a fine Rome morning, with a light breeze and a few wisps of feathery cloud in the sky. A perfect day to ride like the wind. A dark, bearded face appeared at an upstairs window next door and threw a few half-hearted curses down at us.
“Come, Ferrero,” Marchese bawled back. “Out of your pit and help a man do justice in this world!”
Soon the fellow was with us in the street and, to his credit and that of Marchese’s, too, did just as he was told once the magistrate barked out his orders. As the bell of the Pope’s summer palace tolled six, I was ready to depart and eager to face the road. Before I could, though, Marchese gave me some final, earnest advice.
“Lorenzo,” he said. “When you arrive, go straight to the watch or a magistrate. Tell them this lady of yours may be in grave danger and they must ensure her safety. Tell them, too, that a magistrate of Rome follows on to confront this murderous villain with his deeds and set the wheels of justice in motion. Once they hear me speak, and see my papers, his head’s upon the block, believe me.”
I looked into his eyes and said nothing. This situation was too complex to offer answers. I could not do as he said, not until Rebecca was safely out of the clutches of both Delapole and the city. He saw my hesitation and seemed, for the first time, afraid.
“Listen to me, son. I know this man. I have seen his handiwork. Tackle him alone, and he’ll skin you alive on the spot.”
“Yes, sir” was all I said, then leapt into the saddle and spurred Ferrero’s lean piebald mare down the street.
As I rode I laid my plans as best I could. It was out of the question that I should go to the watch and alert them to Delapole’s past before Rebecca and Jacopo were clear of the city. Until Marchese arrived with evidence, they would more likely believe a supposedly moneyed English aristocrat than two Jews and an orphaned apprentice who had all but deserted his master. With his cunning, Delapole could have turned the tables on us instantly, revealed the nature of our all-too-real crimes, then fled with whatever loot he had beneath his arm. My first aim must be to find Rebecca and keep her safe, then help her flee before this precarious fabrication of deceit tumbled around our heads.
At Chioggia I left the panting horse and talked my way on board one of the fishing skiffs that sail each hour from the port across the lagoon to dock at the fish market on the Grand Canal and unload their catch. On their way they could drop me on Cannaregio’s southern limit, near San Marcuola, and from there I could be in the Ghetto Nuovo within minutes. With these instructions issued, I found a resting place in the back of the boat, fashioned a makeshift bed out of my jacket, and fell sound asleep to the lapping of the waves against the little vessel’s hull.
When I awoke some two hours later, we were wending our way down that broad, busy waterway I had come to know so well. A few yards to my right and a little further on, I could have strolled into Ca’ Scacchi and asked my uncle how he fared. Delapole’s relations with him must have reached a pretty state too. As had mine. Whatever future lay ahead, it was not as a Venetian printer’s apprentice.
The small sail that had taken us across the lagoon was now furled, so we made our way through the mass of vessels by oar, ducking and weaving. We passed the narrow channel of the Cannaregio canal. My heart stirred at the thought of Rebecca’s presence nearby. Then the boat hove into the jetty by the church and the captain bade me farewell with a friendly curse and a thump on the back.
I leapt the short distance to the landing and found myself on solid ground once more, as solid as it gets in Venice. Then I strode through the tangle of back alleys until I came to the bridge where I had first entered the world of the Jews. The guard yawned and waved me past. Once out of sight and across the campo, I took the steps to Rebecca two at a time. To my amazement, the door to their home was half-open. I pushed it back and saw Jacopo as I had never witnessed him before. He was slumped at the table, a flask of wine in front of him, eyes glassy, quite drunk.
“Well!” he cried. “What do we have here?”
My heart froze. He was clearly quite alone. I walked into the room and closed the door behind me.
“Jacopo. Where is Rebecca? It is vital that I see her.”
A bitter laugh was my only answer. Then he picked up a spare cup on the table and poured some wine into it. “Vital, eh? Not so quickly, lad. We’ve time to make a toast, eh?”
I brushed aside his hand. Jacopo’s eyes were
full of hatred. I could feel my well-made plans begin to crash to the floor.
“Where is she? Please?”
“Please? Oh, come on, Lorenzo. A toast. Rebecca and I have found good fortune at last. For, within a matter of days, we’ll be on the road once more, like little lapdogs, following that English friend of yours. She writes the notes, he puts his name upon them, and I just follow in their wake. So generous of him to talk that out of her, don’t you think? Although he had a little weight behind his elbow.”
He spoke in riddles. “I don’t understand,” I said. “You plan to leave so soon?”
“We are Mr. Delapole’s new household, don’t you know? To supply whatever he needs, and I fancy that’s more than fame and fortune. He’s got a roving eye, that one.”
I took him by the shoulders. “He is not the man he seems, Lorenzo. We cannot let him near her.”
“Oh! Now Delapole is not the man he seems. I thought that was your uncle. With whom, I have to say, I negotiated a fine agreement before your man got in the way. Old Leo would have done us proud: to publish and stay quiet, until she found herself able to make her authorship known. A penny-pinching chap, perhaps, but an honest one, Lorenzo. You judge him wrong. And in his place . . .”
I thought for a moment that he might strike me. Yet Jacopo was above that, even in his present condition. Instead he grasped me roughly by the collar and pulled my face in to his. I could smell the wine stink on his breath.
“In his place we now have the Englishman,” he said. “Who knows everything about us and will reveal it all unless we do his bidding. Oh . . . damnation!”
He launched the pewter pot against the wall and cursed me vilely. “What gave you the right?” he demanded. “To barter with our lives this way?”
“I thought Leo might take her from me,” I answered, not entirely honestly, and needed immediately to correct myself. “I believed he might have thrust himself upon her in return for his patronage.”