by S. D. Sykes
“I shall not! I’ve been nursing poor John through his sickness. And now I shall be needed at the side of his wife. I cannot possibly leave the care of that poor young girl to these Venetians. They will make her ill with all those shells they are forever boiling up.”
“You’re not wanted here, Mother,” I said.
“Nonsense.”
“Very well. I didn’t want to tell you this, but John Bearpark does not hold you in high regard.”
“More nonsense.” She dropped her chin and peered suspiciously into my eyes, as if trying to stare me into admitting that this was a lie.
“He called you an old sow,” I said.
She let out a great blustery laugh. “A sow? John would never say such a thing about me. You’re making this up, Oswald.”
“He told me so himself.” I paused. “What’s more, he also told me that he doesn’t like your soup. He called it poisonous.” I paused again for a moment, allowing the insult to sink in. “So, you see. The man is not your friend.”
“Poisonous?” she said with a frown. “Are you sure, he used that word?”
“He said it to my face.”
Mother opened her mouth and then shut it immediately. “Well. What an ungrateful ape.” She then clasped Hector to her cheek. “Mind you, we never liked him, did we, Hector?” The dog gave a low growl, though this probably indicated that he was being squeezed too tightly, rather than being a sign of his aversion to Bearpark. “The man has spent far too long on this lagoon. I’ve heard that the seawater creeps inside the brain, you know. And now I can believe it.”
And so, once our clothes and few belongings were packed into a chest, we set out for the inn. I had managed, at short notice, to secure a room in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, near to the Rialto Bridge. As we departed through the courtyard, I felt Filomena’s eyes bearing down upon me from the seat in her window. Her refusal still stung my heart, and her warning still rang in my ears.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was not only Filomena who watched our departure from Ca’ Bearpark. My young spy was still on our trail as we left the house, his dirty head bobbing across every bridge and running along every canal-side pavement as we made our progress through the city. When we disembarked at our new lodgings, the boy appeared immediately from the crowd, before taking up his post on a nearby quay.
The Fondaco dei Tedeschi was a welcome change after the dark oppressiveness of Ca’ Bearpark. Built at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, it was a complex of warehouses and living quarters usually reserved for the German merchants of Venice. Normally we would not have been welcome in this place, but they had spare rooms after the war with Hungary, and we were able to secure a single chamber that looked out onto the Canal Grande. The air was sweeter here and not trapped between the tall buildings of the side canal where Ca’ Bearpark was located. Here, the water moved with energy and pace, along a course that was wide enough for the wind to lick at its surface and cause small waves and eddies—not stagnant with the effluent, kitchen waste and scum that characterized the waters of the smaller canals.
Mother complained about my choice of inn, of course—I would not have expected any less—but this place was clean, the food was adequate, and open prostitution was discouraged, so what was there to moan about? Once I had offered the usual platitudes in response to each of her grumbles, I fell onto the bed and closed my eyes. This room was smaller and simpler than my bedchamber at Ca’ Bearpark, lacking the nooks and crannies where my monkey liked to hide.
I must have drifted into sleep, for I dreamed that I was lying on the forest floor, deep within the Weald of Kent. As I looked up into the canopy, sunlight caught the leaves of a sweet chestnut tree, giving each saw-edged leaf the appearance of a delicate pane of stained glass. I was happier than I had felt for many months, finding a spot among the trees where the sun could warm my face, but then I became aware that somebody was nearby, watching me from the undergrowth. I looked up to see him in the glade ahead—the black cloth of his Benedictine habit outlined against the green of the forest. It was a face from my past. My old tutor from the monastery—Brother Peter. A man I had once loved. Very much. At first I turned away from him and tried to pretend that I couldn’t hear his plaintive calls, but his voice was kind and soothing, as it had been in our early days together, so I could not ignore him. He knew what I had done, and he understood. He would not judge me.
We walked together through the forest, and as we stepped through the heather and bracken he encouraged me to drop each of the golden coins I had stolen from Burano into the grass, my conscience lifting with each disposal. Brother Peter smiled at me, but when I looked away from his face, I found that we were no longer in the forests above my estate. Instead, he had led me onto a lonely island in the middle of the Venetian lagoon. It was the Lazaretto with its bleak, marshy terrain, wind-blown banks of sand and lonely, crumbling church. I wanted to run, to get away from this place, for I knew what waited for me here among the lepers, wanting me to take its small skeletal hand and look into its face, but Brother Peter held me back. He wanted me to find the monkey. He wanted me to look at it, but I could not. I would not.
So I broke away from his grasp. I ran into the shallow sea, wading into the water and feeling its cold fingers at my skin. And now, though I tried to run, the mud held onto my feet, and soon Brother Peter caught up with me. He was no longer the reassuring, kind monk that I had known at the monastery. Now he was the angry, venal man of his later years, too ready to coerce and control me. He grasped my neck and held me under the surface of the sea, and in this water I saw a new world. The fish that swam here were misshapen creatures, their backbones crooked, their eyes pitted, and their scales dull and flaking. I tried to close my eyes and pull away, but I could not escape. Though I thrashed my arms and tried to kick, Brother Peter held me there, as the fish bit at my face, until they had sucked the skin from my bones.
I woke with a jolt, feeling all the old melancholy return. The monkey might not be in this room, but I had not escaped it. Filomena was right. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep, when I heard a short sob from the bed next to my own.
I sat up and reached for Mother’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?” She stiffened at my touch, so I removed my hand. “Why are you crying?”
“Don’t concern yourself on my behalf,” she said.
“Have I done something wrong?” I asked. I will admit to being mystified by women’s moods. Too often I have caused offense without the slightest intention or even knowledge of the event. My mistake has come to my attention when only I have been informed of it later.
Mother rolled over to look at me, her face tear-stained. “It’s not you, dear Oswald,” she said, “it’s me.” She emitted a long groan. “I’ve been such a fool.”
“Why? What have you done?” I said.
She opened her hand to reveal a small square of wrinkled parchment. “Oh Oswald,” she said, “I’m so ashamed.”
I tried to take the parchment from her, but she snatched it back and screwed it up in her fist. She then launched the ball at the fire, taking perfect aim. The parchment caught alight in the embers.
“What was it?” I asked.
She waited until the fire had died back, and then she rubbed her eyes clear of their tears. “It was a love letter. From John Bearpark.”
“What?” I said, unable to mask my shock, even disgust, at this revelation.
She feigned a laugh. “Oh don’t worry. It was written nearly thirty years ago.” She began to shudder as the tears returned. “When I wasn’t such an old sow and my cooking was not poisonous.”
I now understood the reason for her tears—she had been wounded by Bearpark’s cruel words. Words that I should have kept to myself. I put my hand upon her shoulder again, and this time she did not stiffen.
“Bearpark didn’t mean those words,” I said. “He was angry with me, and he’s still very upset by the death of his grandson.” I was apologizing for a foolish and cruel old
man, and it did not feel comfortable. However, my words seemed to console her a little.
She sat up and leaned back against the wooden headboard of her bed. In the distance we could hear the banging and shouting of the kitchen servants as they put away their pans and kettles for the night. In the room next door, a German couple were arguing in the low, suppressed fashion of two people who really wanted to scream loudly at one another.
I got out of bed and poured Mother a bowl of wine. “So, Bearpark was once your admirer?” I said.
She smiled at the memory. “Oh yes Oswald. But, he was also more than that. He was my lover.” She began to cry again. “Father of poor little Katherine.”
“You had a child with him?” I said, nearly dropping the bowl to the floor.
“Yes. Every summer I would travel with your father to Southampton. It was my favorite trip of the year.” She gave a long sigh. “Even though your father didn’t want me to go.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said.
She waved this comment away. “He should have paid more attention to me then, Oswald. Rather than spending all those hours in the taverns with the Venetian merchants.” She laughed at a distant memory. “He always bought too much mace.”
I interrupted. “How did you end up having a child with John Bearpark?”
“Because he was so gallant and handsome in those days, Oswald. Not like the crusted old prune you see now. We met each summer, for a number of years, until little Katherine was born. She was such a beautiful child. But taken from me by the pox. Probably my favorite child, as it happens.” She looked up mischievously to see if this comment had had its desired effect, but, when I didn’t respond, she returned to her gloomy tone. “Poor little Katherine.” She sighed. “After she was born, I stopped going to Southampton.”
“Why?”
She held out her hands for the bowl of wine. “Your father guessed, I suppose. He forbade me from making the trip anyway, and wouldn’t give me a reason. John wrote me one last letter.” She puffed her lips. “And that was the last that I heard of him.”
I walked to the window and opened the shutter, needing some fresh air after hearing this revelation. How could my mother have ever loved that repulsive man? How could she have dragged me all the way to Venice, on the pretense of a pilgrimage, when the real reason was her desire to rekindle an ancient love affair? And yet this was my mother. The most capricious, frustrating, and headstrong of women. It was why I both loved and sometimes loathed her. I went to close the shutters, but, as I did so, I chanced to look down toward the decrepit wooden jetty that clung to the foundations of the Rialto Bridge like a cluster of limpets. There I saw the small boy who had been following me, sleeping like a she-cat among the crab cages.
“So, you hoped to rekindle your romance with Bearpark, did you?” I said as I turned back to the room. “That’s why you insisted we come to Venice?”
Mother wiped a tear from her eye. “Yes, Oswald. And don’t look at me in that way.” Her voice was no longer softened by tears. “Just because a woman is sixty-eight, it does not mean she is dead from the waist downward you know! She still has desires.” Then the tears flowed again.
In that moment my anger turned to sympathy. I returned to Mother’s side and let her weep onto my shoulder until her tears had lost their bite, and she could only lie in bed and close her eyes.
I woke the next morning with renewed purpose. It was now Thursday, and if we were to leave Venice quickly, then I needed to visit the Molo and find us a berth to Marseilles. I did not want anybody, especially Vittore or Signor Ballio from the doge’s palace, to know our plans, so it was important that my little spy didn’t follow me to the harbor. I pulled on my boots and my dullest clothes and then looked from the window, to see if I could still spot the young boy asleep beneath the bridge. He was absent from his post when I looked at the rotting jetty, however, so I knew that now was the right time to leave.
I was looking for a merchant galley once I reached the Molo—a ship with two masts and a castle at the bow and stern—for this was the style and size of ship that would be sailing to the west of Europe. Farther along the quayside, there was a great deal of activity around the five Jaffa galleys, which were now preparing for their next departure for the Holy Land. As I had crossed the Piazza San Marco on my way here, I had seen their captains already waving their white banners bearing red crosses, to attract custom. Each man shouting the merits of his ship as opposed to the others, and offering his galley for inspection to any pilgrim who cared to look.
As I wandered through the crowds of the Molo, I made some tentative inquiries about the destination of various merchant galleys, until a man carrying a barrel of salted beef tongues pointed me in the direction of a smaller ship at the end of the row of masts. When I stood alongside this galley and called up to the deck to speak with the captain, a small, stout man appeared. As he looked down at me, I recognized him immediately. He was the droopy-eyed fellow that, months ago, I had pulled from the canal with Enrico’s help.
A smile of remembrance crossed his face. “Hello again. Englishman.” He looked over my shoulder. “I hope you don’t have that ruffian with you? The one who looks like a pig.”
“No, I’m alone,” I said.
“Come on board then.” I climbed a thin ladder to the deck of the ship and then the man led me into his quarters, which turned out to be little more than a low-roofed cubbyhole with a door. We sat together on a bench, and he offered me a mug of Paduan wine and a dried fig.
“So. What did you want to ask me?” he said.
“I need to leave Venice,” I said. “As soon as possible.”
He looked at me strangely and stopped chewing. “Oh yes?”
“It’s my mother,” I said quickly. “This city is harmful to her health.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Marseilles.”
He wiped his lips clear of the wine. “Aigues-Mortes is my next destination.”
Aigues-Mortes is a civilized-enough port, and under different circumstances it might have been acceptable, but I didn’t know anybody there—certainly not anybody who would lend me money. “Will you stop at Marseilles?” I asked.
The captain picked a piece of fig from his teeth and then laughed. “Marseilles? That quiet little town. Not so kind to your mother’s health either, I hear.”
I ignored his sarcasm. “Look. Will you stop there? Yes or no?”
“I can do,” he said, after a frustrating pause. “For a fee.”
“And when do you sail?”
“There’s a high tide tomorrow night, so we’ll sail with the retreating tide at dawn on Saturday.”
My debt was due on Saturday morning, so this departure would get us out of Venice with only hours to spare—but this should be sufficient. It might take Vittore a few hours to realize we had left on a ship. “How much for a berth?”
He smiled and raised his bowl of wine to indicate that we were approaching the heart of the deal. “Since you are my friend, Englishman, I can offer you a special price. Six ducats for you, and six for your mother.” He opened his hands and raised his palms, as if he were granting me a great gift of charity. “It would be less of course, if we didn’t have to stop at Marseilles.”
“That’s far too much,” I said, ignoring his supposed warm-heartedness. “This is a merchant ship, not a pilgrim galley. And Marseilles is hardly out of your way, as I expect you will call in there anyway. If only to collect water.”
He cocked his head slightly. “Maybe. But don’t forget that I have to accommodate two extra persons on board. And your mother will want some privacy. Think of the room that a woman takes up. Think of the disruption they cause on a ship.”
“Two ducats each.”
Now he threw up his hands in disgust. Bartering was such a tiresome activity. “No, no. Four ducats each,” he said.
“I can pay no more than two,” I said. “And I remind you of the service that I performed in pulling you from th
e canal that night.”
He sighed, and then smiled at me, before we eventually agreed on five ducats for the both of us, as long as I purchased a bed and a rope for Mother, a keg that we could fill with water at each port, and a food chest packed with twice-baked biscuits, ham, hard cheese, and almonds. The captain would supply us with some of his Paduan wine while we sailed, but what we ate was our concern. The crew would call us assumed names, and our embarkation onto the ship would be organized under the cover of night.
As I went to leave, he put his hand on my shoulder. “So, are you going to tell me the real reason for leaving Venice? I don’t believe your story about your mother.” He whispered into my ear. “And I don’t like lies.”
I regarded him for a moment, wondering if it was safe to tell him the truth, and then I thought back to our first meeting at the tavern. “I have made an enemy of a man named Vittore Grimani.” For a moment the captain seemed confused. “The man who threw you into the canal. The one who looks like a pig.”
“Ah, him.” He slapped my back. “Then welcome on board.”
I left the ship feeling satisfied with this arrangement. Pulling my hood over my head, I walked back along the Riva degli Schiavoni making plans for our departure. The ship sailed the day after next, so I would not have long to organize my affairs. In addition, it was important that I did nothing to draw attention to our departure, so I decided to ask Mother to purchase the provisions for the journey, as she was not the one being followed about by a spy.
I was making such plans, when I passed two people that I had not ever expected to see again, particularly not outside in the streets of Venice. It was Bernard and Margery, huddled together with the captain of a cargo boat—a wide-bowed vessel with a single mast and a square red sail. The type of boat that usually carried goods across the lagoon into the River Po.
I hadn’t wanted to speak to Bernard, but our eyes met and it was too late for either of us to pretend that this hadn’t happened. The captain of this cargo ship withdrew as soon as I approached, as if he was ashamed to be seen with the pair.