Before Zenobia could speak again or take a step towards her, Anna had snatched the purse from the drunkard’s belt, loosened the drawstring and flung it like a released dove into the air. The lamplight turned the coins into a brief sparkling constellation above the benches. They clattered like hail stones off the wood, but by then Anna was flying back the way she had come, and a Red Sea of avaricious bodies was thundering across the path between them, leaving Zenobia, Pharoah like, to fruitlessly watch her exodus.
There was nothing to be done but search every boardwalk and alcove, every blade of trampled grass until she found him and in the meantime hope that she did not run into Zenobia or another of her household.
Moving back along the long canal-side she saw the lion mask ahead once more. He was holding her shoe in his hand. Despite the mask, she was quite sure it was the Genoese condotierro captain, Giustiniani.
‘Here she comes,’ she heard one of the men about him say. ‘I told you it was a ruse.’
‘Be quiet, Dalmata,’ said Giustiniani. He took a knee and theatrically presented the shoe to her. ‘Madonna, I fear the other lies at the bottom of the canal, and I am overdressed for swimming.’
Her heart was pounding from the race, her breathing was coming fast, and they could see it also to judge from where all their eyes rested. She felt the colour rising in her face as she took back the shoe.
‘Can you help me?’ she said between panted breaths. She glanced back to see if Zenobia was closing in.
‘Madonna, it is my duty,’ said Giustiniani rising from his knee. He appeared to be entirely sober, unlike his friends.
‘I was looking for your Genoese comrades. The ones with the podesta, but they are gone from the piazza.’
‘There’s no mystery,’ said Giustiniani with a boyish smile. ‘They will be watching the carnival king burn. Come, we can go along there together.’
As if the city already responded to his command there came at that moment the smell of smoke and a cheer from across the low rooftops. They had lit the pyre of the straw sultan and the carnival had reached its most bacchanalian phase.
XV.
They had been drinking hard all day long, and by the time of the chariot parade it had become clear that the podesta was sorely out of practice. Grant and Fieschi had between them half-carried Maruffo to the piazza where there were benches for him to rally upon; but the whores, smelling blood, came hopping about them like battlefield crows.
Sambucuccio hardly cared and was soon gone to a dark corner with his choice. Grant had been ready to do likewise when Boccanegra called out that the Notaras party was approaching and Grant had leapt from the strumpet’s side like a scolded cat.
Of course, it had been another party altogether, as Boccanegra knew all along, and the Genoese roared with laughter at Grant’s expense.
By the time they were done, the whore had found another customer and Grant, thinking better of it, had sat himself back down beside Maruffo.
A short time afterwards the Notaras group really had come through the piazza, and Grant had felt relief when Maruffo chose to harangue the Venetian, Barbo, instead of making any lewd remarks about the girl in the colombina mask walking beside him.
Later, once Sambucuccio had returned, someone suggested finding a good spot from which to watch the burning of the carnival king and they had moved off, oblivious to the commotion that was about to unfold along the main waterway.
From the moment Grant saw the straw sultan and the brands being made ready he had known what was about to happen. The familiar, sudden rush of bile, the patina of sweat, rising like dawn fog across his brow. The first touch of flame to the kindling had brought a scream to his ear, as real as if it had come from Fieschi beside him.
He had tried to stand his ground, as any soldier would, but it soon became too much. He had slipped away from the other onlookers and walked a little way back into the maze of sham Venice before sitting down with his back against a painted wooden palazzo wall.
He was still sat there, breathing in lungfuls of air and trying to ignore the smell of smoke when he caught sight of Anna.
She was strolling, barefoot, down the boardwalk towards him on the arm of Giustiniani, her hair dishevelled, the colour high about her skin. The captain wore a smile of satisfaction below the rim of his lion mask.
‘He’s had her in some dark corner,’ thought Grant, and his heart turned to cinders. He struggled to his feet, and as he did so, she noticed him.
Her eyes spoke to him with such power that all his fears vanished in the instant, like a nightmare meeting morning.
‘Here he is!’ said Giustiniani, but Anna was already flying to Grant like a spark to tinder. She threw her arms about his neck and before he knew it the golden lace of her mask was pressing against his brow and her soft lips were hungrily working against his.
Grant put his hands about her waist and felt the weight of her come from his neck, but her mouth had not slackened its assault.
He half-heard Giustiniani mutter something and move away. Then her lips sprang to his ear and he had a pure breath of aloeswood off her neck as she said, ‘Come with me, quickly.’
She led him without another word to a small iron gate in the wall of the hippodrome. Anna gently pushed it open and they moved through a narrow brick passageway that opened out into the grounds of the ruined imperial palace. The sight took his breath away.
The broken shells of buildings soared up all around them, huge columned structures glazed in a green mantle of moss. A bright spring moon washed its light over mosaic floors half buried under clumps of sorrel and ragweed. Defamatory vines clung to the statues of long-dead emperors and creepers hung from fractured roofs like the tendrils of a great green octopus. It was a strange, haunted place, a space where nature was slowly erasing the evidence of past human glories.
There were bodies lying about the shadows of the broken palace, in pairs mostly, but some in threes and even larger groups. ‘Dionysus,’ he heard Anna whisper as she led him deeper into the ruins.
Watchful colonies of birds eyed them with suspicion from roosts in the vaults of old banqueting halls as the sound of the masquerade slowly ebbed to a haunting, soft duet with the wind. It felt to Grant as if they had escaped all the world’s maddness to a distant, tranquil Eden.
She stopped walking and took his hands in both of her own. A heavy silence hung between them. The hazel eyes behind the mask swam like those of a deer brought to bay.
She was frightened, he realised. Whatever fire had burned away her inhibitions upon finding him was now fully dowsed by her innocence.
He pulled her gently close and felt her at once both stiff and trembling. She seemed to read his hesitation and without meeting his precarious stare began to pry apart the buttons of his doublet.
He pulled her into the shadow of a ruined colonnade, pinning her to the wall and roughly worked at the fastenings of her gown.
She lay like a fresco across the stone wall, hands splayed out in surrender, her quick, hot breaths condescending on the cold white marble.
Then, with a wrench that came dangerously close to tearing the seam apart, Grant had the gown over her shoulders and his hands were cupping about her breasts.
She sighed at his touch and closed her eyes, but Grant’s own were wide and alert and so they caught a glimpse of movement at their edge.
One of the bird colonies, disturbed, rose up into the dark heavens.
His fingers continued their caress, but drawn by the birds, his gaze turned and fell upon the figure in the archway across the abandoned courtyard.
Still as the lichen-silvered statues, the bright district of stars shimmered in reflection across the beaked mask.
With a triumphant smile, Grant turned his attention from the figure and kissed the nape of Anna’s neck. When he glanced back a moment later, Barbo had vanished, back into the ruins.
***
She had been a girl on the threshold of an unwanted marriage, wishing to experience
something more than Barbo could ever give, wishing to deny him some of what he understood she would bring to the marriage, mounting her own small rebellion against fate’s injustice. She was a girl no longer.
Through the gaps in Justinian’s great palace roof the stars winked down on where Anna lay in her varangian’s arms.
A secret smile crept over her lips. It had grown far too late to hope to slip unnoticed back into the imperial enclosure. Her father had most likely departed for home long ago and she could only hope Zenobia had been wise enough not to return there without her.
If that were the case and she could find her, Anna was sure her handmaiden would overcome her usual scruples about lying and fall in with whatever story Anna told the megas doux.
‘I wish we could stay like this forever,’ she said. ‘I wish time would just stop, now, and Clean Monday never arrive.’
‘There’s still hope,’ Grant said.
‘Hope? Hope for what?’
‘The Turks can be beaten,’ he insisted. ‘We can still save Constantinople.’
It had not been what she meant at all, but she supposed it impossible for him to understand. It was not the Turks she dreaded; it was a boat for Italy.
Still, Anna preferred not to dwell on such matters, so she pretended she had meant the war and shook her head. ‘We have already been conquered,’ she said, rolling over to rest her chin on his chest. ‘Not yet by Turks, but certainly by Latins. The emperor’s authority depends on foreign troops like you. The ships in the harbour are Venetian. Giustiniani is in command, and he will give guard of all the key points of the city – the gates, palace, watchtowers – to Latins. If he is successful and holds off the Turks, do you think he will be content to simply hand power back to Constantine? Genoa is risking him here for a reason. They hope to conquer my city from within, snatching it from beneath the sultan’s nose.’
He wanted to deny her suspicions of Giustiniani’s motives but in truth he shared them. ‘Can Genoese rule be so terrible a prospect that you’d rather prostrate before the Moslems?’
‘We have never recovered from the last Latin rulers,’ she said. ‘Why should the people suffer again so one man can have his glorious end? The Turks do not ask us to convert, nor are their taxes onerous. We are being forced into a vainglorious slaughter in the name of Constantine’s pride.’
Silent, Grant waited for her to raise the prospect of her father’s plot, but instead she laid her head back onto his chest.
He stirred for battle once more, and feeling him do so, Anna gave a playful squeal and sprang to her feet. He reached out for her, but she skipped, giggling, out of his reach, and then, as he rose to his feet, she scampered away across the mossy courtyard with a glance back that bade him to follow.
He could have run her down in no time, but the chase was all part of the game, so he let her stay ahead of him, just beyond his grasp as she fled, laughing with delight, through the ruined palace, back towards the gate they had come from.
As they neared the next courtyard he stumbled, so she was further ahead, though still in sight, when she burst from the dark collinade and came to a skidding halt as if a gorgon’s glance had turned her to stone. He rushed up behind, still thinking it part of a game and wrapped his arms around her with a laugh before his eyes took in the sight ahead.
There were three men in the square, wearing no masks but the grimmest of faces. One of them was John Dalmata, Giustiniani’s adjutant, another was the Greek, Theodoros Karystinos, and the third was Isnardo Fieschi.
Grant dropped his arms away from Anna in shock and embarrassment. Something in their manner told him this was not a chance encounter. These men had not tired of the ball and come strolling in these grounds. They had come looking for him.
Fieschi’s eyes were moist with tears, and Grant had a sudden, stomach-eating sense of dread as the veteran stepped forward.
‘There has been a killing.’
***
The light of the sentry’s torch gave an eerie illumination to the body. They had covered it with a sheet to shield the sight from curious eyes, but even before it was pulled back Grant knew no mistake had been made. He recognised the boots.
‘He left the carnival alone, not so long ago,’ Fieschi said.
Grant punched his fist into his other palm. ‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ he said and heard his words ring back off the alleyway walls.
‘Why didn’t you!’ Fieschi snapped in echo. ‘I never believed him when he said there was a price on his head.’
Grant knelt close to the body and looked down on the sallow face of Maruffo where it lay on the cobbles. Gone now the spark that had forever twinkled in his eyes, replaced by the hollow gaze of a landed fish. He had been a surrogate father to Grant for almost as long as he could remember, and now he was gone. Grant had failed to protect him, too preoccupied with his own lust to consider anything else.
Rising to his feet, he turned to Karystinos. ‘There was a price on his head in Venice,’ Grant said. ‘This is the work of one of them.’
The paramonoi captain nodded. ‘We know. There was a witness.’
‘A witness? Fegs! Where is he? What did he see?’
‘She,’ corrected Karystinos. ‘An old woman from the house across the street. She says the killer stabbed him twice in the belly, then ran that way.’ He pointed away from the hippodrome. ‘The podesta staggered here and collapsed.’
‘And the killer, what did he look like?’ Grant said, a hand to each of the archer’s shoulders. He was desperate for a chance at vengeance.
‘It was dark, and he was masked. Like almost everyone in there.’ Karystinos jerked a thumb back towards the carnival. ‘The mask was distinctive though. She said she thought it was a bird at first because of the long beak.’
‘Barbo!’ Grant spat the name out. At the same time, he was thinking, ‘This is my handiwork. This is his revenge for the sight he came across in the ruined palace.’
A clatter of arms behind them announced Giustiniani and his Genoese entourage. ‘The Venetians have declared war,’ Grant said. ‘We should go back in there and massacre them all!’
‘No.’ Giustiniani’s command was firm. ‘This ends now. We cannot defend a wall if we are worrying about the sword at our backs. Think how the world would look upon Genoa if we slew half the defenders here and did the sultan’s work for him?’
‘This was the work of Venice!’ Grant snarled. ‘By the hand of Paolo Barbo, but the bounty placed on our podesta belongs to the Venetian doge.’
‘There will be justice, I promise you,’ Giustiniani said. ‘We will find this Barbo. I shall force their bailo to hand him over.’
XVI.
They buried Maruffo in Pera, in a sober gathering of which he would not have approved. The wake was held in the podesta’s palazzo, which, with Maruffo gone, now belonged to his deputy, Angelo Lomellino, along with the heavy task of navigating the future of the colony.
Buried with this new workload, Lomellino was sadly absent from the courtyard game of tarocchi cards that the others were playing that Wednesday afternoon to determine how Maruffo’s possessions might be distributed among them.
‘You’ve got the begato,’ said Sambucuccio across the table from Grant. ‘I know you do, you devil. I can see it in your eyes.’
‘I’m looking at no better than a lousy matto,’ Grant said, fingering his cards.
‘You’re lying,’ said Sambucuccio as he put down a moderate trick of king, knight and jack. Things were getting serious now that the better items were up for grabs. Maruffo had a full suit of plate armour and the winner of this hand would become its new owner.
‘He is lying,’ Boccanegra agreed. ‘Because I have the matto.’ He put down two Moors and the matto card.
Sambucuccio, who was Fieschi’s partner for the round, swore and banged his hand on the table.
Fieschi shook his head and put his own meager trick down. ‘Let’s have it.’
Grant spread his cards out with a
widening grin. Angel, moon, begato and the six of cups. The armour was his.
‘Bastard!’ Sambucuccio laughed again. ‘I knew it.’
‘Your luck is certainly in these days,’ said Boccanegra. ‘It’s a good job Isnardo saw the two of you or else I’d never have believed it.’
‘Snatched her right out from under the captain’s nose as well,’ said Fieschi. ‘Giustiniani’s face must have made for a pretty painting!’
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Grant with the broadest of grins. ‘My view was obscured.’
‘Well, his face was sour enough when I went looking for you and asked him if he’d seen you,’ said Fieschi.
Grant stood up and began gathering up the garniture of armour to stack in his pile while Boccanegra shuffled the cards for the next hand. ‘Next item,’ he said with a nod to the dwindling stack of Maruffo’s possessions. ‘An arming sword; underemployed. Some rust about the cross guard.’
‘How will you go back to tavern whores after a duke’s daughter?’ said Fieschi as the cards were dealt once more.
‘I reckon I may not have to,’ said Grant.
‘Ha! There’s riding your luck and there’s pushing it,’ said Sambucuccio.
‘Why not?’ said Boccanegra, who had always shown most faith in him. ‘It’s not as if the girl is getting married to Barbo any more.’
The mention of Maruffo’s killer sent them into a moment of awkward silence. As yet, no trace had been found of Barbo. The Venetian bailo had sworn that the Serene Republic had played no hand in the murder and confessed there to be some suspicion surrounding Barbo’s involvement in the death of one of their own. A banker had been slain, weeks before, amid the chaos of the riot. The bailo had wanted to question Barbo on the matter but admitted that a Venetian boat had illegally left port on the morning after the masquerade.
‘Well,’ Sambucuccio said as he arranged the tarocchi cards in his hand, ‘if he is planning on paying court at the Rose Palace, I hope he has something more to bring her than that irritating smile.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Grant.
Porphyry and Ash Page 15