The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  William knew himself lost. This woman does not look to judge, the judgment’s made. She wants only to confirm the sentence. William stared down at Oldcastle. He wished Oldcastle were awake to hear his confessed sorrow for their state and shrive him.

  Still looking at William, the Duchess of Bracciano barked an order at Borachio: ‘Tell him what your master has told me. Of the plots, of how conveniently these two came into his company. Of the “robbery” that explained their diminished embassy. Ambassador of England? Hah! The man can scarcely speak Latin.’

  She poked at Oldcastle with her foot, staggering a little to do so.

  ‘As for you,’ she turned on William, ‘even if my men had not been witness to the murder of Iseppo da Nicosia, you are too cunning to be this fat fool’s bastard if you even looked like him. And as for your dress, remarkable assemblage. More player than person of note. The Count knew you, master assassin. Well? Tell him.’

  This last was to Borachio. The little man had advanced into the room. His companions had moved too. They stood beside the beautiful servants of the Duchess, just as Borachio now stood beside the grey-haired captain of her guard. That man, Antonio, held William in a grip made hard by long hours at practice of the sword. He was staring at Borachio’s scalp and the rivulets of sweat that ran down to his chin.

  ‘Truly, Your Grace,’ Borachio said, ‘you are betrayed.’

  With these words he drew a dagger, long and thin. A dagger that he should never have carried into the Duchess’s presence were it not for the hurly-burly haste of the morning’s madness. A haste that let him in unchecked; he who should least be trusted. Borachio turned. Antonio was pushing William from him even as Borachio’s blade came out. Borachio plunged it into Antonio’s chest. As he did so, his two companions fell on the servants of the house. Swift ends achieved with swift cuts.

  William stumbled from Antonio’s grip to fall across the prostrate figure of Oldcastle. He twisted round and up. Above him he saw the Duchess’s eyes grow great and she opened her mouth to scream but no sound emerged.

  A loud scraping noise slit the silence. Borachio’s blade ran across a breastplate hidden beneath Antonio’s finery to plunge into his arm instead of his chest. The captain howled, his own half-drawn dagger dropping to the ground. That same grip that had held William now grasped at Borachio and drew him in. To a sound like splintering logs, Antonio drove his forehead into Borachio’s nose even as Borachio plunged his dagger again at the captain. This time it struck Antonio below his armour. The wound opened up his thigh with a great gout of blood. Still Antonio held Borachio. Though Borachio twisted in his grip he could not escape the captain’s hand. He gripped Borachio’s wrist, turned the blade and brought it up towards his neck. Borachio’s companions reached him. Their own stilettos struck. Borachio’s blade, whose deadly point had reached so high as his throat, at last lost will and faded with the captain’s life.

  The three men turned. William stumbled to his feet, seizing the captain’s fallen dagger. The Duchess, seemingly released from whatever spell Borachio’s betrayal had cast on her, let loose a high and penetrating scream.

  ‘Kill them both. Quickly.’ Borachio’s hoarse command was uttered from a face masked in blood, a throat from which blood dropped as a curtain.

  William hauled the Duchess back and out of the reach of a slashing blade. She, unbalanced from the precarious perch of her shoes, fell into his arms.

  He cursed his own stupidity. The Duchess was no shield. Why had he burdened himself with the defence of a woman who had sought his death a moment before? The door burst open. Armed servants of the house flooded in. Borachio brooked no delay.

  ‘The Englishman has her, kill him,’ he screeched at the servants. ‘Treachery. Murder. Murder.’

  Seeing William, dagger held in one hand and the Duchess held in the other, the servants turned toward him. Borachio and his men, ignored, slipped back through the door beyond. William was left with the struggling figure of the Duchess and much explanation to make.

  So may the outward shows be least themselves

  Isabella had woken past noon. Her maid, Maria, had roused her and brought the terrible news of the murder of Iseppo da Nicosia, a man full of strange loyalties and confidences but ever her dear friend.

  ‘Oh, lady, so wretched,’ cried Maria, ‘such a bloody thing to be done to such a good, kind man.’

  Isabella sat up in her bed speechless with sadness. Her thoughts were full of dread.

  Her maid had brought with her a tray that had on it a small bowl of rice with almond milk, watered wine and a letter. She tore open the letter. When she had read it she scrambled from her bed and began to dress.

  ‘Who brought this, Maria?’

  ‘I do not know, lady.’ The maid twisted her hands together. ‘A young boy delivered it just a few moments ago.’

  ‘Quickly, quickly, Maria. My cloak,’ Isabella said.

  She pulled her hair up and thrust a comb into it.

  ‘Madonna, lady, you are frightening me.’ The maid’s distress made her fingers fumble at the ties of the cloak.

  ‘Good,’ said Isabella.

  Isabella pushed her hands away and tied it herself. She took Maria by the shoulders. ‘Good that you are frightened,’ she said. ‘When I am gone, lock the doors. Admit no one. Do you understand?’

  The older woman opened her mouth but said nothing. Isabella shook the woman’s shoulders.

  ‘Do you understand, Maria?’

  ‘Yes, lady, yes.’

  Isabella left her house to the scraping of bolts. Behind the door the muffled sounds of her maid calling on the Mother of God to protect the house and its mistress.

  She was already too late. The letter told her so. She knew the hand that wrote it: Prospero’s.

  I warned you. For what did you oppose me? For nothing.

  Go to Rialto.

  Stand on the Campo Erberia.

  See and understand how little you matter. How little you understand of how far my hand reaches.

  Then fly if you wish. It cannot save you. It will only grant you a little more time.

  She found herself running again through Venice’s streets. The Campo Erberia stood across from the Ca’ Bracciano, as she knew. She did not think to stop there. She ran in hope that she might not be too late. She stumbled to a halt. A crowd had gathered ahead of her, blocking her path. She looked about for another route. She saw a bridge and ran to it. She thought to pass around the crowd. As she reached the top of the bridge’s span she turned her head. Again she stumbled to a halt, for now she saw what drew the crowd.

  The Canal Grande was clogged with boats outside the Ca’ Bracciano. On the balcony stood William. He held a blade to Vittoria Accoramboni’s throat as she struggled in his arms. Isabella gripped the stone rail of the bridge. She saw and willed her eyes false. She saw the servants of the house gathering about William. She saw the dead figure of the English Ambassador tossed from the balcony to break on a barge below. She saw William’s arm draw back across Vittoria’s throat. She saw the Duchess fall, suddenly still, from his arms. She saw William vault over the balcony. Isabella fell to her knees and hid her head behind the wall of the bridge. She could see no more.

  True! Pow wow

  There was no explanation would penetrate the brain of the howling, flapping figure in William’s arms. The Duchess strained against him as a falcon seeking to escape its gyves. It was all he could do to hold her still. He looked about him. He dragged Vittoria, stumbling, to the balcony. Escape lay only a leap away but he was held there by the sight of Oldcastle more surely than by any chain about his leg. He peered out over the edge. The screams and cries had drawn a crowd of boats. Among them lay salvation.

  ‘You,’ William cried. He pointed with the blade at one of the servants advancing on him, a young man with thick blond hair and the strong jaw of a statue of Apollo. ‘Pick up the old man and bring him here. Do it and the woman lives.’

  All the men held. William pressed th
e point to Vittoria’s throat, red blood trickled across her white skin. Apollo looked to his left. Their leader, Jove to the younger man’s Apollo, nodded to him. Apollo went to Oldcastle and grasped him under the arms. He staggered beneath Oldcastle’s weight and his wariness of William’s blade.

  ‘Throw him over the side,’ William ordered.

  The young man looked at him, uncomprehending. The old man was senseless. He would drown if thrown in the canal.

  ‘Do it,’ the servants’ leader barked, impatient of his mistress’s safety.

  With a shrug Apollo heaved Oldcastle up to the rail and pushed him over. No splash of water followed, instead the sound of cloth rending, followed by a thump. William drew his arms from around Vittoria’s throat, pushed the Duchess away and leaped.

  The servants stood astonished, then ran to their mistress, who had fallen without a cry to the floor of the balcony. Seeing her unharmed but faint with fear, their leader ran to the balcony’s edge. Beyond it, in the swirl of boats on the canal, now some yards distant, he saw a barge. It was laden high with bales on which an unconscious figure was sprawled. At its rear, demanding obedience at knife’s point, was William, who did not risk a glance at what might follow him.

  Every gash was an enemy’s grave

  Isabella was not sure how she came to be back outside her house. Those moments since she’d witnessed all her effort come to naught, herself betrayed, had been as moments from a dream. They passed in scattered instants.

  Through it all she was distracted by the question of what followed. What was she to do now? Now that Prospero was triumphant. Now that he had shown how deeply he could deceive her. Deceive her even in the person of the boy Fallow. The whole business with Francesco Tiepolo false? No, but of course, it was Prospero that had told William of the House of Dandolo. All to make her trust him. She shuddered at the memory of what she had revealed of herself to William. How he and Prospero must have laughed at her.

  That thought stopped her. Hysterical with anger she turned and beat against the wall. The sharp pain in her hands that came pulled her back to herself. Isabella looked down at her bleeding palms, scraped and chafed against the rough bricks of the alley. Soberly she strode into her house.

  To catch woodcocks!

  The door burst open. William hauled Oldcastle in and through to the kitchen of the House of the White Lion. Salarino stared at the bloody figure and then at William, who stood, soaked in sweat, his fine clothes torn. Salarino’s eyes fixed on the dagger, bare in the young man’s hand. William advanced on him. Salarino’s hands came out. He grasped at William’s outstretched arm but William had the strength that comes from hot-forged fury. He drove Salarino back against the doors of a cupboard. Salarino slammed into it and the plates within shook and rattled in time with his teeth. The dagger hovered before the little man’s eye.

  ‘I know,’ William’s voice was the hiss of fat falling from the spit to the fire. ‘I know you betrayed us to the Duchess of Bracciano.’

  ‘I am sorry. I am sorry,’ Salarino said.

  He stood very still, not daring to deny the maddened William. Fixed by the sight of the dagger’s point as surely as if it pinned him.

  ‘You will be,’ William said. ‘What did she pay you?’

  Salarino began to cry. ‘Thirty ducats. For information, for information only. Yes, yes. I did not know, I beg you, I did not know that harm would come to him or you.’

  ‘A traitor’s price,’ William said. ‘I will pay you double.’

  Salarino was too terrified to understand what William was saying and continued to babble at him. A little maid was cowering in the corner of the kitchen, her head hidden in her hands. William slapped him.

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ he said. ‘I will pay you double.’

  ‘What, my lord?’ Salarino shook his head. His ears rang.

  ‘Men are coming. They are looking for me and for Sir Henry,’ said William. He pointed the dagger at Salarino’s eye and drew his gaze with it. ‘You will hide Sir Henry and tend his wounds.’

  Salarino looked at Oldcastle, who had pulled himself from the floor where William had put him to sit slumped against a wall, his head bowed. William reached up and turned Salarino’s chin until his eyes were once again on William and the dagger.

  ‘He stays hidden and well,’ William said. ‘You get sixty ducats. He is found or harmed, I will kill you.’

  Salarino said nothing, simply stared. William spoke as slowly as his nerves would allow.

  ‘Do you understand me?’

  Salarino gave the smallest of nods.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  Salarino nodded again.

  ‘Quickly now. They are coming.’ William turned and ran to the door. At the threshold he turned back to review the kitchen scene.

  He pointed the dagger at Salarino, and in the tone of dungeons and the school of night he spoke one last time.

  ‘Life, long life and wealth, Salarino. Or death and no swift death either. Those are your choices. Quickly, quickly.’

  William stumbled out into the alley behind the House of the White Lion. He saw Borachio’s men at the moment they saw him. He ran to draw them after him and away from Oldcastle. As he ran, he cursed the world that left him with so rich a choice as to gamble his friend in the hands of his betrayer.

  The world is still deceived with ornament

  Maria did not know what she might do or say to calm Isabella Lisarro. Her mistress was distraught. She had not stood still nor sat in all the hours since her return home. Isabella railed to the uncaring air. Maria longed to send for someone who might speak to her, Tintoretto or Marco Venier perhaps, yet she dared not leave her.

  ‘I have been such a fool.’ Isabella’s face was smeared with the tracks of her tears. ‘Now all is lost.’ She beat her fist into her palm. ‘Take my defiance then. It’s all I have left.’

  Isabella sank to a seat in the salon. She put her head in her hands.

  ‘Him, of all people,’ she said. ‘Is my judgment so put off?’

  She spoke to Maria as if the woman would understand about whom she spoke.

  ‘I was so easily deceived in him,’ Isabella said. ‘I thought I tested him but he just played me. Played. How could I miss his murdering nature?’

  She looked up at Maria. ‘Am I run mad?’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, let me not be mad.’

  Maria was now crying to match her mistress. Fat tears ran down her cheeks. That she did not understand the cause of her mistress’s state made her own fears worse.

  There was a hammering at the door. The women looked to the noise. Isabella ran from the salon to the room opposite. She peered through the half-closed shutters to the dark street below. Two figures were huddled by the door. At their feet paced a leashed dog.

  ‘Open up, Madonna,’ a rough voice called in the dialect of Venice.

  The hand hammered at the door again. A loud sound in the silence of the night. Isabella’s hand closed around the sill of the window, knuckles white. So soon, so soon Prospero sought to deal the final blow. Shocked from her self-pity, Isabella breathed deep. She wiped her face and thought.

  ‘Mistress?’ Maria whispered from behind her.

  Isabella motioned her to silence. If they hurried they might gather the boy Angelo and flee by the canal entrance. No, fool, surely Prospero would not have left that exit unguarded? Think, she urged herself, think.

  Below, a figure appeared at the end of the alley. The moonlight caught him: William. A cold flare of fear at sight of him was driven from her by the heat of anger.

  ‘Fetch me the knife from the bedroom, Maria,’ Isabella said quietly.

  ‘Mistress. I –’ Maria clutched at Isabella’s sleeve.

  Isabella shook off the hand. ‘You know the one, Maria. Go quickly,’ she said.

  The two men below turned at the arrival of William. He advanced to join them. Isabella could hear the two at her door muttering in Venetian. Fifty yards from them William stopped. Isabella saw h
im look behind.

  ‘Ho,’ he cried and beckoned to the two at her door.

  They began to walk to him. William set off at a run. The lead man ran to join him. Isabella saw the other, the one with the dog, pause. He turned back to look up at her house. She held her breath, praying that he could not see her in the darkness of night, concealed behind the shutters. For a whole minute he stood and stared. Then he turned and let the dog pull him after his companion. Isabella drew breath.

  Maria returned to the room. She clutched in her hands the stiletto that Isabella kept in her room. She put it into Isabella’s outstretched hand. When Isabella tried to take it, for a moment Maria resisted her pull. Then she let go. She looked from the blade to her mistress’s face and she was frightened.

  You see this chase is hotly followed

  William had thought to find refuge at Isabella’s house. Instead he found it besieged. Borachio commanded more men than he had anticipated. William had run and hidden and run again until at last he was certain he had slipped loose from the first two. Thinking himself free he had worked his way round to Isabella’s house. There he found two more.

  In the dark of the night it took him a moment to realise who they were. By that time he was scarce fifty yards from them. At first they did not seem to recognise him. When he finally understood that they were Borachio’s men, there for Isabella, he cried out and beckoned to them.

  Again, he ran to draw the hunt away from those he loved.

  This pursuit was not so easily lost as the first. The man behind him knew Venice as the first two, the ones he’d found outside the House of the White Lion, had not. William turned corners, crossed canals. Still his pursuer gained on him.

  He bounded up the steps of a bridge. His chest burned and his throat was raw from heavily drawn breath in the race. At the top of the bridge William saw the marble footprints cut into the floor and knew where he was, the Bridge of Fists. His pursuer threw himself forward.