The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  William was knocked to the ground. He twisted to his back as he fell, the wind driven from him. His pursuer fell across his legs. The man scrabbled forward, trying to clamber up William’s body and reach his throat. William wrapped his legs around his attacker’s waist. He felt hot breath on him. He tried to hook the man in the head with his fist. His arm tangled in the folds of his cloak. The man blocked the feeble strike with his elbow, then, when William’s blow glanced uselessly against his arm, the man cracked his elbow down across William’s cheek. William grunted with pain and fear.

  The man scraped his forearm down William’s face until it fell across his throat. He pressed. William struggled to draw breath. He arched his hips to lift the man up and wrenched the man’s shoulder to one side. The man tumbled forward, putting his hands out to steady himself. William twisted his body into the gap made by his own arching hips and pushed his way free from his attacker.

  The two men scrabbled to their feet. Prospero’s man drew a knife and stabbed at William’s gut. William twisted. He let the knife thrust ride along his forearm and divert its course. As he did so, he reached up with his other hand and stuck his fingers in the man’s eye. His pursuer howled, reeled back. William moved with him. He kept his forearm riding on the other man’s knife hand. In the small part of his mind that was not consumed with dread, he heard Hemminges’ voice from weeks ago and a world away saying ‘On you is not in you, Will’. With his other hand William reached down, grabbed the man’s wrist and bent it so the blade turned inward. Then he let the man’s own desperate attempt to pull his hand back and free from William’s grip begin the drive. A drive that William, putting all his weight behind his forearm and the hand that bent the knife, finished.

  The man gasped as his own blade went into his gut. William drove his head into the man’s nose, then let go the hand, the blade now stuck deep in the man’s stomach. The man staggered back, blinded by the blow. William dropped his shoulder and charged. The man was knocked from the side of the bridge into the canal. He did not surface.

  Across the square the other man appeared with the dog. William turned to run again.

  This would not be believed in Venice

  The approach of dawn brought with it people. Isabella scanned the crowd, the brisk marching matrons early to market, the yawning gondoliers, a senator and his servants heading to the Procuratie Vecchie.

  Isabella stood in the shadow of the portico. The hood of her cloak was pulled low. She watched the Canal Grande. Across the water and to her left was the House of the White Lion. From where she stood she could see the Ca’ Bracciano just beyond the bend in the canal. She had stood there an hour or more.

  As soon as William and his two men had left her house that night, she and Maria had gathered some things and slipped away. Maria she sent to the safety of Marco Venier’s house. Isabella had gone a separate way. To set a watch on the lodging of the English.

  She recognised William by his cloak when he appeared. The heavy red velvet cutting through the muted colours of the morning. He looked about him as he walked. His brow was mottled with bruising and the bright eyes she had once admired were sunk in dark circles. He picked up pace toward the Canal Grande. She began to walk towards him.

  William was not looking in her direction. She pushed back her hood to see more clearly. Beneath her cloak’s swirl she clutched the handle of the dagger. It shifted in her hand; despite the cool of morning her palm was damp. It is one thing to think of murder, another to approach and deal a blow from which there is no return.

  She stopped. This was madness. Her grief and rage had betrayed her better judgment. She turned aside.

  She saw William look about. She moved left to avoid his glance and was driven by the edge of the canal until she found herself ahead of him. He walked towards her without seeing her, his eyes on everything but what lay in front of him. She moved backwards, still trying to slip away. She saw him raise his hand to hail one of the traghetto. It was stained with red. Isabella watched it rise into the air like a banner.

  She was pinned by the sight. He moved towards her, still glancing behind him. He turned and looked up at his own hand. As one they looked down from the hand and saw each other. William opened his mouth to speak. Isabella struck at him.

  She saw him gasp. She saw him stagger back. Then the crack as the rail split. And he was gone from sight, into the Canal Grande.

  Isabella watched William fall and turned away. Behind her she heard a cry go up. The splash of oars in water as people came to see what had fallen into the canal. She did not turn to look.

  Oh my prophetic soul, her thoughts whispered to her. The dagger fell from her hand. She reached up to wipe away a tear. She did not weep for William but for herself.

  There must be something within her that drew them, that opened her up to them. The dissembling, the cruel, the killers, gathered to her like moths by some foul light within her. First, Prospero. Then this boy.

  He had seemed different. Not so. Not in the ways that mattered. Different from Prospero only in outside appearance and age. In dissembling he was Prospero’s equal, his master. No more can you distinguish of a man than his outward show, which, God knows, seldom or never jumps with his heart.

  What of her own heart? How did she allow herself to be deceived? Was it the thrill of their rashness? Was it her arrogance to think they could be tamed or turned from their path? She dared not believe it. For then the taint would be in her. She would never be free of it.

  She had been so sure that William was more than that. Yet how to disbelieve the evidence of her eyes? That hand, that bloody hand, stained red with her failures. Her heart was no sound judge, no judge at all.

  Isabella looked back at the crowd gathered around the canal. They pressed and peered at the place where William had fallen. She could see nothing clearly and she was grateful for that. She walked away. At the top of the small bridge she stopped, the same place from which, the previous day, she had seen William drag the Duchess to the balcony and slay her. Murder her and, without a backward glance, leap. Isabella hung her head. She pressed her hand to her breast and walked on.

  Amid the swirl of people Borachio’s two men had not seen what caused their quarry to fall. One moment he looked to escape in a traghetto, the next he was stumbling into the canal. They waited until the crowd dispersed and they were sure the man had not surfaced. Then they went to tell Borachio the man was dead.

  A figure crouching in the shadows saw them go. He bent to lift his sodden burden and carry it to safety.

  By th’ luckiest stars in heaven

  ‘I am in Heaven.’

  William looked up at the man above him, whose rough hands were laying him down on a bed and stripping away his soaked clothes.

  ‘I must be if you are here.’ William coughed out a laugh. ‘I was not sure that would be my lot.’

  ‘Quiet, lad. You’re not in Heaven yet. Though God knows you may be close,’ Hemminges said.

  He pressed him back against the bed as William tried to rise. With quick clean movements he bared William’s stomach and pressed at the edges of the cut.

  ‘It’s long but it’s not deep. If it doesn’t fester, you will live,’ he said.

  Hemminges left the room and William stared at the ceiling trying to make sense of a world turned topsy-turvy in a night. His lover become his murderer; his dead friend reborn. He had new sympathy for Oldcastle’s complaints about Venice and its reversals. With that thought he remembered and struggled to rise only to be defeated by his own weakness.

  ‘Oldcastle?’ William said to Hemminges when the man returned.

  ‘Recovers below. I’d say between the two of you he’s had the worse of it. He was less fitted to endure it.’

  Cold water washed across William’s bloody stomach making him cry out. It was followed by some kind of paste and then a clean dish clout wrapped tightly about him.

  ‘It’ll scar,’ said Hemminges.

  ‘No mind,’ replied William. �
��There never was nor never will be a poem to the beauty of a man’s stomach.’

  Hemminges sat in a chair by the bed. William turned his head to look at him. The solid rock of his presence seemed undiminished.

  ‘You’re alive,’ William said.

  ‘Observant as you ever were,’ Hemminges said. ‘I see you have also kept up your habit of making enemies.’

  ‘How?’ William asked. ‘How are you alive?’

  Hemminges reached up and parted the fall of his hair to show a great puckered scar that ran across the side of his scalp. He tapped it.

  ‘Thick as a ship’s keel. I woke, I think, quickly. You and Nick and Sir Henry were already gone. Enough strength in me to hide in the wood and see the robbers come to remove all sign of battle. Then I fell into a mulled sleep again. I judge I was asleep for more than a day.’

  ‘How did you find us?’ William said.

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ Hemminges answered. ‘I found the inn where you and Nick fled and judged by their description that it was you pair that lived rather than the Ambassador of England and his steward. God, that was bold work, William.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I meant no compliment. Boldness is not judgment.’

  Hemminges ran his fingers through his hair and bent forward to let his head hang with tiredness.

  ‘Nor timidity wisdom,’ said William.

  Hemminges lifted his head.

  ‘The rest is dull to relate,’ he said after a minute. ‘It took me longer to reach Venice than you, having no barge to travel on and being weak to begin with. Longer still to find where you and Nick were staying. I arrived to find a little chick of a man squawking and clucking over Nick, and Nick scarce better than a corpse. It was not till near morning that I pieced him together enough to judge it safe to leave him. Longer still to piece together enough news to judge it purposeful to search for you.’

  ‘Well that you did,’ said William.

  ‘Well that I did and that I swim better than I sail.’

  There came a little pause.

  ‘Sir Henry?’ Hemminges asked.

  ‘Dead,’ William replied. ‘He died in the wood not far from where we thought you killed.’

  William let out a little sob and turned to look back at the ceiling.

  ‘Jesu mercy. It is good to see you, John,’ he said.

  Hemminges opened his mouth to speak, then said nothing. Finally he stood and looked down at William.

  ‘You should sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s safe enough for the nonce.’

  William nodded without taking his eyes from the ceiling.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hemminges, ‘for saving my life.’

  ‘Oldcastle,’ said William. ‘Oldcastle saved you. Never knew he had such strength in him.’

  Again Hemminges opened his mouth to speak but then nodded in his turn and left the room.

  No more a rude mechanical

  A night of groans and fitful sleep heralded a morning in which to draw breath was pain. William pulled himself from his bed. The dish clout on his side was stained with red. He peeled it from him. The wound wept blood but did not seem hot or angry or wont to fester. The same could not be said of William. He pressed a fresh cloth to his side and shrugged on a shirt.

  In the kitchen downstairs, sat at the long table in the middle, was Hemminges. He ate a honeyed pastry with much relish. The figure of Salarino hung about him anxious of his approval. Seeing William, Hemminges rose and helped him to the bench. A glance at Salarino was enough to set the little man scurrying to bring food and drink. They ate in silence.

  At last they rose and made their way upstairs to where Oldcastle lay. The great man slept and so was spared the sight of William, who had not wept at the pain of pulling away the bloody bandage of his wound, crying at the sight of him.

  Hemminges and William sat beside the old man’s bed. They spoke quietly of what had passed in the weeks since the battle at the bridge.

  ‘This Prospero is at the heart of it,’ said Hemminges when William was done.

  ‘In some way, yes,’ said William. ‘What I don’t understand is his intent. Or why we came to be caught up in matters when it seems now that the Duchess of Bracciano was his target. Or why the Duchess blamed me for the murder of Iseppo da Nicosia. Or if he is truly dead. Nor do I understand why Isabella Lisarro should want to kill me. That least of all. I thought there was more –’

  William broke off. He turned his head away lest Hemminges see him cry a second time. Hemminges held his arm till he recovered.

  ‘Of all the strange parts to this story that is the strangest,’ Hemminges nodded.

  William wiped his face and said, ‘Exhaustion and loss of blood had made me weak. I am recovered.’

  ‘What now?’ Hemminges asked.

  William looked up. His expectation had been for Hemminges to take command, to chart the course. Now Hemminges looked at him with that same expectation.

  ‘Home, I suppose,’ said William.

  Hemminges nodded and looked over at Oldcastle. ‘It is the sensible course.’

  After some minutes had passed William spoke again.

  ‘It is what Oldcastle would want,’ he said. ‘He has begged for us to return home from the moment we arrived in Venice, from before, from when you were killed.’

  ‘But?’ said Hemminges.

  William drew a deep breath. ‘I must still deliver Sir Henry’s letters. Duty to an old man’s wishes. That and Sir Henry managed to persuade me that their safe conveyance was for England’s good. No greater persuasion could there be than that he was murdered to prevent it. Were it not so, their delivery is still the guarantee of welcome on our return to England. Essential now that we have so committed ourselves as to spend Sir Henry’s money and use his name. And . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, I cannot leave this mystery,’ said William. ‘I cannot leave Venice without speaking to her. I must understand what happened. Why she thinks . . . We –’ He broke off again. ‘And I will not leave without vengeance for what has been done to Nick, to you, to me,’ he finished.

  ‘The pleasure of vengeance is short lived. The price, high,’ Hemminges said.

  ‘I have been moved about the board by others’ hands too long,’ said William.

  Hemminges looked from William to the sleeping Oldcastle. William softened his voice from its sudden rise.

  ‘I will not be a player in another man’s drama any more,’ he continued. ‘I will write the part I play. From where I sit now that part looks bloody, black and vengeful.’

  ‘What is going on?’ said Oldcastle. Without wishing it, the venom in William’s voice had roused Oldcastle.

  Hemminges leaned towards him. He took his friend’s hand and spoke softly. ‘William wants us to stay in Venice a while longer, wants to deliver Sir Henry’s letters, wants revenge for the insults paid to him and to you.’

  Oldcastle looked up at Hemminges and smiled, teeth red-rimmed with dried blood.

  ‘Good. I’m in a vengeful humour.’

  Full of decay and failing?

  Prospero stood by the window looking out at the canal below, willing the gentle stillness of its waters to impart to him their calm. When he felt in control once more he spoke to the miserable figure in the chair behind him.

  ‘How have you failed so completely?’ said Prospero.

  ‘The failure is not mine,’ said Borachio, ‘but yours.’

  Prospero strode to where Borachio sat, his arms wrapped about his stomach, a silvery sheen of sweat across his broken face.

  ‘Say that again,’ Prospero demanded. ‘Say it again, little man.’

  ‘If you had not delayed,’ muttered Borachio. ‘If you had not allowed obsession with that woman to blind you . . .’

  ‘Tell me, Borachio,’ said Prospero, ‘how it is my fault that you and your two men failed to kill Vittoria Accoramboni when she stood before you unguarded save by a senseless old man and a stripling boy?’


  ‘It was not the boy that broke my nose,’ replied Borachio.

  ‘I’m sorry. You speak true,’ Prospero said in mocking tones, ‘there was also that old and antique captain. His service an ornament for a vain woman. How you must have quaked at his threat. When he moved did dust fall from him to blind you to his blows?’

  Prospero strode back to the window and pointed to the city beyond.

  ‘The streets are littered with your failures, Borachio. To the rashly murdered intelligencer, Iseppo da Nicosia, we add the bodies of two of your men. The Signoria cannot fail to notice so many dead.’

  ‘None of this was necessary in the first place,’ shouted Borachio, ‘if you had done as I advised and killed the English before we reached Venice!’

  ‘Now, in this last night, at the house of that whore, your men, Borachio, rogues whom you vouchsafed sufficient for the labour, were sent to kill two women and a child,’ Prospero said. ‘Two women, a thin-wristed whore, a broken-backed servant and a little boy.’

  ‘The Englishman must have intervened,’ said Borachio.

  ‘So we come back to your failure, do we not?’ Prospero said. ‘For that murderous Englishman lay within your hands, Borachio, and you let him go. You and no other. The one achievement of the day, the steward Fallow’s death, was not your doing but an accident.’

  Prospero gripped the shutters of the window. ‘Get out,’ he said.

  ‘All your fine argument cannot disguise whose the failure truly is,’ said Borachio. ‘The Pope shall hear of it.’

  ‘Get out, Borachio,’ repeated Prospero. ‘Go and try and do something of value to me.’

  ‘I have already achieved more than you,’ said Borachio rising from the chair. ‘I have the English packet of letters.’

  Prospero turned. ‘Give them to me,’ he demanded.

  ‘The antidote,’ said Borachio.

  ‘You think the letters worth your life?’ asked Prospero.

  ‘I know them worth yours,’ replied Borachio.

  He reached out and plucked up a cushion. He wiped at his nose, which still leaked blood, and cast it aside. Prospero watched the ugly man with distaste written plainly on his face.