hen I rose the next day I was as fresh as an adder who has left his old skin lying upon a rock. I would be leaving tomorrow, I thought, for my clothes were still being washed; so I had better deliver the pope's letter to the cursed, annoying Baldwin de Courtenay.
This time there were no guards at the door of the White Hound. Without the angry presence of my lords of Grez and Bussac, the place seemed defiantly ordinary, and I wondered how a man who called himself an emperor could bring himself to accept such lodgings. The serving-maid whom I recognised from my last visit blushed in a comely way when she saw me, but a fat older woman who I took to be the mistress of the inn shoved her aside, looked me up and down and waved her hand impatiently towards the stairs.
'They're up there,' she said shortly. I assumed she recognised me, for I was wearing my outlandish Venetian clothes again, so I said nothing; yet I wondered again at the grim circumstances that had befallen the young emperor. I climbed the stairs and, when I reached the landing, pulled out the pope's letter, the better to make a grand entrance - for I winced at the thought of fumbling in my satchel while Baldwin and his two gladiators smirked. So I stood before the emperor's closed door, arranging the letter in my hand so that the bulla hung majestically - or so I hoped - over my forearm, before giving the door a sharp, efficient rap.
The wood sounded hollow, and I realised that the door was unlatched. It opened slightly. To my surprise, I heard no one within: no answer to my knock, no summons to enter. Feeling like a jackanapes, I hesitated. Then I thought to myself how odd it was that the Emperor of Romania should leave his door unlocked. Perhaps, I reasoned, it was deliberate. Christ, now I suddenly wished to get this business over with straight away.
‘Your Majesty’ I said, very loudly, banging on the door again, hard enough to swing it a good way open, as I had intended. A somewhat unseemly accident it would seem, but at least I would have announced myself.
But as soon as I crossed the threshold I saw that something was amiss. The chambers were empty: no, not empty, for the plain furniture was still there, but the shield with the black lion was gone, along with the tapestries. There was no chest against the wall. I blinked in the sunlight that was streaming in through unshuttered windows, and cocked my head. A sound was coming from the room where Baldwin had slept: a hissing, harsh and regular. In the confusion that still filled my brain-pan I could not place it at first, but it was not threatening, and I walked softly to the doorway and peered in.
A blonde-haired chambermaid, her long braids dragging in the rushes, was down on her knees, scrubbing the floor tiles under the window. She had already filled a sack with rushes, I saw, and now she was bent to her task, holding the brush with both hands as she scoured the tiles, here dark and stained, there clean and red-orange. But her hands were not the hands of a servant, red and swollen with water and lye: no, they were pale and long-fingered, and the nails were long and shapely. As I noticed this odd fact she looked up and saw me staring at her.
She had a long nose, not quite straight but with a delicate inward curve. Pale eyebrows were arched in surprise above wide, narrow eyes, forget-me-not blue. Her mouth was wide also, although drawn back with the effort of scrubbing, and she had a pouting upper lip. Her skin was almost milk-white and her hair was as yellow as new butter. It was a strange face, lean arid yet fleshy and sensual, almost animal. I felt myself blushing. Then I recognised her: the woman from the market, who had been knocked down by her brutish man. Without taking her eyes from mine, the woman raised one long finger and flicked distractedly at a bead of sweat that was running down her temple. There was a pimple just breaking out beside her nose. Slowly she straightened up, until she was squatting on her haunches. Her feet were bare. Unaccountably I felt my loins tighten.
She was not dressed as a servant either: her tunic was of fine silvery linen that shimmered faintly in the light, like cobwebs in a pasture at dawn. As I realised this, there was a rustle of reed-stems to my left, behind the bed. I tore my eyes from the woman on the floor. A man was standing in the shadows behind a great beam of light that angled in through the windows, fogged with a confusion of freshly disturbed dust motes. I could not see his face, but I saw he was of medium height and stocky build, with the wide shoulders of someone used to heavy work. I did not have to see his pugilist's nose or florid skin to know who he was.
What have you there, boy?' he demanded: the flat tones of a northern Italian. Zianni's voice, only full of mastery, of command.
‘I seek His Majesty the Emperor Baldwin’ I told him, standing up straight and trying to look like a papal envoy, whatever that meant.
Well, he is gone. I ask again: what have you there?'
'A communication from His Holiness Pope Gregory’ I replied. I did not care to be treated like a servant, and I did not like this bullying man one bit, whoever he might be. Where, if I might enquire, sir, is His Majesty?'
'He has decided to return to Venice - urgent news summoned him. I am his Majesty's agent: I have full authority to treat for him in his absence, and to conclude any outstanding matters.' There was nothing but disdain in his voice.
'This is not a grocer's bill,' I snapped, and immediately regretted it.
'No matter. You will leave it with me,' said the man calmly. He stepped into the shaft of light, and there was the flattened nose, the narrow eyes, the gleaming, freshly-shaved skin. His mouth was strangely delicate, as neat and sculpted as the lips of a tomb effigy, but petulant and cruel. I took an involuntary step backwards.
Your pardon, good sir, but I will not’ I said doggedly. 'My orders were to put this thing in the emperor's hands, and his alone. If you will supply your name, I am certain all shall be amended.'
Who are you, boy? No Lateran flunky, unless His Holiness is pulling bum-boys off the streets to do his errands.' He chose his words carefully, and when he spoke each one was like the prick of an assassin's knife. The icy delicacy of his voice was a strange match for his bulk and power, and I realised with a lurch of my guts that I had mistaken him, as an unwary ape might mistake the cold intent of a stalking tiger for dumb, bestial swagger. I began to sweat. 'My name is Nicholas Querini,' he told me. 'There: is all amended, my fine little fellow?'
‘I ...' Glancing down, I saw that the woman on the floor was still studying me intensely, a look of faint amusement playing around the corners of her mouth. ‘I am myself bound for Venice’ I said doggedly, and felt myself blush under the woman's gaze despite my growing fear.
'Oh, yes? Save yourself a long and hazardous journey, boy, and give me the letter. The roads are not safe for a lonely messenger.'
'But safe enough for His Majesty Baldwin? My dear sir, you confuse me’ I said, regretting my feeble jibe as soon as it had fled my lips.
'That, boy, was most assuredly not my intent’ he said, the last words hissed through clenched teeth. He took another step forward, and the air in the room suddenly felt alive, as if a thundercloud had thrust an arm in at the window.
'Begging your pardon, sir, but I will take my leave’ I stammered. I spun on my heel, conscious of two pairs of eyes flaying my back, and stalked out, propelled on a wave of ruffled dignity and embarrassment, but also fear, for although that man had claimed to be a royal agent, I could have sworn he had been about to knock me down. Send a boy to do a man's job, I told myself, and this is your reward. I ducked back into the teeming alleys of the Borgo, cursing Baldwin furiously under my breath. How could such a fool, such a flighty, inconsequential fool style himself Emperor of a chamber pot, let alone of Romania, whatever that meant? I felt the heft of the pope's seal in my satchel. It was a burden in every sense, this thing: now more than ever. I was going to have to chase Baldwin de Courtenay, it seemed. I would have to restrain myself mightily if I were not to slap his silly face when I caught up with him.
But as I strode through the warm, noisy streets I found it quite easy to keep my chin up and my mood, if not sunny, then at least a light shade of grey. I listened to the many tongues all rai
sed in excited chatter, all bickering and haggling over gimcrack souvenirs. And as I noticed more and more strange and wonderful things about me I began to enjoy myself. A pretty girl selling oranges smiled at me; I found myself laughing at two dogs caught arse to ballocks in the midst of a fuck and dragging each other, yapping and squealing hither and yon across the street; and the simple sounds of people about their daily lives began to warm me inside. Baldwin was a fool: fiddle-de-dee to him and his ridiculous empire. I was bound for Venice myself anyway. Doubtless I would pass him on the road within a day or so, for he would surely be wandering along like a butterfly in a breeze. No matter. In fact, so much the better: a whole day in Rome with nothing to do but look forward to a journey on the morrow. Suddenly the world seemed suffused with the purest bliss. The dogs suddenly popped apart and fell to madly licking their privy parts in the midst of the street, and I laughed so hard that a brace of passing monks squinted at me in sour reproof and crossed themselves. Scowl away, good fellows, I thought. For I, sinner, reprobate and outcast that I am, am about the pope's business, and you, pious wax-faces, are not.
I crossed the Campo dei Fiori and headed towards the Jewish Quarter, for I was in the mood for the good fried fish that I knew could be found there. And I loved this part of the city, with its different sights and smells, and its sense of otherness, which reminded me of the Cormaran. I found a cook-shop selling red-hot fillets of some firm white fish and ambled through the streets, nibbling carefully on the searing morsels and looking idly at the life around me. It was thus that my feet led me to one of my favourite sights, the fish market on the steps of the Church of Sant’Angelo which stands in the shadow of the palace of the Savelli, everything in turn overhung by the ruinous, marble-tumbled bulk of the Capitoline Hill. The worthy canons of the church rented out their stone steps to the fishmongers of Rome, and it made for the oddest scene imaginable, at least to my eyes. I had come down here before just to watch the fun: the fish of all shapes and sizes, laid out on the worn marble; mounds of shells, buckets of writhing eels and seething elvers; crates and baskets of the oddest creatures from the deep pastures of the sea. In the air a stench of fish-guts and a babel of voices, greeting, haggling, arguing, protesting. It seemed to me an eminently sensible use of church steps. This morning the melee was in full swing, and I sat down on a piece of old column to watch.
The spectacle did not disappoint. A ruinously fat woman in the clothes of a wealthy dowager was engaged in a mighty tongue-lashing contest with a small, swarthy fishmonger. Both stood, hands on hips, and excoriated each other on some subject I could not hear, but which I assumed was piscatorial in nature. And indeed, growing tired of words, the woman hitched up her sleeves to reveal great doughy arms, bent down, and came up grasping a vast and grotesque creature, a spider-crab whose body was as big as the fishmongers head and whose claw-tipped, hairy arms splayed out, waving feebly, like the rays of a blasphemous halo. For an instant I thought she was going to drop the thing on to the man's head, but instead the merchant threw up his arms, they both laughed, and in another instant the man was tying the poor crab's weakly protesting legs together with a length of twine and placing it carefully in the woman's basket.
This was better than a puppet show. I went over to examine the wares on display. Here was a crock full of cuttlefish, all nacreous ooze and popping, ink-teared eyes. A pan full of eel-like creatures with long, sword-like beaks looked naked, visceral. I admired the golden bream and the night-striped mackerel. Enough, then: I was hungry again, and I had it in mind to take a last stroll around the ruins of the Campo Vaccino as well. There was a smell of grilling fish in the air, and I located its source: a stall behind me, over by the Palazzo Savelli. I went to investigate. Sardines: fresh and succulent, the man informed me. I was just handing over my coin when, over the grill-man's shoulder, I happened to glance over at the shadowy arches of the palazzo. A gang of urchins, cruel and noisy, were hunting fat fish-market cats in the shade, and their hoots and halloos were echoing off the stones. I was idly following the proceedings when my eye caught sight of a face in the shadows, for a spear of sunlight lay across it, catching the yellow hair and an oblique slash of face: a hint of an eye, the tip of that unmistakable nose. It was the woman from the White Hound, from Baldwin's chambers.
My heart jumped, and several thoughts flew up at once: what happenstance; she followed me; she has come to buy fish, of course. I blinked and set down my coin, and in the time it took for me to grab my leaf-plate of fish, she had vanished. Ah, then it had been an illusion. Rome, I was finding, was apt to play tricks upon the mind, especially those fevered with a newly resurgent lust. I shook my head ruefully and walked over to the palazzo, just to make sure. And indeed the curved, cloister-like space behind the arches was empty of blonde women. But it was full of screeching children with the scent of cat blood in their noses, so I moved on.
I spent the next hour clambering over the ruins in the Campo Vaccino, the very heart of the world when Caesar ruled it, but which was now half weed-choked desolation and half cattle market. It was also a crucible of the sun's scorching heat, and so I tired of poking through the bramble-carpeted motley of foundation walls and collapsed pillars. With nothing to occupy them, my thoughts had begun to turn again and again to the wench in Baldwin's chambers. I rolled her image around in my head, toying with it as a kitten plays with a vole: first touching, then patting, then batting, then licking, and then devouring it, until it had become such a vivid daydream that only when I tripped over a half-buried column and and scraped my hands did I come to my senses. So I said farewell to the ruins and climbed the hill to the Campidoglio, and thence down into the familiar tangle of the Campus Martius.
I wanted to visit my favourite place in the city once more before I left, and so a little before None I arrived before the Church of Santa Maria of the Martyrs. From the Mirabilia, I knew its true name to be the Pantheon, and indeed the great portico, with its inscription to Agrippa, seemed like the entrance to no church I had ever known, even in this city of confounding discoveries. But it was not the outside that had drawn me here again and again in the past weeks, but what lay within, through the mighty bronze doors.
It was almost empty inside, save for a nun sweeping the floor and a verger talking with two monks against the far wall. As I always did, I paused on the threshold before setting out into the great well of dusty light, padding across the marble and feeling the round walls rise around me, letting my head fall back as I walked until I was in the centre of the floor and gazing straight up at the sky through the perfect circle of the oculus. There I stood, seeing nothing but that disc of purest blue hanging at the apex of the domed roof, and all around it the squares within squares that made up the dome, carved from stone but seemingly weightless. A pigeon fluttered to and fro across the shaft of sunlight that angled down towards me. Sparrows twittered faintly out in the portico. I breathed in the cool air, and felt the hair on my head rise ever so slightly, as it always did in this spot. For here, I was sure, was the centre of the world, the point on which everything turned. Here was stillness, utter calm, the axis: around me, the seas, the countries at war and peace, the fretful seas, the clouds, the stars in their spheres spun and danced.
The nun began coughing horribly behind me, wet, wracking spasms. I sighed and looked down. The marble walls in all their colours glimmered. I rubbed my eyes: I had walked far today, and I realised I was tired. The nun coughed again. I glanced over. There she was, hunched over her broom, shoulders heaving. The verger was also regarding her with irritation. And further around the curving walls, a woman in a tunic of silvery linen, whose yellow hair fell straight behind her back. This time she was no illusion: the monks were watching her too. She caught my gaze, and began to edge along the wall towards the door. She walked, step by cautious step, and I turned in place, still the axis, still caught under the eye of heaven. Through the golden half-light she slipped, past empty niches and tombs, past the nun, recovered now; I turned, and she reached
the door and darted outside.
Released by the oculus, I took to my heels after her, ignoring the throaty admonitions of the nun. But out in the piazza I found only the dun-coloured flocks of pilgrims circled by sharp-eyed Roman wolves. I looked about me in a frenzy: where had she gone? I chose an alleyway at random, and ran up it until I reached a little church, around which the streets diverged in three directions. It was hopeless: she had probably not even come this way, I told myself. But she had followed me after all, for happenstance does not strike the same two people twice in as many hours. Why? I leaned against the church wall, panting.
Slowly as pitch trickling down the planking of a ship, comprehension dawned and I realised what I had to do. I must hide the pope's decree at once. The yellow-haired woman was no scullery maid, and what she had been scrubbing from the emperors floor had been blood. I had not liked the voice of the man in the shadows. I had not liked that he did not show his face, and the way his flat Venetian voice had drilled into me, full of command and condescension. If they were following me it was not for myself, for I was nothing. It was for what I carried.
I had a fairly good idea where I was, so I made my way, through back alleys and the narrowest passages, west to the piazza in Agona. The long, broad field of the piazza I skirted to the north, through alleys overhung with towers snarling across the air at one another. I thought to slip across the bridge to my lodgings in the Borgo, but that would be too obvious, for that man in the White Hound was used to command - he would have more than a wench at his call, that was certain - and no doubt he was watching the bridges.
Who could I go to for help? I was starting to feel exhausted, for I had been on my feet in the heat all day and had eaten and drunk but little. A cup of cool wine would surely clear my head. I thought of a comfortable cellar and a friendly barrel of white wine from the Alban hills, and then it struck me: Marcho Antonio Marso, the Captain's old companion-in-arms.
The Vault of Bones Page 14