The Vault of Bones

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  'Go!’ hissed the boatman. I dumped my bag on the top of the quay and clambered up, pulling Letice after me as soon as my feet were set. The boatman, without a backwards glance, began to heave at his oar, and in less than a minute we were alone. But where were we? I looked about us. The canal upon which we had arrived was no more than a tiny channel trapped between towering walls of brick, into which, here and there, had been let a marble-framed window. To our left the canal ended unceremoniously in another wall, and to our right was a narrow oblong of daylight through which we could glimpse blue sky, white buildings and boats passing on choppy water. That, then, must be the Grand Canal. In front of us were more striped poles, a little thicket of them, leaning this way and that. Sparrows hopped around their bulbous finials, and tiny silver fish flicked through them as they sank out of sight in the hazy canal. I kicked at some loose mortar between two mossy steps and looked up, to find that above us an ancient palace squatted, its stones streaked with grime and blotched with lichen like the hands of an old man. The steps led up to a row of plain columns that supported light, simple arches. Behind these I glimpsed two heavily barred windows and a large doorway. Above the arches another row of arched windows were set into the face of the building, interspersed and surmounted by stone plaques that seemed to show long-legged birds and stars. Above that, a plainer storey rose up, pierced here and there with more windows, these ones pointed.

  I climbed the steps and walked cautiously between the columns and into the damp, mossy shadow of the arches. Stepping up to the doorway, I laid my finger upon the bronze knocker, a toothy fish pop-eyed in amazement at the taste of its own tail. I heard Letice climb the stairs behind me.

  You remembered the key, didn't you?' she asked, casting a somewhat querulous look up at the looming palace. Glancing about, I made sure that we were not observed, but the windows that faced us were bricked or boarded up, and it seemed likely that the little canal had been left to itself for quite some time. I pulled out the set of burglars tools I had made aboard the Seynt Victor and addressed the lock. After an uncomfortable few minutes of scraping and cursing the hasps surrendered, the hinges rasped and groaned, and we stepped inside the Ca Kanzir.

  The Ca' Kanzir was not the true name of the palace on the Rio Morto. To the Venetians - those who even remembered its existence - it was the Palazzo Centranico. It was one of the oldest buildings in the city, and had survived floods and fire, for it had been built from stone at a time when most of its fellows were of wood, two hundred or more years ago. It had once housed a Doge, and the Captain had bought the place from the last member of that noble family. Over the years he had transformed it, inside if not out, into his one earthbound refuge. All this I had learned as we made our way up the eastern shores of Italy, and as the Captain found his voice and began slowly to mend. So, as I sat with pliers and files and a collection of ships' nails, making lockpicks for myself, he had created the Ca Kanzir in the air between us, each word brought forth carefully and with love. He had guided me through its halls and up its stairways, explaining, in loving detail, how the Venetians built their houses, until I marvelled that a man who had always seemed as rootless as one of the Athingani could be so wedded to a pile of ancient stone and brick.

  Beyond the door stretched a wide, damp hallway, sequestered in mouldy gloom. I knew it would be there, for the Captain had drawn it for me in words. The walls were of wooden panelling, simply painted, with many doors leading off on either side. It was very dark, but I could make out huge, ungainly chairs and benches standing between the doors. The floor over which our shoes clicked was a simple chequerboard of white and red marble flagstones. At the far end was another door, which was not locked. We stepped through it and back into sunlight, into a small courtyard with high walls on all sides. In the centre stood a marble wellhead carved with spiky leaves and birds. Big pots of red clay lined the walls, and from them grew trees, some of which I recognised - there were lemons and oranges rotting upon the branches, and lying in green and mouldy heaps upon the ground, a fig and a small olive tree - and some I did not, strange plants with thick, hairy trunks and glossy leaves like huge ferns. Everything was dry and neglected and near death. Vines festooned the outer walls, and a tall rose-briar was scrambling up towards the sky. Odd carvings in many kinds of stone were set into the brickwork, seemingly at random, so that faces of birds and beasts, shields with noble devices, and swirling knots of carved greenery peered from among the leaves. A stone staircase with an ornate, though worn, rail of marble led up the side of the palace. It should have been beautiful here, for the Captain had described it as his refuge, his Eden. But old cobwebs cloaked the leaves and branches in grey and refuse-mottled tents and all was silent save for the rustle of a wren somewhere. It suddenly began to screech and scold us with its tiny voice. I shivered, and beckoned to Letice, who was peering down the well.

  'No one there’ she said with a grin, but I knew she had not been jesting. Silently we climbed the stair and stepped into another long hallway paved with smooth, worn brick and lined with long benches strewn with plump silk cushions, silvery with dust. At the end was a long gallery that formed another loggia with the windows I had seen from the canal. There were tapestries on the walls, and old shields and lances. Strangely, the windows at both ends of the hallway held no glass, and an icy draught was flowing down towards us. As below, the hallway was lined with doors, and I opened one at random. Beyond it lay a large, white-walled room hung with far richer tapestries and strange, barbarous-looking weavings. Candles stood ready in tall, gilt candle-holders. There were wide, high-backed chairs brightly painted and stacked with pillows. A round table stood empty. Dust lay everywhere, criss-crossed with the roadways of mice and spiders.

  'No one has been here’ I said. No one had come to this house since Gilles had left, two or more months ago. That meant that Querini had not yet thought to search the place - or perhaps, hope against hope, he had not even arrived in the city, and we had overtaken him somewhere upon the ocean. But that thought, tempting though it was, could not be clung to.

  We might stay here, but it is not safe’ I whispered, so that the dust could not collect upon the words. 'Querini will come here sooner or later. It is less safe than if he had already ransacked it. Where shall we go, then?'

  She said nothing. I turned to find her gazing into an enormous mirror. I had seen such things before, but they had been little discs of burnished silver that gave one a reflection little better than could be had from a puddle of water. This one was almost as big as my head, and I could see that it was curved like the face of a soap-bubble. Curious, I went to her side. In the mirror the room was duplicated as if through a window. Another Letice stood there, fey and dishevelled, looking out at me with mocking eyes. And next to her another man stood uncertainly. He was sunburnt and his thick brown hair was in need of trimming, and had not seen a comb for many a windblown day. There was a rutted track of newly healed scars across his face, pink and livid, and his clothes were rough and salt-stained. His nose was somewhat askew, and his eyes were at once suspicious and resigned. The only thing bright and lively about him was the sheathed knife at his belt with its hilt of green stone set with rubies. I swore under my breath and stepped back hurriedly. Letice's eyes watched me from the mirror. Then she shook her head, and for a moment the glass was a blur of whirling golden threads. Then it was empty save for the empty room.

  We can go somewhere very near’ she said at last, after a long silence.

  I took the trouble of locking the doors behind us, scraping away with my crude tools while Letice kept watch. We had left through the street door, and had found ourselves in a little square. There were unfinished brick walls on three sides, their windows boarded up with weathered planks. The Ca Kanzir formed the fourth side. A low marble well-head stood in the middle, its carvings softened by years of rain. Ahead of us a low tunnel led under the sagging, abandoned building. The Calle Morto, the Captain had called it: the Alley of the Dead. Inside the tunnel
, the stench of cat was almost solid in the air. White stalactites dripped like livid toadstools from the roof. It was narrow enough that I could easily touch both sides as I walked, and shadows lurked here as thick as soot, or ashes. Letice seemed as oppressed by the tunnel as I was, and hurried along, pausing only when she reached the end and looked out into a wider alley.

  ‘I thought so!' she hissed triumphantly. 'The Calle dei Morti. We are only just around the corner’

  'From what?' I whispered back.

  You will see,' she crowed, stepping out into the street. There were a few people about, but no one gave us a second look, and I followed Letice, who turned left and began to bustle along. We passed over a little bridge and into the square beyond.

  It was a small square and one side of it was a church. But the other three sides were all high walls of brick with many pointed windows. And in those windows, in each one, stood a woman, sometimes two or more; women with painted faces, with curled hair of every unnatural hue and -I stopped dead in my tracks as I took this in - all of them with clothing pulled up or down, or no clothing at all, shaking their breasts, offering them, caressing their bellies, even flicking aside their tunics to give a glimpse of bush. And down below, men, scores of them, some furtive, some strutting with stirred-up lust. Every one of them had his head thrown back and his mouth hanging slack, gawping up at the tarts ...

  'Oi, fishface,' Letice said loudly in my ear. You can do that later’ She grabbed my hand and led me through the throng, my nose wrinkling at the acrid, hog-house scent of rutting men, trying not to look up at the festoons of juddering pink flesh above me. And then I saw: Letice was leading me into one of the houses. I tried to protest, but too late, for she had rapped out some signal upon the door, and in another instant we were inside, and a grave man with a monkish face and a humped back was closing the door behind us.

  This was not my first time in a brothel, I must confess, but if I had intended to make some pretence of virtue I need not have bothered, for no one was paying the slightest attention to me. Instead, a gang of women had leaped up, leaving assorted men behind them in various stages of arousal and indignation, and had surrounded Letice like bees about their queen. They poked and stroked her, laughing, scolding and gabbing, and her voice rose above them in happy protest, until an older woman, her grey hair gathered under a sort of starched wimple and dressed in a sombre robe of shimmering, lead-hued silk, emerged from the shadows and began to belabour the tarts none too gently with a silver-tipped staff. They squealed and did not seem to mind, but when the blows continued to fall they trotted back, chattering and swearing cheerfully at each other, to their impatient customers.

  'Magpie!' said the madam, for so she must be. She did not smile, but held her arms out stiffly from her sides. Letice embraced her around the neck and hung there, as if embracing a crucifix. The woman patted her upon the head and pushed her away gently with the head of her staff.

  'My little London Magpie’ said the woman. 'Or rather, Signorina Querini, eh? What are you doing here, Letice?' There was affection in her voice, but a palpable edge as well. Letice bowed her head.

  'Messer Nicholas has let me go’ she said. 'He gave me away to Dardi Boldu.' Something appeared for a moment in the madam's face, but vanished as quickly as it had come.

  It was a lean visage, planed and chiselled and sanded, lips thinned by time but still full, eyelids thin and sagging but beneath them, eyes of startling green. She had probably never been beautiful, but no doubt she had always terrified and bewitched.

  'Oh, dear’ she said, emotionlessly. 'But you have found yourself a new benefactor, I see. My, he looks important. Welcome to II Bisato Beccato, Signor’ She gave me a flat, scouring look. I thought of bowing, and thought again.

  'No, Mother, this is Petroc. He is a friend. We are ..’

  'Not fucking’ finished the woman bluntly. That is plain. Why are you here, little one?'

  We need a ... a bed’ said Letice. It was the first time I had seen her ruffled. 'Not for that! I mean, we need a place to stay, not for long, just a few days’

  'And why should I let you stay here, in trouble as you plainly are?' said the woman. Nothing showed in her face. Letice nodded to me, and I pulled out my purse.

  We will pay what we would at the finest hostelry in Venice’ I said, fumbling out a gold piece. At the sight of the coin one of the woman's eyebrows lifted fractionally. She tapped Letice upon a breast with her cane and treated us both to a frosty smile.

  Well, my dears, sentiment is my weakness’ she said, her voice showing not a glimmer of any weakness whatsoever. ‘You may stay five days. Any longer and I shall put you to work - both of you’ I felt the tip of the cane brush my crotch and cleared my throat noisily. ‘You may have your old quarters, Magpie. The girl who was using them died last week.'

  'Thank you, Mother Zaneta’ said Letice fervently, dropping a deep curtsey. Now I did bow, but Mother Zanetas cane caught me under the chin.

  'Do not put that purse away, young man’ she said. 'The terms of my house are very explicit. Payment in advance, for any and .. ‘ the cane found the coin and there was a chink of silver upon gold,'... all services’

  Our room was up at the top of the house. It was a square, cramped box, and faced, not the seething square, but a decorous canal.

  'Not a prime spot,' said Letice indifferently. 'Good enough for a dying girl, though, I expect’

  There was a bed, a linen chest, and nothing else: no adornment of any kind. I thought of the last occupant and shuddered. Had they kept her working, the poor wretch? I pictured the girl and her rough, oblivious customers, and felt a breath of desolation pass through the close, stuffy air.

  Tell me about Mother Zaneta’ I said, to drive the ghost away.

  ‘I broke her heart’ she replied, inspecting the sheets suspiciously. Well, they did change the linen. Now then, Mother ... I told you about her. She took a shine to me - let me learn things. Made me learn. Perhaps I was going to be Mother one day - I'll never know, will I?'

  'She didn't like Dardi, did she?'

  'Oh, you are sharp. Dislike might be the wrong word, though. Remember I told you about the girl he killed? Well, that happened here. Not in this room’ she added, seeing my horror. 'Her name was Amelia. I don't think Mother thought she was special, but no whore-mistress likes it when the customers fuck the girls to death, do they?' Her voice was light, belied by the hardness of her words. She flicked a feather from the bolster.

  What does "II Bisato Beccato" mean?' I asked.

  '"The Trapped Eel,"' she said, flatly, and went over to the window, where she propped her elbows on the sill and slumped wearily.

  'Now what?' she said.

  'Now we find Querini’ I told her.

  'Easy enough. Come over here’ She pointed out across the rooftops, south-west. I saw a forest of tall chimneys, each topped with an odd inverted cone, and here and there a taller belltower. Pigeons strutted and wheeled everywhere. Further east was nothing but a blurred confusion of land, sea and sky.

  The Querini Palace is just over there’ she said. 'See those chimneys there, the bright ones, next to the dragon weathercock?' I saw: the place seemed within pissing distance’We can walk there in the time it takes to eat an apple’

  'Let's not’ I said quickly. We can't very well march in and demand to see Baldwin, and by the bye, would they mind giving back the Crown? You know the building. Is there a postern door, a ...'

  'A thief s way in?' she finished. 'No: there's a front door and a back door, like all Venetian houses. One on the square, one on the canal. And really they're both front doors, if you take my meaning. You could swim up the canal, climb the wall and get in through the pantry window, but you'd freeze to death in the water, and the wall's sheer.'. She leaned upon the sill and gazed out over the city, eyes, I guessed, seeing nothing; or perhaps seeing what her younger self had once beheld. I turned back to the room. I knew now what was troubling me: it was Anna. The first night we had spent
together as lovers had been in a brothel. It was as clear to me in all its strange, mortifyingly wonderful detail as if I were seeing it painted upon the walls: a summer night in Bordeaux, the candlelight, the rutting in the room next door, the terrible mural with its fat little people who bulged their eyes at us as we played.

  'I am going to have a look anyway’ I said, to break the spell. You can take me there.'

  'I think I had better not’ said Letice. 'These streets are likely to be full of Querini's people. I might bump into Facio, or it might be Agneta the cook on her way to the fish market, which would be worse.'

  Instead, she drew me a map in the dust behind the bed, the way to the Palazzo Querini and a crude outline of the city and its various islands. I changed into my sadly abused but patched and clean Venetian clothes and left Letice alone at the window, her yellow hair bright against the blue sky and the darting grey of pigeon wings.

  I let myself out of the brothel, ignoring the curious stares of the whores. The square - the Campo San Cassiano, as I now understood it to be - was as busy as before, and I slipped unremarked through the slobbering, randy fools and, trying to remember the twists and turns that Letice had described, set off into the maze that is the city of Venice. My legs felt light and weak, for I had been a month at sea, but I followed my directions - left, second right, over the bridge, round the corner, sharp left, left again - and in no time I had reached the busy little square where the Palazzo Querini stood, its back to a wide canal. I held back in the shadowed mouth of the alley and took stock.

  It was far bigger than the Ca Kanzir, and far newer, a towering edifice of chestnut brick into which were set an exotic congeries of pointed, tracework windows, carved plaques and bosses, and even fragments of mosaic and ancient statuary. I suddenly understood where the glory of Constantinople had ended up: here, in the strongrooms and on the walls of Venice, for the people of that city have decorated their houses and churches with whatever they looted from their great and ancient rival, haphazardly, as a hedgehog in an orchard will roll over in the windfalls to see what will stick to its spines. A nation of thieves indeed, and they were by no means coy about it. But Letice was right. There was no way in save through the delicately pointed door, and although I took the trouble to skirt around and steal a look at the backside of the palace from across the canal, there was no way in that way, either.