He stopped walking, turned. ‘I never wished for you to look so,’ he protested vehemently, as if it were suddenly more important that she should know that about him than any of his instructions about safety in the city.
On the jetty she handed him her yellow slipper full of sequins. She gave it to him swiftly before she could change her mind, for the gift of her hard-earned wages represented her passage to Turkey. Now she would never go home.
‘For the hospital,’ she said, ‘until I come back with more.’ Then she got swiftly into the waiting bark, hampered by her unaccustomed skirts, her green kirtle spreading to fill the boat like a single lily’s pad on the water.
Feyra watched Annibale standing there, getting smaller and smaller as the bark rowed away, expressionless in his beak mask, but wringing the yellow slipper in his telltale hands. She had been right to give it to him. She had thought that she could not leave her patients, but the truth was that, even though all hope was gone, it was him she could not leave.
Chapter 34
Annibale had sent Feyra forth in a strong-bottomed dory which could accommodate both her heavy case and the green dress, so as the boatman neared Venice he had to navigate carefully between the canal traffic.
A heavy mist of sea fog and Plague fires combined hung low over the water so the city’s spires poked above the gloom like swamp rushes, and Feyra had to peer through her mask to divine their direction. She saw that the dory was pulling into the city almost exactly where Il Cavaliere had dispatched its dreadful cargo all those months ago. There was the white filigree palace and the great twin pillars Death had walked between.
Now she was seeing his works.
The numerous barges were not crowded with pleasure trippers but filled with shrouded bodies, already powdered with snowy lime to begin their decay on their journey to their graves. Here and there a peevish wind lifted their shrouds to reveal a blackened hand, a rictus jawbone. Now the drift of yellow fog had risen to hang in a sickly pall over the city, pollarding the tops of spires and belltowers. The Plague had taken hold in Feyra’s six months’ absence, and the need for what she had to sell was great. She sat a little straighter, and held the horse mask to her face. Today she had a part to play.
She leaned forward, ‘Which is the veduta della Sanita et Granari Pubblici?’
The boatman pointed. ‘’Tis that big white building, Dama, with all the hawkers before it.’
Feyra peered though her mask holes at the long low building – she could barely see its pillars and porticoes for the massing crowds before it. There were pitches and stalls crowded on to every inch of the foreshore. ‘Who are they all?’ Feyra breathed.
The boatman laughed bitterly. ‘Sellers of dreams, Dama. Promises to keep the Plague Maiden from bedding with you. They’d tell you a rush dip was a moonbeam and charge you for it.’
Feyra kept her chin high as the boatman handed her out of the dory. There was nothing for it but to put her case down beside the rest, and set out her stall.
By noon she’d sold one bottle – to a gentleman who’d clearly thought she was selling something else besides – and given another away. Her story of the Lion and the Well went unheard and unheeded, drowned beneath the barkers and sellers shouting their own desperate slogans and pitches. One seller sold faggots of firewood; juniper, ash, vine and rosemary, guaranteed, he shouted, to raise a smoke hateful to the Plague. Another favoured a powder to be thrown into the flames made of mastic, laurel and cypress. A lady nearby in a dress almost as fine as Feyra’s sold smelling apples moulded from gum Arabic, fragranced with roses and camphor and artfully coloured with red and white sendal. There were cures for every budget – from a concoction of spikenard and rhubarb for the poor to a powder of real emeralds or an amethyst etched with a healthful symbol for the rich. Some remedies were downright bizarre; one enterprising fellow, who seemed to be selling severed pigeon wings, was singing the virtues of his cure in a sweet baritone.
Feyra felt degraded by this company. She saw the same woman visit almost every stall with a silver goblet, desperately trying to exchange the cup for a potion to protect her only daughter from the disease. Having determined the child had not yet been stricken, Feyra gave the second bottle of Teriaca to her, along with some directions for best use. She did not take the cup.
By the afternoon Feyra was desperate. She could not bear to return to the Lazzaretto with a full case, and tell Annibale that he must give up his hospital. She had been so sure that she could save the island for him.
She looked about her. Annibale had been so anxious that she would fit in in Venice that in her mask, cloak and gown she looked no different to all the other high-born dames she saw skirting the stalls. Her gown was a little finer, perhaps, her carriage taller, but she was Venetian to the last detail. She remembered what Annibale had said: if all potions looked the same then in order to sell yours you needed something that no one else had. The man who sang and twirled his pigeon wings had long since packed up and gone home, every plume sold. Quality and efficacy meant nothing in the first instance. Quality and efficacy would keep a customer coming back. But for a first sell, you had to stand out.
Feyra had a sudden, desperate flash of inspiration. She would tell the people something much more terrible than a seller’s lie. She would tell them the truth. She found a discarded fish crate and set it on its end. She took a single bottle of Teriaca out of her case, threw off her cloak and mask and stood on the box.
‘List to me well, people of Venice,’ she called above the hubbub, ‘to the story of the Sultan’s Secret.’ She caught the attention of the little knot of people nearest to her; they turned to listen, and began to shush those about them. Feyra continued in her best Venetian accent, but using all the conventions and mannerisms of the Ottoman storytellers to draw in her audience. Begin with a secret, she remembered. Tease them, tell them something they don’t know. ‘That’s right, I am in possession of a secret that comes all the way from Byzantium, that no other living soul knows. I know how the Plague came to Venice, and I alone know the cure!’
Her heart beat faster, her voice carried out over the heads of the now silent crowd. Steeling herself, she went on. ‘The Turks gave you the Plague! That’s right, the Ottoman Sultan sent the Plague to our good city!’
‘How do you know this, Dama?’ shouted one of the crowd.
‘My husband, God rest his soul,’ she choked out the treacherous blessing, ‘worked at the Quarantine island of Vigna Murada.’ She had remembered the old name of Annibale’s Lazzaretto. ‘The fortymen apprehended a ship lately come from Constantinopoli, and took the crew ashore. It was their mistake. Within seven days all the fortymen were infected with the Black Death, and the heartless infidels gathered supplies and waited for them to die.’
Now the crowd had multiplied, and was listening, rapt. Feyra lowered her voice a little, drawing them in. ‘My husband was the last to die, left alone to resist the enemy. The ship prepared to sail once more, but even in his sickness, my good husband prevented one man from reaching his ship, by stabbing him to the heart. His cowardly compatriots left the Turk, a faithless infidel called –’ she thought quickly ‘– Takat Turan.’
There was silence from the crowd – she could have whispered now and they would have heeded her. But she spoke clearly, warming to her theme. ‘The two men were alone on the island, one Christian and one heathen; one stabbed to the heart, one sick unto death of the Plague. My husband, my dear … Annibale –’ she let her voice crack into a sob ‘– asked Turan how it was that none of his compatriots had succumbed to the terrible disease they were carrying. Turan showed him the answer – it was this.’ She held the bottle of Teriaca high. The liquid inside, as green as her dress, was illuminated by a fortuitous sunbeam that penetrated the fog, shining out like a hopeful star in the pestilent gloom. ‘In those last hours my husband persuaded the Muselmano it was not too late to make amends. They crawled together to the little church of San Bartolomeo, set there upon the isla
nd, and there my husband asked Takat Turan to accept the true God. My husband, too noble to come home and give me the pestilence, wrote down every word of this history, and the constituents of the potion too, and left it among his effects rolled and scrolled and bound within this our wedding band –’ – she pulled the crystalline ring from her bodice ‘– so that I would find it. Being somewhat skilled in physic – I mean in the domestic sphere,’ she hastily amended, ‘for do not we women cook in the cucina for our menfolk every day?’ – there was a sickening titter in the crowd – ‘I made the decoction in its exact parts as stated.’
The crowd rumbled with interest. ‘How do we know it works?’ called one woman.
‘I am living proof of it,’ sang out Feyra, clear as a bell. ‘For six moons now I have walked among the Plague wards, untouched till a good Badessa told me God wanted me to share my gift with you good people for the meagre price,’ she said, sick at heart, ‘of one sequin a vial. So little a price to pay for a life.’ She opened her hand and saw that her palm was bleeding where her nails had bitten into it. She stood waiting, the picture of youth and health, her arms outspread in entreaty, one hand wounded like the crucified shepherd prophet, the other holding the magical vial.
It was enough.
She was knocked from her box in the rush.
Amid the shouts and the jostling panic to exchange money, she heard the real reason she’d been successful. Over and again she heard the Turks derided, named as devils, demons and curs. Over and over again she heard terrible lies, passed from one mouth to the next, of their religious practices; she heard insults against their women, curses rained down upon all of her people. Only the thought of Annibale and all the good she would do with the money could make up for the fact that the reason for her success was hate.
Annibale quickly overcame his scruples in the face of Feyra’s success. For a week she returned to her pitch and told the same story, embellishing it, honing it, choking on every word. The crowd grew and changed every day, and she served teachers, clerics, and once a Republican guard in the same livery in which his fellows had once chased her from the Doge’s door. She even saw, once, a doctor in the crowd towing a cart of his own cures, his beak recalling Annibale to her, except that his mask had black spectacles drawn around the eyes. He appeared to listen intently, and cocked his head like a sparrow when she uttered the name ‘Annibale’. Feyra faltered in her tale and felt a sudden sense of danger pool in her stomach. She had made so much money this week that she was attracting attention. Perhaps it were best that she did not return for a few days.
After her bottles were sold she had to call upon one of the Consiglio’s constables to help her, so great was the baying of the disappointed crowd. He advised her that it would be too dangerous for her to walk down the waterfront, so she ducked into the little streets where the sun could not penetrate. After some minutes of wandering she found herself in a familiar ward. Why not? she thought, and turned her steps to the little square where there was a house with gold callipers over the door.
She knocked with some trepidation: after all, she had fled the house as a Turkish spy, and although she did not doubt Palladio’s welcome she knew that others might not be so pleased to see her again.
It was Corona Cucina who opened the door, and Feyra stood nervously, conscious that some of the tale she’d woven all week was a reality for this dame, who had indeed lost her husband to the Turks. But the cook sketched a curtsey, and said humbly, ‘How may I aid you, Dama?’
‘Why, Corona Cucina,’ exclaimed Feyra with a nervous laugh, ‘don’t you know me?’
The cook’s eyes widened to saucers, she clasped Feyra to her in a bear’s hug, then held her at arm’s length. ‘Turkish, my arse! I always knew you for a Venetian! Come and see the master. He’ll be right glad to see you.’
At sunset Doctor Valnetti parked his cart before the great doors of the Ufficio della Sanita et Granari Pubblici, the headquarters of the Consiglio della Sanita.
He demanded two things of the constable on guard: firstly, that he should be allowed to see the Tribunal without delay, and secondly that the fellow should look after his cart. It was still full to the brim with little bottles for he had sold exactly one vial of his Four Thieves Vinegar today. He might as well, he thought, as he mounted the wide white marble steps to the great chamber, let the varlets steal the vials, for after today, it seemed, the bottles had no value, thanks to the woman in the green dress.
The Sala della Consiglio della Sanita was a magnificent room that ran the whole length of the top floor of the Ufficio. Bottled crystal windows let the lowering sun into the gloom, and lit the vast dark frescoes depicting the seven stages of alchemy. Here and there gilded elemental symbols or figures of magi sprang forth in burnished relief, the leaden paint turned to gold.
At the far side of the room, behind a long oak desk scattered with fat ledgers, sat three ancient fellows, gowned in scarlet. Seeming as old as Time, their slack jaws melted in multiple waxen folds into their tallow chins.
This was the Tribunal of the Consiglio della Sanita.
The oldest of them paused in this counting of the day’s tithes, his hand quavering in the air. ‘Is it Valnetti?’
‘Yes, Tribune.’
‘What is it, Dottore? We are finishing the day’s business here.’
Valnetti strode forward over the vast wooden floor and recounted the mysterious widow’s story. The three ancients listened in silence. When he was done, Valnetti felt compelled to refine his point.
‘In short, business is suffering because of this widow in the green dress selling her “Turkish cure”; this Teriaca.’
One of the tribunes stroked his sagging chins. ‘Does it work?’ he asked aloud in his quavering voice.
‘So she says. Does it matter?’
‘But Valnetti, you know the rules,’ put in the first, querulously. ‘If she were a doctor, then she would have to register each ingredient over a hundredth part of the decoction, and pay the tax. But from what you say, she is a private citizen.’
Valnetti held his tongue. He was an indifferent doctor but he had made a great deal of money over his years as a physician by being a creature of instinct. He had pricked up his ears when the widow had uttered the name he most hated: Annibale. That and her tale of the island where Cason had built his hospital was too much of a coincidence; Valnetti was as sure as he could be that his young nemesis would prove to be at the bottom of this. But he kept his peace for now, until he could be sure.
‘If she were practising medicine with a licence, now,’ the second went on, ‘then of course, that would be different.’
‘Of course,’ echoed the third ancient. ‘Then you would be able to collect your tithe from her. It would be no small income if she sold the scores of bottles that you say.’
Valnetti gritted his teeth. ‘But if her medicine leads the market then you too will be losing money hand over fist!’
There was an agonizing pause before the first tribune spoke again. ‘He’s right you know.’
The second drew a great wheezing breath and let it out again with a sigh. ‘Very well, Valnetti. Then find out where she comes from; if she is connected to a hospice or medical practitioner then perhaps we can demand that she registers this … what did you call it?’
‘Teriaca.’
‘Teriaca. An odd name.’
‘How shall I discover her whereabouts?’
‘My dear fellow, this is Venice,’ said the third tribune. ‘Have her followed.’
When Feyra emerged from Palladio’s house after an hour, so buoyed up was she by the success of the day and by the old man’s company, she did not notice the watcher in the shadows.
She thought over her conversation with the architect and smiled into the dark, shaking her head a little. He was unchanged, so obsessed with the church that grew brick by brick on Giudecca, telling her in great detail about each joist and buttress, that he had forgotten to ask her why she was here, and dressed like a Ve
netian to boot.
He did ask after the doctor, though, and confided in her that he felt a fluttering sensation in his heart. She’d given him some white willow bark to chew from her medicine belt, and also gave him a small green vial of Teriaca. Feyra had eyed him sternly till he’d taken the draught down. She had left him cheerful enough, exhorting her to visit his site one day. She’d smiled, but knew she never would. She would not set foot in a Christian church. After all the lies she had told this week in the foreign god’s name, she feared terrible vengeance if she should cross the threshold of his house.
But as she hurried down the calli in the direction of the Fondamenta Nuove, the smile vanished from her face. She could hear footsteps in the darkness mimicking hers. She held the horse mask to her face and pulled up the hood of her voluminous riding cape. Perhaps she was imagining things, but there the footsteps were again, slowing and speeding to match hers, stopping when she stopped.
She changed direction when she could and doubled back, but still they came. She cursed the impulse that had led her to Palladio’s house. In her unease she took the wrong turning and fetched up in a tiny alley, enclosed by dark and looming palaces. She ran down it, but it was a dead end. High up on the wall was a shrine of the mother and child, lit by a guttering candle stub flickering like a warning beacon.
She looked up at the tableau, rooted to the spot. She had seen other such scenes since she’d been in the city, on practically every corner. But the eyes of this mother did not look kindly upon the son who reached up to her shining face: this was an icon of an older Christianity. Here mother and son, their faces exactly alike except in size, their heads backed by circles of gold, looked straight out, accusing her of borrowing a god that was not her own.
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