The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  Using the shadows, they gained the large archway that formed the entrance to the storage sheds. The heavy oaken double doors looked intimidating, but Zuliani tried the small wicket gate set in the right-hand one and found it opened easily. It seemed no one was expecting intruders in the basin. They were inside in a moment, and closed the door behind themselves. The storehouse was almost pitch-dark, with only the weak light of the moon shining through a barred window set high on the rear wall. Zuliani cast round for a lantern, but there wasn’t one.

  ‘We shall have to take a risk and leave the door open or we won’t see what we are looking for.’

  He turned back to the wicket gate and opened it again. It cast a little more light into the interior, and Katie peered around.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Whatever it was that held the ship low in the water before it was removed.’

  ‘What if it was just stones?’

  Zuliani sighed. ‘Then we shall find a pile of stones and be none the wiser for our adventure. But I don’t think it will be stones, or why did they bring the ship into the Arsenale before emptying it?’

  They began to shuffle around in the darkness, reaching out in front of themselves to avoid bumping into anything. It was Zuliani who made the first discovery – with his shins. He cried out sharply as the corner of something substantial cracked his old bones, but then quickly changed his mood.

  ‘Look at this.’

  Katie moved over to his side, and felt out for what had barked his shin. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they saw what it was. He had bumped into the first of a long stack of wooden boxes, all of the same size. He looked around, and in the light from the door saw what he was seeking. A long metal bar with a flattened end that the dock workers used to prise open crates. He grabbed it, and jammed it under the lid of the nearest box. Prising the wooden slats upwards, he eased out the nails with a frightening screech. The furtive pair waited with bated breath, but could still not hear any sound other than the soft lapping of the waters against the quay. Further effort pulled the nails free, and the lid came away easily. Zuliani looked inside and gasped. Katie peered over his stooped shoulder.

  ‘It’s a king’s ransom.’

  Inside the crate was a heap of gold coins, gold ornaments and gold bars. Even in the soft moonlight they glowed seductively. Zuliani eyed the contents of the crate, and then looked at the stack. Katie could tell his brain was calculating the accumulated worth of the pile of crates, if every one was as full of gold as the one he had opened. He gave out a low whistle.

  ‘This is more than a king’s ransom. It’s enough to buy his whole kingdom. We . . .’

  He stopped and held a finger to his lips. Listening hard, Katie heard what he had. The sound of men calling to each other out on the quay. Their voices carried easily over the waters of the great basin, so they were probably some way away. But it was obvious they were coming their way. Katie was beginning to get nervous.

  ‘We should go, Grandpa.’

  ‘Just what I was about to say.’ But he still hesitated.

  ‘What is it?’

  He was looking around again.

  ‘There just one more thing. This morning I saw what I thought looked like a body being brought in here.’

  The voices were getting closer, and she clutched at his sleeve.

  ‘A body! It’s too late for that. Let’s go.’

  But Zuliani wasn’t deterred, and began to look around the darker corners of the storehouse. With a sigh, Katie set about helping him. With two pairs of eyes, the job would be done quicker, and she reckoned they would be on their way sooner. And it was Katie who found it. Behind the crates she saw a blackened sailcloth with a suspicious hump underneath it. She lifted one corner, and revealed a calloused hand, its fingers curled upwards like a dead spider. On the end of the hand was a tattooed forearm. She pulled the sail-cloth further back. The man’s sightless eyes gazed up into the moonlight. Not daring to shout, she hissed out for Grandpa. But he was already at her shoulder.

  ‘Saluzzo. The ship’s captain.’

  He bent to look closer, and then suddenly heard a cry from outside. The men were much nearer than before. And it was obvious they had seen the open door to the storehouse. They were coming their way, and would be on to Zuliani and Katie very soon. Zuliani was still examining the body, and seemed oblivious to the danger. She grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

  ‘We have to go. But how are we going to get out of here? They are at the door and will see us if we go that way.’

  Zuliani seemed unconcerned, and with one look back at the body, beckoned his granddaughter towards the rear of the warehouse.

  ‘This way.’

  It seemed madness to her to be trying to hide in the furthest reaches of the big, gloomy chamber. With a guard set on the door, it would take the other men no time at all to flush them out. But Zuliani was not going to cower in the dark and await his fate. As he paced around close to the rear wall, the sound of his feet on the ground changed. He stamped to make sure, and was rewarded with a hollow note echoing back to him. He kneeled down and wiped the accumulated straw and rope strands from the stone floor, revealing a ring set in one of the slabs.

  ‘Help me with this. It will be heavy.’

  She hurried over to him and helped him heave the slab up by means of the ring.

  ‘How did you know this was here?’

  He grinned at Katie. ‘Did you miss that when you were eavesdropping on my conversation with Domina Este? She told me all the secret exits from the Arsenale, including those used by the dockers to plunder what treasures were stored in here in the past.’

  She had little time to marvel at how he had known she had overheard his conversation with the bereaved woman. He was already ushering her down the open hatchway and into the impenetrable dark below. He followed her down but was unable to get the slab back in place and cursed his luck.

  ‘Damn. We shall just have to hope we have made our escape before they find this hatch. Go that way.’

  He pointed to his right where there was a patch of light beckoning. Katie realised they were on a level with the ancient wooden pilings that had been driven ages ago by their thousands into the marshy ground to create a base for building La Serenissima. Sliding over mud and wooden post tops, they slithered towards the beam of moonlight. Finally, they squeezed through some rusty bars and found themselves underneath one of the bridges crossing a canal. She poked my head up, and saw exactly where they were. Close to the rear of the Church of San Martino.

  ‘Damnation. We are in trouble.’

  It was Zuliani who uttered the curse, and Katie looked round at him, fearful that they had after all been followed.

  ‘What is it?’

  He poked a finger through a gaping hole in his new jaqueta.

  ‘I have torn it. Cat will kill me.’

  With only a day to go to the elections to the Council of Ten, Zuliani had to set aside his discoveries in the Arsenale. He first needed to concentrate on convincing those with a vote that he was a suitable candidate. With his jaqueta repaired by Katie’s nimble fingers, he started doing the rounds of the good and the worthy, only stopping short of exchanging money in order to court favour. He would have had no qualms about doing this, but Cat convinced him that the old aristocracy would think it too common an approach to the election process. Instead, he should intimate that favours could be carried out for those who voted for him as soon as he was in a position of power.

  ‘Isn’t that corruption?’

  Cat laughed at such naïvety from her lover. She couldn’t believe that Zuliani of all people had said that. The wheeler-dealer par excellence was questioning the rightfulness of using – or maybe misusing – a position of authority.

  ‘Merely accepted practice, Nick. You do a favour for them, and when you need one, they will do one for you in return.’

  Zuliani’s face darkened, and he scrubbed his freshly shaven cheeks.

  ‘Al
l the same, it will be me using my status to gain advantage. I’ve never been on this side of the fence before.’

  Cat patted his arm. ‘And you still aren’t, yet. So get out there and oil the wheels.’

  Still grumbling, he left Ca’ Dolfin for his first appointment. Katie looked at her grandma in surprise. She had never heard her grandmother supporting the ways of the case vecchie before, even though she was one by birth herself. Cat saw Katie’s look, winked and walked off to her room.

  The mist was being pushed back out to sea by the sun, revealing La Serenissima in all its beauty. Zuliani poked a finger in the tight collar of his jaqueta, and sighed. Being a public figure was harder work than he had imagined. Everyone thought they owned you, and demanded some of your time. He had not been out his door for more than a few moments, and he could already hear the sound of someone hurrying towards him. He turned, a fake smile plastered on his face. When he saw his pursuer was Bernardo Baglioni, he let his mask drop. He could see that the man was terrified.

  ‘What on earth is the matter, Baglioni? You look as though you have seen a ghost.’

  The trader’s face was indeed pasty-looking, almost green, and his mouth was pulled down in a grimace. His voice came out high-pitched and broken.

  ‘Saluzzo is dead, killed by a fall, they say, from the rigging. But . . .’

  His voice finally failed him, and Zuliani finished the sentence for him.

  ‘But Saluzzo was as nimble as a monkey up in the rigging. I myself saw him swinging down from it and landing at my feet with barely an intake of breath. Yes, I know.’

  He glanced around, concerned in case someone had been following Baglioni. Though there were several men hurrying about their business, no one seemed to be intent on scrutinising their meeting. Still, it was as well to be circumspect, and Zuliani dragged Baglioni into the dead end of a dark, damp alley that led only to the edge of a canal. In the gloom, Baglioni appeared to regain his composure a little.

  ‘They didn’t let me see his body, but insisted that the only marks were those caused by falling from the top of the mast on to the wooden deck. His neck was broken apparently.’

  Zuliani tested out the other man’s understanding of the situation.

  ‘Then it could have been a tragic accident, after all.’

  Baglioni shook his head vigorously, his dark hair flopping over his forehead.

  ‘Never. He was silenced, and I will be next.’

  It was obvious to Zuliani that Baglioni didn’t know about the old man, Baseggio. And yet he had still come to the same conclusion Zuliani had. He wanted to know more from the trader.

  ‘What reason have you both to be silenced? And who are the “they” that you keep referring to?’

  Suddenly, Baglioni glanced nervously back towards the sunlit entrance to the alley where he and Zuliani stood like a pair of thieves. Zuliani could see the indecision on his face. Baglioni was so scared of someone, he was going to backtrack. When he spoke, his voice broke like a boy’s.

  ‘Maybe I was mistaken and you were right when you said it was a tragic accident. Saluzzo had to miss his footing as some point, being as overconfident as he was.’

  All of a sudden, he was suggesting the ship’s captain was not as sure-footed as he had first imagined. Baglioni was now anxious to convince Zuliani of this incontrovertible fact.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. A simple accident that I have blown up out of all proportion.’

  He even puffed out his cheeks and laughed, as though he had convinced himself of his mistake. Not quite making eye contact with Zuliani, he waved his hand in apology and strode back out of the dark alley. However, Zuliani noticed that it was not without looking edgily both ways first that Baglioni walked into the sunlight. Zuliani would have left it there, and planned another strategy to get the truth out of Baglioni, if he had not seen a dark shadow suddenly flit past the end of the alley. His immediate reaction was that someone was walking purposefully after the trader. Someone who had waited for him to come back out of the darkness where Zuliani now stood.

  He ran to the end of the alley and looked in the direction Baglioni and his tail had gone. The street twisted to the left only a few yards away, so he didn’t see Baglioni. But he did see the end of a dark cloak, flapping in the breeze, before it too was lost round the corner. He hurried in pursuit. The street he was now in ran straight towards the Franciscan friary of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Zuliani cursed his old legs as he tried to close the gap between himself and both Baglioni and his dark pursuer. He had a bad feeling about what was happening before his eyes. The man in the cloak was closing rapidly with Baglioni, and there was no one else around to see what might happen.

  Zuliani called out a warning to Baglioni, but it only served to aid his attacker. The trader turned round, stopping in his tracks and allowing the man to fall upon him. There was a flash of a blade in the morning sunlight, and Baglioni fell. The attacker ran off diagonally across the small square beside the friary, but Zuliani was close on his heels, cutting him off at the bridge over the canal that ran behind Santa Maria. From under the hood of his cloak, the man snarled, feinting one way, then dodging the other. Zuliani was too slow, and as he twisted round, he felt a sharp pain travelling across his chest. He looked down, and saw that the sober jaqueta was slashed from one side to the other. Wondering how he was going to explain the ruined coat to Cat, he fell to his knees and blacked out.

  When he came to, he found himself being bathed solicitously by the very person he had last been thinking of. He realised the offending jaqueta had been removed, and Cat was washing his bare chest. He smiled and looked up at her, but her face was set in a grim mask.

  ‘Don’t think you are going to get away with ruining that coat just because you have been wounded.’

  He tried to look down at his chest.

  ‘Wounded? I thought I had died and had gone to Heaven, where beautiful handmaidens were attending to my every need.’

  ‘No, it’s just me making sure this cut doesn’t turn bad.’

  With his chin tucked in, he could now see what Cat was referring to. A red line ran across his chest, bisecting his nipples. She had washed away the blood and little was now oozing out. She proceeded to pour an oily liquid along its length. Zuliani struggled to sit up, howling at the pain. Cat laughed and pushed him back down.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby. It’s just oil, wine and vinegar, but if it was a good enough remedy for the Greeks, it’s good enough for you.’

  ‘I would much rather have taken one of those ingredients internally.’

  Cat pulled a face, and proceeded to bind some clean linen around his chest.

  ‘You can do that shortly. When you have spoken to the Signori della Notte. One of them is waiting outside to speak to you.’

  Zuliani groaned. The Signori della Notte were a shady bunch who looked into all disorder and crime in Venice. He had fallen foul of them when a youth, being accused of a murder for which he was not responsible. He had been wary of them ever since. It had been only his prolonged absence from Venice, and his subsequent return rich and famous that had resulted in the accusation being shelved. But the Signori had long memories and an even longer reach. They could easily dust down his alleged criminal act. And now he would have to explain to them his presence at the attack on Baglioni. Suddenly recalling what he had seen, he asked Cat to enlighten him.

  ‘Baglioni?’

  Cat Dolfin shook her head.

  ‘Dead.’

  Zuliani cursed his luck. The trader could have given him a lead on the matter of the mysterious cases of golden ballast, and now he had been killed. Along with Baseggio and Saluzzo. With much more to do, he decided that now was not the time to tangle with the Signori. They could embroil him in a prolonged debate about what he had seen, and who the killer had been. They might even accuse him of making up the presence of another person, and imprison him for the crime. After all, he had been accused once before of murder. It could end up being weeks before h
e could prove his innocence, and in the meantime, the true killer could disappear, along with the gold. He sat up, feeling the bandages pull tight across his chest.

  ‘Tell whoever is waiting that I am too weak to be interviewed. I am after all over seventy, and this has been a great shock to me.’

  ‘Hmm. I am not sure that will keep them from seeing you. But you do have one other means at your disposal.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I will explain to them that you are shortly to be elected to the Council of Ten, and your friend the Doge would not take very kindly to you being badgered at this crucial time.’

  Zuliani was not accustomed to using an elevated position in society to avoid the Signori. He was more used to ducking and diving like the common man he was. But he liked the idea, and grinned suddenly.

  ‘Excellent. You can put on your most patrician face, and send them on their way.’

  Cat laughed at his drawing her into the scheme.

  ‘I am glad you see the sense in my suggestion. At least it beats what you used to suggest I do to protect you.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘That I used my feminine wiles to distract them.’

  Zuliani’s smile turned wolfish. ‘Well, your attributes are manifest in that area.’

  She gave him a playful slap in the arm and turned away, giving him a view of a wiggling bottom as she went about her errand.

  Ruefully, Zuliani picked up the garment ruined by his attacker, and poked his hand through the long slash. The quilted nature of the elaborate stitching was probably what had saved him from a worse injury, but it meant the jaqueta was beyond salvation. He bundled it up, and tossed it aside carelessly. He had never liked it anyway, preferring his old fur-trimmed long gown with its patterned cloth. It had been his favourite garb in distant Cathay, and reminded him of other, more carefree days. Days when he didn’t have to kowtow to the wealthy in order to gain their favour. Then, he had been an agent of the Great Khan, with his personal passport and badge of office – the paizah. The gold bar, etched with the Khan’s command, had been his means of access to officialdom wherever he went in Kubilai’s empire. It had been lost in the fire that had engulfed his home recently, along with most of his other treasured possessions from Cathay.