The Apothecary's Shop

by Roberto Tiraboschi

  After a number of times when the bull was dragged along, still tied with ropes, they set the dogs on it, which had been especially trained to bite its ears.

  The fierce mastiffs surrounded the animal, taking powerful leaps to attack the poor creature’s muzzle.

  The crowd was laughing and encouraging them, delighted with the spectacle, while Edgardo wondered how such a cruel game could bring so much enjoyment.

  The bull’s almost human laments, mixed with the growling and howling of the dogs, seemed to generate a heartfelt cry, a prayer to Our Lord.

  But the ferocious ritual was only just beginning.

  After repeated attacks, a mastiff managed to grab the bull’s ear. However much the bull shook his muzzle and arched his back, the dog wouldn’t let go, was tossed in every direction, until the animal finally managed to rid itself of it with a more powerful jerk. The dog rolled on the ground, the hairy ear between its teeth. The bull’s muzzle was flooded with blood.

  Then, all of a sudden, the crowd fell silent, and a quietness charged with anticipation enveloped the entire campo.

  A bare-chested, muscular young man slowly approached the bleeding bull. Holding a saber, he stared into the animal’s eyes. The wretched bull looked down, as though apologizing for existing.

  A deep sense of grief stifled Edgardo’s chest.

  The sword was raised high, the young man stood with his legs apart to take his position and remained so, accompanied only by the raucous breathing of the bull.

  A sharp whistle cut through the air. The blade fell, luminous and inexorable on the blood-soaked neck. The head came away from the body.

  A roar of satisfaction rose from the crowd in praise of the hero who’d detached the head with a single blow, his sword not touching the ground.

  Blood flooded out, and the dogs ran to lick the delicacy, while the young man was carried off in triumph.

  Defeated and repelled, Edgardo lowered his head. How could this same crowd, now drunk on violence, sing hymns full of faith to Our Lord during processions?

  The campo slowly emptied, and what was left of the bull was tied by the legs to two cart horses, and dragged, like a trophy, to Rivus Altus, followed by a celebrating crowd.

  The group of larvae with Kallis’s ghost had vanished. Perhaps that vision had been merely the fruit of his sick mind, burned up by opium.

  He carried on wandering aimlessly, letting himself be dragged, in a daze, by groups of gnaghe and wild men.

  When he heard None being rung, he went back to Ca’ Grimani, exhausted.

  The hours of sleep passed in apparent calm, with a humid, sticky wind running through them, spreading a veil of fog over the soft land that peered out through the surface of the lagoon.

  Venice was sunk in a surreal silence. After the celebrations and clanging of the last day of Carnival, the people had been overwhelmed by an animal sleep full of regurgitations.

  Lying atop one another in campi, calli, church porticos, inside gondolas and cogs, in shelters, and storerooms, the exhausted bodies looked like corpses abandoned in a battlefield. Death, more than life, seemed to have become the mistress of these muddy lands.

  Matins rang in vain, echoing from district to district, but nobody stirred. Only the monks in the monasteries scattered between Venice and the islands in the lagoon left their cells to go to church for the first prayers.

  Then, gradually, a mother-of-pearl light flashed illuminated splinters on the horizon, and the expanse of water lit up with scales of silver.

  The new day was approaching from the Orient with small steps, defeating with great effort the army of shadows.

  Edgardo was awoken by a succession of blows that reverberated in the interior courtyard.

  For a moment, he thought they were just in his head, then he came to: they were coming from the front door. He put on his breeches and ran to the ground floor. None of the servants had heard anything.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted without opening.

  “I’m here on the orders of the gastald. I must speak with the illustrious nobleman Tommaso Grimani . . . It’s important.”

  “Wait, I’ll go call him.”

  He was about to go when he saw Tommaso walking toward him.

  “What’s happening?” Tommaso asked, in a state of agitation.

  “A messenger of the gastald is asking for you.”

  Without delay, Tommaso lifted the iron bar that blocked the door and removed the chains.

  “Are you the nobleman Tommaso Grimani?” the messenger asked.

  “I am, you may speak.”

  “The gastald asks you to follow me to the Doge’s Palace.”

  “What happened?” Tommaso asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you much, Signore.” The man gave Edgardo a suspicious look. “If I might speak . . . ” Tommaso nodded. “It seems that during last night’s patrol, the body was found.”

  “The body?” Grimani said, surprised. “The body of the virgin of the beads?”

  “I have no other news, Signore. They just ordered me to come and call you.”

  “Very well, I’ll follow you.”

  Edgardo’s face had turned purple, blood had rushed to his head, triggered by powerful emotion.

  She hadn’t been resurrected. She wasn’t roaming around the streets of Venice like a larva without peace. Nature had reinstated its laws. The dead shouldn’t be confused with the living.

  “Edgardo, tell my wife. Let’s go,” Grimani said, leaving the palazzo.

  Edgardo bowed his head. He wanted to follow him. The identity of that mysterious young woman would finally be revealed.

  XVIII.

  NATRON

  He went down the steps leading to the cellars of the Doge’s Palace slowly, uncertainly, as though his robust body wished to rebel against the resolve of his mind.

  The nobleman Tommaso Grimani, illustrious member of the Great Council, was about to do his duty on this dawn clouded by shreds of fog.

  When he walked into the domed salon, beneath the main courtyard, his footsteps sounded to him like the drumroll before a death sentence.

  Standing in front of a long table, in the middle of the basement, he recognized the gastald, as well as the nobleman Morosini, who immediately walked toward him, looking attentive.

  “Come,” Morosini said, sliding a hand under his arm, as though to support him.

  Tommaso immediately saw that the laid-out body, totally naked, was that of a woman. The milky whiteness of her skin gave off a chilling, otherworldly aura. It was an adolescent, with just a hint of breasts, narrow hips, and long, frail legs.

  A veil of deep sadness filled his chest. He rubbed his eyes again and again, then the gastald moved aside to let him see the face.

  Morosini’s hand held his arm more firmly.

  Tommaso took a step forward and recognized her: it was Costanza, his Costanza, his beloved wife’s sister.

  The gastald thought Grimani’s face looked like that of a knight who, convinced his life is safe after a long battle, suddenly feels an icy blade pierce his side.

  The muscles of his face hardened and, astonished, he turned to Morosini, then to the gastald, as though seeking confirmation for what lay before him.

  “The soldiers found her at dawn, at a checkpoint set up to look for the virgin of the beads,” the gastald explained, holding his breath.

  Tommaso didn’t utter a single word, but reached out and caressed Costanza’s face. The girl did not have a suffering expression.

  “Poor, innocent Costanza,” Tommaso whispered.

  “She was at the bottom of a cog, covered with rags, naked,” the gastald continued. “The boat had been abandoned.”

  “Where?” Tommaso asked.

  “In a canal behind San Lorenzo.”

  “San Lorenzo . . . very near wher
e she was abducted.”

  “We think the murderers were in the process of moving the body,” Morosini said, “but then they must have gotten scared by the checks we’d ordered for the virgin, so they abandoned the boat when they saw the guards.”

  “And do we know anything about the body of the Meta­mauco girl?” Grimani asked.

  “No, nothing.” Morosini shook his head. “Fate has played a trick on us.”

  “You said ‘murderers.’” Grimani had a hard expression. “Do you know how she was killed?”

  “As a matter of fact, we’ve found no traces of violence or cuts on her body,” the gastald explained. “The flesh is intact, only of an unnatural whiteness.”

  “She could have been poisoned . . . or suffocated,” Morosini added.

  Tommaso’s warm breath, as he leaned so close to her face, seemed to restore a touch of life to Costanza’s cheeks.

  “I see no sign of strangulation on her neck. Nor the blue caused by some poisons on her lips . . . but for this we need to consult a physician or an apothecary,” Tommaso said, caressing her face and arranging her loose hair.

  “Look,” the gastald exclaimed.

  A fine white dust had risen from her hair, and floated around her face, like a halo.

  “What could this possibly be?” Morosini asked.

  The gastald tested the consistency of the dust. “It feels like flour, only much finer. Her hair is steeped in it.” He ran his hand down her arms and legs and raised the same dust. “The entire body is covered in it.”

  “She must have lain somewhere in the middle of this mysterious substance,” Morosini suggested.

  Tommaso nodded. “So it would seem.”

  “Collect a small amount,” Morosini ordered the gastald, “and I will personally ask an eminent apothecary monk who lives at San Giorgio’s Abbey for his expert opinion. Naturally, if you agree, Grimani.”

  “Nothing will bring her back to life. Do as you see fit.” Tommaso suddenly covered his face with his hands. “Merciful God, how will I break the news to my wife?”

  “Have we sinned? Tell us, Lord, how have we sinned? What are our faults? A child, an innocent, pure young girl: what were her sins? Speak to me, Lord, so I may understand why Thou hast decided to send us this test. Reveal Thyself to me, enlighten me, so that I might accept Thy will and bear the death that has come among us.”

  Everyone had expected Magdalena’s desperate screams to fill the rooms and spread through the house but, instead, there was that whisper, that litany she obsessively mumbled, roaming around like a madwoman. She’d repeated her pained dirge for hours, and it was unbearable, soul-destroying.

  “Have we sinned? Tell me, Lord, how have we sinned? What were my sweet, innocent sister’s faults?”

  Magdalena dragged herself from room to room, biting her arms and slamming doors as though she’d lost her mind.

  They’d all rushed in at the news: servants, Nena, Edgardo, and found their mistress broken by grief in Tommaso’s arms as he tried to give a little relief to her heart, torn to shreds.

  Nena had thrown herself at her feet and burst into sobs, while Edgardo had remained frozen, his chest in pain, like an abscess swollen with bad humors.

  He’d promised, he’d sworn, and he’d failed once again. He should have dedicated himself more attentively to searching for Costanza, instead of chasing after a ghost among the Carnival crowd. In the end, Lent had come, the time for penitence.

  Magdalena had given him a look full of resentment. That death was also his responsibility. Edgardo had lowered his head. Would he ever find the courage to look his benefactors in the eye again?

  “We’ll bury her in the monastery of San Zaccaria,” Tommaso announced. “She’ll rest in a marble sarcophagus. I’ll ask the abbess for permission to place it in the crypt, where Costanza prayed for the last time.”

  Magdalena let out a dull howl.

  “As for the culprit, or culprits, I will use all my power to find them wherever they may be, and their punishment will be terrible and exemplary. The violence in this city is spreading like an uncontrollable disease. We must react and do everything in our power to defend honest, righteous citizens.”

  It sounded like the speech of a future doge and, for the first time, Edgardo had the suspicion that Tommaso wanted to use this terrible murder for his personal gain.

  Magdalena, on the other hand, seemed relieved by these words, as though the public recognition of her sister’s death made her suffering less acute. Seemingly calmer, she told her husband that she was going to her room to pray.

  Alone with Tommaso, Edgardo finally managed to express his feelings. “You know how much affection and esteem I had for Costanza; my pain is equal only to the shame I feel for not having been able to protect her and save her. I assure you that I will not stop fighting at your side until we discover the perpetrator of this abominable act.”

  “You have been unforgivably neglectful . . . ” Tommaso sighed, “but then, afterwards, you did everything in your power.”

  “No, I didn’t do enough. And I cannot find peace.”

  At that moment, a servant announced the arrival of the gastald, who was asking to be admitted.

  “Signore, we discovered what the dust found on the girl’s body is,” the gastald stated proudly. Tommaso gave him a sign to carry on. “The apothecary monk recognized it immediately. In the Benedictine monastery where he grew up they had a small foundry for manufacturing glass. It’s natron. It’s used by glassmakers as a flux in the production of glass. You find it in many foundries.”

  Foundries, glassmakers: the words thrust Edgardo back in time. Everything seemed to be happening all over again.

  “So the body came in contact with this substance?” Grimani asked.

  “The girl was most probably kept prisoner in a glassmaker’s foundry, or her body may have been hidden there,” was the gastald’s theory.

  “I can’t understand what Costanza would have had to do with glassmakers,” Tommaso wondered.

  Edgardo’s mind was a whirl of all the elements of an insoluble riddle: Tataro, the disappearance of his assistant Giacomo, the Alexandria merchant and the pure glass pieces found in the storeroom, and now the natron powder on Costanza’s body. He couldn’t find a thread that would link such seemingly distant events.

  Grimani was absorbed in thought. He was slowly pacing up and down the salon, rubbing his eyes.

  Suddenly, he stopped, rooted, as though about to attack.

  “Edgardo, please call back my wife. I want her here immediately, as well as all the servants, Nena, Alvise, everybody here.” Then he turned to the gastald. “Please be kind enough to wait too. I’d like to ask your opinion on a suspicion that’s wormed its way into my mind.”

  The bells of San Leonardo were starting to ring Sext. By the time the bells had struck twelve, they were all assembled in the salon once again.

  Magdalena, worried and surprised, had her eyes fixed on her husband, trying to guess his thoughts.

  “I can’t see Alvise,” Tommaso exclaimed.

  “He’s gone out to fetch logs for the fire,” Nena said apologetically.

  “I wanted to gather you here so that you might all be aware that our souls are crying out in pain over the death of our dear sister Costanza. At the same time, our souls are crying out for justice. Therefore, we will pursue the culprit with all our might.” Grimani looked at all present one by one. “I’ve just heard from the illustrious gastald here that Costanza’s hair and body were covered in a very fine powder called natron.” Everyone in the room looked at one another, quizzically. “It’s a substance used by glassmakers to prepare glass paste.”

  For a moment, Edgardo thought that, because of his past, the master assumed he was involved in the murder.

  “Therefore, the gastald and I have deduced that the body must have been
kept prisoner in a foundry.” Tommaso took a deep breath to muster the strength for one final burst. “So I wondered who, among those close to Costanza, may have had anything to do with glassmakers now or in the past.”

  Edgardo thought he was in a trap.

  “If memory serves,” Grimani continued, “during the last search, glass beads were found in . . . in Alvise’s room.” He turned to Nena, who looked blank with fear.

  “It’s nothing, Signore. His master gave them to him. Two winters ago, Alvise worked as a garzone in a foundry . . . ”

  Unable to continue, Nena swallowed saliva in a desperate attempt to stuff back down her throat the words that had just come out of her toothless mouth.

  The nauseating breath of suspicion eddied among those present and turned into a sigh of relief. It was now clear to everyone what Grimani was getting at.

  At that moment, a cheerful whistling came from the canal, then the sound of wood hitting the steps.

  Alvise’s footsteps resounded loudly in the inner courtyard. When he walked into the salon, the boy looked around, bewildered, at all those people staring at him.

  “Come forward.” Grimani’s tone was persuasive. “Now, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you’ll answer as truthfully as if you were with your confessor.”

  Alvise swallowed.

  “Where were you on the last night of the Carnival . . . where were you yesterday at dawn?”

  The young man looked at his mother, then Edgardo, as though hoping to be prompted. “I don’t know, I went around, here and there, drinking and joking . . . I fell asleep in a campo.”

  “Which campo?” Tommaso asked.

  Alvise’s eyes opened wide. “The one behind San Severo, I think.”

  “Did you sleep until dawn?”

  “Yes, Signore.”

  “Were you with a friend? Did anyone see you?”

  “No, Signore, I was alone.”

  Nena was twisting her fingers as though trying to tear them off.