The yarn he’d spun to those present when he returned to the palazzo had left them all perplexed. Edgardo had cleared the merchant of all responsibility, and explained that he’d made a blunder. There was no involvement in Costanza’s death or the disappearance of the garzone; Ibrahim traded glass that he himself purchased from foundries in Mesopotamia.
Tataro’s mouth had twisted in anger. Edgardo had used him, tricked him with promises he hadn’t kept. The formula for crystalline glass was still a secret.
Abella too was surprised. “That you should want to dupe me, scribe, is something I really can’t tolerate,” her expression seemed to say.
In the end, they’d left the palazzo silent and dejected, mulling over what they considered to be a sack of lies.
“You look extremely happy,” Abella said as soon as they were alone. “An incomprehensible attitude after the umpteenth failure. May I remind you that Alvise is about to be quartered for the spectacle of the Venetian people?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Edgardo replied. “What you’re seeing in my face is the determination not to abandon the struggle.”
“That may be the case but listen carefully: let’s abandon your so-called intuition and get back to the facts, to concrete things, and reasoning. The first evident symptom, as we physicians would say, through which to track the origin of the disease is still Sabbatai. First of all, he tried to kill you, then we find the corpse with the natron, like Costanza, at the bottom of his well. All this makes me think that the apothecary is deeply involved in this business . . . What does your intuitive mind say?”
“It agrees.”
“Excellent. Then we must go back to Sabbatai and grill him.”
“He’s vanished.”
“That’s what it looks like. At times, symptoms can be deceiving. There are rumors concerning his return. Tonight, we’ll get inside his shop, like a probe in the guts of a sick man, and see if the rumors are true.”
There are nights when the lagoon conceals the glassy reflections of the moon and the flicker of lights; it stifles the gurgle of waves against the shores; wraps in silence the sighs, the whimperings of pleasure, the songs of the drunks, the screams of sinners shaken by night terrors of death, allows itself a well-deserved rest, and abandons itself serenely into the arms of darkness.
The muddy waters, fords, sandbanks, and stretches of reeds and rushes blend into a single thick, motionless expanse. Nothing has any more shape or substance, and even the edges of the buildings, churches, and towers on the Rivus Altus blur into that flow of pitch that envelops everything.
It seemed this night had chosen to be their ally.
Edgardo and Abella’s scaula sliced the surface of the canal like a swallow’s flight, skimming the water without a sound.
The perfect night to circulate unseen.
They left the boat alongside the stream that lapped the internal courtyard behind the apothecary’s shop, and disembarked.
Edgardo gave Abella a bewildered look. “We can try going in through the roof, but we have to climb all the way up there.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Abella took out of her tunic a strange device with two arms in the form of a cross, made of curved iron, shaped like a spoon, and looking like an enormous pair of pliers.
“What the devil is that?” Edgardo asked.
“You use it to extract a dead fetus from the mother’s womb,” the Magister explained, “and it will be useful to us now.”
She slid the points into the gap between two planks and squeezed the handles. There was a soft creaking sound, followed by a painful squeak, and the plank came off.
“I hope you don’t put in as much strength with those poor women,” Edgardo said.
“Come, let’s go in.” Abella lit a tallow.
A rotten stench caught their breaths in their throats: a mixture of moldy spices, dried meat, and powder of putrefied dog innards, kept closed in a barrel to be marinated for seven nights.
“Worse than a gangrenous leg,” Abella grumbled. “You can’t breathe in here.”
Raising the flame, Edgardo shed some light on the back of the shop.
The utensils and clay and ceramic pots were well-organized on the shelves, as though they hadn’t been used for ages. In a yellow glass jar swam a kind of monstrous-looking fetus, with a human bust and octopus-like tentacles.
They looked into the shop. It looked abandoned, the spices giving off a slightly stale smell. No sign of Sabbatai.
“Maybe he’s not back,” Edgardo suggested.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
Abella was trying to move softly, but her stout body announced her presence at every step with creaking, rustling, and grumbling.
In the first room, where you could smell acrid, extinguished embers with a generous watering of piss, they found no sign of human presence.
However, Edgardo noticed on the table half a salted sardine drowned in white semolina.
He sniffed and examined it. “This hasn’t been here long. There aren’t any worms yet.”
The Magister stuck her finger into the mush, then lifted it to her mouth.
With a delicate flick of the tongue, she sent part of it down her throat. Edgardo couldn’t repress a grimace of disgust.
“It was cooked no later than yesterday evening at Sext, with too much rosemary and very little salt. Revolting,” she pronounced.
“So he’s been through here.”
“Perhaps he’s still here.”
Slithering like snakes, they went into the second room: there was a trunk, a chest, a bed thrown on the floor, and a stench of curdled goat’s milk that grabbed one by the throat.
Abella grimaced. “It’s like being in a stable.”
“Except that the animal has bolted.”
A pointless expedition; the chances of saving Alvise were growing slimmer. Only two nights left before the execution.
They were about to leave the house when they heard a regular, hiccupping chirping. They weren’t sure where it was coming from, because it seemed to be raining down from the sky. They thought perhaps a sparrow had been caught in the reeds.
Edgardo raised the candle and saw a kind of nest hanging between two beams. It was quite large, made of cloth, and held up with ropes. Inside, there must be more than a sparrow, a larger bird, a big fat goose, for example.
The two partners gave each other a look of understanding, then Edgardo took a pole that was standing in a corner and, without much ceremony, began to poke the mysterious guest.
The chirping suddenly turned into miaowing, then a grunt, and finally into incomprehensible swearing. “By that whore of your mother who stinks like rotten shit, and that pimp of your father, may his dick fall off . . . ” The sweet song ended with a loud thud.
At their feet lay a strange kind of bird, short, without wings, without hair, with a head like a watermelon, full of bumps, and which they had no trouble recognizing: it was Sabbatai.
Edgardo grabbed him by the shirt that covered his repulsive nudity and put him on his feet.
“For the love of God, what do you want from me?” Sabbatai mumbled.
“Why did you try to murder me?” Edgardo said, coming straight to the point.
“Murder you? Absolutely not, Signore, you’re mistaken . . . ”
“You added an excessive quantity of henbane and white poppy to the opium,” Abella said with all her authority.
“No, no, forgive me.”
Edgardo let go of him. Sabbatai stood up. He looked terrible, the bump over his eye was as large as a duck’s egg. “I can explain . . . It was a very special blend. Stronger, better . . . the usual mixture wasn’t enough . . . you needed something magical . . . ”
“And you didn’t think I could have given up the ghost?”
“No, Signore, really, I swear.”
The apothecary’s face, hard as it is to imagine, grew even more distorted into a devilish grimace, and began dancing about on his neck as though trying to abandon its body to find an escape route.
“You told us you knew nothing about natron, and yet your well is full of it,” Edgardo said.
At this point, Sabbatai decided to keep his head on, and shielded himself from the blows of destiny by hiding his face in his little hands. “Natron, natron, I know nothing about this natron . . . and the virgin of the beads has nothing to do with me, I swear.”
“Did she walk here by herself?” Abella said.
“No, no, I was forced . . . they threatened me, the city was full of soldiers, they didn’t know where to hide her.”
“Who? Who didn’t know?” Edgardo had a fierce expression that allowed no way out.
“Those two, the fat man and the man from Bergamo . . . they dumped her on me, I didn’t even know it was the virgin.”
“And what’s your business with those two cutthroats?”
“Trifles, small trade, a little dead body every now and then . . . corpses of no importance that nobody wants, people sentenced to death, lepers, slaves. We fix them up and sell them to scholars like yourself,” he said, pointing at Abella.
“And do you also trade in mummies? What were you supposed to do with the virgin’s body?” Edgardo insisted.
“Mummies are a gift from heaven, a lot of money, but the virgin was just here temporarily . . . the man from Bergamo and the fat one were really scared.”
“Where’s the virgin now?”
“Down in the well.”
“And what do you mean to do with her?” Abella asked.
“Me, nothing. They’ll come and get her.”
“And take her where?”
“I don’t know . . . to whoever ordered them to steal her.”
A flash of light illuminated Edgardo’s eyes. “And when are they coming to get her?” he cried.
“Tomorrow night, when there’s no moon.”
The night before Alvise’s execution outside San Marco.
“Tomorrow we will wait for these two gentlemen here, hidden in your shop,” Edgardo said.
“And if you play any trick, I’ll report you to the judges for poisoning,” Abella threatened. “The word of a physician is highly esteemed.”
Sabbatai nodded, terrified.
XXX.
LITUS MERCEDIS
They crouched behind the shop counter while Sabbatai waited upstairs. The lagoon was calm, still, like the night before. The black waters had ebbed away, dragged by the northern currents.
In the dark, Edgardo was unconsciously smiling. The thought that he might have to face dangers, fights, and use force couldn’t keep from his face the ecstatic expression and the new sensation he could have described as courage. Kallis’s return made him feel reborn.
They’d met for a few minutes, after None. He’d slipped into the palazzo like a thief. He couldn’t resist the desire to hug her. Kallis’s presence had unexpectedly reawakened a wave of sensations and emotions he thought had been dulled forever. A frenzy was burning in his chest. He needed to see her, caress her, kiss her, hold her body tight against his. He hadn’t felt anything akin to this since they’d parted.
A confused rumbling came from the internal courtyard, then a sinister scraping at the door that led to the back of the shop.
The skipping steps of the apothecary on the stairs were interrupted by the hissing voice of Abella, who’d practically lifted him up by the neck. “Remember . . . don’t try and be clever.”
Sabbatai disengaged himself and rushed to open the door. The fat man and the man from Bergamo were waiting for him, looking tired.
“So, where have you hidden her?” The man from Bergamo stank of curdled milk.
“In there,” Sabbatai replied, pointing at the well.
“In the cistern?” the fat man exclaimed irritably.
“And where was I supposed to put her, on the shelf in the shop?”
“Damn rotten, stinking luck,” the man from Bergamo swore, and went to lift the iron plank that covered the well. “Will you go down?” he said to the fat man.
“What? So I get stuck in there?” his partner replied.
They looked at each other in silence, expecting heaven to nominate someone.
“Come on, hurry,” Sabbatai said.
Still swearing, the man from Bergamo went down into the well. When he heard him reach the bottom, the fat man leaned over. “So, what can you see?”
“Nothing, it’s pitch black.”
“Is the girl there?”
“Of course she is.”
“Does she stink?”
“No, she doesn’t stink.”
“Is she rotting?”
“No, she’s nice and dry, dry as a salted sardine.”
“Then tie her and I’ll pull her up.”
A moment later, the body was tied to a rope, and the fat man began to pull. “She’s as light as a chaffinch,” he said to Sabbatai, looking pleased.
The apothecary helped him lift her. While the man from Bergamo was climbing out, they wrapped her in a torn sail.
Abella and Edgardo had followed the entire procedure hidden behind the window of the back of the shop.
“And this concludes our business,” Sabbatai said. “I don’t want to hear anything more about this girl.”
“Go on, you know you’d have liked to have a little go with her, she’s still in good condition,” said the fat man, who started laughing.
They placed the body at the bottom of the boat and, with a quick maneuver, pushed away from the shore.
Abella and Edgardo rushed to their own scaula to go after them.
The cog of the two crooks was advancing in a dull, almost surreal silence, as though the lagoon wished to pay the virgin of Metamauco a final homage.
After going down the Rivus Altus, past the bay of San Marco, they went along the Riva degli Schiavoni, toward the Lido.
Sitting on the boat floor, Abella wondered where the two villains were taking the mummified body, and why. Once again, she’d let herself be involved by the visionary scribe. She studied him while he rowed, absorbed in his thoughts, and unexpectedly had to admit that she had begun to feel something she couldn’t quite describe: a rush? A way of feeling that was in tune with his? Affection?
In the distance, in the east, they saw the line of battlements erected in defence of San Nicolò and the watchtower. The calm, flat waters of the lagoon gave way to the lapping of waves caused by the open sea currents.
The cog turned north, in the direction of the island with forests brimming with vegetable gardens and vines that was dedicated to the holy martyrs Saint Erme and Saint Erasmus, known as Litus Mercedis because of a legend according to which, during the construction of the church, a large quantity of gold was supposed to have been discovered.
They followed the coastline and docked on an isolated shore near the Amurianum harbor.
The two villains unloaded the body and went down a path in the midst of a bed of reeds. The Magister and the scribe kept a safe distance.
After just a few steps, they reached a tall, round building in poor condition, and easily identified it as an abandoned water mill.
Hiding in the rushes, soon afterwards they saw the two men leave the mill empty-handed and return to their boat.
Abella gave a sign, and they set off.
They didn’t know what to expect: there could be dangerous people in there, and they could be risking their lives.
They walked around the building, trying to pick up the slightest sound from inside. The creaking of their footsteps was a sign that the mill was built on the border of a saltpan.
The acidic, metallic smell that rose from the basins burned their lips and throats. A breath of wind rose, bending the reeds.
Built, like so many others in the lagoon, next to canals in order to use the tides, the water mill had been used to mangle salt and grain, but it looked long-disused; the large wooden wheel was covered in algae. Because of the rising waters during the past few years, many saltworks had been abandoned.
They went to the door. It was ajar. They pushed it open.
In the pitch dark, they were greeted by a singular stench: a warm, repugnant mixture of aromas and rotten meat.
They groped their way forward. They made out the dark shadow of a huge millstone standing vertically over another one, and the long wooden arm that connected them to the outside mechanisms.
Abella took a few steps forward and collided with a stone plank. “Light a candle, quick!” she said.
Edgardo took a tallow from his jacket and, with the help of his flint, managed to bring a faint light to the place.
Right in front of Abella, on the stone slab, lay the body of the virgin of the beads: totally naked, covered in that powder that gave her an icy, supernatural glow, still looking healthy and unexplainably beautiful after all those days.
“It’s the natron that keeps her intact,” Abella whispered.
Edgardo raised the flame to have a more comprehensive look at the place and was astounded.
In the room of the mill, various, ancient stone sarcophagi were laid out in an orderly fashion, some with their lids removed, other sealed with marble slabs.
They approached. The stench of rot and aromatic herbs made the air unbreathable.
They leaned over the first sarcophagus. A horrifying sight that even Abella, in her experience as a physician, had never come across. A body that had been quartered, with no hands or eyes, sewn back together as well as could have been, covered in natron, its skin and flesh dried up in places, dripping a thick, sticky, green liquid that gave off an unbearable smell.
The Apothecary's Shop Page 25