The Forging of Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  The laughter was louder and up the table heads turned to track the cause.

  ‘Aye, Signore,’ I stammered. ‘I am very expert at how to use a fork on dung. Behold!’

  And so saying I drove the fork hard down against his left hand which lay on the table and pinned it to the wood through the thin skin stretching between the thumb and the forefinger.

  He bellowed like a bull being translated into a bullock, making din enough to disturb the Seven Sleepers, and the podesta and his officers leapt to their feet in alarm while armed guards ran into the banqueting room, expecting at the least an assassination attempt. I rose quickly and thrust my chair back. My precious cutlass was with the other weapons in the vestibule of the palace, but I seized a carving knife, ready to defend myself from what seemed certain attack. Had Basadonna made the slightest move towards me, I was ready to slit his throat, with what consequences to me I shudder now to think. Fortunately, as he pulled his hand free, tearing the skin, the sight of his own blood spurting merrily forth turned him whey-faced and he fell into the reluctant arms of his gaily garbed neighbour.

  ‘God’s vein! Have a care, Giacomo!’ cried this young peacock. ‘Blood will not out!’

  Quevedo meanwhile seized me by the arm and forced the knife from my nervous grip.

  ‘Best step aside for a while, youngster,’ he murmured. ‘Come, come.’

  And by main force, he dragged me step by step from the table.

  By the time Zanetta, Benetto and Godfrey came to me as I sat on a cold marble form in an antechamber, I had shed enough of my anger to feel afraid. Any hope I had that the assault might be accepted as a natural reaction to the slur on my honour soon disappeared. Honour it seemed was for gentlemen and though the term might be stretched to include such foreigners as could produce references, it certainly didn’t include me.

  ‘You have besmirched the name of Priuli under whose auspices you came to this house,’ proclaimed Benetto at his pompous best. ‘Worse than this, you have gravely offended the podesta, who represents the Doge here in Padua, by brawling at his table. You must abase yourself before him and crave forgiveness.’

  This seemed a bit strong but I was ready to comply, recognizing that my behaviour as a guest had left something to be desired.

  But the next spoonful of humble pie was all gristle and no gravy.

  ‘But worst of all,’ he said, his voice dropping low as though about to announce I’d been caught buggering the Doge, ‘You have made a murderous attack on a clarissimo of Venice in public. Through him, you have attacked the State itself. Only instant and complete self-abasement can hope to fetch you off with your life, and even that is no certain clemency.’

  ‘What!’ I cried. ‘Abase myself before that painted privy! Nay, and if he feels himself injured, he may seek his satisfaction with what weapons and at what place he cares to name!’

  This speech rang very nobly in my ears but its only good result was to render Benetto speechless with moral indignation, while Zanetta threw up her hands in exasperation and scolded at me, ‘You stupid child! Can’t you get it into your thick Croatian skull, even if he wanted to, which I’m certain he doesn’t, Basadonna couldn’t fight you. Duels between equals are frowned upon. How then should he fight with a mere … a mere….’

  The flow slowed down and came to a stop, whether out of an excess of sensitivity or a shortage of vocabulary, I do not know. I had tears in my eyes as I turned appealingly to Godfrey, hoping to hear some rebuttal of these vile, stiffnecked Venetians from his lips. But he merely placed his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘Oh, Carlo, Carlo, if you hope to grow tall you must learn first to bend.’

  Well, there’s not much more to tell of this story. I bent, and for my reward I found it easier than I had expected. The Spaniard, Quevedo, I discovered later, had been eloquent in my defence; the podesta, who clearly could hardly stand the sight of Giacomo Basadonna, received my regrets most graciously, and when the young Venetian, his hand bound with as many dressings as would have turbanned a caliphate of Turks, returned contumelious abuse to my insincere apologies, the civic ruler spoke to him most sternly.

  So in the end I came out of the scrape with honours fairly even. I had made a new enemy, but, in Señor Quevedo, I had found a new friend.

  Though, God keep our souls and show us his meaning, I’d be hard put in the last analysis to say which of them, enemy or friend, did me the greatest harm!

  5

  WHEN we returned from Padua to winter in Venice, I was full of discontent and had even thought of using the chance of being on the mainland to make my escape. ‘Escape’ may sound a strange term from one who enjoyed most of the privileges of freedom and many of those of birth in the Venetian State, and indeed I would not have used it myself. For though the business with Basadonna had reminded me forcibly of my status in the eyes of society, it had only indirectly connected with my status in the eyes of the law.

  It was Godfrey who made the connection clear when I dropped some surly hints of my purpose.

  ‘You fucking half-wit!’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you forgotten what you are?’

  ‘No. Nor shall I, which is why I may not with honour remain in this situation,’ I said haughtily.

  He looked at me in amazement and then burst out laughing, which so incensed me that I picked up a stoup of wine which stood on the table between us and dashed it in his face.

  I was terrified the moment I did it, and with good cause.

  Licking the red wine from his lips, Godfrey swung his boot beneath the table and lashed my stool from under me. I fell heavily on the floor and next moment he was kneeling over me, not astride my body which is always a dangerous position to take, but at my head, one hand gripping my hair as though to rip it from my scalp, and the other holding a knife at my throat.

  ‘Understand me, Carlo,’ he said in a low voice. ‘In the eyes of the world a man may pretend to be whatever he wishes. But he can never cease to be that which he was born. I am an English gentleman, of a family that has held land and title these five centuries while you and your peasant ancestors were grubbing up roots to feed yourselves withal. Even when you have learned enough, and lived enough and done enough to pass for a gentleman, there will still be need for me to stoop, as now I stoop, to slit your throat.’

  I looked up at him in horror and amazement, horror because I believed he was going to do it, and amazement because, coming hard on the heels of this Basadonna business, his outburst had sown the seeds of a suspicion which later grew into a certainty, that behaviour based on rules other than those of profit and loss was a flaw in the crystal of a man’s soul.

  Something of this must have stolen into his mind also for, on a sudden, he looked shamefaced and, instead of slitting my throat, he helped me to my feet and sat me at the table once more, saying, ‘Learn your lesson, Carlo. But learn this also, that even were you natural son to the King of France, you are still a prisoner of the State of Venice, whose boundaries are your prison walls. Aye, and further too, for so jealous are they of their authority that even the crossing of their boundaries is no guarantee of escape from the Ten.’

  Well, I thought he was exaggerating, but when we returned to Venice he took me one evening to the Square of St Mark and drew me casually through the crowds of nobles encountering and intriguing in what they call their broglio to the south corner of the church close by the entrance to the Ducal Palace. Here was a huge stone of porphyry nearly six feet high which I had noticed before but paid no special heed to, so full of more startling marvels is that place. But I paid heed that night for there, with eyes wide open and lips drawn back in pain, as though they peered down at the broglio and sneered at its hypocrisies, were two bloody heads.

  I was not yet so old in the craft of blood that such a sight did not move me.

  ‘In God’s name.’ I asked Godfrey, ‘who are these two and what was their crime?’

  ‘I know not,’ he answered, unconcerned. ‘If we meet with one of our acquaintance, perh
aps he may tell us.’

  Well, it was difficult not to meet with one of your acquaintance in the square at this time of night, for everyone who had any ambitions in politics or in business (that is to say, everyone) used the broglio to further their ends. A group of three clarissimi passed us by, wearing the black gowns and moving at the stately pace of their class. Godfrey hailed one by name and the group paused. These were senators I now perceived as I studied their garb more closely. The one Godfrey was acquainted with was a slender, almost emaciated, man with a blank of a face made human only by a nervous twitch of the upper lip. This was Giambattista Bragadino of whom it was said that he would have dropped his own balls into the voting urn if they had been necessary to win him election to the Senate.

  After a brief exchange of courtesies, Godfrey pointed to the heads and inquired their meaning. The Venetians exchanged glances, then Bragadino said, ‘These two were brothers who held positions of authority in the Arsenal. This authority they misused to divert sums intended for the construction of galleys and armament to their own pockets, thus at the one blow cozening and weakening the State.’

  ‘For which they were taken up and executed?’ prompted Godfrey.

  ‘Nay. Not at once,’ said one of the others. ‘Somehow being forewarned of the Senate’s suspicions, they took what monies they could quickly put together and fled from the city.’

  ‘And were they caught as soon as they reached the terrafirma? inquired Godfrey.

  ‘No, for their fear gave them wings. They fled as far as Milan.’

  ‘And there were taken?’ said Godfrey, amazed. ‘I had not thought the Milanese would be so cooperative with the laws of Venice!’

  This was an understatement! Milan was dominated by the Spanish between whom and the Venetians there existed at a diplomatic level a chronic mutual distrust.

  ‘Yes, there they were taken,’ said Bragadino. ‘But not by the law of Milan. Venice is a mighty huntress who reaches out where she wills and plucks back that which is her own. Or at least that part of it that she requires.’

  He made a contemptuous gesture at the two grinning heads, then he and his companions bowed low and went on their complotting way.

  I realized now why Godfrey had brought me here, but it was not until I had made private inquiries that I was convinced that he had not also engineered our meeting with a well-primed Bragadino. Even making allowances for the typical exaggeration of the Venetians in matters relating to their State, a frightening picture of its power emerged. Recognizing that fear of failure is the only thing that keeps many men from breaking the law, the Ten on behalf of the Senate would take extreme measures to see that any major trespasser against the State was brought to book. When an offender made his escape, bounty hunters were dispatched in pursuit. Officially once out of the State they had no standing, but if they returned with their quarry’s head, they were paid handsomely, as much as 20 000 ducats having been given on one occasion, so popular legend had it. And because there is no lesson learned without book, the heads of these reluctant revenants were displayed for three days and three nights on the porphyry stone outside their Church of St Mark.

  Sense should have told me that I wasn’t worth 20000 gazets to the State, but young men put a high value on themselves and are not easily persuaded that others don’t share it.

  So Godfrey’s care for my well-being had its effect. I put aside for the time being any thoughts of stealing quietly away from Venice and settled down to enjoy my life there, which had been made much pleasanter by two new developments. One was that Antonio Priuli was now Doge of Venice and the second was that I had fallen in love.

  My excess of animal energy was still being consumed by Maria and while it is good that a young man’s affections should be able to overflow frequently without harm or danger, yet such perverse releases as she gave me might be judged more perilous to a young mind than natural frustration. Her own citadel she cared not to have breached, not out of fear of impregnation, for surely she was past her time for that, but (I believe) because her proper pleasure derived not from the stratagems of battle but from spilling sparks into the enemy’s budge-waggon. She left me ever exhausted while she was still entirely herself, and though I knew not how to resist those delights, yet I neither anticipated nor recalled them without a tremor of fear. Honest fornication has never seemed to me worth more than a single century of purgatorial flame, and I suspect God will agree, whatever these prickless prelates say. But each time my powder exploded at the touch of Maria’s twisted fuse, I felt my soul blown into fragments and scattered across the black night of hell.

  Once I surprised her and took her unawares as a man should take a woman and though my lance was well nigh broken in the charge and though she raged in terrible anger at me, I took more true delight in that quick conquest than in all lingering pleasures of my previous defeats.

  In the days prior to Antonio Priuli’s enthronement as Doge, all the servants were kept far too busy for Maria to have time to visit me. This was not the first time this honour had befallen the family and, as I have said, they were in the first rank of importance in the life of that city. In most States I have known there is a simple equation which says that high rank plus high office equals great wealth and great power. Only in Venice are things different. What other would you expect in a city where the nobles all dress like parsons and their ladies dress like whores?

  First of all, being noble is taken so seriously that the whole bloody family has got to be looked after, and the families are huge. It’s got to such a stage that for a young man, getting married requires a family council which will weigh up the pros (the size of the girl’s dowry) against the cons (her likely fertility rate). The place is fuller of lusty bachelors than a free brothel! The other side of this coin is that it is almost prohibitively expensive to marry off your daughters. And because unmarried women clutter up the place even more than unmarried men (who can at least make a stab at earning a living), the convents of Venice are stuffed from porch to chancel with noble nuns. The only certain way to protect a family fortune is trade – either by succeeding at it or marrying into it! Economy is the great democratizer.

  Antonio Priuli had made his considerable fortune out of timber, which shows how clever he was; and he had impoverished himself in the public service, which shows how thick he was. His besetting sin (again it was Quevedo who told me this; he seemed to know everything!) was honesty, and the price he paid was having to borrow almost 8000 ducats to meet the expenses of his coronation. God’s pursestrings, what a state this was! In return for being elected to an office with less power than a pissed-on bowstring, a man had to show himself grateful by lavishing gifts on the stinking mob! Three thousand ducats alone were hurled among the people as Antonio was carried shoulder high on a chair in the great procession that crawled through St Mark’s Square that day. And most of the rest went on lavish gifts of wine and bread and meats of all kinds, so that the same mob could celebrate their luck in having found another fool to be their gilded figurehead.

  Well, I enjoyed it as much as anybody. The formal and ceremonial part I found long drawn out and tedious, but the festivities that followed were such as tickled the fancy of a simple country lad. There were lavish illuminations, gay music sounded everywhere, and the canals were aflame with the lanthorns of richly caparisoned gondolas. My friend Quevedo and I had dined well and wined better and, coming across one of the Priuli gondolas with its gondolier sleeping drunkenly at his station, I had tipped him overboard and commandeered the vessel.

  Quevedo lay at his ease across the leather-upholstered bench beneath the vaulted arch and shouted instructions and abuse at me as I set the boat lurching unsteadily into the stream of the Grand Canal. He had promised to take me to a brothel that he knew where we would rent a couple of juicy girls and take them out on the lagoon, ‘where’, he claimed, ‘if the wind do but ruffle the water, a man and a maid need but lie conjoined and let the rocking of the boat do their work for them’.

>   These gondoliers let out strange cries as they go about their work, which are the dialect of their trade and have hidden meanings as ‘I’m going left’, ‘Straight ahead’, ‘Go about’, ‘You fucking idiot!’ and the like. I parodied these as I plied my oar, which made Quevedo roll about with laughter and brought curses from the professionals whose skill was called upon to avoid our erratic progress.

  As one such gondola drove by us, I saw within a family group, with the canopy drawn back the better to enjoy the sights and the air. The man wore the crimson damask gown which is the uniform of a gentleman on these festal days; his wife was also dressed according to the fashion, wearing a long black veil which did little to hide her huge well-polished bubbs that dangled before her like casques on an armoury wall. But the third member of the party wore a white veil, which denotes a maid, and had her breasts covered with a blouse of lawn. This pleased me much, for I was in no way diverted from regarding her face that I saw quite clearly through the flimsy stuff of her veil, and it was the loveliest I had ever seen. Any doubt of this disappeared next moment as a sudden gust of wind caught up the veil from her face and then rudely tore it quite loose and sent it drifting across the water. I plucked the filmy coil from the air, drove my oar in with such vigour that I once more drew alongside the over-taking gondola and leapt dexterously from one vessel into the other.

  ‘Your veil, lady,’ I said bowing low.

  ‘What, sir!’ cried the man angrily. ‘Are you an Uskok that you board us in so unmannerly a fashion?’

  This comment, so accidentally apt, made me start and I glanced quickly at the older couple just in time to observe the woman dig her consort in the ribs and flicker her eyes significantly towards my gondola.

  ‘What? Oh!’ he said, then went on in a changed tone of voice. ‘Nevertheless, sir, we thank you for your courtesy. My wife Teresa, sir, and my daughter, Felicia, and myself, sir, Lazzaro Molini, we all offer you our thanks.’