The Forging of Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  It was a wild and wanton time and none but a saint or a eunuch could have failed to be infected by the fever of merry-making which ravaged the city. Quevedo having excused himself from my company on the pretext of some business (which I took to mean an illicit assignation!), I engaged to meet him later and went roaming through the streets in search of my own excitements.

  Chancing to meet with some young blades of my acquaintance from the pallone field, I went carousing with them. Later we joined in the dancing in one of the squares close by the Rialto, and later still joined in the fighting which broke out after our somewhat free and easy techniques of dancing had outraged even the festive dames we danced with. Fortunately there was a kind of unspoken rule at carnival time that fights should be conducted with fists or, at the utmost, staves, so that broken heads rather than ripped guts might be the worst end of it. So I staggered away from the fray with nothing worse than a bellyful of bruises when on another occasion my drunken incapability might have got me killed. I paused by a rio and vomited into a passing gondola whose occupants clearly did not subscribe to the unspoken rule, for they swore at me most vilely and fired a carbine over my head. Whether this was good or bad aiming, I did not wait to discover, but fled speedily from that place.

  The shock of this plus my bout of spewing sobered me up a little. The calli were still full, though not so crowded as earlier, and it was difficult to move at more than the steady (or unsteady) pace of the merrymakers, but after a while I began to have a sense of being followed. Whenever I glanced back, I saw the same people, but this was hardly surprising as they could no more overtake me than I could hasten away from them. One in particular I remarked, however – a tall broad-shouldered man in a mask of the god, Zeus, but perhaps it was just his very tallness which caught my eyes.

  These fears, I assured myself, were but the last vapours of wine rising from my scoured stomach and clinging mistily to my fuddled brain. Nevertheless no man lives long in Venice without learning to believe that the Ten have spies everywhere and are able at any time of night or day to reach out and pluck in their prey. Why the Ten should still be interested in me I could not guess. Perhaps some enemy had slipped a note of denunciation through one of the bocce di leone, those bronze lions’ heads set in the wall of the Ducal Palace and elsewhere round the city, whose mouths were posting boxes for anonymous letters to the Ten. Anything seemed possible to my fearful brain, so finding myself of a sudden on a fondamenta by the side of the Grand Canal, I jumped into one of the gondolas which crowded the waterway and, by passing from one to another, made my way over to the other side. Looking back, I saw I had left a trail of bobbing boats, grumbling gondoliers and protesting passengers which it would take a very brave man to follow.

  Feeling pleased with myself, I went on my way, but soon security bred scepticism and after a while I started to laugh not at my cleverness but at my foolishness for thinking it was necessary! What would the Ten want with me? Why, those sinister figures were nothing but men, and old men at that! Doubtless they too were squeezing what senile pleasures they could out of this most splendid carnival!

  And so confident of my own self-deluding had I become that when I came upon one of these same bronze lions’ heads set in a wall, realizing that my spewing had voided my belly but not my bladder, I stood close to the head, slipped my tube into the bronze mouth and began to piss.

  What a denunciation was here! I thought. There’s a squirt for Giacomo Basadonna! And another for Lazzaro Molini! And a big one for the three Inquisitors of State!

  I threw back my head and laughed aloud. Then screamed as I had a vision of the stern face of Zeus, all framed with golden curls. And screamed again and wished it were a mere vision of a mere god as a large human hand clapped firmly on my neck and the tall man I had suspected of following me said, ‘Got you, you little bastard!’

  Then my screams were stopped as he thrust a stinking rag into my mouth, plucked another mask from his gown and set it hard over my face so that I could not speak and hardly breathe. A stiletto prick in my kidneys told me it was death to struggle, so I let myself be dragged through the streets looking, I daresay, like any drunken wassailer being helped along by a kindly companion. The mask was over my eyes too so that I could not see where we went, but I had no doubt that the Ten’s questioning room lay at the end of our route.

  Finally a door opened. I was kicked inside, tripped so that I tumbled down a flight of rickety stairs and ended on my back with all the breath knocked out of me. The gag in my mouth became unbearable. Had I not spewed so recently, I had certainly choked now on my own vomit.

  Regardless of the consequences I dragged the mask off my face and spat out the filthy rag, then lay for a moment content to suck in the foul dark air of that black hole. Was I back in the pozzi beneath the canal which runs behind the Doge’s palace? It seemed most likely, but the thought was bearable so long as I had life!

  In the darkness before me, a light flared. I saw Zeus’ golden face gleam as the tall man set his tinder to a lanthorn. In the wavering rays of the lamp which swung to and fro on the rusty hook it depended from, I saw the place I was in. It was vile and bare, certes, and the walls dripped greenly, but it did not look like a prison, nor were the instruments of torture anywhere in view.

  But prison or not, Zeus was now approaching. I gathered my wits and my strength, not yet knowing which was like to serve me best in these straits, and fearing that both alike would fail me.

  ‘Friend,’ I quavered as one good servant of the state to another, ‘pray tell the most noble senators, your masters, that I would speak with them on matters of the gravest import.’

  As item, how to save my life!

  But Zeus now towered over me. I contemplated kicking his legs from under him as I had seen the Turkish wrestlers do. But these legs looked like oak trees and my feet felt like cat’s paws.

  ‘Villain!’ I cried, trying authority when I saw that democracy would not avail. ‘I demand to speak with the Three!’

  He reached up and plucked off the face of Zeus. I gasped in horror and longed for that golden sternness back when I saw what lay beneath.

  The smooth black leather of an executioner’s head-piece.

  It seemed like a good time to grovel.

  ‘Most puissant Signore,’ I cried. ‘I beg that I might be permitted a confessor before you proceed to your duties.’

  Anything for a respite!

  But the unmasking had not finished. For now he untied the thongs which held that leathern blankness and drew it slowly over his head.

  Now I shrieked indeed and wished the black executioner back, or golden Zeus, or all the terrors of the Ten. Anything rather than be shut in that damp and dripping place with a long drowned man returned from the sea to kill me!

  ‘They promised me pleasures enough at Venice carnival. But I had not looked for one like this,’ said Black Jaraj.

  9

  THE Church’s teaching is that the spirits of the dead are insubstantial things. Only demons and other instruments of darkness may put on sinful flesh when they visit this world. So a man may easily see the form of his departed wife or mistress, but if he finds he may take her in his arms and be bold with her, then is it no spirit but a demon in masquerade, hoping to capture his seed and his soul in a blasphemous coupling.

  Well, I was not about to screw Jaraj, but the feel of his boot crashing into my only recently healed ribs convinced me that here was no spirit but a malicious demon at the least. And even this small hope (for a demon may be discharged if you find the right conjuration) disappeared as his humanity became apparent in his words as well as his deeds.

  ‘Though I was dead, eh, shit-fly?’ he grunted as he pursued my squirming body with kicks and blows. ‘Thought I was bone-meal now? You and that blond-haired bastard. Lechery and treachery, eh? Lechery and treachery!’

  He liked this phrase for he repeated it several times as he tried to kick my balls in. If I had had the time I would have .been amazed at
the deep dints my innocent courtship of Dusanka had made in this villain’s cast-iron sensibility. But my only concern was to avoid (or rather to absorb, for evasion was not possible), as much of his assault as possible till the moment for counter-attack arrived. One thing I did gather from his inchoate babblings was that he’d no idea where Godfrey (or Godislav as he still called him) was, and that he was delaying my death till I had told him what I knew. So waiting till my scrabblings had brought me close to the foot of the stairs, I suddenly cried out, ‘Wait! Wait! Godislav is … Godislav …’

  Then, arching my spine, I let out a terrible shriek and fell on my back, limbs rigid, eyes wide and staring, in a posture I’d picked up from some scenes of martyrdom daubed on the walls of the Priulis’ private chapel.

  Jaraj regarded me doubtfully.

  ‘What of Godislav?’ he demanded. ‘Speak, shit-head!’

  He gave me another kick, but there was something tentative about it. I think it was the staring eyes that convinced him. One blink and I would have had it, but I bent all my will to keeping my face as stiff as a hot bull’s pizzle and finally he knelt beside me to attempt resuscitation.

  If you have no weapon and only one chance at an opponent (and I did not fool myself there would be more than one) you have a straight choice – crutch or eyes. Nothing else is worth thinking of unless you have mastered those eastern blows which paralyse a man by a flat-handed chop to the spine or neck. Well, I was still young in the arts of combat then and ignorant of such refinements. So I had to choose – two finger nails thrust deep into his eyes or one knee brought up hard between his legs. Or at least, I should have chosen.

  As the young often are when faced with choice, I was greedy and tried for both. The result was that I only got one eye and though my knee must have caused him great pain it was not the completely incapacitating blow I had intended.

  Still, it gave me the chance to run and, my own pain forgotten, I scrambled up those stairs eager to put as much space as possible between me and the howling, groaning, blaspheming giant behind me. That was another mistake a more mature man would not have made. Both my present difficulties and much future woe might have been removed if I had used this hard-won respite to kill him.

  Instead I ran and found the door at the stair-head bolted. By the time I had opened it, Jaraj was grasping at my ankles. I wriggled free and fell through the doorway. I was in a narrow corridor with several doors off it. The one at the end looked as if it might lead out on to the street, but it also looked as if it were well bolted and barred. There would be no time to get through there, I thought, and at the same time realized there might be no time to get through anywhere. For my hesitation had let Jaraj reach the stair-head. He was staggering along all bent double, like a cringing courtier suing for favour, and blood blanked out his left eye. But there was hatred enough in the right, and a stiletto in his hand, to tell me that my death was now a larger consideration than any information I might have.

  I fled up the corridor. He kicked at my heels and I crashed down against a side door, which, as he flung himself on top of me, opened a fraction. I looked up and thought, with a great gush of religious feeling, ‘I am saved!’

  For peering out through the narrow space was a priest.

  ‘In God’s name, what is all this coil?’ demanded my saviour.

  ‘This brat I found in the house, Father,’ lied Jaraj. ‘He attacked me as I apprehended him.’

  ‘What?’ said the priest, alarmed. ‘A spy?’

  ‘A common thief, more likely,’ said Jaraj. ‘But I thought it best to be safe and dispatch him.’

  ‘What, are you a fool?’ demanded this most blessed and holy man indignantly. I would have kissed his foot if Jaraj’s grip had not prevented any movement.

  Then I heard his next words.

  ‘Not here. Do it at a distance from the house and drop his body in the canal. And, for God’s sake, do it quietly!’

  So saying, the bastard closed the door. I was lost, I thought. But even as I thought it, my mind registered what I had glimpsed as the door shut. A wall with on it an icon of a long thbrsaint.

  And just before Jaraj’s filthy paw closed on my fear-parched mouth, I found spittle and strength enough to throw back my head and cry, ‘Ouevedo!’

  The next half hour had me on trial for my life. There were no formal proceedings, just a long muttered discussion between Quevedo, who (praise be to God!) had come rushing out when I called his name, the priest, the wizened mountebank and two or three other heavily muffled fellows who were present in the house. I sat quiet in a corner of the room with Jaraj guarding me. What was going on, I did not understand, but I knew that on the whole the feel of the meeting was with the savage Bosnian who had told the story of our previous connection in terms which made me sound the arch villain of all times! Godfrey and I, according to this blackguard’s lies, had planned the whole disaster from the outset, stealing vast sums from the common treasure chest before we left Senj, and intending to murder our companions and keep all the ransom money for ourselves also! Godfrey’s cutlass had not, alas, thrust deep enough and Jaraj had been hauled from the water in the net of some fishermen from one of the islands. Simple folk foolish enough not to have connected Jaraj with the story of the Uskok raiders even if they’d heard it, these interfering dolts had nursed him back to health and eventually he had made his way back to Senj.

  The little mountebank, Jaraj’s master, was prominent in the discussion and I was not comforted when I realized who he was. I had glimpsed him once before, in Senj. This was that same Majmun, or monkey-face, acknowledged as overall leader of all the Uskok bands!

  What these pirates were doing here I did not know, nor did I wish to know for it struck me forcibly that such knowledge meant death either from the Ten for concealing it or from those present for revealing it. Not that ignorance was like to be a defence in either case!

  The mood was against me, I could tell, and my best hope was Quevedo who was now speaking urgently and persuasively on my behalf (I hoped!). I strained my ears to catch what he was saying, hoping to pick up some cue for survival, but I could make out too little to be of much help. When he fell silent the priest, whom they called Father Ignatius, rose and came to face me. He was, I suspected, of that Spanish order of Jesuits who had been put out of Venice at the time of the Pope’s interdict, but were now to be seen again in the city. He had the large broad nose which I ever associate with lickerishness, and the size of this promontory made the inlets of his deep-set eyes seem all the more sinisterly shadowed.

  But when he spoke his voice was mild and kind enough.

  ‘Tell me, my son. What think you that we do here?’

  This was a facer. I had to appear ignorant, yet only a half-wit would not have been made suspicious of some dark plot by the kind of treatment I had received!

  ‘Some affairs of business or trade, best kept secret till they have matured,’ I suggested, adding for the sake of verisimilitude, ‘but though your own holy presence and that of my dear friend, Señor Quevedo, whom I know to be most honest, persuades me your purposes are legitimate, yet I fear you must have been deluded to admit such a black villain as this to your counsels!’

  Jaraj growled and made as if to attack me, but Father Ignatius waved him back.

  ‘You were one of these Uskoks yourself once,’ the priest continued. ‘Are not they honest men also?’

  Another facer with Majmun lurking in the background.

  ‘The most part of them are, I believe,’ I answered. ‘Good Christians, active in the war against the heathen. But even in the strictest of monasteries may be found some few lecherous monks.’

  He smiled at this and changed his tack.

  ‘You lodge at the palace of the Priulis, do you not? What think you of this family?’

  Now here was the crunch. Anywhere else in this city and my way would have been clear. I would have praised up the family as my dear friends and protectors and the perfect exemplars of all the civic an
d religious virtues. But something else was required here. And I had to get the tone right.

  ‘They are kind and generous people,’ I declared. ‘I have much to be grateful for at their hands. But …’

  ‘But …?’ prompted Father Ignatius.

  ‘I must speak honestly,’ I said. ‘I find they give themselves overmuch airs, and so do all these Venetian nobles. They are a proud and stiff-backed folk, claiming virtue through names rather than deeds, and not paying the Holy Father in Rome the deference due to his great office. In plain terms, this Benetto Priuli is but a weak, hag-ridden fellow and his wife little better than a common whore, yet because some old fool of their kin has been elected Doge, they act as if they are lords of the universe! Why, sometimes I think these gentlemen of Venice are nothing but a pack of Protestants, for do they not permit known Protestants, aye, and Jews too, to move at will in their dominions, to the scandal of all true Catholics!’

  Here I paused and looked confused, as though I had let myself be carried away.

  ‘Forgive me, father,’ I said sheepishly casting my eyes down. ‘I pray I have not caused offence by speaking so freely of these matters.’