The Four Horsemen Read online

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And I’ve heard them mention the Turks.”

  “The Turks. Any specific Turks? The Sultan?”

  “Not really sure. They don’t like them, though.”

  “Well, that could be said about quite a few people in Venice.”

  Boldrin made one of his fly-whisking gestures. Clearly he had no such prejudices. I wondered if he had occasional Turkish clients. “Perhaps,” he said. “But these people, Sanudo and his friends . . . They had lands out east, I believe. Anyway, I’ve heard them mention the Fontego a few times.”

  “The Fontego?” He was clearly referring to the Fontego dei Turchi, the ancient palace on the Grand Canal towards San Zan Degolà which had been given to the Turkish community back at the beginning of the previous century; it was used as both a residence for visiting Ottomans and a warehouse for their goods. There was even supposed to be a small mosque inside it; there were certainly tempting exotic smells that came from the building at mealtimes.

  “Yes. Don’t know what they’re thinking of doing.”

  “They’re not planning to attack it, do you think?”

  “Attack it? What for?” He clearly found the idea ridiculous.

  “Well, not for financial reasons, obviously,” I said. “A gesture of some sort?”

  He made another of his sweeping dismissive gestures; they were obviously the only kind he understood.

  “You must have heard of some of the provocative things that have been done recently against Turkish visitors and merchants,” I said. “Perhaps by these very people.”

  He thought about this. “It’s possible, I suppose. Can’t say I’ve heard anything specific.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?” I said.

  “Well . . .” He lowered his voice. “You might want to have a look at the little place he has on the Giudecca.”

  “What sort of place is that?” The long island of the Giudecca is sparsely inhabited; there are some monasteries, a number of palazzi along the waterfront and a great many cultivated fields and orchards towards the southern side. It had once been fashionable for noble families to have small houses with gardens there for summer retreats, but nowadays people of means had villas on the mainland for such purposes, usually along the River Brenta.

  “I don’t know exactly. I just know the family has a place near Sant’Eufemia. I’ve heard him mention it to his friends. They’re doing something there.”

  “But you have no idea what.”

  “No.” He was finding it harder and harder to keep up the pose of the affable host, happy to share his knowledge with his new friend. “I will have to ask you to be very discreet in the way you use this information.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “We’re called confidential agents, you know.”

  “Because of course I’m doing this for Sanudo’s own good. He probably does need reining in, but . . .”

  “You don’t want to be known as the one pulling on the reins.”

  “Exactly.” He had another swig of wine. “Do you want some more?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “Just one last question. Have you ever heard any talk of an organisation called the Four Horsemen?”

  He looked blankly at me. “No. Who are they?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just wondered.”

  “I think I’ve answered enough questions. I’ll ask you one.”

  “Please go ahead,” I said.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to see our establishment, are you going to reconsider our offer and direct your clients towards it?” He clearly wasn’t sure whether to make this request in an all-friends-together-now tone or in an assertive business-like one. He made a compromise, delivering the question firmly but then adding a friendly leer at the end. It didn’t work.

  “I’ll certainly consider it,” I said neutrally.

  “Something in it for you, you know,” he said, and the leer became more pronounced.

  “Yes, so I was led to believe,” I said, remaining vague.

  “Anyway, now I have other matters to see to.” He gestured to the side door, and the leer turned from affable to frankly lewd.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “Do you want me to send Sior Boldrin in?”

  “You can tell him that if he so much as knocks at the door I’ll rip him apart.”

  “It’ll be my pleasure,” I said.

  When I stepped into the main room I found Boldrin and the serving- man still standing beside the door. “Well?” snapped Boldrin.

  “He gave me a message for you,” I said, and repeated Molin’s last words. It was a pleasure to see the expression on his vindictive little face.

  He glared at me. “I suppose you think you’re so clever.”

  “Just well informed,” I said. “I now know that the decision to set those bravi on me the other day was your own, and it was a mistake. Did you know what they were doing this evening?”

  “No,” he said, and then he clearly regretted having even deigned to give me a reply. “Whatever you and Sior Molin may have said to each other in there, I’m sure he doesn’t want you on the premises a second longer.”

  “And I have no desire to stay a second longer,” I assured him.

  “Well, get out then.” He prodded me with a manicured finger. He was obviously delighted at having found a way to use the insulting words that his master had addressed to him just a few minutes earlier, and he even raised his voice to do so. One or two of the players turned round in some irritation, including the hunched figure of the man in the nobleman’s gown, whose demeanour seemed even less cheerful now; the mask he was wearing did not fully conceal the sheen of sweat around the lined sides of his face. Not a young man, I saw; probably another noble family on the brink of ruin – or, at least, of shameful exile to the cheap accommodation provided for such broken figures near San Barnaba.

  I looked away from the gaming table and stared down at the intrusive finger still touching my chest. I refused to move until Boldrin had removed it. Then I left, resisting the temptation to whistle an aria from Pergolesi as I did so. There is such a thing as overdoing it.

  16

  I returned home and decided to catch up on some sleep. It was not until mid-morning that I was again abroad. I was glad to see that the fog had still not lifted; this was a perfect day for a discreet visit to the Giudecca. And I decided I would ask Bepi to take me.

  I had already had to tell him that I wouldn’t be able to go to Fusina the next day to look for English travellers, since there was no way I could fit in my half-job as cicerone with what was becoming my full-time job as agent. So the least I could do was offer him some hired work as my own gondolier. I just hoped he wouldn’t have already found someone else to replace me.

  I walked across Saint Mark’s Square, glancing up at the four horses as I passed by. Their bronze bodies gleamed with a sleek lustre in the damp air. It was good to know they were watching over the city. People were making their way into the church for High Mass; the bells rang with a muffled solemnity through the fog. I promised myself that I would catch up with my devotions later that day.

  Bepi fortunately was at his usual place at San Moisè; with the persistent fog he and his mates had moved inside their little wooden cabin by the canal. The dice clicked just as merrily indoors as outdoors.

  He glanced towards me as I looked in through the doorway. “And so?” he said in his characteristic greeting.

  “And so,” I said. “Even if we can’t go to Fusina tomorrow, would you take me out now? Usual rates?”

  He got up and came towards the door to discuss it privately.

  “Usual rates for a foreign visitor?” he said.

  “Usual Venetian rates,” I said. “But a whole day’s worth.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “You paying?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And just you travelling?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Who were yo
u thinking of?”

  “No one,” he said. “Just I heard . . .”

  “What?”

  “People said you were moving with the nobility now.”

  “What people?”

  “Oh, you know . . .” He gestured to his companions behind us. They were all looking curiously at us.

  “Did anyone say which branch of the nobility?” I said.

  He stroked his chin and looked sideways at me. “Venier?”

  “My goodness,” I said. “Word gets around very quickly.”

  “The lady has a certain reputation,” he said.

  “But how on earth did anyone . . .”

  “Oh, nothing. It just seems you were one of the last to leave her salotto the other evening. One of my mates was working for the Tron family. He just mentioned it to me.”

  “There’s no more to it than that,” I said. “She wanted to help me find a book I’d lost during the evening, and so she kept me a little later than the other guests.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly.

  “If you say so,” he said. “So where do you want to go now?” He started walking towards his gondola.

  “The Giudecca.”

  “It’ll be tricky in this fog,” he said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Though I don’t mind the fact that we won’t be noticed.”

  “Is this for – for your other job?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Well, just so long as we keep quiet about it.”

  “Yes. That is always part of the bargain.”

  We got into the gondola. As usual I stood outside the cabin, resting my hands on its roof, so that I could chat with Bepi as we moved off towards the Grand Canal.

  “You heard the news?” he said.

  “What news?” I said.

  “Well, it’s not actually news, I suppose. Just rumours. Something strange happened up the other end of the Canal.” The Canal always meant the Grand Canal for gondoliers.

  “What sort of strange?”

  “Seems a gondola disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? You mean vanished into the air?”

  “Well, into the fog.”

  “Whose gondola?”

  “It worked for the Fontego dei Turchi—”

  “What?” I said it so loudly and so immediately that Bepi almost lost his balance as he unmoored the boat. He looked round at me in curiosity. “Why is that so interesting?”

  “I’ll tell you in a moment. But first tell me what happened.”

  “I’m not sure of all the details. It seems the gondola set off from the Fontego with some passengers, and just a minute or so after it had left, the two gondoliers who were supposed to be rowing it were found in another boat, drifting down the Canal. They said they’d been waiting outside the Fontego and this boat had come up and three men had jumped out and attacked them; they tied them up and threw them into the boat they’d come in and took over the gondola.”

  “Who were they?”

  “They didn’t know. They were wearing masks. They didn’t speak a word. One of them stayed in the boat with them and rowed down the Canal, and then another boat came up and he got into it and just left them drifting.”

  “So how many were there in all?”

  “I think four, if I got the story right. Three in the first boat and then another man who came up in the other boat.”

  “And were they gondoliers?”

  “Well, they knew how to row.”

  That didn’t rule out Sanudo and his friends. There had been a brief fashion a few years earlier for competitive rowing among young noblemen. It lasted until they realised just how hard it was, but there was no doubt that one or two had acquired some skill at it.

  “Did they row well?”

  Bepi shrugged. “Don’t think anyone was really taking any notice of that.” His tone suggested a hint of disapproval of this failure on his colleagues’ part; he couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which he would fail to notice such an important fact. He set us moving towards the Grand Canal with his usual apparently effortless skill.

  “So who were the passengers that got kidnapped?”

  “That’s not clear. All I can tell you is what the gondoliers said. They’d been told to be ready to take some passengers somewhere, but they didn’t know who.”

  “Where?”

  “They hadn’t been told that yet. Seems they were never very chatty, the people who gave the orders. Paid well, though.”

  “Anyway, they were Turks.”

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  So at the very least a major diplomatic incident had been provoked. I sighed and gazed towards the hazy shape of the Salute church, whose great dome disappeared into the mist above us. Bepi steered us across the canal towards the tip of the wedge-shaped customs building that stands at the threshold of the Grand Canal.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Early this morning. Before the first bells for Sunday Mass.”

  “I see,” I said.

  He said in a voice that he was clearly trying to keep casual, “Is this trip anything to do with that business, then?”

  “Well, possibly,” I said.

  “And it’s just the two of us,” he said.

  “We’re just going to inspect a place,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “What place?”

  “A private house owned by the Sanudo family, near Sant’Eufemia.”

  “Where they’re keeping the people they kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know that at all,” I said. “I didn’t even know about the kidnapping until you told me about it.”

  “No, but you got very interested in it. Look, is this a good idea, just the two of us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But at the moment I don’t know who else to ask to come with us. If you want the full truth, Bepi, I’ve been told to stop investigating this matter. I’m not doing this for the Missier Grande or for the Inquisitors.”

  “All right then,” he said.

  He didn’t stop rowing. We had now rounded the tip of the Customs House, with its swivelling gold statue of Fortune, and were rowing across the Giudecca Canal. The Giudecca itself was invisible; there were few other craft out at the moment, just a long barge laden with poles being rowed down alongside the Zattere. The voices of the bargemen sounded muffled in the fog. Somewhere a fog-bell was tolling steadily. Otherwise the canal was grey and featureless, merging in the distance into the trailing mist.

  After a minute or so, he asked the obvious question: “So who are you doing it for?”

  “Well, it might sound stupid, but I suppose I’m doing it for Venice.”

  He didn’t answer at once. After a few more strokes, he said at last, “It does sound a bit stupid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I suppose I’m a bit stupid myself,” he said. “So all right.”

  “Thanks, Bepi.” I wondered whether he had actually found it easier to agree once he had heard that the Missier Grande was not involved.

  “What is this place, then?” he asked.

  “Just a house or a casino that the Sanudo own. That’s all I know. We’ll have to ask once we get there.”

  “Hope they’ll understand us,” he said. “Funny people, the Zuechini.” He used the dialect name for the inhabitants of the Giudecca.

  “I don’t know any Zuechini,” I said.

  “No, don’t think they get out much. Too busy digging their aubergines.”

  I gathered that Bepi didn’t know any Zuechini either. The stately white facade of the Redentore church began to emerge through the mist. A few people were climbing the steps to enter it.

  We made our way down the canal, past the various palaces and warehouses that stood along the water’s edge, until we reached the wide canal that splits the Giudecca in two and is spanned by a rickety wooden bridge known simply (and aptly) as the Long Bridge.

  “So what do you thi
nk Sanudo is up to?” said Bepi, after a long pause.

  “Well, if you really want to know, I think he’s involved in some absurd plan to provoke the Turks.”

  “Provoke them?”

  “He comes from a family that’s never got over the fact that it lost lands to the Turks.”

  “Well, he’s not the only one.”

  “No, but he’s a particularly bitter one. And he’s got three idiotic friends, a Tron and two Bons, who seem to be at his bidding.” I thought of something. “Didn’t you say that one of your friends works for the Tron family?”

  “Yes, my friend Lele.”

  “Has he ever said anything to you about Sanudo? Or about the Four Horsemen?”

  “The what?”

  “The Four Horsemen. I think they imagine themselves riding the four bronze horses against a Turkish horde.”

  “Venetians have never been much good at horse-riding,” said Bepi. “Maybe best to start with bronze ones.”

  “Do you know if young Tron can row?” I asked, prompted by a hazy association of ideas.

  “Well, funny you should say that,” said Bepi. “Lele told me just the other day that his master asked him for a lesson, out over by the Fondamenta Nuove where no one would see him. Told him to keep quiet about it, of course.”

  “And so he told you.”

  “Well, we gondoliers tell each other things, but they don’t go any further.”

  “No, of course not,” I said with an ironic smile.

  “If I’m telling you now,” he said sharply, “it’s because you said it’s for Venice.”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry,” I said. I meant it.

  “So there are going to be four of them,” said Bepi.

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “And there are two of us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, you know I like an occasional gamble?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t stake too much on our chances.”