The Four Horsemen Read online

  Bepi had joined me, after retrieving his cudgel. I said to him, “We’ll have to do what they say, leave them blindfolded till we get them to the boat.”

  It took us another minute or so to get the women sufficiently calm to be raised to their feet. It became clear, even without uncovering their faces, that one of them was just a girl, perhaps only fourteen or fifteen, while the other was middle-aged. Mother and daughter, I guessed.

  Bepi and I walked them to the door, touching just their arms to guide them. They stayed as close to one another as possible, leaning inwards, away from us. Their arms were still trussed behind their backs, and I decided it would be best to leave them like that until they were safely in the cabin.

  As we reached the doorway I allowed myself one last remark, turning and addressing all four men. Sanudo was sitting up; his mask had come off and his face was twisted in pain and anger. I said, “Sorry to have robbed you of your fun.”

  The three other men did not answer. Their heads were bent downwards. Sanudo just spat on the floor.

  Once the gondola was moving in the direction of the Giudecca Canal (I will spare you the complicated and heart-wrenching details of getting them, blindfolded and trussed, aboard the boat) I put my hands to the blindfold of the girl and removed it as gently as possible. A pair of dark eyes, startled and fearful, stared at me. I mouthed the word “Sorry” and turned to the other woman; I had to put a hand to either side of her head to get her to stop trembling enough for me to be able to remove her blindfold. The eyes thus revealed were rolling in crazed fear.

  I said, “Sorry” and then took off the gags. For a while both women did little more than pant. Then the older woman pulled her veil down over her face and began to recite a sing-song litany. I imagined she was praying. The girl looked at the older woman and pulled down her own veil. She did not join in the litany, however.

  “Sorry,” I said again. I had no idea, of course, whether they could understand the word. I just hoped my tone was sufficiently soothing to tell them they were no longer in any danger.

  Of course, I should also have untied their wrists; however, I was worried that they might attack me. It would not have been wholly unreasonable on their part.

  I said gently, “We are taking you back home. Home.” I was still sitting next to the older woman and so I tried to communicate to her by gestures that I would untie her wrists; it would involve some obviously unwelcome contact, and I wondered for a moment whether it would be worth asking the old woman from the church to come aboard for a moment. But then I saw that we were already out in the Giudecca Canal, and so I put aside the idea.

  The woman clearly did not understand what I was trying to convey to her and began to grow even more agitated. The girl said something calming to her and then twisted herself on her seat so that her wrists were towards me.

  “That’s right.” I leaned across the cabin and looked at the rope: the knots were painfully tight and would be very difficult to untie. I said, “One moment,” and stepped out of the cabin. “Bepi, you always carry a knife, don’t you?”

  He was looking particularly grim-faced as he rowed. We had hardly exchanged a word since we left the building with the two women; our conversation had been limited to quiet and, we hoped, soothing remarks as we somehow got the women to pass into the cabin. Now he said, “Yes,” and reached inside his jacket with one hand. He passed it down to me. “Better be careful how you show it to them.”

  “Yes,” I said. I had realised this. I put it inside my cloak and stepped back into the cabin. The two women were talking quietly and urgently. I gave them a smile and hoped it looked reassuring rather than crazed. Then I gestured to the girl’s wrists again, and she obligingly turned herself. I drew out the knife. A sudden gasp came from the older woman, but I put up my free hand reassuringly and then as gently as possible slid the blade between the girl’s wrists and the rope. Seconds later the rope parted and she rubbed her wrists with relief. Her mother’s agitated gasping slowed down and eventually she turned round so that I could do the same for her.

  They did not attack me. None the less, I decided it would be best to leave them alone for the moment. They were probably not used to being in the presence of unknown men.

  I stepped out of the cabin and handed the knife back to Bepi.

  “How are they?” he said.

  “Still terrified. Particularly the older one.”

  “And we’re just going to let those shits go free?” he said with sudden asperity.

  “Bepi, they’re all noblemen. I’m a cicerone and you’re a gondolier. And those women are never going to testify.”

  He said nothing for a few seconds. He clearly realised the grim sense of what I had said.

  “We can just be thankful we got there before . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “They really were going to do that?”

  “That was certainly Sanudo’s intention. And the others probably would never have found the guts to go against him.”

  “I would never have guessed it from the way Lele described Tron.”

  “He’d have done it out of pure weakness,” I said. “Or, at least, he wouldn’t have stopped Sanudo from doing it.”

  “And what was it all for?”

  “Don’t ask me. Perhaps they thought it would provoke another war and another Morosini would rise up and retake the Peloponnese. And Crete. And Cyprus. And another Dandolo would retake Constantinople even . . .”

  “They’re just shits,” said Bepi.

  “Yes, that sums it up quite well too.”

  We could now see the Zattere. Bepi was heading straight towards the canal that led towards the church of San Sebastiano. I had only the vaguest idea of the geography of the canals in this western corner of the city, but I presumed Bepi was going to wiggle us up through Dorsoduro and Santa Croce to the far end of the Grand Canal, where the Fontego dei Turchi is situated.

  After a pause he said, “See what you meant about your kind of skills. You did pretty well.”

  “And so did you. Thanks so much for that use of the cudgel. Unusual but effective.”

  “Well, you have to work with what you’ve got.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does this mean you’ve finished this case?” he asked.

  “I don’t think there’s ever such a thing as finishing a case. Not completely.”

  “No, but bringing these two lasses back to the Fontego must count for something.”

  “Yes, you’d think so,” I said. I had been wondering, of course, how we were going to do that. If the Missier Grande were around it might help things, but I had no idea whether that was likely to be the case.

  We were now passing up the canal in front of the church of San Sebastiano. I thought of the splendid ceiling canvases by Veronese depicting the story of Esther, slave-girl raised to the status of queen and saviour of her people. One of the three canvases celebrates the triumph of her cousin Mordecai, who rose to his position by thwarting a conspiracy against the king. It was a painting that had grown dear to me in recent months; it was, after all, the only great painting I knew that paid tribute to a confidential agent.

  “I’m afraid,” I said, “that we might not be able to get the credit we deserve for this.”

  “That’s all right,” said Bepi. “That’s not why we did it, is it?”

  “No,” I said. “I just hope we don’t actually get into trouble. If we can’t report the real perpetrators we have to come up with some explanation of how the women come to be in our gondola.”

  As the church slipped past us to our left I recalled the fact that Mordecai’s triumph consisted in riding on a splendid white horse, formerly used by the king himself. I thought of Paolo Padoan, who had, according to Fabrizio, been terrified of four very different horsemen. Could it really have been Sanudo and his feeble accomplices who had instilled such fear into the poor man? Something told me that the case was not over.

  Ahead of us was the marvellous tracery of the windows of
Palazzo Ariani, like a little offshoot of the Doge’s palace in this western corner of the city. Bepi swung us to the right along the Rio dei Carmini. This was a busy canal, and Bepi had to exercise great skill in weaving amid the various sandoli and gondolas, especially since we were now in Nicolotti territory and his red cap marked him out as a Castellano. A gondolier wearing the dark cap of the Nicolotti called out to ask him if he was lost; he merely smiled ironically and rowed on. We passed the Campo dei Carmini and a short while later encountered the Rio di Ca’ Foscari, which swung right and became the Rio Malcanton, or Bad Corner.

  “You know your way around this side of town very well,” I said.

  “I’ve got an aunt who married a Nicolotto; she lives near Anzolo Raffaele,” he said. After a pause he added, “Some of them aren’t so bad once you get to know them.”

  “I imagine not,” I said.

  “Maybe the same is true of Turks too,” he added philosophically, glancing down at the cabin.

  “Probably,” I said. “Mind you, I don’t think we’re going to have much chance of getting to know these two.”

  “No,” he said. “Probably best to leave them to themselves.”

  We continued to move northwards, swinging westwards briefly along the Rio del Gaffaro and then proceeding north again past the church of the Tolentini. The church of Santa Croce, with its tall bell- tower, partly lost in the fog, marked the entrance to the Grand Canal.

  “So what are we going to do with them?” said Bepi.

  “I think we’ll have to see when we get there,” I said.

  “You mean we’re going to improvise again,” he said with just a hint of scepticism in his voice.

  “I don’t think the cudgel is going to be much use this time,” I said.

  “No, but we could, say, leave them nearby, point them in the right direction and row off.”

  “It sounds good,” I said, “but I think they need to be delivered to their doorstep. I don’t think they’re in any condition to go wandering in the fog.”

  He was silent. “I suppose you’re right,” he said eventually.

  We passed by the church of Santa Lucia, the church of the Scalzi, and then the great mass of the church of San Geremia, where the Cannaregio Canal joins the Grand Canal. As ever this part of the waterway, even on a Sunday, was full of jostling traffic: barges, gondolas and sandoli somehow making their various ways without colliding, even if with a certain amount of caustic commentary and the occasional curse.

  The Fontego appeared through the mist on our right, with its long line of slender arched windows. It had presumably once had an equally elegant ground floor, with a line of wider arches along the canal, but a ramshackle set of smaller shed-like buildings had been untidily stuck on to the façade; the entrance was now by a side door in the broad calle to the right of the palace. There were several gondolas moored here, and there was a group of people standing in front of the doorway. They were mostly Venetians, but there were at least two people in Turkish garbs. Animated conversation was under way.

  There was still room for our gondola among the ones already moored by the bricole. Bepi steered us in delicately. Two gondoliers were standing close by and watching the crowd around the door. Bepi addressed them as he tied us up to the nearest bricola: “What’s going on?”

  “The Inquisitors have come,” said the one with a red Castello cap. “They’re in the building.”

  “Yes, but why?” said Bepi.

  “You haven’t heard? A Turkish ambassador, his wife and their daughter were kidnapped.”

  An ambassador. I winced.

  “How did it happen?”

  It took a while, since each man wanted to make it clear that he knew that extra little fact that was the key to the whole story (“and it was my friend Piero who saw the boat drifting with the gondoliers who’d been tied up”, “yes, but my friend Marco spoke to them straight afterwards . . .”), but eventually we got a clearer picture of what had happened. The gondola had contained the ambassador and his wife and daughter, and they had been intending simply to go down the Grand Canal to see the Piazza from the water, since there was no other way for the women to get an idea of the city; moments after the gondola had left, the ambassador was attacked by the usurping gondoliers and thrust out of the boat at Campo San Stae; the gondola had then disappeared into the mist and no trace of it had been seen since. The moment the ambassador had got back to the Fontego the alarm had been raised; the real gondoliers had then been discovered, tied up and drifting down the canal in a boat, and they had recounted their side of the story. The Turks had immediately summoned the authorities, and the whole place had been swarming with sbirri and agents ever since. However, it was not until the three Inquisitors had turned up that any of them had been allowed into the Fontego. Orders had been given that no one must speak of what had happened. Anyone found recounting the episode was liable to arrest (“They say they’ll have their tongues ripped out,” said one of the gondoliers with gusto; Venetians love to spread wildly exaggerated rumours about the hideous cruelty of their rulers). Of course, that didn’t apply to gondoliers, who could be relied on to keep things to themselves. (One of the gondoliers had given a slightly nervous glance at me at that point, but Bepi had raised a reassuring hand: as a friend of a gondolier I was automatically to be trusted.)

  All the while the story was being recounted I found myself continually glancing back at the door to the cabin, nervously expecting the women to appear at any minute, but for the moment they remained secluded.

  Looking towards the entrance to the Fontego I suddenly saw a small man leave the group and walk towards us. I at once recognised the self-important strut of Marino Basso, pigeon-chest thrust out, pointed chin raised as if he were balancing a glass on it. His burly assistant followed close behind. Basso raised his silver-topped cane in an imperious summoning gesture towards me.

  “Marangon!” he called.

  “Sior Basso,” I said, in as coolly courteous a tone as I could manage.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “My friend Bepi Zennaro just wanted to chat to some friends,” I said.

  “I will have to ask you to leave,” he said without even glancing at Bepi. “I am here with the Inquisitors on important state business, and we cannot have our investigations in any way impeded by people who have nothing to do with the matter.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” I said.

  “Sior Marangon,” he said in a pitying tone, “I think you are rather out of your depth here. This is not a matter for mere gossipmongers.”

  This was certainly not how had I had planned it (if I had indeed planned anything), but it was impossible to resist the provocation. I said in my mildest tone, “I understand you are looking for two missing Turkish women.”

  “Silence,” he snapped. “This must remain absolutely secret.” He now acknowledged the presence of the lowly gondoliers and addressed them severely. “Not a word of what has happened must get abroad. The penalties will be most severe.”

  The gondoliers, including Bepi, all lifted their hands, as if shocked at the very notion of their letting slip a word on the subject.

  I said, “Well, it may have to remain secret, but I still say that Bepi and I can help you.”

  “For goodness’ sake. I have no time to waste . . .” And then his irritated voice died away, for I had leaned over, opened the cabin door and gestured towards the interior; the girl’s veiled head had appeared there for an instant before she retreated nervously into the gloom.

  “Who . . . How . . .”

  I thought to myself that even if I were to be sent to the galleys for this little trick, it would have been worth it for the expression on his face at that moment.

  “I think,” I said, “these are the women you are looking for.” I lifted a hand as Basso tried to board the gondola. “No. They’ve had a severe shock. I think you must summon someone they know from inside the building. They can’t be subjected to any further indignities.�
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  He glared at me but after a few seconds clearly saw the sense of this and strutted back in the direction of the building. His hefty shadow lumbered after him.

  “So now what do we tell them?” said Bepi. He had already put up a hand himself to bar the other gondoliers from boarding. I’m sure they were already picturing themselves in the tavern that evening, outdoing each other with first-hand details of the story of the day. “No,” he said to them. “As my companion said, these women need protection.”

  “I don’t think we’ve much choice,” I said in answer to his question. I lowered my voice so that only he could hear. “Something as close to the truth as possible but without giving any names. One of the Inquisitors is Sanudo’s father.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Bepi. “That’s all we need.”

  “This is the story,” I said, quietly and firmly. “You and I went to the Giudecca to hunt rabbits because your brother told you they could be found close to the lagoon . . .”

  “Which brother?”

  I was about to explode that it didn’t matter when I realised that it did; it was exactly the sort of question they would ask. And then they would ask the brother in question. “All right. You’d heard it from someone in a tavern.”

  “Which tav—”

  “You decide. It doesn’t matter to me. And we were walking round the back behind Saints Cosma and Damiano and we heard cries from this house . . .”

  “Sanudo’s house.”

  “It’s just a ruin. They can make what they want of it. Sanudo will probably deflect all inquiries at that point. And we found these two women tied up and we brought them back to the city. They’re clearly Turkish, so we brought them here. That’s all we know.”

  “The women will tell it differently.”

  “I doubt the Turks will allow the women to be interrogated. Anyway, it’ll have to do for now. Remember that we have the advantage of knowing that they won’t want the truth to come out, so they’ll be happy to go along with our story.”