The Venetian Contract (39 page)

‘Teriaca.’

‘Teriaca. An odd name.’

‘How shall I discover her whereabouts?’

‘My dear fellow, this is Venice,’ said the third tribune. ‘Have her followed.’

When Feyra emerged from Palladio’s house after an hour, so buoyed up was she by the success of the day and by the old man’s company, she did not notice the watcher in the shadows.

She thought over her conversation with the architect and smiled into the dark, shaking her head a little. He was unchanged, so obsessed with the church that grew brick by brick on Giudecca, telling her in great detail about each joist and buttress, that he had forgotten to ask her why she was here, and dressed like a Venetian to boot.

He did ask after the doctor, though, and confided in her that he felt a fluttering sensation in his heart. She’d given him some white willow bark to chew from her medicine belt, and also gave him a small green vial of Teriaca. Feyra had eyed him sternly till he’d taken the draught down. She had left him cheerful enough, exhorting her to visit his site one day. She’d smiled, but knew she never would. She would not set foot in a Christian church. After all the lies she had told this week in the foreign god’s name, she feared terrible vengeance if she should cross the threshold of his house.

But as she hurried down the
calli
in the direction of the Fondamenta Nuove, the smile vanished from her face. She could hear footsteps in the darkness mimicking hers. She held the horse mask to her face and pulled up the hood of her voluminous riding cape. Perhaps she was imagining things, but there the footsteps were again, slowing and speeding to match hers, stopping when she stopped.

She changed direction when she could and doubled back, but still they came. She cursed the impulse that had led her to Palladio’s house. In her unease she took the wrong turning and fetched up in a tiny alley, enclosed by dark and looming palaces. She ran down it, but it was a dead end. High up on the wall was a shrine of the mother and child, lit by a guttering candle stub flickering like a warning beacon.

She looked up at the tableau, rooted to the spot. She had seen other such scenes since she’d been in the city, on practically every corner. But the eyes of this mother did not look kindly upon the son who reached up to her shining face: this was an icon of an older Christianity. Here mother and son, their faces exactly alike except in size, their heads backed by circles of gold, looked straight out, accusing her of borrowing a god that was not her own.

Retribution was coming.

Her pursuer was behind her, close.

Terrified, she turned at last and saw a black figure standing at the end of the alley, tall as a hanging tree and faceless under a black cowl.

He walked towards her, slowly now, confident that she was trapped. His cloak lifted in the breeze and fear clutched at her throat. Was this Death, then, still stalking
the alleys, come to collect her new-forged debt to the Christians’ god?

He came close. ‘Feyra Adalet bint Timurhan Murad,’ he said, in her own language. ‘I have been seeking you for a long time.’

He threw back his hood.

It was Takat Turan.

Chapter 35

^‘
I
was the one who denounced you.’

The words dangled around them both like corpses on a gibbet.

Feyra’s eyes widened. She looked into Takat Turan’s face. He was thinner than she remembered, but still neatly groomed, his beard trimmed and his hair oiled. It was the eyes she remembered most clearly, dark as chips of jet and glittering with a nameless fire. She remembered how he had saved her from the crew of
Il Cavaliere. ‘Why
?’

‘For seven days I was sick unto death. I could not return to you or your father in the infidels’ ruin. When I was well enough to go back to the temple where I’d left you, there was nothing but a gang of masons building there and you were gone. I feared you dead, yet a boatman remembered you but not your father.’ Takat Turan bent his head, and his respectful pause was strangely at odds with what he’d revealed. ‘From then on I watched and waited and found you eventually in the house of the architect.’

Feyra felt suddenly angry. She turned on him. ‘Why did you do it? Why would you place me in danger? You who defended me, you who served my father until his last hours?’

Takat Turan spread his hands as if he were surprised. ‘I
thought to get you nearer to the Doge. Is that not what you wanted? If you were arrested you would be taken to the belly of his palace, where the dungeons are.’

‘To be tried and tortured?’ She was aghast.

‘If that is what our master requires, we must bear it as we may.’

Feyra began, suddenly, to feel afraid. His utterings sounded reasonable, but their meaning was insanity. Now she could put a name to the fire in his glittering eyes. He was a true fanatic.

‘How would that help me to meet the Doge?’

‘Meet him?’ Takat Turan laughed. The incongruous sound echoed down the alley and back. ‘You mean
kill
him! Is that not why we are here?’

Feyra took a step back, her shoulder blades pressed against the cold stones of the palazzo behind her. She willed herself to be silent.

‘But then you slipped away, and I did not see you again. I gathered together everything necessary and as the day drew near, was about to act alone.’

He opened his cloak and took out a small, muddy ball. She noticed again his missing fingers.

‘Persian naphtha,’ he said, ‘beloved of the Crusaders, the most incendiary substance known to man. You see, all is ready bar the details.’ He took hold of her shoulders in an iron grip. ‘And then God decreed that I should see you again, in heretic weeds, telling heathen lies to gather money for our enterprise. I commend you. I knew you would not run, I knew you would finish your father’s mission, once he had told you the whole of the design of the Sultan – the delight of my eyes and the light of my heart.’

‘My
father
?’ Was it possible that Timurhan had been
complicit in this second crime, to burn the Duke of Venice in his own palace and fire his city? Or had her father known only of the Plague? Feyra forced herself to remain calm. She could not afford to reveal how little she knew. ‘And now?’

‘The second stage of the Great Tribulation,’ he whispered, the sibilants in his voice hissing in competition with the votive candle. ‘
It is time to purify with fire
.’

Feyra looked into his eyes, burning with tiny reflected flames, and began to shake. ‘When?’ she choked out.

‘Tomorrow night. There is a feast among the infidels – the great square will be crowded with the filthy citizens. They have been visited by the pestilence but some survived. The unquenchable fire shall harvest them. The Doge will burn, his palace will burn, and all the city too. And now
you
have been sent to aid me.’

Feyra’s head beat with her pulses, but she kept her voice steady. ‘How will we gain entry?’

‘That is the easiest of the matter. We get ourselves taken by the guards.’ He took hold of her arm in a vice-like grasp.

She pulled back. ‘And what will become of us? The Sultan’s faithful?’

‘We shall burn too. But we shall be saved, and transported to Jannah, according to the will of God. Come –’ he clapped his hands. ‘There is much to do and only a day to do it. I will take you to my dwelling place; it is safe, and no one will find us there, for it is close by a church.’ He smiled at the irony, as if they spoke of inclement weather.

He is mad
, Feyra thought.

‘Your infidel coin will buy the kindling that we need for the oil and the fuses; yes …’ He turned to look at her once again, and she saw that he was bent on one purpose alone, the service of his earthly and his heavenly master. ‘And your
disguise and mastery of their filthy tongue will aid me – for I have not their language, nor your innocent looks.’

He marched her to the mouth of the alley, and on to a larger thoroughfare, over a bridge and by the side of a canal flat and still as a smoked mirror. She was close to Palladio’s ward but she knew that to run to the architect would avail her nothing – Takat already knew the house and would find her there at once. She must get back to the Lazzaretto and to Annibale and pray that Takat did not know of the island’s existence. She knew these streets and must pray that he did not. She tried to walk steadily, but as they passed a tiny
sotoportego
Feyra twisted away from his grip and ran.

She was reminded of the first time she had fled through this city, but this time she ran from an even greater danger than the guards. The great skirt of the green dress hampered her legs, her ribs pained her, but finally she reached the waterfront. She ran across the last bridge in the direction of a knot of friendly boatmen.

Takat Turan loomed out of the dark and barred her way. She screamed before she could stop herself, and the boatmen turned to watch the struggle. As Takat put his hand over her mouth she bit it as hard as she could and shouted, in her best Venetian, ‘Help me! He is a Turk!
Muselmano
!
Muselmano
!’

The boatmen, seeing a Venetian woman attacked in the dark, hurled themselves across the bridge, and fell upon Takat Turan. Thrown clear, Feyra clung to the balustrade of the bridge and watched as Takat was pinned to the other side. His head was punched repeatedly until it lolled back on his shoulders, his lips and eyes swelling and oozing gore. Stray curs came and twined around his feet to lick the pooling blood. Feyra’s hands flew to her mouth.

‘Say something,’ bawled one of the burly men, his great oar arms crushing Takat’s neck, his spittle falling on Takat’s swollen face. ‘Say something so I can be sure, before I turn you in.’

Takat spoke then, venomously. ‘I curse you and your Devil’s city. All of you will burn.’

Only Feyra understood the words, but the boatmen understood the accent well enough. ‘Take him to the constables,’ said one. Takat Turan went suddenly limp. As he was dragged away, he looked back at Feyra, a little smile playing about his lips. She could feel his eyes on her long after he had passed round the corner, the flame still burning there.

Feyra waited until he was out of sight before she gave a loitering boatman her directions to the island, low-voiced, confident that no one but he could hear the name of her destination. Once she was seated in the coracle she began to shake. She had put Takat Turan exactly where he wanted to be: in the gaols, right in the belly of the Doge’s palace. But she also knew he would not act until tomorrow; he would not deviate from his plan. He needed the citizens to be gathered for their festival, so he could inflict as much damage as possible.

At the Lazzaretto Novo Feyra barely paused to pay the boatman. She ran through the gatehouse with scarcely a greeting to Salve, running only for the square of light that was Annibale’s window. She knew he would be waiting up for her, as he did every day, to count their sequins, guilty as usurers, before the fire.

Feyra burst through the door and found him just as she had the first time she laid eyes on him, sitting hunched, staring into the fire, his curls tumbled forward. Her heart failed for a second but there was no time for nostalgia.

‘I need you to help me,’ she gasped. ‘Your Doge is in danger.’

He stood at once. ‘What do you mean? What has happened?’

‘The Red Horse is coming.’