A Death in the Venetian Quarter Read online

“He’s good,” said Henry begrudgingly.

  “Is it too late to send for Alfonso?” I asked.

  “Come on, Feste,” urged Cnut.

  I stepped to the edge of the tower, trying to get the interior rhymes together as I struck the opening chord:

  “My word.

  I’ve heard

  Of lyrics less absurd

  From drunken boys.

  And braver noise

  From the roisterings of a bird.

  The field is yours;

  We’d rather stay indoors,

  And watch you fall

  Before this wall.

  That is assured.

  Enjoy your final meal,

  And then come sup on steel,

  ‘Til you feel

  That this zeal

  Is cured.

  You praise your boat

  Because it can float.

  Well, friend, so can a turd.”

  Howls from the Varangians. Henry clouted me so hard on the back that I would have gone over the edge of the tower but for Cnut’s quick grab.

  Not exactly a proper troubadour sentiment from either of us, but this wasn’t a musical tournament at Fecamp or the Courts of Love—it was a declaration of hostilities. And I was a fool, not a troubadour. The higher Tantalo would go in his songs, the baser would be my reply.

  Tantalo bowed to me from his perch.

  “Well sung, Fool,” he shouted. “We’ll call it a draw for now. The challenge will be renewed when Alexios sits on the throne.”

  “He sits there now,” I replied.

  “I like that,” he said. “You ask no quarter, and you give none, as we say in Venice. Well, I must bid you farewell. As Odysseus said to the Cyclops, remember my name!”

  A rock sailed over our heads, splashing well short of the Eagle. Others followed, the crowd surging forward with glee and vituperations. The fleet’s oars bit the water as the aspiring Emperor was hustled below decks. The ships pulled slowly away, back to the safety of Skutari.

  Only rocks were thrown. No one facing a siege was about to waste a vegetable.

  “All right, Cnut, I’m going to feed this poor fool,” said Henry. “Keep an eye to the north, lad. If you see more than ten ships, sound the alarum.”

  We walked down the ramp as the watchmen relayed their calls from tower to tower, up and down the seawalls.

  “Your opposite has a good voice,” commented Henry as we walked towards the Hodegon bastion where the Varangians were quartered.

  “One of the best,” I agreed.

  “You know him?”

  “We’ve crossed paths a few times,” I said.

  “Was one of those times two nights ago?” asked Henry.

  “Why do you want to know that?” I asked.

  “I have no great objection to dying in battle,” he said. “But I like to know that it was for something worth dying for.”

  “I thought soldiers just followed orders,” I said.

  “And who gives you yours?”

  “I’m not a soldier, Captain, I’m an entertainer. I don’t get orders, I take requests.”

  We entered the garrison and raided the larder.

  “My point being,” continued Henry with his mouth full, “that if there are secret negotiations toward a truce, but the powers that be still want to put on a good show for the locals, then I’m not a soldier anymore. I’m also an entertainer.”

  “Lord knows there’s no honor in that.”

  “No offense, Feste. So, what’s going on?”

  “There’s no truce, Captain.”

  “Any prospects on the horizon?”

  “There’s nothing on the horizon except Venetian ships.”

  “Then war it is,” he said, satisfied.

  “What do you think of this boy, Alexios?” I asked.

  “What’s he to us?” he said. “We’ve sworn an oath to the Emperor.”

  “As you did to Isaakios before him.”

  He was silent, swishing the ale around in his cup and watching the whorls.

  “We were in the city when that happened,” he said. “He was in Kypsella. By the time word came, there was nothing we could do.”

  “You could have honored your oath,” I said. “Rose against his usurper.”

  “Another pointless battle,” he said.

  “How so? I’m not disagreeing with you, but why did your oath ean so little then?”

  “Because Isaakios had been blinded,” he replied. “We were told that according to local custom a blind man could not sit on the Byzantine throne. We had therefore been absolved of our oath to Isaakios.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “The leaders of the garrison then were Will and Phil,” he said. “I believe that you know them.”

  “The sources of some of my more interesting requests,” I said dryly.

  “I thought as much. They’ve done quite well for themselves since persuading us that passivity was honorable.” He drank his ale. “To the Emperor,” he muttered.

  “To the Emperor,” I echoed. “What do you think of him? Just between us.”

  “How do I know it stays just between us?”

  “I give you the word of a fool.”

  He rinsed his cup in a water barrel and put it back on the shelf.

  “I’ve heard things about you,” he said.

  “What sort of things?”

  “That you play a different game than the rest of us.”

  “A jester plays many kinds of games. You’ve known me for a year, Captain. What do you think I am?”

  “Someone who has saved some lives,” he said.

  “A worthy virtue.”

  “And ended others,” he added.

  I shrugged.

  “But the others were worth ending,” he concluded.

  “Then still virtuous, if not exactly worthy,” I observed.

  “They say you saved Isaakios. Is that true?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you visit him often?” he asked curiously. “He’s in the Chalke Prison now.”

  “I know. I see him about twice a moon, with the knowledge and blessing of the Emperor. Brotherly love or guilt, I know not which.”

  “A captain of the Varangians can’t pay social calls like that,” he said. “Next time you visit, tell him that Henry wishes him well.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  He picked up his helmet. “And, in answer to your question, the Emperor can go hang himself for all any of us cares.” He put the helmet on and left.

  I rinsed my cup and ambled across the Augustaion, trying to gauge the mood of the citizens. For the most part, they were chattering away. The sentiments I picked up were unremittingly anti-Venetian, and the return of Alexios did not impress them the slightest. He was perceived as a puppet of the Doge, although the reality was that more than one hand pulled his strings.

  There were two Alexioses and one throne, I mused. If neither went away, then there would be war. The old one would not leave, and the young one could not. And that was Ranieri cutting across my field of view and interrupting my train of thought.

  I had my cloak on in a trice. He had not marked my motley, fortunately, and in the great throng of people in constant motion it was not hard to follow him unobserved.

  He was heading back to the Great Palace but veered to the right before reaching the Chalke Prison by the entrance. He cut over past the public entrance to the Hippodrome. As he did, a small, pale rabbit of a man came through a small grove of mulberry trees, looking around nervously. I hung back, watching some grooms exercising a group of racehorses in a paddock nearby. The two talked briefly. I saw a small pouch emerge from Ranieri’s cloak and a small wicker box handed over in exchange. Then the two separated, Ranieri walking behind me as I chatted with a stableboy, my hat concealing my face. The rabbit went into the building that once housed the old baths of Zeuxippos.

  Once again, I found myself with two men to follow, only this time there was no Plossus to
help me. I decided to tail Ranieri and check on the rabbit later.

  The Horologion showed noon as we passed it. The Venetian walked briskly through the covered portion of the Mese, not even bothering to check and see if he was being followed. I took my normal precautions nevertheless, staying safely back a good hundred paces while checking to make sure that no one was following me.

  Yet, for all that, I was to learn nothing further. Ranieri simply entered the Venetian quarter and resumed business at his table in the embolum, chatting casually with everyone in the room, especially Ruzzini. I saw no further transactions with the wicker box he had obtained by Zeuxippos. I watched as well as I could, but hanging about looking from the outside was risking discovery. I gave up and left.

  First order of business upon my return home was the second part of my payment of kisses to my wife, which left us both breathless and giddy. It was my turn to cook, and as the others arrived, I filled them in on the events of the morning.

  “A wicker box?” wondered Rico. “About how big?”

  “The size of your hand, my friend,” I said.

  He held his palm before his eyes.

  “Not a document,” he said. “Too little to be a spice of any value.”

  “A jewel,” guessed Aglaia. “Or a ring.”

  “A seal of office,” offered Plossus. “Useful for forging orders and sowing confusion during the upcoming war.”

  “That sounds promising,” I said. “And that would make sense for someone working in the Great Palace. There’s mostly governmental offices there now. Anyone know what Zeuxippos is used for nowadays?”

  “Never been there,” said Rico. “Hasn’t been used for baths in decades.”

  “I thought it was a museum,” said Aglaia.

  “No, I think it’s now a factory of some kind,” said Plossus. “But I have no idea what they make there.”

  “Well, we’ll have to investigate further. I don’t know if this has anything to do with Bastiani’s death, but we haven’t much else to go on.”

  “If only we knew who the Crusaders’ contact in Venice is,” mused Aglaia.

  “No hope of that from our colleagues,” I said.

  “How is that?” she asked.

  “Because of what Tantalo said after the tenso.”

  “Yes, I wanted to ask you about that,” said Plossus. “What were his exact words again?”

  “‘You ask no quarter, and you give none, as we say in Venice,’” I quoted. “Then he said, ‘Well, I must bid you farewell. As Odysseus said to the Cyclops, remember my name!’”

  “The first part is obvious,” said Plossus. “He used ‘Venice’ and ‘quarter’ in the same sentence. But does that mean that we were supposed to find someone named Odysseus there?”

  “Or Ulysses?” asked Rico.

  “Maybe a man with one eye,” suggested Aglaia.

  “We can stop the search before we start,” I said. “Odysseus did use his own name when he and his men rowed away from the Cyclops’s shore. But Tantalo is rarely that obvious. As the story went, before he escaped from the monster’s cave, he had told him that his name was Nobody, so that when the blinded creature called to his fellows and tried to tell them what happened, he told them that Nobody had done this to him.”

  “And so they left him, laughing,” remembered Aglaia.

  “Yes. I think what Tantalo’s trying to say is that nobody is the Crusaders’ contact in the Venetian quarter.”

  TWELVE

  Nos fom austor et ylh foro aigro, e cassem los si cum lops fait mouto. (We were hawks and they were herons, and we chased them as the wolf chases the sheep.)

  —RAIMBAUT DE VAQUEIRAS, “EPIC LETTER” (TRANS. JOSEPH LINSKILL)

  The fleet kept to Skutari the next day. I wanted to speak with Philoxenites again, so I joined Rico and my wife on their walk to Blachernae.

  “If there is no Crusader contact in the Venetian quarter, then what exactly are we looking for?” asked Aglaia. “And don’t tell me Nobody. That was a tired joke when Homer used it.”

  “Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Enrico Dandolo,” intoned Rico. “No, it lacks the poetic ring. I’ll leave the balladry to Raimbaut and company. Maybe they can turn this farce into something pretty.”

  “Bastiani was still an informant,” I said. “That’s frequently reason enough. Something is going on there. That weapons cache tells us that.”

  “But that may just be for defending the quarter,” said Rico. “We haven’t found any conclusive evidence of a plot, let alone a murder.”

  “Shall we give up?” I asked.

  Aglaia shot me an astonished look.

  “I’ve never heard you say that before,” she said.

  “I bring it up as a possibility. One death goes unexplained. The world won’t come to an end.”

  She sighed. “Let’s continue. I think that there’s something there, although I don’t know what it has to do with us.”

  “Rico?”

  He shrugged. “It passes the time.”

  “An enthusiastic endorsement. Very well. We’ll go on.”

  When Rico and I came to the throne room, the Emperor was seated on his sawhorse while his servants wheeled him around an enormous model of the city and its surroundings. His generals, minus Michael Stryphnos, looked on intently.

  “Ah, Feste!” he called when he noticed me. “I heard of your noble exploits facing down the fleet. Well done, Fool. Here’s gold for you.”

  He tossed me a small pouch. I bowed.

  “But all he did was sing,” commented a general.

  “He stood tall and defeated his man,” barked the Emperor. “He’s the first hero of the war. Maybe I should make him my commander.”

  “The men won’t follow a fool,” protested the general.

  “Not another one, anyway,” I said.

  “Well, back to work,” said the Emperor. “Where will they make their landing? What’s your guess?”

  “They won’t attack the seawalls,” said Laskaris. “There’s no room to land at either the straits or Marmara. The Golden Horn is blocked by the chain. That leaves either the north shore or south of the city. My guess is north. It’s an easier landing.”

  “So, that’s where we’ll wait for them,” said the Emperor. “Archers, crossbows, and Varangians at the beach, and petrarries set up on the stone bridge. If we have to fall back, we’ll make our stand there.”

  “What about the Imperial Guard?” asked their commander.

  “The Imperial Guard guards the Imperial Person,” said the Emperor. “You stay with me. Do we have the Pisan and Genoese representatives here?”

  Two men stepped forward and bowed.

  “Gentlemen, your fortunes are tied to my own,” said the Emperor. “If we prevail, there will certainly be no more Venetian trade in this city. You would find that situation advantageous, would you not?”

  They agreed, bowing some more.

  “So, we need your help in preserving our empire. Say, five hundred men in armor apiece. And don’t tell me you don’t have armor. I know what goes on in the quarters as well as any man. Hm?”

  “We will be happy to defend our quarters against attack,” said the Pisan representative.

  “Oh, no need for that,” said the Emperor. “You’ve got that lovely high seawall covered with Varangians protecting you, not to mention the chain across the harbor. No, I’m going to send you somewhere more useful. Get your men together and await my orders at the Galata Tower.”

  The representatives looked at each other uneasily, but bowed and left without any protest.

  “How is the mood of the city?” asked the Emperor.

  “They have rallied behind you as they have never rallied before,” said Philoxenites smoothly. “They have every confidence that you will drive the invaders back into the sea.”

  “Good, good,” said the Emperor, pleased.

  He went back to his battle plans. Philoxenites nodded to me and left. I followed him.

  �
�What do you think of his tactics?” he asked me when we reached his offices.

  “I’m not a general,” I said.

  “Neither am I,” he replied. “Neither, I think, is he. It’s the plan of a timid man, not a hero.”

  “Heroes die,” I said.

  “Sometimes. But sometimes they achieve victory. I have my doubts that the Emperor will manage the same. The citizens are wondering openly how he managed to let the navy dwindle so badly, and the news about the five hundred knights lost won’t stay secret for long. The morale could drop like a stone in a moment.”

  “Therefore what?”

  He closed the door.

  “How was your meeting with your contacts?”

  “We met. I suggested that they break the news to the troops that the boy had no support in the city. His reception at the seawalls should have confirmed that nicely.”

  “Yet they still may come,” he said. “Did you learn anything else?”

  “One thing I wanted to tell you,” I said. “There is no Crusader contact in the Venetian quarter.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. “Impossible. Bastiani himself was one.”

  “Or at least that’s what he wanted you to think,” I said. “A ruse to obtain your patronage, perhaps.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But there must be someone inside waiting for the Doge’s orders.”

  “I have seen Ranieri acting oddly,” I said. “I followed him to the Great Palace yesterday.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Where did he go?”

  “He met with someone who came out of Zeuxippos,” I said. “I don’t know the man.”

  He looked at me and started laughing.

  “Fool, you disappoint me,” he said. “Of course he met with someone from Zeuxippos. It houses the Imperial Silk Factory. Why wouldn’t a silk merchant be going there?”

  Chagrin and disappointment. One of the few leads I had, shot down in an instant.

  “Well, you’ve solved that mystery,” I said. “It doesn’t get me any closer to finding Bastiani’s murderer.”

  “That may no longer be a priority,” he said. “I may need you to contact your friends again. I want you to sound them out about that final possibility we once discussed.”

  “Which you don’t want to say directly anymore.”