I saw him clearly, and the shadow that he cast across my mind. Apart from his hate, Nicolo Polo was well briefed in not wanting to make me a member of the company adventuring to Cathay. If I could pay my way he would suffer me to do so; he had persuaded himself that I could not earn it. I was not enough like Felix.
“I’ll have a go at it with you,” Felix told me. “But don’t ask me to touch a leper. It would make me puke.”
An hour short of midnight, Felix’s crew rowed the Grazia da San Pietro into the canal that approached the lazar house from the lagoon. My outer clothes, although worn thin, and bought cheap, looked finer than any I had ever worn, fit for a patrician’s son. Underneath were the gay-colored shirt and hard-woven woolen breeches favored by fishermen. After bathing with oil and soap until, he said, he smelled sweet as the Doge’s bride, Felix had similar garments next to his skin and a gondolier’s habit without. We left the ship in the shadow of a little-used bridge, climbed onto the bank, and at the next bridge hailed a vacant gondola. While I hung back in the gloom, Felix spoke the first lines of our play.
“My master will pay double for your boat,” he told the gondolier, “but only under specified conditions.”
“I’ll hear ’em and decide,” the fellow answered grumpily.
“He’s a young nobleman, as you can well suppose, and he’ll meet tonight a young wife of—let us say someone of a station equal to his own. He wishes me to conduct them for a matter of two hours while you take your ease in an inn. So to attract no attention, I have put off my master’s livery and donned the habit of a public gondolier, but it was one that I wore before I entered his service, and you need have no fear for your craft, for he’ll pay for every speck of paint I knock from her fat sides.”
Already Felix had exceeded his instructions. The matter was the same, but couched in livelier language. Indeed he imitated perfectly a high-spirited rascally servingman of a lecherous young lord. I was afraid that the show was too good for the boat owner to believe.
At least the man was no kill-joy. Like a true Venetian, he entered into the game.
“A young nobleman, say you! I’ve had an old nobleman, a member of the Council if you must know, board me unmasked with the wedded daughter of a princely house. Wild horses couldn’t drag from me what happened thereafter, but if I were one to gossip——”
He paused, as though in fair play.
“God knows an oyster is a public crier compared to you, and my master trusts you further than his own grandma,” Felix cried, rising to the occasion. “It’s his sensibilities, not his reputation, that demand the privacy. If you won’t respect them, say so, and I’ll look elsewhere.”
“I’m a man of sensibilities myself.”
I waited Felix’s reply with as much pleasant expectancy as the gondolier. Fishermen are famed both as delightful liars and as skilled at repartee.
“Then you’ll sympathize with my master? You know the sort that must break their bladders before they find ease in an open boat. He’ll turn his back on his best friend even in the wildwood, and as for sitting next to a lady in a public jakes, why, he’d sink through the boards. When he’s frolicking with a light-o’-love, the squeak of a mouse will unman him. So you can imagine that with arms laden with forbidden fruit and a stranger behind his table——”
“Say no more, my friend. Only pay me in advance, with an extra grosso to spend in entertainment while I wait, and leave my mother—for she bears me as tenderly as my dam once did—moored under San Paolo’s bridge.”
3
It was a pleasant beginning for our adventure, and, we trusted, a good omen. But our cheer began to pall as we drew near the fortresslike pile that housed the living dead. Truly Venice was famed for the good health of its citizenry, doubtless by the blessing of San Marco, yet there were enough lazars of all sorts to pack it full as a dunghill is with worms. It stood in a gloomy backwater among towers fending off the sun; its stones were gray with cold slime; silt and seaweed fouled its doorways. Every window was barred, and all were dark except those of the guardrooms, which were bright enough for a gala night. The air became tainted an arrow cast distant. As we drew nearer a company of rats swam in a V-shape pack across our bows, climbed onto a dock, and vanished in a crack in the wall. There were at least fifty of the loathsome beasts following a captain as big as a half-grown cat, and I wondered to what feast they had been summoned.
We tied the gondola to a piling where I had seen others of its like in the last few days, and where presumably it would attract no attention. Then, lowering our caps and pulling up our neck-cloths, we made our way to a recess near the iron gate known as Dead Man’s Portal, where a rushlight flickered and cast a rigadoon of shadows. This gate should open about midnight to let the outer guard bear the day’s accumulation of corpses to the charnel boats, from which they were thrown into a mass grave. Ordinarily the door would be locked behind them by Messer Vico, the junior warden, and opened only for their readmittance. Since we had sent him a prearranged signal, we could expect him to omit the precaution tonight as though by a fault of memory. The dead had to be identified by a town watchman at the end of the alley, prayed over, and shrouded before being stowed on the boats, so we could count on at least a half an hour to effect Haran-din’s rescue.
My wait very soon grew chill. Since the night was warm, I could only attribute this fact to cold sweat. To try to conceal it from Felix, I kept up a pretense of gay whisperings, but apparently he saw through it, or perhaps was himself under more strain than his debonair manner revealed. In any case he brought forth a leathern flask containing a pint of strong wine, which we shared with great pleasure.
We were enjoying its warmth when we were given a great scare as well. An officer of some kind, bearing a pike, emerged from the shadows and came toward us along the moonlit quay. If we ran the day was lost; if he found us and raised an outcry, our fix would be even worse; if he attacked us there might be an added load for the charnel boat. Our best hope was that he would pass by without seeing us. And it seemed to be winning when he stopped, held his weapon ready, and spoke in low tones.
“I’d a notion I’d find you here.”
“Who are you, friend?” I asked.
“Captain Vico, the junior warden. I received the signal, and thought I’d take a look at you, and if you appeared a gentleman, I’d lend you a hand.”
I knew the smell of this full well, and it was greasy.
“When are you going to unlock the door?” I asked with growing boldness. I did not know its source or whether it was quite real. Anyway, it had an instantaneous effect on Messer Vico.
“The bolt’s slid already, but the coast’s not clear until the guards bring out the stuff.”
“You’ve a ring of keys on your belt. Does one of them unlock the Infidel’s cell?”
“No, signor, only the keys of the outer rooms. But the lock will be easy to break, and you’ll have plenty of time, some of which is by my special provision.”
His low voice had become gleeful in an obnoxious way. It was like the happy croak of vultures as they hop toward carrion. I did not want to ask him how he had lengthened the time, but saw no way to dodge it.
“How did you work it, Captain?”
“In a way you’d never think of. Last night I had the kitchen knaves fix a mess of kale, green and half-cooked. Maybe you know it will burst your belly with colic, and flux you worse than spoiled fish. I don’t mean you, your Honor. I mean them who has to eat it, when they’ve nothing else.”