“My uncle does not appear to be a man much concerned about laws,” I said, rather proudly, “or even much afraid of burning. But Mordecai, I cannot do it without your participation. We must make the break together. What say you?”
He was silent for a while, then he mumbled, “I daresay burning is preferable to a slow death from the pettechie, the prison disease. And I long ago outlived every last one of my relations.”
So the next night came, and when the coprifuoco tolled and the guards commanded us to put out our lamp, we only shaded its light with the pissòta pail. When the guards had gone on by, I spilled most of the fish oil from the lamp onto my bed planks. Mordecai contributed his outer robe—it was quite green with mold and mildew and would make the blaze smokier—and we bundled that under my bed and lighted it from the lamp’s rag wick. In just moments the cell was clouded black and the wood had begun to flicker with flames. Mordecai and I fanned our arms to help the smoke out through the door hole, and clamored loudly, “Fuoco! Al fuoco!” and heard running feet in the corridor.
Then, as my uncle had predicted, there was commotion and confusion, and Mordecai and I were ordered out of the cell so the men with water buckets could crawl in. Smoke billowed out with us, and the guards shoved us out of their way. There was quite a number of them in the passage, but they paid us little heed. So, aided by the concealing smoke and darkness, we sneaked farther down the corridor and around a bend in it. “Now this way!” said Mordecai, and he set off at a speed remarkable for a man of his age. He had been in the prison long enough to have learned its passages, and he led me this way and that, until we glimpsed light at the end of one long hall. He stopped there at a corner, peered around it and waved me on. We turned into a shorter corridor furnished with two or three wall lamps, but otherwise empty.
Mordecai knelt, motioned for me to help, and I saw that one large square stone in the bottom of the wall had iron grips bolted to it. Mordecai seized one, I the other, and we heaved and the stone came away, revealing itself to be shallower than the others around it. Wonderfully fresh air, damp and smelling of salt, swept in through the opening. I stood up straight to take a gratefully deep inhalation, and in the next instant I was knocked down. A guard had sprung from somewhere and was shouting for help.
There was a moment of even more confusion than before. The guard threw himself upon me and we thrashed about on the stone floor, while Mordecai crouched by the hole and regarded us with open mouth and wide eyes. I found myself briefly on top of the guard, and took advantage of it. I knelt so that he had my full weight on his chest and my knees pinned his arms to the floor. I clamped both hands over his loudly flapping mouth, turned to Mordecai and gasped, “I cannot hold—for long.”
“Here, lad,” he said. “Let me do that.”
“No. One can escape. You go.” I heard more running feet somewhere in the corridors. “Hurry!”
Mordecai stuck his feet out through the hole, then turned to ask, “Why me?”
Between grapplings and thrashings, I got out a few last words in spurts, “You gave—my choice—of spiders. Get out!”
Mordecai gave me a wondering look, and he said slowly, “The reward of a mitzva is another mitzva,” and he slid out through the opening and vanished. I heard a distant splash out there beyond the dark hole, and then I was overwhelmed.
I was roughly manhandled along the passages and literally thrown into a new cell. I mean another very ancient cell, of course, but a different one. It had only a bed shelf for furniture, and no door hole and not so much as a candle stub for light. I sat there in the darkness, my bruises aching, and reviewed my situation. In attempting the escape, I had forfeited all hope of ever proving my innocence of the earlier charge. In failing to escape, I had doomed myself to burn. I had just one reason to be thankfuclass="underline" I now had a private cell. I had no cellmate to watch me weep.
Since the guards, for a considerable while thereafter, spitefully refrained from feeding me even the awful prison gruel, and the darkness and monotony were unrelieved, I have no idea how long I was alone in the cell before a visitor was admitted. It was the Brother of Justice again.
I said, “I assume that my uncle’s permission to visit has been revoked.”
“I doubt that he would willingly come,” said Brother Ugo. “I understand he became quite irate and profane when he saw that the nephew he hauled from the water had turned into an elderly Jew.”
“And, since there is no further need for your advocacy,” I said resignedly, “I assume you have come only in the guise of prisoner’s comforter.”
“At any rate, I bring news you should find comforting. The Council this morning elected a new Doge.”
“Ah, yes. They were postponing the election until they had the sassìn of Doge Zeno. And they have me. Why should you think I find that comforting?”
“Perhaps you forget that your father and uncle are members of that Council. And since their miraculous return from their long absence, they are quite the most popular members of the community of merchants. Therefore, in the election, they could exert noticeable influence on the votes of all the merchant nobles. A man named Lorenzo Tiepolo was eager to become Doge, and in return for the merchants’ bloc of votes, he was prepared to make certain commitments to your father and uncle.”
“Such as what?” I asked, not daring to hope.
“It is traditional that a new Doge, on his accession, proclaims some amnesties. The Serenità Tiepolo is going to forgive your felonious commission of arson, which permitted the escape of one Mordecai Cartafilo from this prison.”
“So I do not burn as an arsonist,” I said. “I merely lose my hand and my head as a murderer.”
“No, you do not. You are right that the sassìn has been captured, but you are wrong about its being you. Another man has confessed to the sassinàda.”
Fortunately the cell was small or I should have fallen down. But I only reeled and slumped against the wall.
The Brother went on, at an infuriatingly slow pace. “I told you I brought news of comfort. You have more advocates than you know, and they have all been busy in your behalf. That zudìo you freed, he did not just keep on running, or take ship to some distant land. He did not even hide in the warrens of the Jews’ burghèto. Instead, he went to visit a priest—not a rabìno, a real Christian priest—one of the under-priests of the San Marco Basilica itself.”
I said, “I tried to tell you about that priest.”
“Well, it seems the priest had been the Lady Ilaria’s secret lover, but she turned bitter toward him when she so nearly became our Dogaressa and then did not. When she put away the priest from her affections, he became remorseful of having done such a vile deed as murder, and to no profitable end. Of course, he might still have kept silent, and kept the matter between himself and God. But then Mordecai Cartafilo called on him. It seems the Jew spoke of some papers he holds in pawn. He did not even show them, he had only to mention them, and that was enough to turn the priest’s secret remorse into open repentance. He went to his superiors and made full confession, waiving the privilege of the confessional. So he is now under house arrest in his canònica chambers. The Dona Ilaria is also confined to her house, as an accomplice in the crime.”
“What happens next?”
“All must await the new Doge’s taking office. Lorenzo Tiepolo will not wish the very start of his Dogato made notorious, for this case now involves rather more prominent persons than just a boy playing bravo. The lady widow of the murdered Doge-elect, a priest of San Marco … well, the Doge Tiepolo will do everything possible to minify the scandal. He will probably allow the priest to be tried in camera by an ecclesiastical court, instead of the Quarantia. My guess is that the priest will be exiled to some remote parish in the Vèneto mainland. And the Doge will probably command the Lady Ilaria to take the veil in some remote nunnery. There is precedent for such procedure. A hundred or so years ago, in France, there was a similar situation involving a priest and a lady.”