City of Masks Read online

  I pulled Giovanni to one side. “Do you think they’re telling the truth?” There was something about their fulsome sincerity that troubled me.

  Giovanni placed his finger on his part and carefully rearranged his fringe. “Yes, Oswald. I do.” He looked about the small chamber with some distaste. “Adolpho Bredani left this island as soon as he could. And I do not blame him.” He gave a short shudder. “May we go please? It smells rotting in here.”

  “You mean rotten.”

  It seemed we had indeed wasted our time, and this irritated me, though not as much as having to admit that Giovanni was right. I bid the old couple good day and then strode out of the house in something of a temper, with Giovanni scurrying along behind me with a self-righteous skip in his step. My instincts about coming to Burano had not been completely misplaced, however, for we had barely reached the end of the street, when a man caught up with us and begged to speak with me. He wore the loose, leather tunic of a fisherman, causing Giovanni to call him a beggar and attempt to chase him away, but when this man shouted the name of Adolpho Bredani, I told Giovanni to let him speak.

  This time I conducted the conversation myself. If I spoke slowly enough, the man would understand my Venetian, no matter that I had not been raised in Burano. “Why do you ask about Adolpho Bredani?” I said.

  His voice was hoarse and strange to my ears, but his words were comprehensible, as long as I concentrated. “I have information about the man,” he said. “I think you will be interested.” The fisherman then uncurled a hand that was blackened by the oily stain of pine pitch.

  Giovanni huffed and folded his arms. “You see, Oswald,” he said to me in English. “This man is a beggar. Don’t speak to him.”

  I turned to my companion and whispered, though it was highly doubtful that this so-called beggar could understand any English. “He might know something. It’s worth a soldino, isn’t it?”

  Giovanni stiffened. “If you say so.”

  I held out my hand and waited for Giovanni to delve reluctantly into his purse in order to retrieve a single coin. When I presented this same coin to the fisherman, the man shook his head, indicating that he expected more. “This is it,” I told him. “And you were lucky to get this much.”

  He took the coin from me with a sigh and then slipped it into his sleeve. “Bredani was here two nights ago,” he told me. “I heard him banging on the door.”

  I looked to Giovanni, but my companion merely raised his eyebrows to indicate that he thought the man was a liar. I ignored him and turned back to the fisherman. “Where is Bredani now?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  He shook his head. “He was at home for only a short time,” he said. “I heard some shouting, and then his mother was crying.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  The man shrugged. “The walls are thin, but not that thin.” He hesitated, and then the curled, dirty hand appeared again. “But there is something else.”

  “There’s no more money,” I said, but as he turned to leave, I persuaded Giovanni grudgingly to part with another soldino. “Come on then,” I said, waving the coin in the air. “What is it?”

  The man grasped the coin greedily from my hand. “Bredani’s father bought a pig yesterday.”

  I turned to Giovanni, thinking I had misunderstood. “What does he mean?” I asked, in English. “Did he mention a pig?”

  Giovanni responded with a puff of exasperation. “Yes. He did.”

  I turned back to the fisherman. “Why are you telling me about a pig?”

  “Because the Bredanis are a poor family,” the man said, “yet they can suddenly buy a pig. The day after their son comes to visit.” I must have seemed especially stupid, as he now spoke very slowly. “Pigs are expensive, and we are at war. Who has the money to buy such a beast?”

  We returned to the house immediately, but Adolpho’s elderly mother was no keener to admit us a second time, and we were left with no option but to push our way inside.

  “Where is Adolpho?” I demanded in Venetian. The fisherman in the street had understood me well enough, so there was no reason that I should not communicate with this elderly pair. Nevertheless, they pretended to be confused, so I had to admit defeat and allow Giovanni to conduct the interrogation.

  “Tell them that we know Adolpho was here two nights ago. Ask them why they are lying to us.” Giovanni repeated my question, prompting the old man to stumble to his feet and wave a fist at me.

  I ignored this outburst and continued. “Ask them where Adolpho is now.” I said. Once again, the pair claimed to have no knowledge of Adolpho’s whereabouts, until the old man finally admitted, after a long bombardment of questions, that Adolpho had, indeed, returned briefly two nights earlier. After this confession, he returned to his stool, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and then wearily revealed that he hadn’t told us any of this before, because Adolpho had been frightened about something. Something that his son had refused to reveal.

  We were reaching the truth at last. “Ask him about the pig.” I told Giovanni. The old man only stiffened at this question. “Did Adolpho give them some money?” I asked. “If so, where did the money come from? Had Adolpho stolen it from somebody? Was that the cause of his fear?” In response to this string of questions, the old man and his wife simply refused to speak, so what was I to do? I could hardly torture the pair into making farther confessions.

  I decided, instead, to search the house. Adolpho’s elderly parents might not be willing to speak to me, but there might be some clue in this hovel that would give us more information.

  As I made my way toward a door at the back of the house, Giovanni joined me. “What are you looking for, Oswald?” he asked. “Adolpho isn’t here.”

  “I know that. I’m just looking for clues.”

  Giovanni frowned. “What sort of clues?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve found them.”

  Leaving Giovanni to watch over the elderly couple, I pushed at an internal door and found myself in a room that served as a primitive kitchen. In reality it was little more than a porch with a steeply slanted roof, a single table, and another door leading out into a small courtyard. This courtyard was surrounded on three sides by a high wall, and it was a brighter place that the rest of the house. I could tell that the old couple spent as much time out here as the weather allowed, for a couple of chairs were placed beneath the naked branches of a fig tree. In the other corner was a collection of crab cages, stacked like barrels to make a rudimentary pen. And in this pen was the pig—this great object of mystery. I must say that it was a sickly looking creature, with a freckled snout and flopping, ragged ears—but it was still a living pig and must have cost the pair a great deal of money.

  Giovanni followed me into the courtyard, but showed little interest in my observations regarding the animal. Instead he pointed to the overcast sky. “Please, Oswald. We must go now. The fog is coming.”

  I ignored this entreaty and returned to the main chamber, where I climbed the ladder to the rooms in the eaves of the house. As my feet ascended each rung of the ladder, the old couple seemed increasingly anxious, and I wondered what I might find up there. Perhaps they were hiding Adolpho after all? What I discovered instead was a cold, windowless space perfumed by the smoke from the fire below. I felt into every nook and cranny of this loft, but found nothing.

  Then I sat down on one of the simple bedsteads and looked up through the beams at the underside of the tiled roof, as Giovanni shouted up to me from below.

  “Please, Oswald. The wind is turning. I fear we will be stranded here.”

  “Very well,” I said casting my eyes about the room for the last time. There was nothing out of the ordinary here, nothing that might constitute a clue. To be truthful, there was hardly anything in this room at all. I had rarely seen such a bare home—without even a crucifix attached to the bedstead or a holy niche carved into the wall. I was about to climb back down the ladder, when it occurred to me to check
one last place. I lifted both straw mattresses from their frames, discovering a small slit in the canvas on the underside of one of them, and, feeling inside, I found a small leather purse. When I pulled the thing out of the mattress, I quickly looked inside to count eight golden ducats. More wealth than such an impoverished couple could ever save.

  The coins could have come only from their son, but where had Adolpho acquired them? My guess was that this money was stolen, perhaps even from Enrico himself—which farther suggested Adolpho’s involvement in the murder.

  I quickly dropped this leather purse inside my own, before descending the ladder, while making sure to keep my hand on the purse so that the coins did not chink against one another. I should have asked the old couple about this money, but I didn’t. And when Giovanni asked me if I had found any clues, I lied.

  Chapter Nine

  The fog descended on our return from Burano, just as Giovanni had predicted. As we sailed into the lagoon it seemed we were navigating the River Styx on our last journey to the underworld. For long stretches it felt as if we might have been the only vessel on the water, but then, every so often, another solitary boat loomed out of the mist, before evaporating again into the haze. When we caught sight of these boats, our oarsmen shouted across to their crews, asking them the direction of Venice, only for their calls to be lost in the thick air.

  Giovanni played alternately with his rosary and then his set of keys, while I clutched tightly at my purse, as if the coins I had found on Burano might give me away by scattering across the floor of the boat. The farther we sailed from the island, the more a tantalizing thought began to creep into my mind. Why not use these same coins to play at dice? What could be the harm? With this money I could win back my losses and more. Who would ever know?

  I had almost planned which taverns to visit, when I came to my senses. The dice had betrayed me before, and they would do so again. I was a fool to even be having such thoughts. I decided instead to take the honorable course of action and reveal this evidence to Bearpark, asking if he knew whether it had been stolen from Enrico. And yet the thought of making this disclosure was not appealing. In fact, it made me feel a little sick.

  I tightened the strings of the purse and tried to cast the coins from my mind for a while, when Giovanni jogged my elbow. “I knew we shouldn’t have traveled to Burano,” he said, with a note of despair in his voice. The fog was now so dense that we could barely see the oarsman at the other end of our boat.

  “It was worth going, Giovanni,” I said. “At least we know that Adolpho was involved in the murder.”

  “Do we?”

  “Of course we do,” I said. “He fled from his post and appeared on Burano in a panic. He was guilty of something.”

  “He was guilty of abandoning his duties, while his young master was killed,” said Giovanni. “There’s no evidence that he was involved in any other way.”

  I had evidence of Adolpho’s involvement in something. It was sitting in my purse, and yet I said nothing. Instead I went back to staring at the still, syrupy water, while Giovanni bombarded the oarsmen with questions about our proximity to Venice. At first they gave noncommittal answers to his questions, but soon their responses turned to annoyance and then rudeness. Of course they were steering in the right direction. Of course they wanted to get back to the city as quickly as we did. Of course they would keep to the agreed fee, no matter that this journey had taken so much longer than they had anticipated.

  When we came within feet of a great galley, Giovanni crossed himself and prayed out loud to the Virgin, which only caused the oarsmen to curse his existence. This ship was an unexpected sight, looming out of the mists like a great sea monster. There had been no such merchant shipping on the lagoon for months—as these vessels were either harbored in Venice, or they were elsewhere in the Adriatic, waiting for the hostilities with Hungary to end. The sail was lowered, and its many oars drove through the water in perfect unison. As it passed our bow, the galley created such a strong wave that we were rocked violently from side to side, while a great spray of water smacked against the wool of Giovanni’s hose, causing him to cry out loudly with rage. Some of the crewmen looked down from their deck at this, and then jeered before their ship was gone, vanishing into the fog as quickly as it had appeared.

  After this, the fog only continued to thicken, causing the worst of my moods to descend. With no horizon to offer distraction, my spirit drew back upon itself, scratching and plucking at the very worst recollections. Now I sensed that my shadow was close, waiting to creep up on me, so I concentrated on my hands, just as I always did, in the ardent hope that it would leave me alone.

  When I sensed that it had finally given up, I felt able to raise my eyes as the oarsmen began to shout. The fog had lifted a little, revealing that we had floated close to land. Behind the sandy banks of the shore I could see grass, a row of stunted trees, and even a collection of crumbling, derelict buildings. And then, as the fog lifted a little more, a group of people materialized from the gloom—watching us silently from a low mound. They wore thick, unsightly tunics, and their heads were covered with hoods—but these garments did not fully obscure their ruined, leprous faces. At their fore was an old man whose eyeballs might have been two orbs of Carrara marble.

  Behind me, Giovanni was panicking—demanding that the oarsmen row away from this place, warning that our boat must not touch the mud of the island, or we might be infected with their malaise. But I could not take my eyes from the faces of the lepers, for, in the midst of their ragged, dismal shapes, there was a figure I knew well.

  It had found me, and for those few moments it was real—exactly as I had always imagined. Hunched and skeletal. Its coat black and matted. Its face circled by a fringe of dirty white fur. It looked straight into my eyes with a pleading, nauseating sadness that almost turned my stomach, and when it held out its bony hands to me in supplication, I could face it no longer.

  I had been right to sense its presence through the fog, for this wretched, miserable island was its perfect haunt. I should have anticipated that it would be here and kept my eyes upon my hands. Instead, I had let it catch me out and now I would never be rid of it. The blood rushed from my head and I leaned over the side of the boat in case I vomited. When Giovanni came to my aid, I pretended to be suffering from seasickness. But this was not nausea. It was much worse.

  I do not remember the rest of the journey, but when we finally disembarked at Ca’ Bearpark, I ran up the two sets of stairs to my chamber and closed the door firmly. Mother tried repeatedly to speak to me, but when I told her to go away in the strongest terms, she had the sense to leave me alone. I wanted to erase what I had seen from my memory, but a mind will not obey such a command. It cannot unsee something that it has seen. When I closed my eyes, I found the creature’s face had been etched into my eyelids.

  And so my melancholy returned with a vengeance, until the pain finally lost its passion, and in its place came something worse. A low, grinding inertia that sat in my stomach, reaching out through my chest and into my limbs, until my hands felt like lead weights. As I lay in this stupor, there was a rattle at the window. The Bora wind had blown straight from the Adriatic Sea and was now banging the shutters against the frame, making a repetitive, harrying sound that I could not get out of my head, no matter that I stuffed my fingers into my ears. It thumped and thumped its fists against the wood until I could stand it no longer.

  I stumbled to the window and opened the shutters, fastening them against the outside wall. Then I heard a whispering. At first I looked around, thinking that somebody had crept into the room without my noticing, but soon I realized that the voice was inside my head. I needn’t stay in this ugly world, it told me. I could escape so easily.

  It all made sense.

  I climbed up onto the windowsill. I felt liberated and purposeful. This was the answer. I had only to launch myself from this window, and everything would go away. The lies. The guilt. The shadow. Why had I not
thought of this before? The drop was high enough to kill me, or so I hoped. My heart was beating at speed. My body felt joyous and determined. I would have taken that leap, when somebody shouted my name.

  I spun around to see Filomena looking at me from the door. “What are you doing?” she said, as she ran over. “Please come down.”

  I turned away from her, but she grasped my hand and pulled me away from the sill with surprising strength. As I fell back to the floor she knelt down next to me, and all of a sudden I felt so hopelessly pleased that she was here. “So. You do speak English?” was unfortunately all I could think of to say.

  “Yes. I am married to an Englishman, after all,” she said with a smile, as she helped me to sit on the bed, and then placed her fingers lightly upon my trembling hands. “I saw you from the balcony below. What were you doing?” She paused. “I feared for you.”

  “There’s nothing to fear,” I said unconvincingly.

  “Please, Oswald. Don’t lie to me,” she whispered. “I know that you watch me, but sometimes I watch you as well, and I have seen sadness at your heart.” She drew her face closer, and I was able to gaze into her gentle, solemn eyes. “What is this sadness? Tell me,” she said. “I will not speak of it to anybody.”

  I didn’t want to say anything, and yet the idea of unburdening myself suddenly became so appealing that the words tumbled out before I could stop them. “I saw something today,” I said. “On the lagoon.”

  “What was it?” she asked.

  I tried to laugh, but the sound was hollow and dishonest. “You’ll think I’ve lost my senses,” I said.

  Filomena shook her head. “No, I won’t. I promise.”

  “It wasn’t real.”

  She frowned at my words, though she quickly changed her expression to a sympathetic smile. “Was it a ghost?” she asked.

  “No. Not a ghost.” I paused. “I think of it as a . . . shadow.”