City of Masks Read online

“Is she beautiful?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  I made the mistake of adding a shrug to this comment, which caused him to sit up straighter in his chair and fix me with a glare. “Do you like women, Lord Somershill?” he demanded.

  “Of course I do,” I said quickly, thinking back to the man who was probably still burning to death in the Piazzetta, “but I keep away from the wives of other men.”

  He raised an eyebrow at my comment, as if this was a curious principle, just as we were disturbed by a scratching noise from a side wall. My interrogator stood up with some reluctance, struggled over to this wall, and then lifted a small flap to reveal a tiny round hole. He put his ear to this hole and listened, while somebody on the other side whispered a string of mumbled instructions. Throughout this conversation, my inquisitor frowned and pursed his lips, before finally nodding with a sigh and replacing the flap.

  “How long have you known John Bearpark?” he asked me, as he returned to his table, sitting down with such a heavy thud that it caused his enormous velvet hat to wobble.

  “Who’s on the other side of the wall?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Nobody.”

  “You had a long conversation with this nobody.”

  His stare was humorless. “Answer my question please, Lord Somershill. How long have you known John Bearpark?”

  “I met him for the first time when we arrived in Venice,” I said.

  He put his quill to the parchment in readiness for my answer. “But you say Bearpark is an old family friend?”

  “Yes. My father fought with Bearpark at the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314. They met again, years later, in Southampton.”

  “Southampton?”

  “It’s a port in the south of England,” I said fractiously.

  “I know where Southampton is, Lord Somershill. Why did your father meet him there?”

  I could not curb a sigh. “As far as I understand, Bearpark followed the Venetian merchant fleet to Southampton every summer. My father traveled from our estate in Kent to meet him there. Bearpark sold us Malmsy wine, silks, and spices, and my father sold him fleeces. Does that answer your question?”

  “And you sought John Bearpark out deliberately when you came to Venice?”

  “It was my mother’s idea. There’s nothing to be suspicious about.”

  How I regretted using this word, as he took great pains to write down my sentence, verbatim, before repeating it aloud. “There is nothing to be suspicious about.”

  “I just can’t see why you’re so interested in me?” I said, allowing the first trickle of despair to taint my voice. “I’m just a pilgrim.”

  He continued to study me for a few moments, and then pushed the bottle of wine across the table. “Have something to drink.”

  I folded my arms childishly. “No thank you.”

  We sat in silence as light streamed in through the opaque window behind him—a large casement glazed with a honeycomb of small circular panes, each pane as thick and warped as the end of an ale bottle. There was something absorbing about the pattern of sunlight that forced its way through these prisms and then cast such strange shapes upon the smooth terrazzo floor. For a moment I watched tiny particles of dust dance in the rays of light that now striped the air, but then a shadow loomed behind the window and the spell was broken.

  The shape was blurred at first, but soon I knew its hunched, creeping outline as it paced back and forth before pressing its face against the opaque glass to peer in at me. I kept perfectly still and looked at my hands, just as I always did, and waited for it to disappear.

  My inquisitor pushed the wine toward me again. “I think you should have something to drink. You look pale.”

  “I’m perfectly well,” I said defensively.

  He tapped his quill upon the parchment and sucked his teeth. “Very well then,” he said, after a long pause. “Have you visited the bones of St. Nicholas?” When I hesitated to answer, he carried on. “Or what about the crystal ampoule that contains the miraculous blood of Christ?” I managed to raise a smile at this, which caused him to frown. “Every pilgrim who stays in Venice visits these relics. You say you are a pilgrim, and yet I see here that you haven’t visited a single shrine.”

  What was I to say? That I would rather drink the water from my own bathtub than waste an afternoon staring at bones or viscous potions claiming to be a thimble of Christ’s blood. The Venetians were devoted to their relics, having plundered most of them from Greece, Egypt, or Constantinople, but I could not muster any of the same enthusiasm.

  “I do intend to visit these shrines,” I said. “Of course I do. But I have had a fever, and it seemed unholy to present myself to the relics when I was suffering an illness.”

  He barely suppressed a laugh in response to my obvious lie. “There are two other English pilgrims staying at Ca’ Bearpark. Is that right?” He cocked his head to one side, causing the top-heavy chaperon to sway again.

  “Yes, yes. Bernard and Margery Jagger,” I said wearily, thinking of the odd pair who shared our supper table and slept in nearby rooms. Mother complained that this brother and sister were as ill-mannered as peddlers—which, after all, was the true meaning of their family name—but these jaggers had enough money to sit at the same table and eat the same food as us, so who were we to look down upon them? Not that they were the easiest of company, however. Bernard constantly wore a distant smile, as if he were laughing at some undisclosed joke, and his sister Margery had sworn a vow of silence since leaving England, not intending to speak again until she cast her eyes upon the Holy House of Nazareth. Her strangeness was only amplified by her insistence on wearing the hooded white habit of a Dominican brother and the wimple of a nun.

  “The Jaggers have been seen at many shrines,” my inquisitor told me. He traced his finger across the roll of parchment. “Now. Let’s see. They have visited the arms of Saint George and Saint Lucy; the feet of Mary the Egyptian, the ear of Saint Paul the Apostle, and the molar of Goliath.” He looked up at me, as if he expected an answer to this.

  “They’ve enjoyed better health than I have.”

  “But you have been well enough to visit the Rialto market?” He rolled back the parchment and pointed to a word. “Yes. I also see here that you have been to the taverns of Castello. Many times.”

  “Enrico Bearpark has been showing me around Venice,” I said quickly. “He is John Bearpark’s grandson. We are roughly the same age, and he thought—”

  He interrupted me. “We know who Enrico Bearpark is, thank you.” He leaned forward again. “I’m more interested in you, Lord Somershill. So, tell me this. Why is a devoted pilgrim spending so much time in the inns of Venice, when he says that he’s too ill to visit the shrines?”

  “It was Enrico’s idea,” I said weakly. “He thought it would lift my spirits.”

  “Is there something wrong with your spirits?”

  I looked away. Another question that was difficult to answer truthfully. “Does Venice always spy on her visitors?” I said instead. “As if we were common criminals.”

  He gave a disdainful smile. “We are only watching out for our enemies.”

  The tapping came again from the wall, causing the man to sigh and then make his way, once again, from the table to the flap. This time the whispering was low and measured, as my interrogator nodded repeatedly and muttered the occasional yes or I agree.

  When this conversation ceased, he returned to his chair. Finding his place at the end of the writing, he once again pressed the nib of his quill against the parchment—this time with more force, as if he wanted to hurry things along. “Which way did you travel here?” he asked me sharply.

  “The same way that any pilgrim comes to Venice.”

  He lifted his eyes to meet mine. Without breaking his gaze, he then dipped his quill into the ink pot, tapped it, and let it rest upon the parchment.

  “We came through Germany,” I told him.

  “Your exact route please.” He coughe
d. “From England.”

  “We joined my mother’s family in Ipswich in late February,” I said. “Then we sailed from Felixstowe.”

  The quill once again began to scratch its way across the page. “What was your destination?” he said.

  “The port of Zierikzee in the Low Countries. We wanted to avoid France.”

  He nodded at the good sense in this decision. “And then?”

  “And then we sailed south on riverboats to Constance, where we continued by land toward the mountains.”

  “You had a guide?”

  “Of course we had a guide! Who would cross the Alps without one?” I said.

  He continued to write, noting down that this comment had made me angry.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm my temper. “There were late snows, so we were stuck in an Alpine village for two weeks. As soon as the weather improved, we traveled over the Splügen Pass to Bergamo, which is where, as I told you before, our company parted ways. The others traveled to Bari. We traveled to Venice.”

  “Did you go through Padua?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you stop there?”

  I knew why he was asking such questions. The Lord of Padua was another enemy of Venice—jealous of his neighbor’s wealth and power. He might have signed a recent peace treaty with the Republic, but now he was said to be amassing German mercenaries, ready to take advantage of Venice’s vulnerability, should the Hungarians invade. If I admitted to staying in Padua for any length of time, then this man would, no doubt, accuse me of being a spy. “We traveled straight through Padua,” I said. “We did not even stop to eat.”

  He wrote to the end of the page and stopped. He then perused the manuscript and struck out some of the words, while adding others. “Very well, Lord Somershill,” he suddenly announced, “you are free to go.” He stood up and indicated that I should do the same.

  “No more questions?” I said, getting to my feet. “I thought you might want to know my favorite color, or the name of my first puppy?”

  “No, no,” he said, as he ushered me hastily toward the door. “Welcome to Venice. Please enjoy your stay.”

  It was my intention to stride out of the chamber with something of a dramatic exit, but he blocked my path with his arm, allowing his sleeves to drag across the floor.

  “One last thing, Lord Somershill,” he said, before a long and deliberate pause. “Please don’t forget. Venice is still watching.”

  Chapter Two

  To look at John Bearpark, it was hard to believe that he had ever been a young man, for he was wizened and whiskery, and possibly in his eighth decade—though it is sometimes difficult to age a person who has spent most of his life in the strong sun of France and Italy. I’m sure that once he owned the pale complexion of a man with red hair, but now his skin was a patchwork of brown and orange, where his freckles had unified to form great blotches of pigment. A pair of scabs marked the top of his head, though he was quick to replace his cap if he thought anybody was looking, and if you were unfortunate enough to stand too close to him, he smelled as if he were already beginning to decay. I should say that these signs of decrepitude were mainly superficial, however, for Bearpark’s mind was quick, his step was sprightly, and he still possessed a surprising strength. I had often witnessed him move the long oak table single-handedly, or lift his heavy coffer up the stairs toward his bedchamber.

  Nevertheless, the old man’s appearance had still shocked Mother when we had first arrived in Venice. I believe she had expected Bearpark to look as he had done thirty years previously, when she had accompanied Father on their annual visits to Southampton—but time is cruel, even to the most resilient of bodies. It was the apparatus that Bearpark now wore, almost perpetually, upon the bridge of his nose that had most disturbed her. Bearpark called this strange device his “spectacles” and claimed that these two circles of glass held together by a frame of horn had saved his eyesight. Once or twice, for a little entertainment in the long evenings, Bearpark had even suggested that I wear the things and then tell the assembled company what I could see. The world only looked more warped and out of focus through these strange circles, however, so I quickly passed them back to the old man before they induced a headache.

  Bearpark might have suffered from the unavoidable deterioration of age, but this had not prevented him from marrying a young Venetian woman named Filomena and getting her with child. She was Bearpark’s third Venetian wife by all accounts—the first having died many years ago in childbirth, and the second having perished in the Great Plague of 1348. In fact, the only member of Bearpark’s whole family to have survived the devastation of this Pestilence was his grandson, Enrico—a young man of my own age who was determined to introduce me to every tavern in Venice. The more I declined his invitations, the more often they were made, resulting in my having to hide or invent a sickness in order to avoid yet another of his “lively nights of entertainment.”

  Not that I always shunned Enrico’s company. In fact, in my first months in Venice I often sought him out, particularly in the long afternoons when there was little else to do. His command of English was good, since his grandfather had been sure to teach him a tongue that was so useful for trade. In other circumstances, we might have become more solid friends, but Enrico’s fondness for spending his nights with loud and raucous company and drinking until he was sick was at odds with my own mood. Nevertheless, a companionship of sorts had begun to flower, and in the afternoons we often discussed those topics on which I held opinions, such as the trajectory of Venus and the writings of Pope Pius. Enrico was polite enough to feign an interest in these subjects, but he soon turned the conversation to the poetry of Petrarch and Dante, or the travels of Marco Polo.

  Such times with Enrico were pleasant diversions, but when his friends began to amass in the piano nobile, I made sure to disappear, especially if a man named Vittore was part of their company. I could tolerate most of Enrico’s friends, though they were pampered young men with too much money, too many fine clothes, and too little to do. Some were just foolish, such as the peacock Michele, who always sported a long-feathered cap and had the unpleasant habit of delving around in his striped hose to rearrange himself in public. I could ignore such bad manners and boorishness, but Vittore was different. He unnerved me.

  He was tall, with striking blond hair, and features that seemed too big for his face. His nose was wide and upturned, with large nostrils that reminded me of a pig’s snout. I was not the only person to have noticed this porcine resemblance. In fact, everybody had remarked upon it at one time or other, though not, of course, to Vittore’s face. I was not the only person to be unnerved by Vittore either, for he used his size to dominate and subdue a room, and the other men, including Enrico, showed him the respect they might pay to a prince. When Vittore spoke, they listened. When Vittore made a joke, they laughed. When Vittore said it was time to leave, they followed.

  The man ignored me for the most part when we met at Ca’ Bearpark, for I kept to my own corner and kept my own counsel, but whenever Enrico attempted to include me in a conversation, it seemed to irritate Vittore. Why should he listen to me? To his mind, I was just another pilgrim, an Englishman with no influence or importance in Venice, so why should he care what I had to say? When Vittore did take the time to notice me, it was only to sneer at some comment I’d made, or to make some joke at my expense. In fact, he soon coined a silly name for me that became adopted by the whole group—“the Silent Englishman”—and though Enrico advised me to laugh at this, as it was only a piece of innocent foolishness, I refused to comply. It was a veiled insult, so why should I have pretended to find it amusing?

  One night, soon after my interview at the doge’s palace, Mother came to find me in my bedchamber, while a noisy party was gathering in the piano nobile directly beneath my room.

  “Why don’t you join Enrico and his friends, Oswald?” she said, folding her arms and looking about my room with disdain. “They’ve been ask
ing for you.”

  “No thank you,” I said firmly.

  “Indeed?” she said. “And why not?”

  “Because I don’t feel like it.”

  She sighed with frustration. “If you stay in your shell any longer, then you’ll turn into a snail.” She then strode across the room to open the shutters as if a cold draft of air might bring me to my senses. “You’re not making any efforts to get better, Oswald!” she scolded. “And let us not forget that a recovery of your spirits was the whole point of coming on this pilgrimage.”

  I groaned, for I had heard this speech so many times before. “Just leave me alone, Mother.”

  “But I cannot leave you alone, can I? What would become of you?” She then placed a hand firmly on my shoulder. “It’s been more than a year and this cannot go on for much longer. You have a life to lead. You have responsibilities.”

  “You think I can just forget what happened?”

  “No. I don’t expect you to forget about it, Oswald. But you need to make an effort to recover.”

  Our conversation was interrupted by a sudden burst of laughter from below. This house may have been grand, but the walls of the upper stories leaked like the cloth of a tent. I looked to Mother with a sudden entreaty. “Please. Don’t give me away.”

  She drew back from me and returned to the window, closing the shutters now that her cold air treatment had failed to work. “Very well,” she said crossly. “But what will you do instead? Sit with John Bearpark and that dull little wife of his?”

  “I don’t find Monna Filomena dull,” I said. Though, in truth, it was difficult to engage the young woman in conversation, or indeed communicate in any way with her. Bearpark’s wife faced the world with the blank, unknowable mask of the Madonna, and hardly spoke to anybody, including her own husband. She often seemed so sad that it provoked my pity, so I sometimes tried to cheer her up with a little conversation—finding an opportunity to ask her opinion on a piece of news, or even to make a platitude regarding the weather or the taste of a meal—but my attempts at discussion were always immediately stamped upon by her aged husband or his officious clerk, a man named Giovanni. This pair of bullies either answered my questions on Filomena’s behalf, or, in Bearpark’s case, sent her from the room, as if to punish her for being noticed. If I did manage to speak to Filomena alone, then she met my smiles and politeness with an indifference equal to the reaction she meted out to her husband’s slights and lack of respect. Cold and stoic dispassion. Her true feelings lived somewhere behind her face, and we were not invited to share them.