‘THEY WILL BEAR YOUR WEIGHT, ADMIRAL,’ wailed the Venetian. ‘COME TO ME.’
Slovo ignored a final spasm of weakness which made him wish he could turn and look to his crew for support. He knew that he had lost them; their reservoirs of primal dread outweighing any such latecomer concepts as loyalty or courage. Nothing else for it: Admiral Slovo was alone again. He vaulted over the ship’s rail.
The dead men dipped and rocked but, as promised, they formed a path of sorts. Ignoring their undead stares – eyeless or otherwise – Slovo made his way to the Venetian. Close up, he saw that three days in the company of King Neptune and his little fishes had not been kind to the body.
‘Hello, Slovo.’ The greeting was uttered through nibbled lips.
‘We meet once more, Master Venetian.’ So saying, Slovo raised his lace kerchief to his nose. The once exquisite nobleman was now less than social in company.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of us down here,’ said the Venetian by way of small talk and indicating his carpet of comrades. ‘Many of them put there by the likes of you. That fact may account for the assistance vouchsafed me in my quest. Even the sea has moral standards, it transpires.’
‘Who’d have thought it?’ quipped the Admiral.
The man and the revenant regarded each other with mutual distaste. Then the Venetian left the rusted buoy, causing its bell to toll, and reached out to grasp Slovo’s throat. He did not meet any resistance and the saturated flesh of his plump and swollen fingers easily covered the Admiral’s neck from ruff to chin.
Eye to eye with his nemesis (save that its eyes were in some fish somewhere), Slovo patiently awaited the application of pressure – and whatever lay beyond. After a while he realized that pain and death were a long time coming. The Venetian, poised upon fulfilment of his last wish, appeared undecided.
At last, the green mouth opened and, on a gale of salt-breath, it spoke into Slovo’s face. ‘Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet,’ he quoted. ‘When an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice … to refrain from imitation is the best revenge.’
‘Meditations?’ croaked Slovo.
The Venetian rocked his wobbly head. ‘Of the divine Marcus Aurelius,’ he confirmed. ‘The guiding light of my life – both of which you took. One has been returned but the other …’
Admiral Slovo said nothing – mainly because it would have hurt too much.
‘His Stoic principles attended my every thought and action: to the very point where I quietly trod a plank at your request.’
It seemed to Slovo that the vice-grip on his windpipe had eased somewhat, although he did not yet dare to hope.
‘You did not deprive me of my faith during life,’ mused the Venetian, ‘why should you have that victory in death?’
‘Why indeed?’ Slovo hissed.
The Venetian nodded again. ‘I will not kill you,’ he said.
Less happy than he should be, the Admiral waited in vain for the hand to release him.
‘I will take from you less than what is owed me,’ the Venetian went on. ‘I will have from you the energy to sustain my half-life – and thus condemn you to the same fate. There is justice in that, a moderation of vengeance. Such restraint is truly Stoical.’
With this, he applied his lips to Slovo’s and they grappled in an obscene French kiss. Nauseated beyond endurance, Slovo felt himself losing … something, and then was calm.
The Venetian dropped him and stood back. He seemed reinvigorated and exultant. ‘Your life-force is good,’ he said. ‘It will last me till my flesh and sinews at length decay. I shall have time to read my books!’
Admiral Slovo regained his footing and wondered why he felt so uninvolved.
‘And you,’ the dead man said, answering the unspoken question, ‘I have left you with enough to live out your life. Life, of a sort, at least. I have been merciful.’
‘Then thank you,’ said Slovo politely.
The Venetian smiled – which was the worst sight of all. ‘You are changed already,’ he said. ‘Such aridity! I afflict you with a curse and you thank me!’ So saying, he sank beneath the waves.
Admiral Slovo turned rapidly back for his ship, not knowing how long the ex-human footway would last. In a gentle kind of way he was looking forward to the reunion with his crew and, still a way off, favoured them with a tigerish smile. Their disloyalty no longer worried him. He felt happy about the changes that would be made – by knife and rope and shot. And he was less troubled, less disturbed by flibbertigibbet thoughts and his own emotions than before. It might well be the peace of the desert, but at least he had found peace of mind.
Vengeance? he thought as he clambered over the side and the sea-dead fled to their proper place. A curse? I’d have paid good money for this!
After a wide-ranging and enjoyable discussion on Plato and the efficacy of the spells prescribed by the god Hermes Trismegistus in his masterwork, Corpus Hermeticum, the senior of the two Vehmists indicated that they should proceed to more mundane business.
The lesser brother, a member of the Rhodian Military Order of St John and appropriately armed and dressed, was weary after coming direct to this interview from his long journey. Even so, he sat up straight in his ornate carved chair and awaited some sign that he might deliver his report.
The other man, older than the first but clothed in equal splendour in the High academic gown of the Gemistan[2] Platonic School, levered himself up and crossed the room. There he checked for potential eavesdroppers and then closed and locked the door. Only after that, with a wave of his ancient and be-ringed hand, did he urge his guest on. Even in their Grecian citadel at Mistra, the Vehme had varying degrees of trust.
‘Honourable Master,’ said the Knight of St John, his Greek, though probably not his first language, faultless and courtly, ‘I can convey both a measure of success and failure …’
‘I know you, Captain Jean,’ smiled the old scholar, ‘your failures are ordinary men’s glorious triumphs. Your past service to the cause would excuse a thousand disasters to come. So, tell me all without fear of reprimand.’
The Knight savoured the high compliment before proceeding. ‘I have discovered the fate of our man,’ he said, ‘but failed to retrieve his murdered body.’
‘How so?’ asked the scholar.
‘The sea has him, and her returning of borrowed objects is most capricious. We have scanned the likely rocks and beaches unsmiled on by fortune.’
‘At this remove of time,’ the scholar mused, looking idly out of the diamond-paned window down the spur of Mount Taygetus and at the landscape of the Morea (or Sparta, as he would archaically have termed it) below, ‘I doubt there would be anything whole or wholesome for us to revere with burial.’
The Knight nodded his agreement. ‘You are undoubtedly correct, but I fastidiously forbore to mention the point. Some of the cadavers we did discover were quite … impermissible!’
‘Just so, Captain. Very well then, let our brother roll in the embrace of the waves. He shall have his oratory hymn all the same. Its composition is near complete – as doubtless is his decomposition – a most moving conceit in which the styles of Pindar and Sappho meet and conjoin.’
The Knight smiled warily. ‘A most unlikely mating,’ he said, ‘given the predilections of either poet.’
2
George Gemistus Pletho (or Plethon) (c. 1335–1450?). A Byzantine
philosopher and scholar. Best known for the introduction of Strabo’s