DEDICATION
To Dorothea Kenny
for measureless aid and advice,
and, once again,
to my parents,
Noel and Richard Powers
EPIGRAPH
“If but we Christians have our beer,
Nothing’s to fear.”
—Sir William Ashbless
PROLOGUE: All Hallow’s Eve, 1529
WITH ALMOST LUDICROUS CARE the old man carried the pitcher of beer across the sunlit room toward the still older man who reclined propped up in a bed by the window. A smear of dried mud was caked on the foot of the bed.
“Here you are, Sire,” he said, pouring the black liquid into the earthenware cup which the old king had picked up from the table beside the bed.
The king raised the cup to his lips and sniffed it. “Ah,” he breathed. “A potent batch this time. Even the vapors are strengthening.”
The other man had now set the pitcher down on the table, pushing to one side a rusty lance head that had lain next to the cup. “It’s a few ounces short,” he confessed. “He sneaked down here Easter evening and stole a cupful.”
The king took a sip, and closed his eyes rapturously. “Ah, that is good beer.” He opened his eyes and glanced at the other old man. “Well, I don’t think we can grudge him one cup of it, Aurelianus. I really don’t think, all things considered, that we can honestly grudge him it.”
BOOK ONE
“No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colors of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.”
—William Wordsworth
Chapter One
ALL NIGHT the hot wind had swept up the Adriatic, and from the crowded docks down by the arsenale to the Isola di San Chiara at the western mouth of the Grand Canal, the old city creaked on its pilings like a vast, weary ship; and clouds as ragged as tatters of sailcloth scudded across the face of the full moon, tangling with the silhouettes of a hundred fantastic spires and domes.
In the narrow Rio de San Lorenzo, though, the smoky oil lamp at the bow of the gondola cast more reflections in the water than the moon did, and Brian Duffy reached over the gunwale to stir the black water with his fingers and multiply the points of yellow light. He shifted uneasily on the seat, embarrassed, for he was travelling at someone else’s expense.
“Pull in to the fondamenta,” he growled finally. “I’ll walk to my boat from here.”
The gondolier obediently dug his long pole into the canal bottom, and the tiny craft heeled, paused, and then surged up to the embankment, its prow grating on a submerged step. “Thank you.” Duffy ducked under the awning of the felze and took a long step to a dry stair while the boatman held the gondola steady.
Up on the sidewalk the Irishman turned. “Marozzo paid you to take me all the way to the Riva degli Schiavoni. Bring him back the change.”
The gondolier shrugged. “Perhaps.” He pushed away from the stair, turned his craft gracefully about, and began poling his way back up the glittering watercourse, softly calling, “Stalí!” to draw any possible fares. Duffy stared after him for a moment, then turned on his heel and strode south along the embankment calle toward the Ponte dei Greci, the bridge of the Greeks.
He was reeling just a little because of the quantities of valpolicella he’d consumed that evening, and a sleepy footpad huddled under the bridge roused when he heard the Irishman’s uneven tread. The thief eyed the approaching figure critically, noting the long, worn cloak, evidence of frequent outdoor sleeping; the knee-high boots, down at the heels, and twenty years out of fashion; and the rapier and dagger which looked to be the man’s only valuable possessions. Edging silently back into the shadows, he let Duffy go by unaccosted.
The Irishman hadn’t even been aware of the thief’s scrutiny; he was staring moodily ahead at the tall bulk of the church of San Zaccaria, its gothic design undisguised by the Renaissance adornments that had recently been added to it, and he was wondering just how much he would miss this city when he left. “Only a matter of time,” Marozzo had said over dinner. “Venice is more than half a Turkish possession right now, what with that grovelling treaty they signed eight years ago. Mark me now, Brian—before our hair is completely white, you and I will be teaching the uses of the scimitar instead of the honest straight sword, and our students will be wearing turbans.” Duffy had replied that he’d shave his head and run naked with the jungle pygmies before he’d teach a Turk even how to blow his nose, and the conversation had moved on to other matters—but Marozzo had been right. The days of Venice’s power were fifty years gone.
Duffy kicked a stray pebble away into the darkness and heard it plop into the canal after bouncing twice along the pavement. Time to move on, he told himself morosely. Venice has done its recuperative job, and these days I have to look closely to see the scars I got at Mohács two and a half years ago. And God knows I’ve already done my share of Turk-killing—let this city bow to the Crescent if it wants to, while I go somewhere else. I may even take ship back to Ireland.
I wonder, he thought, if anyone back in Dingle would remember Brian Duffy, the bright young lad who was sent off to Dublin to study for Holy Orders. They all hoped I’d eventually take the Archbishopric of Connaught, as so many of my forefathers did.
Duffy chuckled ruefully. There I disappointed them.
As he clumped past the San Zaccaria convent he heard muted giggles and whispering from a recessed doorway. Some pretty nun, he imagined, entertaining one of the young moneghini that are always loitering around the grounds. That’s what comes of pushing your unwilling daughters into a nunnery to save the expense of a dowry—they wind up a good deal wilder than if you’d simply let them hang around the house.
I wonder, he thought with a grin, what sort of priest I would have made. Picture yourself pale and soft-voiced, Duffy my lad, rustling hither and yon in a cassock that smells of incense. Ho ho. I never even came near it. Why, he reflected, within a week of my arrival at the seminary I’d begun to be plagued by the odd occurrences that led, before long, to my dismissal—blasphemous footnotes, in a handwriting I certainly didn’t recognize, were discovered on nearly every page of my breviary; oh yes, and once, during a twilight stroll with an elderly priest, seven young oak trees, one after another, twisted themselves to the ground as I passed; and of course worst of all, there was the time I threw a fit in church during the midnight Easter mass, shouting, they later told me, for the need-fires to be lit on the hilltops and the old king to be brought forth and killed.
Duffy shook his head, recalling that there had even been talk of fetching in an exorcist. He had scribbled a quick, vague letter to his family and fled to England. And you’ve fled quite a number of places in the years since, he told himself. Maybe it’s time you fled back to where you started. It sounds nicely symmetrical, at any rate.
The narrow calle came to an end at the Riva degli Schiavoni, the street that ran along the edge of the wide San Marco Canal, and Duffy now stood on the crumbled brick lip, several feet above the lapping water, and looked uncertainly up and down the quiet shallows. What in the name of the devil, he thought irritably, scratching the gray stubble on his chin. Have I been robbed, or am I lost?