“Right,” agreed Duffy, and found himself a moment later standing on the dark landing while the door clicked shut behind him. Now there’s an odd fellow, he thought as he groped his way down the stairs. I’ll be very curious to see if there actually are five hundred ducats in this bag.
A stale liquor scent lingered at the foot of the stairs, and Bella sidled out of the shadows when he reached the bottom. “The little eunuch gave you some money, didn’t he?”
“I beg your pardon, lady,” Duffy said. “Nothing of the sort.”
“Why don’t you and me go drink some wine somewhere?” she suggested. “There’s lots I could tell you about him.”
“I’m not interested in him. Excuse me.” Duffy slid past her to the pavement outside.
“Maybe you’d be interested in a little feminine companionship.”
“Why would that concern you?” he asked over his shoulder as he strode away. She shouted something after him in a rude tone of voice, though he missed the words. Poor old woman, he reflected. Gone mad from cheap Italian liquor. Shouting harsh words at strangers and harrying poor weird old men.
He glanced at the sky—an hour or so after midnight. No sense now, he thought, in going back to San Giorgio; the only thing worth mentioning that waits for me there is a landlord, justly angry about my failure to pay rent. I’d better find some kind of rooming house to spend the night in, and then get an early start tomorrow. A few hours’ sleep in a moderately clean bed is what I need right now. It’s been a tiring night.
“Stand aside, grandfather, we’re trying to unload cargo here.”
Duffy glared fiercely at the lean young dockworker, but moved obediently away. The morning sunlight was glittering like a handful of new-minted gold coins on the water, and Duffy was squinting and knuckling his eyes. He’d been told to look for a Cyprian galley called the Morphou, which was scheduled to make a stop at Trieste on its way home; “Look for a triangular sail with three sad eyes on it,” a helpful little Egyptian had said. “That’ll be the Morphou.”
Well, he thought irritably, I don’t see any damned three eyes. Half these ships have their sails reefed anyway.
He sat down on a bale of cotton and watched disapprovingly the activity of all these loud, wide-awake people around him. Dark-skinned children, screaming to each other in a tangle of Mediterranean languages, ran past, flinging bits of cabbage at an indignant, bearded merchant; tanned sailors swaggered up from the docks, looking forward to impressing the Venetian girls with their foreign coins and fine silk doublets; and old, granite-faced women stood vigilantly over their racks of smoked fish, ready to smile at a customer or deliver a fist in the ear to a shoplifter.
Duffy had awakened at dawn in a malodorous hostel, feeling poisoned by the liquor he’d drunk the night before but cheered by his memory of opening the cloth bag beneath a flickering street lamp to discover that it did indeed contain five hundred ducats. And there are five hundred more waiting for me in Vienna, he thought, if I can just find this filthy Cyprian Morphou.
The gray-haired Irishman struggled to his feet—and a man on a porticoed balcony a hundred feet behind him crouched and squinted along the barrel of a wheel-lock harquebus; he pulled the trigger, the wheel spun and sprayed sparks into the pan and a moment later the gun kicked against the man’s shoulder as its charge went off.
A ceramic jar beside Duffy’s ear exploded, stinging his face with harsh wine and bits of pottery. He leaped back in astonishment and pitched over the bale of cotton, cursing sulphurously and wrenching at his entangled rapier.
The gunman leaned out over the balcony rail and shrugged. On the pavement below, two men frowned impatiently, loosened the daggers in their sheaths, and began elbowing their way through the crowd.
On his feet now, Duffy clutched his bared sword and glared about fiercely. It’s probably one of those furioso Grittis, he thought. Or all three. And after I was so patient with them last night! Well I won’t be this morning.
A tall, feather-hatted man, whose moustache appeared to be oiled, strode up to the Irishman and smiled. “The one who fired at you is escaping in that boat,” he said, pointing. Duffy turned, and the man leaped on him, driving a dagger with vicious force at at the Irishman’s chest. The hauberk under his much-abused doublet saved Duffy from the first stab; he caught the assassin’s wrist with his right hand before another blow could be delivered, and then, stepping back to get the proper distance, ran his rapier through the man’s thigh. Feather-hat sank to his knees, pale with shock.
I’m leaving Venice none too soon, Duffy reflected dazedly. He noticed with annoyance that his hands were trembling.
The frightened merchants and dockworkers were hurrying away, so he noticed immediately the two figures that were sprinting toward him—one was a stranger, one was young Giacomo Gritti, and both carried drawn knives.
“Fetch the guardia, for God’s sake!” Duffy yelled shrilly at the crowd, but he knew it was too late for that. Sick with tension, he drew his own dagger and crouched behind his crossed weapons.
The stranger leaped ahead of Gritti, his arm drawn in for a solid stab—and then his eyes widened in pained astonishment, and he pitched heavily forward on his face, Gritti’s dagger-hilt standing up between his shoulder blades.
Separated by ten feet, Gritti and Duffy stared at each other for a moment. “There are men waiting to kill you on the Morphou,” Gritti panted, “but the old Greek merchantman anchored three docks south is also bound for Trieste. Hurry,” he said, pointing, “they’re casting off the lines right now.”
Duffy paused only long enough to slap both weapons back into their sheaths, and nod a curt and puzzled thanks, before trotting energetically away south, toward the third dock.
Chapter Two
AFTER A BIT of token frowning and chin-scratching, the merchantman’s paunchy captain agreed to let Duffy come aboard—though demanding a higher-than-usual fare “because of the lack of a reservation.” The Irishman had learned long ago when to keep quiet and pay the asking price, and he did it now.
The ship, he observed as he swung over the high stern, was notably dilapidated. God, dual steering oars and a square, brailed sail, he noted, shaking his head doubtfully. This one is old enough for Cleopatra to have made an insulting remark about it. Well, it’s probably made the Venice to Trieste run more times than I’ve pulled my boots on, so I suppose it’s not likely to founder on this trip. He sat down in the open hold between two huge amphorae of wine, and set one of the weather cloths, a frame of woven matting, upright in its notches in the gunwale. There, he thought, leaning back against it, I’m hidden from view at last, by God.
The sailors poled the vessel out past the clusters of docked galleys, and then the sail was unfurled on its dozen brailing lines, and bellied in the cold morning wind. The antique ship heeled about as the brawny steersman braced himself against the overlapping oar handles, and they were under way.
The captain sauntered about the deck criticizing the labors of his men until the Lido had slipped past on the starboard side; he relaxed then and strode to the stern, where Duffy was now perched on a crate, idly whittling a girl’s head out of a block of wood with his dagger. The captain leaned on the rail next to him and wiped his forehead with a scarf.
He nodded at Duffy’s sword. “You a fighting man?”
The Irishman smiled. “No.”
“Why are you so anxious to get to Trieste?”
“I’m going to enter a monastery,” Duffy said, paring the line of the girl’s cheek.