Perhaps it was not such a dreadful experience for Mordecai, since, to the best of my knowledge, he had spent all of his prior days huddled in his cell-like money shop on the Mercerìa, and this could not be a much different confinement. But I had been free and untrammeled and convivial; being immured in the Vulcano was like being buried alive. I realized that I ought to be grateful for having some company in my untimely grave, even if it was only a Jew, and even if his conversation was not always buoyant. One day I mentioned to him that I had seen several sorts of punishment administered at the pillars of Marco and Todaro, but never an execution.
He said, “That is because most of them are done here inside the walls, so that not even the other prisoners are aware of them until they are over. The condemned man is put into one of the cells of the Giardini Foschi, so called, and those cells have barred windows. The Meatmaker waits outside the cell, and waits patiently, until the man inside, moving about, moves before that window and with his back to it. Then the Meatmaker whips a garrotta through the bars and around the man’s throat, so that either his neck snaps or he strangles to death. The Dark Gardens are on the canal side of this building, and there is a removable stone slab in the corridor there. In the night, the victim’s body is slid through that secret hole and into a waiting boat, and it is conveyed to the Sepoltùra Pùblica. Not until it is all finished is the execution announced. Far less fuss that way. Venice does not care to have it widely known that the old Roman lege de tagiòn is still so often exercised here. So the public executions are few. They are inflicted only on those convicted of really heinous crimes.”
“Crimes like what?” I asked.
“In my time, one man has died so for having raped a nun, and another for having told a foreigner some of the secrets of the Murano art of glassworking. I daresay the murder of a Doge-elect will rank with those, if that is what you are wondering.”
I swallowed. “What is—how is it done—in public?”
“The culprit kneels between the pillars and is beheaded by the Meatmaker. But before that, the Meatmaker has cut off whatever part of him was guilty of the crime. The nun raper, of course, had his gid amputated. The glassworker had his tongue cut out. And the condemned man marches to the pillars with the guilty piece of him suspended from a string around his neck. In your case, I suppose it will be only your hand.”
“And only my head,” I said thickly.
“Try not to laugh,” said Mordecai.
“Laugh?!” I cried in anguish—and then I did laugh, his Words were so preposterous. “You are jesting again, old man.”
He shrugged. “One does what one can.”
One day, the monotony of my confinement was interrupted. The door was unlocked to let a stranger come stooping in. He was a fairly young man who wore not a uniform but the gown of the Brotherhood of Justice, and he introduced himself to me as Fratello Ugo.
“Already,” he said briskly, “you owe a considerable casermagio of room and board in this State Prison. If you are poor, you are entitled to the assistance of the Brotherhood. It will pay your casermagio for as long as you are incarcerated. I am a licensed advocate, and I will represent you to the best of my ability. I will also carry messages to and from the outside, and procure some few small comforts—salt for your meals, oil for your lamp, things like that. I can also arrange for you”—he glanced over at old Cartafilo and sniffed slightly—“a private cell.”
I said, “I doubt that I would be any less unhappy elsewhere, Fra Ugo. I will stay in this one.”
“As you wish,” he said. “Now, I have been in communication with the house of Polo, of which it seems you are the titular head, albeit still a minor. If you prefer, you can well afford to pay the prison casermagio, and also to hire an advocate of your own choice. You have only to write out the necessary pagherì and authorize the company to pay them.”
I said uncertainly, “That would be a public humiliation to the company. And I do not know if I have any right to squander the company’s funds … .”
“On a lost cause,” he finished for me, nodding in agreement. “I quite understand.”
Alarmed, I started to remonstrate, “I did not mean—that is, I would hope … .”
“The alternative is to accept the help of the Brotherhood of Justice. For its reimbursement, the Brotherhood is then allowed to send upon the streets two beggars, asking alms of the citizens for pity of the wretched Marco P—”
“Amoredèi!” I exclaimed. “That would be infinitely more humiliating!”
“You do not have to decide your choice this instant. Let us discuss your case instead. How do you intend to plead?”
“Plead?” I said, indignant. “I shall not plead, I shall protest! I am innocent!”
Brother Ugo looked over at the Jew again, and distastefully, as if he suspected that I had already been receiving counsel. Mordecai only pulled a face of skeptical amusement.
I went on, “For my first witness I shall call the Dona Ilaria. When she is compelled to tell of our—”
“She will not be called,” the Brother interrupted. “The Signori della Notte would not allow it. That lady has been recently bereaved and is still prostrate with grief.”
I scoffed, “Are you trying to tell me that she grieves for her husband?”
“Well …,” he said, with deliberation. “If not that, you can be sure that she exhibits some extreme emotion because she is not now the Dogaressa of Venice.”
Old Cartafilo made a noise like a smothered snicker. Maybe I made a noise, too—of dismay—for that aspect of the situation had not before occurred to me. Ilaria must be seething with disappointment and frustration and anger. When she sought her husband’s removal, she had not dreamed of the honor he was about to be accorded, and she with him. So now she would be inclined to forget her own involvement; she would be consumed with a desire to exact revenge for her forfeited title. It would not matter on whom she vented her rage, and who was an easier target than myself?
“If you are innocent, young Messer Marco,” said Ugo, “who did murder the man?”
I said, “I think it was a priest.”
Brother Ugo gave me a long look, then rapped on the cell door for a guard to let him out. As the door creaked open at his knee level, he said to me, “I suggest that you do choose to hire some other advocate. If you intend to accuse a reverend father, and your prime witness is a woman bent on vendèta, you will need the best legal talent there is in the Republic. Ciao.”
When he had gone, I said to Mordecai, “Everyone takes it for granted that I am doomed, whether I am guilty or not. Surely there must be some law to safeguard the innocent against unjust conviction.”
“Oh, almost surely. But there is an old saying: the laws of Venice are supremely fair and they are sedulously obeyed … for a week. Do not let your hopes get too high.”
“I would have more hope if I had more help,” I said. “And you could help us both. Let the Brother Ugo have those letters you hold, and let him show them in evidence. They would at least cast a shadow of suspicion on the lady and her lover.”
He gazed at me with his blackberry eyes and scratched reflectively in his fungus beard, and said, “You think that would be the Christian thing to do?”
“Why … yes. To save my life, to set you free. I see nothing un-Christian about it.”
“Then I am sorry that I adhere to a different morality, for I cannot do it. I did not do that to save myself from the frusta, and I will not do it for both of us.”
I stared, unbelieving. “Why in the world not?”