Death of a Rake (3/4)

Watching her strange new friend being carried away by the covey of capi, crow-like in their black capes, she felt a sinking feeling. She glanced back at the corpse, just as pretty as ever and completely ignored.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said to him, bending down to pat his cold hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll find out what happened.”

Now, what had Hibbert said? Piazza San Marco…Griffiths.

She plucked a paper map of the city out of her purse. At the moment she was in the northernmost sestiere, Cannareggio, near the Church of Saint Alvise. Nearby she heard a choir of young women practicing—nuns?

The city map was a twenty-first century artefact but reliable enough. She managed to weave her way through the labyrinth, dizzy from the nauseating stench and trying not to look too hard at the muck on the streets. There were an awful lot of cats and they didn’t look in very condition. One particularly battered tomcat was dragging a very large chuck of meat along the alley.

Passing over a little bridge she suddenly found herself in a different city altogether. The buildings were tall. There were several children playing in the street, women with covered heads were bustling to market and vendors were setting up their shops. Seeing books, signs and inscriptions in Hebrew, she guessed this was the ghetto.

Sure enough, she passed what was marked on the map as the ‘Great German Schola’, a huge synagogue. Past the ghetto, she saw the tall boxy bell tower of Santa Sofia, the Stele di Pan (‘table of the bread law’), which she calculated must only be 28 years old. She stopped to take a picture of it. She raced over bridges, past churches, around carts loaded with vegetables, fruit, bread, sweetmeats.

Once or twice she herself paused to gawp—a man with a black velvet cape embroidered with golden bees minced past, a woman tottered by with towering white hair, a beautiful chintz jacket and darling heels. Hunched against a stone portico was a sorry creature who looked very much like an actual leper.

The clang of multiple bells sounded bone-shudderingly close—and she realized it must be eight o’clock in the morning and that she was near St. Mark’s. Passing down a very narrow alley, she finally came out, on Piazza San Marco brilliant in the benediction of sunshine. Looking around, she saw an appreciable crowd gathered on one side of the square. CaffeèFlorian! She remembered reading it had been founded in 1720. Maybe Griffiths was there.

Bustling over, uncomfortably aware of how much she was sweating from her exertions, Tina spotted the man she was after by his bright-yellow tights. He was with the ladies he’d been with before, apparently enjoying their company greatly. Their wigs were considerably disheveled.

“Hey, Griffiths!” Tina called. She stopped in front of the astonished trio, puffing.

He looked at her.

“Ah, the lady we met in Canarreggio. But where is Lord Hibbert?”

“That’s what I want to tell you. He’s been arrested.”

“Arrested?” Griffiths, formerly ruddy, suddenly looked as pale as an oyster.

“Yes they took him off to prison. We have to help him.”

“We?” Griffiths coughed. “But—dash my wig and trouser buttons—it can’t be done my girl. You haven’t met these Venetian jolterheads, they’re dreadfully intractable. I’m afraid there’s not much we can do for him but pray.” He shrugged.

“Some friend you are!” she snapped. “Lord Hibbert won’t forget that you left him to languish in jail.”

Turning on her heel, starting to stride across the piazza.

“But, miss, madam, where are we going?” Griffiths cried, clearly alarmed.

“The Ducal Palace. That’s where the judges and things are, aren’t they?”

“You can’t do that. They won’t let us in! Or, rather they will, and that’s the problem.”

“I’ll make them let us in,” said Tina. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

Griffiths walked nervously behind her. She went up to a palace guard, who looked haughtily at her as she spoke.

“I am here to inform the Doge of a disaster that is about to strike, unless he releases a man by the name of Lord Hibbert.”

“What?” said Griffiths.

“Just translate,” said Tina. “Quickly!”

Apologetically, the Englishman spoke a few words of Venetian. The guardsman looked at her skeptically.

“Can you please tell him the matter is urgent?” said Tina.

Griffiths did so.

“Tell him I’m a witch.”

Griffiths gulped and translated. The soldier went into the building.

“I told him that you think you’re a witch.”

“Good enough.”

“He’s going to get one of the English-speaking councillors.”

The bells of the clocktower struck the quarter-hour.

“Quick,” said Tina. “Can you drum up a crowd for me?”

“What?”

“Get more people around. The more witnesses the better. Hurry! Tell them the witch thing.”

She climbed up on the edge of a fountain and blew the extra-loud safety whistle she’d purchased for her trip. Sure enough, people began to stare and approach. She tried to remember a poem and “The Song of Hiawatha” came to mind, the one she’d taught to her ten-year-olds the previous semester. When there was a sizable crowd, she decided to get going.

“Don’t translate this bit” she whispered to Griffiths. “It’s just to get things started.”

She commenced, in a booming voice, to recite the first lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s masterpiece:

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.

Her crowd was grinning, elbowing each other, imitating her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a councillor emerge from the Palace, followed by a tough looking pair.

“Start translating now,” she said to Griffiths:

“Hear ye, hear ye! Men and women of Venice. My name is Leonora the Luminous! And I say to ye that a terrible catastrophe is come upon the earth. This very day, in only ten minutes, at eight forty, the earth will shake mightily.”

She groaned, and some members of the audience, those who could speak English, gasped.

“The reason is that an innocent man has been arrested—John Chichester, Lord Hibbert, an Englishman beloved of God. So beloved of God is he, that—unless he is released immediately,” she looked the Councillor directly in the eyes, “Then the earth will shake again, another time. And at that second time—Oh woe!” She started clawing at her cheeks, pulling her hair and gesturing at the sky. “Oh lackaday!

“What? What? Tell us!” cried the crowd.

“Venice will be…no more.” She said the last two words very quietly but they resonated in the piazza and for a couple of moments the crowd stood in stunned silence.

“Zese are lies,” boomed the Councillor, then he translated for the benefit of the crowd, who looked far from convinced by his skepticism. He shoo’d them away and grabbed Tina, who did a good job of looking like a martyr, and Griffiths, who looked merely dismayed.

“Well, this is a nice mutton pie you’ve got us into,” he hissed.

“Have some patience,” she hissed back.

Just as they were about to mount the steps to the ducal palace, the piazza started to tremble, wooden beams bent at strange angles and tiles came crashing down from a few roofs, smashing on the piazza’s smooth flagstones. The commotion in the square was intense—women screamed and men yelled.

The Councillor looked discomfited. He stared at Tina suspiciously, then expostulated with Griffiths, who answered respectfully. The councillor gave orders to his enforcers and Tina heard the word “’ibbert” and watched the men run in different directions.

At the same time, a crowd started approaching the Ducal Palace. An old woman fell to her knees, moaning and uttering an agonized speech.

“What’s she saying?” Tina asked Griffiths.

“She’s praying that Lord Hibbert be released for the salvation of Venice and all its citizens, whom she considered her own grandchildren. She says she’s willing to offer her own life in exchange for Lord Hibbert’s.”

The Councillor lifted a hand to his forehead and told them to disperse or he’d take their names.

He then dragged Tina and Griffiths into the Palace, down a sumptuous hall and into a room that looked like a study, decorated with a huge portrait of someone with a funny hat. The Councillor spoke grimly to Griffiths, and then he left them in the room, shutting an extremely thick door and turning a key in the lock.

“Oh rabbit,” Griffiths swore.

“He’s not going to free Hibbert?” Tina asked with concern.

“Oh no, he is. But we’re booked for an audience with the Doge. And you’re going to have to prove you’re a witch or it’s the dungeons for us.”

“Oh,” said Tina. “Rats.”