Paul Doherty - A Brood of Vipers

Lord Roderigo's party drew quickly to an end. After making his cryptic remarks he wandered away, Lady Bianca leaning heavily on his arm.

'What's Preneste got to do with it?' I muttered. 'I haven't seen him all evening.'

A short while later I discovered the reason. Lord Roderigo dismissed the servants. He ordered the candles to be doused and gathered us together on the broad, green lawn at the centre of the garden. He stared around, studying each of our faces carefully. Giovanni began to douse the sconce torches fixed into the soil until only one, in the centre of the lawn, remained burning.

'Lord Francesco is dead,' Lord Roderigo began. 'We welcome our English visitors. However, as I have informed them already, there are many paths to the truth.' He looked over his shoulder towards the house. 'Is Preneste…?' 'He is coming now, Master.'

'I am here already,' a voice declared beyond the pool of light thrown by the torch.

Preneste walked forward. Gone were the sober robes of the clerk. Now Preneste was dressed in a white alb, with a red belt round his waist and on his head a helmet of garlands with extraordinarily lifelike artificial snakes. His feet were bare. He carried a chest, which he placed in the pool of light and opened. I craned over my master's shoulder. I knew enough about the black-magic lords to recognize its contents -philtres, magic letters, the eyes of cats, a bowl of froth from a mad dog, a dead man's bones wrapped in yellowing skin, a noose from a scaffold, daggers rusty with human blood, and plants and flowers gathered under a hunter's moon. 'What nonsense is this?' I murmured. Benjamin stepped back. 'Look at his face, Roger.'

Preneste stood up. I noticed how smooth and white his face had become, the eyes enlarged. Drunk on poppy seed, I wondered, or on the juice of mushrooms which allows a man to see visions through the curtain of reality? No one objected to Preneste's transformation from chaplain to black magician. I remembered a saying that the Florentines' religion was like wax, 'very hot and easily moulded', and recalled Dante's acceptance of sorcery in the Inferno, where a special part of hell is reserved for the sorcerers, where their heads are twisted back so that they, who in life were always straining to see the future, could only look backwards. Dante had it right – black magic flourished in Florence – and the Albrizzis were involved in it.

'Stand back!' Preneste ordered. 'Retire beyond the pool of light!'

I was only too happy to. At the time Benjamin and I were quite relaxed – such practices were common even in London, where witches, with cupboards full of human skulls, bones, teeth and skin, were six a penny. I viewed what the Albrizzis were involved in as a masque or pantomime, put on to whet jaded appetites and entertain, even perhaps frighten, their visitors from England. We all withdrew to the edge of the lawn. I don't know where everyone was standing. All I can remember is that I was near Benjamin as Preneste began his ritual. He was holding a marble vase in his left hand and a sponge tied to a dead man's leg in his right. He lifted his face and began to chant, staring at the moon as if it was some beacon light for his prayer. He then knelt and kissed the earth, dipped the leg bone in what looked like a bowl of human blood and sketched a circle which encompassed both himself and the sconce torch fixed to a rod driven into the ground. He placed a skull in the centre of the circle, poured some of the blood over it and began to chant in a language neither I nor my master understood. At first I stood there bored. Suddenly, Preneste looked up, eyes staring. He clapped his hands. 'The Master comes!' he shouted. 'I wish he'd bloody well hurry up!' I muttered.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than a cold wind sprang up. The torchlight danced, lengthening Preneste's shadow, and the man himself seemed to grow like some swelling toad. In the woods beyond a dog howled, a long and curdling cry. Preneste's lips were moving soundlessly. Again the howl, and suddenly a dog or jackal sped across the torchlight. God knows where it came from! God knows what it really was! And only God knows where it went! To hell I hope! Lady Beatrice squealed, but now Preneste turned, staring into the darkness. He was holding in his hands a wax tablet and a sharp knife. I stared into the shadows and saw one deeper than the rest. The cold wind grew stronger. A terrible stench pervaded the garden, corrupting and rotten. The hair on the nape of my neck curled. I shivered and grasped my master's arm, tense and rigid. Suddenly there was a crack like a gun firing. Preneste staggered sideways, turned and stared at us, a look of surprise on his face. He crumpled to the grass, hitting the pole which held the torch and extinguishing the light. For a few seconds no one moved. A woman screamed, I don't know who. 'Bring torches! Bring torches!' Roderigo shouted.

I heard tinder strike. Giovanni brought a light and lit the other torches in the garden. Roderigo was already bending over Preneste but one look at the man's waxen features, slack jaw and half-open eyes told all. The man was dead, killed by a metal ball which had struck him on the side of the temple. My master picked up the wax tablet, but all Preneste had had time to draw was one line.

'Anybody's,' Benjamin said, 'it could have been anybody's name!'

'If you really believe in that nonsense,' I answered, my courage now returning.

Roderigo turned Preneste over on to his back. Lady Bianca had to be carried away, her gasps and splutters of near-hysteria being stilled by Alessandro, who took her to one of the garden seats and thrust a goblet of wine into her hands. Roderigo got to his feet and swore deeply. This was the first time I had seen him frightened – his face was slack and his hands trembled. He stared round at the rest of us. 'Whoever it is,' he hissed, 'intends to kill us all! Giovanni, take Preneste's body upstairs to his chamber. The rest of you, come with me!'

We followed him into the house, past silent, frightened servants who, summoned from their quarters, now began to clear up the remains of the banquet. They whispered amongst themselves, staring at the body still sprawled on the grass. A small pool of blood ebbed out from that dreadful black hole in the side of the skull. Roderigo led us back into a room that in England we would have called the solar – a pleasant chamber with quilted window-seats, decorated walls and delicately carved furniture. Dominating the room was a long, polished, oval table with quilted stools ranged around it. We all took our seats. Servants lit candles and brought goblets of sweet wine infused with a cordial. I didn't touch mine. I'll be honest, old Shallot was terrified. Demon-worshippers, the black arts, a mysterious assassin who could fire a handgun and not be detected – it was all too much for me to cope with. Mind you, I wasn't alone – Roderigo had lost his arrogance and everyone there had been shocked by Preneste's death.

'At first,' Roderigo said, 'I believed Francesco's murder was the work of a solitary assassin, perhaps the result of a blood feud because he had wronged some family, either in England or in Florence. Matteo's death could have been an accident. But this!' He banged the table with his fist. 'Who can carry an unwieldy weapon into a secure and well-guarded garden, fire it and then disappear? You, Inglese!' – he pointed angrily at Benjamin – 'your master sent you here to help. I demand that help now.' I felt like reminding him that only a few hours earlier he had been quite offhand about our assistance. But the mood of the Albrizzis had turned ugly.

'How do we know,' Alessandro asked, 'that it is not the Inglese themselves who are the assassins?'

'Don't be stupid!' I retorted. 'We had never even heard of Lord Francesco or any of you before all this happened!'