Paul Doherty - A Brood of Vipers

One of the guards came out of the shadows carrying the iron poker he had been heating in a small brazier just inside the door. He pressed the red-hot poker against the back of my neck. I screamed in agony and fell off the stool. The sharp-edged manacles dug into my wrists and ankles and I jarred every bone in my body. Seraphino spoke again and the guards picked me up and put me back on the stool. Frater Seraphino smiled benignly.

(By the way, have you noticed that professional torturers always smile and are usually very softly spoken, as if they personally regret every little inconvenience they cause you. Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth I's master torturer, was no different. Once, as we were admiring the gardens at Greenwich, I asked him why. Do you now what he said? 'My dear Roger, it increases the sense of terror. Such a sharp contrast can unnerve the coolest wit.') Well, Frater Seraphino certainly terrified me. 'Your first name is Roger?' he asked me. I nodded. 'But don't you English use that word "Roger" to describe the sexual act?' Again I nodded. 'And are you one for the ladies, Master Shallot?' 'So they say.' 'Like the Lady Beatrice? Or the Lady Bianca?' I just stared back. 'Who is killing the Albrizzis?' 'I don't know.' 'Why are you so interested in the artist Borelli?' I told him.

'And what messages do you carry to the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici?'

I told him that, as well as what the cardinal had said in reply. Frater Seraphino leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. 'What did Cardinal Wolsey mean by that message?' I shook my head dumbly. Frater Seraphino smiled.

'I am not sure, Roger,' he said quietly, 'whether you are lying or telling the truth. You see, you have told us something, but only pieces of a puzzle. They don't fit together.' Again he ticked the points off on his stubby fingers. 'Who's killing the Albrizzis and why? What is this message to the cardinal? What does it mean? Why does your royal master want to hire the painter Borelli?'

I felt like telling him to ask the cardinal himself, but remembered the hiss of that red-hot poker and kept my mouth shut. One thing was clear, even to my fuddled wits; Lord Giulio had been right – in Florence information meant power. The Master of the Eight, for reasons best known to himself, was intent on entering this game of shadows.

'Well.' Frater Seraphino beamed. 'You'll have to be our guest a little while longer.'

The black-hearted turd muttered something in Italian to one of my keepers. Seraphino glanced at me sharply to see if I understood what he said, then he nodded his balding head. 'We shall meet again,' he whispered.

I was dragged off to one of the loathsome hell-holes beneath the prison, a rank, fetid pit. It was simply a stone cavern, with wet, mildewed walls and no light except the few weak rays struggling through the cracks and seams of the heavy trapdoor above me. I was thrown on to a bed of black, rotting straw and given a tallow candle to light and place in a niche in the wall. A cracked bowl of dirty oatmeal and a tin cup of brackish water were also lowered down to me, but both oatmeal and water tasted so vile that I emptied them on the straw. I squatted and watched the cockroaches, big as butterflies, crawl from beneath the straw into the bowl. I didn't feel too frightened. Master Benjamin would surely discover my whereabouts and arrange my release. I leaned back against the shit-stained wall. At first I felt homesick for England. I cursed King Henry, starting with "Fat Bastard", and when I had exhausted my litany of insults started on Cardinal Wolsey. I must have been shouting, for the trapdoor was flung open and a bucket of cold slops hurled down on me, followed by a stream of curses which, I understood, told me to be quiet. So I shut my mouth, my mind going back over the events that had brought me to this filthy hell-hole.

Now, sitting in a prison cell with nothing to do is not my favourite pastime, but does concentrate the mind. Certain images kept recurring – the garden at that taverna, the children and their fire-crackers, Cardinal Giulio's silent menace, his lack of interest about the murders at the Albrizzi household. I scratched my chin and watched the king of the cockroaches squat in the middle of my dirt.

'Now, that's strange,' I mumbled to myself. 'Why didn't the good cardinal ask me a question? What are the messages he and Wolsey are sending to each other? And the painter Borelli? How can a man paint in a darkened room?' I recalled the picture I had seen in the king's chamber at Eltham, then I rattled my chains with glee. Whoever had painted that was right-handed, yet the man we had met, calling himself Borelli, had held the brush in his left hand. Did that painting hanging on the walls of Eltham Palace lie at the heart of this mystery? And what of the assassin with the arquebus? For some strange reason I kept remembering those skeletons Benjamin and I had unearthed outside the manor at Ipswich.

I was about to develop my thoughts when the trapdoor opened and another prisoner was flung into the pit. A greasy-haired, sallow-faced man, he spent the first few minutes shaking his fists and cursing his captors, until they poured down a bucket of cold slops to silence him. 'Welcome to Hell!' I murmured. He got down on all fours and peered through the gloom. ‘Inglese?' 'Yes.'

'Signor.' He extended a hand. 'My name is Bartolomeo Deagla, Europe's principal trader in relics, now detained by the Florentine authorities over a minor misunderstanding.'

I grasped his hand. He scrabbled across and sat beside me. He smelt like a midden-heap. His moustache and beard were all straggly and unkempt, but his eyes were watchful. I smelled the wine fumes on his breath. 'What are you doing here, Inglese?' 'Minding my own business!' I snarled. 'So hostile!' he murmured.

'Hostile but not stupid!' I snapped. 'Oh, for God's sake, man, you're wasting your time. You're no relic-seller. Your hands are soft. You have just drunk a goblet of the most fragrant wine. Finally, don't you think it's a coincidence that here I am, an Englishman in a Florentine gaol, and wonder upon wonders, another prisoner joins me who can speak English.' I thrust my face closer. 'You're a sodding informer! A Job's comforter! Now, why don't you piss off and tell Frater Seraphino he'll have to do better!'

The fellow shrugged and smiled to himself; he got to his feet, walked under the trapdoor and shouted something in Italian.

A ladder was lowered. The fellow climbed up this but stopped half-way and grinned down at me.

I don't know what he said, but he pointed to a grille in the far wall. He clambered up, the ladder was withdrawn and the trapdoor slammed shut. At first I sat, quite pleased with my perspicacity, watching the daylight fade through the cracks.

I began to grow cold and wondered when my master would arrive to save me. My courage, never the best, began to fade. My eyes were drawn to that large grille in the wall. What had the spy meant? Drops of water began to seep through the grille. I heard a scurry and a squeak and glimpsed red, mad eyes glaring at me through the grating. 'Oh, Lord save me!' I muttered.

An idea formed in my tired mind but I dismissed it as some new, cruel game the Master of the Eight had decided to play. At first I thought the grille was fixed in the wall but, straining my eyes through the gloom, I saw that it was held by wires attached to a chain. I heard a creak. The wires became taut and the grille began to lift. I huddled in a corner and watched the long, black, slimy-tailed rats slip out. No, I don't lie, these weren't your robust little English rats. Believe me, I have seen smaller cats! The leading one was at least two feet from snout to tip of tail; its fur was black, sleek and glossy and its eyes glowed like fragments of fire. In the poor light of the candle (and now I knew why the bastards had given it to me) I glimpsed long snouts and cruel, yellow teeth. These were sewer rats, voraciously hungry. They were probably lured from an underground river and trapped for a while to whet their appetites before being released into that God-forsaken hole.