The Medieval Murderers - Sword of Shame

‘Old di Betto’s son, Lorenzo. It was his idea. All of it, I swear it was.’

I left Sebenico hanging upside-down in his own sottoportego , with the front of his nightgown stuffed in his mouth for good measure. It would not take him long to get free, but long enough for me to return to the barge, and pole myself into the night. But as I crossed under the Merceria, I heard the familiar cry of the Signori de Notte , baying in the darkness. Sebenico, it seemed, had been quicker than I had anticipated. I stopped the boat directly under the crude wooden bridge that spanned the rio , and crouched in the gloom. The sound of one man’s hurried footsteps echoed above my head, quickly joined by those of several others.

At first I thought that the Signori had merely converged on the bridge in their search for me. My heart pounded in my chest, and my fist tightened over the hilt of Caterina’s sword. Then I heard a strangely strangled cry, and a scuffling of feet. I kept as silent as I could for fear of discovery. The scuffle was oddly quiet, with only a grunt or two to suggest there was a fight for life going on above me at all. I had always imagined a fight to the death would have been more noisy, more dramatic. But when the end came, it came with nothing more than a curiously feeble gurgle.

As I was pressing with both my hands and shoulders on the underside of the bridge, in order to prevent my boat from drifting out from cover, my face was close to the edge of the timbers. Suddenly, a swarthy face appeared right before my eyes, but upside down like Sebenico’s had been. I gulped, thinking I had been discovered. But even as I looked back at him, the man’s eyes were emptying of life. Streams of blood poured from his nose and mouth and over his forehead. It mingled with his long, black curly hair, and dripped down on to the water’s surface, spreading out in pink circles. He gurgled once, and was dead. As his head swung lifelessly backwards and forwards, his face was so close that I could make out an old scar on his lower jaw, and a gold ring in his ear. Then it disappeared once more back above the bridge’s lip. The Signori were removing the evidence.

I listened for their footsteps fading into the distance, before I risked a glance over the edge of the bridge. All I could make out was a gang of men, dragging what appeared to be a large sack behind them. Even that vision soon converged with the shadows and the silence. It was as if nothing had happened, as if I had dreamed it. But I was sure I had made out the bulky shape of Lorenzo Gradenigo in their midst. My hands were trembling as I poled the boat back to its moorings, realizing the stranger’s fate could well have been my own, if I had been caught by Gradenigo.

However, it was another Lorenzo-Old Man di Betto’s son-who I needed to track down the next time that darkness allowed me to roam abroad. But first I had to get through the day, cooped up with a restless Malamocco for company.

‘Barratieri. Show us the dovetail shuffle again.’

I sighed, and took the boy through some of my classic card-sharp moves, starting with the dealer grip, and moving on to the dovetail shuffle-where you can keep track of a single card, as it’s no shuffle at all-and the classic force. Malamocco tried it himself, and laughed at his own dexterity. He was good, almost better than I was, and I mentally noted not to play any gambling games with him in the future. If either of us had a future, that is.

‘Who did you say the silversmith ratted on?’

I was getting into a gloomy trough of despondency again, so the boy’s question served to sharpen my wits somewhat.

‘I didn’t. His name is di Betto. Lorenzo di Betto. I conned some money out of his father, and though he got it back with interest, it was not half of what the son had expected. I suppose this is his way of getting his own back on me. Landing me in the sh…’

‘Lorenzo di Betto?’ The boy was now excited, and scattered the cards over the table.

‘Hey, that’s no way to fool your mark! Never show him the deck broken up. He might see the trick.’

‘What? Oh that doesn’t matter, now. That name-it’s the name of the witness. The one who said he saw Lazzari being killed. I should have told you before.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Master Alimpato came round last night, while you were out. He told me he had got his hands on the witness statement taken by the Quarantia . Read it and all.’

Now why did that not surprise me. I reckon Alimpato has a better spy system than the doge himself. So, he was able to read the doge’s private correspondence. I railed at Malamocco’s inability to pass on a simple message.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Because when you got back you went straight for the bottle,’ he grumbled sulkily. ‘And then you told me you didn’t want to be interrupted.’

He was right. I had been scared by the sight of what the Signori de Notte could do when they were let loose. But if Malamocco was going to be a sidekick of mine, he needed to know when to ignore an order.

‘So did Alimpato say what was in the papers?’

‘He said this di Betto bloke swears he could not be sure of the identity of the man who killed Lazzari, as it was dark. But he says he had red hair. And he described the sword in great detail. It was an old sword, he said, with a distinctive cross-dogs’ heads that looked as though they were baying. And it had some sort of inscription on the blade. He swore that he could see that as the blade was swung high in the moonlight. Before it did for Lazzari.’

I could see Malamocco’s eyes landing on my sheathed sword that lay at the other end of the table, taking in the down-turned dogs’ heads with their mouths wide open. Like mad dogs baying at the moon. He looked back at me with admiration in his eyes.

‘Did you really do it? Cor, I bet a sword like that would take a man’s head off. Was there lots of blood?’

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and shook him.

‘Get it into your thick head, boy. I didn’t do it. I didn’t harm a hair on Domenico Lazzari’s head.’

Mentioning hair made me think again of the stranger who I had seen give up his life last night. The blood running down his oily hair, and dripping into the canal. His life’s blood washing away into the lagoon. And I wondered exactly how Lazzari had met his end. Maybe di Betto had seen him die, maybe not. Either way it looked like I needed to find him. Malamocco straightened his rumpled clothes, which were still the respectable ones I had clothed him in when he played the innocent ballotino .

‘OK. OK. Keep your hair on.’ He began to gather in the scattered cards. ‘I just wanted to know what it’s like. To kill a man.’

‘It’s evil, and it makes you feel sick. Even in war. So let’s hope you never have to do it.’ I tried to lighten the mood. ‘Far better to take them for all they’ve got, and leave them alive to pluck another time. Come on, show me you can do the dovetail shuffle properly.’

Later, I left Malamocco practising, and made for Old Man di Betto’s house. I had a rendezvous with his son, who it seems had persuaded Sebenico to denounce me, and had claimed to have witnessed the murder. My route involved crossing the Grand Canal, and as I didn’t want to risk being seen crossing by boat after curfew, I decided to venture out in the late afternoon on foot. I was in disguise however, having long ago laid my hands on the brown garb of a Franciscan friar. It had come in useful to escape irate gamblers out for my blood on more than one occasion. I had chosen it rather than the black of the Dominicans because it suited my complexion better. Besides, the Dominicans were building their church out in the marshy expanse on the eastern side of Venice. Not a very salubrious neighbourhood, and I had thought it unpropitious at the time. That choice helped me now, as the Franciscans’ pile of Frari was close to where the di Bettos lived. So it would be natural for a Franciscan to be making for that neck of the woods.