The Medieval Murderers - Sword of Shame

I stood on the other side of the small square, and watched the passage of the servant and Valier as they ascended the staircase inside the palazzo. The shutters were still closed but, being old and worn, the candlelight spilled through each set of slats as they passed. The light finally stopped outside an upper room where the shutters stood open, though the room was in darkness. The servant’s light now illuminated a figure that had been standing looking out of the window. The silhouette resembled the shape of a woman, but one with a belly big with child. This had me puzzled for a moment, for I knew of no member of the Dolfin family who might be about to give birth. Then the figure turned her face towards the candlelight, and the people who had just entered her room. It was Caterina’s face. As I stood watching in confusion, she took a step towards Valier, and embraced him.

I had been tossing and turning in my bed for hours, when the next thing I knew Caterina Dolfin was leaning over me, stroking my brow.

‘Caterina! How did you get here?’

She didn’t reply, and I saw it was a changed Caterina. Her finely chiselled features were now slack and heavy, her cheeks distended, her hair hung down in lank ropes, and worst of all, as she rose from me, I could see that she was as distended as a ripe melon. Huge with child. I moaned and called out her name, reaching for her.

‘Caterina!’

But when I touched her grotesque belly, I could feel it pulsating underneath my palm. Her lips parted in a black-toothed grin then, with the coarsest of leers, she lifted her skirts. Her legs parted, and out from her belly marched a column of little replicas of Pasquale Valier, each with a little knife in its hand. They scrambled up my prostrate form as I tried to rise, killing me with pin-pricks. My leaden limbs would not respond to my commands, and I was unable to swat them off. They climbed over my face, and I couldn’t breathe. I was being smothered by an army of Valiers issuing from Caterina’s loins. I tried to call out but my frozen vocal cords refused to come out with more than a high-pitched squeal. It was a merciful release when death and darkness came.

I woke up to find myself fleeing from something unknown. But the faster I tried to run, the slower I went. I was wading through the mud of the great lagoon. And the clinging silt sucked at my legs making each step an inhuman effort. I was sinking deeper and deeper into mud as the sound of my pursuers rang out across the open expanse. Voices carried easily in the way they do at sea, the hunters sounding closer than they really were. I struggled, and yanked my legs out of the sucking mud, staggering on at last. I didn’t dare look back in case the Signori really were as close as they sounded. Then, when I did finally chance a look over my shoulder, I stumbled, and measured my length in the mud and rising waters. I floundered, and some unseen impediment-an ancient log, or fisherman’s rope-pinched my leg and held me fast.

I woke up. Tangled in something heavy and clinging. I panicked, called out, and tried to pull free. My thrashing only made my entanglement the worse, and soon I was exhausted, flopping weakly like some beached flatfish on the shore. Only I was not on the shore, but drowning in the middle of a muddy lagoon with the waters rising. My movements were getting slower and slower as some unspeakable pursuer gained ground with every step. Until finally I could feel hot, devilish breath on my neck. I didn’t dare look back, for I knew if I did, the demon would grasp me. I heard his voice.

‘Barratieri! It’s me, Malamocco. Wake up, you’re having a nightmare.’

I struggled to wake up, and realized I was wrapped in a hopeless tangle of bed-linen. The boy was sitting on my back, breathing down my neck, and trying to waken me.

‘Get off me, you little monster,’ I growled. ‘And go and get me some wine to drink. My mouth is like a Saracen’s armpit.’

‘No wonder. You drank as if the end of the world had come last night. I doubt there is any wine left in your uncle’s cellar.’

I held my head, which felt as though someone had exploded that new gunpowder stuff inside it.

‘It has. The end of the world, that is. My world anyway.’

I recalled the affectionate way that Caterina-the bitch-had stepped into Pasquale Valier’s embrace. It showed the child she bore was certainly his. Which meant she had been whoring with him while she had been with me. And I could now see what had happened to get me into the fix I was in. I had been right royally set up.

My thinking went this way. The murderer had been identified by the unique sword he had used. Who had given me that sword? Caterina Dolfin. Who knew I had that sword? Only Caterina and my drinking companions on that fateful night of the wager, amongst whom was Pasquale Valier. Who got me mixed up in the vote-rigging scam? Pasquale Valier. Who introduced me to Domenico Lazzari in the most public place possible? Pasquale Valier again. Who was rutting with Fish-face Valier? Caterina Dolfin. That was the fact that hurt most. Don’t get me wrong-I couldn’t have cared less if she was whoring with Valier; what hurt was that I had been outwitted and out-scammed by a woman. What’s that? You don’t believe me? At the time I didn’t care.

Defeated, I took the pitcher Malamocco offered me, and drank deeply before realizing what he had given me.

‘Yeeeugh. It’s water. Are you trying to poison me?’

The boy grinned as I spat it out. ‘No. Just trying to sober you up. Besides it’s the best rainwater collected off the roof. Fresh as…fresh as…’

‘Fresh as your sweaty crotch, you urchin. You would do better to use this…’ I threw the pitcher, and the rest of its contents, at Malamocco. ‘…to wash yourself in.’

He dodged, and the pitcher shattered on the stone floor, splashing water over his bare feet. He yelled in horror, and sat down on the floor, wiping his feet on the shabby sleeve of the mantle I had provided for him. But he had made his point. I had wasted precious time in getting drunk last night, and sleeping most of today away also. What I should have been getting on with was finding Valier. And if I couldn’t have the truth from him, I would at least have vengeance.

The trouble was, Pasquale Valier was nowhere to be found. Close to curfew, and in the shadows of dusk, I had sneaked around most of his usual haunts. Where I couldn’t show my face for fear of being identified, I sent Malamocco to enquire on my behalf. No one had seen Valier for almost three days. His brief excursion to Lorenzo di Betto’s funeral must have been the only occasion he had shown his face in public in all that time. Although I had been putting it off, I knew I would eventually have to try at the Palazzo Dolfin.

Having dragged my feet as long as I could, I finally stood in the same doorway from where I had seen Caterina in Valier’s embrace. This time, the window she had been looking out of was firmly shuttered, and the house showed even fewer signs of life than before. I sensed Malamocco fidgeting at my side, but still I couldn’t stir myself. Finally he spoke.

‘Shall I knock?’

‘No, boy. There is no point-there’s no one there I want to talk to.’

We slipped away into the darkness, and went where I should have gone to start with-Valier’s family home. If he was hiding anywhere, it had to be behind the back of his father. The problem was, how was I going to flush him out? The squat palazzo had the appearance of a fortified castle, quite unlike the red-brick elegance of the Palazzo Dolfin. It stood on the corner of the Grand Canal and one of the rios running off it. Thus on two sides it was virtually moated, and the water entrance looked as forbidding as the gateway to the Arsenal. It was only the fact that lights burned behind the shutters of the upper windows that confirmed for me that someone was in residence.