Читать книгу Caravan to Xanadu, A Novel of Marco Polo - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 13

It was a pleasant beginning for our adventure, and, we trusted, a good omen. But our cheer began to pall as we drew near the fortresslike pile that housed the living dead. Truly Venice was famed for the good health of its citizenry, doubtless by the blessing of San Marco, yet there were enough lazars of all sorts to pack it full as a dunghill is with worms. It stood in a gloomy backwater among towers fending off the sun; its stones were gray with cold slime; silt and seaweed fouled its doorways. Every window was barred, and all were dark except those of the guardrooms, which were bright enough for a gala night. The air became tainted an arrow cast distant. As we drew nearer a company of rats swam in a V-shape pack across our bows, climbed onto a dock, and vanished in a crack in the wall. There were at least fifty of the loathsome beasts following a captain as big as a half-grown cat, and I wondered to what feast they had been summoned.

We tied the gondola to a piling where I had seen others of its like in the last few days, and where presumably it would attract no attention. Then, lowering our caps and pulling up our neck-cloths, we made our way to a recess near the iron gate known as Dead Man’s Portal, where a rushlight flickered and cast a rigadoon of shadows. This gate should open about midnight to let the outer guard bear the day’s accumulation of corpses to the charnel boats, from which they were thrown into a mass grave. Ordinarily the door would be locked behind them by Messer Vico, the junior warden, and opened only for their readmittance. Since we had sent him a prearranged signal, we could expect him to omit the precaution tonight as though by a fault of memory. The dead had to be identified by a town watchman at the end of the alley, prayed over, and shrouded before being stowed on the boats, so we could count on at least a half an hour to effect Haran-din’s rescue.

My wait very soon grew chill. Since the night was warm, I could only attribute this fact to cold sweat. To try to conceal it from Felix, I kept up a pretense of gay whisperings, but apparently he saw through it, or perhaps was himself under more strain than his debonair manner revealed. In any case he brought forth a leathern flask containing a pint of strong wine, which we shared with great pleasure.

We were enjoying its warmth when we were given a great scare as well. An officer of some kind, bearing a pike, emerged from the shadows and came toward us along the moonlit quay. If we ran the day was lost; if he found us and raised an outcry, our fix would be even worse; if he attacked us there might be an added load for the charnel boat. Our best hope was that he would pass by without seeing us. And it seemed to be winning when he stopped, held his weapon ready, and spoke in low tones.

“I’d a notion I’d find you here.”

“Who are you, friend?” I asked.

“Captain Vico, the junior warden. I received the signal, and thought I’d take a look at you, and if you appeared a gentleman, I’d lend you a hand.”

I knew the smell of this full well, and it was greasy.

“When are you going to unlock the door?” I asked with growing boldness. I did not know its source or whether it was quite real. Anyway, it had an instantaneous effect on Messer Vico.

“The bolt’s slid already, but the coast’s not clear until the guards bring out the stuff.”

“You’ve a ring of keys on your belt. Does one of them unlock the Infidel’s cell?”

“No, signor, only the keys of the outer rooms. But the lock will be easy to break, and you’ll have plenty of time, some of which is by my special provision.”

His low voice had become gleeful in an obnoxious way. It was like the happy croak of vultures as they hop toward carrion. I did not want to ask him how he had lengthened the time, but saw no way to dodge it.

“How did you work it, Captain?”

“In a way you’d never think of. Last night I had the kitchen knaves fix a mess of kale, green and half-cooked. Maybe you know it will burst your belly with colic, and flux you worse than spoiled fish. I don’t mean you, your Honor. I mean them who has to eat it, when they’ve nothing else.”

“I see.”

“I gave it to half a dozen wretches with one foot and four toes in the grave. Old folk wasting away still crave their victuals—some of ’em more than blacksmiths—but they wouldn’t have touched the stuff if I hadn’t sanded their mush for two days running. Would you call that slipshod work, young sir, or would you call it foresight?”

“I don’t know what to call it till I know your purpose.”

“You haven’t guessed it yet? When a body’s tottering on the brink, a breath o’ wind sends him over.”

“They died?”

“Whist!”

Messer Vico had cocked his head to listen to a grating sound from the iron gate. As it swung open, he stood forth as though to oversee the proceeding. Two by two came the burly guards, each pair carrying a bier on which lay a naked corpse. Somehow I had thought they would all be old men, but what I took for a beardless gaffer with frail limbs showed in the rushlight as a wasted crone. Then I saw a male child among the number and then a fair-haired damsel—newly wedded, perhaps, or a virgin bride of Death.

“Ain’t that the wench who came to nurse her father, and wouldn’t pay your rent for a soft, warm bed?” Captain Vico called jovially to one of her pallbearers.

“The very one,” the bravo answered. “Instead she warmed herself catching fever, which was hot enough, and now she’s gone to join him in a hard, cold bed.”

I thought the pale parade would never end. It did, though, at last—when I had counted nine. Behind them marched six idle guardsmen of a full squad of twenty-four. The shapes faded into the darkness; and the noise of jests and laughter and complaints over shirking fair shares of the load grew faint and indistinguishable. There was still a flickering half-circle of shadows before the rushlight, but done was the awful dance of jumping jacks on the wet stone.

Captain Vico returned to us with a proud smile.

“Wait a minute more in case one of ’em glances back,” he advised. “You’ve time to take your time, as you plainly see.”

“There are more than usual?” I asked. My voice sounded strained.

“Several more. But I reckoned there might be.” The side of his face drew—I saw it in the deep, cold gloom, and I could guess that it indicated a long, knowing wink.

“Six more?”

The question caused Felix to look at me in a startled way.

Captain Vico shook his head. “Sometimes they’ve got more life in them than you reckon, but there were three that got here sooner than they would have, including one that I had least counted on.”

“The old woman?”

“We’d better get on the move——” Felix broke in.

“Why, you’ve time to sit and play a game of chess. Young gentleman, how did you know it was her?”

“I saw you look surprised as they brought her out.”

“You’ve sharp eyes, and no mistake! Them old women are the greatest lingerers in the house. Well, it turned out you didn’t need the extra ones, but many a night there’s only two or three, and I’ve seen the night when we drew a blank. My only aim was to help you win, and I had no notion of asking a share in the prize. But if you’ve thirty lire handy——”

I did have, and I had considered handing them to him. Instead my hand found other work to do, it seemed on its own volition. I had been hating the creature with a swiftly expanding hate, and suddenly he fell down. I had hardly heard the thud of my fist against his cheekbone—perhaps I had aimed at the eye that had winked—before I hated myself for the reckless act. Quite possibly it would wreck our scheme.

“Devils in hell!” Felix broke out in a low-voiced violence. “Do you want to hang us all?”

“I’m sorry——”

Felix jerked a cloth from around his neck and a cord from his pocket. “See, he’s coming to already,” he grumbled as he crouched with busy hands beside the fallen man. “For the love of God, Marco, the next time you hit a man, hit him in the jaw.”

With unbelievable swiftness he fixed a gag in the warden’s mouth and tied his wrists and ankles. Thrusting him into the darkest part of the recess, we dashed for the iron gate. It opened readily and Felix led the way into the dim hall. Soon we both stopped, sickened by the foul air and appalled by the gloom. Here and there a low-burning lamp was bracketed to the wall, but these only caused deeps and shallows of darkness that bewildered the mind. There were black openings that might be corridors, gratings, and barred doors.

“Which way?” Felix whispered.

I could not tell him, but by standing still and shutting fear out of my heart, I looked at the map that Mustapha Sheik had furnished me. I did not do so with my hands and outward eyes, but inside my head where I had stored it, line by line, and with the eyes of the mind. This was the thing I could do, the part I was good for. I was not a good captain but I would make an excellent councilor....

In a moment I knew which one of the black holes to make for. Beyond was a door, as sure as the devil, and a steep stairway.... At its head opened a long hall; with the flickering light it seemed a mile long. Through this gloom we sped, I counting eleven cells. At the twelfth we stopped.

“Haran-din?” I called into its fetid dark.

“Shair Allah (The justice of God)!”

Under my surcoat was an iron bar. I took it out and thrust it through the ring of the big padlock and began to pry. There was no result but a grating noise and then a clang as the iron slipped and struck the cell door. With a grunt of disgust, Felix took it out of my hands. He placed it carefully, his elbow came down against the powerful upward twist of his forearm, and the lock broke off.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom and I feared to turn them on the inmate of the cell. Many a leper becomes a living carcass, half dismembered. Haran-din had the white form of the disease, so that most of his skin was silvery-looking, picking up the vestiges of light so that it appeared to have a phosphorescent glow. He was naked except for a breachclout and a round cap.

“Come quickly,” I murmured in the silence.

It seemed that he too should be able to see in the pale dark, so long had it been his medium. Instead he groped his way toward the door. I was reaching to help him when he gave forth a wail like some strange swamp fowl. Out of the gloom rose a fast football of stone. I had hardly time to turn when three keepers, carrying pointed sticks, burst out of a black passage.

A few seconds ago, Felix and I had been taut as harpstrings with force we could not free. There had been nothing to spend it on after the lock broke; the action of the adventure had been reduced to a snail’s pace. Suddenly we were in a swirl of violence. The guards flung themselves on us, their weapons raised to strike us.

They would have done better to employ them as spears. The most likely reason they did not was a humanly interesting one to be considered only in peaceful leisure. These fellows were not knights, to level lances at the foe, but base keepers of half-dead folk. They used their sticks to prod with through the bars, whereby they were greatly feared and hated, terrible weapons indeed to the poor wretches who could only grunt and shriek and beg for mercy. In truth they were like the forks employed by demons in Hell, for there too the damned are bound in iron and cannot fight back. But well the villains knew that Felix and I differed greatly from their usual prey. Losing faith in their sticking and stabbing, they hoisted them like clubs.

Before their wielders could strike us, we were at grips with them. They were three to our two, but whatever terror was in me was transmuted first to excitement, then to fierce joy. Perhaps I realized it was not a fight to the death. If they carried daggers they did not draw them, partly perhaps because they took me for a nobleman whose kniving would be avenged inside or outside the law, mainly for care of their own skins.

While Felix held his own against two of the wretches, I grappled with the other. We had been fighting an endless time, it seemed, before I dared believe I was his master, and at that instant events took a new turn. More likely not twenty seconds had gone by since the attack began, but these were so furious that none of the three guardsmen had breath to call for help. Suddenly one of Felix’s pair broke from his grasp and went sprinting down the hall.

“Help! Help!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

Then for the first time I saw what a wolf in strength and swiftness Felix was. I had better compare him to some splendid denizen of the deep, such as a great gleaming swordfish whose shadow in the water is the nightmare of the sharks, and which causes their teeth to chatter like castanets. For in battling the sea and its creatures, these graces had come upon him. The giant threshing tunny had taught him nimbleness, and the writhing tentacles of the octopus had proved the strength of his hands.

Although the second man tried to hold him, Felix flung him from him in one wrench, then darted in pursuit of the runaway. I trow he was not two ticks of a clock behind him at the start, and although they vanished almost instantly in the shadows, I had no trouble following the race. The volume of the quarry’s shouts for help had not begun to reduce when they suddenly stopped.

Yet a heavy trouble began to lie on my exultant spirit. What was the good of winning the brabble if we lost the prize? The turmoil had slacked off, with Felix’s man groaning and clutching his knee, and my fellow panting and grunting, although not struggling very hard, in my grasp. And in this quiet I could vision the half-score or so stout watchmen in various parts of the building having heard the shouts, and rushing to their fellows’ help. The wonder was that they had not already appeared.

“Get away as fast as you can!” I shouted to Haran-din in his native tongue. “The outer gate’s unlocked.”

“Nay, I can’t keep my course in the murky gloom,” he answered calmly.

“Try it anyway, for the love of God! The alarm’s raised now, and the pack will be upon us——”

“I think not. The watchmen doze at their posts, and they’ll pay no mind to calls for help. Why, the halls ring with them day and night as some poor soul is prodded or beaten, or belike is devil-ridden.”

Although I could hardly believe the more hopeful words, the rest that he spoke had curious results. Pinning my man down with one arm and one knee, I struck him in the face with my free fist. It was a short blow, but the hardest I had ever dealt, and I aimed it where Felix had bade me, at his jawbone. A marvel to me was the way he wilted. It was a lesson in human vulnerability I would not soon forget.

Just then Felix appeared, dragging by the collar the fellow he had chased. He too was hors de combat, and his capturer lost no time in heaving him into an empty cell whose door stood ajar. It came to me that one of the nine corpses on their way to the Potter’s Field had been found here tonight, and its heaving-out had left the cage for our convenience, and that the new-freed soul that had lately dwelt in the cankered flesh made merry on its flight to Heaven over the upshot. Swearing by San Pietro, the patron of fishermen, Felix seized my sleeping beauty by the scruff of the neck and dropped him beside his own. When the last of the three, awake but harmless, had joined his mates, my copemate shut the door and shot the padlock.

He was more than my copemate, I thought, half in warmheartedness I could not stay, half in a great dismay. He had proved himself the captain of the venture.

Meanwhile I had got my hand on Haran-din’s arm and was tugging him out of the cell. God knew I could hardly bear to touch the silver skin, and to grasp it tightly was unspeakably worse, because there was no firm flesh inside, only a moving jelly. Still, I did not let go. Sick in the belly, faint in the heart, I led him up the hall, down the steep stairs, through the anterooms. It was a thing I could do, and I did it. Although it was not of the splendid order of the things Felix could do, I felt fierce pride.

Our pace seemed no faster than a turtle’s as it makes across hot sand toward the cool sea. I dared not tug too hard on Haran-din’s arm, lest it pull out of its socket. Felix, pacing ahead of us only to turn back and wait our crawl, begged and cursed in vain. We could hurry no more than the black oxen of Time. Even so, the star of the gateway grew and brightened.

At last we passed through it, and the still-tainted air that Haran-din breathed must have seemed as sweet as the perfume of Paradise to a hero newly slain for Allah’s glory.