The Mascherari: A Novel of Venice (18 page)

At last, Esteban removed his mantle and wielded it as a shield. With the aid of this cape, he managed to cleverly veil and disarm his opponent. But this one was only just beginning. He drew out two daggers, then raising them, he stepped forth in deep strides. We stared at him, unsure of what he would do. Esteban watched, ready to strike, but the stranger did not budge.  His two blades glistened in the dark.

Then his accented voice broke the silence, sending shivers through me.

“
I am the noble weapon named the dagger
,” he recited. “
One who plays at very close range.
” In swift footwork, he closed tight toward Esteban, crossing his two blades before him. “
And he who understands my malice and my art, will also gain knowledge of many other weapons
.”  He nodded at Esteban. “
Fior di Battaglia
,” he said, his lips curling into a smile.

In one swift kick, the stranger regained his fallen sword. He seized it in mid-air and re-sheathed it, still holding his daggers in one hand.

“The name is Malek, Signori. Remember that,” he said.

Before Esteban could respond, the assassin turned. As suddenly as he had appeared, he retreated into the darkness, the leather of his mantle whipping the air in his wake.

“
Perché
?” roared Esteban.

But the sound of Malek’s boots was lost, dispelled by the breeze’s ruffling of trees.

Esteban stood in silence. I sensed that he was as troubled as I was. He had asked, ‘but why’, as though he was offended and deeply frightened by our assailant.

“What if he returns?” I asked, nearing his side.

“He will not. As odd as it may seem, he was not hired to murder,” he said, still eyeing the shadow, long after it had been swallowed by the rising mist.

“I am glad of that. I may have just come face to face with the most dangerous swordsman that ever walked the islands of Venezia. I feared for my life and for the life of my young friend.” I glanced at Esteban without bothering to veil my gratitude. “If you, Signore, had arrived a moment later, who knows what may have happened.”

Esteban considered my words.  He nodded, before sheathing his sword and dagger.

“You did well to take note of his swordsmanship, Signor da Parma. That very thought crossed my mind–that he cuts and thrusts with seeming intent to kill. His methods are swift. His approach is deadly. His feints are deceit incarnate. But rest assured. His intention was not to kill. At least…not this time.” He cast a worried glance in Lorenzo’s direction. “Frighten you perhaps…” he added. “Let us have a look at your friend.”

I leaned over Lorenzo and cut a strip of my
camicia
to bind the wound on his neck. The gash was not deep. Esteban was right. Lorenzo would come out unscathed but with great fright. The patrician had not yet recovered his spirits. The emotions had taken their toll on the young man.

“You said he was not hired to kill us. What if he had wanted to? Would you possess the skills to stop him?”

“No,” cut Esteban. “I am of the Dardi School. The man you saw has been trained by a master, one who has taught Knights and nobles alike. I know of only one school with that footwork and the manner he positioned himself from guard to guard. And if I am right, then it astounds me that the late Fiore Dei Liberi would have consented to teach his Art of Arms to a mercenary. Let us place more pressure on his arm,” he added, speaking of Lorenzo. “Here. We shall lift him and take him to the edge of the gardens.”

Mirroring Esteban, I placed Lorenzo’s other arm around my shoulder and between us, we dragged Lorenzo’s limp figure through the garden lanes and to the lagoon bank.

“Master Dei Liberi’s
armizare
is strictly private,” continued Esteban. “His art has remained a secret.  Even I have not seen his wrestling manual. But
Fior di Battaglia
is a rare and fine treatise. I met a Bavarian nobleman, once, who had been taught by Dei Liberi. He told me that the master instructed only deserving nobles, those who would protect the innocents and not misuse their knowledge for dubious ends. The man who attacked you both is a Dalmatian mercenary. He seethes in the dark and probably fights only for ducats. That one such as he would have acquired the Liberi technique astounds me. I do not understand.”

I grew somber at Esteban’s words.

“If as you say, he was trained against the Liberi principles, then what if Dei Liberi had been coerced to instruct him?”

Esteban shot me a quick glance. I could see he had considered the same thing.

“And if this be true,” I pressed on, adjusting Lorenzo’s weight, “the Dalmatian is not himself a free man. He only obeys orders.”

“Whoever orders a man like Dei Liberi must have great power.”

I bit my lips and Esteban at once sensed my restless spirit.

“Ask me the question, Antonio da Parma. Ask it. I can sense how it burns your lips.”

“You are mistaken. I’ve nothing to ask.”

Esteban shook his head. “You want to know who hired him. It is plain to see.”

“That is already answered,” I replied with bitterness. “Only the Consiglio dei Dieci could manage to stage such a masquerade.”

Esteban seemed to rejoice at my admission. “Though I ignore the reason,” I added. “And now, they have successfully frightened Lorenzo. The Signora Contarini will be white with fear when she learns of this.” The cold air of the approaching canal singed at my face. “But not me,” I said.

Esteban managed to turn his head to the side and stared at my determined expression. His bright eyes shone like gems under the moonlight.

“A more pressing question, Esteban,” I continued, not bothering to hide my vexation, “is whether I am likely to encounter you again. You seem to have an intense investment in my whereabouts. Let’s see–I have so far met you in San Polo, later in Santa Croce and now, here, in the Giudecca gardens, of all places. You must not be surprised, then, if I am at all confounded at what seems to be your remarkable talent for doubling up as my shadow.”

Upon hearing this, and much to my dismay, Esteban tilted his head back and emitted a healthy resounding laughter that all but stirred each leaf in the garden. Lorenzo strangely did not wake. We continued down to the edge of the gardens, me looking askance to see whether Esteban would finally reply to my challenge, and him, humming in the cooler air as we approached the canal.

Finally as we waited for a gondolier to oar in our direction, Esteban had the sensibility to offer me a reply.

“I would not want you to come to harm, Antonio da Parma. You are the only man who can help me. Someone with your knowledge of the law, documents… I have already told you what I want. Venezia owes me.”

“I would attempt a visit to the chancellery to retrieve your documents in a legal manner, but my welcome there is dubious,” I said, remembering my last outburst in the Consiglio dei Dieci chamber. “To come to your aid, Esteban, it seems to me that I would need to break into the chancellery and steal from the Venetians. You wish me to betray the confidence of the men who have hired me. And you will not cease from appearing unexpectedly at my side until I have considered your offer. You certainly have strange ways. For all I know, Esteban, you could be hiring those mercenaries yourself!”

“You do not truly believe this,” he said. But his voice was grave and he seemed offended.

I gazed at the gondola’s silhouette in the distance. “You are right. I do not.”

“I feel we are beginning to understand each other, Signor da Parma,” smiled Esteban. I noted the gleam of his teeth in the darkness. I ignore how he managed to smile even at moments like this, when everything I believed seemed to be illusion. The case I had been given grew more obscure every day.

We pushed Lorenzo inside the gondola. I handed a few coins to the oarsman and gave him instructions toward the Contarini household in Castello. To safeguard the young Veneziano’s honor, I explained that our young friend had met with a thug and had fought valiantly before dropping with exhaustion; that he was only to be stirred when he returned home.

“How fares your inquest, Signor da Parma?” asked Esteban once the gondolier was out of earshot.  “Have you extracted the information you sought from Signora Contarini?”

“I saw her two days ago, before the funeral. She was emotionally distraught and spoke with great incoherence. I fear that her mind is suffering.”

“To lose one loved one is a tragedy.  But to lose two loved ones is a curse,” replied Esteban. “Poor woman.”

I nodded pensively. And then a sudden discomfort seized me just as an idea formed in my mind.  I ignored what Catarina would think once her son narrated his attack, but I soon began to understand, that if the Consiglio had at all hired their man of arms merely to frighten Lorenzo, then all along, Esteban and I had been wrong. Lorenzo was not the victim of some political ploy.  He was the pawn in a game. For reasons I could not explain, I had a nauseating notion that, somehow
, the game was to frighten Catarina
.

I began to contemplate the ways of the Consiglio dei Dieci. A sense of resentment more furious than before had risen in me. It dawned on me that Esteban might not be theorizing conspiracies for the joys of rebelling against the Signoria. Then perhaps it was true and Almoro Donato was hiding something. But what? And what designs was I playing into?

Esteban’s story

From an entry in Antonio da Parma’s journal

Late into the night, after deserting the Giudecca Gardens, I sat with Esteban in a quiet tavern in Dorsoduro and together we mulled over his past over a few glasses of Tuscan wine.

“What you saw,” began Esteban, “the skills I possess with the cape and dagger and even my bare arms–I owe all to my master, Gaspar Miguel Rivera. He was a father and teacher to me.  He saw that I would be trained in swordsmanship and close-quarter combat. And yes, he too was taught by none other than Lippo Bartolomeo Dardi now at the University of Bologna. Everything he learned of Dardi, he passed onto me— the knowledge of his secret feints, the use of my cape as a shield and clever tricks that only a few will ever possess both in the military and in the treacherous
calli
of Venezia. 

“I owe much of my learning and my courage to Gaspar Rivera. If you had met me as a child, Signor da Parma, you would not have dreamed of seeing me so fierce as I am now. At the age of twelve, I was a skinny orphan, pilfering what food I could from the port of Barcelona while the notaries grew fat on the estates I was not to touch until I turned fifteen.

“My own mother before she died had been a descendant of an old kingdom which the Berbers, her slavers, once called Ghana—a place rich with gold. Unlike me, she was born into slavery. Her ancestors served at the Andalusian courts for over hundreds of years. A few of them found themselves in Barcelona after the fall of Cordoba. She nursed me with legends and songs for the blissful years of my childhood.

“Love is a wonderful thing, Antonio da Parma. And as she loved me, her master, too, loved her. He declared her a free woman upon my birth and I was then, from the start, a free man.

“I have only ever known freedom. But freedom from fear, that was a gift which much later, Gaspar would teach me. He used to say that I had inherited the meekness of my slave mother and did not know what to do with such freedom; that I was embarrassed of it. That somewhere in the inner workings of my soul, I believed I had done nothing to deserve the rights that so many men take as theirs without doubting.  I had remained a humble soul, fearful of my shadow and too bony at the knees to fend for my own self. 

“But take this. I was rich. Immensely rich. For my mother’s master had truly been in love with her. And every estate they possessed before the plague took them, was to be mine.

“Alas, by virtue of my youth and ignorance of life, I was soon prey to notaries who gathered round me like greedy vultures. And it was at this time that I met Gaspar Miguel Rivera.

“You must imagine the towering figure of a man who stood before me, at the port that day. Before our encounter, he had been one of the best
condottieri
there was at the battle of Chiogga. An illustrious Catalan captain, he had first served on the side of the Genoans, sworn fiends of the Veneziani. At the pivotal point in the battle, the Veneziani managed to buy him. Gaspar Rivera was lured and wooed. He was asked to defect from his Genoan loyalties. And since the Veneziani desired his loyalty for life, Gaspar Rivera was offered a life contract.

“That is unheard of, I know. The majority of the
contratta d’assento
last up to six months on a renewable clause. But they wanted him and they certainly did not wish him to change sides once more. The offer needed to be generous. How could it not?

“Imagine the prize of having such a man serve the Republic. Along with the Venetian tongue, Gaspar spoke Catalan, Castilian and a little Arabic. He knew Sicilian by virtue of his wife who was of the house of Aragon and relations in the Kingdom of Sicily.  Later, while learning the Dardi arts in Bologna, in a time when the city was held by the Visconti of Milan, he learned the Milanese tongue.

“Well-traveled, a skilled swordsman with or without armor, Gaspar Rivera was a perfect linguist and an adept
scarmitor
. He was unequal in his command of ships. He would not have accepted to offer his services to Venezia, save that the contract was much in his favor. Or so he thought.

“The
contratta d’assento
was drawn and Gaspar embarked upon his duties, revealing much of the Genoese weaknesses to the Venetian admiral, Carlo Zeno. As you know, Carlo Zeno’s arrival at a key point in the battle ensured the Venetian victory of 1380. But I wonder if our hero could have achieved what he did without men like Gaspar Rivera.

“The two became friends yet they were unlike each other. When he was not commanding his eighteen galleys and raiding Mediterranean ports, Carlo Zeno was a womanizer and an inveterate drunk.

“Gaspar was Carlo’s complete opposite. When not fulfilling his mercenary duties and waging battles at sea, he delighted in poetry, philosophy reading in Arabic and writing to his beloved Aragonese wife.

“But I come to the turn of his life. For some reason, the immense wealth and rewards that his contract promised were to be fully honored at his old age, not earlier. This arrangement was deemed necessary, since in that time, he would have been too old to defect again.

“For a few years following Chiogga, Gaspar did well for himself.  He returned to Bologna and lived there with his wife, taking up arms at intervals to hunt defectors, according to the terms of his contract. But in 1400, when the plague struck once more, work was lacking and he soon found himself penniless. He decided to return to Barcelona, his birth city, in search of a more stable source of income.

“I must digress here, Antonio, and tell you of another side to Gaspar. Because men like him, often, are so much more than what they seem.

“While in Bologna in 1386, he had met another Catalan like himself, a Franciscan friar of the name Anselm Turmeda. Anselm was a theologian, well versed in physics and astrology.  They became friends and met regularly over the span of a year, until Anselm suddenly became reclusive and Gaspar did not see him for months. Worried by his friend’s silence, Gaspar made enquiries. Imagine, then, his surprise upon hearing that Anselm had not only left Bologna to settle in Tunis, but that he had deserted his Franciscan frock and converted to the Saracen faith.”

“Anselm Turmeda became a Mohammedan!” I said, nearly choking on my wine.

“Aye, he did. He converted. I see that this displeases you.”

“I know nothing of the Mohammedan faith. But fickleness in one’s chosen religion is a sign of a feeble mind.”

“Tis not fickleness, Antonio, when one learns of what he is and is awakened by that notion.  Gaspar described it as being born anew.”

“Continue your tale,” I said, dismissing our opposing views. 

“So where was I?  Before he arrived in Barcelona, Gaspar visited Anselm in Tunis.  Again, he was stupefied. Not only did he find his old friend in good health and living among four beautiful women, but he learned that Anselm had been made vizier of Tunis. Gaspar was struck by what he saw there.  He felt as though he had long been sleeping and that the world were much larger and more fascinating than he’d ever imagined. This gave him an exciting idea, one that would pave the way for how he would live for the rest of his life. The only problem was that he had no funds to execute this idea.

“You can see, now, how he found me. I would provide him with the funds he lacked.

“And now, Antonio, before I bore you to tears, you may like to sip again at your wine and slowly draw your mind out of the
souks
and mosques of Tunis—which I can see, you struggle to fathom—and transport yourself into the port of Barcelona. Ah, this, this, you must try to imagine! How I miss it, even now.

“For a hundred years, Barcelona’s Drassanes Reials, what you would call Royal Shipyards, has had a distinct reputation. They say it can build forty galleys at once, and if you doubt, then you are a fool. It sits proudly at the foot of Montjuic, besides the city walls. A grand view indeed, especially arising from the sea. One would have to be soulless to remain impassive before its Gothic arches and its majestic stone pillars. What a sight!

“I am fond of Venezia’s Arsenalotti and the pride they take in their own shipyard in Castello, but whenever I pine for Barcelona, I say to them, ‘You have your Arsenale, people of Venezia, and I have my Drasssanes.’

“And I was there, on that day, making a living on the decks, toiling as hard as I could in the construction of galleys. I told you of the notaries, Antonio, but there were others, those who sense the fortune of others and who do not hesitate to apply cunning to appropriate themselves of what is not theirs.  For months already, before I turned fifteen, they prowled around me with their unsound venture offers. Uneducated and uncertain of my own judgment, I was at risk for losing my rightful inheritance.  And that is when Gaspar found me.

“In truth, he was not a complete stranger. I’d had glimpses of him times before, on the port.  I had seen him stand back while men spoke with me of their splendid ideas for enterprise and joint ventures.  When they had retired, Gaspar would casually stand in their way and all but threaten them, with one hand on his sword.  I could not hear what was said but it was always the same. Before long, the men would gesture loudly, meet his words with what appeared to be denial, then anger, and then at last, with fear. They would shrivel back and raise their hands in supplication as though to appease the seasoned captain and I wondered what Gaspar must be telling them. I saw by their distressed countenance that Gaspar had hit a nerve with each of these men, and soon, one by one, they stopped bothering me.

“I observed all this with great curiosity, pausing from my chores to wipe my brow and stare at him in the distance, when I thought he was not looking. I knew Gaspar bided his time and wanted, just like the others, to speak with me.

“And then that day came. On this instance, he strode along on the dock. He wasted no time. Before I could blink, he had laid out his idea to me. Dumbstruck as I was, I listened. Gaspar’s charisma took my breath away.  At first, I resisted his power, not because his words displeased me, but because Gaspar’s confidence, his unflinching gait, his allure on the port, everything about him reminded me of my own shortcomings.

“I remember how I stared at him. He was dressed entirely in red. He had much presence with his tall red hat. I was awed by the dignity of his high collar and finely pleated
cioppa
. Fitted round his hose and reaching up to his enormous knees, were the largest, pointiest boots I had ever seen. Oh Antonio, I wondered how an armor could contain such a man.

“And he went on. For all his bravado, I can still remember the fragile glimmer of hope in his eyes.  I think he must have practiced his little speech many times before confronting me. He spoke with verve, telling me of things that sounded unimaginable; that we should become partners, that he would take me away to Venezia where he would manage my affairs for the growth of our enterprise, and that he would provide me with an education to make me the man I was destined to be. Antonio, I dared not imagine that destiny held anything in store for me.

“I replied in the foolish manner of an orphaned boy. Firstly, I said, I did not partner with any stranger and secondly, I had no need for an education, seeing as I lived next to the greatest naval force in the world. 

“There was a moment of silence. I remember that Gaspar Rivera’s jaw dropped a little. Suddenly he raised his hands to his hips and rocked back just as a loud laugh resounded from his belly.  ‘You shall come with me to Venice and see for yourself,’ he roared, ‘what the greatest naval power in the world
really
looks like! Gaspar is a man of his word.’  Somewhat vexed, I told him that I would think over it.

“You must understand, Antonio, what it was like to have lived among white men, men who differed from me. After the loss of my mother, I had no sense of myself. I was not even convinced of my own truth.  The real reason for my reticence in the face of Gaspar’s proposition was that I was afraid of everything I had not known.

“And it turned out, as I realized later, that what frightened me most was the immense kindness of this stranger. Kindness, Antonio, is like a dagger for those who doubt in themselves.

“I stood in the distance, sizing up the powerful man before me.  As he laughed again, his white beard protruded forth and his thick eyebrows became alive.  He was like a giant among men. He stood straight, one hand upon the hilt of his rapier, with the commanding presence of a real captain, which he was. He had lost his Catalan accent and his voice was a pleasant blend of the tongues he knew. I could tell from the soft waves in his gray hair that he was in his early fifties.

“I recovered promptly. I told him that I had no intention of leaving Barcelona. I added, a little unconvincingly, that I, Esteban del Valle, was a
free
man and that if he sought to make me his slave and use me to his ends, he was barking at the wrong tree.

“I could see that he was hurt by my words. He ceased laughing. His smile faded as he inclined his head to the side, caressing his beard in silence. For a moment, he merely looked at me in dismay, perhaps wondering what I had seen in my life to engender such thoughts.

“Finally he spoke and I remember his words to this day.  ‘Esteban, I am a man of honor. I will free you from the vultures that call themselves your lawyers and you and I will live well. I ask only that you become my partner in trade. What I offer you is a great life of adventure and an opportunity to learn much more than you ever will in Barcelona. You will fund our enterprise, and in return, I will take you to lands you have never seen, I will split our profits equally and you shall inherit everything I possess upon my death. I believe that is fair. And that is not all. A
free
man must have a sword to protect his wealth and honor, lest he become a pawn for the less scrupulous to prey on.  Help me to realize the dream I have cherished and I will make you the finest swordsman in Venezia. With or without a sword, I will teach you to foil the plans of those that would dupe you.’