The Pop’s Rhinoceros (72 page)

He dived in amongst the buildings, swerving between them, tripping but up again in a second and running on. He stopped to catch his breath behind a storehouse, to listen for sounds of pursuit, to think, or try to think. He tried to remember the building Seròn had pointed to; it had been larger than the surrounding sheds. He was probably past it by now. There was no one about. He propped his hands on his knees and pulled air into his lungs, fanning himself with his hat. Don Antonio had had “business in the sail-loft.” He began working his way around the backs of the buildings, moving in a half-crouch, for some were little more than woodsheds and their rooflines lower than himself. The roof of the loft soon rose above the others. Still no one about. He darted forward. The door creaked open, then shut behind him of its own accord. The only sound after that was the pounding of his heart. He should have known who would be waiting for him here at Ostia, or guessed, or assumed. He might have sauntered stupidly into the crowd after Bernardo, and if he had, he would by lying there now, a little crowd gathered curiously about him, and the short knife he had glimpsed as Diego had turned toward him, that would be stuck in his chest, or neck, or through his eye. … The trap had been set there. He should have known: the Colonel was the huntsman who never gave up. He had been waiting for him since Prato.

He looked about the interior of the loft. Would these wooden walls now keep him out? That curtain of canvas? He heaved it aside with difficulty, for it was stiff and heavy, suspended from poles high above. An identical sheet lay suspended behind it, then another, and another. … Salvestro worked his way through them patiently, sometimes finding an opening, sometimes not, listening all the while for movements, for presences other than his own. The canvas crackled. His breathing grew labored again. His feet tapped on the planking of the floor.

An identical area on the other side of this strange barrier was more cluttered than the first. Light poured down from overhead onto strange pulleys and windlasses. Taut ropes threaded their way through blocks and rose up the walls to more blocks fixed to the roof-beams. A cluttered workshop at the back seemed to have been added to the main loft, for its roof was low, extending back into a gloom broken only by the outlines of trestles, benches, and stacks of folding tables. Strange tools were hung on the walls together with coils of rope of varying weights and thicknesses. The windlasses, or whatever they were, looked to Salvestro’s eye like enormous insects with their sticklike limbs projecting in all directions.
He stood in the center of this workshop, looking up and around him. The light seemed brighter here.

“Hey! Get off the canvas! … You! Move!”

He jumped, searching for the source of the voice, already moving sideways, ready to run. There was a crash as a trestle overturned somewhere in the back of the workshop, and then a man emerged wearing a workman’s apron.

“Oh,” he exclaimed as he got a better look at Salvestro’s clothes. “Didn’t see you were a gentleman. … Had to shout to warn you.” He pointed to the floor, where a tight square of canvas lay stretched by the insectlike machines at each corner, then began explaining the delicacy of the mechanism. “Snap your neck like a candle if you set it off,” he warned. “Got to watch how you step in a sail-loft.” He pointed to pins and wedges that held the contraption in tension. “One knock here, or here, and …” He drew a finger across his throat. “That’s why I shouted like that, sir.”

Salvestro recovered himself slowly and began asking after Don Antonio.

“Wouldn’t know him,” said the man. “I usually just come in to clean up of an evening.” He pointed to a broom lying in a corner. “Everyone’s off today, though. Pope’s coming, so I’m here on my own.”

“I would like you to take a message for me,” Salvestro said then, trying to sound like the gentleman the man had taken him for. He was about to offer to do some sweeping in return but caught himself before he spoke. Instead he described Don Antonio’s clothes, his sword, his feathered hat. “He will most likely be at the inn.”

“I’ll find him,” the man assured him.

“Tell him to meet me here with all possible speed. Make sure he understands that. All possible speed.”

“And who, sir, shall I say you are?” the man asked then.

“I,” said Salvestro, “am Salvestro.”

The man made a little salute, then disappeared behind the nearest sheet of canvas. Salvestro listened to thuds and crackles as the man made his way through the canvas. The door creaked, and then he was alone.

He found a stool and sat down. Don Antonio had been delayed, that was clear. Or he had come here, found no one, and left again, presumably to search for whomever he had come here to meet. So he would be back, one way or another. And his message would surely bring him at the double. By the afternoon they would be aboard the
Santa Lucia,
out of all this, waving as instructed while the ship pulled clear of the jetty and sailed out to sea. And then? Seròn had been unclear on that. The ship would have a captain, though, and the mate, too. He looked a capable type. And if they should fail, if the expedition should encounter insuperable difficulties or the
Santa Lucia
prove unseaworthy (she had smelled of rot, he thought), then there were always other ports, other destinations. … These were hazy thoughts, more or less unexamined, more or less despondent. More of the same, it occurred to him. More running away. Where did that end?

Minutes passed in this way, in vague contemplation. Perhaps, he thought, he should have simply stood there and let the Colonel come to him. He waited for Don Antonio. Then, slightly muffled by the great sheets of canvas, the door creaked. He heard a man’s footsteps. How stupid his thoughts were! Of course he had been right to run. Now he jumped up and called out, “Don Antonio!” and began making his way back through the canvas. He called again. He was in one of the narrower corridors formed in the gaps between the sheets, his chest and shoulder blades brushing the rough material. He took another step sideways and heard an answering footstep on the far side, then a series of little scuffles. There was something wrong. Something missing.

Eek. …

That.

He stopped, suddenly in doubt as to who was on the other side of the canvas. Another footstep, on the left, perhaps. He edged the other way. If he could get behind his man, there was the door, unguarded certainly. He would run and no one could catch him then. Two sails met and overlapped two steps more to his right. He prized them apart and slipped through. Now what?

A thud, dull and percussive, directly in front of him. He froze, and an instant later he understood his error.

A rage-filled demon had pursued him through the streets of Prato. Now an unmistakable sound filled his ears: the noise of tearing canvas. The Colonel was cutting his way through.

Another thud, another slash of the sword. Salvestro began to panic as the man advanced, edging hurriedly back the way he had come, thinking how soft his skin was compared to the rough fabric shredding so easily behind him, nearer now, the blade that drove forward, then down, over and over again, piercing and ripping, and there was no Amalia to guide him now. He scrambled around the last great sheet of sailcloth. Ropes, windlasses, pulleys. The square of canvas stretched over the floor, tight as a drumskin. The crowded workshop with its trestles and tools. Was there any point in hiding back there, only to be dragged out like an animal? Better to die here, he thought, a fatal calm coming over him. He looked about the airy space, and then, in the cold midst of his calm, he saw it.

He tried to block out the noise, but the thought that he might yet live made his hands shake. He muttered orders to himself, for his fingers would not otherwise obey:Take this line, tie this knot. … He ran back into the workshop, trailing the line behind him. Not far enough. He worked his way under benches and cobwebbed wooden contraptions. Now he could not see. He crouched lower and listened instead, and it was at that moment that the sword fell silent. He’s through, thought Salvestro. Wait now, wait to hear his footsteps change timbre, planked floor to canvas, wait and hold still, and then and only then …

But the silence continued. It seemed an age before he heard a sound muffled by the canvas and coming from the far end of the loft, a shuffling, or dragging, or something being dragged. He could not make it out. Then suddenly the footsteps
were back, much faster, running, and Salvestro knew that the man was coming for him now. A terrible crash boomed out that could only be a man’s body. A trip, a fall: I have him now. An abrupt certainty. He jerked the line, felt the wedge come loose, and the canvas hurled itself into the air.

The islanders used to carry young pigs to market like this: his first thought as he emerged and stood upright. The canvas had formed a long sack suspended two or three feet off the ground. Something struggled inside. The tools he needed now were on the wall: long awls, shears, knives, blades, and irons of all shapes and sizes. He chose a heavy spike and approached. His captive twitched and twisted about. The canvas swayed a little. He used one hand to steady it, then raised the spike high above his head.

Then lowered it.

“Bastard,” he hissed. “Murderer.” It felt good to say this. He said it again. “Murderer. We were your own men, Colonel Diego’s own loyal men. …”

What else? Nothing. The same twitchy movements from within the sack, the man’s breathing, hoarse and nasal, but no response. He raised the spike once more, two sweaty hands around it this time, chose his spot, steadied himself. Then—again—he let the weapon fall.

“Never easy to finish it, when the man is down.”

The voice was all but in his ear. He spun about. The Colonel was leaning against the wall. As Salvestro watched, dumbfounded, Diego pushed himself forward. Three quick steps and he plucked the spike from Salvestro’s hands, then pushed him backward, one hand on his chest, until he stumbled and fell.

“I am a servant of the Spanish Crown,” Salvestro protested weakly.

Diego smiled. “You are Don Antonio’s instrument,” he retorted, “if not his fool. And now the fool has lost his master. That is whom you await, is it not, Salvestro—the Gentleman? So many imposters and imitators. … Your message went astray, Salvestro, but look at the quarry you have bagged. Your old commander from Prato, no less.” Diego turned to the figure suspended in the canvas. “Now, would this be Don Antonio’s impostor, or my own? Which would you say, Master Salvestro? It is an oversubtle point, perhaps, in circumstances such as these.”

Salvestro stared up at him, still dumbfounded by this turn of events. Your old commander from Prato? What did he mean by that? The trapped man shifted again. Diego weighed the spike in his palm, then tapped it against the canvas.

“A good choice. What say you, Sergeant Rufo? A good choice? Would you have used an instrument like this?”

He looked down, then, murmuring to himself, “Better it be done quickly.”

Sprawled on the floor, Salvestro watched Diego cast aside the spike. It clattered loudly on the floor. Then, with a single motion, the soldier pulled out his sword and drove it into the canvas. He used two hands, thrusting forward to push the blade in almost up to the hilt. When he pulled it out, the sack began to shake. A dark stain spread down one side and dripped, then trickled, onto the floor. Presently, the shaking stopped.

Diego bent his knees and sliced at the bottom of the sack. The sodden canvas parted like a pair of bloodied lips, a great gout of red, and then the cadaver slid partway out, slick as a stillborn calf. Across the loft, the door creaked again.

“Over here, Don Antonio,” called Don Diego without looking around. He reached up to tug the sagging canvas free. “Now, let’s have a look at you,” he addressed the dead man.

Eek, eek, eek, eek. …

It was getting worse: louder and more frequent. Everything else was getting better. Much, much better. He would have to talk to Jacopo, and Jacopo would not like it. He had not liked the giant. This addition would worry him more. Money, thought Seròn. Give him money and he’ll come around to the notion just as he himself had in the inn, listening in amazed horror to the soldier’s insane conviction. Something had turned his mind. It was the only explanation.
There has been a change of plan, Don Antonio. …
All that talk of Fernando’s ear, all nonsense, and the grain of truth in it only made the potion froth and foam the more. What price Fernando’s favor when the currency of loyalty was diluted with use, men of arms supplanted by men of the tongue? Packs of fawning placemen scavenged in the courts at Valencia, Toledo, and Madrid, knowing that the useful were preferred above the faithful, the New Men—always—above the Old. Fernando was cold, and clever, and sick.

And Diego was unfavored by King and God alike. When earth and heaven shun you, what else is left but the sea? Seròn looked out along the jetty to the
Santa Lucia,
where a crew of sorts was at last assembling on deck, to the glittering sheet of water beyond, where Don Diego would find his appropriate fate, in open waters, alone with his absurd quarry in the kingless, godless sea. I
have reached my decision. …
Seròn had stared at him. Then he had nodded slowly, trying not to smile, not to break into hysterical laughter, and he’d even doubted his own intelligence, for when one’s adversaries were so obliging, was it truly necessary to be clever? The man who seemed to have shadowed his every movement through the long summer, who had watched as he’d parleyed with Faria, he was gone or would be soon enough. Should he speak with the mate now? Jacopo would not be best-pleased at this particular addition to the
Santa Lucia’s
crew.

No, the later the better. He continued down the quay, shoes squeaking,
eek, eek, eek,
away from the boisterous crowd. Not long now before His Holiness arrived. An hour? It was almost midday.

“I know the fix for that.”

A man had come up behind him quietly, a gentleman, walking quickly to catch up. He fell into step beside him and pointed to the offending shoes. Seròn appraised him quickly: fine hat, doublet well-cut and of good cloth, sword almost as beautiful as his own. His features were even, and a half-smile played about his face where the corners of his mouth turned up. In his hand he carried two apples. He offered one to Seròn, who declined.