Thirteenth Night (9 page)

He decided to inspect his cooking, holding the fish up to his face and sniffing it from every angle while he peered at me suspiciously.

“I saw it,” he said curtly. “And I'd rather not think about it. It was horrible. Why do you want to know about it?”

“You are a teller of tales. I am a collector of tales. I promise not to intrude upon your territory, but I would like to report back to my employer.”

“Why?”

“He loves the local gossip.” I held up a coin. “Do I need a better reason?”

He eyed it greedily. “Well, now that you mention it, it was quite a sordid experience.” He sat back and looked at the sky, pretending to summon up the memory. “He always used to walk along the cliff path, looking out to sea. Sometimes the Duchess would be with him, sometimes his son, sometimes that steward fellow. He'd walk up to that spot there.” He indicated a point where the cliff jutted out over the sea and then continued on to the northwest. “I'd usually be around here that time of day. He'd wave to me, he would, say, ‘Good evening, Old Hector,' and I'd say, ‘Good evening, Your Grace,' and he'd say, ‘How are you today, Hector?' and I'd say, ‘Very well, Your Grace, and I thank you for asking,' although sometimes I wouldn't be feeling so good, but there'd be no point in bothering him about it as I'm sure he was asking just to be polite. Still, it was nice for the likes of him to take an interest in the likes of me, all things considered. Then he'd say, ‘Anything unusual today?' and I'd tell him if I saw any strange ships and whatnot, odd things washed up, portents in the weather. He was a good one, was the old Duke, and sent me the odd gift of food and drink. Many is the time that…”

“This is fascinating, but I'm interested in the last time, not the many.”

He glared at me. “A good story's in the telling, and if you ever get to my age, you'll appreciate that. And when you get to my age, you don't like to be interrupted. And when you get to my age…”

I was beginning to think I would get to his age by the time he finished, but rather than risk interrupting him again, I waited until the harangue had finished.

“Now, where was I?” he said.

“The night the Duke died,” I prompted him.

“Yes. I was mending my nets. He waved to me, and I waved back. He shouted, ‘Good evening, Old Hector,' and I shouted, ‘Good evening, Your Grace.'”

I gritted my teeth and kept listening. He stood.

“Then he suddenly yelled, ‘O Hector, I am undone!' and he fell forward like this.” He leaned forward with his arms out to either side. “Like a fallen angel, he was, still trying to fly. ‘I am doomed, Hector!' I heard him cry in a tone that froze my blood. And as he fell to the earth, his last words were, ‘Tell the Duchess I love her.' And then he struck, and his voice was stilled. I ran, oh, how I ran, as fast as I could on these gouty legs, but it was no use. He was dead. His face was frozen in a look of horror, such as I have seen on men who have glimpsed the infinite ahead of them and didn't like what they saw. I covered his face and ran to the town and that was the end of it. Give me that coin.”

He snatched at my hand. I closed it around the coin and pulled it away.

“What cheat is this?” he howled.

“When I said I wanted the story, I meant I wanted the true story,” I said. “That little oration of yours may be good enough to cadge a drink out of a simpleton, but it won't do me any good at all. I want what you saw and heard, unembellished. No false heroics, no invented dialogue. Then, and only then, you shall be paid.”

He was still staring at the coin. I indulged in a bit of tregetry, rolling it from knuckle to knuckle, making it vanish and reappear in my other hand. His eyes followed it involuntarily. I repeated the process with the other hand, palmed it, passed it back to the first, and suddenly snapped my fingers. He started at the sound, then ogled the coin, which was now betwixt my thumb and forefinger.

“One more snap, and it disappears forever,” I said.

“What are you?” he asked hoarsely.

“A professional gossip who can entertain with words and cheap legerdemain. Watch the coin closely as it vanishes before your very eyes.” I started to pass my left hand over my right.

“No!” he shouted. I stopped and waited. He hesitated and I began to move again.

“No,” he said in a whisper. “All right. I did see him every day, but we never spoke. There's no way he could hear me from up there, with the waves crashing and all. But I'd give him a wave, and he'd wave back, and that's the truth of it.”

“The day he died,” I prompted him.

“The day he died, he was by himself. I wasn't mending my nets, I was drinking to keep away the cold. It was a cold day, first freeze and my fingers were too stiff to do anything other than hold a cup of wine. I saw him up there. He looked at me and waved. I waved back. Then his knees bent and he fell. Didn't make a sound until he hit those rocks. I thought I was dreaming it. I ran to where he struck the rocks, but there was nothing I could do. His face was caved in, and so was his chest. I pulled him off the rocks and dragged him to higher ground, then ran to town. They came and took him away. That captain fellow thought I had killed him at first, but the Duke still had his purse and jewelry. Captain looked around my shack for some kind of weapon, but there weren't none. He finally decided I was telling the truth, which I was, and I am, so give me the damn coin.”

He held out his hand defiantly.

“Not just yet,” I said. “Show me where he landed.”

He took me a short distance to an outcrop of rocks at the base of the cliff, worn smooth by the sea but still hard enough to smash a fallen Duke. “Show me how he lay when you found him.” He stretched himself out carefully, face on a rock about the size of his head, chest on a larger one, arms and legs sprawled in different directions. “Show me how he fell,” I commanded, and he stood on the shore, looking out to sea, and slowly toppled forward, his arms out. “Did he fall like that or tumble end over end?”

“Straight out,” he said. “And he fell. He didn't jump, or dive, or leap, or anything like that. I don't know why he fell, but he fell and landed on his face, and that was the end of him. Enough. I'll do no more.”

“For your pains,” I said, and I plucked the coin out of his ear and put it in his outstretched hand.

“I would check my pockets after meeting the likes of you,” he said, showing the gaps in his teeth as he bit the coin. “But I have no pockets and nothing to steal. Get out of here, and bother me no more. And thanks for the wine.”

I glanced behind me as I rode back, but he had his face in the jar and looked to stay that way. “What did you think of his story, my lord?” I asked Zeus. He snorted. “Perhaps, perhaps not. He lacks sufficient imagination to be a good liar. Unlike myself. Well, my lord, I am abusing your goodwill on the one day of the year in your honor. Allow me to conduct you to your lodgings, where you may find shelter. The wind blows where it wills, as the good book says, but you can still put a door between it and your rump.”

*   *   *

I left him in the stables and wandered into the square, searching for Isaac's office. I found it on the north side, a modest, two-story, wooden building with the Duke's insignia carved over the door. I kicked the snow off of my boots and went in.

Isaac was at a large oaken desk in the front of the room, surrounded by ledgers bound in leather. He was reading from a sheaf of papers and making entries on both sides of the page. He waved me to a seat without looking up.

“I'm almost done,” he said. “A minuscule error made in April has through my faulty oversight grown into a discrepancy of cataclysmic proportions. I am restoring balance to this precarious world.” A few more strokes, then he underlined something, blotted it, and laid his quill to rest.

“Now, my foreign brother, what brings you from Zara in this time of the year?”

“Zara?”

He smiled. “I make it my business to know what's going on. Your innkeeper mentioned it. Wonderful place. Going to be quite the crossroads if they succeed in unyoking themselves from Hungary. How were events shaping up when you left?”

“Good sir, I fear you have been misinformed. I arrived from Venice, not Zara.”

His eyes gleamed for a moment, and he leaned forward. “Venice, in truth. Well, that does put a different complexion on things. What news on the Rialto? Is the next holy war prepared? Are the Christians ready to fight the Muslims for the Jewish city? And when?”

“I'm afraid I did not tarry long enough for the Doge to share that information with me.”

He nodded, amused. “I am in correspondence with cousins in Venice. We try to keep each other posted on the progress of the Crusades.”

“That's good business, certainly.”

“No,” he said. “That's survival. My people have an unfortunate habit of being in the way of these fanatics. If they can't find any Muslims to kill, they turn their attention to us. And they've been known to burn down the occasional synagogue on their way, just for practice. So, we keep each other warned.”

“Interesting. How far does this network of informants extend?”

“As far as my great-grandfather was able to distribute his seed. He was married four times and had a legion of descendants. It would take the very best Arab mathematician to plot our family tree. But here I am talking about my poor self when I have a guest, one with a business proposition, yes?”

“Indeed. But I was hoping to speak with the Duke's steward as well.”

“And so you shall,” came a voice from above. I looked up the stairs to see Claudius descending, the scowl from his first view of me in the church still in place. He favored black, bringing up unfortunate memories of another steward I once knew in this town. But any thoughts I had that he might be Malvolio were quickly dispelled when he reached the bottom step. He was too short by a head, looking me firmly in the neck as I stood to greet him. He glided silently by me, smelling faintly of pine, and settled behind another desk at the rear of the room, placed on a low platform so that he could command a view both of the room and of the square beyond the windows. He greeted me in German so superior to Sir Andrew's that I worried for a moment that he would realize it was not my first tongue.

“Your proposition, if you please,” he said in a voice that was unpleasantly oily.

“You may find it a bit speculative,” I began hesitantly.

“Come, sir, that is no way to begin,” Claudius interrupted sharply. “Men of business are men of action. Life itself is a bit speculative. Let us be the judge of whether you are worth a small investment.”

“It would require no investment on your part,” I said. “Merely an accommodation. A permission, as it were.”

“To do what?” asked Claudius.

“To have one, perhaps two boats harbor here on an irregular basis, to unload their cargo onto a waiting wagonry, and to guarantee safe passage to the end of your domain.”

“A simple enough favor, so simple that I wonder if the cargo be disproportionately complex. What is it that you are smuggling?”

“Smuggling?” I said aghast. “Sir, you do me much wrong. I merely wish to bypass the Venetian tariffs.”

An unspoken communication seemed to go on between them. Claudius nodded finally. “Pray continue,” he said.

“The cargo is spice,” I said.

“Nothing unusual about spice.”

“The spice isn't unusual, the route is,” I said. “Rather than pick it up directly from Egyptian ports, my brother has ventured into Arabia itself and established contact with certain merchants in Siddiq.”

“Ah,” breathed Isaac. “That saves twenty percent of the cost right there if he's successful.”

“But we hope to save still more. In the past, spice has come, as all our imports do, through Venice, then through the Brenner Pass to Augsburg. Venice exacts an exorbitant tariff for the accident of its geography.”

“You propose to unload here and do what?” asked Claudius. “Go by wagon through dangerous country until you reach the Danube? That will take you months out of your way. You've saved your twenty percent, go through Venice and pay the price.”

“Only as far as the Drava,” I replied. “The main point is to avoid Venice. Even with the time lost, we save another fifteen percent. You don't know how much spices sell for in Augsburg. In Munich, even, we could make our fortune with one ship's worth. And of the cost saved, we would pay you a fee of five percent, as an accommodation.”

“For which princely reward, we receive the undying enmity of Venice,” commented Isaac.

“A valid point,” said Claudius. “Our percentage on two shiploads of spice may be amply outweighed by making ourselves a larger plum for the plucking. We've maintained a delicate balance between independence and servitude.”

“Surely Orsino is known for its autonomy. Why do you fear Venice? You didn't under the late Duke.”

“But we are no longer under the late Duke,” replied Claudius. “And events across the sea dictate the choice for the regency.”

“Would either of you gentlemen be a candidate?”

The two began to laugh, not a reaction I was expecting. “Isaac will not be selected because the wealth of the town will not tolerate a Jew in that position. It's one thing to have one work here, as we trade with Christian, Jew, and Muslim alike. But as regent, never.”

“And yourself?”

“I am not a candidate because I do not wish to be. I have my reasons. They do not concern you.”

“Then there's little point in talking to you until that is resolved. You won't be able to make a decision until a regent is chosen to approve it.”

“Correct. But that doesn't concern me. I wouldn't make it until your brother showed up with something in hand, anyway.”