Masks

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Well, he’d figured out where all the gondolas went, Mircea thought darkly.

It was less than half an hour later, and he and Jerome were standing on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the great promenade adjacent to St Mark’s Square. It usually fronted the Guidecca Canal, the mile wide waterway separating St. Mark’s from the island of Guidecca. But not tonight.

Tonight, it fronted a sea of boats.

Big boats, small boats, and everything in between, including what looked like a thousand gondolas, filled the water as far as he could see. And unlike the joyous mood of the crowd on the night of the fireworks, these people were . . . unhappy. Possibly because they were about to miss the greatest spectacle of the age.

And so are we, Mircea thought, jaw clenching.

Bezio jogged up, looking flustered. “Not for love, not for money,” he told them. “I was cursed at just for asking!”

“So much for hiring a boat,” Jerome sighed.

“It wouldn’t do any good, even if we could,” Mircea said, looking at the shouting, swearing, manic crowd in front of them.

“They can’t all be invited,” Jerome frowned.

“We’re not invited, and we’re trying to go,” Bezio pointed out.

“But it doesn’t look like they’re even being allowed to land,” Jerome said, squinting. “Not most of them, at any rate.”

“The senate probably has guards stationed at the dock. And crawling all over the island. And then, if you somehow get past all that, there’s the small matter of—”

“Let’s concentrate on getting there first,” Mircea said tightly, cutting in.

“Son, I hate to break it to you, but we aren’t getting there.”

Mircea didn’t say anything. After a moment, Bezio sat on the edge of the pier, dangling his legs over the side. And a minute after that, Jerome joined him.

Mircea didn’t blame them. They hadn’t fed tonight; they’d already run halfway across Venice; and they didn’t believe his crazy theories. But they’d come with him anyway. And they hadn’t mentioned going home, where the servants had had their meal by now and would be willing to offer as much to them. And where there were soft beds and good wine and rooms with heavily boarded up windows where no morning sun could disturb their slumber.

Or rain hit them in the face, he thought, looking up.

The crowd in the boats started murmuring a moment later. And then shrieking a moment after that, when the heavens opened up, as they so often did in Venice. And began drenching the holy and unholy alike.

Mircea sighed and sat on the pier.

Holy, he thought, lips twisting. As if this city knew the meaning of the word. Where convents were regularly used as brothels, and brothels as inns; where taxing the whores made up a sizeable chunk of the government payroll; where the “good girl” down the street turned tricks for pin money and where noble women were escorted to church on the arms of their lovers, to take the Eucharist with pious smiles on their lovely, painted faces. . . .

Well, holy took on a somewhat different meaning.

He still recalled his shock on arrival a little over a year ago, fresh from a country where even a glimpse of ankle was a rare and thrilling sight, only to find himself staring at the rightly named Bridge of Tits. And at the whores hanging over the side, brazenly baring their charms as they laughed and jeered and called challenges to the men in gondolas passing by underneath.

And in some cases, more than called. “Where are you staying, pretty one?” a black-haired siren had shouted down to him.

“I don’t know yet,” he’d called back, before he’d thought. And had been rewarded with a flash of white teeth as his gondola passed under the bridge.

He hadn’t understood why until it emerged on the other side—and was suddenly rocked by the weight of the half-dressed girl who jumped off the bridge and into his arms.

“Well, then. I suppose I’ll just have to take you home with me!” she’d said breathlessly, as the boatman cursed and the crowd laughed and the girls behind them broke into cheers. But because of the theatrics, not because it was anything unusual.

Mircea had watched in amazement as other girls jumped from canal side to boat, and then sometimes to boat again, their too-short skirts held up around pretty ankles, their unbound breasts bouncing along with their curls, their dimples flashing and dark eyes laughing. All while managing feats of balance most knights of his acquaintance couldn’t have copied, just to reach some likely punter with a few spare coins in his purse.

He later discovered that the city fathers encouraged such displays, supposedly to combat homosexuality in the city’s young men. But, of course, it didn’t hurt its reputation either. The tourists who flooded La Serrinissima during the festival season knew it as a place where one could attend to one’s religious duty all day, and then spend that heavenly credit in the bars and brothels and gaming dens all night.

“A prayer and a poke,” as Paulo had put it, in one of his less refined moments.

It had been a memorable introduction to the city.

Mircea looked out over the string of bobbing, lantern-lit boats, many of which were still decked out in festival finery. They were laid almost stem to stern because of the crush. Closer, in fact, than the gondolas had been on that evening a year ago. . . .

“Come on,” he told the others, getting up. “I have an idea.”

“Gahhhh!” Bezio screamed, charging straight ahead like a stampeding bull.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Jerome said, stepping daintily behind him and looking chagrined.

“Just passing through,” Mircea assured the outraged lady under the soggy blue canopy, which two burly servants were trying to raise over her head. He wasn’t sure why, since her elaborate hairstyle and fine silk gown were already pretty much ruined. And the three uninvited guests clomping along the length of her all but stationary boat clearly wasn’t making her any happier.

“We’re never going to make it all the way there,” Jerome said, hesitating at the prow of the boat, where a good three-foot jump separated them from the next one.

Mircea glanced behind him, at the two huge thugs the lady had just sent to help them on their way.

“I’ll take that bet,” he said, and tossed Jerome over the gap.

A club whistled through the air a second later, detaching a pretty curled ferro and sending it spinning into the water. But it didn’t detach anything from Mircea, who had already jumped. And scrambled to his feet. And grabbed a confused Jerome and started dragging him along, because the boatmen had just jumped, too.

He heard Jerome give a yelp when he also noticed, and then they were both running flat out, just blurs of motion against the bobbing, swaying, almost capsizing, angry bunch of would-be partygoers all around them.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Jerome yelled, getting into the spirit of things, leaping six feet from an elegant piatti onto a barge. Where he accidentally upended a tray of drinks onto an already annoyed-looking man in damp crimson velvet.

“Sorry!” Mircea said, which helped not at all.

But jumping up onto the wooden roof did. Jerome whooped and joined him a second later, and they pounded down the length of the boat over the heads of more irate guests, then leapt back down to the first floor and, in Jerome’s case, somersaulted to the next barge in line.

“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” Mircea told him.

“It’s a gift.”

“You know, you’re not panting anymore.”

“What?”

“Like on the way to the Rialto that day.”

Jerome shot him a look. “Imagine,” he said, and suddenly forced Mircea’s head down, in order to sucker punch the vampire about to bash his brains in from behind.

The vampire fell into the drink, and then so did his companion when Mircea lashed out with a kick.

“We’ll talk later,” he said hurriedly.

Jerome glanced at the mass of angry boat owners fast closing the gap behind them, and nodded. “Good idea.”

They ran.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bezio said, when they caught up with him a few moments later. “Now what?”

The island was looming up ahead, and Bezio had been right: there was a phalanx of the red-caped guards at the pier, and more spread out in regular intervals all along the sand. Flickers of red also moved among the trees, farther inland. No doubt to guard the back approach to the consul’s palazzo, which faced the water on the other side of the island.

Mircea wasn’t able to concentrate enough to do a count, but it didn’t matter. It added up to way too damned many. But there was no way to stop, not with what now amounted to a huge, club-wielding army fast coming up behind—

Mircea’s feet kept going, but his thoughts skidded to a halt. He wrenched his neck around. Then he looked at Jerome, who grinned.

Bezio suddenly noticed the massive problem headed their way. “What the hell have you two been doing?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Why?” Jerome asked innocently, as Mircea put on an extra burst of speed.

A moment later, they disembarked, if a flying jump onto a wet dock and a bounce onto wetter sand deserved the term.

And a second after that, they were being pinned down by very sharp looking spears wielded by very unhappy looking senatorial guards.

“Now what?” Bezio said, but very softly, so as not to upset the man holding the spear against his jugular.

“That,” Mircea said, and covered his head a second before an angry mob descended on them like a tidal wave.

It washed him off the beach. It washed him off the grass. It washed him almost to the tree line before it petered out, dissolving into a bunch of bewildered looking boat owners who didn’t seem to understand why they were suddenly on land.

The guards didn’t understand it, either, but they knew they didn’t like it. They were converging on the area, trying to round up the recent mob and to simultaneously deal with the fact that the mass of boats at the shoreline had taken the opportunity to start landing. There weren’t enough guards to attend to all of it, and while Mircea was absolutely sure that more were on the way, he didn’t intend to stick around and find—

“Why are you just lying there like that?” Bezio demanded, dragging him up.

And the next moment, the three of them were pelting inland, leaving the mess on the beach behind and heading for the one in the house just ahead.