doing so, he blew the whole plot. But as yet he didn’t know how. He sighed, and cast his gaze down to the canal. On the opposite bank he saw a figure standing boldly in the starlight staring back at him. It was the same slender youth whom he had seen the previous night and the night before. In fact, he had had the feeling the youth had been following him for days. He wondered if his part in the conspiracy was already known, and this youth was stalking him on behalf of the Signori di Notte. If so, his goose was cooked. Irritated, and not a little frightened, he called down to the figure on the canal-side.
“You, boy. Who are you? What are you up to?’
For a fleeting moment, the youth ignored his challenge. And then, only after he had shown he did not care whether Zuliani saw him or not, he pulled his cloak around him and slipped away into the darkness.
Zuliani spent a restless night, listening to the wind blowing a storm across the lagoon. He could hear the sea fret crashing against the quays along the edges of the man-made island that was Venice. He even fancied he could hear the creaking of the thousands of wooden posts that had been hammered into the mud banks to create the land on which his and hundreds of other houses stood. It was the very nature of the crazy enterprise that was Venice — a city built on pilings in mud flats in the middle of nowhere — that stirred his and other Venetians’ blood to madcap projects. But sometimes its precarious nature was driven home by foul weather. The chill air of an easterly wind blew through his sleeping chamber, and he could feel the salty spray on its gusts. He huddled beneath the warming lion skin that he had purchased in Kuiju. He had never seen the animal alive, but had grown fond of the skin and its gaping jaws. The head now lay somewhere round his feet, and the tail tickled his icy cheeks until he pushed it away.
The stormy weather would at least have driven the boy who stalked him back to his own home. Zuliani resolved to slip out early in the morning and take action to sever his connection with the plot to bring down the Doge. Why he had aligned himself with the Tiepolos and Querinis he was not sure. They were part of the
“What is this worth, Zuliani? It must weigh three hundred saggi at least.”
Niccolo smiled politely, seeing that the man only saw the surface value of the item he held.
“To those who possessed it, it was priceless. It was not just a bar of gold, it was a permit that gave the owner access to all corners of the Great Khan’s empire — and power over anyone in that empire. It is called a
Zuliani ran his fingers fondly over the curly writing.
“There were ones wrought in base-metal or silver, but the gold paizah carried the highest authority. It was given to me by Kubilai Khan himself.”
Tiepolo grunted, unimpressed by the old man’s story. He could only see the value of the gold. A Venetian saggio was about one sixth of an ounce, and that made the bar at least fifty ounces of gold. He laid the bar down reluctantly and peered at a pile of fancy clothes. Pushing aside a plain grey cloak of coarse material that lay atop the Chinese garb, his eyes once more lighted on the golden embroidery that covered the robes underneath.
“Who would wear those? The emperor?”
“Oh not these. They are the court dress of his Chinese subjects, and would be considered quite ordinary. That cloak is more interesting.”
Tiepolo listened politely as the old man explained the history of the cloak, though he hardly absorbed what he was being told. And then he even let Zuliani drone on about his collection a little more before broaching the subject of the conspiracy to overthrow the Doge. This was the subject he had really come here to discuss, because he knew that, if he could lure men like Zuliani into the plot, he could bring the ordinary
Now Zuliani was left tossing in his bed thinking of a way of escaping the coils of the conspiracy. Restlessly, he rose from under the lion skin, and dragged his heavy fur-trimmed robe around him. The only thing to do was to go to the Doge and make it look as though he had only joined the plot in the first place to act as Gradenigo’s spy. Even so, such a betrayal stuck in his craw. Not that he had any worries about offending some sense of honour. God knows, he had served his own ends often enough in the past. No, he merely worried that Gradenigo and his cronies might only see him as untrustworthy in the future, and not give him the preferred status his betrayal should provide. He struck his brow with the flat of his hand, angered by his own indecision.
“Come on, Nick, boy, you would have not hesitated like this twenty years ago. Get it done, and worry about the consequences later.”
He quickly dressed, and descended the winding staircase down to his street door. He avoided the water door because he didn’t want his servant and boatman Vettor knowing of his purpose. Outside, the wind still howled, as he pulled his cloak close around him and hurried down the Calle Specchieri. At the far end of the narrow alley, he should have carried straight on but something told him to turn left. The Doge’s palace was straight ahead, but he again had the feeling he was being followed. It would be better if it was not known where he was bound. Walking swiftly on, he turned left again and crossed the bottom end of the Rio di San Zulian. He knew this maze like the back of his hand, and darted under the porch of a house almost opposite his own, but on the other side of the canal. Soon, a slight figure dashed past his hiding place, and he made a grab at the youth who had been dogging him for days. He shouted out in triumph.
“Got you, you little bastard.”
The boy tried to wriggle out of his grasp almost breaking away, but Zuliani was having none of it. He swung his arm around the lad’s chest, grabbing at his tunic. He was shocked to feel a soft bosom under his hand, and almost let his stalker go. But he had the presence of mind to hold on to an arm as the figure whirled round and slapped his face. Zuliani laughed out loud, as he looked into the soft face not of a youth but a pretty girl. She was furious at being manhandled.
“Keep your hands off my tits, you old lecher.”
“By all means, mistress. But I wonder if a grope is not what you wanted all along. After all, you have been following my every move so slavishly.”
The girl blushed, and pulled her cloak around her, hiding the immodesty of her boyish garb.
“Let me explain.”
“You wanted to know about what it was like to live in the East?”
He was seated opposite the girl in his attic room, and, though she had kept her cloak drawn around her, she had removed the sugarloaf hat she wore. Her hair had tumbled down, and Zuliani could now see it was blonde but with traces of red that turned it into gold. Her face had the roundness of a young girl — she could be no more than fifteen — but her angular cheek bones and aquiline nose told of a beauty emerging from a chrysalis. He found her looks disconcertingly familiar, but he put that down to his knowing her family well. She had given her name as Katie Valier, and Zuliani recalled an old adversary of his from that family. Pasquale Valier had been a rat-faced little squirt though, and now long dead. This pretty girl could not be one of his brood. He realized he was drifting, and tried to concentrate his wandering thoughts.
“If you wanted to know about the East, why didn’t you just come and talk to me. God knows, I have a tale or two to tell.”
In fact, when he had returned to Venice after a long time serving Kubilai and his sons, people were disinclined to believe his stories. Some had laughed at him behind his back, accusing him of weaving fanciful travellers’ tales. But he knew they all were the God’s honest truth. By and large.
The girl shrugged at his question, and pouted.
