The Venice Conspiracy (11 page)

Beneath the hooks are a series of smears and stains. Blood, sweat and tears. Most of it human. Most of it male.

But don’t be fooled, Larth is certainly not opposed to hanging a woman if circumstances demand it.

A foreign whore who slighted a friend of his was recently strung naked from dawn to dusk. In the afternoon he spun her around, face to the wall, so some of the diseased and deformed men who slept rough by the cemetery could pleasure themselves.

The hooks have sharp ends and dig hungrily into the soft wall when a rope is wound around them and a body hung from them. Larth made them himself. Heated the metal white and pounded it until he had just the right angle. A labour of love.

He thinks of every beat of the hammer and flying white spark as he and his assistants make their way to what the locals call the Punishment Wall. He likes that they call it that. That they recognise its importance, its place in their lives.

Today’s victim, a petty thief, is stripped bare. He’s an old man known as Telthius. When he was a child, Larth was often left with him and his wife while his own mother and father worked. He thinks briefly of that now, and how he used to playfully pull the old man’s long beard and hair. The memory stops as soon as his assistants have finished lifting Telthius on to the platform and stringing him up.

Back to the wall, he hangs from ropes around his wrists, his face already distorted with pain.

Larth feels his anger rise. The thief’s suffering ignites something inside him. Something exciting. Something that makes him feel more powerful and complete than at any other time in his life.

Telthius disgusts him. His long beard is white. White hair sprouts from his nose, his ears, his armpits and even around his manhood. White is revolting. The old man is revolting. What he did was revolting. He was caught stealing from Pesna’s silver mine where he labours. Now the magistrate has decreed that he must be publicly punished. Taught a lesson. One he’ll never forget. One everyone will remember.

Larth puts out his hand and takes a flaming rag torch from one of his aides. ‘Open your eyes! Open them, Thief!’

The kindly elder who once rocked
him to sleep in the sticky afternoon heat squints towards his former charge.

Larth holds the flaming torch between the old man’s legs and smiles.

The white pubic hair catches fire.

Larth laughs. A throaty roar that rolls across the gardens.

Telthius jerks with pain.

The torturer’s assistants can’t bear to look. The air smells of burning skin and hair.

Larth sniffs at the aroma, like a maiden savouring the fragrance of a rose. ‘You stole from your master. Betrayed his trust. Defiled his good name. For these crimes I justly punish you, so others will see the errors of your ways and respect the rights of good men.’

He rolls the flaming torch over the hair that covers the old man’s chest and arms. Telthius screams in agony.

The torturer is careful not to go too far. He lets the fire burn only briefly. Enough to hurt, not to kill. There is no fun in setting fire to a dead body. Well, not nearly as much as setting fire to a living one.

Telthius is unconscious by the time Larth has scorched all his head and body hair. ‘Cut him down,’ he calls over his shoulder as he walks away. ‘Give him to his bitch of a wife to cosset and mend.’

The assistants climb the platform. The younger one asks in a horrified voice, ‘In the name of the gods, how much silver did this fool steal?

‘Shush!’ says his companion, fearing they’ll be heard. ‘Not silver. Not even a scraping from the mine. Telthius took only food. Stale bread that he thought no one would miss. And he only took that because his wife was too ill to bake.’

At the end of the wall Larth throws his torch into the dirt. He hurries away to find himself a whore upon whom he can vent the last of the delicious rage still burning inside him.

The Sacred Curte, Atmanta

Tetia feels strangely nervous as she makes her way down the hillside to the groves near the settlement walls.

The sound of hammering spills from
the temple in the adjoining curte. Squinting into the sun, she can see the silhouettes of slave workers moving like crabs along the roof as they pin tiles to timber frames.

She’d long anticipated the day when her husband would consecrate the completed temple in front of her family and all the other villagers. Now, for the first time, she has a sensation of dread.

Will Teucer be able to see by then? Will he ever see again? Will the elders and the nobles and the magistrates still want him as their netsvis?

She sees the sacred circle. Without Teucer, it doesn’t seem sacred any more. She walks clockwise outside it, her thoughts trailing behind her like a long robe. The grass is all trodden down. The blaze that claimed her husband’s sight is nothing but a blackened hole in the turf. The frenzied marks made by Teucer’s lituus are still visible – as is the small but distinctive oblong he scraped in a clay patch in the west of the circle.

S
he senses something. Someone close to her. Behind her.

She wheels around.

Nothing.

No one there.

Her baby kicks as she crosses the line of the sacred circle, almost as though it remembers what occurred the last time they were here. Now she can clearly see the small patch of reddish clay where her husband made his knife marks. Tetia has brought her own sculpting blades to erase his impressions, but she can’t resist letting her artist’s eyes examine them.

They’re stunning.

So precise, so detailed and intricate. She’d have never thought him capable of such beauty.

She drops to her knees and the baby makes her stomach groan.

‘Incredible,’ she says to herself. The snakes are so vivid she can almost picture them moving. The evil demon doesn’t look that evil to her, in fact there’s a certain majesty to him. She smiles, the netsvis even bears a passing resemblance to Teucer. She bends closer to examine the final revelation. It’s magnificent. The couple look so peaceful, so happy. And the baby – surely he is everything she could hope for in a son.

Tetia feels happier than she’s done for months. She runs her light, sculptress fingers over the indentations. They even feel pleasurable to touch.

She unwraps a cloth containing her work tools. Selects a broad knife. Takes a deep breath and meticulously begins.

Only she no longer intends destroying the markings.

She’s decided
to keep them. Lift them from the ground and keep them for ever.

Tetia carries the slab of clay from the curte as though it’s the most precious thing in her life. She goes straight to her work space at the back of her hut, rather than to Larthuza’s where her husband is recovering. This clandestine and selfish act makes her feel guilty, but the emotion is forgotten when she looks again at the beautiful object in her hands, the carving of the Gates of Destiny.

Using water and her own fine picks and knives, she accentuates the rough cuts made by Teucer. Very quickly she becomes immersed in her task. Consumed by it. Possessed by it.

Time flashes by.

Her cuts are bold, broad, intricate, dashing, decisive. It’s as though her hand is being guided. The clay begins to turn leather hard, no longer malleable. She drizzles water on to the surface to keep it workable, wipes tiny fragments of waste from her blade after every cut and polishes the sharp tip on her tunic.

Lost in her art, she is oblivious to the daylight fading. The grey ghosts of night start to gather.

First, a rustling noise. Then the sudden presence of a strange man’s feet.

Tetia looks up.

‘I am Kavie, noble colleague of Magistrate Pesna. We have come to see your husband, Teucer.’

Tetia shakes back her hair and looks up at the dark-haired and slightly built stranger. ‘He is not here. He is at the home of Larthuza the Healer.’ She notices Kavie is not alone. The magistrate is standing behind him. She gets to her feet and brushes down her tunic.

Pesna nods an acknowledgement at her. ‘Aah, the sculptress wife. What is it that you are making?’

Tetia tries to shield it from him. ‘It is nothing. A rough design. Not nearly of fine enough quality to grace your noble eyes.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Tetia doesn’t move. ‘I have many
fine vases, plates, statues, urns. I store them outside, behind the kiln. I would be honoured to show you.’

‘I’d like you to show me what you are attempting not to.’ He pulls her away from the clay. ‘What piece of fancy can be so important that it must be created while your husband lies ill on the floor of a healer? What muse so powerful that it drives you to work at a time like this instead of being at his side?’

Pesna stoops to see.

He notices the lavish intricacy of the etching and kneels. ‘My, but this is good.’ He stretches out a hand. ‘
Very
good.’

‘Do not touch it!’ Tetia fears she has overstepped her position. ‘
Please
, Magistrate, I beg you! It is not finished. It will break if you handle it, and I wish it to be a surprise for my husband.’

Pesna does everything but touch. He examines it from all angles. ‘It is a rare piece. Perhaps unique. You have a talent, child.’ He lifts his head and stares straight at Tetia. ‘I see many qualities in this visceral work. Explain it to me. What was your intent?’

Tetia hesitates.

‘Come on, girl! I do not have all day.’

‘They are visions.’

‘Visions?’ He looks intrigued. ‘Extraordinary. Finish it. Make sure you complete it quickly.’

Kavie bends to take a closer look. He does not share his friend’s love of art and sees nothing visionary. ‘I am no expert, but I think this is
not
the cheeriest of objects to present to your husband.’

‘Indeed.’ Pesna stands up and brushes his knees. ‘It is not suitable for a sick man. When you have finished it, I will buy it from you.’

‘I cannot.’ Tetia feels her heart thump. ‘I am sorry. It would not be right for me to sell to you something that I have made for my husband. What would the gods think of me?’

Pesna claps a hand on the finely robed shoulder of Kavie. ‘She is clever, is she not?’ He turns back to Tetia. ‘I had come here to tell your husband that he is no longer fit to be our netsvis. That his blindness is a divine act of displeasure from the gods and that once the temple is completed he and his wife –
you
– should seek pastures outside the walls of our settlement. But this—’ he points at the clay, ‘this is the most striking art I have ever seen. My home is filled with beauty, originality, curiosity – the rarest that Greek and Etruscan artists can muster – and this piece belongs there. Indeed, your own husband told me I should acquire more spiritual works.’ He takes one final, stooping look at the clay. ‘To me – this
is a positive sign from the deities – a sign that its creator and her husband should also remain near to me. Protected by me. Patronised by me.’

He moves closer to Tetia. Close enough for her to smell old meat and rough wine on his breath. Close enough for him to hold her chin between his manicured thumb and forefinger and make a bead of sweat roll down her brow.

‘So what is it be, young Tetia? Will you make your peace with the gods and my netsvis? And tomorrow – when I assume you have finished this divine work – will you bring it to me? Or will you take your blind and useless husband and leave for ever?’

Present Day

Luna Hotel Baglioni, Venice

‘How creepy!’ Tina walks from the bathroom in her hotel robe and sits at the dressing table. ‘I’ve never been to a morgue. Actually, I’ve never even seen a dead body – except on
Six Feet Under
. You think you can ring your new cop friends and ask if I can tag along?’

Tom stares at her reflection in the large oak-framed vanity mirror. ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘No. Not at all. I’m curious. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but it really would be something to write a piece on a murder investigation in Venice.’ She picks up a brush and starts to work it through her wet hair.

‘I thought you were a travel writer.’

‘I am. But I’m
a writer
. A journalist. I’ll cover cookery, sport, fashion – even murder, if the cheque is big enough.’

Without thinking, Tom finds himself standing directly behind her, lifting her hair, enjoying the feel of it. ‘Oh, so this is now a money-making opportunity?’

‘Yeah. Of course it is.’ She smiles at him in the mirror, and puts a hand up to touch his on her shoulder. ‘That’s how we strange folk out here – the poor souls on the other side of the church walls – have to live. We
do
things, and then people give us money for
doing
them.’

Tom drops his hands from her hair, looks curiously at her. ‘You think priests don’t work? You don’t know when you’ve got it made. An average parish
priest works close to a hundred hours a week. I was pretty much on call twenty-four seven.’

Tina puts her brush down. ‘Doing what?’

He gives her an exasperated look.

‘No, go on, tell me, I’m interested. What is there to do, besides patter out a pound of prayers and croak along to some very bad karaoke songs – sorry, hymns – in return for a plate of tips at the end of each performance?’

‘You’re being deliberately provocative, right?’

She smiles at him. ‘Right. You’re getting the hang of it now. That’s what we women – especially us wicked women journalists – do. We like to be
pro-voc-ative
.’

Tom can’t help but smile back. ‘But, am I also right in detecting that you’re not religious? You’re not a believer – are you?’

‘Sorry. No, I’m not. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I have lived thirty-two years and I confess I don’t believe one fucking word of it. I think all churches are a con. All religions are businesses. And all those damned TV preachers asking for my money should be locked in one big cell so they can bore each other to a slow and painful death.’

‘The last bit I might go along with. The rest, well, we’re going to have to agree to differ.’