Black Madonna

23

They left later than they would have liked. Everything seemed to take longer to pack than they thought, and errands kept demanding completion. Geraint had to phone to order a parting gift for their hostess. Michael felt the need to call Renraku and let them know that, yes, he was aware that time was short and yes, they were closing in on their target and no, he definitely couldn’t say more than that and also, to be quite honest, shouldn’t they already know all that anyway? Streak had to leave several telecom messages, increasingly urgent, before Juan’s resonant ork voice finally called back. The evening was turning remorselessly into night by the time they piled into the limo for the airport.

The small plane descended from the blue-black, starry night into Marco Polo Airport. With the low angle of decent, they could see the magnificence of the city lit along its canals and squares, the small moving points of light being not just the cars common to most cities but also gondolas ferrying people along the Grand Canal and its myriad tributaries. They seemed almost to skim the very waves of the lagoon as they glided into the runway.

“This brings back memories,” Michael said as the light went out and he could unbuckle his seatbelt.

Geraint’s reply was only a slightly curt, “Yes.”

“It does?” Streak said with a raised eyebrow. He could see Geraint’s response was not one of comfort.

“We spent a week here as students,” Michael said gleefully. “I studied the art in the basilica, the Doge’s palace, the Rialto. Young Geraint took more of an interest in other aesthetic forms.”

The nobleman coughed. “I don’t think we have time for trivia like this,” he said, slightly pompously.

“Oh, but surely we do,” Streak shot back.

“I don’t pay you to take satisfaction in my discomfort,” Geraint pointed out. “Come on, let’s find a cab.”

“Not a gondola?” Serrin queried.

“They do have bridges,” Michael said gently.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Serrin mumbled.

The usual backhander was required to get them through the formalities of customs, even on a Sunday night. Though resplendent in the Doge’s livery, the opulence of the officials couldn’t have contrasted more sharply with their manner. Then the five of them had to squeeze into a small cab, which demonstrated its supreme lack of any suspension as it coughed and wheezed its way southwest.

“Frag me, my arse feels like I just got a housebrick suppository. I’ve had more comfortable rides on the back roads of Pakistan,” Streak grumbled. Hearing him, the driver pointed out in colorful language that the elf was more than welcome to get out and go there right now preferably in a hearse.

“Yes, yes, we’re sorry,” Michael said soothingly.

“No, we’re bloody not,” Streak yelled. “We don’t have to be so sodding English all the rakking time and put up with such crap. Listen, matey, this is a genuine English lord in the back seat here and he deserves better. So button your lip or I’ll put some lead in the back of your head. Prat!”

Stunned by this rejoinder, the driver said nothing and even appeared to drive a little more slowly so that the vehicle didn’t rattle quite so badly. Michael glowered at the elf, who, in a moment of reckless abandon, simply stuck his tongue out at him and raised a single expressive digit.

The journey took mercifully less time than they’d feared. Entering the city Itself, they drove over the tiny bridges of the Castello and west into San Marco, the heart of the city, and into the Piazza San Marco itself, drawing up opposite the forbidding height of the Campanile with the mighty basilica just behind them. They got out of the car and Michael muttered some words of apology to the driver and gave him a thoroughly undeserved tip, much to Streak’s disgust.

First out of the vehicle, Kristen hardly knew whether to look at the basilica and the palace to her left, or the great tower before her She turned from one to the other and back again, and then to her husband, a look of sheer wonder on her face.

“This is incredible,” was all she could manage to say. Serrin stood behind her and put his arms around her and held her, sharing her delight as she took in the splendor of the buildings.

“You say anything sarcastic,” Michael said to Streak, “and I’ll kill you. Get the luggage inside.”

“Yes, Your Lordshipness,” Streak grinned, grabbing a couple of bags and making for the noisy cafe.

It hadn’t changed much in the decade or so since Michael and Geraint had stayed in Quadri’s. The clientele certainly seemed the same: students nursing one last coffee; a cabal of down-at-the-heel artists doping likewise; some ill-disguised tourists, obviously wealthy and thus ripe for plucking by the local predators; and some off-duty officials and soldiery from the Doge’s palace, the latter confident in their uniforms, enjoying the looks of respect the foreigners gave them and behaving rather less badly perhaps than soldiers usually do in any civilized location. The place was noisy, but not rowdy, and Michael smiled as he approached the bar to pay and collect the keys to their reserved rooms.

“You won’t remember me, Claudio, but I haven’t forgotten how good it is here,” he said to the owner. The owner’s hair was more streaked with silver now, and his waist a little thicker, but a decade of middle age hadn’t changed him overmuch, his dark brown eyes narrowed a little as he scrutinized his guest.

“No, no, I do. Michael! It is Michael. But I forget your second name,” he said apologetically.

“Your wife, I think, took our booking. How is Lucrezia?”

“Michael Sutherland! I remember you! And that nobleman friend of yours-he was not English, I remember, but he was as English as any Englishman.” Claudio grinned widely. “Is he with you? I remember him. One or two of the ladies remember him too.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do, and yes, he is with us, and he’s a Welshman,” Michael said all in one go. “It’s good to see you again.”

“And my wife is well,” Claudio said.

“And I hope she’ll be happy to receive this,” Michael said, handing over a small cloth-covered box. The man looked a trifle suspicious and opened the hinged lid. Inside was a small replica axe, long-handled and fashioned in pure silver, with a small booklet accompanying it. He certainly hadn’t planned on bringing it. He’d discovered it in one of the zip-fastened pockets of one of his travel bags, forgotten entirely when or why he’d bought it, but it seemed to fit the bill.

“It’s a replica of the axe that beheaded two of the wives of our King Henry the Eighth,” Michael told him conspiratorially. “Created by the silversmiths of the Tower of London. The original axe was used,” he said slyly, nodding his head secretively and barely managing to keep from winking, “to deal with wives who were not always as obedient as their husbands might wish.”

For a ghastly moment be thought he’d mistaken Claudio’s sense of humor, and the magnificent rows he had with his wife. Inside one week he and Geraint had seen half a dozen items of crockery flung by the fierce redhead at her husband before the delighted customers at the cafe. Then the man burst into a huge laugh and reached across the wooden counter, grabbed Michael by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.

“You are a wicked, mischievous Englishman,” the man laughed. “She will be delighted with it. I will see to it.”

“I hope so.” Michael was laughing now too, ignoring the intense garlic aroma that lingered from the man’s greeting.

“Ah, so here is the lordship now, yes.” Claudio beamed as Geraint, Serrin, and Kristen pushed past Streak as he struggled with the Last of the bags. “Hey!” he announced to the multitude. “This is an English lordship staying at my place! What you think of that?”

“Oh, shit,” Michael said between clenched teeth. Anyone who managed to trace them to Venice wouldn’t find it hard to locate them now. English nobility visiting Venice would hardly be unusual, but staying here would be. That was the whole point of coming here. Geraint glowered at him, and then had to force himself to smile as various comments, some respectful but most ribald, were hooted at him from various quarters of the cafe. Doing the only thing he could, he bowed to the customers, who cheered him and then returned to their wine.

“Thanks for that,” he snarled at Michael as they climbed the rickety wooden steps. “Why not put up a poster and advertise our presence?”

“It would have been less effective,” Michael said sadly. When they got to the landing, Geraint was still visibly seething. Kristen took a determined step forward and faced him squarely, hands on her hips.

“You’re not angry,” she told him. She grabbed him by the arm and half-dragged him over to the small window facing south. “Look,” she said.

“It’s the piazza,” he said, wondering what she meant. She stared at him. He almost had to look away; she was very intense, her body stiff.

“I said look, pampoen,” she repeated, using the Africans for idiot. “Look at it, look at it. Look at those horses, they’re almost alive.” She was pointing to the gilded bronze horses of St. Mark prancing above the huge central doorways of the basilica. “And look at that tower, it reaches up to heaven. Now don’t you dare to be angry when this is so beautiful.”

Geraint understood what she meant and what she was telling, and for a moment he felt a tinge of some small sadness that he couldn’t feel the same about the place. But he had forebodings about the city after what he’d seen in the Tarot cards, and besides that he carried his own troubles, he didn’t have eyes to see the wonder of San Marco right then.

“I’m sorry.” He gave a slight shrug. “You’re seeing all this for the first time… Of course, you’re taken with it. Why not go out and stroll around the square? I’m sure it’s safe.”

“I will,” she said, a little deflated. Something wasn’t quite right with Geraint, and it puzzled her that she didn’t have a glimmering of what it was.

“When you’ve finished fannying around,” Streak said it a businesslike way as he dragged some bags to the nearest door. “Do the honors, guv.”

Michael unlocked his door on cue. “I have one or two calls to make, and then I think it’s an early night. But we need to plan what we’re going to do tomorrow,” he said to Geraint.

“Fair enough. I think a Ministry interest in the remarkable engineering work of the city would be entirely appropriate. I need to call the consulate office here as well, go and flatter some egos,” Geraint replied. “Okay, let’s get organized. Chop chop.”

“We’re going out,” Kristen told Serrin. It was anything but a question.

“I kind of got that impression,” he said with a smile.

The two of them dumped their bags in their room and strode down the stairs and into the night. The square was uncluttered with drinkers at tables, the ordinances of the city forbidding this in the square before the palace itself, and only small knots of tourists like themselves occupied the piazza, save for the guardsmen stationed decoratively before the basilica itself. They walked across the mosaics of the piazza, through a night that seemed to be hushed before the magnificence of the buildings.

They went quietly toward the basilica, stopping ten meters or so before the central doorways. The horses, underlit with small spotlights, reared into the inky night sky, and the black-and-silver-dressed guardsmen stood impassively before the colonnades of the doorways. The huge frontage of the basilica, with its astonishing statuary and frescoes, stretched out on both sides of them.

“Can you imagine building this?” Serrin asked softly. The wonder of the place had struck him too. Flags and pennants hung down from atop the doorways and alcoves, and as he looked at them he saw they were portraits and paintings. He stepped a little closer to examine the nearer of them.

They were, he guessed, reproductions of paintings by the many artists whose work graced the city’s buildings; and that had been most of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, that time in human history when art and science had not so much progressed or flourished as exploded in the minds of so many men of brilliance. It had been an era when the shackles of a corrupt and authoritarian church had begun to be loosened, yet so much of the art of the era had been sacred, and used to decorate many of the churches and cathedrals of Europe’s great cities.

By sheer coincidence, the first painting he saw on its, lightly fluttering flag was Leonardo’s John the Baptist. Opposite it, across the doorways, was a greatly smoothed and polished reproduction of another of the artist’s surviving works.

“The Last Supper,” Serrin said. “Christ and his disciples. I don’t think the original looks quite as clear that.”

Kristen looked at it curiously, stepping closer to examine it.

“I can’t see Judas,” she said.

“I’m not sure where he is. I can’t even remember if he was there or not,” Serrin said. “I didn’t pay enough attention in Sunday school.”

“He’s got to be there, but the arm is wrong,” she said, pointing to the left of the picture.

“What?” he asked, stepping forward himself to see what she was talking about.

“Look. There. Someone is holding a knife at that man’s stomach, but you can only see the arm. Whoever the arm belongs to you can’t see. And he isn’t pointing it at Jesus,” she added, a little confused. “And why are they all accusing him? Look at their hands.”

He squinted, unsure, but with a strange sense of disquiet and anxiety. Something was terribly wrong with this painting.

“Look, they’re making daggers with their hands. Look, he is,” she said urgently, pointing to the left of the painting. “His hand is a flat dagger across that woman’s throat. That’s it! Those two on the left hate her, not him,” she said, urgently now. “Serrin, what is this? Look at his face, that man with the pointy gray beard, his hand is cutting her throat, and she is so sad, look at her. Who is she? Is that Mary?”

“I think so,” he said uncertainly.

“But she’s too young.” Kristen protested. “That can’t be his mother And look, it’s her again. The Mona Lisa. I’m sure it is. It’s her eyes, even though they’re closed.”

Senin was struck by half a dozen insights in the same instant, and he felt horribly cold and even a little sick.

“It isn’t his mother, it’s Mary Magdalene,” he told her, remembering what he’d read in the book he’d bought. “And I hadn’t seen it, but I think you’re right. The book only says that Leonardo painted himself as one of the disciples. Here,” and he pointed to the other side of the painting, one from the right. “That’s him. Talking to the bald man, there at the end.”

“And why is the young man at his side turned completely away from Jesus?”

“That I don’t know,” Serrin muttered, but his eyes returned involuntarily to the woman in the picture. For a moment he realized that the apparently central figure of the painting, the open-handed Christ staring slightly vacantly at the viewer, almost as if he was shrugging his shoulders, was not what this painting was really about. His eyes were drawn to the Magdalene and the accusing hands of hatred directed at her by the disciples around her.

It is she who suffers, he realized. This man painted a blasphemy.

“I want to read your book,” she said suddenly.

“Hmmmm? What? What book?”

“The book on the man who painted this. And the Mona Lisa, and the other things you look at,” she said simply.

“That might not be a bad idea,” he said. If not for Kristen, he surely wouldn’t have noticed any of the strange things about the painting, He made a mental note to come back after they’d toured the square a bit so he could scrutinize every last detail of every painting and etching.

“But now I want to go on one of the boats,” she announced brightly.

“Gondolas” he corrected her.

“I know,” she said testily. “I want to go on one. Now. Come on!”

He laughed and hugged her, then let himself be pulled along. In some people, such a demand would have been childish petulance, but with her it was a genuinely childlike enthusiasm and desire to learn and experience what seventeen years on the streets of Cape Town had given her no inkling of.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” he said, and they walked through the piazzetta to the Molo San Marco and down to the Giardinetti, where they found a host of men only too ready to take their money and promise to sing into the bargain.

It’s a tourist thing, he grinned to himself, but what the hell? There actually are stars in the sky tonight, we can drink wine, and the canals really don’t seem to stink as Michael said they would. The guy propelling this thing has seen untold lovers clamber aboard his boat and he’s probably given them all pretty much the same patter about how beautiful the lady is and how her face shines in the light of his lantern-after all, he’s an Italian-and I still don’t care.

Leaving the disquiet of the painting behind him, Serrin grinned broadly, paid the man a good tip, whispered in his ear and got a broad smile in return, then settled down among the cushions of the narrow boat for the ride.

“What did you say to him?” she asked, suspicious.

“That you were an African princess and I bad eloped with you,” he whispered into her ear. She was about to hit him when he put up a hand in self-defending protest.

“It’s true! We did elope-after a fashion. We had to smuggle you out of the country,” he pointed out, She drew back from her playful slap.

“And you are a princess to me,” he said with an absolutely straight face.

Then she slapped him anyway.