The Bellini Card

104

He fell awkwardly, wrenching his leg as he rolled across the cords of wood.

The tillerman gave a shout of surprise.

Yashim snatched himself upright and turned to the man who was staring at him, dumbfounded.

“It’s me!” Yashim cried. “The pasha!”

A look of consternation swept across the tillerman’s face.

“Tell them to keep rowing!”

The tillerman glanced at the men forward. “Row on! Row on!” he barked. “You, you don’t look like the pasha,” he objected simply.

Yashim scrambled to the front of the barge. His eyes swept the water. It was flat, oily, gleaming in the half dawn.

He had the advantage now, surely? The barge was moving faster than a man could swim, and it was three hundred yards to the Palazzo d’Aspi.

He peered at the shoreline, where the buildings dropped into the water. The buildings were clear, but there were freestanding mooring posts, too. Was the Tatar hiding somewhere among them?

If he were hiding, then he must have seen Yashim jump.

But he’d been swimming. He couldn’t have seen.

Yashim glanced ahead, and that was when he saw a slight movement to his right. It was out of the corner of one eye, and when he looked again, there was nothing.

Only the mouth of the empty canal and the low crenellations of the caisson he’d climbed an hour or so before.

But the Tatar had slipped over it again. He’d seen him go.

Or had he?

Was it a faster way back to the Palazzo d’Aspi?

Had the Tatar seen him coming?

And if he jumped-and was wrong-would the contessa die?

Yashim scuttled back to the man at the tiller. His foot throbbed.

If he jumped, could he swim?

The mouth of the canal was only fifteen yards ahead.

Yashim stood up. He put both hands to his mouth and shouted, “Get down on deck!”

The tillerman looked up, mouth agape.

Yashim grabbed the tiller and swept it out of the man’s hands.

Loaded with cords of beechwood from the foothills of the Dolomites, the barge heeled and swung right, driven by its own massive momentum. The portside rower staggered and vanished with a shout into the canal; his companion sprawled across the logs.

For a moment it looked as if Yashim had made the turn too soon. As the bows swung around toward the edge of the palazzo, it seemed inevitable that they would crash into the masonry wall.

But even as it tilted to the left, brushing its gunwales against the surface, the heavy barge was still making its way downstream.

Over the still and silent waters of the Grand Canal, its solid keel cracked against the caisson like a rifle shot.

The broad prow lifted out of the water, scraping up on the irregular jutting timbers, and Yashim and the tillerman were thrown forward.

For a moment the barge seemed to hang at an unnatural angle. The impact had driven the stern so low that as it slewed to port it seemed to be pressing upon a scoop of water that would at any second rush back and overwhelm it.

Clinging to the edge of the hold, Yashim glanced back. The water was like oil again-slow, gurgling, wreathing itself in coils and bubbles.

Something cracked like a rifle bolt, and the barge lurched.

The waters at the stern rushed in. They swept in beneath the rudder, picked up the barge and lifted it, and as the boat began to rise, a shudder swept its length.

The central plank of the barrier snapped in two. The weight of the barge dropped suddenly a few inches. The crossbeam beneath curved, then popped from its rabbets, and as the prow of the barge dropped through the barrier, Yashim raised his head.

He saw the Tatar, standing in the trench up to his knees, his hands in the water.

He saw him staring upward, blankly, as water began to billow across the shattered caisson.

The water jetted out on either side of the barge’s keel, like two green wings, scouring the walls and then curling inward, dragging with it shattered timber that smacked against the walls like weightless wickerwork and then swirled inward, smashing down onto the trench in a thundering plume of foam and mud.

The boiling deluge rolled down to the far end of the canal, crashed against the caisson, and jetted up into the air.

Yashim gripped the edge of his plank and held on for dear life.

Very slowly, like a fat woman nudging herself into a bath, the barge creaked forward. As the backwash returned, it met a new wave of water and then, as if someone had lightly smacked its rump, the barge glided abruptly and harmlessly into the canal.

The man at the prow stood up shakily.

Yashim removed his fingers from the plank. When he looked around he saw the other rower in the water of the Grand Canal, clinging to his oar.

The tillerman looked back and then at Yashim. He was white as a sheet.

“Paolo,” he said, with an exasperated jerk of his head. “Always, he misses everything.”