Ubaldo exclaimed, “You think he died?”

“Everything happened all at once. I had to flee. I suppose I will not know what really happened until the banditori of the night watch cry the news.”

“Where was this?”

“Back yonder, where the dead Doge is being put aboard his bark. Or maybe he is not yet. All is turmoil.”

“I could go and see. I can tell you sooner than a banditore.”

“Yes,” I said. “But be careful, Boldo. They will be suspecting every stranger.”

He ran off the way I had come, and Doris and I sat down on a waterside bollard. She regarded me gravely, and after a while said, “The man was the lady’s husband.” She did not frame it as a question, but I nodded numbly. “And you hope to take his place.”

“I already have,” I said, with as much of boastfulness as I could muster. Doris seemed to wince, so I added truthfully, “Once, anyway.”

That one afternoon now seemed long in the past, and at the moment I felt no arousal of the urge to repeat it. Curious, I thought to myself, how anxiety can so diminish a man’s ardor. Why, if I were in Ilaria’s room right now, and she was naked and smiling and beckoning, I could not …

“You may be in terrible trouble,” said Doris, as if to shrivel my ardor utterly.

“I think not,” I said, to convince myself rather than the girl. “I did nothing more criminal than to be where I did not belong. And I got away without being caught or recognized, so no one knows I did even that much. Except you, now.”

“And what happens next?”

“If the man is dead, my lady will soon summon me to her grateful embrace. I will go slightly shamefaced, for I had hoped to go to her as a gallant bravo, the slayer of her oppressor.” A thought came to me. “But now at least I can go to her with a clear conscience.” The thought brought a little cheer with it.

“And if he is not dead?”

The cheer evaporated. I had not yet considered that eventuality. I said nothing, and sat trying to think what I might do—or might have to do.

“Perhaps then,” Doris ventured in a very small voice, “you might take me instead of her for your smanza?”

I ground my teeth. “Why do you keep on making that ridiculous proposal? Especially now, when I have so many other problems to think about?”

“If you had accepted when I first offered, you would not now have so many problems.”

That was either female or juvenile illogic, and palpably absurd, but there was just enough truth in it to make me respond with cruelty, “The Dona Ilaria is beautiful; you are not. She is a woman; you are a child. She merits the Dona to her name, and I also am of the Ene Aca. I could never take for my lady anyone not nobly born and—”

“She has not behaved very nobly. Neither have you.”

But I careered on, “She is always clean and fragrant; you have only just discovered washing. She knows how to make love sublimely; you will never know more than the pig Malgarita—”

“If your lady knows how to fottere so well, then you must have learned, too, and you could teach me—”

“There you are! No lady would use a word like fottere! Ilaria calls it musicare.”

“Then teach me to talk like a lady. Teach me to musicare like a lady.”

“This is insupportable! With everything else on my mind, why am I sitting here arguing with an imbecile?” I stood up and said sternly, “Doris, you are supposed to be a good girl. Why do you keep offering not to be?”

“Because …” She bowed her head so that her fair hair fell like a casque around her face and hid her expression. “Because that is all I can offer.”

“Olà, Marco!” called Ubaldo, solidifying out of the fog and coming up to us, panting from his run.

“What did you find out?”

“Let me tell you one thing, zenso. Be glad you are not the bravo who did that.”

“Who did what, exactly?” I asked apprehensively.

“Killed the man. The man you spoke of. Yes, he is dead. They have the sword that did it.”

“They do not!” I protested. “The sword they have must be mine, and there is no blood on it.”

Ubaldo shrugged. “They found a weapon. They will assuredly find a sassìn. They will have to find somebody to blame, because of who it was he assassinated.”

“Only Ilaria’s husband—”

“The next Doge.”

“What?”

“The same man. But for this, the banditori would have been proclaiming him Doge of Venice tomorrow. Sacro! That is what I overheard, and I heard it several times repeated. The Council had elected him to succeed the Serenità Zeno, and were only waiting until after the pompe funebri to make the announcement.”

“Oh, Dio mio!” I would have said, but Doris said it for me.

“Now they must start the voting all over again. But not before they find the bravo who is guilty. This is not just another back-alley knifing. From the way they were talking, this is something that has never before occurred in the history of the Republic.”

“Dio mio,” Doris breathed again, then asked me, “What will you do now?”

After some thought, if my mind’s perturbation could be called thinking, I said, “Perhaps I ought not go to my house. Can I sleep in a corner of your barge?”

9

SO that is where I passed the night, on a pallet of smelly rags—but not in sleep; in staring, glaring wakefulness. When, at some small hour, Doris heard my restless tossing and came creeping to ask if I would like to be held and soothed, I simply snarled, and she crept away again. She and Ubaldo and all the other boat children were asleep when the dawn began to poke its fingers through the many cracks in the old barge hull, and I got up, leaving my blood-stained cloak, and slipped out into the morning.

The city was all fresh pink and amber in color, and every stone sparkled with dew left by the caligo. By contrast, I felt anything but sparkly, and an over-all drab brown in color, even to the inside of my mouth. I wandered aimlessly through the awakening streets, the turnings of my path determined by my veering away from every other person out walking that early. But gradually the streets began to fill with people, too many for me to avoid them all, and I heard the bells ringing the terza, the start of the working day. So I let myself drift lagoonward, to the Riva Ca’ de Dio and into the warehouse of the Compagnia Polo. I think I had some dim notion of asking the clerk Isidoro Priuli if he could quickly and quietly arrange for me the berth of cabin boy on some outbound vessel.

I trudged into his little counting room, so sunk in my morosity that it took me a moment to notice that the room was more than usually cramped and that Maistro Doro was saying to a crowd of visitors, “I can only tell you that he has not set foot in Venice in more than twenty years. I repeat, the Messer Marco Polo has long lived in Constantinople and still lives there. If you refuse to believe me, here is his nephew of the same name, who can vouch—”

I spun on my heel to go out again, having recognized the crowd in the room as no more than two, but extremely burly, uniformed gastaldi of the Quarantia. Before I could escape, one of them growled, “Same name, eh? And look at the guilty face on him!” and the other reached out to clamp a massive hand around my upper arm.

Well, I was marched away, while the clerk and the warehouse men goggled. We had no great distance to go, but it seemed the longest of all the journeys I have ever made. I struggled feebly in the iron grip of the gastaldi and, more like a bimbo than a bravo, pleaded tearfully to know of what I was accused, but the stolid bailiffs never replied. As we tramped along the Riva, through crowds of passersby also goggling, my mind was a tumult of questions: Was there a reward? Who turned me in? Did Doris or Ubaldo somehow send word? We crossed over the Bridge of the Straw, but did not continue as far as the piazzetta entrance to the Doge’s Palace. At the Gate of the Wheat, we turned in to the Torresella, which stands adjacent to the palace and is the last remainder of what was in ancient times a fortified castle. It is now officially the State Prison of Venice, but its inmates have another name for it. The prison is called by the name our ancestors called the fiery pit before Christianity taught them to call it Hell. The prison is called Vulcano.