the gateway gesturing for me to hurry. All the others had gone out.
I bowed and went behind Signore Antonio and out of the orangery, and into the larger courtyard.
I was dazed. I think perhaps Fr. Piero was there, but I didn’t really look at those standing about.
I saw the open doorway to the street, with the dim silhouettes of a couple of servants keeping watch there, and I moved towards the door and then went through it.
No one questioned me. No one seemed to notice me.
I walked numbly into the crowded piazza and for one moment stared up at the darkening grayish sky. How perfectly solid and real was this world into which I’d been plunged, with its crowded stone houses, built slap against one another, and their random towers. How real the walls of the palazzos opposite, somber and brown, and how real the noises of this motley crowd, with their carefree conversation, and bursts of laughter.
Where was I going? What did I mean to do? I wanted to pray, to go into a church and fall on my knees and pray, yet how could I do this with the yellow patch on my clothes? Howcould I dare to make the Sign of the Cross, without someone thinking I was mocking my own faith?
I felt lost and knew only that I was wandering away from the houses to which I’d been sent. And when I thought of the soul of the dead man, going now to the utter unknown, I was desperate.
CHAPTER NINE
I STOPPED . I FOUND MYSELF IN A NARROW MUDDY LANE , overcome with the stench of the filth flowing into the gutters. I thought again of trying to reach a church, a place where I could go down on my knees in the shadows and pray to God for help with this, but then again the thought of the round yellow badge on the left side of my chest stopped me.
People passed me on both sides, some politely giving me room, others shouldering me out of their path, while others milled at the open cookshops and bakery shops. The fragrances of roasting meat and baked bread mingled with the stench.
I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further, and finding a narrow margin of wall between a fabric merchant’s open stall and a bookseller, I slipped my lute around into my arms, and then holding it like a baby, I leaned back and rested and tried to find above the narrow margin of the sky.
The light was dying fast. It was getting chilly. Lamps burned in the shops. A torchbearer made his way through the street with two smartly dressed young men behind him.
I realized I had no idea what month of the year it was here, and if it corresponded in some way to the late spring weather I’d left behind. But the Mission Inn, and my beloved Liona, seemed utterly remote, like something I’d dreamed.That I’d ever been Lucky the Fox, a paid assassin, seemed unreal as well.
Again, I prayed for Lodovico’s soul. But the words seemed meaningless suddenly, in the face of my failure, and then I heard a voice say very close to me,
“You don’t have to wear that badge.”
Before I could look up, I felt the badge being ripped from the velvet of my tunic. I saw a tall young man standing there, dressed very well in brilliant burgundy velvet, with dark hose and black boots. He wore a sword in a heavily jeweled scabbard, and a short cloak over his shoulders of gray velvet as fine as that of his tunic.
He had long hair, much like my own, but it was a soft brown in color, very lustrous and curled just as it touched his shoulders. His face was remarkably symmetrical and his full mouth very beautiful. He had large dark brown eyes.
In the gloved fingers of his right hand, he held the round yellow badge that he’d so easily ripped from its stitches, and he crumpled it up now, as best he could, and tucked it into his belt.
“You don’t need it,” he said in the most gentle confidential way. “You’re Vitale’s servant and he and all his household and family are exempt from wearing the badge. He should have thought to tell you to take it off.”
“But why, what does it matter?” I asked.
He
I bowed and went behind Signore Antonio and out of the orangery, and into the larger courtyard.
I was dazed. I think perhaps Fr. Piero was there, but I didn’t really look at those standing about.
I saw the open doorway to the street, with the dim silhouettes of a couple of servants keeping watch there, and I moved towards the door and then went through it.
No one questioned me. No one seemed to notice me.
I walked numbly into the crowded piazza and for one moment stared up at the darkening grayish sky. How perfectly solid and real was this world into which I’d been plunged, with its crowded stone houses, built slap against one another, and their random towers. How real the walls of the palazzos opposite, somber and brown, and how real the noises of this motley crowd, with their carefree conversation, and bursts of laughter.
Where was I going? What did I mean to do? I wanted to pray, to go into a church and fall on my knees and pray, yet how could I do this with the yellow patch on my clothes? Howcould I dare to make the Sign of the Cross, without someone thinking I was mocking my own faith?
I felt lost and knew only that I was wandering away from the houses to which I’d been sent. And when I thought of the soul of the dead man, going now to the utter unknown, I was desperate.
CHAPTER NINE
I STOPPED . I FOUND MYSELF IN A NARROW MUDDY LANE , overcome with the stench of the filth flowing into the gutters. I thought again of trying to reach a church, a place where I could go down on my knees in the shadows and pray to God for help with this, but then again the thought of the round yellow badge on the left side of my chest stopped me.
People passed me on both sides, some politely giving me room, others shouldering me out of their path, while others milled at the open cookshops and bakery shops. The fragrances of roasting meat and baked bread mingled with the stench.
I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further, and finding a narrow margin of wall between a fabric merchant’s open stall and a bookseller, I slipped my lute around into my arms, and then holding it like a baby, I leaned back and rested and tried to find above the narrow margin of the sky.
The light was dying fast. It was getting chilly. Lamps burned in the shops. A torchbearer made his way through the street with two smartly dressed young men behind him.
I realized I had no idea what month of the year it was here, and if it corresponded in some way to the late spring weather I’d left behind. But the Mission Inn, and my beloved Liona, seemed utterly remote, like something I’d dreamed.That I’d ever been Lucky the Fox, a paid assassin, seemed unreal as well.
Again, I prayed for Lodovico’s soul. But the words seemed meaningless suddenly, in the face of my failure, and then I heard a voice say very close to me,
“You don’t have to wear that badge.”
Before I could look up, I felt the badge being ripped from the velvet of my tunic. I saw a tall young man standing there, dressed very well in brilliant burgundy velvet, with dark hose and black boots. He wore a sword in a heavily jeweled scabbard, and a short cloak over his shoulders of gray velvet as fine as that of his tunic.
He had long hair, much like my own, but it was a soft brown in color, very lustrous and curled just as it touched his shoulders. His face was remarkably symmetrical and his full mouth very beautiful. He had large dark brown eyes.
In the gloved fingers of his right hand, he held the round yellow badge that he’d so easily ripped from its stitches, and he crumpled it up now, as best he could, and tucked it into his belt.
“You don’t need it,” he said in the most gentle confidential way. “You’re Vitale’s servant and he and all his household and family are exempt from wearing the badge. He should have thought to tell you to take it off.”
“But why, what does it matter?” I asked.
He
Similar Books
