The Journeyer by Gary Jennings Page B

then another voice spoke, hissing beside my ear, “You stupid asenazzo!” and something else made a rasping noise, and something metallic glinted in the torchlight. It happened at the edge of my vision, so my impressions were fragmentary and confused. But it appeared to me that one of the priests who had been swinging a golden censer had abruptly swung something silvery instead. And then Ilaria’s husband leaned into my view, and opened his mouth and belched a substance that looked black in that light. I had done nothing to him, but something had happened to him. He tottered and jostled against the other men in the bunched group, and he and at least two others fell down. Then a heavy hand clutched at my shoulder, but I yanked away from it, and the recoil took me out of the center of the tumult. As I struggled through the outer fringe of people, and caromed off a couple of them, I again dropped my scabbard and then the sword as well, but I did not pause. I was in panic and I could think of nothing but to run fast and far. Behind me I heard exclamations of astonishment and outrage, but by then I was well away from the massed torch and candlelight and well away into the blessed darkness and fog.
    I kept on running along the embankment until I saw two new figures taking form before me in the misty night. I might have shied away, but I saw they were children’s figures and, after a moment, they resolved themselves into Ubaldo and Doris Tagiabue. I was ever so relieved to see someone familiar—and small. I tried to put on a glad face and probably put on a ghastly one, but I hailed them jollily:
    “Doris, you are still scrubbed and clean!”
    “You are not,” she said, and pointed.
    I looked down at myself. The front of my cloak was wet with more than a soaking of caligo. It was splotched and spattered with glistening red.
    “And your face is as pale as a tombstone,” said Ubaldo. “What happened, Marco?”
    “I was … I was almost a bravo,” I said, my voice gone suddenly unsteady. They stared at me, and I explained. It felt good to tell it to somebody unconcerned in the matter. “My lady sent me to slay a man. But I think he died before I could do it. Some other enemy must have intervened, or hired a bravo to do it.”
    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