The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [13]
"And do you know why I'm here?" the Doctor continued, waving the guard to his feet. "What is your name, by the way?"
"Speroni, your eminence. Speroni Speroni. I am the Lord of the Night watch for St Mark's Square and the local area."
"Of course you are, of course you are." The Doctor turned and waved Steven and Vicki closer. At least, Steven reflected, that gesture was unambiguous. "And these are my travelling companions, Steven Taylor and Vicki... ah, yes... Vicki. Now, you were about to tell me what you were told about my mission."
"Indeed." Speroni looked dazed, like a man who had been suddenly overtaken by events and couldn't catch up. "I was informed that you would be arriving as representative of the Vatican to question Galileo Galilei on the invention he claims to have made, but I wasn't... I mean, I assumed - we all did - that you would be travelling in your robes and accompanied by a full retinue of guards -"
The Doctor gazed questioningly at him. "Galileo's invention?"
"The spyglass," Speroni prompted, frowning. "The device with which distant objects might be made closer."
"Vatican? Galileo? Spyglass?" A smile crossed his face, and he turned briefly to Steven and Vicki. "Ah, then this must be the year of our Lord, 1609," he said for their benefit, nodding as if he had known this all the time. He turned back to Speroni. "Perhaps you could escort us to our rooms. I presume that they are ready?"
Speroni caught the eye of one of his men, and jerked his head.
The man ran off, his boots clattering on the stone. "They are," he confirmed, flushing slightly. "Perhaps we could aid you with your baggage, your eminence?"
"My... Oh. Ah, yes. We don't have any baggage. Lost at sea, dear chap, along with my robes and the rest of my retinue. Lost at sea."
He smiled paternally at Speroni, who was scratching his head in puzzlement at these strangers and their antics.
"Aren't we all," Steven muttered.
Carlo Zeno tottered out of the Tavern of St Theodore and of the Crocodile and into the narrow alleyway. Turning left, he staggered towards his house. What an evening! Young Baldassarre, struck down in front of his eyes. Poison, they were saying. Judging by the way his eyeballs had protruded and the colour of his tongue, Zeno wasn't about to contradict them.
The alley was bisected after a few feet by a narrow canal. A stone bridge arced across to the other side, where the alley carried on.
Zeno staggered up the steps to the top of the bridge, trying not to lose his balance and fall into the silted, foul-smelling liquid that flowed sluggishly beneath. Too often before he had arrived back at his lodgings soaking wet and covered in excrement. He couldn't afford to ruin any more clothes.
He paused for a moment at the top of the bridge, thinking. They were saying in the tavern that it was Galileo Galilei who had thrown the poisoned wine into Baldassarre's face. Zeno wasn't so sure. He didn't like his lodger, that much was certain, but Galileo's burly form was more suited to a bludgeon than to poison. And he wasn't Venetian, either. Poison came naturally to Venetians. When the Pope's agents had struck down Friar Sarpi and left a dagger sticking out of his cheekbone, the doctors had plunged it into a dog to test what type of poison had been used. So surprised were they when the dog showed no sign of poisoning that they plunged it into a chicken as well. When the chicken didn't die, they knew it couldn't have been a Venetian that carried out the attack. And what about that writer - the one who was fed a poisoned communion wafer by the priest of the church of the Misericordia?
Poison was a Venetian weapon, for sure.
A sudden, urgent pressure in his bladder interrupted his thoughts.
Damn that Grimani: his wine went through a man's guts faster than a stream down a hill, and probably didn't taste much worse going out than it had done going in. He wasn't sure that he could wait until he got home.
Taking a quick look either way