The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [17]
"He threw wine into my son's face. The wine may have contained the poison."
"So could anything your son ate or drank in the past twelve hours."
The corner of Tommaso's mouth turned up in the closest Speroni had ever seen him get to a smile. "Never the less, this Galileo would do well to leave Venice immediately, lest he find himself missing certain vital elements of his being. His heart, for instance."
"My lord," Speroni said as hard as he dared, "there is no reason to believe that Galileo is involved in this matter, beyond his proximity to your son when he died."
"My family honour demands vengeance," Tommaso said levelly. "It matters little to me whether we get the right person or not.
Everybody is guilty of something."
"I shall hold you and your family responsible for Galileo's life,"
Speroni warned. "Nicolotti or not, Lord or not, there are laws here in Venice."
"Laws?" Tommaso's lips twisted as if he had bitten into something sour. "Laws are for the peasants. The families of the Golden Book make their own laws."
"Suffice it to say," the Doctor continued, "that 1609 is one of the pivotal years for scientific history. Galileo Galilei is about to present the Doge of Venice with the first telescope, and thus open up the stars to mankind's inspection. There is a direct line between this moment in time and the spaceship which you were unfortunate enough to crash on the planet Mechanus."
Steven was about to make some protest about this cavalier dismissal of his heroic struggle with the controls of a dead space fighter, but through the window he suddenly caught sight of something hanging from a pillar in the square and lost his train of thought. "Is this Doge the leader of Venice then?" he said, trying to make out what the object was by the flickering light of the flambeaux.
The Doctor nodded sagely. "The Doge heads the Council of Three, which heads the Council of Ten, which heads the Great Council."
From a pocket he withdrew a corkscrew, with which he proceeded to open the wine.
"Powerful man, then?" Steven asked. The object hanging from the pillar was swaying slightly in the fresh breeze that was blowing in off the lagoon. People were passing it by without paying it any attention.
"That's a difficult question," the Doctor observed judiciously.
"Suffice it to say, that at this time in its history, Venice itself is one of the most influential states in the world. Most, if not all, of the trade between Europe and the Orient passes through its ports.
Every commodity known to man of this century - silks, spices, precious stones, slaves, marble, ivory, ebony, fabulous animals...
It is the greatest sea power of the age, unrivalled in firepower, tonnage and efficiency. During the recent wars against the Turks a new galley left its shipyards - the Arsenale - every morning for one hundred days. Imagine that! A new warship every morning!" He poured himself a glass of wine. "And that, incidentally, is what Speroni and his men were so worried about - that we might be Turkish spies."
"Why are they worried, if they can build ships that quickly?" Steven asked. That dangling object was worrying him. The more he looked at it, the more it looked like a body, hanging by a chain.
"The approach into the lagoon from the Adriatic is almost impossible to navigate, except by skilled Venetians," the Doctor replied, and took a sip of his wine. "Hmm, most acceptable. Yes, most acceptable. There are sandbanks under the surface that would rip the keel from any ship that didn't know the way through the maze. The Venetians are paranoid about Turkish spies sneaking into the lagoon in small boats and mapping out the sandbanks."
One of the flambeaux flared suddenly as the wind caught it, casting its light across the pillar and the puffy, bird-pecked face of the body that hung from it, suspended by a metal chain around its throat. The flesh of the neck had swelled so much that the links of the chain had become buried in it.
"Doctor..." Steven whispered, his mouth suddenly dry, "there's a dead body