traitors are denounced here, in writing—the accusation writ down and passed through the mouth to the offices within. Our judicial system relies on such information for the wheels to turn aright.”
My heart plummeted, as I realized that those that filled the prisons below and above us began their journeys here, damned by their friends, rivals, or jealous associates.
I had to clear my throat twice before I could speak. “Is not such a system . . . open to abuse?” I stammered. “I mean . . . is it not used for . . . vengeance?”
She shrugged. “Betimes. But what matter? In each case we exact punishment to fit the crime, in case there is a kernel of truth in the matter.”
I swallowed.
“You will forgive me, my dear Luciana,” she went on, “if we now repeat a little of your former tour—I believe that the best tutors believe in the revision of earlier learned lessons, do they not?” She flashed a green glance at me and I had to drop my eyes—suddenly stone-cold certain she was talking about Signor Cristoforo. “So I will not apologize, but merely assure you that you will not find it dull.”
We went once again through the gloomy paneled chambers to the little door in the wall; I knew now—at the back of my mind I had always known—where we were going. Once again, we descended the darkwood stairs to the prisons—the under-belly of the Venetian state. The chime of terror grew stronger and my skin started to prickle. Once again light turned to dark as we left the airy palace for the dark passages of the pozzi—once again the shrieks of prisoners reached my ears, the pleas of the sane and the babblings of the ones who had run mad. Once again the biting cold turned my skin to plucked chicken, and the killing damp entered my chestspoon. I saw scratches above the doors indicating the numbers of the cells—once names, the prisoners were now numbers, waiting for torture or death, for release would never come.
“Here,” said my mother lightly. She nodded to the burly guard who uncrossed his beefy arms and stood aside.
I looked questioningly at my mother, who nodded. I stepped inside, half expecting the clang of the door behind me. For I was certain, now, that my mother knew something. Instead I was assailed by the smell of shit and vomit, overlaid by a sweet alien smell. My nose recognized the odor before my brain did—I was back in my old house by the Arno, the floor a car-mine pool, my feet wet from the gore, my eyes looking down on Enna, her throat slit and gushing.
Blood.
In the corner a creature of darkness was curled like a babe, keening and crying, his tears dripping in time with the water from the walls. I recoiled from the thing before me and looked at my mother’s dispassionate face. Conversationally, as if she were introducing guests at a gathering, she said the horrible words.
“Of course, you know Signor Bonaccorso Nivola.”
At the sound of his name, like a child or a dog that is sensible of no more than what he is called, the thing in the corner uncurled and turned his face to mine. I could not look upon what I saw there, so dropped my eyes to worse—his hose had been slashed at his groin, and a single bloody appendage dangled there, unnatural, two essential orbs missing in a gruesome mirroring of what had happened to his face. The knife, newly wet from the deed, lay guiltily by on a wooden stool, and my mother picked it up, laid both edges against her tongue in turn and tasted the man’s blood. The stain rouged her unpainted lips and her eyes glittered in the dark like jade. I fled the cell then, and as I vomited I comprehended what I had seen.
His eyes and balls were gone.
As I heaved I was conscious of someone rubbing my back, an action any normal mother would employ with a sickly child.
“Your tutor has gone back to Genoa,” she said. “We did not harm him. But your father and I would like you to stay.”
Again it was said with kindness and affection, as if to a guest who wished to take leave too soon.
The guard, used to such scenes, looked on with dispassion. He pulled a filthy cloth from his belt, dropped it over my leavings, and scuffed the mess back and forth with his foot, leaving a wet smear