“You will pay!” Halim screams at Roberto. The veins stand out on his neck as the guards hold him back. “My sister’s blood stains your hands!”
18
Halim’s men crowd around, trying to restrain him.
“Get off me!” he cries, pushing them away. He lunges towards Roberto, fingers grasping the air. Roberto stands his ground, but his face has drained of blood. Halim’s chest heaves, and his eyes are wild. He doesn’t even seem to have seen me. “You murdering monster! Is this what you do to women in Venice?”
He manages to free himself and his fist crashes into Roberto’s face with a sickening sound. Roberto staggers back, but Halim’s men are able to drag him from the room. Roberto is too shocked to do anything but watch, fingers staunching the blood from his nose.
“I’ll tear your throat out!” Halim screams from outside.
I peer out of the doorway to see him being pulled down the corridor. The guards at the door keep their swords trained on him. For a moment, our eyes meet, and I see a flicker of shame.
“Unhand me!” he growls. “I won’t fight any longer.” As the men release him, he straightens his clothes and walks away, his retinue following.
When I turn back into the room, I see that Faruk has remained. He watches my face carefully. Though his own expression is as blank as a mask, I can’t help but sense a smile lurking behind it.
“What’s happening here?” I ask, swallowing hard. My mouth is so dry I can hardly get the words out. “I don’t understand.”
“You should,” Faruk says, darting a glance at Roberto. “I have learned you are engaged to this brute. Did you forget to mention to the prince that you were going to marry a child-slayer?”
A Venetian servant would never dare speak so, but this adviser seems more like a confidante than a manservant.
“Get out,” I command. His glance rolls over me as if to say, And who are you to give orders?
One of the remaining guards takes a step towards him. “Do as the lady asks,” he warns.
Faruk turns his stooped back on us and follows his master outside. Other footsteps pound up the corridor, and the next moment Nicolo appears, swinging around the open doorway.
“I’m not too late, am I?” he gasps. He spots Roberto’s bloodied nose. “Are you hurt?”
Roberto lets out a long exhalation. “I’m fine. But what did that man want?”
His brother walks farther into the room and sinks onto a stool covered in jade brocade. He shakes his head, staring at the marble floor. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he says, almost to himself.
“That was Halim, the Turkish prince,” I say, going to take Roberto’s hand.
“That much I gathered.”
“He asked to see the girl’s body,” says Nicolo.
“The girl from my rooms?”
Nicolo nods and explains quickly that Halim was escorted to the warehouse in the harbor, where the body was being kept ready to be shipped to Lazzaretto Nuovo. The watchmen prised the coffin lid off. “We only did it to keep Prince Halim happy!” Nicolo says. “Even though we thought it very strange. He wouldn’t explain what she was to him. But the girl who was lying there …” Nicolo shakes his head. “It wasn’t good, Roberto. She hadn’t been washed or cleaned up. There was dried blood all over her dress and the air stank with decomposition. The prince—he fell to his knees! Began screaming and howling. No one understood.”
“Go on,” I say in a low voice.
Nicolo gets to his feet and wanders over to a window to look down on the palace courtyard with its bronze wells. Behind him a bird darts from the eaves, just like the little bird I used to feed in the convent.
“Prince Halim had a pendant. He was clutching it to his chest. He seemed to …” Nicolo turns to face us, and his eyes are full of pain at the memory of what he saw. “He knew the girl—said it was his sister. Her name was Aysim. Next thing, that bald-headed fellow is whispering in his ear and Prince Halim curses, swearing to kill you, Roberto. I got here as fast as I could, but he’d already started running up the stairs.”
“I must go to him,” Roberto says quietly. “Tell him I didn’t do this. He has to understand.”
Before I can move to stop him, he is out of the room. I throw a glance to Nicolo, and the two of us give chase down the