The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fic - By Mike Ashley Page 0,93

citizens, to his side. When he left, he fancied he had been completely successful, later even flattering Zuliani by holding one of his meetings in the man’s home.

Now Zuliani was left tossing in his bed thinking of a way of escaping the coils of the conspiracy. Restlessly, he rose from under the lion skin, and dragged his heavy fur-trimmed robe around him. The only thing to do was to go to the Doge and make it look as though he had only joined the plot in the first place to act as Gradenigo’s spy. Even so, such a betrayal stuck in his craw. Not that he had any worries about offending some sense of honour. God knows, he had served his own ends often enough in the past. No, he merely worried that Gradenigo and his cronies might only see him as untrustworthy in the future, and not give him the preferred status his betrayal should provide. He struck his brow with the flat of his hand, angered by his own indecision.

“Come on, Nick, boy, you would have not hesitated like this twenty years ago. Get it done, and worry about the consequences later.”

He quickly dressed, and descended the winding staircase down to his street door. He avoided the water door because he didn’t want his servant and boatman Vettor knowing of his purpose. Outside, the wind still howled, as he pulled his cloak close around him and hurried down the Calle Specchieri. At the far end of the narrow alley, he should have carried straight on but something told him to turn left. The Doge’s palace was straight ahead, but he again had the feeling he was being followed. It would be better if it was not known where he was bound. Walking swiftly on, he turned left again and crossed the bottom end of the Rio di San Zulian. He knew this maze like the back of his hand, and darted under the porch of a house almost opposite his own, but on the other side of the canal. Soon, a slight figure dashed past his hiding place, and he made a grab at the youth who had been dogging him for days. He shouted out in triumph.

“Got you, you little bastard.”

The boy tried to wriggle out of his grasp almost breaking away, but Zuliani was having none of it. He swung his arm around the lad’s chest, grabbing at his tunic. He was shocked to feel a soft bosom under his hand, and almost let his stalker go. But he had the presence of mind to hold on to an arm as the figure whirled round and slapped his face. Zuliani laughed out loud, as he looked into the soft face not of a youth but a pretty girl. She was furious at being manhandled.

“Keep your hands off my tits, you old lecher.”

“By all means, mistress. But I wonder if a grope is not what you wanted all along. After all, you have been following my every move so slavishly.”

The girl blushed, and pulled her cloak around her, hiding the immodesty of her boyish garb.

“Let me explain.”

*

“You wanted to know about what it was like to live in the East?”

He was seated opposite the girl in his attic room, and, though she had kept her cloak drawn around her, she had removed the sugarloaf hat she wore. Her hair had tumbled down, and Zuliani could now see it was blonde but with traces of red that turned it into gold. Her face had the roundness of a young girl – she could be no more than fifteen – but her angular cheek bones and aquiline nose told of a beauty emerging from a chrysalis. He found her looks disconcertingly familiar, but he put that down to his knowing her family well. She had given her name as Katie Valier, and Zuliani recalled an old adversary of his from that family. Pasquale Valier had been a rat-faced little squirt though, and now long dead. This pretty girl could not be one of his brood. He realized he was drifting, and tried to concentrate his wandering thoughts.

“If you wanted to know about the East, why didn’t you just come and talk to me. God knows, I have a tale or two to tell.”

In fact, when he had returned to Venice after a long time serving Kubilai and his sons, people were disinclined to believe his stories. Some had laughed at him behind his back, accusing him of weaving fanciful