The Mirror Thief(169)
By now they will have guessed that he’s waiting for darkness. In this they are nearly correct. The innumerate moments before the single bell announces sundown contain his final chance to contact Obizzo; he’s resolved not to let it escape him.
Shutters close in the Rialto, pushcarts rattle home, carpets slide from windowsills. Crivano stops in a cutler’s shop, drinks a cup of wine in a casino. Waiting for the light to turn gold. They’re following more closely now: almost always, it’s the men in cloaks. Eventually they’ll lose patience—sure that they’ve either missed the crucial gesture, or that he’s withholding it—and they’ll fall on him. He has no good lies to tell under torture, no time to invent or rehearse them. If they take him, he’ll say what he knows.
There: a glow on the belltower of the Frari. He hurries into the street, zigzagging toward the great confluence at Campo San Aponal. A glance over his shoulder reveals two cloaks, both close behind.
In the campo he mixes with the milling crowd, holding his breath until he sees them: linkboys, gathered with their lanterns on the church steps, laughing and tussling at rough plebeian games while they wait for the darkness to come. Crivano sweeps toward them. Holla, mooncursers! he shouts, rubbing his palms together. Who would earn a bit of silver before the sun has gone?
The boys swarm. Crivano squats on his haunches, opens his purse to remove a bright ducat. Their unblinking eyes converge on it, aligned like compass-needles. This coin is more than any of their fathers will earn in a week—if indeed any of them have fathers. The youngest among them doesn’t even know what it is; another boy’s terse whisper puts an explanation in his small ear.
So, Crivano says, who among you rabble knows the Contarini house, in San Samuele?
A shrill chorus of affirmation follows.
Be at ease, whelps! Crivano says, and passes the coin to a tall harelipped boy. I have silver enough for all. You, varlet, to earn your coin, will deliver a message to Rigi, the Contarini porter. Now—who knows the Morosini house, in San Luca?
Crivano produces another ducat to more agitated yelps, more grasping fingers. The harelipped boy is half-turned, half-crouched, ready to run; his hiss-honking voice cuts through the din. What’s your message, dottore? he asks.
Be patient, my pup: you shall have it soon enough. You there! Here’s a coin for you. Your task is to seek out Hugo, the Morosini porter.
For hours now Crivano has recited these instructions in his head, memorizing them like an incantation, like a magic spell—which they might as well be. He dispatches a third boy to Ciotti at Minerva, a fourth to the gatekeeper-nun at Santa Caterina, a fifth to the small casino near Santa Giustina where he spoke drunkenly of Lepanto. He has more ducats in his purse than there are linkboys. He directs another to the apothecary who sold him the henbane, another to the gondolier who last ferried him from Murano, another to the proprietor of the glass shop on the new Rialto bridge. In his mind he has assembled a map of the city: the city not as it is, but as he has encountered it these past few weeks; a map constellated from his movements and memories, congruent with tangible marble and brick, but submerged beneath the visible surfaces. Now each set of directions aims a lowly urchin down these imaginary thoroughfares.
The most vital errand he delegates to a boy who’s a bit quieter than the rest, who meets his eye coolly, who listens and thinks. He’s neither the youngest nor the oldest among them. He won’t be a linkboy for very long. You, Crivano says, laying the ducat in the boy’s palm, will go to Anzolo at the White Eagle. Do you know the place?
Soon every mooncurser has a coin. Crivano stretches from his crouch to peek over their heads; the two cloaked sbirri watch from the crowd, twenty paces off. Crivano motions the boys near, then whispers. To all, he entrusts the same message: Look behind the curtain.
What curtain do you mean, dottore?
The men whom you seek, Crivano says, will know what curtain. Or they will not. It doesn’t matter.
Who do we say the message is from?
Say only what you know: that you were sent by a dottore, with light hair and a forked beard. That will suffice. And be nimble and clever, lads, for sbirri are about who would deter you. All go together now, on my command! Ready?
A loud handclap sends them charging like unleashed hounds. The sbirri have anticipated Crivano’s stratagem, but they’re at a loss for a response; they make half-hearted grabs for the nearest passing boys, then turn back to Crivano with incensed expressions. Crivano scans the crowd—four more cloaks dispersed at the edges of the campo, some now flying in pursuit of his little messengers—then bolts to the right, around the belltower and behind the apse, doubling back toward Campo San Silvestro. Dottore! a voice calls. He ignores it.
The sun is down. The first bell rings at the Frari to the west and San Marco to the south; then the sound spreads to San Polo and San Aponal and San Silvestro like ripples over water. Crivano loops back again, without intention or direction. He passes the sbirro with the mutilated face who a moment ago was following him. In a gap between shops he sees one of his linkboys scurry by; he’s unable to recall where he sent that one. He’s very tired now. He wants to return to the White Eagle, but he can’t. Not yet.
The crowds thin as the sky grows dark; soon, Crivano fears, he and the sbirri will be the streets’ only occupants. He begins to seek the shortest and narrowest passages, where he can disrupt his pursuers’ view. Once the second bell has rung, he thinks, I’ll go back to the locanda and sleep. Not till then.