Order of Darkness Read online

  Now the bigger houses were built directly onto the canal, some of them with great front doors that opened straight onto the water, some of them had a gate at the front of the house to allow a boat to float directly into the house as if the river were a welcome guest.

  As Isolde watched, one of these water doors opened and a gondola came out, sleek as a black fish, with the brightly dressed gondolier standing in the stern and rowing with his single oar as the gentleman sat in the middle of the boat, a black cape around his shoulders and an embroidered hat on his head, his face hidden by a beautifully decorated mask which revealed only his smiling mouth.

  ‘Oh! Look!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a beautiful little boat, and see how it came out of the house?’

  ‘Called a gondola,’ the boatman explained. ‘The Venetians have them like land dwellers have a litter or a cart to get about. Every big house has a watergate so that their gondola can come and go.’

  Isolde could not take her eyes from the beautiful craft, and the gentleman nodded his head and raised a gloved hand to her as he swept by.

  ‘Carnival,’ Brother Peter said quietly as he saw the magnificently coloured waistcoat under the gentleman’s dark cape and the brilliantly coloured mask that covered his face. ‘We could not have come to the city at a worse time.’

  ‘What’s so bad about the carnival?’ Ishraq asked curiously, looking after the black gondola and the handsome masked man.

  ‘It is twenty days of indulgence and sin before Lent,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘Carnevale as they call it, is a byword for the worst behaviour. If we were enquiring into sin we would have nothing to do but to point at every passer-by. The city is famous for vice. We will have to stay indoors as much as possible, and avoid the endless drinking and promenading and dancing. And worse.’

  ‘But what a grand house!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘Like a palace! Did you see inside? The stone stairs coming down to his own private quay? And the torches inside the building?’

  ‘Look!’ Ishraq pointed ahead of them. There were more houses directly on the water’s edge, most of them standing on little islands completely surrounded by water, the islands connected with thin, arching wooden bridges. On the left side the travellers could see the spires of churches beyond the waterfront houses, and at every second or third house they could see a narrow dark canal winding its way deeper into the heart of the city, and smaller canals branching from it, each one crowded with gondolas and working boats, every quay busy with people, half of them dressed in fantastic costumes, the women tottering on impossibly high shoes, some of them so tall that they had a maidservant to walk beside them for support.

  ‘What are they wearing on their feet? They’re like stilts!’ Ishraq exclaimed.

  ‘They are called chopines,’ Brother Peter said. ‘They keep the ladies’ gowns and feet clear of the water when the streets are flooded.’ He looked consideringly at the women, who could not stand unsupported but looked magnificent, tall as giantesses, in their beautiful billowing long gowns. ‘The Holy Church approves of them,’ he said.

  ‘I would have thought you would have called them a ridiculous vanity?’ Ishraq asked curiously.

  ‘Since they prevent dancing, and women cannot walk about on their own while wearing them, they are a great discouragement to sin,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘That’s a great advantage.’

  ‘It is as everyone said, the city is built on the water,’ Isolde said wonderingly. ‘The houses stand side by side like boats moored closely in a port.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. How will the horses get about?’ Freize asked.

  ‘The boatman will take them a little out of the city, after he has set us down,’ Brother Peter told him. ‘When we need them, we’ll take a boat to get to them. There are no horses in Venice, everyone goes everywhere by boat.’

  ‘The goods for market?’ Freize asked.

  ‘Come in by boat and are loaded and unloaded at the quayside.’

  ‘The inns?’

  ‘Take travellers who leave and arrive by boat. They have no stable yards.’

  ‘The priests who attend the churches?’

  ‘Come and go by boat. Every church has its own stone quayside.’

  ‘Aha, and so how do they get the stone for building?’ Freize demanded, as if he was finally about to catch Brother Peter in a travellers’ tale.

  ‘They have great barges that bring in the stone,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘Everything comes by boat, I tell you. They even have great barges that bring in the drinking water.’

  This was too much for Freize. ‘Now I know you are deceiving me,’ he said. ‘The one thing this city does not lack is water! They must be born with webbed feet, these Venetians.’

  ‘They are a strange and unique people,’ Brother Peter conceded. ‘They govern themselves without a king, they have no roads, no highways, they are the wealthiest city in Christendom, they live on the sea and by the sea. They are expanding constantly, and their only god is trade; but they have built the most beautiful churches on every canal and decorated them with the most inspiring holy pictures. Every church is a treasure house of sacred art. Yet they act as if they are as far from God as they are from the mainland and there is no way to get to Him but a voyage.’

  Now they were approaching the heart of the city. The broad canal was walled on either side with white Istrian stone to make a continuous quay, occasionally pierced by a tributary canal winding deeper inside the city. Many of the smaller inner canals were crossed by little wooden bridges, a few were crossed by steeply stepped bridges of white stone. The ferry was losing the cold breeze and so the boatman took down the sails and set to row; he took an oar on one side, and his lad heaved on the other. They wound their way through the constant river traffic of gondolas going swiftly through the water with loud warning cries from the gondoliers in the sterns of ‘Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!’

  The canal was crowded with fishing ships, the flat-bottomed barges for carrying heavy goods, the ferry boats heaving with poorer people, and criss-crossing through the traffic going from one side to the other were public gondolas for hire. To the two young women who had been raised in a small country castle, it was impossibly busy and glamorous, they looked from right to left and could not believe what they were seeing. Every gondola carried passengers, heavily cloaked with their faces hidden by carnival masks. The women wore masks adorned with dyed plumes of feathers, the eyeholes slit like the eyes of a cat, a brightly coloured hood covering their hair, a bejewelled fan hiding their smiling lips. Even more intriguing were the gondolas where the little cabin in the middle of the slim ship had the doors resolutely shut on hidden lovers, and the gondolier was rowing slowly, impassive in the stern. Sometimes a second gondola followed the first with musicians playing lingering love songs, for the entertainment of the secret couple.

  ‘Sin, everywhere,’ Brother Peter said, averting his gaze.

  ‘There’s only one bridge across the Grand Canal,’ the boatman told them. ‘Everywhere else you have to take a boat to cross. It’s a good city to be a ferryman. And this is it, the only bridge: the Rialto.’

  It was a high wooden bridge, many feet above the canal, arching up so steeply that even masted ships could pass easily beneath it, rising up from both sides of the canal almost like a pinnacle, crowded with people, laden with little stalls and shops. There was a constant stream of pedestrians walking up the stairs on one side and down the other, pausing to shop, stopping to buy, leaning on the high parapet to watch the ships go underneath, arguing the prices, changing their money. The whole bridge was a shimmer of colour and noise.

  The square of San Giacomo, just beside the bridge, was just as busy, lined with the tall houses of the merchants. All the nations of Christendom, and many of the infidel, were shown by their own flag and the national costume of the men doing business at the windows and doorway. Next to them stood the great houses of the Venetian banking families, the front doors standing open for business, absurdly costumed peo