The Lion of Venice. Mark Frutkin

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       I hear the voice of the scribe, Silvio, telling the shipmates a tale, a tale of the whispering skull of Cos. He heard the story from a sailor, who heard it from another whose father went with a Greek priest of the order of Lamanites to a cave on the isle of Cos. Inside the cave was a tiny church and inside the tabernacle of the church was a skull. It was said that the skull was that of a hermit, a saint who had not eaten for forty years and who, while still living, was borne like a feather up to Paradise. A few mendicants in nearby caves had claimed they heard his skull whispering of all it had seen in Heaven and beyond.

       Silvio himself had been to the island to search for the cave, without success, although he had found the skulls of two anchorites.

       Later, in the complete blackness of night at sea I listen to the creaking silence of the ship. My ears gather in the world, drinking in thousands of leagues of night. At the far edge, like dawn breathing, I hear, I am sure of it, the whispering skull of Cos. I am mad with joy and light. I long to explode into the dust of stars, to empty myself into the long tailing winds. Instead I float in the silence and tell no one.

      It was a quiet month at sea, with little sound but the dulcet wind in the sails and the forlorn cry of gulls. After stops at two smaller Venetian colonies in the eastern Mediterranean they sailed to the crowded port of Byzantium, where their ship threaded through the multitude of exotic craft that plied the waters of the Bosphorous. Domes and minarets shone on the hills of the city and sent a thrill through Marco.

      Niccolo and Maffeo oversaw the unloading of goods and supplies: Flemish wool from the fairs of Champagne; linen from Switzerland; caskets heavy with silver and copper from German mines. Marco headed off, determined to follow the friar.

      He had no trouble trailing the mendicant through the contorted alleys and crowded streets in the wharf area. In the large black cloak and hood of a Dominican, he stuck out. The friar stopped to purchase a hunk of bread, which he gnawed as he stopped to speak to a man standing next to an enormous cauldron. Nearby were piles of white bones and skulls. By boiling the flesh off the bodies of Crusaders killed in the battles of the Holy Land, the bones could be shipped home to France and Italy for burial in a less unsanitary way. Marco raised his arm and held his sleeve over his nose. The Dominican started moving again.

      Eventually the friar entered an area that felt more like home. Venetian merchants and families could be seen everywhere, the air rang with the Italian tongue. An old man on the street pointed in response to the friar's question, and then as a wooden-wheeled cart passed laden with straw, the friar jumped unseen on its back. One of the rules of the Dominican order, Marco knew, was to travel by foot only. No Dominican would ride on a cart, especially not in a public place. Marco had no trouble keeping up, the cart lumbering along at a sleepy pace. When the cart turned into a wider thoroughfare, the friar jumped off. He entered a warren of dusty workshops, where twisted alleys splayed off in all directions. The friar stopped again to ask the way of a woman who pointed down a nearby alley with the green-topped cluster of onions she held in her hand.

      Marco could hear the sound of metal on metal nearby. A smithy, the hammer falling as regular as a church bell tolls the hour. Other workshops they passed stood empty, and few people were to be seen in the streets. The friar hurried as he closed on his destination. They entered a shadowed lane with no exit. Marco had to take greater care not to be seen, hiding in doorways, behind carts. Finally the Dominican stood at the alley's end, hesitated, turned around, looked back the way he had come, and slipped through the black shadow of a doorway before him.

      Marco crept to a window cut in the wall near the door. Inside, a glassmaking works contained a large domed furnace at the center with two smaller furnaces beyond it. A heap of soda ash was piled in one corner, a pile of sand beneath a large low window, firewood stacked along a back wall. Objects of coloured glass rested on shelves on a side wall: red goblets with twisted stems, sea-green vases, pink bowls nested inside each other. Through the four mouths of the main furnace Marco could see the fire glowing, its light shining up into the faces of the friar and the only other person in the room, a stocky curly-haired glassworker.

      Marco listened.

      “You tell me my brother wishes me to return to Venice? And why in the name of the Lord should I do that? In Venice I was one glassmaker among hundreds. Here I am one among ten, and I am the richest, for I possess the secret knowledge of Venetian glass. In Venice I could barely afford to pay my workmen. Here I am a wealthy man.”

      The Dominican spoke in fits and starts, teeth clenched. “The Doge has ordered…you know this is forbidden…this treachery.”

      “I have divulged no secrets of the glassmaking art. There is no need to worry. This place is as safe as Venice itself. The population of Venetians here is almost equal to Venice. You must understand. My soda ash,” he pointed to the pile in the corner, “comes from burning seaweed found in Syria, which is not far so I save much money in shipping costs and I have a guaranteed source of supply all year long. In Venice, when the ships arrived late I could be left without soda ash for months.”

      “The Doge has expressly forbidden any glassmakers to leave the lagoon. Forbidden it. Why do you persist in flaunting his will?”

      “I admit to a feud with my brother. A bitter argument, believe me. Rather than being faced with the necessity of killing him, I left. You understand?”

      The friar said nothing as the other turned to tend his furnace, placing a long clear glass tube through the aperture and bending over.

      In a flash, the priest sunk a thin knife in the glassmaker's back, withdrew it, pulled his head back by the hair and in one smooth swift motion, slit his throat. Marco stood staring wide-eyed at the quick-streaming blood and, for a moment, could not move. Then he spun about and ran. The Dominican, his face vivid with reflected flames, twisted around at the scuffling sound of Marco's retreat.