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Duffy thoughtfully bent down and picked up the key. He flipped it spinning into the air, caught it, and grinned. 'All right,' he said.
The stairway was dark and cold, and Smelled of mildewed cabbages, but the door at the top, when unlocked and swung open, revealed a scene of shadowy, candle-lit opulence. The gold-stamped spines of leather- and vellum-bound tomes lined a high bookcase along one wall, and ornate tables, shellacked boxes, glittering robes and dim, disturbing paintings filled the rest of the room. The old man who'd hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.
'Sit down, please,' he said, waving at a chair.
'I don't mind standing,' Duffy told him.
'Whatever you prefer.' He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. 'My name is Aurelianus.' Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off.
'And what is Yours?'
Duffy blinked. 'What?'
I just told you my name - Aurelianus - and asked you for Yours.'
'Oh! I'm Brian Duffy.'
Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. it began Popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.
gue
All Hallows' Eve, 1529
With almost ludicrous care the old man carried the pitcher of beer across the sunlit room toward the still older man who reclined propped up in a bed by the window. A smear of dried mud was caked on the foot of the bed.
'Here you are, Sire,' he said, pouring the black liquid into the earthenware cup which the old king had picked up from the table beside the bed.
The king raised the cup to his lips and sniffed it. 'Ah,' he breathed. 'A potent batch this time. Even the vapors are strengthening.'
The other man had now set the pitcher down on the table, pushing to one side a rusty lance head that had lain next to the cup. 'It's a few ounces short,' he confessed. 'He sneaked down here Easter evening and stole a cupful.'
The king took a sip, and closed his eyes rapturously. 'Ah, that is good beer.' He opened his eyes and glanced at the other old man. 'Well, I don't think we can grudge him one cup of it, Aurelianus. I really don't think, all things considered, that we can honestly grudge him it
Book One
'No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.'
William Wordsworth
* * *
Chapter One
All night the hot wind had swept up the Adriatic, and from the crowded docks down by the arsenale to the Isola di San Chiara at the western mouth of the Grand Canal, the old city creaked on its pilings like a vast, weary ship; and clouds as ragged as tatters of sailcloth scudded across the face of the full moon, tangling with the silhouettes of a hundred fantastic spires and domes.
In the narrow Rio de San Lorenzo, though, the smoky oil lamp at the bow of the gondola cast more reflections in the water than the moon did, and Brian Duffy reached over the gunwale to stir the black water with his fingers and multiply the points of yellow light. He shifted uneasily on the seat, embarrassed, for he was travelling at someone else's expense.
'I'll walk to my boat from here.'
