Empiric, chapter 1, part 1

Don’t trust anyone and keep quiet,
If you want to escape from spies, traps and nooses.
Weeping and repentance won’t do you any good.
Instead, put your courage to the ultimate test.

Graffiti in the prisons of the ducal palace in Venice

Chapter 1. 16-17 August 1622

It was a dark and stormy night, but he slept soundly. When he awoke, his right temple was swollen and sensitive, as if he had been struck there. He touched it; the skin was unbroken. He examined himself more fully and noted a raw, scraped patch below his right knee. Using the handmirror he kept at the bedside, he looked into a single bloodshot eye. It was only when he had completed this provisional inventory that he noticed he was naked, and that his shirt lay in a sodden ball on the floor. He checked the feather mattress. It was dry, so he had not pissed himself. He sniffed the shirt, which had no odour except his own. Perhaps the liquid was merely water. He could tell that it had rained from the quality of the sound and the soft, overcast light coming through the shutters, but how had he remained dry if the shirt was soaked?

There were traces of disturbance in the room as well as on his body. They began with spots of caked blood on the pillow, leaked from the places where he had scratched at his head. The wine glass by the bed was still upright, but the level of its contents was lower than he had left it. A thin trail of ink dribbled across his desk, leading onto the cover of a translation of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which lay spine up, with violently creased pages. He stepped towards it, wary of possible obstacles. As he feared, the report he had left on the desk the previous night had a new postscript. He dreaded seeing a particular name there, but he relaxed a little when he saw the words ‘Knight F’ in an almost illegible script quite unlike his usual hand. He noted with approval that he had been prudent enough to leave the name incomplete, although the precaution was irrelevant by now, since the ‘Knight F’ in question had been strangled in prison six months previously.

His sleepwalking frightened him, and he was not easily scared. He had seen bodies reveal their most cherished secrets, ripped apart within the hermetic space of a telescope, reduced to a paste of prime matter, but he had no way of spying the depths of his own will. He could only exploit the fact that he was animal and instinctive when asleep, and thus incapable of performing complex sequences of actions. If he kept particular items locked up or inside drawers and boxes, then he could not get at them. It was wise, however, to leave some outlet for his frustrations, otherwise he woke covered in bruises. This was why he had left the pages exposed on his desk. There was never more than an extra line or two in the morning, and if necessary, the report could be recopied before he delivered it.

The last thing he noticed was a folded note on the floor. It was quite separate from the mess on the desk. It lay near the door, under which it had been pushed. It was sealed with a casual dollop of wax. He was not surprised by the contents, only that his insensible banging about had not scared the author off. It read, ‘They’re watching you too’. He put it with the others.

A scratch on his cornea danced within his field of vision. Since it was off-centre, he could not see it clearly. It remained peripheral even as it jumped, swimming blindly back and forth. He was reminded of a skipping insect – a minute fly or perhaps a flea – that he had seen jumping ecstatically through the penumbra surrounding his candle two nights before. It was too fast for his eye to register its movements, so he could only reconstruct them by inference during the brief intervals when it was at rest on the wall. It seemed to disappear and appear magically, quicker than a blink, inspired to frenzy by the candle, perhaps suffering under the same delusion as a moth faced with a night light. Now, teeming sparks multiplied around the scar on his eye when he blinked.

In that temporary darkness, he could hear them waiting in the silence outside the door; not speaking, not moving, barely breathing. Probably they already had Domenico.

He knew that companionable, professional quietness, from which he would henceforth be excluded. In whatever future remained to him, every silence would be antagonistic. Each pause would be an application of pressure like the turn of a tourniquet, cutting off the free circulation of words. He wondered how his hidden self would cope with imprisonment.

He found a clean shirt and breeches before he opened the door. He made no resistance, but they wrapped a cloak round his head anyway. Ongarin himself was there, with Gabriel along for moral support, and a couple of others whose names he did not know. He was glad that it was Ongarin. They had been rivals, of a sort. They understood one another.

First Guard: The loyal Gerolamo Vano I presume?

Second Guard: Captain Gerolamo Vano.

Gabriel: General Gerolamo Vano. Where’re your troops, general?

Vano: I didn’t write that.

All of them kept their voices low to avoid disturbing the inn’s other guests, but Vano spoke as clearly as the hood would allow. It was important to be precise, on his own terms, while it was still possible.

Ongarin: I don’t care what you wrote, prick.

Vano strained to pick up the insult. He was partially deaf in his left ear, the result of an overcharged cannon, which had exploded prematurely as he was turning away to check the trajectory of the shot.

Vano: I didn’t write “General”.

First Guard: You didn’t write “Foscarini” either.

Gabriel: The Most Illustrious Kiss My Arse Sir Knight Foscarini.

Vano: Is that what this is about?

Ongarin: I don’t care what it’s about.

Vano: How long were you watching? Last night?

Ongarin: Why? Something to hide? Something to show? Do tell.

Ongarin had, it seemed, assumed collective responsibility for replying. Probably he had made some authoritative gesture, indicating disapproval of the other contributions. Vano was a connoisseur of such gestures, but now he could not see. He appealed to their shared competence.

Vano: It’s stupid to pay the watchers a daily rate. It discourages initiative.

Ongarin: I don’t need them to think. Persistence is what I need.

Vano: Does he write everything down?

Ongarin: Enough.

Vano: How much is enough?

Ongarin: First rule of interrogation.

Vano: Never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.

Ongarin: So. How many fingers am I holding up?

[Continues in the next post ...]