The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato Page B

still be proud. ‘He came to me and asked me if I would embark upon a very important mission for the Sultan. He was afraid, I could see it in his eyes. I thought at first he was afraid of the Sultan, but it turns out he was afraid of me. Of what I had. It was the Plague.’
    Feyra chilled. She knew, of course, of the dread pestilence of Constantinople in the year 747, when thousands of lives had been lost. The disease which had lain dormant for centuries, had, it seemed, returned. ‘The Black Death?’ she whispered.
    ‘Plague, Black Death, it has many names. Although it hadnot been in the city for many years, I knew the tales. I knew then that I was finished. The doctor knew it too. He made me promises; gold for my wife, preferment for my sons, good marriages for my daughter. He seemed to know all about me. He knew I had been at Lepanto.’
    Feyra leaned forward a little. So Death knew the oceans, just like her father.
    ‘He told me that if I agreed to the Sultan’s plan I could defeat our old enemy single-handedly. He laid it before me thus: I could either die in that lonely hilltop place, and my family would live on in poverty never knowing my fate, or I could be a hero like the ones in the sagas, my name writ down in scrolls and sung in songs, while my family would live in riches. There was no real choice to make.’
    Feyra heard a thump and rustle from within the coffin as Death shifted his weight.
    ‘Could you give me some water? I am dry from my tale. There is a can by your side. Sometimes the sailors remember, sometimes they do not.’
    Feyra looked down and saw a silver watering can with a thin pipe of a spout, curved like a billhook – like the ones the ladies of the Harem used to cleanse themselves. She applied it to the muslin panel and poured a thin stream through the cloth. She could only imagine the monstrous features beneath, but heard the smacking of lips as Death found succour.
    ‘They took me in a litter down the hills, to an icehouse near the bay. It took a long time for they took a route well beyond the city walls. I did not see the doctor again but was attended by certain of the Sultan’s men dressed in a black livery with black turbans and face masks. I never determined whether they were soldiers or priests, for as much asthey talked about their mission and their war, they talked also of Paradise and their sacrifice.’
    They were Janissaries, black-clad, fanatical elite of the Sultan’s soldiers. Taken from their Christian homes as boys and turned to the true faith, they were even more devoted to their adopted God than those who had been born into the bosom of the Prophet. But Feyra kept her peace and let Death speak.
    ‘These soldiers of God placed me in this coffin. There was wadding of wool beneath my hips for my human functions, dried meat by my hands for my sustenance, and I would be watered from time to time. The box is large as you see, and I can move and turn, but I will not conceal from you my terror when they first nailed the lid over me. I thought I was never to leave my living tomb; but I was instructed that I am to emerge from it one last time. If I am still alive, I will rise from my casket at the end of our voyage, mingle among the people and give them my gift. In Venice.’ He said the name of the city reluctantly, almost as if it pained him.
    Feyra listened grimly. This was terrible confirmation of all Nur Banu had tried to tell her. The Sultan must be a monster indeed to contemplate such a dreadful scheme. She felt such nausea in her innards and bile rising to her throat that she might have assumed that her malady was returning, but she knew what ailed her was a moral disgust at what one human was planning to do to an entire city. She tried to keep the condemnation from her voice. ‘And if you do not live so long?’
    ‘The soldier told me that if I died my body would be cast into the waves,’ came the answer. ‘And furthermore, this man himself would lie in my casket,