The Empire Of Glass Part 5

Stone walls and tapestries flew past in a blur as they ran. For an old man, the Doctor was capable of an amazing burst of speed when he tried. It was all Vicki could do to keep up with him. His hand was clamped so hard around her wrist that she was getting pins and needles. Her breath was rasping in her chest, coming in short gasps. She hadn't run this fast for years. How far were the rooms? She was sure that they hadn't walked that far away from them.

And then she recognized a tapestry as it flashed past, and knew that they were only a step or two away.

Something closed over her free wrist. She jerked to a halt. The Doctor ran on oblivious until her hand was wrenched from his. As he stumbled to a halt and turned around, trying to work out what had happened, Vicki looked back over her shoulder. One of the guards was grasping her wrist, while the other lumbered up behind. Desperately she tried to lever his hand away from her wrist, but her own fingers closed over something alien, like b.u.mpy twigs. She lashed out at the guard's face, but her hand pa.s.sed through empty air where his cheek should have been. Whatever he was, he wasn't human.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Steven Taylor rested his head in his hands and groaned. He was sitting in a shadowed recess in a nearly empty hostelry with a name something like the Tavern of the Angel, and he had a large gla.s.s of a vile liquid named grappa in front of him. It was cloudy, it was fiery and it made his head swim, but it was calming his system down and, at that moment, he didn't care what else it did so long as his stomach stopped churning.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, he had eventually realized that he wasn't going to get any sleep. The TARDIS did that to him - ever since leaving Mecha.n.u.s he seemed to have been suffering from ongoing time-and s.p.a.ce-lag. He'd gone for a walk, and eventually stumbled into this tavern beside some large bridge called the Rialto. It was small, and its walls were lined with boating mementoes - oars, nets, floats, the occasional badly stuffed fish - but it was a haven of sanity and cool air compared to the madness of the crowds outside. The bridge was arched, and lined on both sides with shops and stalls, and the shouts and laughter of the various people that were crossing it was driving slivers of pure pain into Steven's temples.

What had had he been drinking last night? Watery and sour, it had tasted like adulterated vinegar, but after a couple of bottles he'd found he'd developed a taste for it. Whatever it was, it was strong. he been drinking last night? Watery and sour, it had tasted like adulterated vinegar, but after a couple of bottles he'd found he'd developed a taste for it. Whatever it was, it was strong.

When he woke up beneath Galileo's table, with the sun shining in his eyes and the astronomer snoring heavily on the couch, his head felt like someone had half-filled it with water. It took twice as much effort as usual to move it, and whenever he did the outside seemed to move a second or two before the inside caught up.

Turning it, even slightly, made him nauseous and unsteady on his feet - even more unsteady than he already was.

It was almost worth it, though. Last night had been fun - the most fun he'd had for longer than he cared to remember. He and Galileo had talked for hours. The man was a witty and entertaining companion, full of stories and barbed jokes against his academic contemporaries. He was also a good listener, encouraging Steven to talk about...

Oh no. Steven's head sank lower in his hands as he vaguely remembered babbling on about the Doctor and the TARDIS. Had he talked about the future and alien worlds? If he had, and Galileo remembered, he didn't know what what the man's reaction might be. At best history might be changed, at worst Steven and his friends might be betrayed to the Inquisition, if they had that here as well. the man's reaction might be. At best history might be changed, at worst Steven and his friends might be betrayed to the Inquisition, if they had that here as well.

The few days that the TARDIS had spent in Spain during the time of Torquemada would haunt Steven for some time to come, and he wasn't keen to come that close to any hot irons again.

The cloying, penetrating smell of fish drifted across from the Rialto market, and Steven nearly threw up. Quickly he gulped down a mouthful of the grappa. The fumes burned his throat, but a blessed warmth spread across his stomach as the alcohol hit it. There was probably something in the TARDIS that could help him, but even if he had a key he couldn't remember which island it was on.

Trying to distract his mind from thoughts of vomiting, Steven glanced around the tavern. Small groups of people were sitting around, beneath the nets and the oars, talking and sipping drinks.

Judging by what he could hear, many of them appeared to be English. One or two were dressed differently from the rest - less colourfully, in plain black cloth with white collars and large black hats.

He caught the eye of a young, bearded man standing in a group near the doorway. The man frowned, and Steven quickly looked away. The last thing he wanted to do was to attract attention to himself. The first first thing he wanted to do was turn time back about eight hours, but unfortunately that wasn't possible. At least, not without the Doctor's help. thing he wanted to do was turn time back about eight hours, but unfortunately that wasn't possible. At least, not without the Doctor's help.

Steven realized with a sudden jolt that the young, bearded man and his friends were standing over him.

"Good morning," he said, with some effort, "can I help you?"

"It is we who can help you," the man snarled, "to an early grave."

His face was young and lean, but his eyes betrayed an inherent uncertainty that his swagger was meant to cover.

For a moment the words were meaningless, and Steven rolled them around in his mind until they slotted together to make some kind of sense. "Sorry?" he said. "I'm not sure I follow."

"My name is Antonio Antonio Nicolotti," the man said. "I am the elder brother of Balda.s.sarre Nicolotti, whom you poisoned yesterday." Nicolotti," the man said. "I am the elder brother of Balda.s.sarre Nicolotti, whom you poisoned yesterday."

"I didn't poison anyone," Steven said. "Not yesterday, and not ever.

I've never even heard of you or your brother." His mind, lagging a few seconds behind his words, suddenly alerted him to the fact that he did know the name. Hadn't Galileo said something about a Balda.s.sarre Nicolotti? Something about a bar, and a poisoned tankard of wine?

"You are Galileo Galilei," Antonio said firmly.

"No!" Steven protested, faintly discerning the potential shape of the next few minutes through the haze of his hangover. "I'm not Galileo!"

"It wasn't a question," the man said. "You meet his description, despite having shaved your beard off to avoid being recognized, and you're wearing his clothes. One would think," he added, turning to his friends, "that a noted natural philosopher would be able to think of a more convincing lie."

Steven looked down at his clothes, momentarily nonplussed to find that he was dressed in faded velvet breeches, a threadbare linen shirt and an embroidered jacket. A memory surfaced in the murky, stagnant ca.n.a.l of his thoughts: Galileo ridiculing his clothing some time after the third bottle of wine, and offering to lend him a more fitting costume.

Antonio's friends laughed dutifully as he turned back to Steven, hand reaching for the dagger at his side. "Make your peace with the G.o.d you deny," he snarled. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion as Steven pushed his chair back and tried to stagger to his feet. As his horrified gaze wavered between the man's face and his dagger, he saw the dagger leave its sheath and...

And vanish. Antonio's hand groped vainly for the hilt, but it had disappeared. His face was almost comical in its confusion.

"Your sword should not play the orator for you," a gravely voice said in English, then switching to Italian it added, "Forgive me, but I have an aversion to brawls in taverns, and I find those that do more childish valorous than manly wise." Antonio whirled around.

Behind him, Steven caught sight of a man with a fine-boned face, a mane of grey hair and a scar running down one cheek. "Hand me back that dagger, cur!" Antonio snarled.

"Not until you learn some better manners," the man replied. His gaze quickly switched to Steven and he jerked his head slightly.

Never one to ignore a hint, Steven quietly began to back away from the group of people.

One of Antonio's companions pulled his knife from its sheath and took a step forward. The stranger's free hand shot out and hit him just beneath his rib-cage. He bent over, choking, and the stranger plucked the knife from his hand.

"What do you think you're doing?" Antonio said as the stranger began to juggle with the daggers.

"Using such conceits as clownage keeps me in pay," the stranger replied. "A most cultured and rewarding pastime, I can a.s.sure you." The daggers were just a blur in the air now, and some of Antonio's friends were beginning to cheer. "This is too easy: will somebody increase the challenge?"

As Steven backed through the doorway and into the bright morning sunlight, the last thing he saw was the stranger catching a third blade as it was thrown to him - or was it at him - and incorporating it into his performance. Steven shook his head and turned away towards the arch of the Rialto. Venice was turning out to be full of surprises - and not all of them were pleasant.

"Turkish spies!" Sperone Speroni, Lord of the Night watch, punched his right hand into his left palm as he spoke. The scowl on his face made the skin wrinkle all the way up his bald head.

"Turkish sc.u.m!" he added, and spat on the floor near to where Vicki sat on the couch. She was surprised, and frightened, at the vehemence in his voice. "Thank the Lord that my guards heard your cries for help and chased them off. I will have their eyes plucked from their heads and thrust down their throats!"

"While I commend your enthusiasm," the Doctor said drily from his position by the window, "I would question your identification. Do you have any proof that Turkish spies were involved in our abduction, or is this some blind hope of yours?"

Vicki found herself fascinated by Speroni's hands. They were large and blunt-fingered, and covered in white scars. The hands of a workman, an artisan, not a policeman.

Speroni looked at the Doctor blankly. "Who else could it have been? Those devious, murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would do anything to gain access to Venice's wealth."

"But how would kidnapping us aid their aims?" the Doctor asked. "I mean to say, the disappearance of-" he seemed to catch himself - "of a prominent Roman Catholic Cardinal and his travelling companions would hardly further the aims of the Ottoman Empire, would it?"

"You don't know the underhand way their heathen minds work, your Eminence," Speroni said. "Their agents will have been reporting the..." he flushed slightly, and looked away from the Doctor's gaze "...the difficulties between the Holy Roman Empire and the Serene Venetian Republic over the past few years. They will have heard about the excommunication of the city, and of the attempt on the life of Friar Sarpi..."

As Speroni listed the various indignities heaped upon Venice by the Vatican, Vicki glanced over at the Doctor and noticed that he was just nodding blandly. Surely, she thought, if he had really been Cardinal Bellarmine, he would have reacted a bit more strongly to that. She fluttered her fingers to attract his attention, and when he glanced questioningly at her she jerked her head at Speroni and frowned.

"And, of course, let us not forget the heresies committed by the Serene Republic," the Doctor quickly added, taking the hint.

"Sarpi's writings questioning the supremacy of the church have been inflammatory, if not heretical, and -"

"Friar Sarpi merely put into words what -" Speroni stopped in mid-sentence and took a deep breath. "Your pardon, Eminence, I do not mean to debate theology with a man of your learning. What I was saying was that the Ottoman Empire would dearly love to drive a wedge between Rome and Venice. The disappearance and, dare I even mention it, demise of the Pope's special Emissary would serve their purpose very well."

"A fair point," the Doctor conceded. He was opening his mouth to say something else when the door opened, revealing one of Speroni's policemen. The man approached the Lord of the Night watch and murmured something in his ear. Vicki took the opportunity to slip across to the Doctor.

"What about the guard?" she asked. "He was an alien, not a Turkish spy."

"My dear girl," the Doctor murmured, "Cardinal or no Cardinal, if I start blabbering about being almost abducted by aliens, the Doge would have me locked away faster than you could say 'boiled asparagus'!" He ran a hand through his long, white hair. "Our position here is precarious enough, without bringing our sanity into question. And besides, I'm still uncertain what connection these aliens have with the invitation I received. Until we know that that, we had best tread very carefully. Very carefully indeed, hmm?"

Vicki nodded doubtfully. She supposed that the Doctor was right, but the thought that anybody she looked at might really be an alien in disguise made her edgy. "How do you think they disguised themselves?" she asked, hoping that the Doctor could give her some clue enabling her to tell real Venetians from fake Venetians.

Or, if it came to that, a real Doctor from a fake Doctor...

"Probably a holographic image generator of some kind," he said.

"Quite simple technology. If they had been true shape shifters, then their arms would have felt like human arms. The fact that you could tell they were alien by touching them means that they were just covering their true form with a projected human image."

Speroni broke off from his discussion to address the Doctor.

"Cardinal Bellarmine? We have just received word from the Doge.

He apologizes for the delay, hopes that you are rested and will receive you now."

They were led along corridors that closely resembled the ones that they had been led along by the fake policemen. It was difficult to tell: the tapestries all looked the same to Vicki. They went up stairs, down stairs and along corridors panelled in heavy wood.

The floor of one corridor rang hollow, and she glanced out of a heavily barred window to find that they were crossing a stretch of ca.n.a.l with two black gondolas floating on it.

After an indeterminable time, they ascended an impressive marble staircase and pa.s.sed through an open pair of double doors into a large room. It was lined with tapestries and filled with people who stared at them as they were escorted towards another pair of doors. Speroni gestured the Doctor and Vicki onward. The doors opened as they approached, and Vicki followed the Doctor into a large room panelled in dark wood and floored with marble slabs.

The ceiling was painted with clouds and angels, and enormous canva.s.ses lined the walls, each at least twice as tall as Vicki and many times longer. They all seemed to show groups of robed men staring at the artist with the same expression of wary blankness that Vicki had seen in group holograms from her own time.

And then she realized that one such group of men standing on a raised dais at the end of the room weren't in a painting at all: they were real. As the Doctor walked fearlessly forward to meet them, they moved apart slightly to reveal a tall man seated on a gilded leather chair. He wore white robes embroidered in gold and scarlet, and a hat with earflaps and which rose to a peak at the back.

"Your Eminence, Cardinal Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmine,"

he said in a dry, quiet voice, "I am Doge Leonardo Dona. I bid you welcome to the Venetian Republic."

Steven walked away from the Tavern of the Angel as fast as he dared without attracting attention. His head was still pounding with the after-effects of the worst hangover he'd ever had, and his chest felt as if someone were tightening iron bands around it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, an ever-present flicker of frustration and anger was being fanned into a fire. What was it about the Doctor that meant his companions were always running for their lives? Why couldn't they just have a rest for once? Why couldn't life just pa.s.s them by, instead of grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and dragging them along, kicking and screaming, behind it?

Slowing to a halt in a spa.r.s.ely populated square, he sat at the base of a well. A group of white cats were sunning themselves nearby. They looked up at him for a long moment, then went back to cleaning their fur. He looked around. There was an inn on one side of the square with a handful of tourists standing outside.

Three alleys led off in different directions, vanishing into shadows after a few feet. The rest of the buildings were tall, anonymous houses built in red stone. There was nothing to distinguish the square from the hundreds of others he had walked through since he had arrived. Apart possibly from the colour of the cats.

He sighed, and rested his head in his hands. All he wanted to do at that moment was to sleep until the Doctor decided it was time to leave.

"A close shave, my friend."

He groaned softly. Would he never be left in peace with his aching head? Glancing up, he winced as a sharp pain arrowed through his skull. The man who had distracted his attackers in the tavern was standing in front of him, one leg up on the pedestal surrounding the well. The sun was behind him, silhouetting his grey mane of hair and his bulky leather jerkin.

"I suppose I should thank you," Steven said grudgingly.

"That depends what value you put on your life," the man rejoined.

"But how could I stand idle whilst a beautiful lad such as yourself put himself in the way of a sword's point?"

"I didn't do it deliberately," Steven explained. "They thought I was someone else."

"Mistaken ident.i.ty may be the very life-blood of drama, but it makes for poor reality. Whatever end a man should have, it should be dignified, and to die in error for an Italian teacher and occasional heretic is certainly undignified. Far be that fate from us."

"You know Galileo, then?" Steven asked.

"I know of him. We have moved in the same circles, although we have never met." A cloud covered the face of the sun, and Steven found himself staring into a pair of granite-coloured eyes set in a face that looked like fine-grained leather. The scar running down one side was a few years old, and twisted one corner of the man's mouth up into a cynical smile. "My name," he added, "is Giovanni Zarattino Chigi. And yours is...?"

"Taylor. Steven Taylor."

"A fine English name," Chigi said, extending a hand. Steven took it, and found himself hauled to his feet. "Or perhaps I should say a fine British name. I hear things have changed since I left our fine country." He held on to Steven's hand, smiling warmly as he squeezed.

"So I hear," Steven said carefully, untangling his hand from Chigi's grasp. "I"ve been away too." He was surprised at Chigi's height: the man was so broad-shouldered that he seemed smaller, more in proportion.

"And are you a diplomat, an adventurer, or a seeker after trade?"

Chigi was still smiling, but Steven reminded himself that the scar would make him smile no matter what mood he was in.

"I'm... accident-p.r.o.ne," Steven said eventually.

Chigi laughed. "Very cautious, and very wise. You have the look of a military man. I will a.s.sume, for the sake of conversation, that you are a buccaneer. I have a flair for the dramatic: please don't disappoint me by letting me find out that you are a trader in horseflesh."

"I promise," Steven laughed.

"And are you here with the other Englishmen?" Chigi asked.

"What other Englishmen?"

"Venice is, at the moment, playing host to many countrymen of ours," Chigi said. Steven wondered about the 'ours' - Chigi sounded like an Italian name to him. "They are easily spotted, as they wear clothes of a design that was out of fashion when I I left England, and that was sixteen years ago." left England, and that was sixteen years ago."

"Nothing to do with me, I'm afraid," Steven said, reflecting ruefully that those words seemed destined to become his epitaph.

Chigi looked away, across the square. "A shame," he said. "They interest me strangely. As do you."

Steven smiled. Despite himself, he was beginning to like the man.

"You may not want my thanks for saving my life, but I have precious little else to offer, I'm afraid."

"Perhaps I could buy you a drink?" Chigi looked nonchalantly across the square.

Steven let his gaze wander down that scar, across that weathered skin. "That sounds good," he said noncommittally. "But I can't make any promises."