Three Emperors (9780062194138) by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online Page B

the age-old habit of interring relatives in watery cellars meant that their decay added to the rankness. The French emperor has a nose offended by anything but a battlefield, and when in Venice he ordered that cadavers be buried on the nearby island of San Michele, occupied by a monastery of the Camaldolese Order. Funeral gondolas exiled the bodies in the same way that Parisians are reburying millions of skeletons in limestone quarries under their city.
    It’s modern to tuck the dead away, out of sight and out of mind.
    Expediency makes strange bedfellows. I lifted the end of each coffin to gauge its weight, located the slimmest cadaver, and used Talleyrand’s broken sword to pry up the lid. The young woman inside had a broken neck, her head rocking back and forth like a doll’s.
    â€œI apologize for the intimacy, signora,” I whispered, “but this is for love and rescue of my family.”
    I climbed in beside her, not completely horrified. I’ve had experience with battlefield dead and catacomb bones, and have come to regard corpses as not much more remarkable, or grisly, than a side of beef. I needed escape, and this unfortunate woman, who had probably died in a fall, could provide one. I pulled down the lid as tight as I could, nestled next to my uncomplaining companion, and waited.
    Whether my pursuers followed me through the brothel I know not, but a half hour later I heard surly commands, complaints from roused priests, the clank and screech of unlocking doors, and the tramp of boots. Richter’s henchmen were searching the church like a herd of buffalo. Why did a Bohemian baron care so much about me and my broken sword?
    Was he pursuing the Brazen Head as well?
    What had burned his face?
    Had lovely Nahir known my identity when she invited me to the brelan game? Yet how could I have been expected to appear in Venice?
    And how had he heard of Astiza?
    None of the rose scholars lingered near the coffins, feeling like most people that they’d get to one soon enough.
    Eventually, they left entirely.
    I actually dozed as morning came, since it had been a wearying night. Then I woke to morning Mass, the buzz and shuffle of worshippers, a funeral for one of the dearly departed, and finally the clump of cemetery workmen arriving for the day’s cargo of caskets.
    â€œJesus Lord in Heaven, here’s a fat one,” they remarked as they hoisted my container. “Ate enough for two, this one did.”
    â€œHe’ll sink into the mud that much faster,” said his companion, “and if the sinner is meant for Satan, his gluttony will hurry him on his way.”
    â€œLid’s not even tight.” They hammered it down, which would have been disquieting except that I’d left the stub of sword in the joint to ensure air and a slight crack.
    I was carried, swaying against my sad companion, then carted, and then floated aboard the funeral boat. Once I sensed we were seaborne, I used the broken sword to pry against my board ceiling and make escape quicker. I had to be able to resurrect faster than they could shovel.
    It was winter’s dusk by the time the young woman and I were lowered into her island grave. I heard the first rattle of dirt thrown on top. That was when I pried for dear life, shouting, “Wait, wait, I’ve come back to warn you!”
    Cries of terror.
    I kicked, pushed, and finally burst through the boards, standing upright in the wreckage. I peered over the lip of the grave. The cemetery was empty, the burial tools abandoned. The workers had fled.
    They’d come back to find a woman, not a man, quite dead after all. And new stories would be told about the ghosts of San Michele.
    Night was already falling again after this brief winter day. I hurried to the shore, stole a funeral gondola, oriented myself by Venice’s lamps and the North Star, and sculled to find a trade ship to buy passage to Trieste, planning to travel by coach from there. I