William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

and withdraw the allegation. Surely Rathbone must have said that to her?
    The rhythmic rattle of the wheels over the rails and the slight sway of the carriage were almost mesmeric. The seat was most comfortable.
    What if Rathbone withdrew his services? Then the Countess would have to find someone else to represent her, and that might be extremely difficult to do, perhaps sufficiently so to deter her altogether.
    But Rathbone was too stubborn for that. He had given his word, and his pride would not let him admit he had made a mistake, and he could not accomplish the task—because it was not possible. The man was a fool!
    But he was also, in some respects, Monk’s friend as well as his employer, so there was no alternative but to continue on this excellent train journey all the way to Venice, pretending to be a gentleman, and play the courtier to what was left of the exiled royalty and learn what he could.
    He approached Venice by the new land bridge, arriving late in the afternoon as the light was fading. Stephan met him at the station, which teemed with people of extraordinary variety, fair skins and dark, Persians, Egyptians, Levantines and Jews as well as emperors of a dozen countries. A Babel of languages he did not begin to recognize sounded around him, and costumes of all manner of cut and color surged past him. Alien smells of spice, garlic and aromatic oils mixed with steam, coal smuts and salt wind and sewage. He remembered with a jolt how far east Venice was; it was the place where the trade of Europe met the silk roads and spice trails of the Orient. To the west lay Europe, to the south Egypt and Africa beyond, to the east Byzantium and the ancient world, and beyond that, India and even China.
    Stephan welcomed him enthusiastically. A servant a couple of steps behind him took Monk’s cases and, shouldering them easily, forced a way through the crowd.
    Within twenty minutes they were in a gondola moving gently along a narrow canal. High above them, the sun lit the marble faces of the buildings close in on either side, but down where they were, the shadows were dark across the water. Everything seemed to shift or waver, reflecting wave patterns on walls. The sounds of slurping and whispering came from every side, and the smells of damp, of salt, of effluent and wet stone were thick in the nose.
    Monk stared to one side and then the other, fascinated. This place was unlike anything he had even dreamed. A flight of stone steps rose from the water and disappeared between buildings. Another mounted to a landing and an archway beyond which glimmered a door. Torches were reflected in shivered fire on the broken surface of the water. Other boats jostled up and down, bumping together gently where they were moored at long poles.
    Monk was enthralled. He had not known what to expect. He had been too occupied with what he hoped to learn, and how hewas going to go about it, to think of the city itself. He had heard tales of Venice’s glory—and its ruin. He knew it was an ancient and corrupt republic which was the seafaring gateway east and west of European trade, an immense power at its height, before the decadence which had brought about its fall. This was the Pearl of the Adriatic, the Bride of the Sea, where the Doge ceremonially cast a wedding ring into the lagoon as a symbol of their union.
    He had also heard of its evil, its perversions, its stagnant beauty sliding inevitably into the waters, waiting for destruction. He also knew that it had been conquered and occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and he would find Austrian officials in government and Austrian soldiers on such streets as there were.
    But as the sun set in a flaming sky, daubing the fretted roofs of the palaces in fire, and he heard the calls of the boatmen echoing across the water and the hollow sound of the tide sucking under the stone foundations, all he could think of was the eerie beauty of the place and its utter and total uniqueness.
    Without having spoken of more than necessities, they reached a small private landing and stepped ashore. The landing was the rear entrance of a small palace whose principal facade faced a main canal to the south. A liveried attendant emerged almost immediately carrying a torch which shed an orange light on the damp stones and for a moment showed the dark surface of the water almost green. He recognized Stephan and held the torch aloft to show them the way over the flagged stones to the steps up to a