Chương 5: Black-Day Minus Two

Winter's arrival was as hard as the summer had been persistent and mild, and, as if the season meant to make its point, I filled out my share of exposure on reports for men and women from all around the city. On top of that, what seemed to me to indicate an upswing in literal political backstabbing kept Sinon busy, working with me to prioritise investigations on three noblemen, and even one woman. It was rare that four ochres visited our fine establishment at the same time.

The woman had at first all the hallmarks of another mystery; her corpse had been pulled from the river. Upon first investigation the body's colour all but declared exsanguination, and I spent a good while scratching my head as I looked at her otherwise unscathed skin. Stabbings normally leave wounds, and I had not found a scratch on her. As I was standing over the slab, Sister Amalia joined me in the investigation room, bringing both a solution to my mystery as well as a request of me.

"I have turned her over twice, sister," I said. With some effort, as she was a large woman, I turned her to her side and showed Amalia her back.

"But you see, not a scratch or cut anywhere." The sister stood there in thought for a moment, before she moved past me and grabbed the woman's left breast. With two hands (I already said, the woman on the slab was large), she lifted. And there, hidden from view, was a small puncture wound, and angled for her heart. Skin pierced, not cut. This was a stiletto dagger, not a knife.

"Men," she muttered to herself, before looking at me.

"Marek, really. There's not that many hiding places on a body." I muttered something in response, embarrassed. Then her hands went to a pouch at her belt, and she held out a sheet of paper, which I took from her and peered down at.

"You will want to see this before the Almonry does," she said.

"I have seen it."

"You have seen the sheet. You have not seen the man." She took a step back, as if expecting some resistance, and her face changed the way it always does, smile giving way to frown in a moment. Blink, and you would have missed it.

"Tommaso Rindi. Carter out of the Serravalle gate. They found him under his own cart on the mill road at dawn, and the watchman wrote drink before the sun was up."

"Not exposure?" I answered, receiving only a flat look back from the sister. I read the sheet. It said what she said it said.

"And what do you want from me, Sister? The watch has certified his death, and as you know we are busy."

"I want you to look at him, and soon." She leaned on the desk with both hands.

"Tommaso Rindi has a widow and three children, and the boy is eleven and old enough to be placed. You know what the Almonry does with a drunk's family." I knew well, but still she explained.

"Nothing," she said.

"That is what it does. A man who dies of drink relinquishes all rights under ius testamenti. The Almonry will not certify the widow, and without their seal there is no relief, no consecrated ground, no apprenticeship."

"Sinon did not send him my way, Sister. Look at the paper, he is prepared to accept the guard's conclusion on this one."

"But I am not. Since you were busy here, I already asked Corso to lay him on the slab in the coemeterium." I was hoping to leave a bit earlier today. I had a week's worth of washing to do; my house, my clothes, and I was racing dusk which was arriving earlier every day now. But I trusted Amalia, if she says something needs my attention, it does. The city watch holds the authority to certify death, though they almost never exercise it, and I knew why.

The paperwork was endless, and as soon as a conclusion was contended in a court (and that happened, and often), they had to take men off the streets to bear witness in the Loggia. I did not know why they had signed this one off as a death from drinking, but something did not sit right with me, and I gave the Sister a nod and followed her out into the corridor.

The carter lay on the second slab, stripped and washed. He had been a large man, broad of shoulder and strong—so large that from the doorway the marble slab disappeared beneath him, leaving him seemingly suspended in the middle of the room. My eyes went immediately to his head, the nearest part of his body. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. I stepped into the room and first took his head, which lolled back over the slab's edge, and lifted it up.

I quickly found the bruising: pale, almost a yellowish grey behind his left ear. I pressed the area with my thumb, first gently, and then harder. Some yield, but no more than what is normal. No swelling to speak of. I felt the area around the discolouration, letting the tips of my fingers read the contour of his skull and the tissue that wrapped it.

"What did the guards write about this—" I muttered, and Amalia must have heard me and she handed me the sheet. I let my finger trace down the page until I found what I was looking for." Tommaso Rindi was found, fallen down from his cart. During the fall his head struck the edge of the cart, killing him. Bruising to the left side of head."

"That's not correct," I said softly. Placing the sheet of paper on the desk, I went back to the corpse, and again I lifted the head, this time turning it this way and that. Then I opened the mouth and put my nose almost into it, breathing in. Drink persists in a man's dead tissue for a day, sometimes longer. There was nothing there, except the smell of decay, mixed with something faint from partially digested food in his stomach. I then placed my hand flat on his abdomen and pressed down.

"Well," Amalia said.

"The watch wrote that he was drunk," I said, stepping back to the desk to rest my finger on the entry on the paper.

"They say he was drunk, and that caused him to fall. So, either drink made him fall asleep, or he lost his balance, or both. Perhaps shifting in his seat, before falling. Then his head struck the cart, and that was that."

"But you said… That was not correct?"

"Entirely. This man was dead before he fell. My guess is apoplexy. Something burst in his head where he sat on the bench, and he tipped off it like a sack off a ledge, dead already. There was no drink in him." I returned to the slab, took her hand, and gently set her fingers against the bruise on the side of the man's head.

"Feel here. No difference where the bruise is, to the area surrounding it. And the colour is more yellow and grey than it is dark purple. If he had fallen, the impact would have broken the blood vessels in his skin, and caused trauma to the surrounding tissue. Perhaps broken the skull beneath. Then the tissue would harden and swell. Almost certainly accompanied by blood, and neither the watch's report nor Corso's notes mention blood." I paused, recollecting what I knew.

"I am almost certain this was an apoplexy of the brain, where some event causes bleeding inside the skull. It is sudden, but it just shuts the brain down. I am not sure what causes it, but I have seen it happen as men lift heavy loads. Rindi was a carter and heavy loads were his life. Perhaps he lifted something, or pulled at something. Then sat down in his cart to relax, and…" Her eyes went to the sheet of paper, and she raised her eyebrows as she pointed down.

"Three children and a wife, Marek."

"I will correct it, Amalia." My voice was low; the blue had come over me just then. I cannot always trace the source of my emotions and thoughts to discover what triggered the blue, but this was easy. Death, arrived suddenly and with no forewarning. The carter was my age.

"I write what the body says, Sister. It is the only thing I write."

"I know, Marek. You always do." She smiled at me.

"Today, it was a good thing." I wrote it at my desk while she stood over me, which she knew I disliked, which was why she did it. Apoplexy of the brain, occurring before any fall. No intoxication found. I signed it and blotted it and pushed it across to her. She read it quickly and nodded, then reached for the pen and countersigned the report, as is necessary when we challenge the watch. Our eyes met, and held a moment.

"The carter gets his place," she said.

"And the widow gets her pension. We did good, today."

"You know the watch does not like being corrected, Sister. I don't care much any longer, but someone, somewhere, will catch the blame for it. I will let Sinon know to watch for any noise, but he will back us on this, I am sure. Will you be all right with the Almonry?"

"Mother Superior is spending this month's anger at Francesco Mondora. Did you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Their orphanages. The Almonry has always gotten first pick of the girls. I came from there once. Now… Now, we have to select as everyone else does."

"Hmm," I answered, not knowing what was the correct response. Holding my tongue has never come easily to me, but I thought it prudent not to share my general distaste of the Almonry swallowing the lives of young women like a swamp, before they knew themselves what they wanted to spend their lives on.

In need of a change of topic, I put my argument to her then, sideways, while she was still in the room: whether a thing sewn into a man's body, some article hidden under the skin, still counted among his effects, or had become the man himself. She barely looked up.

"Effects law. You know it better than me. If the guild wants it, it is the guild's. If you have found something on some poor soul, hand it over and wash your hands, or keep it and wash your hands. Do not stand there inventing a third way to wash your hands." At the door she stopped, and looked back at me, sending me a smile and a nod.

"You keep your hands warm for the dead," she said.

"You warm them at the brazier so that you can feel the difference between different types of bruises. And at home? Nobody! You have been about to begin your life since you were sixteen, Marek. Your mother would have—""Enough, Sister." I turned away from her, then. The blue descended like an avalanche, thoughts of my mother crowding out the rest. I missed her still, so much. I had missed her all those years when anger and pride kept me from her door, until it was too late.