Текст книги "The Journeyer"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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From the bright pink and amber morning outside, I found myself suddenly thrust into an orbà, which might not sound like much unless you know that it means “blinded.” An orbà is a cell just big enough to contain one man. It is a stone box, totally unfurnished and absolutely without any opening for light or air. I stood in a darkness unrelieved, suffocatingly close, foul with stench. The floor was thick with some gluey mess that sucked at my feet when I moved them, so I did not even try to sit down, and the walls were spongy with some slime that seemed to crawl when I touched it, so I did not even lean; when I tired of standing, I squatted. And I shook with an ague as I slowly comprehended the full horror of where I was and what had become of me. I, Marco Polo, son of the Ene Aca house of Polo, bearer of a name inscribed in the Libro d’Oro—so recently a free man, a carefree youth, free to wander where I would in the whole wide world—I was in prison,disgraced, despised, shut up in a box that no rat would willingly inhabit. Oh, how I wept!

I do not know how long I stayed in that blind cell. It was at least the remainder of that day, and it may have been two or three days, for, although I tried hard to control my fright-churned bowels, I several times contributed to the mess on the floor. When finally a guard came to let me out, I assumed I had been freed as innocent, and I exulted. Even had I been guilty of killing the Doge-elect, I was sure I had suffered punishment enough for it, and had felt enough remorse and sworn enough repentance. But of course my exultation was dashed when the guard told me that I had endured only the first and probably least of my punishments—that the orbà is only the temporary cell where a prisoner is held until time for his preliminary examination.

So I was brought before the tribunal called the Gentlemen of the Night. In an upstairs room of the Vulcano, I was stood in front of a long table behind which sat eight grave and elderly men in black gowns. I was not positioned too close to their table, and the guard on either side of me did not stand too close to me, for I must have smelled as terrible as I felt. If I also looked as terrible, I must have appeared the very portrait of a low and brutish criminal.

The Signori della Notte began by taking turns at asking me some innocuous questions: my name, my age, my residence, particulars of my family history and the like. Then one of them, referring to a paper before him, told me, “Many other questions must be asked before we can determine on a bill of indictment. But that interrogation will be postponed until you have been assigned a Brother of Justice to act as your advocate, for you have been denounced as the perpetrator of a crime which is capitally punishable … .”

Denounced! I was so stunned that I missed most of the man’s subsequent words. The denouncer had to be either Doris or Ubaldo, for only they knew that I had even been near the murdered man. But how could either of them have done it so quickly? And who did they get to write for them the denunciation to be slid into one of the snouts?

The gentleman concluded his speech by asking, “Have you any comment to make on these most serious charges?”

I cleared my throat and said hesitantly, “Who—who denounced me, Messere?” It was an inane thing to ask, since I could not reasonably expect an answer, but it was the question uppermost in my mind. And much to my surprise, the examiner did answer:

“You denounced yourself, young Messere.” I must have blinked at him stupidly, for he added, “Did you not write this?” and read from a piece of paper: “Will hebe at both the Funeral and the Installation?” I am sure I blinked at him stupidly, for he added, “It is signed Marco Polo.”

Walking like a sleepwalker, I was taken by my guards down the stairs again, and then down another flight of stairs into what they called the wells, the deepest part of the Vulcano. Even that, they told me, was not the real dungeon of the prison; I could look forward, when I had been properly convicted, to being shifted into the Dark Gardens reserved for the keeping of condemned men until their execution. Laughing coarsely, they opened a thick but only knee-high wooden door in the stone wall, pushed me down and shoved me through it, and gave the door a slam like the knell of Doomsday.

This cell was at least considerably larger than the orbà and had at least a hole in the low door. The hole was too small to permit me to shake a fist through it at the departing jailers, but it did admit a trace of air and enough light to keep the cell from being utterly dark. When my eyes had adjusted to the murk, I could see that the cell was furnished with a lidded pail for a pissòta and two bare plank shelves for beds. I could see nothing else except what looked like a tumbled heap of bedclothes in one corner. However, when I approached it, the heap heaved and stood up and was a man.

“Salamelèch,” he said hoarsely. The greeting sounded foreign. I squinted at him and recognized the red-gray, fungoid hair and beard. It was the zudìo whose public scourging I had witnessed on a day memorable for much else.

10

“MORDECAI,” he introduced himself. “Mordecai Cartafilo.” And he asked the question that all prisoners ask each other at first meeting: “What are you in for?”

“Murder,” I said with a sniffle. “And I think treason and lesa-maestà and a few other things.”

“Murder will suffice,” he said drily. “Not to worry, lad. They will overlook those trifling other items. You cannot be punished for them once you have been punished for murder. That would be what is called double jeopardy, and that is forbidden by the law of the land.”

I gave him a sour look. “You are jesting, old man.”

He shrugged. “One lightens the dark as best one can.”

We sat gloomy in the gloom for a while. Then I said, “You are in here for usury, are you not?”

“I am not. I am in here because a certain lady accusedme of usury.”

“That is a coincidence. I am also in here—at least indirectly—because of a lady.”

“Well, I only said lady to indicate the gender. She is really”—he spat on the floor—“a shèquesa kàrove.”

“I do not understand your foreign words.”

“A gentile putana cagna,” he said, as if still spitting. “She begged a loan from me and pledged some love letters as security. When she could not pay, and I would not return the letters, she made sure I would not deliver them to anyone else.”

I shook my head sympathetically. “Yours is a sad case, but mine is more ironic. My lady begged a service from me and pledged herself as reward. The deed was done, but not by me. Nevertheless, here I am, rather differently rewarded, but my lady probably does not even know of it yet. Is that not ironic?”

“Hilarious.”

“Yes, Ilaria! Do you know the lady?”

“What?” He glared at me. “Your kàrove is named Ilaria, too?”

I glared at him. “How dare you call my lady a putana cagna?”

Then we ceased glaring at each other, and we sat down on the bed shelves and began comparing experiences, and alas, it became evident that we had both known the same Dona Ilaria. I told old Cartafilo my whole adventure, concluding:

“But you mentioned love letters. I never sent her any.”

He said, “I am sorry to be the one to tell you. They were not signed with your name.”

“Then she was in love with someone else all the time?”

“So it would seem.”

I muttered, “She seduced me only so I would play the bravo for her. I have been nothing but a dupe. I have been exceptionally stupid.”

“So it would seem.”

“And the one message that I did sign—the one the Signori now have—she must have slipped it into the snout. But why should she do that to me?”

“She has no further use for her bravo. Her husband is dead, her lover is available, you are but an encumbrance to be shed.”

“But I did not kill her husband!”

“So who did? Probably the lover. Do you expect her to denounce him, when she can offer you up instead and thereby keep him safe?” I had no answer to that. After a moment he asked, “Did you ever hear of the lamia?”

“Lamia? It means a witch.”

“Not exactly. The lamia can take the form of a very young witch, and very beautiful. She does that to entice young men to fall in love with her. When she has snared one, she makes love to him so voluptuously and industriously that he gets quite exhausted. And when he is limp and helpless, she eats him alive. It is only a myth, of course, but a curiously pervasive and persistent myth. I have encountered it in every country I have visited around the Mediterranean Sea. And I have traveled much. It is strange, how so many different peoples believe in the bloodthirstiness of beauty.”

I considered that, and said, “She did smile while she watched you flogged, old man.”

“I am not surprised. She will probably reach the very height of venereal excitement when she watches you go to the Meatmaker.”

“To the what?”

“That is what we old prison veterans call the executioner—the Meatmaker.”

I cried, distraught, “But I cannot be executed! I am innocent! I am of the Ene Aca! I should not even be shut up with a Jew!”

“Oh, excuse me, your lordship. It is that the bad light in here has dimmed my eyesight. I took you for a common prisoner in the pozzi of the Vulcano.”

“I am not common!”

“Excuse me again,” he said, and reached a hand across the space between our bed shelves. He plucked something off my tunic and regarded it closely. “Only a flea. A common flea.” He popped it between his fingernails. “It appeared as common as my own.”

I grumbled, “There is nothing wrong with your eyesight.”

“If you really are a noble, young Marco, you must do what all the noble prisoners do. Agitate for a better cell, a private one, with a window over the street or the water. Then you can let down a string, and send messages, or haul up delicacies of food. That is not supposed to be allowed, but in the case of nobility the rules are winked at.”

“You make it sound as if I will be here a long time.”

“No.” He sighed. “Probably not long.”

The import of that remark made my hair prickle. “I keep telling you, old fool. I am innocent!”

And that made him reply, just as loudly and indignantly, “Why tell me, unhappy mamzar? Tell it to the Signori della Notte! I am innocent, too, but here I sit and here I will rot!”

“Wait! I have an idea,” I said. “We are both here because of the Lady Ilaria’s wiles and lies. If together we tell that to the Signori, they ought to wonder about her veracity.”

Mordecai shook his head doubtfully. “Whom would they believe? She is the widow of an almost Doge. You are an accused murderer and I am a convicted usurer.”

“You may be right,” I said, dispirited. “It is unfortunate that you are a Jew.”

He fixed me with a not at all dim eye and said, “People are forever telling me that. Why do you?”

“Oh … only that the testimony of a Jew is naturally suspect.”

“So I have frequently noticed. I wonder why.”

“Well … you did kill our Lord Jesus … .”

He snorted and said, “I, indeed!” As if disgusted with me, he turned his back and stretched out on his shelf and drew his voluminous robe about him. He muttered to the wall, “I only spoke to the man … only two words …” and then apparently went to sleep.

When a long and dismal time had passed, and the door hole had darkened, the door was noisily unlocked and two guards crawled in dragging a large vat. Old Cartafilo stopped snoring and sat up eagerly. The guards gave him and me each a wooden shingle, onto which they spooned from the vat a lukewarm, glutinous glob. Then they left for us a feeble lamp, a bowl of fish oil in which a scrap of rag burned with much smoke and little light, and they went away and slammed the door. I looked dubiously at the food.

“Polenta gruel,” Mordecai told me, avidly scooping his up with two fingers. “A holòsh, but you had better eat it. Only meal of the day. You will get nothing else.”

“I am not hungry,” I said. “You may have mine.”

He almost snatched it, and ate both portions with much lip smacking. When he had done, he sat and sucked his teeth as if unwilling to miss a particle, and peered at me from under his fungus eyebrows, and finally said:

“What would you ordinarily be eating for supper?”

“Oh … perhaps a platter of tagiadèle with persuto … and a zabagiòn to drink …”

“Bongusto,” he said sardonically. “I cannot pretend to tempt such a refined taste, but perhaps you would like some of these.” He rummaged inside his robe. “The tolerant Venetian laws allow me some religious observance, even in prison.” I could not see how that accounted for the square white crackers he brought out and handed to me. But I ate them gratefully, though they were almost tasteless, and I thanked him.

By the next day’s suppertime, I was hungry enough not to be fastidious. I would probably have eaten the prison gruel just because it meant a break in the monotony of doing nothing but sitting, and sleeping on the coverless hard bench, and walking the two or three steps the cell permitted, and occasionally making conversation with Cartafilo. But that is how the days went on, each of them marked off only by the lightening and darkening of the door hole, and the old zudìo’s praying three times a day, and the evening arrival of the horrid food.

Perhaps it was not such a dreadful experience for Mordecai, since, to the best of my knowledge, he had spent all of his prior days huddled in his cell-like money shop on the Mercerìa, and this could not be a much different confinement. But I had been free and untrammeled and convivial; being immured in the Vulcano was like being buried alive. I realized that I ought to be grateful for having some company in my untimely grave, even if it was only a Jew, and even if his conversation was not always buoyant. One day I mentioned to him that I had seen several sorts of punishment administered at the pillars of Marco and Todaro, but never an execution.

He said, “That is because most of them are done here inside the walls, so that not even the other prisoners are aware of them until they are over. The condemned man is put into one of the cells of the Giardini Foschi, so called, and those cells have barred windows. The Meatmaker waits outside the cell, and waits patiently, until the man inside, moving about, moves before that window and with his back to it. Then the Meatmaker whips a garrotta through the bars and around the man’s throat, so that either his neck snaps or he strangles to death. The Dark Gardens are on the canal side of this building, and there is a removable stone slab in the corridor there. In the night, the victim’s body is slid through that secret hole and into a waiting boat, and it is conveyed to the Sepoltùra Pùblica. Not until it is all finished is the execution announced. Far less fuss that way. Venice does not care to have it widely known that the old Roman lege de tagiòn is still so often exercised here. So the publicexecutions are few. They are inflicted only on those convicted of really heinous crimes.”

“Crimes like what?” I asked.

“In my time, one man has died so for having raped a nun, and another for having told a foreigner some of the secrets of the Murano art of glassworking. I daresay the murder of a Doge-elect will rank with those, if that is what you are wondering.”

I swallowed. “What is—how is it done—in public?”

“The culprit kneels between the pillars and is beheaded by the Meatmaker. But before that, the Meatmaker has cut off whatever part of him was guilty of the crime. The nun raper, of course, had his gid amputated. The glassworker had his tongue cut out. And the condemned man marches to the pillars with the guilty piece of him suspended from a string around his neck. In your case, I suppose it will be only your hand.”

“And only my head,” I said thickly.

“Try not to laugh,” said Mordecai.

“Laugh?!” I cried in anguish—and then I did laugh, his Words were so preposterous. “You are jesting again, old man.”

He shrugged. “One does what one can.”

One day, the monotony of my confinement was interrupted. The door was unlocked to let a stranger come stooping in. He was a fairly young man who wore not a uniform but the gown of the Brotherhood of Justice, and he introduced himself to me as Fratello Ugo.

“Already,” he said briskly, “you owe a considerable casermagio of room and board in this State Prison. If you are poor, you are entitled to the assistance of the Brotherhood. It will pay your casermagio for as long as you are incarcerated. I am a licensed advocate, and I will represent you to the best of my ability. I will also carry messages to and from the outside, and procure some few small comforts—salt for your meals, oil for your lamp, things like that. I can also arrange for you”—he glanced over at old Cartafilo and sniffed slightly—“a private cell.”

I said, “I doubt that I would be any less unhappy elsewhere, Fra Ugo. I will stay in this one.”

“As you wish,” he said. “Now, I have been in communication with the house of Polo, of which it seems you are the titular head, albeit still a minor. If you prefer, you can well afford to pay the prison casermagio, and also to hire an advocate of your own choice. You have only to write out the necessary pagherì and authorize the company to pay them.”

I said uncertainly, “That would be a public humiliation to the company. And I do not know if I have any right to squander the company’s funds … .”

“On a lost cause,” he finished for me, nodding in agreement. “I quite understand.”

Alarmed, I started to remonstrate, “I did not mean—that is, I would hope … .”

“The alternative is to accept the help of the Brotherhood of Justice. For its reimbursement, the Brotherhood is then allowed to send upon the streets two beggars, asking alms of the citizens for pity of the wretched Marco P—”

“Amoredèi!” I exclaimed. “That would be infinitely more humiliating!”

“You do not have to decide your choice this instant. Let us discuss your case instead. How do you intend to plead?”

“Plead?” I said, indignant. “I shall not plead, I shall protest! I am innocent!”

Brother Ugo looked over at the Jew again, and distastefully, as if he suspected that I had already been receiving counsel. Mordecai only pulled a face of skeptical amusement.

I went on, “For my first witness I shall call the Dona Ilaria. When she is compelled to tell of our—”

“She will not be called,” the Brother interrupted. “The Signori della Notte would not allow it. That lady has been recently bereaved and is still prostrate with grief.”

I scoffed, “Are you trying to tell me that she grieves for her husband?”

“Well …,” he said, with deliberation. “If not that, you can be sure that she exhibits some extreme emotion because she is not now the Dogaressa of Venice.”

Old Cartafilo made a noise like a smothered snicker. Maybe I made a noise, too—of dismay—for that aspect of the situation had not before occurred to me. Ilaria must be seething with disappointment and frustration and anger. When she sought her husband’s removal, she had not dreamed of the honor he was about to be accorded, and she with him. So now she would be inclined to forget her own involvement; she would be consumed with a desire to exact revenge for her forfeited title. It would not matter on whomshe vented her rage, and who was an easier target than myself?

“If you are innocent, young Messer Marco,” said Ugo, “who did murder the man?”

I said, “I think it was a priest.”

Brother Ugo gave me a long look, then rapped on the cell door for a guard to let him out. As the door creaked open at his knee level, he said to me, “I suggest that you do choose to hire some other advocate. If you intend to accuse a reverend father, and your prime witness is a woman bent on vendèta, you will need the best legal talent there is in the Republic. Ciao.”

When he had gone, I said to Mordecai, “Everyone takes it for granted that I am doomed, whether I am guilty or not.Surely there must be some law to safeguard the innocent against unjust conviction.”

“Oh, almost surely. But there is an old saying: the laws of Venice are supremely fair and they are sedulously obeyed … for a week. Do not let your hopes get too high.”

“I would have more hope if I had more help,” I said. “And you could help us both. Let the Brother Ugo have those letters you hold, and let him show them in evidence. They would at least cast a shadow of suspicion on the lady and her lover.”

He gazed at me with his blackberry eyes and scratched reflectively in his fungus beard, and said, “You think that would be the Christian thing to do?”

“Why … yes. To save my life, to set you free. I see nothing un-Christian about it.”

“Then I am sorry that I adhere to a different morality, for I cannot do it. I did not do that to save myself from the frusta, and I will not do it for both of us.”

I stared, unbelieving. “Why in the world not?”

“My trade is founded on trust. I am the only moneylender who takes such documents in pawn. I can do that only if I trust my clients to repay their loans and the accrued interest. The clients pledge such papers only because they can trust me to keep their contents inviolable. Do you think women would otherwise hand over love letters?”

“But I told you, old man, no human being trusts a Jew. Look how the Lady Ilaria repaid you with treachery. Is that not proof enough that she thought you untrustworthy?”

“It is proof of something, yes,” he said wryly. “But if even once I should fail my trust, even on the most dire provocation, I must abandon my chosen trade. Not because others would think me contemptible, but because I would.”

“What trade, you old fool? You may be in here the rest of your life! You said so yourself. You cannot conduct any—”

“I can conduct myself according to my conscience. It may be small comfort, but it is my only comfort. To sit here and scratch my flea and bedbug bites, and see my once prosperously fat flesh shrinking gaunt, and feel myself superior to the Christian morality that put me here.”

I snarled, “You could preen yourself just as well outside—”

“Zito! Enough! The instruction of fools is folly. We will not speak of it further. Look here on the floor, my boy, here are two large spiders. Let us race them against each other and wager incalculable fortunes on the outcome. You may choose which spider will be yours … .”

11

MORE time passed, in dismalness, and then Brother Ugo came again, stooping in through the low door. I waited glumly for him to say something as disheartening as he had the other time, but what he said was astounding:

“Your father and his brother have returned to Venice!”

“What?” I gasped, unable to comprehend. “You mean their bodies have been returned? For burial in their native land?”

“I mean they are here! Alive and well!”

“Alive? After almost ten years of silence?”

“Yes! All their acquaintances are as amazed as you are. The entire community of merchants is talking of nothing else. It is said that they bear an embassy from Far Tartary to the Pope at Rome. But by good fortune– yourfortune, young Messer Marco—they came home to Venice before going to Rome.”

“Why my good fortune?” I said shakily.

“Could they have come at a more opportune time? They are even now petitioning the Quarantia for permission to visit you, which is not normally allowed to anyone but a prisoner’s advocate. It may just be that your father and uncle can influence some lenity in your case. If nothing else, their presence at your trial ought to give you some moral support. And some stiffness to your spine when you walk to the pillars.”

On that equivocal note, he departed again. Mordecai and I sat talking with animated speculation far into the night, even after the coprifuoco had rung and a guard growled through the door hole for us to extinguish the dim light of our rag lamp.

Another four or five days had to pass, fretful ones for me, but then the door creaked open and a man came in, a man so burly he had to struggle through it. Inside the cell he stood up, and he seemed to keep on standing up, so tall was he. I had no least recollection of being related to a man so immense. He was as hairy as he was big, with tousled black locks and a bristling blue-black beard. He looked down at me from his intimidating great height, and his voice was disdainful when he boomed loudly:

“Well! If this is not pure merda with a piecrust on it!”

I said meekly, “Benvegnùo, caro pare.”

“I am not your dear father, young toad! I am your uncle Mafìo.”

“Benvegnùo, caro zio. Is not my father coming?”

“No. We could get permission for only one visitor. And he should rightly be secluded in mourning for your mother.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“In truth, however, he is busy courting his next wife.”

That rocked me on my heels. “What? How could he do such a thing?”

“Who are you to sound disapproving, you disreputable scagaròn? The poor man comes back from abroad to find his wife long buried, her maid-servant disappeared, a valuable slave lost, his friend the Doge dead—and his son, the hope of the family, in prison charged with the foulest murder in Venetian history!” So loudly that everybody in the Vulcano must have heard, he bellowed, “Tell me the truth! Did you do the deed?”

“No, my lord uncle,” I said, quailing. “But what has all that to do with a new wife?”

My uncle said more quietly, with a snort of deprecation, “Your father is an uxorious man. For some reason, he likes being married.”

“He chose an odd way to demonstrate it to my mother,” I said. “Going away and staying as he did.”

“And he will be going away again,” said Uncle Mafìo. “That is why he must have someone with good sense to leave in charge of the family interests. He has not time to wait for another son. Another wife will have to do.”

“Why another anything?” I said hotly. “He hasa son!”

My uncle did not reply to that with words. He merely looked me up and down, with scathing eyes, and then let his gaze roam around the constricted, dim, fetid cell.

Again abashed, I said, “I had hoped he could get me out of here.”

“No, you must get yourself out,” said my uncle, and my heart sank. But he continued to look about the room and said, as if thinking aloud, “Of all the kinds of disaster that can befall a city, Venice has always most feared the risk of a great fire. It would be especially fearsome if it threatened the Doge’s Palace and the civic treasures contained in it, or the Basilica of San Marco and its even more irreplaceable treasures. Since that palace is next door to this prison on one side, and that church adjoining on the other side, the guards here in the Vulcano used to take particular precautions—I imagine they do still—that any smallest lamp flame in these cells is carefully monitored.”

“Why, yes, they—”

“Shut up. They do that because if in the nighttime such a lamp were to set fire to, say, these wooden bed planks, there would be urgent outcry and much running about with pails of water. A prisoner would have to be let out of his burning cell so the fire could be extinguished. And then, if, in the smoke and turmoil, that prisoner could get as far as the corridor of the Giardini Foschi on the canal side of the prison, he might think to slide away the moveable stone panel in the wall there, which leads to the outside. And if he contrived to do that, say, tomorow night, he would probably find a batèlo idling about on the water immediately below.”

Mafìo finally brought his eyes around to me again. I was too busy contemplating the possibilities to say anything, but old Mordecai spoke up unbidden:

“That has been done before. And because of that, there is now a law that any prisoner attempting such an arson—no matter how trivial his original offense—will be himself condemned to burn. And from that sentence there is no appeal.”

Uncle Mafìo said sardonically, “Thank you, Matùsalem.” To me he said, “Well, you have just heard one more good reason to make not a try but a success of it.” He kicked at the door to summon the guard. “Until tomorrow night, nephew.”

I lay awake most of that night. It was not that the escape required much planning; I simply lay awake to enjoy the prospect of being free again. And old Cartafilo roused up suddenly out of an apparently sound sleep to say:

“I hope your family know what they are doing. Another law is that a prisoner’s closest relation is responsible for his behavior. A father for a son—khas vesholem—a husband for a female prisoner, a master for a slave. If a prisoner does escape by arson, that one responsible for him will be burned instead.”

“My uncle does not appear to be a man much concerned about laws,” I said, rather proudly, “or even much afraid of burning. But Mordecai, I cannot do it without your participation. We must make the break together. What say you?”

He was silent for a while, then he mumbled, “I daresay burning is preferable to a slow death from the pettechie, the prison disease. And I long ago outlived every last one of my relations.”

So the next night came, and when the coprifuoco tolled and the guards commanded us to put out our lamp, we only shaded its light with the pissòta pail. When the guards had gone on by, I spilled most of the fish oil from the lamp onto my bed planks. Mordecai contributed his outer robe—it was quite green with mold and mildew and would make the blaze smokier—and we bundled that under my bed and lighted it from the lamp’s rag wick. In just moments the cell was clouded black and the wood had begun to flicker with flames. Mordecai and I fanned our arms to help the smoke out through the door hole, and clamored loudly, “Fuoco! Al fuoco!” and heard running feet in the corridor.

Then, as my uncle had predicted, there was commotion and confusion, and Mordecai and I were ordered out of the cell so the men with water buckets could crawl in. Smoke billowed out with us, and the guards shoved us out of their way. There was quite a number of them in the passage, but they paid us little heed. So, aided by the concealing smoke and darkness, we sneaked farther down the corridor and around a bend in it. “Now this way!” said Mordecai, and he set off at a speed remarkable for a man of his age. He had been in the prison long enough to have learned its passages, and he led me this way and that, until we glimpsed light at the end of one long hall. He stopped there at a corner, peered around it and waved me on. We turned into a shorter corridor furnished with two or three wall lamps, but otherwise empty.