Chapter VI

Carriages rattled along on the uneven cobblestones of the narrow alleyways; on every square, the hoarse voices of mussel-sellers peddled the morning's catch. Pio walked without looking as the mud and slush of the streets seeped slowly into his shoes. His feet took him to a local alehouse, a rundown establishment of ill repute. The wooding building sagged to one side and a window on one of the upper floors was boarded up.

He had given the man with the slightly bent nose the names of the people to whom he had sold the forged documents. They were all powerful people; anyone of them could have him tortured and killed if it pleased them. He touched the white ring on his finger. One of the buyers would be dead already, he guessed. How else would the man with the slightly bent nose have one of the copies? The ring was still cold but it no longer burned his flesh. He tried again to pull it off but it sat firmly on his finger. In his mind, he toyed with the idea of skipping town, of packing all his illicit gold in a knapsack and leaving. He should have done so the moment he had sold the documents but he had wanted to appear inconspicuous; what a fool he had been. It was too late now. The man with the slightly bent nose would find him. He was sure of it. The ring on Pio's finger would betray him. He could feel the menace brewing in it.

Pio ordered a pitcher of cheap cloudy beer and slumped down in the corner of the alehouse. The other guests were local workmen and craftsmen. In the evening, the place would get loud and brutish but at the moment it was subdued. Pio let his gaze wander across the sorry collection of men drinking in silence; he lingered on a small man with a haggard face. The man had a soft smile on his lips and his eyes were unfocused. A workman's salary was barely enough to live on as a single man in the city. If a workman had a family, both his wife and children would have to slave just as hard as him to make ends meet with no coins to spare for beer at the local alehouse. Pio snorted and looked away.

He hated the common people. His whole life he had worked to escape their grimy embrace. He had grown up on a farm far outside of Ottonia. His father had been a tenant farmer of the local earl. Perennially behind on his payments, with too many kids to feed, and a wife broken by childbirths and hard labor. Pio was fourth out of nine brothers. The oldest brother took over the lease. The rest were just mouths to feed and free labor. Pio had left for Ottonia the moment he was of age. He had arrived in the city with nothing but the ragged clothes he wore and the one gift his mother ever gave him, the ability to read and write.

That was many years ago. He had worked hard to get to where he had gotten. Head scribe at the royal library, a position of some importance but still just a worker tasked with copying whatever the librarians dictated. Pio hated the work. Endlessly copying letter after letter. The scratching of the quill against parchment penetrated his very bones. He had done it year after year. Page after page. Kept his head down. Risen through the ranks. Made himself look industrious and dependable and his fellow scribes indolent and unreliable. But there was nowhere to go from head scribe. It was the end of the line for a tenant's son with no political connections. He made enough money to eat well and rent his own room. That was more than most managed. But he wanted more, he wanted so much more. And he had gotten it, he had almost gotten it.

He emptied his pitcher in one draught and ordered another. Soon he was drunk and belligerent. He could feel his lifework crumbling under him. With sudden resolve, he got up from his chair. The room swayed gently from side to side. The rough wooden boards undulating faintly. Pio stumbled out of the corner he had been sitting in.

"You!" yelled Pio and pointed at the small workman, he had been watching.

"You!" yelled Pio again and grabbed the collar of the workman. The man was too drunk to defend himself. He fell from his chair and hit the floor with a thud. Pio fell with him and landed on the drunkard. Clumsily Pio got up and sat himself astride the barely conscious man. Pio looked for a moment at the feeble movements of the man. It was hard to tell if the drunkard was trying to get up and defend himself. Pio hit the man as hard as he could. The white ring left an indentation in the man's temple and the drunkard burped something unintelligible. Pio hit again and again and again until he wasn't sure whether the think red blood running down the haggard face was his own hands bleeding or from the many gashes the white ring had inflicted on the drunkard's face.

"Please," whimpered the drunkard finally.

"No!" said Pio. His voice cruel and taunting. He raised his arm to strike again but something stopped him from striking the man. With brutish force, he was held back and pulled off his victim. Pio looked around confused. His attacker was behind him and had a firm grip around his neck. Feebly Pio struggled to break free.

"Take it outside," the burly barkeep threw Pio out of the door headfirst. He landed in the filthy mud and slush of the street where chamberpots mixed with dirt and the droppings of animals. A moment later the drunkard landed next to him. Pio raised himself up on his elbows and laboriously got to his feet. For good measure, he kicked the drunkard in the side but the spirit had left him. Hobbling and swaying from side to side, he began to walk home.

Pio lived in a building on a narrow street close by. As the population of the city grew in recent years, more and more stories were added to the buildings on Pio's street. Slowly the buildings had started leaning closer and closer in towards each other; the street was now tunnel-like with only a narrow strip of sky visible between the nearly embracing roofs of the buildings.

Pio stopped at one of the derelict buildings and began rustling through his pockets for the key; after a long while, he remembered he had it around his neck. With his head awkwardly close to the door, he turned the heavy lock and opened the creaking door. A narrow poorly lit hallway revealed itself behind the door. The stale smell of humans living too close together hung in the air. Pio closed the front door behind him and quickly locked the door again. He walked slowly though the hallway and out the backdoor. Behind the building was a small courtyard and a communal well. Pio shuffled to the well and untied a rope from a knob; the wooded bucket hit the surface of the water below with a splash. He waited a moment and then began to reel the bucket back up. He felt exhausted and his arms were sore and unwilling. When the bucket appeared back into view he retied the rope around the knob on the well and pulled his brown cowl over his head. It smelled of his own sweat and faintly of excrement. He laid his cowl on the side of the well and removed his worn woolen undergarment.

Pio emptied the bucket over his head. He gasped for air. The water was colder than he had expected. He untied his own haphazard knot and let the bucket fall back into the water. He was still drunk but the easy carelessness of being drunk had left him. He looked down the well. The bucket lay bopping half-submerged.

He pulled the bucket up a second time and dunked his cowl into the bucket. The clear well water turned muddy and unpleasant. He emptied the soiled water onto the cobblestones and wrung his cowl a few times.

In his room on the second floor, he hung the wet cowl out of the window and locked the door behind him. The building was full of tenants like himself. He trusted none of them. Most lived five or six in rooms the same size as his with two narrow beds squeezed in on either side of the room. Living six people in such a room meant sleeping in shifts and the bed never going cold between one occupant and the next. Pio had a bed that was only his and a small desk instead of the second bed. At his desk, he sometimes sat and worked when he wanted to keep secrets from the other scribes in the library. Stolen parchment and ill-gotten quills and ink filled the desk's drawers.

From under his bed, Pio found a knapsack. It was one of the finest things he owned, made from leather and sown with such diligent care that the rain did not seep in. He had bought it at the market on the central square when he still thought he was on the cusp of a better life. Pio put the bag on his bed and began pacing up and down the narrow strip of uncluttered floor. He was cold and wet but he did not use his washcloth to dry off; he wanted to punish himself for his own foolishness. He mumbled angry nonsense to himself as he paced the floor; then, suddenly, he stopped having arrived at a decision.

He found his knife in the upper desk drawer. It was about twelve inches long. The blade was wide and sharp and the handle sturdy and well-suited to his hand.

The desk made a terrible racket as he pushed it into the corner of the room. Wood scraping against wood, creaking and groaning. No-one in the building or on the street below, however, would think anything of it. Days and nights in the city were filled with endless banging and clanging, and creaking and groaning, and yelling and moaning.

With his knife in hand, Pio began working on one of the floorboards he had exposed by moving his desk. Begrudgingly the floorboard came loose and revealed a brown linen bag beneath it. Inside the sack were fifty heavy gold coins. Pio counted them for good measure and put the sack down his knapsack. He worked three more floorboards one by one before he was done.

The gold was heavier than he remembered; he lifted the bag with one hand to gauge its weight. Quickly he filled the bag with his few other belongings. He had precious little clothes all of which he rolled up into a tight bundle except for a pair of pants he put on. He had bought the pants years ago after saving up for months on his meager salary. Around the knees the pants were threadbare and they had begun unravelling at the ankles. He used the pants when he did not want to be recognized in his brown cowl. Pio then put on one of his two cheap linen shirts which itched incessantly and pulled on the grey cloak he had bought on the same day he had bought the knapsack. The cloak was a warm wool cloak. As shoes, he had only the leather shoes he always wore.

Pio looked around his little room. The place looked like it had been ransacked with torn-open floorboards and emptied-out drawers. He exhaled through his nose trying to calm himself and put his hand down on the desk. He was naturally right-handed but with the ring on his right hand, he had to wield the knife with his left. Carefully he placed the knife just behind the ring at the very base of his ring finger and clumsily tried to get his other fingers out of the way of the knife. The blade rested heavy against the brittle skin of his dry hand. He closed his eyes and pressed down. The knife drew blood but he stopped the moment he could feel his skin give way. He felt dizzy. He could not get himself to cut off one of his own fingers, he realized. Pio cursed at his own weakness, put his knife back into its leather sheath, and hung it from the string of rope he used as belt. He picked up the knapsack and left his room without looking back. He wanted to be out of the city before night fell.