The following is a work of fiction intended for an adult audience. All elements within it that may be considered of original creation by the author are here by declared as work of public domain, free to be used in whole or in part in any and all medium without need of permission nor payment of recompense of royalty. Please note that the use of public domain can not be done in such a manner as to deny others access to the source material.

The following bit is a series of one shot stories of different unrelated characters sort of like old Action Comics before Super Man swallowed the whole book up and turned it into just another Super Man comic. In this case, the various stories do share a common bond. That bond is they are being chronicled by a single individual named 'Vincent', who is writing about the 'odd' and 'unusual' tales of supernatural occurrences and events and the supernatural people seemingly related to them in 1700 Venice. I hope to keep returning to this series and several of these characters if they prove entertaining. - ROOK.

MIDNIGHT TALES OF SUSPENSE AND MYSTERY

"Of cloak and candle, of shade and shadow"

If Paris is the city of lights, then Venice is the city of shadows. And while the Parisian candle has flickered and flared, the silted Adriatic tidal mud flats have always produced a toffee swirled caramel murk more constant than heaven's mere radiant outcast black. In that doughy muddy meld of chaos and rank decay, long timber pilings finger but do not probe the restless back of ageless silken strata, wells sunk into the unknowable upon which unwieldy marble has been piled as if it were heaps of gold, brazen brocade, gilded linen, or fine jewels. Gaudy baubles, oriental opulence, festered upon the oil slick skin of brackish toad boil stench. The tide carries away as much as it uncovers and it brings back bodies upon its return as death newly hatched.

Yet it is my home, for now, and I will probably die here as readily as anywhere else. I was born in the Dolomites, and for a while I soldiered in foreign lands. I was in all modesty, an evil man, and through a long thin twist of fate found myself a jandrum surrounded by acolytes who spawned forth to do my greedy biding. I, in turn, was set upon by others far more evil than I, and found myself by narrow escape, leaving behind all I had known or made or stole, even my name now belonged to a dead man. It was some time before my sever wounds of my slim survival allowed me to travel again, and taking some small sliver of the wealth I had secreted away against some such fall from grace, I found myself wandering under a new identity, a new life, back to the lands of my birth. I found myself in Venice, and there with little effort I set myself up as a long suffering wayward returning scholar who now gray and wrinkled sat down to write about the world he had seen. In short, I set myself up in the shadows with my not too slight sum of ill gotten gains to live out the rest of my days in comfortable means and alone from much of the bustling city social scene.

There are some men, who when they have eaten of a dark or light, powerful fruit for one bite, can not survive if they are made to find nourishment by any other means. And still others who can spend a life time living by nothing else, but removed of the single source of life find it no great challenge at all to live by some other means. There are few who can though, make by a twist of will to pass their hand over such a tasted power, and land their hand upon more common fare, when there is nothing to prevent them in their choice. And yet I am such a man as this latter. This rare breed of leopard that can change its spots. And though I found myself with ample opportunities to return to my hand of nefarious trade, I by simple will, chose not to, and instead nestled into my comfortable charade of weathered wandering scholar now settled down to pen his opus of gathered knowledge.

In my many travels, I had seen many strange things of perplexing mystery and I had indeed brushed deeper into the occult than many living souls could survive of such crushing depths, and so when the occasional city elder would come with some odd query or strange tale to relate, I found myself more than up to the task to maintain my new identity. Indeed I found myself beginning to actually pen down the stories collected in my wanderings and the strange tales brought to me by the many merchant ships in the port that never sleeps.

Amidst my piles of manuscripts and tombs and desks of sheaves and skins, I found myself growing more and more acutely aware that as a magnet draws filings of iron, so too Venice seemed then at the tail end of the 1700's to be drawing almost invisibly to her bosom, the strange and unusual of all of Europe and even of the far East who's yellowed dust still clung to my cuffs. Had she not drawn me as well to her when all of the Earth beckoned?

Amongst the strange accounts of traders of faraway journeys and mystical unexplainable happenings I found Venice herself, full to the brim, with oddities all uniquely her own. Perhaps, it was my own past life which gave me the almost uncanny ability to perceive the weird and unusual flittering scraps of the hidden world of this half drowned city. A wolf knows a wolf, and a thief knows a thief, should it not be that a man once of questionable moral qualities should not then have insight to the similar shade and shape of others of such ilk all about him? And Venice was a nation built upon deceit and greed and spoils of war, make no doubt about that, her families ran the cannels red with blood of internal strife and cut throat competition, and her opulent marbled fabricade rumbled with night shrieks and howls that stumped up short amidst their own echo. I made little ventures here and there as my intellect and instinct informed me and with the gathered intelligence of Doge and representatives of the great families and the Church, which seemed to have formed an opinion of me as being their expert, their 'man' about such things, I found remnants of a great many strange doings that left shards of themselves that quickly faded before the bloody rise of the sun.

Thus I found myself indeed the author of such a strange body of collected works, some of which I shared with the city leaders as they did demand and some of which I now share with you. I will not say these accounts and observations in this haphazard on going chronicle are of completely true events, for so have I made so much of my tailored living out of half truths and lies now so long in the tooth that truth its self may blanche rather than blush to say she knows of me, yet I will set down plainly as events do allow, an article of absolute faith of some of the darkest deeds of this dark city of conflicting opposites has belched forth, that 'I' for one have found of the most unusual stamp.

One such oddity of the Venetian night I have set in calf skin sheets and burnished binding, "of cloak and candle, of shade and shadow". It is a most singular account and as good a place to begin such tales as any other, and if any of the aristocracy should view it, they will quickly note how much it differs from my secret report I was pressed into undertaking into the matter for the nobility of the great city. And yet, nothing disingenuous or of vicious malice is in it, at least not born nor carried willingly upon my own part. Still, it as most tales of the night, hold much of vengeful blood and as is often the case it spills out over the vellum in ever congealing pools, obscuring even as it reveals, a tide of blood, in a city of tide pools.

This particular tale holds a personal interest to me, in that it is the one in which I first came upon the creature called, 'Masque'. But I am getting before myself, to the tale then, not as it unfolded to me in bits and starts of out of time notes, but as I latter was able to piece it together after the fact into one long red ribbon of betrayal and vengeance.

As such it begins with the body of Gonzales, found floating in a mooring cleft just off the Grand Cannel...

"OF CLOAK AND CANDLE, OF SHADE AND SHADOW''

CHAPTER ONE

The body of Gonzales, recently a respected servant of a lesser branch of the archaic Medici family, now an unwholesome feast for the large web footed water rats, was pulled out of the oily brackish water at half past one a.m. by a passing squad of militia, currently serving as an additional policing force due to the uneasy political situations stirring abroad and at home. The black boat hooks and blood eyed lanterns revealed that Gonzales had died, 'poignarder a' l'ecossuis', a French term for a Scotch manner of execution. Essentially poor Gonzales had been stabbed an overwhelming multitude of times, well over a hundred, by several long bladed dirks or daggers. His body looked more like a dress makers wrist pin cushion, or a ground-up concoction of some gray faced butcher shop, than a human corpse. In fact, if great effort had not been made by the murderers not to touch the face of Gonzales with their long wicked knives, his recognition would not have been possible at all.

If the manner of death had not been so insidious of extortive 'warning' and the servant in question not so recently employed by the Doge himself in maters of dubious state, it would not have generated much alarm at all and I would not have found myself being so rudely awakened at three a.m. to visit the still dripping cadaver in the damp and dripping pooled lower half flooded floor of a sequester residence near by to the bodies discovery place. As it was I found myself grasping at my heavy robes against the distinct chill of the fog riddled canal, and peering at the gruesome remains with some unfeigned alarm as I recognized the young scoundrel as one who I had passed several hours with just the night before in my own abode as he 'sold' to me a curious tale of the last voyage of three merchant vessels of his employers estate one of which had become separated by storm and recently returned to port with full cargos but a skeletal crew. No disease had been discovered and after quarantine was lifted off of the vessel it unanchored from the beach head of a lesser island in the great bay and slip the last few fathoms of its journey to moor to rest snug in its harbor berth to discharge its luxurious contents.

The story its self was of little concern to me at the time I passed some coin for it, being I believe a tale of hideous sea beasts who had devoured the crew as the vessels remained helpless in a becalmed night shrouded sea. I paid five ducats and chalked it up to my pretense of form, for my current existence. I had forgotten the tale so completely that I was almost unnerved to find myself remembering it in livid chunks as I stared into that horribly twisted face, once so alive and young and now an ashen swell of some untold agony. The first stabs had obviously not been designed to be lethal, he had died in terrible suffering.

I recovered my composure and eyeing the group of mixed men in the uneven lamp light about me, with side long glances, I found myself backing up into a short, (all Venetians are short compared to my own stature despite age and the deep wounds of my long ago escape having bent my back and hunched my thin shoulders, but this fellow was a full head shorter than his peers,) rangy, wall of a man, who I recognized at once as being the Doge's personal sectary, Benito.

He eyed me in passing and craned his neck over the damp figure, speaking off hand, his locks flopping about his strong bull like neck. "Vincent, such night air can not be conducive to your health."

I froze at this and answered suddenly, "I was summoned."

"I did not send for you," the twenty seven year old descendant of prince's frowned.

"Rengeno, plucked me from my reluctant warm bed." I tried to add mirth to my voice but I was still shaken by an overwhelming sense of apprehension which had bloomed unexpectedly the moment I had recognized the corpses face.

"Ah," Benito shot me a quick scowl. It was his turn to show a flash of terse apprehension in his own cold quick eyes. He did not like to hear that a Papal legate had taken an interest in such matters as those that had sent him out into such a deadly night. And I for one, did not disagree with those obvious sentiments. I had no desire to become mired in anything too cumbersome to my chameleon existence. "What do you make of it, man of the arcane sciences?"

I frowned at his smirking face, "a dead body." I did not like the fear I felt that I could not pin to a cause or sit with a reason.

"Did you know the man?" Benito had returned his half lidded unblinking gaze back upon the mangled remains and I breathed an inner sigh of silent relief at that, though my out ward manner remained aloof and barren of any show of emotion or concern.

"No, not personally, though he may look familiar to me? I can't be sure." I waved an age spotted hand, and coughed into it.

"You should get yourself back home and to your warm bed." Benito was tired of both me and the corpse.

"Good advice, which I shall adhere to immediately." I answered with a curt smile and slight bow, which Benito returned as an inclination of his head, and I scattered the night guard and found the stairs to the street beyond.

It is no small measure of a man, that I in telling you of this event now pause to describe not how I had discovered some clues at the site of where the body had been found nor of keen observations upon my part of some tell tale abortions of design upon the body its self. No, I pause here to further ease my self out of this tale and report instead upon my first inclination of the prescience of the Masque its self. It was as I was meretriciously questioning one of the young guard while keeping a weary eye out for the emergence of Benito whom I did wish to avoid and escape from at any further accostment. When the air its self seemed to nose at me and in a snap of my head and a brief parting of the canal fog I did spy leaping from one building abutment to the next the flash of figure, disgorged and remerged of shadow that with later efforts of gossip gathering and some well paid intelligence I found to be none other than the, Masque.

Though at this juncture my observation was of a lone figure of shadow, of pale white and deepest black and little more of substance than superstitious mummery and fevering imagination; I wish to give the latter gathered image of the Masque who was there spying upon the happenings of Gonzales body's recovery from the dead night lapping waters. And shall do so now.

The Masque is a woman of above average height for a Venetian. Who costumed herself in the most unusual attire, but which I shall give here in great accuracy. Upon her head she wore a large tall velvet conical tri-corner domino hat, that is one of construction that one may see at the many lavish balls and parties and menageries that the upper classes and the lower classes alike love to throw in Venice. It was of all black velvet stiffened with silk backing and it rose to three crown points a full two feet above her head. The center crown swept above the center of her forehead and the other two swooped to either side of its great prowl. The back of the hat was round and fell down in the tapering cylindrical column as did the front. To the base of this black hat was fastened an eye mask, that covered her large wide dark eyes, and as they where sewn together, mask to hat brim, the ties of lace and silk that would have held such a mask in place gave way instead to the hats continuous long necked collar that slipped the entire works over her head and held it firmly in place. This hat-mask-collar did much to conceal the Masque's hair color which I learned latter was of long tresses of the most virulent red.

To this she added long velvet gloves of black that pulled up to her shoulders, and were hidden underneath the large ballooned short sleeved black velvet coat she wore. This garment was also of the darkest black and consisted of a large padded shouldered coat with a single belt that wove through the garment its self and sashed at her slim tiny waist. The coat, I call it, and yet it was more like the fine silk of a great dress for up close one could see the single black fabric was indeed made of monotone lavish lace and filigree patterns of sewn stitching that only a student of the Eastern occults would recognize. This garment held at her waist fell open in wide 'v's above and below the belt where they reveled the palest of white flesh. Her large exposed breasts had large ruddy nipples and between her well turned thighs a thick heavy patch of silken golden red hair like the young beards of sweet corn glistened in tangles.

Her feet were booted with high heeled shiny black leather boots that ran up well into her upper thighs, upon these the Masque glided silently through the nights of Venice as unobtrusive as an old oil painted canvas smiles in the twilight of a steep blue moon marble staircase. But this shadow was most deadly, for upon her belt hung two long poniards of Damascus steel that had tasted the flesh of many a man, as I was about to find out for myself upon our next brief meeting.

CHAPTER TWO

I can, I believe, give a good accounting of my movements and observations over the course of the next nine days after leaving the remains of Gonzales dripping upon his borrowed table, but they are indeed of little regard and lacking in any singular note worthiness. That is, except for two matters. The first was my brief meeting with the agent of the cardinal who had dragged me out of bed and sent me scurrying to the dead man in question and my subsequent report which I am sure was of little to no value to him or his puppet master, and secondly, the aforementioned second meeting I had of sorts with the Masque. While the first meeting of the most singular Masque may easily be dismissed as mere shadow play or passing fancy upon my part as a mind half a sleep and addled by the horrors of violent death, the second could not be shunted off as any such thing as it took place within the confine of my own room and in an air of dreadful menace that had my senses most wide awake, I can assure you!

For this second meeting, following as it did immediately upon the gilded heels of my brief to the papal legate, was conducted with the Masque's own dagger at my throat. I had just closed the heavy door to my inner chamber upon the agents back as my lone elderly servant escorted the man from my domicile, and there varnished in the oily shadows of my room behind the heavy door was the Masque who introduced herself to me with the flashing raise of her arm and the knife trickling a bead of blood from my stretched neck. The sudden impetuous nature of the blur of action surely would have sent me tumbling away from her dagger point had it not been for the immediate icy grasp she inserted upon my most privet member. She grasped my manhood in an over handed grip as one might latch upon an icy railing handle through my heavy robes with a surety of precision that would have made a Frondaco dei Turchi whore green with envy and with a vise like hold kept me there teetering on my bewitched heels. I was most surprised, but only for a second and seeking to wrench my neck out of harms way I tried to back water, only to have the razor sharp long blade drop from my neck and in an instant fasten its self most noticeably under my wincing prick. A simple flick of her wrist and I would never relieve my bladder from an upright position again. Considering my haphazard array of debris ridden lodgings I froze from any further movement less I should trip and in doing so render said injury by my own foolish account. I remained calm and in an even voice said, "madam, you have my most immediate and constant attention, I assure you." To this my guest said nothing but in a hush born straight out of the grave queried me about my most recent conversation. This I rapidly assented in repeating it verbatim to her only to have the conversation cut short, no great double entendre intended, by the blade positioned under my painfully stretched penis flash in a magnificent display of dexterity and skill and cut in an instant through my layers of heavy brocade robe a cake of strata that freed my tortured member and now allowed access of this blade which now serpent shot its triangular bolt of razor steel to lie along the base of my scrotum. A development most alarming, I can assure you.

"Tell me not what I heard you say, but what you said not." And with this hiss born of canal shadow she tilted her wrist so that the point of her dagger had most easy ingress to my anus if she so whished or I so much as sneezed. The minute paper cuts of this act upon the aperture of such a sensitive organ had me both egger to speak and most desirous not to breathe. A contradictory condition that produced some hint of mirth in the large eyes of my black masked inquisitor.

As she held me fast by her tightening grip upon my bruised and swelling member through the now severed layers of cloth of my ruined robes and threatened to tickle my inner chambers with a foot of blue steel, I blurted out all I could think of knowing from years of being on the other side of the cross guard that silence in such matters breeds compulsive action upon the inquirers part. I told all I had not told to my recent visitor, however inane or uncertain the information seemed to me or inconclusive the slim evidence of my observation was, in short I talked of hunches and feelings, and to this the Masque seemed most appreciative. The hand strangling my cock suddenly began to caress and stroke my reddened stretched member and I found myself responding despite my unsteady state of mind and moment.

Hers were the eyes of Venice its self the long congested damp stairs of stone twisting from several stories above and below water, of stained stone dripping shadows, of hordes of cats filling an alley and vanishing all in an instant, of wet broad expanses of plazas ringed with irregular high walls of crannied buildings and beetle born nights buzzing in the hallows between wooden bolts of cloth, and wind pitching awnings that strain and creek of sea breezes almost strangled of coolness by the fetid swamps they have traveled across, of salt crystals on window panes, of thousands of impetuous independent tracks of aspects of existence all total in their alienation of individuality and yet merged with out awareness of the fact into one body of shifting singularity, crossing and re-crossing one another in a chaos with out pattern save ample rhythm. These were her eyes, a city of dark radiance, a city of shimmering shadow.

"I have another dagger, don't make me draw it." She hissed. I had apparently fallen into some slight reverie of conjunctive orbit of those eyes and I snapped out of it and struggled to concentrate despite the immense distraction of her left hands dairy girl actions upon my now engorged member. Her prescience was indeed of an almost mystical nature, for I finished my discharge of information and my manly spirit in the same breath. She smirked openly at me, and wiped her dagger blade on my shoulder, and vanished into the thick shadows of my room. I was left there on shuddering legs, my seamen gluing the cut out pieces of my robe to my penis as if it were a shroud.

What I had told her, I can only guess at, but I do know I had spoke of my curiosity over seeing Gonzales body. The day before his body was found, Gonzales had visited me to sell me a quaint story of arcane interest about one of his masters ships, 'The Nereid'. I had thought nothing of it and paid him a trifling fee for it as well as some refreshments of good wine and some passing fair food. He left pleased enough and I returned to my books, as much out of habit as desire. Upon Gonzales left cheek he had a nasty fresh scratch, which he had gotten just an hour or so before in the market from some rancorous bird, or so he said. Being the host, I had sent my servant for plaster and I tended the light wound in a matter of moments. When I had seen Gonzales dead body freshly fished out of the canal, no such mark was upon his face. One would expect a great addition of wounds upon a murdered and water logged corpse, but not such an incredible removal of such recent hurts. This I had left out in my report to the papal legate as I had no firm answer for it and it was something of a trifle but it bothered me and I could tell it interested the Masque in no small way.

My only conclusion I could draw from this was either Gonzales had healed incredibly fast from this slight wound or else the body boat hooked out of the Great Canal was not Gonzales. I doubted the first more than the latter, as Gonzales himself had off handily noted that the cut upon his cheek would be an indisposition to him in an up coming Ball four days away. As far as the body being someone else's, this was not so incredible as it may seem upon the surface. The very aspect that the murderers had taken great pains for its face to remain recognizable could easily lend some query into the slant that the identity was dubious in its self. In a city of shadows and half light and half truths, one's own persona was something less than firmly assured. Despite the horrendous wounds to the body, it was mainly the livery, the overall build, the general shape of the face, cut of hair, and the fact that Gonzales was known to be missing that set the identity of the corpse as such. A scratch is not enough to voice a doubt to a cardinal's lackey. There was however the matter of the hands. I had a chance to get a good look at Gonzales hands on that fateful day both of the living man and the cadaver soaked latter. The first were of a courtier, soft and well groomed, use to wearing calf skin gloves with a wide silk lace. The second had been of a worker, nails unattended, fingers and palms calloused by harsh labor, even the deathly pallor could not hide the tan of the face and hands that the living Gonzales had lacked but hours before. And there was another matter, distasteful, but more telling than all the rest. The numerous wounds to the torso had invariably opened up incisions to the digestive track of the deceases and the rats had made use of this to such a degree that at once I could see that the individual upon the rickety table had not last dined upon my own fine fare but had been last meal of simpler humbler victuals, of such food stuffs I am sure Gonzales would never have touched in his life, though they were common enough in the hinter lands about the great pylon city.

These elements had lead me to consider the dead man not to be Gonzales but meant by much effort to be construed of as such, and not wishing to be drawn into any elaborate plot of crown or cross I pretended to be beguiled as such did intend. But in privet I had spent the last nine days in the puzzle as to why the doppelganger? What purpose was served in such an act?

In the end all I had was my last conversation with Gonzales and that was taken up with a ghost ship tale. Still it was all I had, and so I had sought out other founts as to the strange tale of the Nereid. It was chiefly of these scraps of information which the Masque had seemed most interested, or so I would wager from the flash of eyes and tightening of lips.

It is at this juncture in this intrepid tale that the point of perspective shifts, as my own inquiries had produced nothing any further than the involuntary call to the Masques visit. All I had gathered I had related to her, and the grist of nothing to me, did work its self as a wet stone to her own intelligence in the Gonzales matter. The part of the tale I now relate is all hers, and I came by it much latter than the events herein disclosed. For in time, to be found in yet another story involving the Masque and I crossing of paths, I did win some grudging respect of her to the point where she did take me into slight confidence and related to me some of her incredible adventures in the city of shadows, of which one such tale was indeed the one I relate now as my introduction to her to the awareness of not only her but others of her ilk working the shadow paths of Europe and even beyond. Though these bits come much latter I relate them now to retain the over all continuity of time disjoint and reframed. And I tell it not so much as it was retold to me, sitting there in entente cordiale the flickering tapers of my study with wine bowl steaming, but as I have come to imagine it as occurring in the minds of those then doing it. Such is my nature and my right of license to mold and shape truth with pen and ink.

CHAPTER THREE

Having left Vincent slack jawed and in enuresis of his embarrassing seed all over his paunch self, I stifled a laugh at the sorry state of the male being and rushed across the city membrane of roof tops and angular wells of alley ways shifting well away from any living eye until I reached the Rialto bridge the only permanent structure spanning the grand canal. A dozen guard of the night where positioned upon either side of the arched expanse as well as in its peaked center to detail the eyeful coming and going of citizens, but it was an easy enough matter for me to traverse the bridge by either crossing along the great stone spine of its stone roof or swinging underneath its ribbed belly. Considering the barges crawling about the agitated waters I chose the first and in simple leaps and bounds found myself glassing across the ivory orb moon lit faceted stone works. From Vincent's tangled mind I had picked enough gleanings to shore up my next avenue of attack.

I was now reasonably certain that Gonzales was still alive, his death having been counterfeited by those I now sought. And I sought them at the only nexus to the bizarre gorgons knot to the strands of these strange circumstances.

The Nereid, laid moored pulled into a warehouse slip her strange tale of a sea monster devouring half her crew having given its owner reason enough to order a re-fit for her in face of the cities superstitious sailors who would not willingly eagerly sail on her any time soon.

The city elders having ruled out disease and murder had decided that the crew of the storm separated and then three day becalmed fog shroud ship had undergone a test of mind and spirit that some had not survived. And that they had jumped from the ship and died. The captain and crew insisted upon an invisible creature snipping off the crew one by one. And it wasn't until the Merchants guild made it obvious that 'monsters' were not a viable insurance claim, that the crew and captain were made to see the light; either it was the snapping of the weak superstitious minds of desperation craved suicidal men or else the willful murder by one of the survivors. A rush of agreement to the former in face of the latter brought all to rapid silence in the matter. The sea was a strange place and never a welcoming home to any man.

I now looked over the vessel from my perch in the rafters over head. The contents of crates and stores had all been removed but remained stacked near by in the warehouse its self. The vessel would be towed to the ship yard for its over haul once the funerals of the lost sailors was completed. For now it lay inert, swaddled in its confines and I cast about for any signs of life before dropping lightly to a stack of crates netted below.

There should have been a guard, but a haunted ship is not closely watched by lowly paid men and on a previous visit I had amused myself with playing a bit of havoc upon the minds of the watch assigned so that I now knew they preferred to huddle over a flask of wine outside of the main door and shiver in the canal fog than to sit warm upon the crates of a cursed vessel.

I made sure to make my final drop where the creaking timber flooring gave way to red stone brick flooring so as to make no discernable noise. There was no telling what catch of sound might draw the reluctant moiety men back inside and what would only make them shudder and cross themselves. The floor was gritty and crunched under my boot heels and I noted that the building had been well cleaned on my previous visit but had been sorely neglected since. I smirked at this and felt more at ease in my approach to the ship and its cargo.

Men had died here, I mused, as my eyes passed over the low slung railings of the deck. Why? Another man had been killed after the ships return from sea, to forage an identity. So whatever had been the impetuous to murder half the crew had not ended with their deaths but had remained to follow it at least one more time into the city its self.

The city officials seemed to believe the murdered man was Gonzales, killed as some warning against the Doge, for reasons left unsaid.

Vincent obviously believed that the murdered man was some innocent that had been killed in order to cover up the removal of Gonzales from the world, for reasons involving this craft, 'The Nereid'.

But they are all men, and men are stupid. From my own investigations into the matter it is obvious to me that the murdered man was a stowaway aboard this vessel (how Vincent or the others had failed to detect the obvious signs of a man immediately discharged from a long sea voyage is beyond me) and that he murdered as much of the crew as he needed to remain undiscovered. Had the ship not been becalmed in fog for three days he would have had a relatively uneventful journey, but a need for provisions or an accidental discovery had prompted his hideous work. It is also obvious that he was smuggled on board by one of the crew and that it made sense that who ever the highest ranking man to be killed during those three long sleepless days and nights was the one most likely responsible for the deed. That would be the first mate, the fifth to die, and one of the last killed.

Having reached his destination, this unknown man was killed in turn, I do not as yet know why? And as his appearance was so closely that of Gonzales they masked him as such and then stole Gonzales away to cover the switch. But who was he, and why did he come here with such terrible purpose as to murder half a gallery crew to do so, and why was he killed so shortly after his arrival, and where was the real Gonzales then, was he indeed still alive? These questions had plagued me and set me back to this berth in query for some source of discovery I may have over looked during my fist venture here several days before.

The Dodge and the city elders were secretly rounding up suspected international spies whose bodies would not be so readily rediscovered as Gonzales had. Their mind set was clear, this was a matter of international intrigue and they were responding as such.

Vincent had spent much of his time inquiring of the manifest and captains log as well as questioning the sailors and merchants awaiting their goods. He obviously believed the dead man had been murdered over some item the ship had secretly carried. In an around about way he was correct, though his dead end tract had failed him. For the item was the dead man himself. Since I alone am intelligent to once again see the truth in these matters it is up to I, the Masque, to divine the solution alone as well.

The clue I sought was simple enough, caked mud red, and fish stench foul upon mixing it with some ready hand slip water. Some one had ventured off the vessel and onto the little mud flat island during its quarantine stay. It was time for me to make use of my own small water craft hidden behind illusionary brined encrusted and seemingly rust wielded iron grills under a remote stone stair jetty.

In a matter of moments I had my fast slim craft poled out into the bay and small ebony sail raised. The black hulled craft whisked quickly to the quarantine islet in question and I had her rapidly fastened to the heavy undergrowth of maze like serpentine roots that weathered tidal flood and clung to the stinking red sand bar that made up the islands brief spine.

It took some doing to find a means of access to firmer footing as I had crescent my approach to come from the unused weather side of the patch of trees and red sandy silt. But soon my strong willful legs carried me in long strides upon the make sift stilt huts that the quarantine officers use when a ship is required to dock and wait its allotted passage of time. Normally the insect and snake ridden isle was unused and barren of habitation and as no ship was marked for quarantine I was surprised to enter the little beach clearing of huts and find them flickering with light. This was no hospitable place and no one, not even the bay pirates willingly would squat here. But here was life, I crouched and approached cautiously, my velvet garment rustling in the slight breeze as the bay fog swirled about.

Three voices, male, from the nearest hut. The second hut held no light nor sign of life. The last hut held a faint smoky light, that of an open taper burning in a crude oil bowl or else a torch of rot wood and foul rags, but no other sound or movement. If Gonzales was still alive, he would be in that last hut as a captive. His guards in the first entertaining themselves as best possible, the third seemed devoid of any prospects of life. I made my way to the nearest hut. It loomed above me on its tide water stilts, the voices inside were obvious in conversation wrapped solely around a game of chance, cards perhaps. Nothing to be learned by listening further I moved on silently to the last hut and easily found an egress ladder nailed to its foremost pillar, up it I went in easy bounds and launched myself nimbly over the rope railing of the light bridge that connected the three huts above ground. The door was on a short platform and I used my dagger to carve away the iron hasp and lock from the rotted wood it held in place. The door freed of restraint I flung it open and readied myself for action! Inside the smoky dim hut of crude construction I saw a man lying manacled to the central floor joist, one of the few pieces of solid wood upon the island, and having been cannibalized from the main spar of some long gone galley years before, I knew my blades would not so easily hack through that mass of iron and wood before notice would occur. I would need the key to free this slumbering man. I entered the room deciding that conversations with Gonzales might be all I need and any attempt at rescue could be left abandoned by me as unnecessary. After all, I was looking for answers not evidence. As I rolled the bedraggled man over to face the smoky light and wake him I recoiled for a second for the man was not the Gonzales I had expected but none other than Benito! The Dodge's right hand man!

Benito! I did not know wither to plunge my dagger into the throat of the man who had been so instrumental in the destruction of my house and family or flee before he woke and fully saw me, for he had long denied the existence of the 'Masque' to his master and I had no great desire to grant him the luxury of proof that would only further complicate and hinder my nocturnal desires. My hesitation let the moment pass and both vengeance and safety were lost, his eyes focused upon me and he murmured my name, "Masque."

It was obvious that he had been severely beaten and had been bound here for some time in this retched place for his face and hands were covered with the bites of the insects that dwell on that fetid isle, and his lips were cracked with an un-slaked thirst. That I had not heard of the Doge's strong man being missed from the city of canals and finding him here shocked me some what and all I could do was hiss at him to keep silent as I moved out of the little ring of torch light to gather my thoughts and peer out of the wrenched open door that I now closed to a crack. There was movement from the main hut. Shadows of men slid around its cracked badly boarded walls. They were in no hurry and so were not responding to anything of my prescience, but such movement would naturally instigate a check on their prisoner. I had little time.

CHAPTER FOUR

It rapidly became apparent to me that Benito was in no shape to answer any questions, in fact it was with great difficulty that I could keep him within the realm of conscious awareness. He would need medical attention and rest before he could be able to answer anything and of course once such recovered he would answer nothing of any interest at all to me. But his rescue might give me some much needed leverage on some future date and I made the grim determination to set him free and return him and myself to the city via my little tied up skiff. For this, I would need the key, and for that I would need to either kill three men or rob them unwittingly of said possession. I turned to the door with intent to scout out the main hut and decide upon which of these means it would be, when I saw the shadow of a man fall across the gap slatted wall. Benito's low moans had covered the sound of the figures approach over the wood and rope bridge! I flung my self to the door, there was no place to hide within the room and upon reaching the wrenched door the guard would instantly raise the alarm at seeing its disheveled state. In a single bound I was through the door with daggers raised and slammed my lowered shoulder fully into the chest of the un-expecting man. The hard blow knocked the wind out of him and he nearly pitched over the wildly swinging rope railing to the root twined marshy ground ten feet below, as it temporally numbed my shoulder and tinged my neck in the impact recoil of the self same blow.

Behind the pitching back figure in the heavy blue shadow of the tall leafy swampy moss fringed boughs all around us I could make out both of the other of the three men! They had all decided to come out and check upon their prisoner! I raised my dagger and using the hilt I gouged it into the sternum of the shadowy faced man before me who gasped and crumpled over on to top of the first fallen man. With a spinning pivot I lashed out a vicious side kick into the soft belly of the third night masked man. My boots are shod in fine steel and wrapped in soft leather to quiet their approach, the steel stiletto heel dug deep into the midriff of the last man and I knew he would not be able to straighten for days with out wincing loudly.

It was then the loud flash and explosion on my right seared by me. Crouching amidst the twisting bodies and the unsteady lattice of the bridge I saw a fourth man had emerged from the second hut and in his right hand a large wheel lock gun still smoked and smoldered. This man was tall and muscular, bare of broad chest, and bare footed, obviously newly awakened from slumber and he now tossed aside his unwieldy smoke belching weapon and raised the long thin rapier in his left hand. Without a word he easily catapulted the short distance from his hut and landed firmly upon the platform of the hut containing Benito. In a single leap he had surrounded me, and cut me off from the man whom I was trying to rescue.

I scarce gave any regard to the three men now entangled and crawling in grunts behind me and focused my attention entirely upon this new adversary who unlike the gasping three I had already waylaid was most definitely a man of martial training. He made no wasted effort to approach me, knowing in my current circumstances I must either leap to the ground in flight or else move upon the shaky bridge to face him. Time was on his side not mine, as soon the threesome at my back would begin to gather themselves and make some annoyance for me. I moved rapidly against him, though he had the advantage of position and length of weapon I still knew I held the greater advantage of being a woman over his lesser birth of being a man! And I made full well use of that fact by thrusting my chest forward so there would no doubt that he would see my large hypnotic jiggling naked breasts, and I swayed my hips wide so my coat flared revealing my proud woman hood before his simpering gaze! It found its mark for he did not lunge nor brace himself properly and his opening swath was half hearted and unsure at best. Still, daggers against sword is no easy matter. It took me well over four passes before I had disarmed him and brought him to his rightful position upon his knees before me with a head butt reinforced by the head band of steel I wear under my mask and hat, which had been responsible for turning aside the glancing lead ball he had fired at me previously. And I finished him with a back fist also of velvet covering the brass knuckles I wear underneath. He pitched insensible face first into my excitement aroused muff, and I let him whimper there for a second or two before wiping my perspiring dew from my woman hood upon his face and then pitched him off the bridge.

The spent powder and muzzle flash had ignited the dryer root mass below and now a fire was rapidly spreading among the island which in reality was little more than a mass of wood and sand. I quickly searched the three men adding a thump of boot heel or brass belted wrist where needed and found the key I required to free Benito. With the key in hand I sought out Benito and freed him at once as his hut was quickly becoming a rapidly fanning bonfire. I remembered as a little girl when one of the little channel islands had been set on blaze to destroy the abundance of vermin living there and it had burned hot for three days and smoldered for weeks afterwards, I had no interest in becoming part of the rain of ashes this little inferno would spill over the city for the next few days, and moved quickly.

With Benito on my shoulder I made for the smoldering ladder, giving one last look over the three men now stirring and hacking coughs into the smoky night air, I was shocked to see Gonzales and the papal legate Rengeno, the cardinals right hand man clumsily trying to find their way through the billowing smoke and back to the main hut and its own ladder of descent. The third man I never identified, though his cruel and terrible misshapen face I will never forget.

And the man I had fought dagger against sword,? Well though Benito never said a word to me during our long escape back to the city and my subsequent leaving of him outside the bell tower of the Doge's Palace. However, I couldn't but notice as I finished ringing the bell and making my easy escape into the shadows from the summoned guard bellow, the Doge himself, bare broad of chest, his firm square jaw and flashing uncombed hair, gesturing wildly about him, what a strong family resemblance there was between that august personage and the young rake I had so recently beaten into submission.

EPILOGUE

That said, what of the murdered man fished from the Grand Cannel nine days earlier? And what happened to those men left upon the flame devoured island in the bay? Ah, well, that the illustrious Venetian Vixen known as the Masque assured me, as she quaffed down the last of her wine and drunkenly slipped from my rooms her giddy hips wiggling and into the engulfing night shadows, would be for another nights telling. And so shall it be for us too.

BE SURE TO RETURN TO THE MR. X WEB SITE OFTEN TO CATCH THE NEXT STORY IN THIS SERIES; 'THE PARISIAN PUSSY IN; "THE CRACK IN THE MERE" AS WELL AS OTHER GREAT STORIES FROM THE MANY ASTOUNDING WRITERS TO BE FOUND HERE ON THIS SITE!