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Renzo Lombardi & The Star of Venus
| Renzo Lombardi’s life was changing as a result of his proven valor, charm and leadership on his most recent voyage aboard the lateen-sailed trade vessel the Star of Venus. Thus, Renzo fully expected the day of his return to port after a long and prosperous journey would be eventful. Still, he did not suspect that this day in his twenty second year would be the most important of his life. With a cool Mediterranean breeze behind his square shoulders and the summer sun sparkling in the steely gray eyes, Renzo called out to Gino upon spying Genoa, “What a welcome sight this gray city of mine is!” His shipmate replied, “Don’t forget the vow you made during the gale!” Renzo’s fair hair atop his head and ruddy skin recalled the beauty of his Tyrolean mother, while his champagne nose and broad chest of thick black hair was the work of his Venetian father. He answered quickly, “I’ll make my way to the Church of San Matteo as soon as I’ve seen my family.” He would be leaving many ducats of gold in the poor box at San Matteo. He had even packed away several yards of rare and precious silks and other presents for his family. Gino laughed. “No detours with the carruggi girls!” “Agreed,” Renzo smiled, striking a bold figure at the bow of his vessel. “But I can’t promise I won’t stop at the first tripperria.” Renzo hadn’t had tripe broth, the favored dish of the tripperia, in quite some time. His return voyage had been delayed by an unexpected storm which forced the Star of Venus to alter its course. After the storm, the Star’s captain had led the crew on a great adventure chasing profit and running from pirates around the southern rim of the Mediterranean. The adventure took them as far west as Gibraltar. Full of wares but sick for home, the Star skirted the coast of Spain, anchoring for a brief time in Barcelona, and then finally making the voyage back to Genoa. But all of the adventures of his young life, or the adventures of a hundred lifetimes could not prepare him for the shock and horror that awaited Renzo in Genoa. Renzo disembarked on a strangely quiet dock. A wide-eyed sailor ran towards the dock and shoved past him. Renzo said, “What’s your hurry?” The sailor did not turn. He called out in a crazed voice, “It is the end of the world. The angel of death is feasting in Genoa!” The sailor made for an empty boat and began to row away as quickly as the oars would take him. Carrying a few yards of fine linen and a sack of coins, Renzo started on his way from the port to the old city. Upon leaving the soft planks of the dock and hitting the cobblestones of the city he was confronted with unwelcome sights and smells. Renzo liked the openness of the sea because city streets were typically coated with a layer of horse dung and surrounded by trenches of kitchen sewage. Even in a fine city like Genoa, rats and pigs brazenly rummaged through the street mess gleaning for scraps. But the foul odor which assaulted his senses was much different than he expected. Layered upon the usual stench was the smell of death, a putrid sweet smell of pus and corpses that nearly caused him to wretch. Renzo was only a few yards from the ship when he spotted the first corpse. The dead man looked to have been a stonemason by the look of his apron and tools, but he was a mason no more. He stared up at the sky with a slack-jaw. His body was crumpled to one side and a puddle of fetid black seepage oozed from his mouth. His shirt was torn at the armpits to expose the blackened swellings, or buboes, which had pained him in his final hours. Renzo stared in pity for a second and then turned away in disgust. He would forever remember this man above all the other corpses he saw that day. Leaving the dock Renzo made his way along the narrow carruggi of Genoa, holding a cloth to his mouth. Once again and with great effort, he stifled his urge to wretch. The stench of death and pestilence filled every crevasse of the city. In places he found bodies stacked like lumber, but in other places corpses lay in the street. He was wide-eyed and shocked at the madness which he beheld, but the Genoese citizenry hurried past the dead as if the dead were invisible. In this place the dead were not segregated from the living, but rather they were a part of the community. Renzo spotted a man he knew from his childhood and called out, “Doctor Antinori!” But the doctor ignored Renzo’s shout. He called out again, “Doctor Antinori!” Doctor Antinori’s head drooped toward the cobblestones at his feet and he attempted to hasten away. Renzo shouted angrily, “Doctor Antinori!” Antinori spun about and said, “Antinori is dead, and I am no doctor. Now leave me alone.” And with that Antinori turned and walked away. Renzo continued on, making his way toward his home, passing the Church of St. Mary on-the-Castle. Here, as everywhere, he found bodies littering the street, the curbs and the stairwells. Renzo asked a stranger, “Why has no one taken the dead to be buried?” The man looked at Renzo and laughed until he cried. Renzo stepped back from the man as he laughed. At last, Renzo said, “Have you gone mad?” At last the stranger paused and wiped the tears from his eyes. Then he looked at Renzo with amazement and said, “Your question is genuine!” The stranger gasped, “I thought you were joking.” Renzo was perplexed. The man looked at Renzo and said, “You haven’t been here in a while have you?” Renzo said, “Our ship just docked this morning.” The man leaned the length of a flea’s leap from Renzo and said, “I am Tancredo, my friend. If no one has yet told you, the world is ending.” Renzo introduced himself as well and the stranger continued to speak. As he did, a tall thin passerby stopped and imposed himself on the conversation. The tall man was named Dante, but Dante did not volunteer his name. Dante said, “We now know how the world will end: this world will end by pestilence.” Tancredo said to Renzo, “When the Mortality first came, we were all saddened. We buried our dead and said our prayers and continued our daily lives. But the deaths did not stop.” Renzo looked around at the bodies in the street and said, “How long does it take for the sickness to kill a man?” Dante, the unannounced stranger, snacked on olives and stood with the deportment of an old acquaintance chatting with friends, answered Renzo between bites, “Some folk go to rest healthy, only to die of the plague in their sleep. Some folk take a few days to die.” Tancredo waved at the dead bodies. “The Pestilence has been with us for some time now. It seems like there are more dead in this city than there are living.” Dante said, “They once wrapped the dead in shrouds and buried them, but after a while it seems like a waste of cloth.” Tancredo said, “For a time, we stacked them like wood on the street corners. The grave diggers carted out loads of corpses. But then those charged with disposing corpses perished---” Dante interrupted, “Or went mad.” “—Or simply ran off.” Tancredo finished. Dante smiled and popped another olive. “If you should die now, we’d leave you where you fall.” He spit the olive pit onto the street. “In the countryside, the shepherds died or ran away so the sheep had to tend themselves. Of course, then the wolves came down from the mountains to feast upon unattended sheep. But when the wolves whiffed the foul miasma of death, even they retreated far into the hinterlands.” Tancredo nodded. “More likely, the wolves perished as well. We’re all going to die soon.” “If we don’t die from the plague,” the tall stranger spit another olive pit onto the street, “we will be consumed by famine. There is no one left to harvest the grain.” “Or bake the bread, were we to have any grain,” Tancredo replied. Renzo bowed to thank the strangers for the information, and then proceeded uphill with a greater sense of urgency as he now felt that he desperately needed to know the fate of his family. He arrived soon enough at the place of his family villa. It was a three-story structure with fine plaster inside and out. In happier times it was a place of joy where grandparents could indulge their laughing children. On another day, he might have found the front door closed but the windows open. He would have called up to a girl in the window, a pretty cousin who was excited to see what trinkets Renzo brought upon his returned. She would have run down the stairs as she let the family know that Renzo had returned. But on this day, the windows were shuttered and the door was open. The villa was empty—save for the rats that scurried from Renzo’s wrath. Some of the furnishings were gone, but there was no wholesale thievery, nor much vandalism. He dropped his linen gifts onto a dusty table and called out, “Is anyone here?” Perhaps his family wasn’t dead; perhaps they had left the city. He paused to take a long look at his father’s favorite fresco: a bold mix of colors depicting an angel watching over a ship at sea. He needed to find out what had happened to them. So, he thoroughly searched the villa and found no clues. He left the villa, to ask neighbors if they had news of his family. If the neighbors knew anything, they weren’t talking. No one knew anything about his family and no one anywhere really knew from whence the plague came or why it came. Science, religion, folklore and philosophy provided no answers to the big questions. Of those who survived, no one bothered to answer the little questions. Already Renzo felt a strange sickness. Was it because he could not stomach the cloudy and vacant eyes of dead staring at him, or was he in the initial throes of the illness? He made his way back toward the ship with almost the same haste that had brought him to the Lombardi-family villa. Along the return he witnessed a priest calling up at the sky and loudly cursing God in heaven. Then, just a few blocks later, he had to dodge a gang of thugs who were hunting blasphemers and rounding up witches in a vain attempt to appease the wrath of God. Back at the foot of Genoa, near the dock, Renzo turned to look upon Genoa one last time, but it was too late. Renzo suddenly felt weak and his body tingled at all points. Perhaps, he wondered, is this was what it felt like to contract the pestilence. But then he looked down at his feet and to his amazement his feet began to dance with white light and then quickly began to fly apart. Before he could wonder what was happening, he heard a bang and was bathed in white light and then silence. Time seemed to pass, or perhaps it did not pass, but he had the sensation of floating a great distance … spinning and tumbling. Until at last all was still. His eyes were closed and all was quiet. Renzo was next aware of the call of sea gulls and he heard the sound of waves. When he was ready, he sat up and opened his eyes on a lonely beach. Renzo’s shipmates were gone. The Star of Venus was gone. Most troubling of all … Genoa was gone. It took some time for Renzo to realize that he was not dead, even though it was plainly evident that this new place was neither heaven nor hell. He walked along the beach for a long ways and then turned inland at the point where a river entering the sea blocked his path. He was somewhere, but he knew not where and he knew not how he came here. By nightfall, Renzo was truly perplexed. Not only was the Star of Venus gone, but the star of Venus was in the wrong place. In fact, all the stars were rearranged. This was how the Androclysm brought Renzo Lombardi to the world of Lharna. |
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