The Sacred Scroll Read Online Free PDF Page A

they joined up, were close to starving. This was their big chance. All they saw was stuff which could be melted down and turned into bullion and coin.
     
But it
had to be done
.
     
What I cannot support, and the memory lives with me still, is that they took one of the whores from the camp and got her drunk and sat her on the Patriarch’s Throne in the great church. There she was, legs wide, and drinking, singing disgusting songs while a couple of sergeants pawed her. I left before I could see what else the men would get up to there. They were out of control.
     
It went on well after the fire had gone out, from Tuesday to Thursday in those last days before Holy Week. I say again that I had never seen such beautiful things as were pulled over and smashed up, if they were stone or marble, or melted down if they were gold, silver or bronze.
     
There was a statue of Our Lady in the Forum of the Ox near the city centre. They tore that down and within half a day it was molten metal, ready to be turned into coin, because she’d had the misfortune to be made of bronze. And that wasn’t the only one, I can tell you. There was a massive statue of Hercules, and another one of Pegasus, the second so big that I counted ten storks’ nests between the bronze horse’s head and his crupper.
     
I was told of two others, one of Juno, and another, which we really should have spared – a statue of the Servant of the Winds, in bronze with the goddess so beautifully balanced on a rotating orb that she acted as a weather vane. And there was a statue of Helen of Troy which I
did
see before it was broken up and taken to the furnaces. I couldn’t believe anyone would destroy such a thing; she was so beautiful you’d’ve thought she was alive. But nothing would stop them. We’d been farting aroundfor so long, trying to take this city, better part of two years, and now, well, there was so much to get your hands on that the lads just couldn’t stop themselves.
     
But the statues couldn’t feel anything. It was the people I felt sorry for, and it was the little people who suffered. Most of the rich got away.
     
I managed to stop one soldier who’d heated the point of his sword and was about stick it into a little girl he’d picked up crying in the street. Had him arrested – hanged him later. Had the little girl taken to one of the convents in the suburbs. There, they had escaped the full fury.
     
When the anger simmered down, some of us looked back at what we’d done and wept. But it was too late. I reckon more houses were burned down than all the houses you could find in our three biggest cities back in France.
     
But there was still plenty to go round.
     
     
    Leporo turned the last page. ‘That’s as far as he’s got,’ he said.
    Dandolo gave a papery sigh. His right hand went to a pocket concealed within the tunic under his stole and closed round something hidden there. Leporo knew the gesture, and followed it with his eyes. He knew what his master was clutching so protectively. He watched, silently, covetously.
    Dandolo was still. He closed his eyes. He stayed like that for a minute, so quiet that the monk peered to see if he could detect the rise and fall of the old man’s clothes as he breathed.
    He thought he could not. Cautiously, he approached.
    He was within touching distance when the milky eyes snapped open. Leporo could see the old burns on the skin around them as Dandolo had struggled to keep his eyes away from the magnifying glass they had used all those years ago, in this city, to concentrate the rays of the sun on to his retinas, to burn them out.
    Leoporo shrank back, but he wasn’t quick enough. The doge’s right hand shot out with surprising speed and seized his confessor’s robe near the neck, pulling him down so the monk could smell the musty breath of age.
    ‘What do you want to do?’ said Leporo, playing the innocent. ‘I’ve got a shrewd idea of what you want censored. Do you want to leave it to