The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘Citizens of Venice, honoured guests from every realm, my friends, welcome, welcome. Tonight is the eve of the feast of Epiphany. Tonight the witch La Befana flies across our city bringing gifts to the children and tonight I have for you, my friends, a gift of my own. I Gelosi perform for us in private audience.’

  With these words a drum struck up from behind the curtained stage and the assembled guests began to applaud. Two masked figures came on to pull the curtain back revealing the figures of Isabella Andreini and her husband, Francesco, in their players’ parts, as Isabella and the Captain. William had thought them gorgeously attired on the last occasion but those were tattered weeds compared to their costume now. Isabella’s ruff was a halo of white lace behind her and the dress blossomed out across half the stage. The Captain’s breastplate shone in the light of the torches and so many feathers adorned his hat that he seemed more peacock than man.

  Their magnificence was undermined by Oldcastle muttering behind William, ‘They’ll sing now, I suppose.’ And when, as if cued, they did begin to sing William heard Oldcastle say, ‘There, told you so.’

  William did not share Oldcastle’s cynicism. He thought both Isabella and the Captain had fair voices and sang in good harmony. Their song was brief and when it was done the two fell into argument, the theme, as ever, love. The crowd took great delight each time Isabella’s wit scored against the Captain and when the two left the stage it was to a great round of applause. William watched intently, for the argument on the stage was no simple thing, yet the two players marked its premises and entailments so clearly that even at speed the audience still followed.

  ‘Admirable are they not?’

  William and his fellows looked around and saw Marco Venier standing beside them.

  ‘Have you such skilled players in England?’

  Oldcastle drew himself up. ‘We do and more truthful too.’

  ‘Truthful?’ asked Marco Venier.

  ‘Yes, they inhabit the part they play. These merely character it grossly.’

  Marco Venier smiled to see Oldcastle’s pride pricked. Isabella, sensing that Oldcastle had drunk too much courage, intervened. ‘It is a great triumph on your part, Marco, to have secured the performance of so famous a troupe.’

  ‘For that I must thank Andrea’s pandering on my behalf, as he will never cease to remind me from this day forth,’ Marco answered. ‘But not all the excitements of this feast are his doing. Have you yet spoken with the Papal Nuncio?’

  ‘We have not, Marco,’ said Isabella, ‘nor would we wish to do so since well you know that Rome is no friend of England, or of courtesans.’

  ‘Not so, not so,’ said a voice behind her. ‘We are friends to all.’

  Marco Venier smiled. ‘Sir Henry Carr, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you Monsignor Cesare Costa, Nuncio to the Holy See.’

  Oldcastle, taken by surprise at the new arrival, shakily gave a leg and then remembered that this was the envoy of the Queen of England’s avowed enemy, the Pope, to whom he should not be bowing and hastily straightened himself. His wine slopped from his glass and a great dollop fell into the centre of the circle sending spatters across the legs of the prelate’s companions. They remained unmoving, only their frowns deepening.

  Marco Venier covered the moment over with an introduction of the others.

  ‘The famous. Isabella Lisarro. I had not expected to meet a woman of such renown in Venice,’ said the Nuncio on being introduced to Isabella. His smile in that red face would have seemed almost benign had it reached so high as his eyes and had it not been framed by the scowls of the two clerics beside him. William recognised one of them, that same black crow that had stood beside Cosimo Tiepolo at Marco Venier’s former feast, that strangely colourless man whose eyes had glittered with an open malice. He that had first floated the wager. So, much became clearer now, now that William understood it had been no simple private vendetta of Cosimo and Francesco Tiepolo but part of a greater plot, and if that plot came from Rome then it was without doubt to one end - the intelligence the English Embassy had gained in Venice. The names, the names were all.

  ‘I would not have thought the Church so concerned with earthly matters as to know of one such as I,’ answered Isabella.

  ‘Oh, Signora, I am told you are known by half the inhabitants of Venice,’ the Nuncio replied.

  The smile remained but in the cruel jibe at her profession Isabella saw this priest for what he was. She drew herself up.

  ‘I am certain that the Church knows of me,’ she answered, ‘but had not thought you to have done so, Your Excellency. Then again, your interests may lie in different areas to those that others of your calling profess. The Commedia, for example. I understood the Church condemns a woman on the stage.’

  ‘There are many in the Church that do, but I am of more liberal dispensation and do not scorn to descend into the pit to find the sinners and preach God’s word to them. That is perhaps why I have been seen fit person to send to Venice.’ The Nuncio gestured to the stage. ‘Take these women of the stage. Some of my brothers,’ he nodded to the Crow, consider them little more than whores, parading themselves for men’s eyes.’

  ‘You do not?’ asked Marco Venier.

  ‘I consider them also to be great artists,’ the Nuncio answered.

  ‘“Also,”’ repeated Isabella.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the Nuncio, deliberately ignoring Isabella’s venomed look. ‘Of course, all artists are to some extent whores since they sell the better part of themselves, their muse, to others. And others are whores by any measure. But then, did not our Lord preach even to Mary Magdalene?’

  ‘Was not the Pope Nuncio in Venice before you?’ asked William to forestall Isabella’s angry reply. He would have liked to strike the man for his insults and yet he felt also a strange detachment from what had been said, as if he watched a scene upon the stage. How careful this man was, how considered his barbs and darts. What pleasure did he take from throwing them? How did a man of God come to find in taunting others such obvious entertainment?

  The Nuncio’s eyes remained on Isabella as he answered William’s question. ‘He was not. His Holiness’ - the Nuncio’s tone lent a little stamp to the title, as if to remind them of the need for respect - ‘was Inquisitor in Venice, not Nuncio.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said William, who knew the answer already. ‘Recalled to Rome at the Signoria’s request, I now remember me. Excessive vigour in his duties, was it not?’

  ‘No truth in such story at all,’ said the Nuncio, his smile tighter.

  ‘Venice, it seems, does not admire a braggart or a tyrant,’ said William.

  ‘Nor Rome a defiant child,’ answered the Nuncio. The false smile no longer playing on his face.

  ‘Oh ho, Marco,’ Isabella spoke up. ‘Do you hear? To the Church we Venetians are but children, to be told the time for bed, to wash our faces, to say grace at mealtimes.’

  William witnessed the Nuncio struggle to bring the smile back to his face. ‘All are the Church’s children, Isabella Lisarro. That is why we call His Holiness the Holy Father. Is it fatherly to let a child dwell in sin unchastened? Only those that repent are forgiven. It is never too late for repentance. That is the lesson of the Parable of the Prodigal Son,’ said the Nuncio.

  ‘That son ate of the fatted calf that day, did he not?’ said Marco Venier, his eyes on Isabella.

  Isabella looked back at Marco and wondered if this meeting was more than just Marco’s perverse love of controversy at play. His eyes made appeal to hers. Had a bargain been struck between him and Rome that turned upon the English? What did they have that Rome still wanted? What had Marco promised this Nuncio?

  William’s thoughts echoed Isabella’s but had run on to an answer: the Nuncio sought confirmation that the English knew the names of the spies in England, certainty that they had not yet passed that intelligence on to England. He felt sickness in his stomach. It was one thing for Hemminges to talk of dangers, it was another
to be confronted by the net as it tightened about them. To realise that they had already tried to strike through the Tiepolo brothers. That having failed there they were sure to try again. He laughed.

  ‘Something amuses you?’ said the Crow.

  ‘Only that I remember a jest of my father’s,’ said William. ‘What were the fatted calf’s last words?’

  William waited for reply but seeing that none would come, answered himself. ‘“I hear the young master is returned!’”

  William laughed alone.

  ‘It is as foolish to be Rome’s enemy as it is wise to be her friend,’ said the Nuncio. ‘This your little England and her queen will soon find. Why, this very month the kings of France and Spain have signed a truce that will leave the King of Spain free to claim his rightful crown as King of England too. Already he begins to assemble a great fleet of ships to bring his army to your shores.’

  The Nuncio looked from face to face and his smile that had wavered returned with full measure.

  ‘Ah,’ he crowed, ‘this was news to England’s Embassy. Such is the strength of England’s intelligencers.’

  The Nuncio and his two companions exchanged silent looks of delight at the frowns on William’s, Hemminges’ and Oldcastle’s brows.

  ‘He need only cross the Channel,’ said Hemminges.

  ‘A few short miles,’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘And he will find such a welcome in that voyage from our Admirals Drake and Hawkins,’ said William. ‘As will light the sky from there to where Your Excellency resides, that you may watch the triumph of his passing.’

  ‘Brave words,’ said the Nuncio showing that he, unlike Isabella, recognised English mocking when it came.

  ‘Brave deeds too,’ answered Hemminges. ‘Rome should remember the fate of those who would rule against a people’s will. It ends with knives on a March morning.’

  For a little moment the Nuncio said nothing as he gauged the man before him who spoke with such quiet anger and whose gaze did not waver. At last the Nuncio spoke.

  ‘You know Rome’s history?’

  ‘A little, enough to profit me with its lessons.’

  ‘Before Caesar there was another dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sylla.’

  ‘A bloody man,’ answered William.

  ‘So some say, yet all he sought to do was restore Rome’s traditions, to return it to the glory of its earliest days, as His Holiness does,’ said the Nuncio. ‘When he died, this Sylla, do you know what his epitaph was?’

  ‘One of regret?’

  ‘On the door of his tomb was writ, Of his friends and of his enemies, he paid them both in full measure. Those are words to live by, are they not?’

  This last to Marco Venier, who bowed his head towards the Nuncio.

  The Nuncio and his companions bowed their heads little enough to be insulting and turned and disappeared into the crowd of guests. Isabella moved to berate Marco for making the meeting possible but he too had melted away. Oldcastle drained his glass.

  ‘May we go now?’ he said.

  No one replied. In silence all four made their way to the gate, leaving behind them the laughter, applause and revels of those that remained behind.

  In the gondola that took them through Venice to their home Isabella clutched at William’s hand and held it against the pain that griped her guts.

  ‘Isabella, what is wrong?’ pleaded William against her silent twists of agony.

  ‘It’s nothing, sweet. I am a weak and foolish woman that has found in fear a poison for my stomach.’

  She groaned again and her body bent against the pain within her. William pushed her hair from her sweat-dewed brow and felt his own stomach twist. He did not think Isabella weak or foolish or prone to pains that were born in the mind. He feared not the poison of imagination but of a vengeful Pope. Isabella reached up a hand to cradle his cheek.

  ‘Do not fret. This too shall pass.’

  All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer

  Isabella’s pain did not pass. It grew.

  ‘We must send for a doctor,’ insisted her maid, Maria, against her mistress’s refusal to countenance such expense.

  ‘I will be well, Maria,’ she insisted. ‘I am only heart-sick with the late news. Rest, rest will cure all.’

  When Isabella had left the room to try and sleep, Maria turned on William. At first she said nothing, simply allowing her expressive look to intimate that she held William responsible for her mistress’s malady. William bore her gaze for so long as his will might before exasperation prompted him to confrontation.

  ‘Speak, Maria, I pray you, if you would say anything to the purpose. For well you know I love your mistress dearly and would not see her suffer.’

  ‘Then call for the doctor, Sir William,’ said Maria, who had taken to giving William the same false title that Marco Venier had thrust upon him.

  ‘You know of one?’

  ‘I do, Doctor Bellario,’ Maria answered with confidence. ‘He is known to be a man of experience, particularly in—’

  Maria broke off to give William another knowing look. William shook his head in incomprehension.

  ‘It is winter in Venice but that does not mean spring cannot come to the city,’ said Maria with a tilt of her head.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sir William, you are young but not so young, I’m sure, as to be innocent of what happens when a man and woman come together.’

  Realisation came on William and struck him like a vagabond thief.

  ‘You think Isabella is with child?’

  ‘Aye, though whether the child is well or no, I cannot tell. Perchance the pain within her womb is the blossoming of some seed in ground illsuited to the harvest.’

  ‘It cannot be,’ said William but he wondered if it might be so. The thought had come nowhere near him till Maria spoke it and yet now he heard it, he could not let it go. It filled the place of his other fears, fears that he dare not yet speak out loud, that he was the cause of this malady in Isabella.

  ‘To the doctor take you,’ said William. ‘Fetch him at once. Go, woman, go.’

  ‘The cost?’

  ‘Sir Henry will pay.’

  When Maria had scurried from the room William sat and put his head in his hands. He did not know if the thrilling tremor in his nerves at the thought of Isabella carrying his child spoke of delight or fear. William knew himself a selfish man. He railed against it when he might, yet always found himself taking the course that best pleased him. So it had been with Isabella. The vows he’d made to his wife Anne had been parchment bonds against the pull of his strong intent. No harm, he had felt, could come to his wife from this wanton dalliance in a distant land. Had his reasoning changed with thought of a child by Isabella?

  What if Maria was in the right of it when she said the child curdled in Isabella’s womb and might undo her? His lusts and hers would then have killed her, leaving him unpunished. Unpunished, save that he would have to live with the horror of it and of his part in its cause. What if it was not in this that his closeness to her endangered her? What if Rome had already reached out to strike at him through her? What if Isabella was not ill but poisoned?

  His mind was full of fears.

  Do you know he promised me marriage?

  Verona

  The servants shuffled out with the broken chair carried between them. It was rare for her father to be in so foul a temper as to destroy furniture. Usually the worst of it was a cup of wine hurled on to the floor. Aemilia worried for a moment that her father had discovered her continued defiance of his command that she have no more conference with her cousin Valentine. Could he have done so? The two had been so careful since, not risking meeting for more than a moment away from the watchful eyes of her maids. Their enforced separation, she had found, had but fed their desires. Fingers brushing as they passed in the palace gardens had been a communion quite unholy in the thoughts that accompanied it, and such letters he had written her, secreted beneath a broken t
ile in the arbour of the gardens to be taken out by her and read at night. The more she felt her love denied the greater it had grown. Yet they had been careful. It could not be that which caused her father such rage.

  ‘A whole convoy taken? Tell me again how it is possible?’

  Her father spoke to his captain of guards, a man Aemilia admired but did not like. He held himself stiffly before her father.

  ‘They grow bold, Your Grace. It is the winter’s privations makes them so. That and there is rumour of a new man among these outlaws, an educated man, who gathers what were before ragged, a crew of patches, into a knitted band. Guides, directs them, that they may strike as one.’

  Her father sat down on his chair, newly brought to him by his servants in replacement for the one destroyed. Aemilia thought he looked very old of a sudden. His hands lolled over the chair’s arms and his head was slumped. It lasted only a moment. When he looked up there was again the fire of youth in him.

  ‘We must ride out, drive them from the woods.’

  The captain and the Duke’s steward shared a look, one that Aemilia caught but her father, standing again and pacing before the fire, missed.

  ‘Your Grace, we lack both numbers and the money to hire more,’ said Rodrigo.

  ‘And those we have are no longer in the first rank of fighting men,’ the captain added.

  The Duke turned from his pacing to look at his two officers. His face was red with anger and his brow dented with worries. Aemilia’s love went out to her prideful and beleaguered father, whose old age was beset with troubles. Would that he would accept her help in them. Would that these worries did not translate so readily to an anger that, finding itself out of reach of its true target, fell upon those that would aid him in them.