Brilliant, Bedmar thought, and signed his name with a flourish. In his own way, Bedmar was letting the duke know that he was fully aware of his black intent, yet was unafraid. Ossuna would certainly take the bait, believing that his assassin could carry out his orders successfully in spite of Bedmar’s foreknowledge. But the marquis had many times discovered that youth and strength were no match for experience and cunning. Bedmar folded the letter and sealed it.
“I wish you good journey,” he said. “My gondolier waits below. He’ll take you to a small boat at the end of the island; from there you will be rowed to a ship anchored at Malamocco. If need be, let Captain de Braga speak for you. Don’t say a word until you’re safely at sea.”
“Your Excellency.” Antonio bowed. “I look forward to our next meeting.”
“As do I,” Bedmar replied.
So that’s how it will be, Alessandra thought. She stood at her bedroom window, looking out at the lagoon, at the Rio di San Giuseppe that flowed along the east side of the house, and at the fallow garden below. In the canal, Bedmar’s empty gondola was tied to a red-and-white-striped post next to stone steps that rose from beneath the water’s surface and led to the garden gate. Any moment now the viscount would appear, progressing from the back door along a curving path of stepping stones, then out through the gate and into the waiting gondola. She supposed that he and Bedmar had not much more to say after she had taken her leave of them.
Not a word, not even a meaningful glance did he leave her with. She had come into the parlor as Bedmar handed his reply to the viscount, then threw Ossuna’s letter onto the fire. Utrillo-Navarre had said nothing to her, except to ask that his cape be brought to him. Then he’d made a slight, formal bow, not even meeting her eyes, although she suspected that if he had, she would have found no sentiment there.
She’d excused herself and gone up to her room, intending to read or to write in her journal. But once she’d come upstairs, she had done neither of those things. Instead, she’d been drawn to the window, the one at the very corner of the room, the one with the best view of the gondola that would take him away.
Now she reproached herself, because of course there hadn’t been any true intimacy between them. They’d talked a bit, was all, and had seldom agreed. Perhaps his seeming charm was due to circumstance. He’d been dependent on her protection, but now that he was not, he no longer needed to keep up the pretense of an amiable nature. She decided she should not give him the pleasure of knowing she was watching him depart, but still she could not pull herself away from the window.
The fire in the hearth sizzled and popped, and Alessandra strained against her dress. The best brocade in the city and still the fabric chafed. The room was too warm, in fact it was stifling, she noted with irritation. It was Bianca’s doing, always insisting that Nico stack the grate with so much wood. Always worried she would get a chill, always hovering, always fussing. For a moment, Alessandra inwardly railed against Bianca’s solicitude, as unfair as she knew it was for her to do so. She only wished that…she didn’t even know what she wished. She felt a longing for something, but it was a mute longing, inexpressible. To be free of it, she thought, and instantly mocked herself: to be free of what? To be free of this dress, for a start. She moved closer to the window, pressed her fingers to it. Moist, cold air seeped through the mullions with a faint keening whistle. The glass felt like ice. She rested her forehead against it and felt some relief.
Although it was not raining, the sky was filled with gray, roiling clouds. Even at midmorning, Alessandra could sense the night coming on, and with it another storm. For the moment, everything felt timeless and still, as if under this somber light the world had stopped turning. In her view, nothing moved save for the flight of a solitary seabird and the constant, shallow rippling of the water. It was as quiet as a day of mourning. She heard the crackling of the fire at the opposite end of the room, and vague noises from downstairs: indistinct, low-pitched male voices, the dull thump of heavy boots across creaking floorboards. In the distance, carried along on the thin stream of air blowing between the windowpanes, came the muffled toll of a church bell. Sailors panic if they hear bells while at sea, her father had once told her. They believe it a bad omen. She wondered how it must feel to be on the deck of a heaving ship, far out to sea, with nothing but wind, and sea spray, and the pounding waves as companions. She briefly closed her eyes and tried to imagine the freedom of it: the sheer, incredible freedom of it.
Paolo, Bedmar’s gondolier, appeared at the side of the gondola—he must have walked along the fondamenta from the kitchen, where he’d been waiting—and boarded the boat. Utrillo-Navarre emerged in the garden a moment later. The gondola’s felze had been removed, and Alessandra could see him plainly as he sat down, but he faced the lagoon, and she could not see his expression. He wrapped his cape tighter, as if he were cold.
Paolo untied the rope that moored the boat, then coiled it and placed it behind the gondola seat. Before he took up the oar, he glanced up to where Alessandra stood. It was as if he’d known exactly where to look, had known that her solemn face would be framed by that particular window. She had thought the viscount would be the one making the backward glance, but he stared resolutely ahead.
Paolo looked up at her with a sober, unwavering expression. He was gaunt, with dark hair and large eyes, a young man of twenty-one. He was often around, especially when Bedmar was away. Whenever the marquis was gone from Venice, Paolo made himself available to Nico and Bianca; he rowed Alessandra’s gondola for them, brought melons and fresh fish from the markets, carried in the heavy kegs of wine that arrived by cargo boat. They rewarded him with a few coins now and then, as was proper.
A few weeks before, she had unexpectedly found Paolo in the spare bedchamber, the one in which Antonio had just stayed. As she’d walked up the stairs, she’d noticed that the door was slightly ajar. A glimmering candle shone softly within.
She had pushed the door open and discovered Paolo standing next to her drawing table. Clearly she had startled him, as he had turned suddenly to face her, at the same time concealing something behind his back. He was silent, of course, but his expression betrayed his guilt.
“What are you doing here?” She did not expect a reply, but the question had been prompted by anger. Paolo was welcome in the kitchen, but he had no leave to be wandering about her house. She moved closer. “What do you have in your hands?”
Paolo had stood very still, his eyes trained upon her, apparently without fear. It occurred to her that he might not know that the consequences for stealing were severe. She glanced over to her curio cabinet, but the room was too dark to see if anything was missing from it. What would have caught his fancy? “Give back what you have taken and you can go. I won’t tell anyone,” she offered, holding out her hand.
He looked pained at her words, but slowly brought his hands from behind his back and held out a small square of paper. On it was a sketch of a seashell, one that at first she took for her own. Alessandra held the paper closer to the candlelight and saw that it was not her drawing. Every detail of the nautilus was perfectly rendered, with a clarity and precision she had never seen before, and yet it was more than an objective view: the essence of the shell had been captured as well.
“Did you draw this?” she asked.
Paolo nodded.
“Just now?”
Another nod.
“It’s beautiful. You have a rare talent.”
He made no response, just kept his steady eyes locked upon hers. “But you do know that you are not allowed to be in this room, or to take my things?” Alessandra spoke gently, as she was not sure of the depth of his understanding. She held out the drawing. “You may keep this, though.”
“I d-don’t w-want it,” he said. “I d-drew it for you.”
She’d been surprised to hear Paolo speak; hadn’t the marquis said that he was mute? Alessandra wondered why the gondolier allowed the ambassador to think he was incapable of speech.
Was Paolo embarrassed by his stutter, or did he have another, more sinister, reason for feigning silence?
Now, as Paolo looked up at the window, it occurred to her that he’d been watching her for days, perhaps weeks. But he soon turned away. He pushed the gondola away from the canal bank, and his steady rowing quickly brought it into the open lagoon, where it veered east, toward the point. As the boat bobbed over the small, rippling waves, traveling farther and farther away, Alessandra waited for Antonio Perez to turn around and look at her one last time, but he never did.
Chapter Nine
“VENETIAN COURTESANS WERE legendary,” Claire told Gwen after she returned to their hotel room. “Thomas Coryat, an Englishman who visited Venice in 1612, wrote, ‘So infinite are the allurements of these amorous Calypsos that the fame of them hath drawn many to Venice from some of the remotest parts of Christendom.’ It’s estimated that there were approximately ten thousand courtesans in Venice at the time, in a city with a population of only one hundred sixty thousand. That means that one of every eight women was a courtesan of some kind.”
Gwen had evinced little interest in Claire’s adventure of the morning or her tale of the conspiracy until she’d mentioned Alessandra’s profession—and then explained what a courtesan was.
“You’re writing about a prostitute?” Gwen asked. She sat cross-legged on her bed, attired much as she had been the day before, in tight, flared jeans and a 1960s-inspired shirt. This one, at least, covered both abdomen and chest. The contents of her backpack were scattered in front of her: iPod, headphones, tubes of makeup, half-eaten packages of candy, gel pens in assorted colors. She’d been writing in a small, leather-bound journal when Claire walked in, and had quickly snapped the book shut and stuffed it into her backpack. A diary, Claire surmised. Full of a fourteen-year-old’s secrets.
“A courtesan is not exactly a prostitute,” Claire explained.
“But she had sex for money, right?”
“It wasn’t just about sex. Rich families didn’t want their fortunes to be diminished by dividing them among all the children, so they generally allowed only one son to marry. The other sons had few options other than a relationship with a courtesan,” Claire informed her. “And because there weren’t many options for women, either, the men offered financial support. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“So a courtesan would sleep with anybody?” Gwen seemed rather subdued this morning, Claire noticed, and wondered if yesterday’s behavior was typical. Was Gwen completely wild, or was the previous day’s drama just a single, isolated ride on the hormonal roller coaster of adolescence?
“Some weren’t so choosy, but a cortigiana onestà—which means ‘honest courtesan,’ or, in a sense, high-class courtesan—tended to have a select group of steady, long-term lovers, each with a designated night of the week. Alessandra was one of these. She was well-educated—more so than most noblewomen, in fact, who often weren’t given much education at all. A cortigiana onestà entertained her clients with music, dance, and conversation, and she often married and gave up the courtesan’s life.”
Gwen yawned and stretched. “Where do we get breakfast?” she asked.
The lobby’s pale marble floors and high, white walls seemed to dance with the bright reflections off the canal just outside the hotel’s large picture windows. From the top of the first-floor staircase, the illusion was surreal, as if the lobby were underwater, and they were walking into a dazzling grotto filled with ormolu accents and gilt-edged furniture. Halfway down, Gwen grabbed Claire’s arm. “Oh my god,” she gasped.
The very moment that Claire saw Giancarlo sitting in one of the lobby chairs, absently reading a newspaper, he looked up and saw her, too. She and Gwen descended the last of the steps and walked toward him, and he put the paper aside and stood up. Claire would have felt nervous except that his smile was so warm and welcoming, and the expression in his eyes so unabashedly admiring, that she was instantly put at ease and smiled back. Just as she was about to ask Giancarlo why he was there, he spoke.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “I must leave so suddenly last night that I didn’t have the chance to ask your name.”
“Claire Donovan.”
Gwen nudged her.
“And this is Gwendolyn Fry, my…student.”
“Giancarlo Baldessari,” he said, with a slight bow that managed to convey a sense of formality and irony simultaneously. “It is a pleasure to meet you both. I’m hoping you’re free this evening to join me for dinner at my house.”
There was probably some sort of cocktail “meet and greet” thing at the conference that she should attend, Claire thought, but…
Giancarlo misunderstood her hesitation. “My family will be there, as well.”
Gwen nudged her again, harder this time. “Say yes,” she whispered.
“We would be delighted,” Claire said. All right, so he was a waiter, but when she looked at him, she didn’t care about whether they would have anything in common or not. Giancarlo was so handsome, he made her feel a little woozy. Staring directly into his eyes was like being zapped with a stun gun; it temporarily suspended her power of speech.
“I won’t be able to meet you here in advance, as I would like, but I have a map with the directions marked.” He took a small piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Claire.
“Thank you. I’m sure we’ll be able to find it.”
“I’m not,” Gwen muttered.
“I’m sorry, but I must leave you now; I’m late for an appointment. I’ve been waiting for some time hoping to see you.” Giancarlo smiled at her again, and she felt her heart skip a beat. “I will see you tonight, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Seven o’clock. Arrivederci!”
Claire and Gwen watched as Giancarlo bounded out of the lobby and then waved as he walked by the windows. Claire was suddenly filled with a sense of well-being, and gratitude for all of the surprises life held.
“You are so going to get your groove back,” Gwen said.
“Excuse me?”
“Your groove. You know, you’re an older woman, he’s a younger guy, you lost your groove, he’s going to help you get it back.”
“First of all, I’m not old, and he’s not that much younger. Second of all, I have not lost my groove. But if I had, and if I get it back, and how and with whom I get it back is none of your concern.” She turned and walked toward the dining room.
Gwen trotted to catch up with her. “He’s such a hottie.”
“I’m not going to discuss this with you.”
“If he can’t help you get your groove back, no one can.”
“There will be no more groove talk, understood?”
“I can’t believe we’re going to a library,” Gwen complained as they passed a group of empty gondole in the small canal outside the Bell’acqua. “I want to go on one of the boats.” She turned to flash a smile at a young gondolier.
“The gondole are very expensive,” Claire said, urging her along to the Piazza.
“It’s my dad’s money.”
“That money is meant for necessary things, not tourist traps.”
“But it looks like fun.”
“We don’t have time for fun today.” Indeed, as yesterday had been a total loss, she was going to have to pack two days’ work into one.
The conference began at eleven, but Claire had already realized that she wouldn’t be able to attend all of the conference events and work on her dissertation, too, not with only six more days in Venice. One was going to have to give way to the other, and making the choice had been easy: her research took precedence. In fact, this morning when she’d perused the schedule (which was merely a hard copy of the no-frills Web page devoted to the conference), she saw only a few lectures that directly pertained to her subject. Andrea Kent’s first talk was in the Ca’ Foscari main hall at three o’clock that afternoon. She’d highlighted it with a yellow marker and ruminated on the strangeness of seeing in print wh
at was very nearly the title of her dissertation—“The Origins of the Spanish Conspiracy of 1618” (A. Kent)—with someone else’s name attached to it.
“Did you know that Armani, Missoni, and Valentino all have stores here?” Gwen asked as they strode past Caffè Florian and caught a glimpse of the three-hundred-year-old café’s bordello red interior.
“How nice for them.” Claire understood that Gwen was talking about fashion designers, even though she was only marginally aware of who they were.
“My mom says that Valentino is the most romantic designer. She loves his clothes. Did you know that practically every designer in the world has a store in Venice? I read it in one of your guide books this morning. Maybe after the library we could go shopping.”
“I have a ton of work to do.”
“I thought teachers didn’t work in the summer.”
“I’m not a teacher yet.”
“Tyler says that in the future no one will actually have to go to work anymore, we’ll just do everything from a Palm Pilot.”
“Who’s Tyler?”
“He’s my, um, friend.”
“Your boyfriend? So he isn’t going to work, is he? Just what is he planning to do with his life?”
“He’s going to be a senator, like his dad.” Gwen looked with longing at a jewelry-store window. “I don’t see why we can’t go shopping. This is supposed to be my trip, too.”
“Yes, an educational trip. That’s what you’re getting.”
“Hold on a minute, I just got out of school. I didn’t come here to actually learn anything.”
“Consider it a bonus.”
“What’s so wrong with doing something fun?”
“I think you had enough fun yesterday to make up for the entire week, don’t you?”
“I don’t remember having any fun.”
The Rossetti Letter (v5) Page 14