“I’ve come to retrieve my knife and to give you this.” He held up the letter he’d taken from her, noticing the writing accoutrements on the desk as he did so. “But I see you are prepared to write another.” Antonio bristled with an impatient energy. He seemed as if he were on an errand he found distasteful, almost as if he were there against his will.
She’d had no such intention, but his blunt, purposeful attitude irritated her. The coldness in his voice felt like a slap, and her voice rose in anger.
“I’m prepared to do whatever’s necessary to protect Venice,” Alessandra said.
“Even if it means putting yourself in greater danger?”
“Is that possible? Already you tell me it is not safe to go home, that I must leave the city.”
“Yes, it’s possible. You don’t realize what harm you do with this.”
“You’ve read it, then?”
“I don’t need to read it to know what is in it. ‘The Spanish ambassador and the duke of Ossuna conspire together against Venice, the viscount of Utrillo-Navarre conveys their secret plans…’”
“So you admit that it’s true?”
“I admit nothing, but I can see that you believe it. It would be better for you to leave Venice and forget about this entirely.”
“You seek to protect yourself?”
“Not only myself.”
“Your co-conspirators?”
“After our escapade earlier tonight, I have left all behind, most especially my co-conspirators, as you call them.” Antonio strode about the room, then peered out the window. “There is nowhere for me to go except away from Venice, and that isn’t easy when Bedmar’s men are looking for me.”
“Why would they be looking for you, when you serve him?”
“Bedmar thought I was the means to a perfect murder. His plan was for me to kill you—and for me, the murderer, never to be seen again.” Antonio tossed the letter on the writing desk.
“He intends to kill you, too?” Alessandra’s anger was overcome by anxiety. What would she do if any harm came to him? It was too unbearable to contemplate, but she did her best to preserve her unruffled demeanor. Why should she reveal any tenderness to a man who was acting so coldly toward her?
“The marquis has grand ambitions,” Antonio explained. “He won’t allow anyone to stand in the way of his political career. Whether he succeeds or fails in this latest scheme, he will not want any witnesses to his treachery.”
“All the more reason why I should take that letter to the Great Council. I refuse to spend the rest of my life in fear.”
“You do realize that if you deliver that letter, I will be marked, too.”
“I did not mention you.”
“I doubt that will make any difference.”
“Why do you try to dissuade me when you know that the Republic is in danger? Do you believe that your life is worth more than the lives of all the innocent people in Venice?”
“From the accounts I’ve heard, all the innocent people in Venice could fit easily inside a gondola.” He mustered an ironic smile, which Alessandra did not return. “I think I may put your mind at rest, however—the thing you fear is not likely to come to pass. There are so many mercenaries in Venice at present that even the most obtuse of your senators must have noticed that something’s afoot. Ossuna presses forward recklessly and Bedmar behaves with insane confidence. There are spies everywhere. This plan of Ossuna’s will be uncovered long before his ships set sail. It will be thwarted and the consequences will be severe.”
“And what about you? What will you do?”
“Is that concern for my person after all?”
“I admit to being curious, that is all.”
“If Ossuna is defeated, my fortunes will fall along with his. I’ll have to leave Naples certainly, and look for new employ. Or perhaps I’ll go home to Navarre, collect what paltry rents I can, marry a rich widow, and settle down.” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
That he could speak so casually of joining his life with another’s made his very presence painful to her. Alessandra kept her voice as light as she possibly could. “You’re so well suited for the life of a country squire, I’m surprised you did not think of this long ago.”
His wounded expression confirmed that her barb had hit its mark. “And what will you do when this is over and you return to Venice?” Antonio asked. “Go back to your chosen trade?”
He does not need a blade, he can kill me with his words. “My chosen trade? Do you think this is the life I would have chosen had I a choice?”
“You could have married.” His voice was low, accusatory.
“Married? I had no dowry, no money. I had only my house, and was in danger of losing it for want of the taxes I owed upon it. No one marries a merchant’s daughter without money.”
“What about the convent?”
“You mean imprisonment.”
“At least it would have been honorable.”
“As honorable as you, who carries out the orders of a madman?”
“I find more honor in doing my duty than in being one of the most popular courtesans in Venice, listed in a book with a price next to her name!” Antonio paced, unable to contain his rage.
She felt the same sharp pain in her breast as she’d felt earlier. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Why do you hate me so?”
He stopped and looked steadily at her. “You think it is hate?” He stood so close she could touch him if she wished. He looked away and spoke harshly, as if he were not speaking to her, but to himself. “It is not hate, it is torment.” He looked back at her. “I cannot—” He stopped, and for a moment looked as if he could not go on. “I cannot bear to think of you with those…those men. With any men.”
In his stricken appearance, Alessandra saw what Antonio was unwilling to say. “Is this a declaration of love? If it is, it is ungenerous and cruel. You do not declare your feelings, yet you tell me you are jealous and persecute me.”
“Persecute you? How?”
“By telling me of your plans to marry.”
“Little chance, I should think, that you would leave Venice and become the wife of a poor viscount, and move away with me to my scrubby patch of land. Or did you think I would stay here and live off your munificence?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought—”
“I have, and there’s nothing to be done.” His voice was hoarse, his eyes clouded with pain. “How can I declare my feelings when I have nothing to offer you?”
“You must think very little of me if you think that all I care about is money.”
“A singular creature—a courtesan who cares nothing for money.”
“You do not believe me?”
“I think it’s easy to say you care nothing for money now, when it is of no consequence. But later, when your fine clothes are in tatters and your jewels are long gone—”
“I have lived most of my life without fine clothes and jewels.”
“But you have not lived in the country in Spain, without a neighbor for miles and nothing more than a village to visit on a Sunday. What of society, of a city full of amusements and beautiful things to buy?” Alessandra could not answer. “You see, I have thought about it.”
“So that’s it, then? An unbridgeable breach?” Although they were standing close together, Alessandra felt as though they’d moved miles apart. “You would color our future so black that it cannot exist.”
“Perhaps…perhaps if things were different than they are right now, these obstacles might have been overcome. But now…don’t you understand? What future can there be for a hunted man and a woman who is soon to be a refugee?”
“This is the only outcome you can envision?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at her, his black eyes wide. Suddenly she understood. “You don’t expect to live.”
“I think it unlikely that I will leave Venice.”
“You would give up so easily?”
“I simply say what I believe to
be true.”
“It can’t be true. I refuse to believe it. We can go away together. I have money saved…there must be a way…”
“She cries,” he said with wonder. He stepped closer, bridging the distance between them, and gathered her in his arms.
She brushed her tears away and looked up at him. “Why do people say love makes one happy? This is the most terrible thing I have ever felt.”
The fire had burned low, but Alessandra could still see reminders of everything she would rather forget: the letter that lay on the desk, unopened; Antonio’s sword, a slim shaft of light as it leaned against the chair over which he had draped his clothes. Too soon the night would end and the morning would dawn; what new terrors would the day bring?
A few hours is all we have, Alessandra thought, moving closer to Antonio as they lay on the bed, feeling the warmth of his bare skin all along her own. He was all muscle and sinew, but his hands were softly caressing as they ranged over her body. She shivered a little as her eyes met his.
“Can it be that you’re uneasy?” he said with a solemn smile. “I would not have imagined…”
It was true she felt tremulous, even anxious. She’d never felt so vulnerable before. “Not uneasy, but…how is it that I cannot hide from you? As if you can see into my soul, and see everything that I am.”
“Perhaps because with you, I am unmasked, too.” Antonio touched his fingers to her lips, then brought his lips to her lips, holding her closer and enveloping her in a deep kiss. Then for a long time they did not speak, but communed only by the touch of their hands, their intertwined limbs.
“You are very quiet,” Antonio said.
Alessandra touched his face tenderly. “I am afraid that I won’t see you again after this.”
“Now is not the time to be thinking of that.”
“You will depart in the morning, then?”
“I’ll stay long enough to help you leave Venice.”
“And after?”
“I don’t know. I fear my presence will only put you in danger.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“We might be followed by Bedmar’s men. What if I cannot save you?”
“Then I will save you. You must come with me to Padua.”
“We shall see,” he said, and silenced her with a kiss.
She hadn’t understood how powerful sex could be, what it meant to yield not just her body but her heart and soul to another person. For the first time, she understood how completely she’d kept her distance from her lovers, how she’d managed to conceal her true feelings. Only now, when she was incapable of hiding, did she realize how little her soul had been touched by any man.
She looked down on Antonio from above. His face appeared younger in the dusky light, his eyes wide and dark, speaking volumes. She wanted to tell him that it was different with him than with anyone else, but words felt beyond her reach now, surrendered as she was to sensation.
Antonio’s hands gripped her hips hard, digging into her flesh. Although he was underneath her, he moved her exactly as he wanted, as they wanted, driving her with a relentless rhythm that was pushing her closer to complete dissolution. She uttered a soft, anguished moan. Her nipples were tight and hard, and she had a sudden urge to feel them rubbing against his chest. She bent down to feel her body upon his, to bury her face in his neck.
“No.” He gently pushed her upright again. “I want to watch you, to see the moment overtake you.” He caressed her breast, then brushed her nipples brusquely, as if he knew she craved his touch exactly there. She felt a violent twinge of pleasure in her womb. His hand moved farther down, stroking her stomach and her thighs, then he pressed his thumb against the nub at the top of the cleft between her legs.
She cried out as the first of the long, wracking spasms struck her, shaking her with such intensity she felt as though she would break apart. Words tumbled unbidden from her lips. She heard herself moan, and closed her eyes.
“Look at me,” Antonio said, his voice low and hoarse. Alessandra opened her eyes and faced his frank stare as she trembled, out of control. A shadow crossed his face and his breath quickened, coming in ragged, rapid gasps. He pulled her against him so fiercely that he drove himself deeper, then deeper still. Alessandra felt herself responding with a gathering power, which would unleash again with renewed force.
Antonio’s head lifted off the bed and his body curved toward her, as if he’d been wound tight with an invisible spring. A great groan, from the depths of his soul, escaped from his lips. He ground his hips so tightly into hers that it left her breathless, and in that moment she felt him pulse inside her, followed by his warm release. He gave a strangled cry and fell back, bucking underneath her, reaching deeper and deeper inside, until she climaxed again in great, shattering waves.
She fell upon him, feeling his arms enfold her, their breath mingling, their hearts beating wildly. Antonio stroked her hair. “My love,” he murmured, “oh, my love.”
Across the room, the logs in the fireplace crumbled into ash and embers, and the shadows shifted and grew deeper. Too soon those shadows would disappear and it would be morning. Alessandra held Antonio tight and resolved to commit every detail to memory: the scent of his skin, the touch of his hands, the feel of his stubbled cheek against her face, the warm pressure of his lips. Even now, in the peacefulness that followed frenzy, she could sense the lion’s mouth waiting for them, its black chasm opened wide, yawning, cavernous, ready to engulf them both.
The Stars
4 March 1618
SEATED NEXT TO her in the gondola, Alessandra felt Bianca shivering as they pressed slowly forward into the fog-shrouded canal. The weather had turned so gloomy that the ancone were already lit, though they were few and sputtered with damp. Vague shapes, unnatural and dreamlike, loomed in the murky distance, then gradually resolved into solid forms as they approached: a gnarled mooring pole, a boat’s curved prow, a grinning gargoyle, a stone bridge. Even Paolo, only a few feet behind her at the stern, looked eerie and indistinct, and the cadenced splash produced by his measured rowing was muffled.
“It’s too quiet,” Bianca whispered. “It’s still Carnival, for a few days. Why are people not celebrating?”
“It’s the fog,” Alessandra said. But it seemed odd to her, too, and for some reason she had answered Bianca in an identical whisper.
Nico and Antonio had gone on ahead, taking the larger of the two chests to her cousin’s vacant house in San Polo. There they could stay hidden until they had hired a barge to take them to Marghera.
She’d composed a letter to Giovanna that morning, which Nico could take to the post as soon as the trunks were upstairs. With luck, Giovanna would be there to meet them at Marghera the following night. It would not be well if she were late. As eager as they were to leave Venice, it wouldn’t do to wait at the terraferma village for long; they might be even more vulnerable there.
The other letter, the one she’d written to the Great Council, had been destroyed. Late last night Alessandra had awakened, stiff with cold. She turned and realized she was alone in the bed; Antonio was no longer there.
Moonlight shone in the windows and left diamond-shaped patterns of light on the floor. The entire room seemed transformed into strange configurations of metallic brightness and fathomless shadows. For a moment she wondered if she were dreaming, if Antonio himself had been a dream.
Then she saw him. He was sitting on a footstool in front of the hearth, his naked body bathed in the ruddy glow of the embers. She thought of calling to him, then she saw what he was doing. Silently she watched as he opened the letter she’d written to the council and read it through. When he was done, he held the corner of the paper to the embers until it caught fire. The light from the sudden burst of flame illuminated his face, his enigmatic expression. With the letter pinched between his thumb and forefinger, he let the fire devour it until he could hold it no longer, and threw the last flaming bit of it into the grate.
Then the
morning arrived, and soon after it so had Nico, Bianca, and Paolo, and they’d had no time to speak of it. But why had Antonio burnt the letter? Who was he protecting? Could it be that he still served Bedmar and the duke? Alessandra resolved to question him as soon as they arrived at Giovanna’s house.
They turned into the Rio dei Frari. Through the mist Alessandra saw the dark shape of a fortified door open to the canal. She looked back at Paolo, then pointed ahead. “That house there.”
Paolo steered the boat through the archway. The gondola that Nico and Antonio had arrived in bobbed in the water next to the stone slab of the ground-level storerooms. Alessandra’s wooden chest was still in it.
Why had Nico and Antonio gone upstairs and left the chest behind? Alessandra felt a fleeting irritation. “Nico!” Bianca screamed, standing up and rocking the gondola wildly. As she bolted from the boat, Alessandra saw what had prompted her sudden outburst and scrambled out after her. Nico was slumped facedown on the stairs leading up to the house. They rushed over and knelt beside him. Alessandra saw the bloody gash on the back of his jerkin and turned him over. Bianca convulsed with tears as they saw the blood that covered his chest and the wound where the sword had entered and run him through. The trickle of red that ran down from the corner of his mouth was still wet, but Nico’s face was contorted in a silent, stilled agony. They were too late to save him.
“No!” Bianca sobbed and threw herself upon him. “No, not my Nico!”
Stunned and bewildered, Alessandra reached to comfort Bianca. She gasped as a strong hand gripped her shoulder and another grabbed her arm, lifting her to her feet. Paolo forcefully turned her away from her sobbing maidservant and pointed across the room.
“By the Virgin,” Alessandra exclaimed as she saw the dead bravo lying near a group of old wine barrels. Paolo pointed again and she saw a second man, floating facedown in the water. The gondolier pulled at her arm, and gestured toward the boat.
The Rossetti Letter (v5) Page 33