“I remember everything,” the boy said quietly. “I just need to see or hear something and then it is stuck in my head.”
“Everything? Really every thing you see or hear?” Excitement mingled with incredulity in Bianca’s tone.
The boy appeared almost hurt by her doubt. “We walked up exactly sixty-two steps to get here, plus one hundred forty paces that were not steps. There were thirty-two lamps lighting the way, and five dusty paintings, all of women. We passed through eight doors, six of them with locks, including the door to your room, which we had to open with a key. They key was brass and had four grooves, three on one side and one on the other. The first words I heard you say were: ‘Santa Flora’s canine tooth, I have taken leave of my senses! This man is driving me mad.’ Then this man said,” he paused to gesture toward Francesco, “ ‘It is funny, my dear Signorina Salva, but it seems you have the same effect on him.’ Should I keep going?”
Bianca, Roberto, and Francesco gaped at him, all momentarily at a loss for words. The child, accustomed to such reactions, was relaxed under their astonished gazes. Bianca was the first to recover.
“That was magnificent. What is his name?” She looked first at her chaperons and then again at the little wizard.
“May I present Master Nilo, Signorina Salva?” Roberto shed his reverie to make a proper introduction as the boy bowed solemnly. “He lives with his aunt at the arsenal, but she has agreed to put him at your service for a small fee. Hearing word of his remarkable talents, we thought he might be useful for your investigation.”
“Yes, he will be quite an asset.” Bianca was wondering how much Francesco and Roberto knew about her investigation when Roberto’s words triggered something in her memory. Of course! Six years ago she had spent the bulk of her infrequent trips from Padua to Venice ministering to the needs of the poor prostitutes the city kept in dormitories for the shipbuilders at the arsenal. The idea was that if there were women easily available nearby, the shipbuilders would never need to skip work to have their libidinous needs met and Venice could continue to boast of producing an entire warship every day. An efficient system, Bianca thought wryly, and one clearly designed by men. She remembered how stunned she had been by the conditions in which the women and their families lived, and by the stories they told about lying with ten or fifteen men in one day. To her that seemed a feat comparable to the construction of a warship, but it was not one the city chose to brag about. Undoubtedly Nilo’s aunt was one of these hardworking, miserable women. She looked at the boy and wondered whether his fine memory was a blessing or a curse for one who had grown up in such a place.
Before she could be too deeply occupied with such thoughts, a clock began to strike the hour, and then another, and then another. Their harmonious if noisy marking of the passage of time reminded Bianca of the immense task before her. One hundred and forty-six hours left, she calculated, rising from the bed.
“Thank you both very much for finding me such a treasure.” Her smile moved from Roberto and Francesco to Nilo, who looked quite pleased at being described that way. “Indeed, I find I have a job ready for him right now. If you gentlemen will kindly excuse us…?”
Congratulating themselves on a job well done, Francesco and Roberto were in search of a celebratory libation when a uniformed servant rushed over to them with an urgent summons from Ian. Ordering the man to follow shortly with a bottle of prosecco, they made their way downstairs to Ian’s library. One wall of the room was almost entirely glass, and overlooked the courtyard of the palazzo, while the remaining three walls were crowded with volumes in fine leather bindings, save for the space occupied by an immense marble fireplace. The ancient Persian rug given to Doge Foscari a hundred years earlier still covered the floor, now supplemented by a thick sheepskin, removed from one of Crispin’s English flock, placed in front of the fireplace. Unlike the libraries of many of Ian’s wealthy contemporaries, both the room and the books it contained were often visited by its owner, who used it as an office and a sanctuary.
Roberto and Francesco found the stormy head of the household seated at his ivory-and-walnut desk, glowering at something near the windows.
“We were just about to toast… My heavens, whatever is that?” Francesco exclaimed, noticing the strangely twisted plants arrayed before the glass for the first time.
“Crispin’s newest acquisition. An amazing find, some rare species of flowering plant brought from the Mongol Empire, or so he told me. To me they look like dead sticks from my villa at the lake, but we know how bad I am with living organisms.” Ian’s rancorous tone told his uncles that his mood had not lightened since the morning.
He turned his glower from the Mongolian rarities to his beaming uncles. “I have been searching the length and width of this whole bloody palace looking for you two this morning. Where have you been?”
“We had an errand to do for your charming betrothed.”
Ian snorted. “Charming. Like one of Satan’s minions. You think she is saintly like those women she always swears by, but I tell you that girl is most likely a murderess, or at least some kind of criminal.”
“So you say,” Roberto spoke quietly, “but we know how bad you are with living organisms.”
Roberto’s quiet and unexpected remonstrance earned him an extra glare from Ian.
“Your judgment about women is not exactly above reproach,” Francesco added, coming to his partner’s aid and sending Ian into a fit of muttering.
“Just wait, you will see my maligned judgment vindicated. You think you know her better than I do? What about this?? Look what she tried to use on me!” Ian pushed the strange instrument he had liberated from Bianca the previous night across the desk toward his uncles.
“Surely not.” Roberto shook his head vehemently. “No, certainly, you must be mistaken. She would never use this as a weapon. For one thing, it is broken. For another, it must be her prize possession. It was given to her father by King Henry the Third when he passed through Venice, and it’s all she has left of her father’s tools. That’s correct, isn’t it, Francesco?”
“Oh yes, the rest were auctioned off by her brother. There’s a bad one for you, that brother of hers. If you are looking for someone with the Salva surname to suspect of murder, I suggest you try him.” Francesco picked up the scissors and eyed them wistfully. “I would say this is the only tool not accounted for in the inventory. It’s a lovely piece, but it is a pity that it is broken. How did that happen?”
Ian goggled at his uncles. Surely they could not have been so quickly swayed to Bianca’s side that she could persuade them to tell a lie of that complexity.
“So she told you that story too, and you believed it?” Seeing Roberto again shake his head, Ian challenged, “How else could you know all this?”
Roberto spoke slowly, hoping his measured tone would help penetrate Ian’s thick skull. “We learned the story when we were lucky enough to be the highest bidders for her father’s instruments, shortly after his death.”
“And the scissors are quite famous. They were left to her in her father’s will, so they could not be sold with the rest of the lot, although they would have fetched far more than all the other tools combined. Look at this workmanship.” Francesco extended them for Ian’s admiration but he just pushed them aside. “You didn’t say how they got broken…?”
“Ask her.” Ian stood and strutted toward the window, taking care not to knock over Crispin’s precious specimens. He needed to be alone, to think about what he had just learned, not to mention the failure of his plan. That his betrothal was not having the desired effect was clear, and became even clearer when his uncle resumed speaking. Francesco’s voice seemed to be coming to him from a thousand leagues away.
“About the betrothal party, Ian. We were hoping you would talk to the Council about having the sumptuary laws lifted for the occasion. It is only right that Bianca w
ear the Foscari topaz, and you know it is valued at far more than the measly thousand ducats prescribed by the laws as appropriate for a bride-to-be. Roberto has already seen about the fabric for her dress, and the jewels will be just marvelous, if only—”
“Yes, fine, I will see it is done. “ Ian responded with his back to them, restraining himself to sound civil.
“Wonderful, wonderful.” Francesco plowed ahead enthusiastically. “In that case, we were thinking that we could send to your place in the mountains for one of those delectable wild boar—”
“Don’t forget about the special musical piece we were thinking of,” Roberto reminded him.
“I was getting to that, but first the peacocks for the garden. We were planning to cover them in gold leaf, just the tails of course—” Ian’s patience had reached its limit. “Do whatever you want, spend whatever extravagant sum you need, invite whomever you please, I do not care. I doubt whether I will even be there.” He hoped his tone was brusque enough to remind them there was a door available for their use. It appeared to do the trick, for instead of argument Ian’s ears were greeted with the blissful sound of that apparatus shutting firmly behind them.
His first thought as he stared into the gray day was that Bianca had spoken the truth. Everything from her father’s tools to the gift of old King Henry seemed to be corroborated. But that did not mean that everything she said was the truth. There were still too many unanswered questions and too many unresolved coincidences. Why had she been at the scene of the crime in the first place and why wouldn’t she tell him? Where had she gone last evening? Who was the intruder?
He tried to make himself recall the events of the previous night, from hearing the intruder to his mad dash across the slick rooftops of the city, but his mind kept returning to what had happened after. Bianca’s naked body, warmed by the heat of the fire, filled his memory. He could see her and feel her and smell her again. He heard her voice, her unnameable but alluring tone, as she asked him if he was going to make love to her. Yes, he hungered to tell her, yes, yes, yes. His senses began to tingle and his body to grow hard, and he found himself wondering if perhaps he shouldn’t seek her out.
“Fool, idiot, madman!” he spoke aloud to himself, halting just in time, before he managed to open the door. What was happening to his mind? What had she done to him? Francesco had called her charming, and indeed she was, like some ancient sorceress bewitching men to their ruin. It wasn’t that conniving, seductive Salva scamp he needed, he told himself, it was a woman. Any woman. The sooner the better. That day. That hour if possible. Moving with a new sense of resolve, Ian stomped out of the library and began barking orders for his gondola to be made ready.
Bianca was staring out the empty hole where the window of her laboratory used to be when she heard the noise. It was so faint she thought she had imagined it, but as it grew louder and more insistent she realized that it was coming from the wall to her right. Just as she was about to step toward it, the whole wall moved in her direction with enough grinding and squeaking of hinges to raise the dead.
A hand appeared around the side.
Then a foot.
And then a handsome blond head.
“Oh, good, I was hoping to catch you in here.” Crispin greeted Bianca jovially, as if his entrance had been anything but extraordinary.
Bianca tried to match his nonchalance, shoving her trembling hands under her arms. “Do all the walls in the house do that?”
“Not all of them, no. But many of them do have trick doors and secret passages. This house has more secret compartments and hallways than the entire Doge’s Palace. It seems that when the house was built our ancestors were involved in something shady that required quick escapes and inviolable hiding places. They must have been a more interesting bunch than the lot of us who lives here now.” He crossed to the glassless window and looked out, then turned to regard her. “Of course, you’ve livened things up a bit with your presence.”
“I’m sorry, Your Lordship. I realize that I have caused nothing but inconvenience for everyone since I arrived. I will, of course, pay for the new window and…”
Crispin cut her off mid-sentence. “On the contrary, it has been a pleasure to have you here. It does my heart good to see Ian so animated.”
“Animated? I would describe him as raving. How do you stand it?”
“I would rather see him acting alive like a rabid dog than doing that walking-corpse imitation he has spent the past several years perfecting.”
“Two years?” Bianca asked quietly.
The gaze he turned on her was questioning. “Yes, ah, something like that.” He did not know how much his brother’s betrothed knew about the incidents of 1583, but he was certain he did not want to be the one to disclose them. If Ian wanted to keep his secrets, who was he to intervene? And if he did not, it was his own responsibility to disclose them. Besides, Crispin admitted to himself, he wasn’t sure he even knew what had happened all those years ago in that hot desert. His mind raced for another subject to introduce.
“It is not terribly warm in here.” The weather? Even to his own ears it sounded pathetic and he wanted to cringe at his lack of wit.
Bianca recognized his feeble evasion for what it was and acquiesced, trying to suppress an untimely chuckle. “Yes, it follows that without the window…” She gestured toward the empty space, through which a light drizzle of rain was now entering. After a pause, she thought of her own conversational sally. If she was not going to unearth Ian’s secrets, she could at least learn those of his house. “Tell me, where does that door go?”
This time Crispin answered with enthusiasm. “To my potting room. Would you like to see it? It’s not much to look at, but I would be honored if you are interested. I know it’s very rude, but I fear I must walk ahead of you.”
She followed him around the back of the wall-door, through a short narrow passage that led to another, more door-sized door. The first thing to impress her when she stepped through it was not the room’s large size or its tidy organization, but its overpowering stench. Indeed, standing in the dark as they were, the only senses available to her were smell and touch, and the odors assailing the first erased any urges she had to exercise the second.
“It takes a while to get used to,” Crispin was fiddling with something as he spoke, “but within a few minutes you will hardly notice the smell.”
A few minutes? The prospect made Bianca even more queasy than the odor alone. But before she could protest, Crispin had lit a lamp and was holding it above them to illuminate the room. Again, though it was both large and tidy, these were not the characteristics that most struck Bianca. She was fascinated by the expression she now saw on Crispin’s face. His features, similar to Ian’s but softer somehow, were suffused with a look of such pride in his odoriferous workshop that she was swept up in his enthusiasm.
“I am experimenting with different types of soil and nourishment for my plants,” he explained, gesturing toward the large containers of sinister-looking goop that lined the walls. He launched into a detailed explanation of the merits of vegetal versus mineral matter and had just begun a defense of his latest mixture when a man covered in dirt entered through a side door. Without giving them another look, he began assiduously scooping something from a vat near where they stood,
“That is Luca,” Crispin whispered to Bianca. “He pretends to be my employee, but I think I take more orders from him than he does from me. He hates it when I bring visitors up here, especially women, because he is afraid they will distract my attention from the plants.” He turned to address the dirty man. “Luca, you need not worry. She is not interested in me in the slightest, peccato. This is Ian’s new betrothed. You should meet her. You might like her.”
Luca looked Bianca up and down pointedly. “Woman,” he said, nodding, as if having had a nasty suspicion confirmed, and turned to leave.
“Don’t take it personally. It is not you he is objecting to…”
Bianca waved his explanation aside. “I have noticed a decided lack of enthusiasm for women in this household.” She had been grateful that, despite her fortune, she had grown up dressing and grooming herself when it became obvious that there were no lady’s maids on the household staff. She wondered if there were any other women in the household at all. “Are all the employees male too?”
Crispin nodded. “It has not always been this way but, well, for the past several—”
“Two,” volunteered Bianca generously.
“—years,” Crispin continued with consternation, “there have been no women living under this roof.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, until with wide-eyed innocence Bianca observed, “It is not terribly warm in here, my lord.” Her lips bore the hint of a smile as she continued, “If it will not upset Master Luca too much, I would love to see your plants. Your collection is quite famous, you know.”
Bianca’s joking raillery and her polite flattery brought Crispin’s good humor back in a flash. He took her arm and ushered her toward the side door through which the dirty figure had disappeared. They passed from the potting shed into a room flooded with light.
Bianca felt herself afloat in a sea of brilliant color. She was surrounded on all sides by benches filled with flowering plants of every hue and shape and size imaginable.
“Santa Helena’s jaws, this is tremendous! There must be a thousand plants in here!”
Behind Bianca, Luca grunted to show what he thought of her estimate.
“Five thousand,” Crispin corrected, shooting his employee a warning glance. “From all over the world. But this is only the first room. There is also the herb room, an orchard, and a room for seedlings and experiments.”
Bianca considered the space she was standing in and realized she had never seen anything like it. The room was larger than her laboratory and, except where it attached to the wall of the palace, was made entirely of glass fastened together by wooden boards. Despite the gray day outside, it was warm and filled with light.
The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One Page 8