The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

by Michele Jaffe

His unexpected relief at seeing her alive had been quickly followed by the return of his angry indignation at the fact she had endangered herself at all. What was she thinking, coming to the most notorious part of Venice by herself at night, without even asking his permission to leave his house? Did she not understand that she was essentially a prisoner? He was on the point of marching up to berate her, but realized there was much work to be done and, assuming she did not manage to get herself killed in the meantime, his complaints could wait. Instead, he turned and entered the arsenal proper.

  He had to pull his shirt over his mouth and nose to avoid inhaling the thick black smoke billowing from fires all around him. Ian’s first thought had been to assess the damage at the Arboretti warehouse, but the mayhem around him suggested that there were other, more crucial needs to be addressed. Buildings that had not yet caught fire were being doused with huge barrels of water to try to save them. To his left, he saw a group of men trying to stifle a fire on the unfinished hull of a ship. On his right, another group of men were forming a long line to hand water into a building burning far from the canal. A boy, probably a shipbuilder’s apprentice, staggered under the weight of one of the large pails of water. Ian ran to assist him, hoisting the pail onto his own shoulders, and was immediately absorbed into the file. Working like a machine, they put out first one fire, then another and another. Long rows of similarly inspired men had formed all around, their concentrated efforts finally succeeding in beating back the fire from the bulk of the arsenal.

  What seemed like hours later, the groups of men began to break apart, some heading toward the hospital to attend to minor injuries, others rushing out to search for lost loved ones and friends, still others dropping from exhaustion exactly where they stood. Ian had just begun to make his way toward the Arboretti warehouse when he heard a small voice crying plaintively behind him. Turning, he saw what was once a dormitory, but which now looked more like the cross section from an architectural drawing. One half of the building was completely gone, and on the top floor of the remaining half Ian could make out the figure of a small girl. A quick survey showed Ian that when the other half of the building fell, it had taken the stairs with it, leaving the little girl stranded.

  He raised his face and shouted up to her. “Jump, little one, I will catch you. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here.” At first the girl was too preoccupied with her desperate cries to realize they had produced a savior for her. When his words did finally penetrate, she just shook her head.

  Ian tried twice more to coax her down, muttering under his breath about the contrariness of females. Realizing that there was nothing for it, he moved closer to make an inspection of the remains of the building, looking for anything he could use to ascend toward her. In the normal Venetian manner the boards for walls had been laid horizontally and those exposed when the building split could be used, Ian decided under duress, as footholds and handholds. With only two, or six, missteps, Ian managed to scale the building, growing more and more apprehensive about its structural soundness with every move he made. The unsupported floorboards groaned under his weight as he approached the little girl on the top floor.

  Her wailing had ceased as she watched his ascent and approach, her eyes open wide, but as soon as Ian was near enough to reach her, she ran to him and began to bawl.

  “No, no, you mustn’t do that.” Ian was desperate. Try to save a woman’s life and she dissolves into a mass of tears, he thought to himself bitterly, ignoring the fact that the woman in question could be no more than six years old. He was looking around, wretchedly, for someone to relieve him of his soggy burden when he saw Crispin approaching below out of a cloud of smoke.

  “Up here,” Ian called, waving his arms to catch the attention of his brother. “You are good with women. Make her stop crying.” Crispin looked around and finally craned his neck up to take in the scene at the top of the building.

  Ian rendered impotent by a crying six-year-old girl was one of the most entertaining sights Crispin had ever seen, but the miserable expression on his brother’s face made him take pity. He spread his arms wide and spoke in his most reassuring voice. “Jump, cara, I will catch you. Don’t be afraid, I never miss.”

  It was as if Crispin had spoken some magic formula. Without even a moment’s hesitation, the girl stopped crying and leapt from the roof into his arms. She looked at him for a second, then wriggled free and took to her heels, running headlong into the throng of people crowding toward the exit of the arsenal. Ian shook his head in disbelief, first at the powers of his brother, then at the perfidy of women. But his musings were brought to an abrupt end when the boards under his feet gave way and he fell, bottom first, onto the level below, and then through that level and the next, until he reached the ground.

  Crispin heard Ian muttering something about never assisting a woman again, as he rushed over to help him up. When they were both righted and Ian had ascertained that all the parts of his body worked, though not painlessly, Crispin began walking in the direction of the Arboretti warehouse.

  “Giorgio told me Bianca is missing.” Crispin did not disguise the concern in his voice.

  “Another woman,” Ian grumbled, as if proving a long-contested point, and then sneered at his brother. “So, she got to you too? You need not waste your energy worrying about her; she is very much in her element, surrounded by blood and gore on the porch of Santa Maria’s. Women like that sort of thing.”

  Crispin was puzzled about how his soon-to-be sister-in-law had ended up in this inferno, but decided to hold his questions for a time when Ian’s mood had not been worsened by contact with a crying female. The continuing tumult around Crispin reminded him that he had a much more timely errand to perform. “I had actually gone in search of you just now. There is something wrong at the site of the explosion. For one thing, the damage to the warehouse is less than we would have expected. Anyway, we need your expert opinion.”

  At one point during his adolescence, Ian had developed a fascination with artillery and in particular with gunpowder. He had passed one summer enclosed in his laboratory, emerging finally with what he promised would be the most volatile explosive ever. The first demonstration was less than spectacular, managing only to scare a few rabbits from their holes, but with a little tinkering he finally succeeded in blowing up a large and notably horrible stone monument erected by one of his ancient forebears at his house in the mountains. Even more than for its strength, the gunpowder was remarkable for the fact that it was impervious to water, making it ideal for sea battles. It was in gratitude for the secret of this new and massively potent form of gunpowder, the key to the Venetian naval victory at Lepanto, that the Arboretti had earned the right to sell and store explosive merchandise in Venice. And it was that same gunpowder that had caused the destruction that surrounded the two brothers as they drew up to the remains of the warehouse.

  Surveying the wreck of their storage space, Ian had to agree with Crispin. Because of the postponement of the munitions shipment to England, the Arboretti warehouse had been full to capacity of highly combustible ammunition. That quantity of incendiary matter should have caused an explosion powerful enough to level the entire arsenal, not to mention knock down the walls of the warehouse. But the front wall of the building was intact, and the adjoining wall was still partially standing.

  Ian moved to inspect the two remaining walls from the inside, where he was joined by Tristan and Miles. He bent to study the black patterns left by the heat of the explosion, looking for clues to its cause and, even more, its partial failure. There were only two possible explanations for the latter. Either, the ammunition had somehow lost its potency, by exposure to some disabling agent; or there had been less of it in the warehouse than they had thought. While Ian had his professional pride and would not like to think that his product was less than perfect, he preferred the first solution to the second because the implications were not as troubling. The A
rboretti were meticulous in their bookkeeping, especially when dealing with particularly precious or particularly dangerous commodities. Gunpowder being both of those, Ian oversaw the accounting for it himself. If the supply in the warehouse had been smaller than his records indicated, there could only be one explanation, judging from the explosion’s results: someone had stolen more than half of it, about seven hundred tons.

  This was the unfortunate conclusion he had formed by the time he stood up again. When, jaw set, he announced it to the other Arboretti, there was a battery of questions. The most obvious, who was responsible? was followed by the most perplexing: why steal only part of the supply and leave the rest to explode? Why not make off with all of it? Because it was located on official Venetian property, the Arboretti were not allowed to employ their own guard for the warehouse and had to rely instead on the protection of the army. Tristan and Miles related their unsuccessful attempts to locate anyone who had seen anything strange around the building earlier that day, and Sebastian concurred. Even with an army of men, there was only the slimmest chance that the Arboretti would be able to find anyone who had seen anything and had not been paid off to keep his mouth shut.

  “We do have one clue.” Miles cocked his head to one side and pushed his hair out of his face. “The fact that they did not take all the gunpowder. Perhaps they only had a market for a small quantity of it and had no place to store it, so only took what they could sell.”

  “Or maybe they got interrupted,” Sebastian offered, his blue eyes glowing with anger at the insult to the Arboretti.

  “Or maybe they only had a small boat.” Tristan’s comment, as usual, brought unwilling smiles to at least four of the cousin’s lips.

  Ian’s forehead was wrinkled with concentration. “There is another explanation which does not require a stoop toward the comic. What if someone intended there to be an explosion? That would explain why some of the gunpowder was left behind, and also suggests a direction of inquiry. If we assume the explosion was premeditated, then we must assume that whoever did it bears some grudge toward the Arboretti.”

  Tristan, unfazed by Ian’s dismissal of his earlier sally, looked skeptical and became uncharacteristically serious. “Under those circumstances, why take any of the gunpowder at all? Surely the larger the explosion, the more harm done to our operations.”

  “While a larger explosion might have caused more buildings to tumble, I for one am not sure it could damage our reputation any worse than this one will.” Crispin’s limpid blue eyes looked melancholy “But what if whoever did this knew that, and therefore saw no harm in selling off a little of the gunpowder on the underground market, as Miles suggested. That way, in a single stroke, they could ruin us and make a profit.”

  “Let us hope so,” Ian spoke solemnly, “because the only other possibility is that they have plans for another explosion. And I would hazard that we are the likely targets.”

  Had it not been for the people still milling about the smoldering remains of the buildings near them, the Arboretti would now have been standing in absolute silence. The prospect of someone harboring the desire to destroy them was chilling, especially while they stood surrounded by a demonstration of the lengths to which that person would go. When they turned as a body and made toward the exit of the arsenal, even Tristan would have been hardpressed to conjure a smile out of any of them. Sebastian, whose keen investigative instincts and ability to extract information from anyone or anything made him the natural choice to head the investigation, looked grimmest of all.

  It felt as though they had been inside for days, but consulting his pocket watch, Ian saw it had been only four hours. There were no visible fires anywhere, and two crews had resumed their work on partially finished ships. Passing through the brick pillars of the entry, the exhausted Arboretti scattered, each in search of his gondola and, eventually, a midmorning nap. All except Ian. Refusing Crispin’s offer of a ride home, he directed his steps toward the Church of Santa Maria. The time had come, Ian decided, to wring Bianca’s neck.

  It looked as if all the chaos previously taking place around the arsenal had been transplanted onto the porch of the church. The scene revealed to him as his eyes adjusted was horrible, blood all over, bodies littered everywhere. Ian wove his way through the maze of patients, narrowly avoiding a run-in with a ferocious-looking nun carrying a large tray of linen bandages. It was not until he had entered the church proper that he could identify the lithe figure with the large bandage on her head. The sight of her there, injured and barefoot, diminished the relish he had been feeling at the prospect of wringing her neck, but only slightly.

  He walked up behind her and waited while she finished changing a dressing on the arm of a burly sailor. As she stood, he swung her around toward him. Her look of melting softness was met by his hard gray eyes, and she began to tremble in fear. At least, that was how Ian had concocted the scenario in his mind. But instead of melting softness, or even relief, the expression in her eyes was one of fury.

  “Unhand me, d’Aosto.” Ian was even more startled by her use of his title than by the failure of his scheme. He let his hand fall, wondering if that was the cause of her strange response, and waited for her to explain herself.

  But she didn’t. As he watched, she turned and walked away. It was too much to bear, even for the rational, controlled man Ian knew himself to be. This time, he not only grabbed her but, crushing her against his body, lifted her off the ground. Patients, nuns, and his uncles watched in disbelief as he carried the kicking, screaming, squirming figure out of the church. He did not stop until he had found one of his gondolas and stuffed Bianca inside the enclosed cabin. As he hastily gave orders for them to make off, foiling Bianca’s attempts to leap ashore through the door by firmly grasping her ankles, he saw his uncles rush out onto the porch of the church in concern.

  “Do you know how to swim?” Ian asked her when they were under way. He refused to loosen his grip on her legs until she admitted that she couldn’t, but was tempted to tighten it again when she added that she would rather drown in the Grand Canal trying than share a gondola with a marauding kidnapper like him.

  “At least,” Ian’s voice was cold as he spitefully hurled the word at her, “I am not a murderer.”

  “Really, my lord?” Her voice was even colder. “No one died in that explosion? My most recent tally was twenty-five. That is about four people for every one of you Arboretti.”

  The last word was spoken with such contempt that Ian’s insides curdled. Then he remembered the theory he had himself espoused less than an hour before and regarded her quizzically. She had stealthily left his house at the crack of dawn, but if she had been planning the explosion, it was unlikely that she would have either left a note saying where she had gone or remained at the scene of the crime. And yet, those two elements provided her with a perfect cover. Before he could stop himself, suspicion had again overtaken his powers of reason. “You hate us, don’t you? You started that explosion yourself to ruin us.”

  Ian finally got the satisfaction of seeing Bianca tremble, but not with fear. Rage swept through her, a rage stronger than any she had ever felt, and the only thing that kept her from assaulting the man in front of her was that her hands were shaking so much she wasn’t sure she could hit him. She took three quick breaths and gave him the most glacial look she was capable of.

  “I never would have guessed you could be so vile. You would worm your way out of your responsibility for this horrific disaster by blaming me? If I am the miscreant you seem so eager to cast me as, why would ruining the Arboretti have to be my goal? Why not the sheer pleasure of mending bashed skulls and listening to the agonized screams of burned children for hours on end?”

  Ian ignored her sarcasm, already sorry that he had given vent to his anger, but damned if he was going to admit it. Instead, he turned her questions around. “What do you mean my ‘responsibility’? Surely
even you don’t think I would set fire to my own warehouse?”

  “No, my lord, I am not daft. But you, who know so well the dangerous potential of the gunpowder you manufacture, decided to store it in the center of the most densely populated part of the city. How could you be so negligent, so careless about the lives of other people? Don’t tell me that with your vaunted intellect, you never thought about it. Don’t tell me that the convenience of having your stores so close by blinded you to the murderous danger you created. Even a woman could see that a disaster like this was inevitable.”

  When Ian did not respond, she railed on. “Would you store this volatile substance in your own house? Would you?”

  “No, of course not. The city would not allow it. You know that explosives of all kinds are prohibited in our quarter of Venice.”

  “Why are the lives of some of Venice’s inhabitants more valuable than the lives of others? Why does wealthy Widow Falentini deserve protection, while the widows of the men who build and fight for the Republic deserve nothing?”

  Ian was at a loss how to respond. She was absolutely right, he was culpable because of his sheer lack of consideration. His culpability, however, was not the issue he had planned to discuss, he remembered with relief. Leaning back into the gold velvet cushions that lined the enclosed cabin of the gondola, he strove to assume an attitude of aloofness as he moved to change the topic. “I fear that when you became party to a murder, you forfeited your right to judge the behavior of others. Neither my conduct nor the conduct of the city of Venice are subject to your censure, carissima.” The sarcasm was back with added force, an effective diversion. “Your behavior, however, that is a worthy topic of discussion. What made you think you could just caper off this morning, without asking for permission, without taking an appropriate guard? Surely you can’t pretend there was no one on hand, as you had so coyly coerced me into sharing your bed with you. Or perhaps you thought that after last night you could bend me to your will?”