The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

by Michele Jaffe

  “I bet he’s still vying for Bianca’s hand.” Tristan’s dry observation brought a blush to Miles’s fair skin. “Undoubtedly saving her life while Ian is chained up in a dungeon will make a fine impression on her. But what about me? What am I to do? If I sit here quietly while you two become heroes, I’ll never be able to woo another woman in all of Christendom. ”

  Sebastian ignored Tristan and spoke instead to Nilo. “You take Tristan to where you left Ian and Crispin. If anyone can free them, he can. He used to be a thief.”

  Nilo moved to Tristan’s side and regarded him with wide-eyed admiration.

  “Thanks for the recommendation,” Tristan said with an amused snort, already moving toward the door with Nilo at his heels. “We’ll meet you in San Marco within the hour.” He said that optimistically, but his voice had lost all hint amusement when he spoke his final words crossing the threshold. “That is, if there’s anything left of it.”

  “How did you come up with that part about stabbing me in the bowels?” Crispin asked Ian over his shoulder. “That was the part that really made me shudder.”

  “I think it was something about the way my stomach felt when I saw that man on the point of killing you,” Ian admitted with unusual candor.

  The brothers hung there in silence for a moment; then Crispin spoke again. “I did not realize that Mora was so…insane.”

  “Neither did I. When we were together, I thought she was capricious. Ha!” Ian grunted at himself. “Of course, I also thought Bianca was a murderess.”

  There was a moment of silence, broken by the fierce pounding of the rain against the windows, then Crispin asked, “Do you think we will be able to hear the explosion from here?”

  Ian exhaled deeply. “I would rather not think about that. I am enjoying concentrating on the pain in my wrists.”

  “You can still feel your wrists?” Crispin asked incredulously. “I am numb almost to my knees.”

  “Count yourself lucky,” Ian muttered back, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  “I wonder if I will ever feel anything aga—”

  “Shhhhhh!” Ian cut him off. “Listen.”

  From somewhere deep in the house Crispin could hear the baying of dogs. It started faintly but got louder as more and more animals joined in. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

  “How many men do you know of who have that effect on animals?” Ian whispered over his shoulder.

  “Only one, the prince of thieves. But how would Tristan have found us?” Crispin countered with his own question.

  “I haven’t got the energy to guess. Let’s just hope we are right.”

  The brothers lapsed into silence again, straining their ears in the darkness. At first they heard nothing except the omnipresent falling hard rain, but then came a creak, barely audible, then a scuffle, then another creak. Silence fell again for a moment, followed by the distinctive sound of rusty hinges opening.

  They heard Nilo’s and Tristan’s soft footsteps before they saw their rescuers. The two figures were nearly in front of them before they could make out their outline in the dark.

  “Ian! Crispin! Can you hear me?” Tristan asked in a hurried whisper as he approached the two dangling bodies. “Are you conscious?”

  “Only of the pain in our arms,” Ian replied, also whispering.

  “Not me, I can’t feel my arms,” Crispin added helpfully.

  “Grazie a Dio!” Tristan exhaled sharply. “I was afraid I would be too late.”

  “If it’s anywhere near eleven o’clock, you might be,” Ian answered grimly. “We must get to Piazza San Marco before the clock—”

  “—strikes twelve,” Tristan interrupted. “I know, I know. Miles and Sebastian are already on their way there. Miles thinks he knows a good way to disconnect the fuse, or else to blow us all up. But first we need to get you down from there. I can’t see from here. What have they got holding you, Ian?”

  “Manacles, like those from the slave galleys, and chains about that thick. The locks are new. They look like those Gianferuccio made for the prisons, the ones with the triangular keys and the two prongs.”

  “I am pleased to see you still remember your lessons,” Tristan said, smiling to himself as he dug in the dark through the satchel he was carrying. When Ian had approached him years earlier and asked to be tutored in the fine art of lock picking, Tristan had initially thought he was being mocked for his seedy past life. But he soon found out that he had misjudged his quirky older cousin, that Ian was genuinely interested in what he called the “mysteries of thieving.”

  “I won’t recall them for much longer if all my vital fluids keep moving from my head to my feet,” Ian replied in an anguished whisper.

  “That will be the least of your problems if those damn dogs roused the household. I’m working as fast as I can. Aha!” Tristan took the ring of keys he had just found and set the satchel aside. “Nilo, is there a chair or stool or something I can stand on at hand?”

  “You brought the boy along to help you?” Ian sounded surprised. “What good will he be? Beware Giorgio if he finds out you’ve brought him here.”

  “Giorgio knows he is with me. But I wouldn’t be here and Sebastian and Miles would not be in San Marco if it weren’t for Nilo. He overheard everything Mora said and ran back to Palazzo Foscari to get help.” Tristan had climbed atop the stool that Nilo had dragged over and was fiddling expertly with the large lock that yoked the brothers together on the ring. “Ah. I think I have almost got it. Be ready to fall,” he warned the brothers, and the lock sprang open.

  Ian and Crispin hit the floor with thuds and one scarcely concealed yelp of pain. “There’s no time to get the manacles off right now, we can get them in the boat.” Tristan climbed off the stool. “Can you walk, or better yet, run?” he asked hurriedly, replacing his tools in his satchel.

  Ian nodded and allowed Nilo to help him up as Tristan did the same for Crispin. “Come on. This way,” Nilo said, tugging Ian’s cape hopefully in the direction of the door. He pulled so hard that he soon had the entire thing in his hand, empty of its occupant who was still standing motionless where Nilo had left him. Without telling Ian, someone had replaced his legs with immobile hot pincers that dug painfully into his body each time he tried to move one.

  “You go ahead,” he whispered to Nilo. “I will catch up in a moment.”

  “I’ll do that too,” Crispin whispered, wincing with the pain of standing.

  Nothing Tristan or Nilo could have said would have convinced the brothers to move, but the sound of footsteps approaching the outside door was more than enough incentive. They leapt rather than walked to the small door with the rusty hinges that had admitted their saviors earlier, and had just closed it when the outer door burst open.

  The six guards who entered the room and found it empty knew they would receive worse than dismissal from their demanding mistress if they let the two captives get out of the building. “Bar the doors! Close off the stairs! Let out the dogs!” the head household guard shouted, and the orders were executed almost before they were given.

  At the foot of the stairs leading to the kennel, Tristan halted, and the others fell into line behind him. He motioned them to be silent, then opened the door a finger’s width and peered around. The dogs were barking ferociously at two bewildered-looking Moorish servingmen who had been given the task of letting them out. Putting on his most authoritative air, Tristan pushed open the door and emerged from the staircase, pulling Ian and Crispin behind him by their chained hands.

  “It’s all right, men,” Tristan told the two servants, “I have the captives.” He held up the chains that were still binding Ian’s and Crispin’s hands so the servingmen could see them. “Go upstairs and tell the head of the household guard that everything is under control. I will see to the dogs and bring these two traitors,” he spit a
t his cousins with contempt, “as soon as I have finished.”

  The relief on the faces of the two servingmen was unmistakable. “Yes, sir.” They bowed to him. “We will go immediately.” Tristan inclined his head slightly to acknowledge their bows, then moved toward the dogs, emitting a low whistle that quieted them immediately. As the servingmen scurried off, Nilo emerged from behind the door of the passageway. The admiration on his face as he approached Tristan made even Ian envious.

  “That was fantastic, Master Tristan,” he said breathlessly.

  “Did you have to spit at me?” Crispin demanded.

  Tristan waved aside his cousin’s demand. “It’s just an old trick,” he told Nilo dismissively. “But it won’t be worth anything if we don’t get out of here quickly. Lead on!”

  Nilo nimbly moved ahead, following the path he had found earlier that night. They wound past the kitchens then down and to the left. Finally, after what felt like fifty hours to Ian and Crispin but was really no more than three minutes, they ended up in the narrow calle that ran the length of the house. Never had Ian and Crispin been so happy to find themselves standing, underdressed, in the midst of a raging storm.

  “It’s just a few more steps to the gondola.” Tristan spoke to the brothers over his shoulders. “We’re home free.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the shouting started. “There they are!” someone called behind the escaping Arboretti. “Follow them!”

  Tristan spun around to see three large guards emerge from a different side door of the house and take after them. Nilo had run ahead and was long gone, but Ian and Crispin were too weak to move quickly. Tristan watched with horror as the guards gained on and finally overtook the brothers, who seemed to be moving hardly at all.

  But his horror turned to amusement when he saw that Ian and Crispin had only been feigning incapacity. On the count of three, they each raised their manacled hands and brought them down on the heads of two of the guards. The third guard, witnessing the treatment of his peers, turned on his heel and sped away faster than he had come.

  If it hadn’t been for the possibility that he was summoning reinforcements, Tristan would have burst into laughter right there. Instead, he and the two brothers made haste around the corner of the palace, to where Nilo was already waiting in the gondola.

  “San Marco, as fast as you can,” Tristan shouted, leaping after Ian and Crispin into the boat. “I think I just heard the clock strike eleven.”

  The wind blew torrents of water into their faces as Miles and Sebastian ran from their boat to the clock tower. There was no doubt that someone had been there. The lock on the door had been broken, leaving it to flap around in the gale-force wind, banging against the structure in time with the rhythmic ringing of the hour. Miles mounted the stairs, three at a time, and stood panting before the huge clock mechanism as it struck for the eleventh time and fell quiet.

  His eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, but as soon as they did, he saw it. The apparatus was almost as complex as the clock mechanism itself, with four wheels and several weights. Miles walked around the narrow platform put in place to enable artisans to fix or clean the clock, and maneuvered himself for a better view. Sebastian stayed where he was, not sure he wanted to be any nearer to such a sinister-looking device.

  “Madonna!” Miles whistled through his teeth in admiration. “This is a fine piece of work.” As his admiration grew, so did his despair, for he hadn’t the vaguest clue how to begin dismantling such a device. He tentatively reached out a hand to touch it, then drew it back, as if the little device had hissed at him.

  “Does it bite?” Sebastian asked, not entirely joking. With all those gears and pulleys it certainly looked like some infernal automaton.

  “It’s too early to say.” Miles’s voice was not playful. “Did you remember the leather pouch?”

  Sebastian edged over to Miles, extending the pouch of tools in his hand. Miles opened it, looked from it to the device, then carefully selected a long, thin metal implement with a flat end.

  “Can you see?” Sebastian asked as Miles moved with his tool toward the device.

  “No,” was the encouraging reply.

  “I hope you know what you are doing,” Sebastian added after a brief pause.

  “I don’t,” Miles said calmly, then reached down with his tool and began prying at one side of the device. Sebastian could not see what Miles was doing, but he heard the scraping of metal.

  Suddenly, there was a loud snap, and the clock tower filled with a blazing white light. Sebastian hurled himself against the wall, shading his eyes and face from being scorched. As quickly as it had come, it left, leaving behind the acrid smell of exploded gunpowder and a massive quantity of smoke.

  “What happened?” Sebastian demanded into the darkness. Getting no answer, he struggled to get to his feet, coughing out the thick, grim-tasting smoke. “Miles? Miles?” he shouted with growing alarm.

  The only response he got was the echo of his words off the stone walls of the chamber. “Miles!” he tried again. Miles-Miles-Miles, the walls whispered back.

  The silence was almost worse than the unsettling echoes. Sebastian had just cupped his hands over his mouth when he heard a cough, then another.

  “Here… I’m down… here,” a voice said with difficulty from below the floor. Squinting into the smoky darkness in the direction of the voice, Sebastian was finally able to make out the top of Miles’s head, hovering somewhere under the platform on which Sebastian was standing.

  It took a moment to register. Miles was dangling by his fingertips from the narrow platform, hanging in space at least seven body-lengths from the ground.

  “Sebastian…” the voice said plaintively, “my grip…slipping.”

  Before he had finished speaking, Sebastian had leaned over, grabbed his wrists, and pulled him up. He allowed Miles a minute to cough, then began the questions.

  “What happened? How did you get down there? Was that it? Is the Palace exploded?”

  Miles shook his head, using his cuff to wipe the soot off his face. “I am not completely sure, but I think that was only a protective measure. The real fuse has to be much more potent than that one, but it was enough to do its job.”

  “Which was?” Sebastian demanded.

  “To discourage anyone from tampering with the apparatus. I’m telling you, whoever constructed this is a genius. I can’t do anything to it without risking another explosion like that, or possibly worse.”

  The two men regarded each other in silence as the full import of Miles’s words sank in. “Are you saying,” Sebastian clarified, “that there is nothing at all you can do? That we are just going to sit here while the Doge’s Palace explodes?”

  When Miles didn’t respond but continued staring unhelpfully into space, Sebastian decided to needle him. “Are you just going to let Bianca die like that?”

  “It is hardly my problem, she is not my betrothed,” Miles said with a petulant indifference that Sebastian saw through immediately.

  “Of course,” Sebastian agreed. “All I meant is that she is practically one of us. And you would not just stand about idly while one of our lives was on the line.”

  “Who said I was standing idly by?” Miles demanded fiercely.

  “I thought when you said that there was nothing you could do that meant—”

  “Nothing I could do with that machine,” Miles corrected him, pushing his hair off his forehead and leaving a sooty streak in its place. “There is still one more solution to try.”

  “Which is?” Sebastian asked, not allowing himself to feel excited.

  “We could stop the clock, and keep it from chiming twelve,” Miles explained simply.

  Sebastian regarded his cousin with alarm. Had he lost his mind? “But you know that this clock was designed to
run perpetually, and that they say if it stops the entire Venetian Empire will fall into ruins.”

  Miles shrugged.

  “What does that mean?” Sebastian demanded with exasperation.

  Miles shrugged again, then seeing that Sebastian was on the point of throttling him, opened his mouth. “I think it is the only chance we have. If we are lucky, the entire Venetian Empire is snug in their beds and no one will notice that the clock has stopped. That is, if it is stoppable.”

  “Couldn’t we just go position ourselves near the bells and stop them from moving when it becomes time to ring the hour?” Sebastian offered.

  “Obviously you’ve never seen them up close. Each of the bells is large enough to crush a man with its clapper. Besides, that would only solve the problem temporarily. As soon as we moved away, the clock would strike twelve and the fuse would ignite. What we need to do is stop the clock entirely. At least until tomorrow, when the gunpowder can be traced and that thing,” he said, gesturing at the device with a mixture of ire and awe, “can be removed.”

  “All right. I agree that is the best way left. Go ahead. Stop it.” Sebastian spoke with the stoic determination of a man who has just been told he has to have his arm removed.

  “Just like that?” Miles asked with disbelief. “You yourself pointed out that the clock is designed to run perpetually. Do you expect me to stop it by snapping my fingers? I am flattered by your assessment of my abilities, but I must confess, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to halt it.”

  Sebastian was still gazing at him with his blue eyes wide open when the wheels began to spin and a loud bell struck above him. It was half-past eleven.

  The gondoliers fought staunchly against the relentless storm. Not only had their cargo been augmented by the two large forms of Crispin and Ian, not made any lighter by the irons they were sporting, but the wind had picked up. The Grand Canal more strongly resembled a tempestuous sea than the peaceful main artery of the city as the boatmen struggled toward San Marco.