The Wolves of Venice

by Alex Connor

  “I don’t know, and until I have proof one way or the other, I can do nothing.” Der Witt stood up, putting on his hat and then pausing. “Before I leave, I wanted to ask you if ‘The Wolves of Venice’ means anything to you?”

  Tintoretto shrugged. “No, nothing. I’ve never heard the expression before. Should it mean something to me?”

  “I just wondered.” Der Witt replied, moving to the door.

  “A moment,” Tintoretto called after him. “You are not unknown to me, Signor. I have heard your name often and people who have benefitted from your treatments have spoken well of you... But others have said you are a dangerous man who uses the occult for his own advancement. A necromancer, a man of poisons... Or so they say.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “Oh, what I say does not count. I keep away from society and gossip” Tintoretto waved his hand in the direction of the studio. “Paintings are my life, I would be of no use at court, or politicking favours from the Doge. But I would say this – if you believe someone is trying to make you seem the murderer do not continue on your quest alone. You must find yourself some powerful allies - an army of one has no chance of success.” The Dutchman nodded as Tintoretto continued. “The Inquisition has its spies and its informants. If someone betrays to you to them any amount of false claims could be made against what they would regard as a Protestant quack.”

  Der Witt smiled wryly.” You are very wise, Signor.”

  “No, not wise, merely observant.” Tintoretto replied, pointing to a box in which he had placed a group of his little wax figures. Quickly he fashioned a hat and placed it on the head of one of the bodies, then turned back to the Dutchman, pointing to it. “Here you are, right in the middle, an easy target.” Quickly he moved the figure to the back of the box, behind the others. “But look now. Here you are at the back, able to see everything - and remain unnoticed.” Handing Der Witt the wax figure, he said: “Keep to the shadows, Dutchman, and chose your army well.”

  Chapter Forty Five

  Having been refused entry to the Gianetti palazzo, a humiliated Pietro Aretino made his way to his sedan chair and ordered his return home. His bulk made walking difficult, his belly overhang sweaty under the mound of fat, his thighs chafing as they rubbed together. And yet being carried in the sedan chair was uncomfortable too. His great weight forced him to employ four men - where usually there would be only two needed - and even then they would stagger at times, especially if the ground was slippery or uneven underfoot.

  So the old bitch Contessa would refuse him admittance, Aretino thought bitterly. She would rue the day.

  “Stop here!” he bellowed, the men jerking to a halt, Aretino’s fat body lurching forwards as he signalled to someone across the street. “Adamo, where have you been? I’ve been waiting to see you for two days.”

  The Florentine shrugged, blithely unconcerned. “I have other calls on my time —”

  “And other paymasters, I’ll be bound.”

  Baptista ignored the bait. “You look angry,” he said, leaning against the sedan chair.

  “Come back with me —”

  “There isn’t room for more than one in that thing.” Baptista replied, mockingly.

  “I don’t mean with me, you fucking moron! Follow me.”

  “I am awaited at a game of primero.” Baptista replied, “I will come along later.”

  Aretino’s fury could not be contained.

  “I have been refused admittance at the Gianetti palazzo! I cannot get beyond the door. How dare that old corpse of a woman turn me away. And not just her, I could not get access to her craven grandson either!” he snapped, wiping the sweat from his face. “They will pay for this fucking insult.”

  “Can you really expect to gain entrance after what we did?”

  Throwing his handkerchief to one side, Aretino ignored the comment. “I need to speak to Marco!”

  “And you think that by arriving on his doorstep you will achieve your aim?” Baptista leaned down, his voice lowered. “The Contessa will not let you in, she is protecting her grandson. And as for Marco himself, no, he will not meet with you again. If you wish to see him —”

  Aretino strained to look up at the Florentine. “Yes?”

  “ – he needs to be tricked into it.”

  “Then get on with it!”

  “I will. Later.”

  “I don’t pay you to keep me waiting!”

  “If the cost of my hire is too high, then I will stay at my card game and we will part company.” Baptista retorted, Aretino reluctantly nodding.

  “Very well, come when you’ve finished your cards and cheated everyone. By then you might be a better frame of mind.”

  “As might you.” Baptista replied, tipping his hat and moving on.

  *

  Silent, Rosella sat in the Fasculo house looking out of the window onto the square below. In the same room Gilda was holding a long and involved negotiation with a customer, Angelo beckoning for Rosella to follow him.

  Once outside, Angelo presented her with a bag of oranges, great ginger orbs, each one almost the size of a hand.

  “See what I got from the market. Look and feel the weight! From Naples.” he smelt the aroma, one fingernail digging into the peel and releasing more of the scent. “The best in Venice, the man said.”

  Rosella took the one he offered her, sitting on the back step of the house and peeling it slowly. The juice ran over her fingers, magnifying the pores of her skin underneath. Intrigued, she nudged him.

  “Look.”

  “What is it?”

  “My skin... I was only just wondering what kind of skin my baby would have...” Rosella explained, lowering her voice so that he had to strain to hear her. “Angelo, I am telling you this in confidence. The Contessa wishes that I marry Marco —”

  “But —”

  “Sssh!” she urged him, “You are my only friend, the only person I can talk to. Please listen, and let me speak... She is intent on Marco being held responsible for his actions and asked if I would convert to Catholicism.” She looked at him helplessly. “I do not want to deny my faith! But the Contessa said I should think of the child and act in his best interests.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “What kind of life would a child have if I married someone of another faith, another nationality, another world? How could I live in such wealth when I come from so little? The family and their associates would laugh at me, mock me, and more than that…” she looked into the orange flesh of the orange, split open in her hands. “…such a match would be a scandal in Venice.”

  “Yet the Contessa suggested it.”

  “The Gianetti family cannot possibly want it in reality. The whole city would talk about it and I would be taken away from everything I love here.”

  Angelo was torn between speaking out and keeping silent. He wanted to ask how she could think of marrying Marco Gianetti, the man who had tricked her. Yet at the same time he knew Marco was the child’s father and the man who had once been her lover.

  “…I wonder if they really want to take control,” Rosella continued. “perhaps later get rid of me and keep the baby. After all, Marco’s child would be the next Gianetti heir. Maybe that is why the Contessa seems fixed upon the marriage.”

  “Perhaps she is merely offering the best solution —”

  “You think I should deny my faith? I am a Jew, Angelo, I was born a Jew and wish to die a Jew.”

  “Then talk to the rabbi.”

  “When I am ready. But not yet. First I want to think…” she bowed her head. “Ira wants to marry me to a Jewish widower in another city to avoid the scandal.”

  “You would not have to go to another city, Rosella, you know how much I feel for you —”

  She shook her head. “No, my friend, I cannot ruin your life. You cannot be expected to take on a woman carrying another man’s child. Your life would be made miserable here because of me.” Gently she touched his arm. “We ar
e friends, and we can never be anything else. But I value your friendship more than you know. Do you understand?...”

  Reluctantly he nodded, glancing down.

  “...And you are not angry with me?”

  “No.” he said, taking in a long breath and changing the subject. “If Ira arranged a marriage for you, would you agree to it?”

  “It would mean that the baby will grown up amongst its own kind and will never know it’s true parentage. I want that for my baby - but by the same token, am I right to deny the child it’s inheritance?”

  “If it was a girl, it could not inherit.”

  “I know, but she would still have a good life, full of chances. Girl or boy, they would want for nothing, affluence, opportunity, status… but then I wondered if they would ever be completely accepted. Or if everyone would remember that their mother is a Jewess, a poor Jewess from the ghetto. A woman who - instead of living in a palazzo - was locked up when the curfew bell rang.” She flung the orange into the gutter and shook her head. “Ira is so angry with me.”

  “He was shocked —”

  “Shocked?” she repeated bitterly. “It was not him that was used, it was me. If his pride is injured, what of mine? Is he carrying an illegitimate child? No. Ira said he would stand by me, but where is he now? Not here, Angelo, not here. I have shamed him and he will never forgive me for it.” Her voice hardened. “The fight he had with Marco was not for my benefit, Ira has cast Marco as the scapegoat —”

  “Is he not?”

  “Marco was as used as I was.” She replied, “His greatest failing was his weakness, his desperation to please Pietro Aretino. I came second to the writer because Aretino could offer Marco something I could not – a father. That was why he wanted to please him so much. Marco thought that in some way if he could please Aretino he could please his own father, the man who had always despised him.” She tapped the back of Angelo’s hand. “What Marco did was treacherous, cruel, stupid - but I understand why he did it. What I do not understand is Ira’s hostility towards me. I think he believes that I have ruined his career, that this scandal has made him a figure of mockery - and he cannot endure that. If I marry Marco Gianetti not just the ghetto will know what happened, but the whole city. Venice thrives on gossip, they will take their fill from this.”

  Uncertain of how to respond, Angelo stared at the burst orange in the gutter, seeing the sunlight glisten hotly on the split fruit.

  “Ira’s a proud man, but he loves you.”

  “He did love me,” Rosella conceded. “...but now? Now I am so sure.”

  *

  Nervously waiting outside the artists shop on the Rialto, Marco watched for the approach of Tintoretto. The painter’s message had said that it was urgent for them to meet and that Marco should tell no one as the matter concerned Rosella. Hopeful at the thought she might want to see him, Marco studied every passerby for the familiar stocky figure of Il Furioso and was surprised when he felt an unexpected grip on his arm.

  “What do you want?”

  Adam Baptista feigned disappointment. “We are old friends, Marco, are you not happy to see me?”

  “I am meeting someone —”

  “Ah, well, Signor Tintoretto is not coming. I used him as a ruse to get you here.”

  Marco tried to shake off his grip. “I want nothing to do with you!”

  “Nor Aretino either, I imagine.” Baptista replied. His grip had tightened on Marco’s arm. “We don’t want to cause a disturbance out here, what would people think if Marco Gianetti was involved in second fight only days after his return? Let’s move on.” He steered Marco away, moving towards a moored boat with the initials P and A emblazoned on its side.

  Gesturing for the boatman to leave, Baptista urged Marco into the vessel where Aretino sat shaded under a tasselled canopy. After the storm and the fogs of the previous days the weather had turned itself around, teasing a little late summer from the October air.

  “You must try these figs, dear Marco,” Aretino said, his tone mellow. “I have never experienced such lushness.”

  “What you do want with me? I am only here because I was tricked into coming —”

  “You are easily duped, are you not? But your naivety makes you all the more adorable.” Aretino continued. “We must regain our friendship —”

  Marco snorted. “Never!”

  “Angry men are blind and foolish, for reason at such time takes flight and, in her absence, wrath plunders all the riches of the intellect while judgement remains the prisoner of its own pride.” He gestured to the figs again. “Try one, you will be consumed by its sweet moistness.” He looked to the side of the canal and addressed Baptista, who was waiting there. “We will chat for a little time, come back in a while when we have made amends.” His small, shrew eyes turned back to Marco. “Please sit down, we have much to talk about.”

  “I have nothing to say to you —”

  “Fucking donkey!” Aretino sneered, his anger suddenly uncorked. “You might have nothing to say to me, but I have plenty to say to you. Your antique grandmother banished me from the Gianetti palazzo, sent me packing like a beggar, but soon we will see just who is the genuine beggar.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin, pointing irritably to a seat. “Sit down, little boy, and learn how the real world works.”

  Hesitating, Marco looked from Aretino to Baptista, the latter standing a little way off on the canal side.

  “That flight of yours was pointless, Marco. See how you returned? Some doubted you would, but I knew better, even if you did miss your own father’s funeral. Poor Jacopo, we were friends for many years.”

  “My grandmother said that he hated you and that you blackmailed him.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No.”

  “No, she denied knowing when we spoke,” Aretino replied. “But you and I, being friends, can speak freely together. The truth is often painful, but we are none of us children forever.” He paused, reaching for his wine, sipped at it, and then continued. “Rosella Tabat is pregnant with your child.”

  “I know.”

  “And there is gossip that you intend to marry her —”

  “How would you know that?”

  “My dear Marco, how many servants does your family employ? Thirty? Forty? Oh, and boatmen too. Many are loyal, but there is always someone who finds that loyalty wavers in the face of a purse of coins.” He smiled sleekly. “Servants are like mice, unnoticed most of the time, but always in the background, scuttling about and overhearing much with their big, ever open ears.”

  “Do you have spies everywhere?”

  “Everywhere I need them.” He replied, reverting to his previous theme. “Are you not curious as to why I blackmailed your father?”

  “So you admit it?”

  “Yes, I admit it.”

  “And as my father is dead,” Marco replied, “it does not matter anymore.”

  “So you think his secret is without value now?”

  “I do not know his secret. I do not want to know his secret,” Marco said, understanding that he was – in some way –being cursed. That the bloated man in front of him, still sweating even under a sheltering canopy, was not content to have fed off a dead man, but was now turning his eyes on the living son.

  At that instant he marvelled that he could have ever admired Aretino, or thought him amusing. He wondered how he had endured his capriciousness, his casual cruelty, and felt the same sense of entrapment that his father had once felt. A noose of control about to slide over his head and tighten around his throat. And he wondered why he had returned to Venice. If he had stayed away, Rosella would have married a Jewish widower and raised her son in peace, Ira would have prospered in his career and if Marco Gianetti’s name had ever been mentioned it would have been with hatred and relief that he had left Venice forever.

  But he had returned, and Aretino was talking again.

  “Your father was quite prepared to pay me for my silence and our deal continued for m
any years. Of course his death was a matter of grief for us all —”

  “What hold did you have over him?”

  “ – I will tell you in time, Marco. You are impatient.”

  “And you are like the boy who pulls the wings off a fly to see it suffer and stay earthbound before watching it die.” Marco replied. “If you have any mercy, tell me now. Unless you have nothing to tell, and are merely bluffing.”

  Aretino raised his eyebrows.

  “How brave you have become, Marco. Your sojourn away from Venice has matured you. But then again, only a mature man could be the heir to the Gianetti fortune. Only a strong man could handle the many duties and burdens of such wealth.” He sighed, his chest wheezing like a pair of bellows. “The fog induced in me a cough, something from which I had not suffered before. I find it irksome…” Marco said nothing and waited for him to continue. “...Your grandmother and I had a long conversation about your welfare.”

  “My welfare?”

  “You have people who care for you, Marco, you must never doubt that. The ghetto rats are of no importance. If they hate you, what does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “So naïve...” Aretino replied, moving on. “The Contessa was anxious for your return, obviously to see you in good health, but also for you to inherit the legacy which is yours by rights. I believe that as you have no siblings the estate would go to your cousins in the event of your death. Which naturally is not pertinent here.”

  “What is pertinent?”

  “As you know, your dear father was affected in the mind before he died, and your mother, God rest her soul, was unstable also.”

  “I am not afflicted that way.”

  “No, no, you wouldn’t be,” Aretino replied, pausing for an instant before he continued. “And why? Because you are not Jacopo Gianetti’s son —”

  Confused, Marco stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You are not the heir to the fortune for which you long —”

  Marco shook his head, his voice wavering. “No, no...”