3 - Cruel Music

by Beverle Graves Myers

  By the time I reached the Ripetta, a pale sun was thinning the mist and the day’s business had begun. A flock of boats with high curved prows and single masts bobbed at the quay, almost like a little Venice. Porters were unloading casks and crates from wheeled vehicles and transferring them to the jetty to be loaded onto boats. I stopped several draymen before I was directed to the Via Verdi.

  I recognized the warehouse immediately. It seemed to be the only oil business among establishments that dealt in corn and wheat. Its stone façade was cracked and discolored, and though the rest of the street was coming to life, its ramp was not in use.

  Approaching cautiously, I ducked under a slanting portico littered with broken casks and other debris. A street door fashioned of heavy planks was wide enough to admit an average-sized cart. The door sagged on its hinges. I pushed it open a few inches, stopping when it creaked like a dungeon gate.

  I glimpsed a vast interior stacked with oil casks, then stepped back. I didn’t know what to do. The walk through the mist had cooled my white-hot anger to a temperature that allowed reflection. I could barely contemplate leaving Rome while Benito’s attackers went on as if the evil deed had never occurred. But I obviously couldn’t alert the authorities. Had I thought I was going to leap on the man with the blue cap and pummel him to a pulp? Alessandro could have carried that off, but not I. Heaving a sigh, I realized it had been a mistake to come to the warehouse at all.

  I turned to go, but I was too late. The man in the blue cap blocked my path, his dark eyes narrowed and his lantern jaw pushed forward in a scowl. His sinewy hands gripped a stout leather bludgeon. I knew him only from the beggar’s description and Gussie’s sketch, but he knew me by sight. He pronounced my name in a raspy growl.

  A wave of panic rose in my chest. I feinted to my left, and then sprang to my right, hoping to throw him off balance, but his big body moved with the grace of a dancer. The blow struck my forehead and sent me staggering back. A rainbow flash rent the air, then darkness.

  ***

  A splash of cold water startled me to consciousness. Lying on my side, atop some lumpy sacks smelling of garlic, I coughed and spat only to have another bucketful flung in my face.

  I was in a small storeroom. Blue Cap squatted beside me. He poked my chest with his bludgeon, and I realized that my wrists were tied behind my back. “He’s awake,” he called to someone moving around behind me. “We don’t need no more water.”

  I endeavored to move my feet and found those restrained as well. A wave of dizziness engulfed me as the white stockings and buckled shoes of the water flinger came into view. I raised my gaze to his face. Hope exploded in one delirious heartbeat, then the truth struck me with the force of Blue Cap’s club.

  “Guido,” I whispered.

  The footman looked down on me with a nasty smile. “Not very clever of you to show up here. If I were you, I’d be putting as much distance between myself and Magistrate Sertori as possible. What are you doing at my uncle’s place, anyway? Did Benito revive enough to tell you that I took your letters?”

  “No.” I thought quickly. “Benito is a little better, but the doctor says he will never be able to remember what happened.”

  “Then what brought you here?” Guido asked.

  I glanced at Blue Cap. More lies designed to protect the people I loved sprang to my lips. “People in the street where Benito was struck described the cart and driver. I’ve been on the watch ever since. I spotted a likely cart one day and followed it here, but there were a lot of porters milling around. I returned to have it out with the driver in private.”

  Guido squatted and nudged Blue Cap aside. The footman produced a dagger and caught the tip in the notch of my jaw. “Now, why don’t I believe that?”

  Barely moving my mouth, I answered, “I’m telling you how I found this place. I can’t help it if you don’t believe me. Why did you want my letters, anyway?”

  “You know that as well as I do.”

  He was right. Guido had played his valet role as skillfully as the most seasoned actor, but now that he had dropped the respectful servant’s persona, he looked every inch a killer.

  “You were trying to find out what I knew about Gemma’s murder.”

  “Of course. Once Gemma was found with the marchesa’s scarf around her neck, I thought the old bat would finally be packed off to the madhouse where she belongs…but the cardinal surprised me. He decided to keep things quiet and involve you. I had to know what was going on.”

  “At Benito’s expense,” I replied grimly.

  Guido released the dagger and sank back on one knee. He lowered his eyes. “I didn’t want things to end up that way.”

  I thought I saw real regret in his face, but it passed with a flicker.

  “Why did you kill Gemma?” I asked boldly. “Surely it was not just to get rid of a troublesome old lady.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  Guido snorted. “You’re all the same. We servants live right under your noses, but we might as well be invisible unless we’re shoving food at you or wiping your precious asses.”

  “You’re lumping me in with aristocrats like Cardinal Fabiani and Prince Pompetti?” Even in my dire situation, Guido’s point of view amazed me.

  “You wear silk coats, don’t you? And full dress wigs made of real hair? And you have a trunkful of snuffboxes and silver buckles and other such gewgaws.” He and Blue Cap shared a nod, setting anyone above their station squarely in the enemy camp.

  Another truth burrowed its way through the pounding in my head. Despite my bonds, I managed to raise up on one elbow. “You’re a thief! Some of my things have gone missing. The marchesa’s, too. Is that why you killed Gemma—because she found you out?”

  Guido laughed outright at that. “Gemma was partners with us. She took things the old lady wouldn’t miss. And stood guard when need be.”

  I nodded. Everything was becoming clear. “Because of the marchesa’s wandering, Gemma could find an excuse to be idling almost anywhere…by a tapestry that leads to a concealed staircase, in the pavilion that has a secret entrance to the old aqueduct…” I remembered the carefully clipped path from the aqueduct to the river. “It’s all so very convenient. You pack your booty through the tunnel and a boat picks it up. Under cover of night, of course. Where do you store it until it can be sold, I wonder.”

  Guido’s quick glance toward the casks stacked along the back wall of the storeroom wasn’t lost on me.

  Blue Cap drew his truncheon arm back. “Here, this capon knows too much.”

  I tensed in expectation of a blow, but Guido jerked his confederate’s arm down. “It doesn’t matter how much he knows.” The footman gazed at me, a smile playing around his brutish mouth. With a sinking heart, I realized that he was going to recount the murder scene—and that I wouldn’t live to tell another soul.

  “Old Red Chaps had me on duty at the front entrance that night, but as no one was about, I decided to do a little scouting for a pretty trinket or two. Those hidden passages make it easy. All the servants know about them. How else would they keep ’em clean? But the passages are off limits for anything else, and no one breaks that rule for fear of being let go.”

  “Except you and Gemma.”

  He shrugged. “A fellow like me takes risks when he has to. Gemma had her own fish to fry. Anyway, when I saw the cardinal duck into the tunnel, I wondered what was up. I followed him. Gemma was waiting in the little garden house. I cracked the door open and listened from the other side. They were walking around—talking low—made it hard to hear every word. But I got the most important bit—Gemma wanted a hundred gold sequins to keep quiet about something she knew, and Fabiani was going to give them to her.

  “Well, I could hardly let that go by, could I?” Guido stood and began pacing, warm
ing to his sense of injustice. “I had cut her in on my deal. The gardener didn’t trust her, but I said we needed her. I told him, ‘Either she’s partners with us or I go.’ You see? I did right by her in the thieving business—so half those sequins were mine by right. I waited ’til the cardinal left, then came out and told her how it was going to be.”

  I squirmed upright so I could watch Guido’s face. “She wouldn’t share.”

  “It was pathetic.” His lip curled in a sneer. “She refused me because she was saving up for a dowry. Gemma thought that she could buy a marriage proposal from that custard-faced abate of hers. As if a Montorio would ever wed a serving maid.”

  “There must have been more, though,” I said, observing the deep-seated anger that had bunched Guido’s shoulders and balled his hands into fists. “You weren’t thinking very clearly—leaving a dead body at the entrance to the tunnel where your gang shifted your goods was the work of a dolt.”

  The footman stooped and stuck his face close to mine. Blue Cap was right behind him. “The little whore called me a finocchio.”

  I raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Guido shook his head vigorously. “Benito is a finocchio. I’m as much a man as they come. I just like fucking the finocchio.”

  Before I could contemplate the distinction, Guido gave Blue Cap a nod, and my world went dark once again.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Wheels clattered. A fishy smell filled the air. Boatmen cried their distinctive calls. Had I somehow got to Venice? With a pounding ache in my head that felt like it had swelled to twice its normal size?

  I opened my eyes and squirmed tentatively. The light was faint, filtering through seams between boards that encased me in a tight, uncomfortable ball. Despite the chill, I broke into a torrent of sweat. Guido and Blue Cap must have stuffed me in a crate and hauled me to the Ripetta. I nearly vomited when I realized how simple it would be to dump this crate from a boat once it was out on open water.

  My hands and feet were still bound, and a gag that tasted of rancid oil covered my mouth. I made short work of that by scraping my jaw against the rough boards until the fabric loosened and I could wriggle it down my neck. With frantic energy, I went to work on my bonds. My captors must have tightened them as I lay helpless. I couldn’t do more than hunch my shoulders or draw my legs back a few inches. This I did, using my boot heels to drum a tattoo on the boards. I yelled at the same time, but my feeble efforts produced no effect.

  I quieted when I heard the sound of several voices above my crate. Guido’s I recognized at once. The footman assured someone that “all would soon be taken care of,” and my prison was lifted aloft, rocked along for thirty paces or so, and deposited on a hard surface.

  The voices of Guido and the others drifted away. Against the background clamor of the busy port, I heard water lapping against stone, very near, then the sound of rigging lines slapping wooden masts. My crate was on the jetty, ready for loading. If I couldn’t summon help within the next few minutes, I was a dead man.

  Poor Gemma had been no match for Guido, but I wasn’t about to let a greedy street tough do away with me. I craned my neck to find the widest crack between the boards. Behind my left shoulder, a knothole admitted a circle of light the size of my pocket watch. By painful degrees, I twisted around until my mouth could reach that hole.

  I shouted and screamed for all I was worth. My lung power was prodigious, but I might as well have been crying to the deaf. I was competing with haulers, porters, boatmen, and harbor agents—all raising their voices on urgent matters, all striving to be heard against the chaos of rattling drays, stamping horses, and casks rumbling over paving stones.

  Tears of frustration wet my cheeks. I couldn’t end like this. Not when I’d just found Liya again, with so much to look forward to and so many triumphs before me. I beat my head on the boards, oblivious to the piercing pain. I had to sing again, to fill the opera house with my voice.

  I inhaled sharply. Of course! There was one sound I could make that might cut through the din. If one note had the capacity to inspire rapture in an audience intent on dining, gossiping, and romancing, surely it could catch the attention of those who would never expect to hear such a sound emanating from a crate on the jetty.

  The maestros called it a messa di voce. I had never performed that vocal marvel from such a cramped position, but I had to try. Pushing my knees against the opposite end of the crate to make as much room for my ribcage as possible, I took a deep breath.

  I covered the hole with my mouth and sounded a soft, clear tone. Slowly, with exquisite control, I swelled that note louder and louder until it throbbed with the majesty and power of an organ pipe vibrating in a vast cathedral. Many a lady in a sixth-tier box had been driven to a swooning frenzy by my messa. With the accuracy of a marksman, I projected this one straight toward the sounds of the thickest activity. Surely someone on the Ripetta would hear and come to investigate.

  I sustained the height of my crescendo until black spots danced before my eyes and I slumped down, lungs utterly spent. For a moment, I thought I had failed. Then, as welcome as Saint Gabriel’s trumpet, a very British voice called my name.

  “Gussie,” I shouted through the hole. “Over here.”

  The crate shook. My brother-in-law continued to call my name, along with another voice that made no sense. The sounds of a fight erupted: fists pounding flesh, Guido snarling oaths, a woman screaming, yelps of pain and anger. Through it all, I could only kick at the boards and pray in helpless, barely coherent anguish.

  Suddenly, the lid of my crate was ripped away. Blinking in the bright sunshine, I was overjoyed to see Gussie and Liya reaching in to pull me to freedom. I added my clumsy efforts to theirs and was soon rising to my feet.

  I emerged from the crate to face an audience, a crowd of onlookers packing the Ripetta. When they saw that I was unharmed, spontaneous cheering and clapping broke out, then several cries of “bravo.” A grin split my face—never had applause sounded so sweet to my ears.

  Gussie sprang to my back to work at my bonds, and Liya threw her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. In the excitement, I had barely noticed my third rescuer, a man whose bearded face was hidden by a handkerchief stanching a wound over his cheekbone. Who was this?

  He lowered the bloody cloth.

  “Alessandro!” I gasped. “How in Hades did you get here?”

  ***

  Magistrate Sertori had not been far behind my rescuers. As I later learned, he had set his most intelligent constable on my trail the moment he heard about my part in Gemma’s watery burial. I had been watched as I kissed Liya in the alley behind the cookshop, as I mixed with the pilgrims in the street, and as I hovered at Benito’s bedside. Only the fact that I’d been too busy to visit Gussie’s lodging had kept Sertori from discovering that my brother-in-law was in Rome.

  When the retrieval of Gemma’s body set my arrest in motion, Sertori was furious that I couldn’t be found at the villa. I can imagine how he must have raged and fumed, but all he could do was put a guard on the place he most expected me to turn up: Liya’s cookshop.

  The dawn appearance of an English stranger who swept Liya away in great excitement signaled his men to summon their master and give chase. They hung back as Gussie and Liya hurried to his lodging and entered the building. When Sertori arrived, he and his band of sbirri waited in anticipation of an easy arrest. They were puzzled to see Gussie and Liya leave and proceed toward the Ripetta, not with me, but with yet another tall stranger.

  The magistrate created quite a stir when he waded into the appreciative crowd on the jetty. Recognizing a person of authority, Alessandro pointed out Guido and Blue Cap, who were being restrained by some boatmen. While my brother accused them of kidnapping me and attempting to murder Benito, they yelled stout denials and identified me as “the vicious capon who
had killed poor Gemma Farussi.” Liya took great exception to this and pulled at Sertori’s sleeve to induce him to listen to her. Magistrate Sertori had no interest in conducting an open-air interrogation. Brandishing his walking stick, he barked orders for the lot of us to be taken into custody.

  Thus it was that we were carted to the building that housed the magistrate’s court and lock-up. The constables sat us down on hard wooden benches lining a gloomy hallway and took up positions at each end of the corridor. Liya, Gussie, Alessandro, and I faced Guido and Blue Cap as Sertori paced the floor between us. He fingered his lower lip as he regarded us from between lank curtains of hair. Like a cat with some captive mice, he was keeping us in suspense. I had the feeling he enjoyed every minute.

  When Sertori paused to take a folded missive from one of the constables, I took the opportunity to question Alessandro in whispers.

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Just this morning. I came straight to Gussie’s address.” He stroked his beard, answering from behind his hand. “I couldn’t think where Gussie would have gone so early, but he and your lady soon showed up and let me know what was going on. It gave them quite a jolt to find you’d disappeared.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “The torn watercolor that you left on the floor. We started at the oil warehouse and were told the cart had just left. We fanned out looking for it and its driver.”

  I nodded with a great exhalation of breath. At least my anger had served one good purpose. If I hadn’t ripped up Gussie’s sketch, they would never have found me in time.

  I leaned close, my chin nearly resting on my brother’s shoulder. “But how did you get out of prison? You must tell me.”

  Alessandro kept his gaze trained on Sertori, who was having an increasingly agitated conversation with his officer. “Later, little brother. Right now, we need to finish rescuing you.”